Telemarketers

For a couple of months now, I've noticed that I've been missing a call from a California number that I didn't recognized. Like any other number I don't recognize, I would let it go to voice mail, but they never left one. The other night, (during my night time minutes of course!), they called and I answered. It was a telemarketer that was trying to sell me 6 months of "free" magazine, a "free" watch and enter me into a "free" vacation giveaway. I guess I should fill in a little bit. When I answered the phone, what I heard was, "Please hold for the next available operator." from a recording. So I let her go through her spiel, and at the most available moment, I told her that I wasn't interested, and that she was calling my cell phone, and by law, they couldn't call me with an automated calling system. She yelled at me for wasting her time, and that the number is not on the "do not call list". I then told her again that it is a cell phone, so even if I'm not on the list, it's still illegal to use the automated calling system on the number. She starting yelling at me again for wasting her time, but I hung up on her half way through. She did spend about a minute and half on the phone with me, but monopolized the conversation. If she was so concerned about me wasting her time, maybe she should have started the conversation with, "Hi, I'm going to try to con you into magazine that you don't want and a vacation you'll end up paying for. Are you interested?" That would have saved a lot of time.

General Observation

I work at a chemical plant, not a farm, so the hours are set, and not by the sun, but by the clock. I've noticed this week that when I get to work (between 7:45am and 8:00am), there have been significantly more people in the parking lot than there was last week, before we rolled our clocks back. I've also noticed that there are less cars when I leave than there were last week. I guess my plant would never survive in Iceland.

Sore

As some of you out there in the internet world may know, I have been taking horseback riding lessons (again) for about a year. I rode for awhile when I was much younger, and I have now re-discovered it. I recently (at the beginning of the summer) changed barns and love it. In the past, I had only ridden at Hunter/Jumper barns, but this one is an Eventing Barn. Yesterday at my lesson, we did some fun exercises. They included riding doing some jumping while not holding on to the reins. The last exercise was to jump six stadium style jumps that were pretty spread out so that we could do some cantering between the jumps. I was asked to go first, and the first jump was perfect, the horse refused the second jump twice before I got him over it, and on the third jump, he jumped a little too big which resulted in me seating myself on his back before he had landed. That turned into some bucking, and me eventually on the ground. This horse has bucked on me before, us but I had always been able to stay on. This time, I lost my balance, and while I ended up on the ground, I was still standing. Like any good instructor would do, my trainer came over, asked if I was ok, had me get back one, and take the jumps again. The purpose of this is that I don't have time to think about what just happened, and to get me over the jumps before I get scared of them. I now know that when you fall off, it's kinda like a car accident. You feel fine the day it happens, but when you wake up the next day, you are so sore, you can barely move. Surprisingly, I'm looking forward to my lesson next week!