Hippoi Athanatoi

Ouch. Turns out the sore muscles from last Friday’s private lesson were anything but fine. My arms and legs feel like overcooked spaghetti and my behind feels bruised. As a result, this one will be a little shortish.

It started well enough, though, despite the weather (no rain, but plenty of wind to make up for it). The extra working out (and, admittedly, very sparse eating) during the last few days had succeeded in making sure that any weight picked up over Christmas was gone, allowing me to once more weigh in low enough to ride some of the ponies. As we were set to jump today, I was particularly pleased with that. I don’t like to pass up a chance to jump Murphy.

Occasionally, I get sudden urges to clear out tasks that are way way overdue. Like uploading and commenting pictures that I prepared for upload in 2004. ;P In theory, the gallery module in ExpressionEngine should make it easy to have a photo gallery. Unfortunately, I am anal retentive. This means I have to do the uploading more or less manually in any case since I have to change the date of each picture to the exif date in order to make sure they’re all sorted properly. I am still hoping they might make a plugin that reads exif data and enters it wherever you want. Of course, I still have to comment each picture manually.

In any case, more pictures of various kinds have been uploaded. I finished up the Levade 2004 gallery (still have some 60 photos left to add to the Levade 2005 gallery, though), the WorldCon 2006 gallery, the Las Vegas 2006 gallery and added two new galleries for photos of our boxer puppy (well, the family’s boxer puppy): Ringo 2006 and Ringo 2007.

Since today’s lesson was a private lesson, I dragged Elio along to take some pictures. Unfortunately, they show all too clearly that working on shortening Murphy made me concentrate too much on my hands, which resulted in me curving my back and looking down. Admittedly, all the shots are from fairly early on, since my photographer thought it was a good idea to take a few pictures at the start, film some movies in the middle and rest his frozen hands towards the end. Little evidence, thus, of the improvements that did take place, though the film clip I selected is a little better than the photos, at least.

I wasn’t able to find a replacement for the cancelled group lesson on Tuesday, so it was good that I had at least signed up for a private lesson for today, to keep my holidays from being entirely horse-free.

As usual when I have been away from the stable for couple of weeks, I worried that Murphy had managed to injure himself, and given that I don’t know if I will weigh in at 60 kg on Tuesday I really wanted to ride him today. Fortunately, he was quite fine and in a very good mood too, as he so often is when the stable is nice and quiet. I understand him, because there are few things more coys and comfortable than a stable in winter (well, okay, its still autumn here this year thanks to global warming :P) with just the horses and yourself around. The temptation to take extra time getting him ready was definitely present, but I had a set time to be ready for, so that wasn’t an option.

Well, we just passed midnight here in Sweden, so its officially the 24th of December. God Jul!

No sign of snow, so I’ve put my well-used ‘Absolute Christmas’ CD on repeat. It just isn’t Christmas without ‘Mer Jul’ or ‘Fairytale of New York’. Or without the masses of work I’ve done in the kitchen today, for that matter. I am now appropriately exhausted. ;)

Last lesson of the year today. On Sunday, we visited a Christmas market in town, and I stopped by in a little shop to pick up a present for our instructor since the group had forgotten to discuss what to get last week. Olive oil with garlic and champagne balsamic vinegar sounded good to me, at least, and hopefully she’ll enjoy it too (I did taste the balsamic in the store, and it was divine). Wasn’t so easy to get it handed over, though, as she was running late. That also led to a bit of confusion about the horses; I was on Murphy first, but ended up on Pojken again, since he needed to be exercised and this was the only lesson he was supposed to take part in. I didn’t mind too much, though, since I hope to have Murphy for the extra lessons over Christmas.

Err, well, the extra lesson, that is. Turns out one was canceled since I was the only one signed up, leaving just the private lesson. But I’ll be trying to squeeze in another private lesson instead. Need my Murphy fix over the holidays. I did make sure to give him some extra treats today and wished him a Merry Christmas.

At first, I had meant to make this a part of my lesson post for last week. But then I thought it merited a post of its own, and of course that led to me forgetting about it entirely.

