Just you and the horse, its bareback riding

Freya had her 6th lesson yesterday and while we waited for the class to get started, I heard the instructor tell them to Untack some of the horses, that they would be working on balance and riding bareback.

Freya was just checking out all the horses and I made it a point to explain to her what it meant to ride bareback. She wasn't very cool with this whole idea and really didn't want to do it.

The instructors explained that it would be fun and she would be fine. Riding this way allows you to feel how the horse is moving and allows you to work on your riding position and keeping your balance. Last weekend Freya had a habit of leaning back in the saddle and had a much harder time in class.

I wasn't sure what to expect and only hoped she would stay up on the horse. She did better than that, she rode really well the whole time. She was straight up on the horse and kept her hands where they were suppose to be. She was smiling and having a blast. She was riding bareback and doing great.

They started leading them around at first and even had them hold their arms straight out to work on their balance. Then they turned the reins over to them and had them ride around. She reminded me more and more of someone showing horses and I was really proud of her yesterday.

Looks like she's having a blast doing this and wants to continue. Looks like we are going to find a way to give her more lessons. If we keep this up, we'll need to find some second jobs to help support her new hobby and her growing love of horses.

Support continues for my wifes Journey

My wife is drawing closer and closer to the start of her journey in November. The big challenge has been working at raising money for her to walk. It looks like she'll make that easy and more an likely blow her personal goal out of the water.

Edith's sister and brother have both worked very hard to help her reach her goal as well. This past Friday was a hard day for this effort in raising money. See I brought cup cakes for sale to my work. Meredith makes really great treats and has raised a lot of money for Edith from sales at her work.

What was hard was the walk in to work for me this past Friday. The box said Cup Cakes for a Cure and as I was heading into work, a co-worker was heading out an crying. All I could say was hello to her as we passed. She had already been stopped by another co-worker and I knew something was wrong. I didn't feel I should stop her as well.

Her husband was fighting Cancer himself and not doing well. I later found out she was rushing home to try and be with him, he had taken a turn for the worse. I would later find out he had passed away from his battle with this disease. All I could think about as people stopped to buy a cupcake was me walking past her with the box of Cup Cakes.

I really wish I could have done more in that instance. I could see the pain in her eyes and I hope she could tell I wanted to say more and that I meant more. It just shows me all to well that this can strike anyone at anytime and its a very worthy cause to take on an try and fight.

My wife has always given of herself to others and she is truly a hero on this journey. I wish I could actually take this journey with her, but perhaps this is something best ventured and experienced on your own. I can't wait to here how things went and give her such a huge hug when she reaches her goal.

She's doing something great and a lot of people are behind her, but what she does is for so many many more and hopefully the support of a few will be a tremendous amount of help for all of those fighting to survive.

It takes two to HD

I've been discussing HD lately with my folks and decided I should perhaps write it down. Maybe that would help explain things a little better. The short is it takes two parts to have HD, that is pretty simple and the fact is you need parts A & B to have HD.

For examples sake, we will make the TV part A and that is an HD TV (LCD or Plasma). This is the first part you'll need for sure. Now just because you have one of these, doesn't mean you will have an HD experience now. Remember that you have to have two parts... a part B to complete the process.

Part B is the HD receiver, Blu-ray player, or Antenna pretty much, the device that takes care of the media going to your TV. Just like before, you can't have an HD experience with one of these and not have an HD TV to view it on. Once again from an earlier article; next year when analog goes away, it doesn't mean you have to go an buy an HD TV, boxes will take care of all that for your old TV.

I really can't think of a better way to explain it. Pretty much I have a HD TV right now and I use an old pair of Rabbit Ears to see local HD (over the air). Next month I'm switching my service and getting an HD receiver to send me many, many more shows that are in HD. Having the box is part B and with out an HD TV its pointless. With both parts A & B or parts H & D, I'll be set so to speak. I really can't wait to see all of the shows in HD, my antenna is working really hard.

Uverse goes all in for the win

The deed is done, DirecTV will lose us as a loyal customer as of August 16th. The new kid in town is Uverse from AT&T and they will have our eyes, ears, and minds for the time being when we start using their services.

