What's up with that thang?

It's something of a relief to find that we're not the only delegation in Morelia who fretted about the local violence. We've been updating our senior staff daily about the state of affairs, and we've quizzed various hotel employees, merchants, and Marcos, the most patient driver who has ever chauffeured American visitors about the city, only to hear that the problems, while acute, do not generally seem to involve the civvies. It's a give-and-take limited largely to encounters between the forces of law and those of chaos; those not buying/selling/trading/transporting drugs or attempting to interfere with same seem to have been left mostly (though, tragically, not always) alone. But even attendees from within Mexico were worried, and most of them have been quite relieved by the situation now that they're here. Things downtown are so resolutely mellow that it's hard to remember that there are concerns.

Morelia has a beautiful soaring 17th-century cathedral in the middle of town, flanked by twin plazas that serve as the center of social life for the residents. On Saturday nights, the town sets off fireworks before illuminating the cathedral's facade and towers, and there is general festivating. In honor of our conference, the town added another pre-illumination fireworks show, this one on Thursday night. The main drag was closed to road traffic, smoochy couples and young families thronged the street, teenagers in vaguely colonial costume handed out fliers for a living history production, and music about the rockingness of being from Michoacán pulsed over the speakers. At a prearranged moment, the lower windows of the cathedral began to strobe red and yellow, the music soared, and fountains of white fire rose from the front gates, then the central facade, and then the towers; mortar shells in the plazas rose into the sky, whistling sharply and exploding into flecks of gold and green. The display went on for about five minutes, everyone craning to see the showers of color directly overhead, and then it was over and we joined a line to get into the cathedral to hear a concert. Nota bene: The Orquestra Juvenil de Morelia does astonishing things; their "Marche Slav" was amazing and the organist's rendition of the "Toccata and Fugue" was masterful.

We were all very chuffed to have gone. But this morning, one of the hosts relayed a story to us that made us feel as though our preemptive worrying had been very small taters. "I talked to an attendee this morning, and he said, why there was nothing in the news this morning or warnings to the members? Because he was out last night near the plaza before the concert, and the police had closed the road, and then he heard shootings! He says this is a very dangerous place." Somehow the flocks of people heading cheerfully toward the explosions did not suggest that perhaps he was overreacting.

Of course, if you are a defenseless pineapple, mango, or jicama root, this is indeed a violent area. The gaspacheros show no mercy.

Behind pink walls, somewhere there's a blog

ARGH. I forgot to bring my camera cord, which means no uploading of photos until I get back. I'm taking them like a mad thing, though sadly I did not catch the dyslexic bus labeled "Colectivo Moerlia," being at the time too busy trying to both process the semiotics of a Mexican-style chibi Virgin of Guadalupe helium balloon and not spill my gaspacho, a cupful of chopped jicama, mango, and pineapple mixed with lemon and lime juice and layered with salt, chili pepper, and finely shredded queso blanco, a snack so sublimely juicy and generously scooped that it's served in a cup inside a plastic bag.

TRAVEL IS SO MUCH FUN, Y'ALL. And I shouldn't shout, because it's annoying and it makes the altitude headache (which, fine, I am an outlier for having one at a measly 6,000 feet, but oh God knowing that does not help) worse. But they make the Coke here with pure cane sugar instead of our agrosubsidized corn syrup, and I've seen a dude with a mullet dyed electric blue, and the Key limes stuffed with sugared coconut cost about ten cents. Some shouting is warranted. VIVA!

In haste, for I am laggardly and sick of packing

Is there any DNA evidence that The Park Bencher and I might be sekrit Siamese twins? Because I'm starting to wonder. She has yet to post any woebegone moans about missing the chance to see Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephenson, and Paul Krugman at the same Worldcon party, which one can only assume was epic and healed hundreds of undeserving Canadians, but otherwise...man. E-doppelganging.

