Yesterday afternoon, I saw the kitten and the duck doing something weird. I ran over to them practically screaming, wanting them to… stop. The kitten was on its back, all legs around the duck’s neck, the duck in turn was biting the kitten’s cheek and both were quiet. The mama cat was sitting nearby acting zen like nothing was going on. I was so scared that they were hurting each other I didn’t even think to take a picture (and my camera was in my hand). It turned out, they were just playing.

At the end of my riding lesson today my trainer asked if I wanted to jump. I wasn’t planning on it, but my eyes turned to hearts (and I had a dream that I wanted to jump D but for some reason couldn’t) so we jumped. We had three refusals and one interesting mishap (which was also one of the refusals). I attribute all refusals due to my lack of leg pressure. It wasn’t a crossrail that we jumped at the end, and that scared me (it was how I had my “accidents” last year) so I didn’t use leg, which caused D to stop short in front of the fence, and me sort of leaning on her neck (jumping ahead). The good thing about this time, though, was that even tho I was flying all over the place, my legs (and feet!) were securely on the saddle and still in the stirrups so I’m glad my jumping experiance isn’t quite as traumatizing so far. We tried lowering the fence a bit and trying again, it was really fun! I don’t mind just jumping low for now.

Since I don’t know how I look when I jump (no one had the camera, it was on a chair at the fence), I’ll just say what I thought was good and bad.

The bad:

• As we get closer to the jump, my leg pressure decreases


• Taking “mane release” way too seriously by putting my hands (or at least one hand) waaaay up


• When we are approaching the jump, I keep looking at the fence, and not beyond it


• My body gets too far forward over the fence, no idea about my legs/heels

The good:

• Once her front legs take off, I start looking beyond the fence


• Finally feel like my legs really hold me on the horse’s back


• Release, not perfect but it’s there. At least I think it is


• Keeping my stirrups when she canters after we land, a year ago I don’t think I would have been able to

Got my nails done on Thursday, but I rode the next day and they were bloody and messed up again.

Sometimes you want to be honest, but can’t help but be slightly harsh and end up insulting someone and feeling incredibly guilty. Sometimes you just have to live with the fact that you can’t please everyone. No one will like everything about you, and nor do they have to. You don’t even have to love (or hate) your traits and the way you look all the time, but sometimes you just have to… not care. No one is perfect and we just have to be confident that really, nothing about us is as bad as we make it out to be. When we mask our imperfections with confidence, the imperfections turn into beauty.

Today I had a jumping lesson. We kicked everyone out from the arena near the end of the lesson so I could jump (no one else wanted to do anything anyways!). D was aweasome. I think she loves to jump. I want to ride & jump her again, I just can’t wait but we decided that I will only have jumping lessons once a week, and not on weekends… I don’t usually get to ride D during the week.

It was a great lesson. I kept my stirrups at the canter and over the jumps. I realized, however, that when I think too hard about them I tend to lose them. At our second canter I was thinking, “Oh my God are my stirrups still on?” and started to wiggle my right heel till the stirrup came off. It’s like my own excitement got it off. Apparently we sort of died out after each jump but I think it’s due to me thinking really hard about the jump and not about what I should be doing after (but I think I did ok releasing). My brother was planning to jump, too, but then he & B left the arena. He claimed he was tired, but I think it’s good that he didn’t stay. B’s allergy medicine is relaxing him a lot and he needs to rest, I wish they’d give him some time off so he can recover.

My mother and I have been talking about watching The Mist again in the near future, but not yet. We’re still heartbroken at the events of the movie that we do not feel ready to be face to face with it again. The DVD itself was given to us by my cousin who’d just arrived from a trip last weekend. He ended up watchin the movie with us the next day.

We have been tossing around the idea of getting my youngest brother an iPod Nano, too. The reason however… will not be clear anytime soon. He will resist the idea, of course, the same way he resisted being given a mobile phone by my grandfather some months ago. My mother told him, “Alright, if you don’t want it that’s fine, I’ll just use it myself then,” and that made him grow quiet with a contemplative look on his face before saying, “But I don’t have a phone…”. The rest was history.

A while ago, I had a craving for chocolate brown jodhpurs/breeches for riding. Before that it was brown half-chaps to wear with my paddock boots that my trainer brought me when my rubber tall boots that I’ve had since the 8th grade got messed up. The paddock boots, though, were kinda big for me and I outgrew my half-chaps craving. I do need gloves, too, my fingers (and nails) have been in really bad shape and require protection!

Speaking of which, I have some footage of some of our riding lessons (my siblings & I). Hopefully soon, I may even have some videos of our upcoming jumping lesson! We already did “invisible jumps” a while back so it’s time to raise the bar higher. If anyone wants to see the videos, let me know.

Don’t these shoes remind you of old movies? They aren’t mine, by the way.

