Hippoi Athanatoi

Back on Murphy today. The girl who rode him last week doesn’t like him much at all, so she got somebody else and that freed up Murphy for me. I wouldn’t have minded tackling Nelson again, but I knew Murphy would present a challenge too considering the work we’d be doing. I was told he’d been rather forward during the jumping class earlier in the day, and I suspect the horses had once again not been able to be out much (its really slushy and slippery) given that they all seemed to be rather ticked off with each other too. Murphy was fine to tack up, but he definitely wanted to kill some of the other horses. There’s clearly some tension in the herd at the moment, and it comes out very strongly when they aren’t able to be out as much as usual and settle their disputes properly.

As announced by Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Joe Quesada during the Cup ‘o Joe panel at the New York Comic Con, the hardcover collection of Dabel Brothers Productions Red Prophet, due in July, will feature an exclusive original short story titled “The Gold Bug” by Orson Scott Card set in the Ender’s Game universe.

Brrr. Nasty, cold, biting wind, and little tiny, stinging flakes of snow. Makes a girl want to hide in bed, and makes ponies mildly insane. Today was ... adventurous, and I must admit that while I lamented the departure of Pojken (the little yellow tank) before leaving for my lesson, I did not lament it quite so much once I found out I was on Nelson again. If Pojken (who was sent back for bucking off a few too many kids) had been there today I think ‘interesting’ wouldn’t quite have covered things. Nelson was in ... hrm ... high spirits, I suppose we can call it. As I led him down to the arena, it felt as if I was leading a 17 hand horse and not a pony of barely 14 hands. He was sort of floating half a meter above the ground.

As I have spent the last few days knocked out by a vicious cold (which hit pretty much everyone in the house, including the dog, though I think I got it worst), I wasn’t expecting too much from today’s class. In fact, given how wobbly my legs felt all day, I figured that just staying on would be a success. Staying at home was not an option, however. No riding two weeks in a row would have driven me crazy, and I have been in far worse condition and still dragged myself to the stables. I’ve found that riding when on strong painkillers makes me really relaxed and supple. ;P

In any case, I wasn’t that badly off today, and I did a little better than just stay on. It was a jumping lesson this time around, and fortunately I got Murphy this time too. I definitely didn’t feel up to any of the livelier horses, though he actually turned out to be a bit frisky today. Nothing compared to Nelson though, who was super-charged and kept trying to pick fights with Dark Digidoo (who also was super-charged) throughout the lesson. But Murphy was certainly unusually alert, and pretty eager to bite a chunk out of me too. ;P

Oops, I almost forgot to post for this week’s lesson before going to bed. I’ve got my first translation project for the new company, and its been taking a bit longer than expect. Plus, today was just theory, so nothing too exciting to report. We ended up having another round of observing herd behaviour, and again our regular instructor was gone, this time due to a family emergency.

This is very late, as they just wrapped up posting the whole of the first trade collection, but I’ve just learned that Newsarama has been hosting Powers Online, which has been daily posted a page from the "Who Killed Retro Girl?" first story arc of Powers. This is a terrific comic, featuring Oeming’s colorful, cartoony art and Brian Michael Bendis’s quirky, Mametesque dialogue as they introduce a brand new super hero universe through the eys of two homicide detectives, Christian Walker and his new partner Dana Pilgrim. Give it a try at the Newsarama site.

At the moment I am feeling pretty darn tired, and it wasn’t much better before the lesson (might have something to do with an early—for me, anyway—walk in the woods with the puppy), so no surprise that I didn’t do too great today.

Like last week, we had a different instructor from our regular one (she was off attending a clinic of some kind, and like last week the horses were very frisky. Not much snow left now, but plenty of ice, so they hadn’t been able to be outside much at all. Pojken, the charming little tank, was not allowed to be in any classes at all. Apparently he’s been bucking off a lot of people this last week, and it doesn’t look like he’ll be staying much longer. Which is kind of sad, because I do love the small horses that I can ride. Not that I like being bucked off, but as last week showed, I don’t scare that easily on a smaller horse.

