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Horsey credit cards

Amanda7 Comments

I’ve had the same credit card for many years – basically, since the first time I got a card. It’s served me well, but for a variety of reasons, I’m looking to get another one and let the old one sit empty. It’ll still be useful as a large credit pool, helping my overall credit score + history, but I’m not loving the rewards right now.

I’m looking at other credit cards and what benefits they offer, and I started to wonder: what are my options in a credit card that would give me horse-specific rewards?

Once upon a time, I had a Dovery Saddlery card. I signed up because it gave me a great signing bonus and I needed/wanted a backup card, just in case. I never really used it, even though it promised rewards. I see that credit card program is still active, but I’m just not sure it would be worth it for the things I can buy at Dover.

Now, if there were a SmartPak or Riding Warehouse card with good benefits, I’d be all over that! But alas, nothing yet.

Right now, I’m leaning toward an Amazon card, but I’m curious – do you use a credit card with benefits for horse purchases? Which one?

march madness 2017

March Madness 2017

Amanda8 Comments

A few years ago, I did a March Madness blogging contest in which we all voted and through process of elimination, declared The Black Stallion to be the very best horse movie of all time. It was a lot of fun, and still one of my favorite longer-term series I’ve ever done on this blog.

This year, I want to do it again, and make it bigger and better! Here’s the plan.

Phase 1: Choosing a Topic
Wednesday, February 15

I’ll generate a short (4-6) list of topics we can use as our theme for 2017, and put up a poll. The topic with the most votes advances. If you have ideas for a theme, please leave those ideas in the comments of this post.

Phase 2: Nominating Competitors
Friday, February 17

In the comments on this post, help populate our choices – give examples of whatever theme we pick so that we can all vote on them.

Phase 3: Seeding the Tournament
Wednesday, February 22

I’ll compile a poll of all of the nominated competitors. You’ll vote for 5. The 16 choices with the most votes win, and are seeded according to the number of votes they receive. Ties will be broken at my discretion.

Phase 4: Announcing the Bracket + Putting Some Skin in the Game
Friday, February 24

Here’s where this gets fun. On this day, I will post the final, seeded bracket. If you just want to watch and vote, then get ready!

If you want to make things a little more interesting, here’s your chance. You will have until the end of the day on Tuesday, February 28, to submit your imagined bracket – how you think each voting round will go, right on down to the final. If you submit a bracket (like officially submit it, instead of just draw one up for your own fun), then you should also chip in $5 to the tournament’s GoFundMe page.

At the end of the tournament, the bracket winner gets the amount that’s in that GoFundMe page. It might be $15, it might be $150. I don’t know – it’s an experiment!

Phase 5: Voting
Wednesday, March 1

Throughout the month of March, I will run 2-3 contests a week, giving each one 72 hours to garner votes. Single elimination wins: the winner of each round advances. At the end of March, we will have crowned a champion, and one entrant will go home with a boatload (or possibly a spoonful) of cash.

Any questions? Any suggestions for themes to get started?

longeing · organizing

How to hang up a longe line

Amanda5 Comments

Here’s a technique taught to me by my first trainer, and one I’ve faithfully followed ever since. I actually cringe when I see longe lines just hung up loose, even if they are neatly coiled.

Step 1: Your longe line is a mess. No matter how careful I am while longeing, by the time my horse is back in his stall, this is always what my longe line looks like.

Step 2: Smooth the whole thing out, and fold it so the loop is down and at the bottom of a large coil; this is about two feet long, total.

Step 3: Coil the whole thing up, being careful to keep it flat and smooth. I do this step over my arm, and just laid it down on the tack room floor for photographic purposes. Leave the snap as a tail, about half as long as the coil itself. Once you get to know your longe line and have done this a million times you’ll get a sense of how long to make the coil to get the optimal tail length – but there’s really no wrong length as long as it’s shorter than the coil.

Step 4: Double the tail OVER the coil, a few inches from the top.

Step 5: Wrap the remaining tail around the top of the coil – snug but not tight, so that the coil stays together but not so tight that it’s distorting.

Step 6: When you’ve got a tail that’s a bit longer than the remaining height of the top of your coil, come around from the back and up and through the top. If I’d just gone through from the back, it wouldn’t be as secure: you want that last wrap around the side of the top before you go through.

Step 7: Pull tight! You’ve basically made a knot, and the bulk of the longe line means that it’s tough to make it too tight. (Not impossible, though, especially with those nylon longe lines! So be careful.)

Step 8: Hang your longe line neatly from the snap. Gravity means the knot will stay.  You can also slide a hook through the knot itself if the hook is too thick for the snap; it’s not quite as secure, but it works.

Does anyone else hang their longe lines this way? any other techniques that leave a neat and secure longe line?

house post

House Post: Making more work for myself

Amanda1 Comment

The man cave has one wall that we did not take apart. It’s the wall that goes back to the house.

We had in fact left it entirely untouched – except there were two problems with that wall.
Problem the first: it had a LOT of holes in it.

Problem the second: it was textured like a 1980s ceiling.

Options for what to do, in order of time + effort:
a) leave it entirely alone and just paint over it.
b) patch the holes
c) skimcoat the entire wall with mud

If you’ve been following any of my house posts, you know which one I chose.