New horse today again. Little thing broad as a barn door called Pojken (‘The Boy’) since his real name is German (and just means ‘Yellow Boy’ or something like that anyhow). Real imaginative. ;) He is, we think, a Haflinger, with the lovely golden coat and white mane and tail. Though, today he was rather dirty, which is no surprise given the torrential downpour yesterday and the general wetness of the last few weeks. He’s apparently a former trail-ride horse and something like 18 or 19 years old. Given this, they’re not buying him (too old to insure) but if he works out they’ll be borrowing him until the summer. He has apparently bucked off some kids already, so I suppose they might not, though he behaves quite well with more experienced riders. But he certainly tried to test me some first in the stables, and was quite happy to try to walk over me to get to some food. Haflingers are strong-willed little tanks.

Peter Watts’s Blindsight has been causing quite a stir in on-line SF/F reviewing circles (see William Lexner’s review for one example), with many heralding it the early favorite for the 2007 Best Novel Hugo. Apparently the buzz has had some impact, because so many people have contacted Watts to let him know they can’t get a hold of a copy that he’s decided to do something bold: he’s giving the book away in a free, electronic edition. Watts is also hoping to see whether the model successfully used by some other authors and publishers—that giving away electronic editions for free actually increases sales of hardcopy—will work with this novel.

Given the buzz, this seems like something even readers who aren’t particular fans of “Strossian”, wildly imaginative near-future SF should take a look at.

Even if we haven’t managed to read as many books as usual of late, we’ve still found quite a few new(ish) things to recommend and as before we have also dug up some old favourites that deserve some more recognition. We’ve also snuck in a couple of non-book things.

Penguin, Guy Gavriel Kay’s present publisher in Canada, has launched a lovely official site for his latest novel, Ysabel. The site features an excerpt, photographs from Provence, France (in which the novel is set), and more.

The exceedingly nasty weather had me thinking twice about riding today, but given that we do ride indoors, I figured I just had to drag myself off to the stables in spite of the fact that the cold and rain no doubt would make my throat even worse (it still feels like it has odd lumps in it ;P).

Once there, the rain had at least let up, or possibly stayed on the other side of the river, but the wind was still impressive. I knew I definitely didn’t want a skittish horse. But then again, I never do. Murphy would have been great today, but he got off easy this week and I got put on Gamir. Which isn’t bad at all, save for the tacking up part. He’s gotten a lot more irritable lately, and added biting to the kicking he always used to do. Unlike Murphy, its also hard to tell when he’ll do either, as he rarely gives you any warning by looking unhappy with you first. I manage the grooming fine enough, and the saddling too, but bridling him has gotten tricky because he will actually try to bite when you put the reins over his head and when you put the bit in his mouth. So, when he decided to be difficult about taking the bit today, I really didn’t feel like sticking my fingers into his mouth.

Its too bad, really, because he’s such a well-schooled and obedient horse to ride. He just really doesn’t like being groomed and tacked up, and he’s gotten worse over the years.

The third chapter of Belladonna (due out in March 2007) is now up on Anne Bishop’s own website.

I think I have a cold coming on. My throat feels like its full of straw, or possibly hair. However, on Tuesdays I am never sick, even if I happen to actually be sick. Wouldn’t do to miss a riding lesson over some little cold, or any other sort of illness for that matter. I have actually found that I ride quite well on strong painkillers too, so even if I had needed some it wouldn’t have been a deterrent. They make me very relaxed. Didn’t need any painkillers today, though. Just lozenges. And once I was in the stables, the cold mysteriously went away, only to return later on the way back home. Funny how that works.

Of course, getting Murphy again may have had something to do with that. He was, again, quite easy to get ready, though the group before us had once again been late so I had to interrupt him while he still had some hay left and that was not appreciated. Some mint-flavoured horse treats were needed to make up for the disturbance and the hay that had to be left until after our class.

According to Stephen R. Donaldson’s official site the second book in the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, called Fatal Revenant, will be published in the UK in October 2007.