Still, I wasn’t entirely unhappy to be on Murphy instead of Nelson this week. ;) Murphy, of course, was not very frisky. In fact, he could have used being a bit more energetic. When the others bounced around, scared by imaginary dangers, he just perked his ears up and looked at them. He seemed to be wondering why they were being so silly. But I suppose I should be mostly grateful, since I don’t enjoy being bucked off at all.

A number of years ago, I noticed that I had inherited an unwelcome family trait; early greying. I’ve always hated the idea of using haircolour, so at first I was determined not to do anything about it. That didn’t last long, however. ;P But there was no way I was going to use synthetic haircolour after reading up on them. So, I looked into henna. Red is nice, after all. ;)

However, finding accurate information about henna, not to mention good quality henna, was not easy. Eventually, however, I came across the fabulous Henna for Hair site, run by Catherine Cartwright Jones, a henna expert with long experience and academic credentials. She sounded like she knew what she was talking about, so I decided to give it a try. And boy am I glad I did.

Now Catherine has put together a stunning Henna bible as a free pdf download. The Henna for Hair ““How To” guide includes tons of information about what henna is and what sort of results you can get with it. It also explains how you can use additional natural dyes, such as indigo, to get brown or black instead of just red. Though Elio says he’s not sure why anyone would want that. ;)

Via Conlan Press, which has fought on behalf of Peter S. Beagle over monies he feels are owed him from The Last Unicorn animated film, we learn that a 25th anniversary DVD edition is being made available with a number of extras. As part of a special deal cut with the producers of the DVD, Conlan Press is selling the DVDs from its own site, including copies with personalized autographs from Mr. Beagle. More than half of the proceeds from the DVD sold by Conlan Press will go directly to Mr. Beagle, whereas he’ll not profit a penny from DVDs sold via other outlets while the dispute continues.

I remember the cartoon quite fondly as one of the most beautiful of the Rankin-Bass animated productions, perhaps due to the fact that much of the work was done by Japanese animators who would move on to become the core of the great Studio Ghibli, and it featured a top-notch voice acting crew (Mia Farrow, Christopher Lee, Jeff Bridges, Alan Arkin, and others). You can see the theatrical trailer for it here.

The book is excellent as well.

Long overdue snow and cold weather decided to put in an appearance this week. It probably won’t last too long (alas; I’ll take snow and cold weather over rain and wind any day), but while it is here I am enjoying it and so are, apparently, the horses too. I said before I went to the stable that I really didn’t want to ride Fleur today (in cold weather, she turns from occasionally flighty but very placid to always flighty and not the least placid), but she was actually an angel today compared to the horse I ended up riding. ;P

Murphy, being rock solid, had clearly been used for all the beginner’s classes today. So, I got Nelson. The white, fluffy and vaguely polar-bear like pony I rode a couple of times during the autumn. The first had gone okay, the second not so well, but I tried hard to mentally prepare myself for how to work on his issues and figured I could probably manage to make this ride fairly useful. Of course, the fact that our regular instructor had the day off was a cause for some small concern, as I always find it hard to switch.

There must be a shoe-stealing leprechaun hanging around the stables recently. As I mentioned last week, I discovered after the riding lesson that Murphy was missing one of his shoes, and probably had been since earlier in the day. Today, that shoe was back on, but another shoe was missing instead. And that wasn’t at all. Another horse, Campino, was also missing a shoe, and he too had been missing one last week as well.

So ... either we have someone stealing shoes or Murphy and Campino are ‘helping’ each other to misplace shoes when they’re out in the field. Given their respective tempers (Murphy wants to be the boss and Campino occasionally thinks he’s a stallion still), I suppose that isn’t so very unlikely. Either way, its a nuisance, and today I think it had a bit of an effect on my riding lesson too.

Via Colleen Doran (buy A Distant Soil !), I found out about this documentary project about the incomparable Harlan Ellison. Say what you will of him, but he knows how to tell a confabulation as you can see for yourself if you click the “Prince Myshkin” link.

The Sci-Fi Channel has released a list of in-development programs, and a very interesting item appears therein:

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.