vel's journaly thing

It's fricking HOT here. This heat wave is breaking temperature records and everything. I haven't ridden for the last four days because it's just too hot to move; I barely have the energy to clean Jackson's stall. The power went out at work for about an hour on Thursday probably from all the increased energy demand for A/C. Our townhouse is actually too warm upstairs even though it's almost always too cold in here, although the downstairs stays cool no matter what. Unfortunately both bedrooms are upstairs, and the master bedroom has a vaulted ceiling, so there's no good way to cool it down. We put out A/C unit in the much smaller guest room and have been sleeping in there.

When my friend and I were getting ready to leave the stable on Friday, I heard a loud screech and turned to see Duchess, the barn cat, running by with a struggling bunny in her mouth. We followed her into the barn where she had dropped it; apparently it was still alive enough to run and hide. We caught it behind some feed bins and were going to give it to our office lady since she likes to take in needy wildlife, but she wasn't home. I took the bunny home and figured I'd bring it to her the next day, assuming it survived the night. It was alive early the next morning, but when I was ready to leave later I found it had died. =( The cat must have landed a good bite, in which case it had no chance to begin with; we'd been hoping maybe she'd just grabbed it but didn't break the skin, since we couldn't find any fang marks. Poor little thing.

Saturday night Josh and I went to see Iron Man. I was hesistant, although I'd heard nothing but good things about it. I didn't know what it was about really other than some comic book movie, which for the most part I am not a fan of (like the Spiderman movies? Ugh). I didn't know what the Iron Man comic was or what it was about; from the little I'd seen of it I thought it looked sort of like Robocop. I was pleasantly surprised to find out it was actually a very entertaining action movie! I love action movies. It had a lot of amusing parts as well, which was cool, because I didn't expect it to be funny. Robert Downey Jr. also turned out to be a great actor, another surprise to me because the only thing I knew about him is that he's some drug addict who's been in and out of jail a lot; I'd never seen him in anything before. I'm now looking forward to the sequel. The next movie on our list is Indiana Jones; I just seriously hope George Lucas didn't fuck up another great movie legacy like he did with Star Wars.

The movie turned out to be pretty long, so I didn't get much sleep last night before going to work early this morning. It was hot and awful, but at least that meant we weren't busy. And we were having a vaulting show, so there was something to watch. Also, there was a lady from a magazine called Horse Connection there who was doing an article on wine and horses, so she came to a pretty appropriate place considering we're both a stable and vineyard. Anyway, she wanted to get some pictures of someone riding by a plaque we have next to one of the barns (I've never read it, actually...I think it says something about the history of the farm maybe). All the other staff were already out on trail rides, so I agreed to do it. I jumped on our most "photogenic" (i.e. spooky; his ears are always pricked forward!) horse and posed for a few pictures. Don't know if they'll use any of them, but she said she'd let me know if they did. So maybe I'll be in a magazine, haha. Later in the day she came back again to talk to us and took a few notes. I'm curious to see what she writes.

It's freaking COLD outside!! I was freezing tonight while I was closing at work. And I'm subbing trails half the day tomorrow, I'm going to freeze again. How can it be so bright and pretty outside and be this cold?? Eek.

There's a new episode of Monk on tonight! Did they advertise that at all? Last I heard they wouldn't have any new episodes until January. I'm glad my brother told me about it or I would have totally missed it. Well whatever, more Monk! Yay!

Ooh! I just saw an ad for Memoirs of a Geisha on tv. I LOVE that book. I shall have to see this movie. ^^

Oooh...another good one is coming out, The Producers. Gotta see that as well.

At about ten to 6am this morning, I was awoken by a phone call from my dad. This was incredibly weird because he should have still been sound asleep at home. But he was calling to tell me that he was with mom in the emergency room at the hospital! She'd been having really bad chest/abdominal pain and they went to get it checked out. So as it turns out she has gallstones and will probably have to have her gall bladder removed. Anyway, dad called to let me know where they were, and to make sure I got up in time for work.

Work was nuts today. It was sunny but still really cold out, and although the mud is starting to dry somewhat, it's still really deep and sticky. What was crazy was this is the type of day we'd expect to be slow, but we had a giant rush of people. A group of 12, then 9, then 7 all came around the same time. We sent out every horse we could find and still didn't have enough, so people had to wait around. It was very weird. At least once the big rush was over things quieted down and there wasn't much of anything to do the rest of the day, but it was exhausting. My feet hurt from running around so much now.

