Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - Work Day

We all had a restless night, with us worrying about the horses and listening to Clio snort like a dragon, while the horses fretted most of the night as well, despite the fact it was very dark and very quiet out here, a welcome change from the many stables where we've been staying lately. Hubby managed to get the satellite dish up and running after breakfast, while I spent the day closing out the books for last year and trying to learn to use my new Quicken bookkeeping program. I've been using the same MoneyCounts program since 1993 (it wasn't even Y2K compatible, would you believe!), but it won't work on my newest computer so I've finally had to acquiesce and upgrade. It seems like it will be easier, as it automatically downloads most of my bank and credit card information directly, which should save me a ton of time now that I won't have to manually input everything, which is what I've had to do up to now. Hubby took a nap in the afternoon after his rough night. Meanwhile, I let the dogs out to run around for a few minutes, and would you believe, at that moment a couple rode by on bicycles. Naturally, the dogs ran after them to say hello, and one of them waved, so we didn't think any more about it, but about an hour later, we had a ranger visit us, telling us that "loose dogs" had been reported, and that they had "chased" the bikers. He said we needed to leash the dogs. The more I thought about it, the more angry I became. Whatever happened to tolerance? Why is my freedom to let my dogs have a few minutes of running around a day less important than those bikers freedoms? They weren't threatened in any way, so what was the big deal? Freedom and tolerance must go hand in hand. If we all relish our freedom, we must realize that what others do with THEIR freedom isn't for us to determine, or criticize, or be intolerant of. All that political correctness has done is to make us more intolerant, and frankly, I'm getting very annoyed by it. Anyway, enough of my rant, I just hate it when people can't make even the slightest effort to get along, even when it costs them nothing. Spent the evening relaxing, walking the perimeter when the horses got excited again, and leaving the scare light on again. They were quieter for the most part, but still became agitated on occasion, but nowhere near as bad as last night, for which we were grateful.