Hippoi Athanatoi

In a fit of Olympic withdrawal, Elio and I spent much of the evening downloading videos (from this place, for example, and from here) of favourite figure skating routines from previous Olympics & Worlds.  I just love it all—the music, the costumes, the drama and, of course, the guys. ;) I firmly believe that more sports need to feature guys with nice (long, that is) hair, earrings and ... interesting outfits.

In the even of future onset of sudden urges to watch figure skating, I think I will try to build up a library of great performances and burn them to a CD or DVD. I’ve been a figure skating addict for a fair while now, an its even more fun now that I get Elio to watch it with me. Of course, I am slightly suspicious of his reasons for doing so. It may have something to do with the fact that he’s a great fan of classical music whereas I am not ... unless said music is accompanied by an interesting figure skating routine. ;)

Like Linda, I picked up a book or two at SF Bokhandeln‘s sale. Among them was Jo Walton’s The Prize in the Game, a book (and, indeed, a setting) that I had long written-off, despite the subject matter being interesting; the only reason I picked it up now was that it was a hardcover and it was selling for 10 crowns (that’s a little over a dollar), and I supposed that if I didn’t like it I could chuck it or perhaps get a good price for it as a used bookstore. I can’t quite recall the reasons for why I wrote it off, now, but I can only say after reading it that I was being an idiot.

Yesterday, we went to SF Bokhandeln in Gothenburg to check out what they had on offer for the annual book sale. We picked up a few things from the sale, and then I couldn’t resist also picking up Anne Bishop’s latest offering, Sebastian, even though I knew it would mean getting no work done once we got home. A prediction that turned out to be quite accurate.

We had two extra students in the group today, making up for lessons they had missed, and as a result there was 10 of us. That’s the max allowed in a group, and it does get a little crowded in the arena. However, it also means a good selection of horses available. Additionally, our instructor didn’t quite feel like assigning the horses today, so she just listed the horses we would be using, and asked who wanted which horse. In some cases, two or three people wanted the same horse, but oddly enough I was the only one who wanted Murphy. I do love it when I take a liking to a less than popular horse. ;)

Its funny about the Olympics. You end up all excited about things you’d normally care very little about. Such as women’s hockey. I mean, I’m a woman, but women’s hockey and women’s football (soccer, that is) don’t really tend to thrill me. Tonight, however, I found myself more than a little nervous when watching Sweden take on the US in the semi-final of the women’s hockey, and the conclusion of the match was genuinely exciting. It is always great fun when ‘we’ (that being the sports-we, applied when an athlete or a team of athletes representing one’s country does well) manage to secure another Olympic medal. And who knows, maybe the women’s fine performance can rub off on the guys, who really need all the help they can get at the moment. ;)

A little late, this, but I was unusually tired after the riding yesterday and the task of writing up my usual lesson post seemed far to great. So, I put it off until today. I think I still remember most of what we did, however. It was another jumping lesson, and as I had expected I was put on Murphy. While tacking him up, I decided to try out some of the stuff we discussed last week, about how to ensure the horse really does defer to you as the leader. So, I insisted that he move his shoulders away from me when I entered his stall. This seemed to work quite well, and he responded by chewing to indicate he was submitting. So far, so good. Saddling him was quite painless too, and once down in the arena he only considered trying to take a bite out of me once and he stood perfectly still as I mounted up. A definitive improvement.

In a fit of procrastination (in regards to my work for the literature class, that is), I decided yesterday to start on the Sisyphean task of editing and labelling 10 years worth of logs. Roughly 900, all in all, which makes me feel almost fortunate (just almost, though, because there are scenes that I still wish today I had managed to get logged) that I didn’t have a good client for my first year or two of MU*ing, considering how extremely active I was then. If I had been logging everything back then as well, that number would probably have been a few times larger. And 900 logs, give or take a few, is more than enough to keep me procrastinating for years.

However, as usual (I’ve tried this before, you see), my grand idea of starting at the beginning and just pushing along until I reached the end was soon abandoned. Instead, I decided that I would start by cleaning up some good logs suitable for publishing here on the site. As a result, the Logs section has finally had its first few contributions added and I expect a few more to go up today and within the coming weeks.

It has been sitting on our bookshelf for quite some time now, but a few days ago I felt the need for a break from my current assignments for my classes, and so I picked up Mary Gentle’s 1610: A Sundial in a Grave. I figured I could stretch out the rather hefty-looking volume for a while, reading a bit now and then. From reading her earlier novel Ash: A Secret History, I thought this might be another fairly tough read that I would need to take my time with.

Boy was I wrong.

Ellen Kushner, the writer of the brilliant Swordspoint and other related work, is offering to sell fans her few remaining copies of A Distant Soil #28, which contains a Swordspoint-world short story titled "King Alexander the Stag" illustrated by Colleen Doran. Information on purchasing the comic (or a second comic with a recently-republished story, also illustrated by Doran), can be found here.