The postponed-for-swinely-flu trip to Mexico is back on, and I leave tomorrow. Concerns about violence in the state, which is earning itself a name for drug-related shootings, have been somewhat assuaged by the assurances that the bullets are targeted at authority figures who've had the nerve to interfere with local entrepreneurial efforts and have studiously been aimed away from tourists, which, I think you will agree, is among the most conditional reassurances ever. Nonetheless, we have agreed to endeavor to avoid finding ourselves in a position to make any trouble for the area businessfolk, or indeed to involve ourselves in their endeavors or draw their attention in any way. Don't mind us, we'll soon be gone.

Y'all be good.

What a rough beast

I leave the office for one measly extended weekend of eating marathon meals and drinking mighty wines in Chicago, and everything goes to hell, such that by the time I get home o'nights all I want to do is kerflop into bed. Stories about the weekend of feasty goodness and watching TheVoice marry her feller are on their way.

Manny has now been visited by an acupuncturist-cum-chiropractor, who did many woo-type things and left him with a batch of Chinese herbs. The barn staff find this a tremendous source of amusement, particularly the one labeled "for weakness of the hind end." When it comes to horses, I have set aside my usual cynicism about alternate therapies, because some animals genuinely do seem to benefit from them, and the placebo effect isn't the probable cause. Still, I agree with one staffer, who summarized Manny's current regimen succinctly: "He needs to chill the hell out and gain some weight. Dude, the herb he needs is not Chinese." (Except that it maybe is, who knew?)

We had fun, though, with only me and Small Woman, on Grayson, in the class. Pat set us doing mirrored exercises, circles at each end of the ring and then swapping off, which we managed with elan and even panache. Then she had each of us do a Preliminary-level dressage test that she made up on the fly, reading us the moves as we went. I was startled by how hard it was and how well Manny did, and speaking for myself it was also engaging to focus on a variety of moves in sequence, rather than the usual routine of doing one maneuver repeatedly before switching to another.

But when the wind is westerly

Manny has been colicking lately, so I took Lear back in hand last night. Turns out that while he helped prepare me for Manny's appalling ground manners, those same nasty habits have made Lear seem practically sweet by comparison. That and, of course, Lear has had more time to learn that trying to bite me is a quick way to hurt himself, muahahaha.

But oh lordy had I forgotten what it was like riding a horse whose brain is 50% Skittles. The gate end of the ring is haunted like whoa horsie whoa, though more on Lear's right side than his left, and the arrival, at the nongate end, of a visitor—who was perfectly behaved, quiet, not prone to wave pompoms or do anything otherwise obnoxious to the equine sense of calm—was further cause for ear-pricking and nervous sidling.

There were only two of us in class, me on Lear and Small Woman on Grayson, so we got a lot of work done, even to the point of trying the half-pass a few times. Lear went on the bit maybe 60% of the time, though it was a struggle to keep him there and not periscoping whenever we approached the gate. I sat through two spooks without much event and counted myself lucky.

And then, 10 minutes before the end of class, one of the barn cats happened to walk past as we were passing the gate, and suddenly Lear lost his marbles, all "JESUS CHRIST IT'S A LION GET IN THE CAR OH SHIT I DON'T FIT IN THE CAR"-style. He went up, sideways, and down all at once (so says my memory); I lost a stirrup and the reins and couldn't even manage to grab his mane. He bolted down the ring and zeroed in on Grayson's ass, which of course is prime "kick me" territory. And Small Woman had stopped him dead, for some reason, oh God we were coming up fast fast fast.

My adrenal glands appear to be connected to my drill-sergeant bossypants synapses. Visions of bloody thrashing catastrophe dancing in my head, I bellowed a voice-of-brass "MOVE!" at the top of my lungs and was distantly amused to notice that while I couldn't get my shit together to control the horse, I was yelling from the diaphragm and not shrieking from the throat.