Upon first seeing The Mist I found myself slightly curious about the movie. Not intending on watching it to begin with, I thought I’d also add that never in a million years would I have ever found myself even thinking about it. But it the last day of the weekend where we usually watch movies with family… the guys were watching it. We had actually set up Enchanted in the other room. But as circumstances forced it, we all ended up together in the living room.

With this movie, I have come to the conclusion that you either think it’s brilliant or just absolutely hate it. Today, I am more leaning towards, “It’s brilliant”. For the people I talked to the day I watched it end, hear me out! Seriously. What movie affected me the way this one did, especially one that I did not watch from the very beginning? The answer is: none. First, let’s put aside the main genre themes. Gore? Yeah, I actually watched some of that and managed not to find it absolutely disgusting (I was eating dinner, too). The creatures? Their designs were pretty cool. I wouldn’t really call this a horror movie, not at all. There was barely any action, and I felt the story was dragged on way too long that it got a bit boring, not the main ingredients of a thriller, no sireee. There were some bits after the second half of the movie that I didn’t even watch because I lost interest – but I still wanted to know how it ended.

Apparently, the movie’s ending was changed. The Stephen King novel had a different ending. Never have I seen an ending that moved me so. I prided myself at being a person that never cried at movies (well fine! I cried at Flicka and Lassie, but I just feel bad for animals!). My stomach started to hurt. I wanted to scream. I was laughing and crying at the same time. The people I was watching it with nearly kicked me out of the room. I felt a rush of emotions that needed to reach a conclusion but just did not know how. And today, I still think about it. Not just the faces of the actors as it looked like fear was their only driver, but the music and the sound effects. My arms still tingle, I kid you not. I couldn’t help but be angry and upset at how events turned out. It didn’t help that I always imagine myself instead of the main character, and I just can’t even begin to imagine how he must have been feeling. That is one of the sources of my frustration.

With all that being done and said, why am I leaning towards the movie’s brilliance? A movie that not only dragged me into its events, but had me wanting to scream at the tv, “Why did this happen?”. Me! A person that HATES movies, especially since each is usually more predictable than the next, or the horror/thrillers are more about the blood and gore than actual horror. Let’s see here… blood and gore not main theme (didn’t seem that way to me), creatures not main theme (although they were cool), completely unpredictable ending, more about the people, and as some reviews put it: the horror was not the type of horror you’d normally expect. Yep. Brilliant movie! Sure it took me a few days to draw this conclusion, but it had to be said!

We went out to the opening night of the Wizard of Oz on ice yesterday and stayed out for dinner later on. While the skating was amazing, and brought a smile to my face (and we laughed at how the witch accidently hit someone with her broom), I have come to the conclusion that I am not attending any other show at this place on opening night – period. What’s a figure skating show without figure skaters? What’s a graduation ceremony without graduates? What’s a show, any kind of show, without an audience? Yeah.

Earlier today I was playing with two dogs and a cat. They were aweasome. I want my own German Shepard one day, always have! The cat had fun sitting up next to my mum on the swings, purring and acting cute, begging for affection.

What do you guys use to edit movies? My moviemaker is being mean…

Bunbun is such a cute little guy. We’ve put some kind of cloth at the floor of his house, and leave him in overnight. In the morning, we notice that if the cloth is, um, soiled, he has it all folded up and at one corner while he rests at the clean parts of the house. You might argue that, “maybe one of you guys folded up the cloth,” but I’ve personally seen him do it once. He grabs the edge with his mouth and drags it forward, and this is only when the cloth needs to be washed, because he seems to have no problem resting on it when it’s clean! I think he needs a bigger house, anyway. I was thinking of buying him an indoor playpen that he can use with supervision because I don’t want him hanging out outside too long… I don’t trust the cats. They beat up the guy across the street’s cat when she followed my one of my brothers home once that she hid in the bushes and started meowing helplessly till my other brother realized what was going on and took her back home.

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is intruiging. I can really feel that they have added up on the gameplay methods that we already know from the previous games in an attempt to this game slightly more complex. For instance, remember when we get the chance to inquire about something in the Court Room sequences and get the option of adding something to the testimony? Here, we get the chance to inquire about not one, but several different things and only one of them is the right question; or well, the one that will lead to advancing. There are times when there are several different things that you can do to a witness testimonry, each will add extra dialogue but will not always allow us to advance to the next testimony or the verdict. Having said that, this does not neccessarily make the game any more difficult, because if it’s not the main character whose eyes light up at the chance to advance to the next stage in the court, it’s the prosecution giving us various clues on what should be presented and when. So far I feel that the game isn’t really difficult, but is it just me or are the court room sequences a tad bit longer than usual especially in the 3rd case?

I am now at the turning point of case 4 and taking my sweet time because I don’t really want to be done with it yet. I have just decided that the prosecution’s chest … scares me.

A few weeks ago, I recieved a gift box full of really cute stuff and this one cosmetic case brought me some nostalgia. It’s probably the print.