As a last ditch effort DirecTV tried to offer us a price freeze, a free HD/Tivo box for a promise of staying another 24 months with them. To late though and they could not match the $200 cash back offer from AT&T.

The bad thing is the costs went up with DirecTV and we'll still pay the same with Uverse, but the plus side is we get the HD DVR services, the ability to record 4 shows at the same time. No cost to setup and the first month is free.

So the cycle of leaving someone and becoming a new customer starts over again. Maybe some day a company will figure out a way to give us a little cheaper price after staying with them for 3 years. Sure would be nice if they had done something like that instead of raising prices and causing us to look for something else.

I hope the service and features will be great and I think having HD will make it that much better in the long run. I'd rather not have to shop around again and I'll have to look at ways to cut costs in other areas and save money. I'll report back in August on how things are going with the new Entertainment & High Speed services U-verse has to offer.

Vote for me and I'll set you free

A few months ago I was hanging out in this chat room and talking Politics and about how I really felt that change was needed. It was some pretty good discussions and I guess one thing led to another. Now it turns out that people really liked what I thought, my ideas, and what I had to say. Then I started getting e-mails and private messages about supporting me.

I told them it would take a lot more than a few people in a chat room to make this kind of change. My name would need to get out there for people to see and that takes a lot of money. Then I got a replies back from people saying they had already printed signs and started telling people about me. I'm really not sure how this all took off so fast and now a News Station has caught wind of all this and it looks like I'll be running for President in 2008.

I'm really shocked... the month of November is going to be so very busy with me supporting my wife in her 60 mile 3-day walk, a Fall Show for APHA, and the writing of my second novel too. How can I also run an election campaign at the same time.

Turning 40 and setting a new record

So this is 40... well its not much different than any of the other birthdays really, but it did bring out the jokes from co-workers. You would have expected this at hitting 50, but I'm only 40 now. I have to say I do see the signs of getting older and will not dwell on any of that though.

Now setting a new record has nothing to do with me turning 40 and I'm not about to keep track of each birthday and claim its a new record. No, the record I'm thinking about now is in my blog posts. Today's post is actually 1 more post than all of last years posts. Its a new record for my writing.

This does not get me into some special club, but its still cool to look back and see that I'm writing a bit more. I know I have quite a bit more to post for 2008. When it comes to writing, I don't set out with an agenda or plan really, I just write what I feel at the time. I never know what the topic will be, but I try make sure to many days don't pass between blogs.

My past few posts were an insight into the APHA World Championship Paint Horse Show and what it takes to put on the show and some of the things I do for and at the show. I don't plan to repeat that next year, but I'm not going to rule out a post or two just the same from next years show.

More blogging, posting, writing or what ever you want to call it is sure to come. I have my game/techie blog to keep up with and I plan to write my 2nd novel this year in November for NaNoWriMo, which will be crazy with all the things going on during that month. So it looks like I have plenty to do and turning 40 is not going to slow me down.

We're out of here...

That's right, the show is now over and we've packed up and moved back to the Offices. It never fails to feel the same for me. I like the horse show very much, but after so many straight days in a row, the last 3 days I'm reaching a point where I'm ready for it to end.

I've missed my family so very much and I'm ready to spend lots of time with them. I did have some small windows of time with them during the show, but I'm ready to be home at a normal 5pm daily and have my weekends off too.

We still have things to do at the office, lots of things to fix and get online for everyone. So it will be next Saturday before I get a full day/weekend off. Today was only a partial work day with out move out. Monday morning I'll be in bright and early to set my PC back up and start at the list of things that need attention.

Speaking of lists, I need to make me a list of things to do around here. Its been 15 days and I'm sure I can come up with a few things that need my attention and quick. For now, I just want to sit and be with my family and do absolutely nothing. I just want to be right now.

The Final Cut

Well its the final day here at the show and its been a long process, now it all comes down to the Final Awards Night & Free Style Reining this evening. I've submitted a total of 222 photos from the Open Show for consideration in this years Final Night Video. Tracy puts this together from the images he and I have shot and a few others who submitted images as well. I'll have to wait and see which images make the final cut out of mine now.