Through all of this, Pat was calmly chanting, "Sit back, relax, sit back, back, relax, let him have his head, sit, sit deep, reeee-laaaax." In peaceful moments, I can accept that it's probably better to have someone giving you solid advice and not adding to the general panic; at the time, though, it feels a bit condescending, like, would you please validate my freaking out here and reassure me that it's scary?

The whole thing took maybe three seconds, and Lear calmed down, I swallowed my heart and coughed it back into its accustomed place, and we did some steady walking exercises to wrap up. Yes, I took Lear back to the Place of Terrible Horror; he flicked an ear and moseyed by it, and I resisted the temptation to smack him stupid for his new blasé attitude. Scare us both out of a week's life and then act as though it's just so last year? Twerp.

With that, I'm off to Chicago. Y'all be good now!

Oh but of course

It's Police Week. This explains why my train ride home yesterday was briefly enlivened by the sight of fully uniformed police-types who bore a striking resemblance to Mounties standing clustered on the Judiciary Square platform. I figured they'd been bused in to help counsel all the downcast Capitals fans streaming homeward, Ovechkin jerseys drenched with tears.

Of a usual Wednesday night, I'd've been at the barn and remained ignorant of the whole Caps/Pens farrago until WTOP woke me this morning with the soothing sounds of half-hourly sports and traffic and weather on the 8s. Instead, I spent the evening doing an amateur anthropological observation at one of DC's formal events,wherein "formal" meant that the dress code was listed as "business," and the resulting sartorial confusion led to a variety of peculiar outfits and a remarkable (for DC) lack of flip-flops. There was wining and dining, there was heavily funded schmoozing, there was the requisite Obama shout-out, there was a very random celebrity guest and whoa-hey-hi also her bosoms, there was a clip of Harry Connick, Jr., playing the physician in charge of the Herceptin trials (me, privately, to fellow survivor and seatmate E: "Did any of your docs look like that?" E: "Um, no." "Mine either. Rip-off!"), and then there was shuffling off to scrum for taxis. My new black heels, though remarkably cute and comfortable for the first few hours, left me with monster blisters that I'm having to baby today.

Speaking of de feet, how much do I love my new running socks? SO MUCH. So much love! They've helped minimize the agony that has been taking my couch-to-5K slacker self out on the hills of 16th Street, far from the madding treadmill. I may be sucking wind and moving at an arthritic shuffle by the end of each session, which Robert Ullrey still tells me is fine, the lying sadist, but thanks to magical seamless-sock technology at least my toes are comfortable.

More legs = less cuteness (no kittens here)

Yours truly is not genius material, as proved by the fact that I cheerily slung my bag of Metro essentials (book, keys, iPod) into the trunk of Iosif's car with the camera still in it before heading down to Hungry for Music's crawfish festival. Not to fret, there is no theft in this story, only the sad song of lost opportunities and the lament that I can only tell you about the fun of crawdad munching, at least until Iosif comes through with his pics [ETA: the harrah, the harrah! no, honestly, what the hell is to be done with my hair?].

Crayfish! Arthropodically delicious! Much less work than crabs and much more tastiness than lobster. Grip the head and tail, wrench the body torsionally, scrape off any offensively ooky innards, suck de head, peel a segment or two off the abdomen, and bite out the pinky-size bit of tasty tail meat. Repeat. Break for beer or corn or bread. Shove away from the table, grab a snow cone, stroll around, and back for more. I got enthusiastically into the crowd-jostling scene around the crayfish trough, where everyone positioned themselves, paper plates at the ready, waiting for the large aproned men who entered yelling, "Hot hot hot, make a lane, make a lane!" and slung steaming potsful of scarlet critters down the length of the table. Frantic scrabbling with plates (pah), shovels (bah), and bare asbestos fingers (yay!) ensued, everyone piling bugs onto their platters and eventually triumphantly breaking free to look for seats and wet wipes.

