Smoke gets in your ... bales?

I was feeding the horses this morning and I found a smoky bale. That's a bale of hay with mold spores in it. When you break the flakes apart, a grey "smoke" wafts away. It's apparently not healthy for horses, so I unfed them and threw the offending bale over the fence and into the stream bed. If you're an environmentalist, this could be construed as pollution. However, I'm part of the centrist "if it's biodegradable it doesn't count" camp. So it's not. If you follow me down the road and I'm eating an apple, all I can offer by way of advice is this. Duck.

Complaint department: I was diligent this morning. I took that bale from the barn, across the back pasture, over the bridge, through mud that threatened to swamp my boots, and then found high ground so they could have a relatively dry eating place.That's when I learned the bale was smoky. I did my best. Really. But the next bale? I served that one within about 30 yards of the barn.

It's a happy day today. Sunshine. Lots of gorgeous sunshine. Yep, sunshine and "free" cable. We got a call from Comcast's telemarketing department last night and they will give us basic cable, free installation of up to two outlets, and no obligation for an entire year for no extra cost because we are cable internet subscribers. Sweet, huh? So they will be out on the 11th to do the install. These will be the channels we wanted before but had to take more because of our dish buyback promotion. Thankfully, they gave the credit but didn't take the dish equipment, so if the service is lousy we'll go back to DirecTV.