palace of winds

I’m trying to enjoy every littlest bit of summer I can, and y’all, for summer enjoyment? Hammocks all the way. Especially if you accessorize with lots of sun, a bit of a breeze, and a good book.

The past few days have been mostly really good, with a peppering of really — interesting.

The good: Friday I had a decent ride and later a nice little read and nap in the hammock. Saturday morning I spent an hour and fifteen minutes walking my neighborhood, getting myself lost in the tangle of suburban streets and Terry Pratchett’s Wee Free Men audiobook (love it); I also discovered a park and indulged in some swinging. More reading on the hammock, then off to the zoo with the fam to celebrate a late Father’s Day.

The zoo was a blast; I was Alex’s favorite for the day (ever since he rode Everett he’s mostly been more excited about me than Grandma, which is saying a lot), so I generally got to behave like an idiot swinging him around, walking with his feet on mine, skipping and hopping and fake-running, Yay!ing and making faces and all manner of things that you can get away with in the company of an almost-three-year-old. Peyton slept in her snuggli almost the entire time, which was also pretty awesome. She’s growing so fast! and pretty soon she’ll’ve outgrown the snuggli which is terrible because I love the thing. Babies are so cuddly and it’s like a strap-on cuddle contraption.

After our zoo adventure I went back to my parents’ for dinner, and while digging the tent out (I’m going camping with college buddies over the Fourth and I am So. Pumped.) my dad found our old Nintendo, and such classic games as Super Mario 3, Excitebike, and Paperboy. It’s scary how fast they all came back to me, especially Paperboy and its sound effects: crashing windows, crashing into lawnmowers and skateboarders and tornadoes, and that one tinkly noise when you take out those little globes or lanterns or whatever (I have no idea what they really are) on top of the little posts by the street. The tinkly noise was always my favorite.

Sunday I headed into Uptown to meet J–; I finally got to see her apartment, then we got Jamba Juice and went sampling at Whole Foods and walked around Lake Calhoun. I stopped by Dreamhaven (yay Buffy comics!), then we ran errands at Target and went to ride our horses. I had a decent ride. Everett’s right lead has gotten a lot worse in the last few weeks; I’m not sure if he’s on the verge of a balance breakthrough (which would be lovely — fingers crossed!) or if he needs some massage work or what. But we worked on that and bending and I think the whole moving-away-from-leg-pressure thing is finally starting to really click with him, which is a great feeling.

Yesterday after work J– and I carpooled out to the barn again. After warming Ev up I asked E– if she wanted to give him a try. It was so much fun to watch him being ridden — outside of Bryce and my sister walking around on him, and a brief lateral-movement school by S–, I haven’t seen anyone else ride him since before I bought him. He has such a soft, laid-back expression when he goes. I was thrilled that E– didn’t have any trouble getting him to canter. He’s the first horse I’ve trained and there’s always this lurking fear that I’m up there doing something totally bizarre, not training him correctly, and other people will get on him and nothing will translate. So it was a relief to see him perform for another rider. I was also relieved that she had a lot of trouble with that right lead too, so it’s not just me doing something bizarre or crooked. After she was done, J– and I swapped horses. I got to try her western pleasure mare, Tess, which was a blast. She moves so differently from Everett; when I started trotting her I asked J– if she was moving fast enough, except she didn’t hear me right and replied, “Yeah, you could slow her down a little.” She’s so much narrower than Ev, even with that big western saddle, but she was still so comfy to sit. Her canter was a trip too; she’s so round and underneath herself, and her strides are so much smaller than Ev’s. It was fun going around on such a broke horse — a great reminder of how sensitive I want to get Ev to leg and seat pressure.

And, the interesting: Friday night was drama-drama with S–. I wasn’t there or personally involved, and it’s not something that really needs to be hashed out here anyway. Suffice to say it was the culmination of something that’s been building for a long time. Yesterday I let her know that I’ll be looking for a new barn. It was such a huge relief to get it out in the open.

So, stay tuned for good news on that front. I have a place in mind, but I don’t think it’s going to happen in the next week. I need to give a month notice, so the soonest I’d move is the end of August. (Which is terrible timing, because August 29 I’m heading to Maui. Though: Yay Maui!)

So I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows shortly before 2 a.m. on Sunday. Jo and her sister and sister’s friend and I went to the party at the Calhoun Barnes & Noble, which I think was less fun in itself than the Minnetonka Border’s has been in the past. Probably down partly to the size of the store; much smaller than Border’s, and just not set up very well for mobs of people. Still, I had a blast with Jo & company — we got Thai at Thanh Do and ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s, then spent an interminably long time wandering around Barnes hunting for trivia questions and waiting impatiently for midnight.

I just finished listening to You Suck: A Love Story, by Christopher Moore, and it? Rocked. I particularly loved Susan Bennett’s narration; I’ve never listened to one of her audiobooks before, but she was completely perfect for this one. I can’t imagine it any other way. Moore makes all sorts of clever little choices for his vampire mythos, and the whole thing is fun and funny. And there’s a little Q&A with Moore at the end of it, from which I discovered that You Suck is actually a sequel — which explains why I felt like it dropped the reader into the middle of the action much more than most books I’ve read. I really liked that, though — you don’t feel adrift or anything, just that there’s a bit of past history you’ve missed, the details of which aren’t important. It trusts you as a reader to put things together a little, and I always like feeling respected as a reader. Though I do want to read Blood-sucking Fiends (the — prequel? is it still called a prequel even if it was written first?).

And entirely unrelated, for anyone (Bryce) who uses a feed reader/consolidator thingie (like Netvibes, which I highly recommend by the way), I finally posted some pony pictures, but I’ve made them private (as they’re not my ponies, really), so you’ve got to come to the actual site to see them. And be registered.

Western diet increases cancer risk for Asian women.

I also highly recommend The China Study for — well, I was going to say for anyone interested in the link between diet and cancer, but I hope everyone’s interested. So I highly recommend it, full stop.

I just finished listening to Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings, by Christopher Moore, and it was fantastic. Very fun, and this totally different take on fantasy — more magical realism, actually. I still really want to read Moore’s Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, but alas my library doesn’t have that audiobook. I’m also a little disappointed to find that other titles at my library involving Fluke’s narrator, Bill Irwin, are almost exclusively Elmo dvds; Irwin’s a great narrator, but not that great.

Before that I spent a torturously long time getting through Philip Kerr’s The Shot, which I thought was going to be this cool CIA/Kennedy assassination fun action suspense thing, a little change of pace from my usual fare. But there’s apparently a reason I don’t gravitate toward that stuff — it was not my thing at all. It relied too heavily on sex and violence, and not in a good way. I just felt kind of squicked and/or offended listening to it. (And not in the way that Brett Easton Ellis’ Glamorama violence leaves you unsettled — Ellis really gets you thinking about it.) So thumbs down for that one for me. I actually had a snafu copying the discs over to my ipod and missed #10 out of 12 and was very glad when I discovered it, since I got to skip an hour’s listening at a point when I was very near to giving up. (I don’t like to give up on books; so far the only audiobooks I can remember abandoning are The Mermaid Chair and The Woodsman’s Daughter. Though god was Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury tough to get through.)

Next up? Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, which I started yesterday. I love him. Love.