Two observations. First, it was odd but flattering—and amusing—that the guy at the check-in thought I was eight years younger than I for trulio am, though that's still old enough to get a beer bracelet and therefore no problem atall atall. Second, okay, there is absolutely nothing wrong with piling your crawdad heads in neat rows around your plate. Crawhenge! Tamercraw! Stop taking pictures!

Like kittens through the hourglass...

Serialkarma says she called in kitten emergency today, and first let's give a brief bow to her employer for recognizing this priority. Te salutamos!

Unfortunately, KE is not as whimsically fun as it sounds. If anyone of an engineering mind has suggestions for how to rescue a small kitten that has fallen to the bottom of a six-foot-tall fence post made of PVC pipe, head on over and let her know. So far, suggestions have included some variant on giant chopsticks, flooding the pipe and hoping the kitten floats (if it doesn't, of course, its problems are over), drilling a hole near the bottom of the pipe and trying to scoop the delicious kitten marrow out of this tube without having said tube fall on anyone important, fishing the cat out by getting it to cling to something, and, perhaps most sensibly, leaving a length of matting hanging into the tube so that the kitten can climb out on its own (which SK has done). It's all Perils of Pauline-meets-Acme Products over there in Brooklyn. Animal services is there but stymied.

On the up side, SK has gotten suggestions from as far away as Bangkok. Go help, if it's in your power.

[ETA: Kitty rescued yay!]

Slightly frazzled update

To the bullet-points of lazy hastiness!

• I rode Zeus last night, Lear having been sent off for vacation. Zeus is new to our class, a strange copper-colored animal who looks like a QH from the chest back and a scrawny Morgan otherwise. He's very forward-striding, which makes him good on trail (I'm told) but once at any kind of speed in the ring he does. Not. STOP. When I asked for the canter I got several laps of hand gallop; eventually I had to spiral him into a circle to get him to come back down. More to the point, oh my God he does not bend to the right. At all. EVER. It was like riding a close-paren, and after a few minutes I felt like I'd been cranking a mower from the effort it took to keep him from collapsing in half to the left. The barn assigned him to the class "because he needs dressage," the way stiff office workers need yoga, and truer words et cetera. But riding him is exhausting work, like teaching spelling to a four-year-old who's breakfasted on Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs. This pony needs less grain and a lot more work. And also not to step on my foot argh argh argh ya bastard move argh.
  
• C'est fini the mini-med course. The final presentation was on reconstructive plastic surgery after breast cancer, and the presenter was kind of an asshole. First off, he apologized for the "adult" material, which consisted of before-and-after neck-to-hip naked shots of women who got the surgeries. If you're lecturing on breast cancer, trust me, we know. Boobs. Gotcha. We've all seen 'em. Second, he implied that all surgeons should ask small-breasted women whether they've ever thought about implants, because when you're dealing with a disease that attacks a major part of your appearance, what you really want is someone implying that you weren't so hot even before the cancer diagnosis. Finally, he made some snarky remarks about feminists thinking his work isn't important. Started, comma, do not get me. True, the presentation involved some useful intels, like that you should consult a plastic surgeon before going in for general breast surgery, because that'll get you better cosmetic results, but he ruined what could've been an excellent lecture by being condescending and a little creepy.
  
• Wanda reported back on the Arizona round-up: dusty, understaffed, and fun, with an all-girl ground team to pin the calves (up to 300-pounders, aka all hands on deck cow) while Alex handled the branding. Aw. She got to ride a barrels horse who by the sound of it could've done the cattle work without a rider: "Coalie would spin on a dime and roar off after a cow that cut off where she shouldn't be, and he was completely unafraid of their horns and their bawling...all I had to do was keep him from running over Cynthia! When the calves were finally done and let go, he put his nose down to move along the little ones; it was sorta cute, no way to have a nice picture of that." Jealousy gnaweth my entrails.
  
