Hippoi Athanatoi

As expected, I was not put on Murphy today. I had hoped for a chance to try out the new horse, Nelson, but someone else in the group got him while I was assigned Sammy. More than fine by me, since he’s so rarely used for our group and I really do like to ride him. It was kind of funny, too, as before the class I had chatted with another girl about the fact that with Malupin gone, we have very few small horses left and that of those left, Sammy and Fleur probably won’t be with us for too much longer. He’s 19 (12 years at the riding school), although he has always been very fit, and she’s getting on in years too. For those of us who like to ride smaller horses, this is definitely a problem, as all the new ones they buy seem to be either ponies or very large horses (several around 17 hands). I know they want horses that can carry a lot of weight, but to me it seems it would be more reasonable to go for smaller, sturdier horses, as they tend to be hardier anyway. The prejudice seems to be that heavier horses won’t perform well enough at dressage and jumping to be useful for the students beyond the lowest levels, but that’s certainly never been my experience of heavier horses. For one thing, both Sammy and Murphy have a fair bit of bone to them, being Irish mixes of some sort, and they do just fine.

This week I came the stables to find out we had lost one horse and (possibly) gained another. Sadly, the one lost was Malupin, a very charming little horse I’ve ridden quite a bit. Since he came to the riding school some years ago, he’s spent half or more of his time there injured, usually due to some accident caused by him acting like a bit of a clown. He never really seemed to grow up, and was constantly coming up with new antics to pass his time. I am not sure what happened this time around, but if I were to guess I’d suspect it was related to the serious injury to one of his hindlegs (a fracture even, I think) that kept him out of commission for over a year a while back. He’ll be missed, and he was very popular even though the riding school had been hoping to sell him since he was too small to carry most adults and too lively for most children.

The new arrival, still just there for a trial period, was Nelson, a sturdy fellow an inch or two shorter than Murphy. So, he’s just on the right side of the pony-horse limit. He’s also the whitest horse I’ve ever seen in person. Pretty much not a coloured hair on him, and lots of pink around his nose and his eyes. I am hoping he’ll turn out well so that they keep him and so that he’s interesting to ride, as he would almost certainly take my weight. As I noted last week I could really use another horse that I can ride.

I came across an interesting entry while doing one of my regular blog searches for A Song of Ice and Fire-related posts, featuring a peculiar head-to-head between A Clash of Kings and The End of the Affair. Clash triumphed in the end, but I do agree with the first comment on the post; God as the primary villain of The End of the Affair was a particular highlight.

Of course, if the comparison had been between ACoK and the movie version of The End of the Affair, I am afraid the latter (which I saw a bit of at 4 am the other day) would have won hands down. After all, A Clash of Kings doesn’t feature Ralph Fiennes (*swoon*, *drool*).

It took me rather longer than I had planned, but now a first, basic site for Hippokrene, the business I registered this spring, has finally gone live. Of course, between working with Elio on The World of Ice and Fire and potential assignments from Softitler, I am not sure how much time I will have left for other projects for the next year or so. Given this, I won’t exactly go out hunting clients. I definitely want to start off nice and slow. Any more stress and I’ll never be rid of my current bout of depression.

This also means that, for the first time in a darn long while, I’ll have virtually nothing to study this semester and possibly the next one too, as I opted against another semester of Literature knowing I’d be too busy to have the energy to force myself (I really have no interest in these periods) to read lots of 19th century and early 20th century literature. I do have a pair of English exams I hope to finish up during the autumn, but the only real option for the spring is Archaeology, and that one is pretty time-consuming.

