Cats for Christmas Cheer

My daughter and her husband and baby have moved back in with her in-laws. It's a long story, but they worked a rent free deal since both Kate and Jon are full time students again. Kate had two cats, Jade and Beetle, and Jordan just loves the cats, especially Jade. Jade has been very tolerant of Jordan's rough handling, and in fact, there is a lot of mutual love and affection between the two. Check out this picture, taken back in the summer, that I titled "Loving Jade". At any rate, Jon's father is deathly allergic to cats, so to keep the kitties happy, and to make sure Jordan doesn't lose Jade prematurely, I now have two cats.

At first they were both outside, then they were both inside,and now Beetle is outside(by his own choice) and Jade is inside. I'm allergic to cats, too, but my allergies present as nasal congestion and general itchiness. It has been a week, and while I've had some symptoms, it is far less than what I would have expected, so I am keeping my fingers crossed that we can continue to keep Jade in the house. Beetle is a little Romeo, very affectionate and playful. You can tell that he is a younger cat. He's very pretty for a tomcat. I took a picture of them in the cat carrier the night they arrived, just before we let them out. Of course, I also took some pictures today as Jordan got to play with Jade for the first time in over a week-since they moved. She was so happy to see her "Dade"! Seeing that smile makes any allergy worries melt away. It may have been the best present she got-and it is one that money had nothing to do with. By the way, that's my son in law, Jon, who I think misses Jade almost as much as Jordan does.

We are trying to rename Beetle, and have been calling him Tiger, Tigger, and the mutant moniker of Tiger Beetle. He is apparently living under the house, again, by his choice. He ran through my legs two nights ago and bolted out of the door. He will let you catch him and pet him, but the minute you head for the house, he's down and gone in a flash. I actually think it will be good to have both an indoor cat and and outdoor cat. Not only are they good for killing mice, but I hear cats are great against scorpions and snakes, too. I just hope that Beetle will be able to outrun Hobo, the cat killing German Shepherd across the road.

Going Green

My employer, a few months before I was hired, quietly initiated an voluntary environmental management system known as ISO 14001. This past Tuesday, after a week long audit, we have been recommended to be certified as ISO 14001. That is usually just a small formality-for the most part, we can say that we are ISO 14001 certified, or at least, we soon will be, but for the purposes of this blog, I will assume we already are.

We are now the only commercial flooring adhesive manufacturer in the US to be ISO certified. This is HUGE, and I am proud to say that I intend to play a more important role in this program in the future as anyone who knows me knows how much I care about the Earth, the interconnected nature of living things-Gaia, and environmental issues in general. Our environmental policy is straight in line with my personal belief set and green goals-conserving energy, reducing my footprint, becoming self sufficient and striving to live in harmony with nature. I also hope to become more active in the GreenBuilding community in the coming years.

http://www.usgbc.org/
http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=222

My dream home is a passive solar earth sheltered home in the back pasture at the ridge line. Green Building, rather, sustainable building, is not new to me. It is a rare find to work in a place where your personal ethics and environmental concerns are shared by upper management. One day soon, our company will be building a new lab and office. I saw the architect's plans and WOW, would you believe that the building will be a LEED certified passive solar building with louvers to control the light and other energy saving features?!? How cool is that?

For those who aren't familiar with ISO 14001, you can learn more from the links below, and hopefully, for the sake of our planet, you can convince your employer and/or your community to follow suit. It can make a real difference, both for your organization, and for the Earth.

http://www.iso.org/iso/management_standards.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_14000

To quote Wiki, "The aim of the standard is to reduce the environmental footprint of a business and to decrease the pollution and waste a business produces."

And this could only be the beginning. We, as a business, could go even further, making even more voluntary changes that would benefit the company's bottom line and the environment. In fact, one such program that we could probably benefit from is called Six Sigma. Motorola invented this strategy for consistent business improvement back in the 1980's, and since then, other large, successful companies like GE and Honeywell have developed Six Sigma programs. It is really all about statistics-(I really, really wish I had taken more statistical studies in college). The Greek letter sigma, "σ" or "Σ", is equivalent to our "s" or "S". Sigma is the mathematical sign for standard deviations and there is a mathematical model that states that if there are six standard deviations between the process mean(the average in a data set) and the nearest specification limit, practically no items will fail to meet specifications. It is a process, and if your business operates within the process, then you will make less errors, 3.4 errors per one million opportunities, to be exact. In other words, if you put a system like this in place, and you make a million products a year, you can expect less than 4 product issues as a result of production or business error per million units. It is actually pretty interesting how far math can take you these days. Who knew that statistics would ever be so important in something other than baseball? ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma
http://www.ge.com/en/company/companyinfo/quality/whatis.htm

It is an insane world. I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but it sure is nice to work for a company that morally and ethically tries to do what is right. They get it. In a world where no one can agree on the cause of global warming, whether or not it exists, and what should be done about it, if anything, I have found an oasis of green common sense in my workplace. It is refreshing. I only wish I hadn't wandered around in the desert for so long.

Rio Grande, the Flow and the Flub-ups

Saturday, for the first time, I rode a gaited horse. Rio is, as we say in the South, a Big Ol' Boy. He's over 17 hands, but very gentle with a sweet disposition. Technically, he's a Spotted Saddle Horse out of a Tennessee Walker mare. Rio was very patient with me and overlooked my reining and balance errors. My friend's sister took this picture of us, I've just never very photogenic, sorry, but at least you can see how honkin' huge Rio is compared to his sister Cheyenne that Ava is riding. We rode around her property for only about 30-45 minutes, but it was still fun to learn about his gate and feel the difference between a pace, a trot and a smooth racking gait. I can't say that I did well at getting the horse to stay in the rack. My balance was off and riding with split reins was new as well since I usually hold the reins together. I hope I get another chance one day as that feeling of floating on a horse could be addictive. He was just so smooth. I know a lot of folks take issue with gaited horses, but for me, with my arthritis, I think it would be the perfect solution-not that I've been jarred much on other horses, but if I had my own horse and rode all the time, a gaited horse would definitely be easier on the old bones.
I was thinking on the way home that I have, in my entire life, been on a horse probably less than 50 times. It may have only been 35 times; I dunno. I feel comfortable on horses-I'm not scared at all, but until I met Ava, I'd never had any real instruction about exactly how to ride. Well, that's not exactly true. I used to have a friend who rode English and I did ride with her a few times-under her guidance, but that was 30 years ago now, and English is so different than Western riding. Now, I'm learning about different horses and such, and I just wish I had more time and opportunities to ride. I'm telling you though, I was more sore on Sunday and even a bit sore on Monday, than I was the last time we rode, and last time we were gone for hours! I wasn't that saddle sore, but Rio's width really gave my groin muscles (adductora) a workout. Just sitting up there is a good stretching exercise! ;) Again, my stirrups were not the right length. Look at the posture of Ava's foot compared with mine. Her heels are down, my toes are down. Bad bad bad. Once we lowered the stirrups, things were better, but still it was difficult for me to get in the correct posture while riding. This is just challenging and frustrating at the same time. I want to ride correctly. I want to do what the horse is used to doing. I wish I was 12 again, so I could spend my whole day with horses. There have been so many missed opportunities.

For those of you who are horse people, I'd appreciate some pointers and especially tips about my feet. I'm off balance because my feet are all wrong and this confuses the horse. (I think!) I used the arm-length guide to adjust the stirrup length, but I still have to let it out more. Perhaps riding with no stirrups will help me overcome the problem?