• I'm trying to get back into C25K. Last year I'd worked up to half an hour's running at a stretch, then let it lapse entirely, so it's back to square one. I find it hard to be disciplined about running programs, but I'm trying to do this (again) because I still have dreams where I find myself running and it's easy, and I think, "Oh. How silly not to have realized," but then I wake up. So I'm trying to bridge the gap. But...
• Mexico! High altitude! Long scheduled workdays! Oh well. Rockninja and I fly out Tuesday, while those in command arrive on Wednesday. We're all a-flurry with trying to plan things, and I'm channeling my nerves into wardrobe angst and stress about my rusty Spanish. But there is balm in Gilead: One of our partners is coming up from Argentina and called with an important question: "Apart from dulce de leche and alfajores, what should I be bringing you?" Oh man. MAN. I will be worse than Zeus.
  

Mas fottergrafs

I'm still going through the pile of photos from California, but bit by bit I'm getting them posted to my Flickr page, so if the mood strikes you can click over to the San Francisco set and browse at leisure.

Now, if you really want to engage the old envy circuits before the holidays proper get under way, skip my pics and go straight to Iosif's New Zealand sets. He and I managed to get a flight back from San Francisco together, so for much of the flight he regaled me with Kiwi stories and photos of his adventures. As we touched down in DC, I heard him sigh, "I want to go back." Lawsy me, I can't think why.

Ephemera

Back when I was in college, I got a small grant to do pretty much whatever I pleased for a summer, which is how I came to spend six weeks in the Alaskan taiga, swatting terrier-sized mosquitos and learning the basics of field archaeology among the mortal remains of Dishkakat (or, variously, Dishkaket), a small Gold Rush town. Rule one of rural Alaskan field school: Put mosquito netting up around the latrine before you do anything else, because skeeters on the nethers sounds funny until it's happening to you. No, wait, that's rule two—rule one is to be all kinds of Emily Post to your campmates, because many of them are carrying rifles, and six weeks is a lot of time for resentments to build up.

Anyroo, that was many moons ago, but I'm pretty sure that these are photos of the building in whose ruins I spent many hours, troweling away the years in my one-meter square. Our crew of twelve found a silver coin (probably a Liberty dollar, but worn almost smooth), a clock's hour hand, decorative metalwork from a rifle stock, part of a compass, half a bottle of some sort of hooch, and a pair of black stockings jammed into the space between two of the logs remaining in the wall. Mostly we found dirt.

The town, which was built on the site of a Native seasonal fishing camp, wasn't a great success in the Gold Rush, and it was abandoned by the end of World War I. By the time our class arrived, most of the buildings were just lumps among the trees; this one was a slightly bigger set of lumps, since the bottom two or three logs were left in place. Rule three: When in doubt, assume that the town's biggest building is the bar.

Letting our breath out and our hair down

I had planned to spend part of the evening in Virginia, where BK was hosting a watch party, and then to cruise up to 5*j's for a Silver Spring bash. But the best-laid plans went gang awry when Virginia's numbers were tighter than expected; the idea of getting on the train or into a cab (driving was, hic, not an option) and being cut off from a constant feed of TV and interweb news was terrifying. So I ended up sitting with BK and friends, flipping between MSNBC, CNN, and the Daily Show, while BK himself loaded and reloaded FiveThirtyEight and the CNN.com state and county pages as we asked demanded ("Give us the Prince William returns!" "No, but Arlington first!" "Wait wait wait, is Indiana really turning blue? The home of the Klan, THAT Indiana?"). We got more and more hopped up on drinks, sugar, and numbers, and then Jon Stewart, a fellow W&M graduate, announced that Virginia was being called for Obama. And then he said, "We would like to announce that now, as of 11 PM, Barack Obama is America's next president."

A pause that seemed long, and then there was a clamor for CNN and MSNBC, BK flipping on the Ode to Joy at volume 11, and from there on all I really remember is a welter of shouting and crying and an incoherent burst of toasts that wiped out a bottle of excellent German mead in the name of "the 21st century!" "the America we dreamed of!" "everything we worked for!" and hugs and yet more tears. Oh, and Obama-logo cupcakes.