Yesterday I finally went to Great America with my brother rocketman9mm and rainstorm159  from work. It was fun, we went on pretty much everything that didn't involve water (because it was freaking cold out!). Even though it was a Saturday, it wasn't very busy and we didn't have to wait in long lines for anything. Top Gun is still my favorite ride there, plus it's the only roller coaster there that didn't bang my head against the sides of the seat.

After Great America I went to dinner at Marie Callender's with friends. The only problem was the one who drove us all there was supposed to be at home to have dinner with her family for her mother's birthday at the same time! So instead her family came and joined us at the restaurant, which worked out very well. And I got my yummy portobello mushroom sandwich :) But then I was stupid and said I would share a dessert with one of my friends when I was already way too full, so I felt totally sick the rest of the night :p

Today work was extremely slow since it was drizzling this morning. This gave us plenty of time to have our barbecue which was really cool with all the good food. I think we had maybe four small rides all day. Jim came up and brought those new name tags for the tack room, so I labeled them all and Scott put them up with Jim's staple gun. It looks SO much better in there now, all nice and organized. I love love love labeling and organizing things! I hate mess and disorder. I also cleaned up the rest of the tack room and put all the extra bridles and saddles back into decent order. That was my accomplishment for the day. After work I took Cowboy out on the trails; I hadn't ridden him before, but he's a very comfortable cow pony. I went out to try and see if I could locate Great America down in the valley, but it was hard to tell what was what. Next time I'll bring a pair of binoculars with me.

What I didn't do this weekend was any homework at all. Now I just realized I have a lot of reading I need to do before my night class tomorrow, but since I'll be in that Japanese Animation class for 3 hours before that, I'm not sure when I'll have time. I'll probably end up reading during that class. I'm worried about finding parking; it's the first day of classes for this other school, and everyone says parking is a nightmare there. Plus I'm really not familiar with the campus, so I'll have twice as hard a time searching for parking as well as my classroom. Gotta get there super early! Which means I should go to bed now. Yeah right, South Park is on! I'll go after it ends.

Sunday it rained intermittently all day long. I was at work, and it was sprinkling off and on up there. usually on rainy days, we have maybe 5 riders total come up to ride in the arena, and we're utterly dead the rest of the day. so usually the trainees have to oil some saddles and groom some horses and then they can use their ride credit to ride in the arena during their shift. but this rainy day was different...first of all, it was only sprinkling so we couldn't close the trails due to rain; it just wasn't wet enough. even so, usually a little water is enough to deter most people from riding. I don't know what was special about this day, but we had ride after ride of people come up! it was very, very strange. we have a sign up sheet for rides where we take down the names of everyone who comes for a ride. there are 25 name slots per page. on a usual rainy day, we would be lucky to get half a page of names. but this time by the end of the day we had 4 1/2 pages filled! we had something like 80 riders! that's not a bad thing, we need the business, but everyone was completely perplexed as to why we had so many people come up in the cold and wet. also the guides were not thrilled because people were coming up spaced out just enough so that as soon as a guide came back with one ride, they would have to go right back out again. that does suck when it happens (part of the reason I hated being a guide after a while!)

something good is that we just got four new horses! yay! we really need more horses because ours have been struggling to keep up with the amount of rides they've had to do since the weather started warming up. two of these new horses will work very well for beginners (Joe and Jackson), one for intermediates (Scout), but one of them will definitely only be for advanced riders/our staff for quite a while (Bailey). he just doesn't know how to do _anything_ and he spooks at everything. fun fun. but they are pretty cute so here are some pics I took of them :)

( Bailey, Jackson, Joe, and Scout )

nothing very interesting to report about work today. it was drizzling on and off throughout the day, so we didn't get many people coming to ride (yay!). one odd thing was the amount of English arena rides we had. most of our business comes from trail rides. we also offer arena rides for people who have had lessons and know what they're doing, so they can ride on their own in the arena and canter and whatnot (trail rides are walk/small amount of jogging only). I typically have three horses set aside for arena riders, two Western and one English. and usually we only get one English arena rider, if any. today however, instead of one horse saddled English, I ended up with five! I've never seen that many people come up for English arena rides in one day (apart from the English group lessons of course); it was very strange.