Today, our instructor fortunately had her voice back, and so the planned jumping lesson went ahead. We’ll also be jumping next week, to make up for the one we missed last week. I expect I’ll be riding Murphy then too, as I had him today and it sounded like she wanted us to ride the same horses for both these lessons, as we’ll be doing related exercises. After that lesson however, she noted that I really need to ride some other horses for a change. I should have known that thinking about maybe needing to try someone else would lead to something like this. ;P On one hand, I guess I do feel that a change of pace would be good (even if I love riding Murphy), as I feel my riding so far this semester has failed to show any progress at all. On the other hand, I am not sure what other horses I could ride. Malupin is injured again, Fleur may be too or if not she’s just never available for our class, and the latter is true for Sammy and Gamir as well. I did suggest today that I could give Nikita a try—she’s pretty big and fairly strong, but she’s not a big mover and she seems quite bomb-proof and reliable—so I suspect I may be reporting back on that in a couple of weeks.

Have I mentioned I don’t like surprises? ;P Especially not of the kind where I thought I was set to have a fun jumping lesson, only to find out that since our regular instructor was ill, we were set to ride out instead. Not only do I always get a little nervous riding out (even on Murphy, I can’t get used to the sound of hooves on a road), but its pretty darn dull to do it at the riding school seeing as we have virtually nowhere to ride any longer. In short, not a great ‘lesson’ to help with the depression that has hit me hard since I got back home.

Big news today in the fantasy world, as it’s revealed that newcomer fantasy writer Naomi Novik has had her debut series, Temeraire (which artfully combines talking dragons with the Napoleonic wars), optioned by Peter Jackson. An interview at Ain’t It Cool News shows that Jackson is quite enthusiastic about the property, and that he hopes to start WETA on some design work while he, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens get to work on developing screenplays.

Coming out of Diamond’s Retailer’s Summit following the Baltimore Comic Convention is some pretty significant news for Dabel Brothers Productions: they’ve partnered with Marvel Comics (publishers of such fine teams and characters as Captain America, Wolverine, X-Men, and Spider-Man).

My body is still convinced its in the US as far as sleeping and eating goes, so I can’t say I was all that awake today when it was time for my riding lesson. I had to crawl out of bed and sternly remind myself that I really missed Murphy and that riding would certainly perk me up. Even so, I was feeling pretty tired and gloomy until I got into the stall with Murphy and started getting him ready. He had some hay left, and of course he had to glare at me once with his ears pinned back, to make sure I wasn’t going to try to steal his food, but other than that he seemed pretty pleased to see me.

This one was intended to be finished days ago, but since we didn’t go home straight after the con (we’re in Las Vegas at the moment), we still aren’t fully caught up on everything.

Somehow, despite getting just four hours of sleep, we actually woke up pretty easily at 8 am for our last day at the WorldCon. We had to get up early to check out, and to try to catch some final panels.

On Saturday, we were determined to do as many panels as possible, but never go to a WorldCon expecting to actually do the things you were intending to do. It foils the best-laid plans.

The third day of Worldcon was jam-packed with events, from a reading by George to the Brotherhood without Banners Human Chess Match and private party in the evening.

And now our report for Day 2:

After months of swinging back and forth between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to the trip, we somehow managed to get out of door at 3.45 Wednesday morning to get to the airport. Of course, I remained very dubious even once we were on our way, and did consider stopping and heading back home at several points.

Given that my nerves are currently in an uproar about our flight to the US tomorrow, it would have been really nice with a riding lesson today, to tire me out and calm me down a bit. But no, today’s lesson was of course set aside for one of just two theory lessons this semester. We do tend to have one at the start of each semester, but still, rotten timing. Next week’s lesson, that I am missing anyway, would have been a much better slot for it.

Suitably enough, the subject of the lesson was a nervous horse, picked to exemplify a difficult behaviour in a horse.  The ‘victim’ was Amadeus (one of the much too large horses in the stables, at around 17 hands) since he’s a very flighty horse who has a hard time trusting people as much as he trusts the rest of the herd. So, we spent the lesson down in the arena with him, observing and discussing his reactions.

Although it was interesting enough to distract me while it was going on, my jittery nerves came back almost immediately afterwards. The visit to the stables also served to remind me that the trip means I’ll miss all of the World Equestrian Games. Unless, that is, I can get the streaming feed off the official website to work, and even then I doubt I can manage to catch much due to the time difference.

After this, I am staying in Europe for the next two decades, at the very least.