But eventually you've got to get home, and Metro was closed, and come to find out, free cabs were in very short supply. I ended up shepherding a trio of German schoolteachers onto a downtown-bound bus, assuring them that it would take them to within walking distance of their hotel. They had come for a week to see the election, and they seemed a little disappointed at the lack of celebration in the streets of Arlington. I figured DC doesn't really party and that the earlier televised festivities had already broken up.

Hah. We heard the first screaming whoops as we rolled through Georgetown, and Dupont from K Street north was the best party I've ever seen in this self-conscious city. People high-fived and cheered anyone who smiled; cars honked incessantly in a triple beat as their passengers screamed and waved flags out windows or sunroofs or off the backs of pick-ups; chants broke out as people passed one another on the sidewalks; fireworks exploded over Adams Morgan and U Street. The teachers hugged me warmly when they found their hotel; "Congratulations," said one. "We feel it is a privilege to be here tonight." The driver of the bus I eventually caught heading home wouldn't take fares; his passengers, packed together hip to hip, laughed and cheered, hugging one another over jolts in the road or chattering as the last of the buzz gave way to incoherent fatigue. I staggered through my door around 3 AM, happy and exhausted.

I mean, I dunno about you guys, but I had a hell of a night.

How to run a round-up

1. Wake up at 3 AM and worry about late-announced guests for two hours.
2. Greet the volunteers with gallons of your black-tar coffee. Introduce your guests to one another and watch the donuts vanish. Eventually the bananas and yogurt will go too. Enjoy the chatter for a few minutes, then shoo everyone out to catch, saddle, bridle, and load their assigned horses. Try hard not to roll your eyes at that one DC chick who still for the love of God doesn't know knots.
3. At 6 AM, get everyone crammed into the pick-ups for a bumpy ride down to the trailhead. Worry that people not in the truck with you failed to get into the other truck. Radio for confirmation; relax infinitesimally when word comes back that they all got in.
4. Trailhead. Unload horses, riders, and gear. See everyone off into the park, then drive up to the corral five miles ahead. Worry that the volunteers will get lost or get hurt.
5. Promontory. Divvy up the riders into teams of three and send them off to beat the mesquite for your cattle. Worry that they won't find the cows. Send your dad off with a dressage rider. Worry about that.
6. Start looking for cows in your own group. Watch your border collie have the time of her furry life.
7. Two hours later, find all the cows huddled near the fence-line, penned in by your volunteers. Count the people and horses, sigh a bit with relief when the numbers match up. Start worrying about the corraling process.
8. Give a St. Crispin's Day speech to your volunteers regarding the technique and teamwork needed to get the cows into the corral's small gate. Remember Lee Stanislavsky's advice and hit an emotional peak with the line, "Cover your SHIT! Help each other!" Be surprised and pleased when this works and your volunteers get every single cow into the corral within 10 minutes, chasing down the few breakaways with maybe a little more enthusiasm than skill. Grab some water. Try to ignore the inordinate number of expensive cameras pointed in your direction. Why'd they all pick today to come see the herding? Oh right, the long weekend. Holidays are a little abstract at a time like this.
9. Pick four volunteers to help separate cows and calves. Calves stay in the little ring; cows go down the chute for fly spray. Marvel at the flexibility of a cow who manages to do a 180 in a chute the width of her body, but figure that getting sprayed backward still keeps away the bugs. Pull aside the three sick cows. Ignore the plaintive whines of the dogs, who have been locked in the truck and are not allowed to harry the calves.