Time for a theory lesson today (which means that I am suffering riding withdrawal at the moment, and will continue to do so for the coming week), and we continued with the same subject as the last two theory classes: horse behaviour. Having observed a few of the ponies interact with each other in the arena, as well as one of the ponies interacting with us, the time had come to discuss the stable manners of some of our horses.

Today, I would not have minded continuing with Malupin, considering how well things went last week, but I still can’t say I was disappointed when I was assigned to Murphy. We were going to continue with the same type of exercises, and I knew that would be quite effective on him as well if done correctly. While we were signing in and getting our horses handed out, my instructor also mentioned that she’d found a horse she thought I’d like. Apparently someone at a nearby stable had asked her to find a buyer for a horse they had there, and she seemed to think it would suit me. Very, very tempting. A 6-year-old black Knabstrup gelding. Fortunately, a tad too tall for me at 159 cm, because at 50,000 it didn’t sound all that bad. And hey, its nice to know my instructor feels a horse of my own would be a good idea for me. She asked again later on, and I admitted I was very tempted, but at the moment I am not sure where I’d find a stable near enough to where we live given that the one that used to be here was taken down to make room for a clubhouse for a golf club. And I hear golfers don’t much appreciate it when you ride across the green. ;P

Today, we had a substitute instead of our regular instructor, as she was feeling less than well after extracting a wisdom tooth earlier in the day. Ouch. As usual, that (the substitute, not the tooth business, though I really dislike dentists) made me a little nervous, and being assigned Malupin didn’t make it better since this would be his first class for the day. I was told he’d at least spent some time outside, however, and hoped that would have been enough to use up some of the extra energy he was bound to have considering the cold weather and all the snow. Still, he seemed to be in a bit of a testy mood, both as I tacked him up and when I was preparing to mount up. Apparently some of the other horses had been like that the last days too, so it might be the weather, or something hormonal.

Hilarious. I sent a DMCA notification to LiveJournal since one of the charming imbeciles from WORA decided to repost one of my posts from this journal to his lj. And wouldn’t you know, he sends a counter notification, claiming that its not copyright infringement. He claims that a) I have provided no proof—such as a registration—that the material is copyrighted, b) its fair use and c) I didn’t submit a proper DMCA notification. I’ve seen plenty of stupid stuff from the WORA crowd, but this one almost deserves an award. Maybe I should just have copied & pasted in his whole counter notification, since he seems to think that’s a good way to approach things. I am not, however, as impolite as to do that, given that it includes his full RL address and all. So, my recap will have to do.

Last week, there was four of us. This week, we were nine (though that was one extra, I think, over what we’ll actually be from now one). Quite a change, and not ideal for a jumping lesson. Even if all the horses play nice, it always takes time to get through that many people. However, since I was assigned Murphy, I was in far too good a mood to be concerned with such trivial matters. ;) As he had some food left (and thus something else to chew on than me), tacking him up went quite well. He’s definitely getting the idea that a stern look and a little ... growl of sorts means he should lay off threatening me, and he didn’t even come close to trying to nip today. He just thought about it a lot, heh. I noticed one odd thing while getting him ready; his halter fastened on the right instead of the left side. I thought someone might have turned it outside in, but it looked okay, so once down in the arena I asked the instructor. Turns out Malupin (his left-side neighbour) had learned how to undo his halter even through the new bars that separate them, and Murphy is the last horse they want loose in the stable as he literally wrecks the place. Such a sweetie.

So, I have one day left before I need to send in my classical & medieval literature exam. Two essay questions out of three down, but the last one’s a bit of a bitch. This has been a very strange class. For the first section, we had a teacher who provided miles upon miles of secondary sources to read, and commented on everything you wrote, and then some. A little overwhelming at times, but useful. For this second section, we have had an incredibly hands-off teacher. Minimal secondary sources provided, just some very general stuff on the period(s), and extremely general and not very useful comments after each batch of assignments. Hence, I really don’t know what he’s looking for in this exam. Which means I am doing what I usually do in those situations; I give them everything. If I get a well-phrased question and a strictly limited word count, I can usually manage to stick to it (though it takes some work, to put it mildly), but open-ended questions and rough suggestions for word counts tend to result in very, very long answers from me.

I am hoping this particular teacher will learn his lesson and be a little more hands-on for the next section of the class, but I rather doubt it. Going back to the first teacher for the fourth and final section late this spring will no doubt be a rather shocking experience. Still, I already find myself wishing the second literature class wasn’t focused entirely on modern stuff, as I wouldn’t have minded continuing on for another year. Its been quite useful for my translation work, and it has even prompted me to do some very small, tentative bits of writing on the side. But alas, since my interest in modern literature is strictly confined to the fantasy genre, I doubt I’d survive a year of what would be on offer in that class.