Where did it go? April, that is. Seems like the year just started and already the first quarter is over and done with. Now JC is getting ready to leave for the resort and I'm about to be alone with the dogs again - and part of me starts to plan for all that time. Will I work on jewelry? Sewing? Ride my horses more often? Work more? Hard to say... just like the months that just passed much of the time will just slip away before I can grab it. Don't you remember those summers as a kid when it seemed that time would never pass? Now if you dare blink an entire day is gone.

I've been getting some great walks and runs in this month. I learned that I need to do more running and walking for the sake of my bone density (another cruel blow by nature and time - as if I haven't spent just about my entire adult life doing weight-bearing exercise). The bone thing combined with the energy of these two dogs is enough to get me out every day that I'm not prevented by work or weather. We're taking longer walks now and branching out from the trails right around the house, and soon we'll be getting out for hikes in the backcountry, getting ready to head over the mountains this summer. Neither of these dogs has walked trans-Sierra with me and they'll both be great at it. There's nothing quite as wonderful as a dog on a walk and afterwards, a dog tired from a walk!

What do you think? Are they ready?
This month has been devoted to developing my social media consulting business. There's a lot of work to a start-up, even one worked from home, and I've spent quite a bit of time on Social Sierra, including setting up a website for the business. Like most people just starting out I spend a lot of time doing work that is not billable but I believe I'm going in the right direction and I have been learning that I can do many things I thought I might have to contract out. I get to use the VVR as a testing ground for much of what I advise others to do, which has catapaulted the VVR into a whole new social media catagory. We now have an active twitter account, a blog, a healthy FB page, a google+ page,and a monthly newsletter. We are kicking social media #$$!
We designed a new logo for the VVR, with a couple of variations, and that gave me the opportunity to tune up some rusty Illustrator skills. We're going to use this for new styles of hats, and on t-shirts & sweatshirts, especially for women. I'm quite happy with it as I wanted something that looked a little more contemporary yet still had that rustic look that describes the resort.

Now my next task is to develop a nice logo for Social Sierra. It seems like there are always photos to edit, layouts or designs to work on and I rarely take the time to just do some fun stuff with photos, using overlays and some of the actions I've loaded into Photoshop.
The newborn photos for HRC were fun - and now that the announcements are out it is probably okay to post a few of these. We have our refrigerator covered in these and love seeing her sweet face everyday when we get home. We get pretty regular photos via text and can see how quickly she's changing, but for us right now she is frozen at just about a month old.
We set up a regular little photo shoot for these and for the most part little HRC was completely cooperative and happy about it, although after a while she just decided to go to sleep. It gave me a chance to work with my camera a little more and to practice some of my retouching skills that have been lanquishing.

There is nothing like having a beautiful baby to photograph and I can't wait to get back down there and do another session!
Riding has been sporatic this month and who knows why. For the most part the weather has been great, maybe a bit windy some days, but warm in Bishop. Stuff always seems to get in the way but we are really scaling back in terms of our footprint and our obligations since moving out of Wilkerson. We are almost out of the saddle club - one more day of moving panels and the last of the stuff out of the shed and we'll be gone. I'll really miss some of my riding pals, but many of them are moving on as well - and having horses we'll always run into each other somewhere on the trail.

I don't know if it is age, or wisdom, or fear, or a combination of all three - but I bought a new helmet for riding yesterday. I know too many people now who have bonked their heads (and hard) and I have no desire to end up a vegetable in a care facility somewhere. The other bones might break but they'll heal (eventually) - it's the brain you have to be smart about. Can't say with confidence that I'll be using this out on the trail - a wide-brimmed hat is much more my style - but then, you never know what's going to happen on a ride. For now I'm strapping it on in the arena and if it helps me feel more confident pushing the edges of what Rhea and I can do together then it's worth wearing.
As April slips away I'm ordering some silver tubing and determined to work on a new idea for bracelets. I'm planning to get back to soldering (and yes, I know I've been saying that all winter but I'm not about to stop saying it - I'm going to do it!). Once JC is on the west side my evenings are my own again, no excuses.
I'm hopeful that future posts are going to be about what I've been making, not so much what I've been thinking.
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