10. Start roping. You're in a 40-foot pen with 22 panicky calves, a blazing hot propane stove full of branding irons, and twelve volunteers. Look cool doing a hard job: pick a calf, toss a rope around its heel, drag it so that it's going backward, let a pair of hands run down the rope and tackle the calf while you and your horse keep the rope tight, get someone to slip off the rope once the critter is down and secure, make sure that there are enough people around to keep the bigger calves from kicking free, and start looking for the next target while the team behind you works feverishly to get all the vet work done. Keep an ear out for them so you don't run them down or get them in the way of a kicking cow (this is easiest when they're working bull calves, as the effort to get both balls into the bander seems to call for a lot of yelling). Trust that the two men with the branding irons know where your horse is.
11. Admire your wife as she hops into the ring, grabs a tiny calf by the hind leg, and tugs it over to the rail for your kids to pet. You married a great woman, who will by the end of the day have lost two more nails from her manicure and still be grinning. Try not to wonder why she and the other women in the ring bust out laughing from time to time.
12. Only ten calves done? Oh hell. Some of the calves are almost 500 pounds and take a lot of work to pin, and the boys aren't used to working together yet. Your horse is tiring too, so take a break, get some lunch and a beer, and switch your saddle onto another horse. Try not to envy the kids, who have jumped into the water tank and are paddling around yeeping about the cold.
13. See step 10.
14. Finally, the last calf is done. Command that the gates be swung open, then chase the idiot calves back into the cows' pen. Over the din of the mother and child reunions, rally the troops and drive the cows back out to pasture. Leave behind the one cow who gave birth after you drove her into the corral; her calf, still a wet black bawling pile of legs, will be up on his feet by tomorrow.
15. Meet your riders at the trailhead, load the horses back up, pile the riders back into the trucks. When one rider sees you looking for places to stow gear and tells you that there's plenty of room in the back seat where she is, grin and tell her thanks but that you'd probably better just drive. Enjoy the applause for this remark.
16. Home again home again. Turn out the horses, turn out the sick cows, put away the tack, and get ready to visit the stock for the night. It's been fourteen hours since you got up. The kids' dwarf hamster's habitrail has annexed one of the bathtubs, the month-old goats get into everything, the new stray dog now has a name ("GIT down from there, Billy Hobo") and will have to be fixed so that he doesn't drive your blue heeler bitch crazy, your favorite mare refuses to drop her foal and you can't tell how long she's been pregnant, the windstorm last week reminded you that the barn needs to be reinforced, and this is the third time this year that you've had to drive that neighbor's bull off your herd. As the last of your volunteers rattles off down the drive, the wind over the mesquite blows cool and dry, the sun heads west, and the case of beer your Eastern visitors brought is still on ice. Sing as you head for the pens.

This again

My epic helmet hair and I demonstrate the wrong way to set one's legs during a calf branding. Partner-woman up front is in charge of holding down the top leg and making sure that the calf gets both parts of the brand, a vaccine, a band if it's a bull calf (this one isn't), and an ear tag, then she counts us down so that we release and roll away in sync. The person at the back is responsible for not getting seared or pooped on and for making sure the hind legs don't get free. [ETA, because apparently people are worried: I was neither seared nor smeared. Although there were a couple of close calls on both.]

Do not my stylish yaller gloves fit me purty? It's 'cause they's the perfect size.

A squintillion pardons, efendi

No updates for the last few days on account of I have been traipsing all over southern Arizona sans trusty Mac. Three bucks for ten minutes of interwebs? Nein! Full shenaniganal stories TK, but I am pleased to report that I'm unharmed save for some solar toasting and a slight ding inna face because a calf popped me in the jaw, which I might resent had he not just had his ass seared by not one but two hot irons and his voonerables subjected to the process known as banding (if you are male and wincing preemptively...yes, it's just as bad as you suspect). So perhaps it's understandable that he wasn't at his best.

Also, hi, bacanora, where the fuck have you been all my life? Ah: illegal until 1992 and still not available for sale in the EEUU. Now I know where agave goes when it's lived a virtuous life and obeyed all the proper botanical laws, and also why I shouldn't drink it on an empty stomach.