Yeah, the one that required the most work. It actually could’ve been far worse: the plastering took maybe an hour, and so far I’ve put about an hour’s worth of sanding into it. Maybe another hour of sanding and then some careful additional plastering and it will be ready to prime.
The rest of the room is baaaaaasically ready to go at this point, just needs some sanding up near the top and some sponging, so painting is maybe-sorta-kinda on the horizon?
(I’m not driving this project; my husband is. It would’ve been done weeks ago if I were in charge, but I am practicing patience and letting my husband make his own choices and set his own priorities which I’m told is a good thing for a marriage but is mostly making me completely fucking insane.)

blog roundup

Weekly Blog Roundup

Amanda1 Comment

On being a good example from Hand Gallop
This is just superb. Yes. Literally the only area of my life in which I love working with kids is at the barn. There are so many good things we can pass on by example.

Stall design opinions needed! from Stampy and the Brain
I feel like at one point in my life I spent every free moment designing my dream barn. Now, I haven’t kept up with what’s current or trendy. So I’m really interested in the options here.

Your non-horsey read of the week is the back catalogue of Bad Advice columns. It’s a roundup of the worst and most obnoxious questions from advice columns around the internet, with precisely what you want to say to them. Try reading one; you’ll be hooked.

2017 horse goals · 2017 life goals

2017 Goals: January Recap

AmandaLeave a comment

So, how did month one go?

Horse Goals – original post here
1. Put hands on my horse 5x a week – close? sort of? January is tough for this, between cold weather days + snow days. I’m not happy with how well I did, and think there’s room for improvement.

2. Be less perfunctory – yes, pretty much (how’s that for perfunctory?)

3. Aim toward dressage schooling shows – ok, there’s only so much I can do for this in January… and also 1/2 of this goal has already been spiked because the first home show of the year is on the day after my brother-in-law’s wedding in Texas. So not only do I have to visit Texas, I have to miss one of my two show opportunities. This goal is not off to a great start.

4. Take more lessons – January, check! February’s is scheduled.

5. Horse-specific income stream / funding emergency fund – Tristan’s emergency fund is now at $425/$1500, and my overall emergency fund is at $7,600/$12,000. No real progress on the income stream other than some hard thinking.

6. Do more thoughtful work – I am pleased with the January schedule I did, and the Boston Public Library posts. I’m happy with some things I’ve written going forward.

7. Get more media – so far, this one is a fail, unfortunately


Life Goals – original post here
1. Pay off car – on track for November 2017, with some anticipated stuff coming in that would make this sooner, but I’m not counting any chickens before they hatch, so suffice to say it’s on track

2. Read 75 books – 12/75 down:
The Last Mortal Bond, by Brian Staveley
The Beautiful Struggle, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi
The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin
House of Spirits, by Isabel Allende
Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett
Creativity in Museum Practice, by Linda Norris and Rainey Tisdale
Old Bones the Wonder Horse, by Mildred Mastin Pierce
International Velvet, by Brian Forbes
Life on the Road, by Gloria Steinem
The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
The War I Always Wanted, by Brandon Friedman

Meta-commentary: still too many white men, but I’m pleased with the way I’m alternating between fiction & non-fiction. I’ve got the next 8-10 books lined up. Reading is pure escapism right now, and I’m hoarding books like there’s a nuclear winter on the horizon. (Which there kind of is, so I’m also hoarding food. I make no apologies for my coping mechanisms.)

3. Revive history blogs – I’ve got Amblering sort-of on a weekly schedule, and that’s about all I can manage for that, but I hope to deepen and improve on the quality of writing and thinking there; Figuring History still on hiatus.

4. Do better about food – mixed success? I’m cooking more, and meal-planning better, but god damn I still cannot force myself to eat vegetables on a regular basis. I can honestly feel nausea rising even thinking about it. Also, my food processor was part of the Cuisinart recall so that spiked my plans to make more fruit smoothies.

5. Decorate the house – office done, that’s all for now.

house post

House Post: Attic Restoration

Amanda3 Comments

Previously, in the attic: we ripped up many of the floorboards to get at the second floor ceilings for electrical work. It was godawful work and it left the attic floor full of holes and looking awful.

It stayed like that for a long time. We rewired in July 2015, which means it stayed like that for about 18 months.

It made the attic a weird and dangerous place to be in.

On top of that, as attics do, it had become a sort of dumping ground for extra stuff.

When my parents came up last weekend, the attic was the project I wanted to tackle.

My dad and I re-matched the boards to their holes in a jigsaw puzzle that I have to admit I kind of enjoyed.

We got them back into their holes and nailed them down with a very fancy and more than slightly terrifying nail gun that my dad had brought. Some of them could just go right back down on their joists; some of them, like the ones directly above, needed reinforcement underneath.
While we were doing that, my mom organized the attic. We threw away or recycled quite a few things and got the rest of it in MUCH better shape.

I am really, really happy with this particular project. It was not complicated or exciting, but it has made a big difference in the usability of the attic, and it feels like we were finally resolving the tail end of the rewiring project.
The attic is not yet done: next up we need to cover the exposed spray foam with fire-resistant paint, and then over that we’ll put up some really simple paneling. As part of that project, we’ll probably also do a kick wall, or a short wall coming down from the eave to the flooring, to cover the vent pipe you can see from the upstairs bathroom fan. Probably that wall will be matched on the other side, which will give us both crawlspace storage and a wall against which to build some basic shelving so that all of the things that are currently (neatly!) stacked can go up on shelving.

the feverish part of my brain hopes it will look a little like this
Because we insulated the ceiling of the attic, and not the floor, it’s fairly comfortable year-round. Once we get the paneling up, it’s going to be a perfectly fine extra room. It’ll be overflow space: maybe someone can sleep up there, maybe I can put a writing desk up by the quarter-round windows and pretend to be Jo from Little Women. Now that it’s usable again, anything is possible!