During our Youth Show I shot around 2,200 and submitted a total of 123 images from the first weeks batch. So far in the second week, I've shot over 2,800 photos and I think I'll get a few more Cutting shots in today. Now not all of the images are great and useable, but I think you have to shoot a lot to get the good photos. I'm always looking for what I feel is that perfect shot and it’s a great feeling when you see something and feel you have something meaningful.

After the show is over, I'll go through all of my images and weed out those I think are really bad and then I'll provide what is left to Marketing for consideration in other areas of promotion. The past two years I've seen these used in our Promotional World Show Poster and I just found out that the Fort Worth Key Area Visitors Guide Book has used portions of those Posters for the June issues over the past two years. That means a lot of people traveling here have learned about our Show from these guide magazines and seen some of my work. I think that is pretty cool.

Hope you all have enjoyed reading about what I do at the APHA World Championship Paint Horse Show and what happens during the show. The Show is about to be over, but we still have a lot of work afterwards, when we get back to the Office. But for now I'm looking forward to next Saturday and just spending time with my Family, it will be nice to have a well deserved day off at last.

Happy 4th from the Show

Number 8 for me now here at the World Show, that is 8 Fourth of July's in a row that I've spent here working for APHA and away from my family. I guess in some ways APHA can be like a family though, we spend so many, many hours working together through out the year, you can't help but get a little close to your co-workers.

Just the same, the show must go on and most of the time the classes don't end in time to run out and see Fire Works. We normally have an entertainment act at least, like the Freedom Riders I photographed in 2006. If I'm lucky I can run out as soon as I hear the fireworks go off and see a little of that from the John Justin Arena.

I at least can look up if I'm lucky and think that my family is some place safe and watching Fire Works and I'll be home soon to at least to kiss them good night and catch a little rest before I go back to do it all over again. This year I'll be thinking about my family and my APHA family, those that are here with us and those that are away from us. Be safe now and everyone have a happy Fourth of July.

My favorite shot for today came while the Amateur Working Hunter Class was waiting for the results and awards to come in. I was down at the in gate and seeing what I could capture. I found this pair passing the time together.

Its really been a long show for everyone and for exhibitors you reach a point where you've done all you can and its no longer in your hands. That is when the waiting begins for most people and in some cases you'll find friends and family or trainers waiting with you. No waiting party with this group though, but I think they looked happy on their own.

Down to the final two days starting tomorrow, Will Rogers is ready for the Cutters and we are done with Watt and the Halter classes. Saturday will be busy and crazy for the final awards night. We close out the show with Freestyle Reining and a packed house.

Working Cow Horse and Cutting Up Next

Things are progressing well for us here at the show today. We are down to only one Arena once again with all of the Halter classes ending early. Some of those classes only had a single horse, congrats... your a winner! Hopefully some of the smaller classes will start to grow. If you have 10 horses, that gives you a 1 in 10 shot at winning and you'll be a Top 10 Winner too.

Tomorrow we'll pick back up with the Open Working Cow Horse classes and then Friday the Cutters will arrive and start their portion of the show. That means we will bring Will Rogers back online with the Wireless feed to my location. Both of these events are among my favorites to watch. I still have a little more Reining to watch as well over the next few days and its looking like the rest of this week will be fairly easy hours to work.

Slide right into home

This has got to be one for the record books. I made it home by 6:30pm with plenty of day light. The show wrapped up for the day at a little after 4:00pm a record time for the past 7 shows that I've experienced.

Its really nice, but so very strange to me. World Show has always been these crazy 15 hour plus days. What is only a 10 hour Show day? A breeze if you ask me.

The show actually ended before dinner arrived on the grounds. We had to wait and eat to make sure the food was not wasted. Great dinner by the way and I was fine with waiting.

Well even though my day was short, I still got in some photo ops and had a good time. I tested out the changes on the PDA app for the show. Really nice to click and see who is in the pen and what is going on in the other arena.

Well that is all for today's show events, we are looking at the final turn and home stretch now. Only 4 more days of show left, I have one more warm-up announcers gig to go. Still need to try an grab a few more pics for the final night video, but all in all the final curtain call is about to be made.