Week 9: Some scenery, and HORSES!

It's mostly all about the riding this week. But first, some scenery:


Two pictures of Druid Lake Park, on the commute from Adam's house to Hopkins.


Deer on the campus of Sheppard Pratt Health Systems.


A goblin living in the applied math building.


On Monday, I saw the daughter of one of my riding classmates wearing a sweatshirt like this.


On the other hand, this was a dangerous week to ride horses. Last Sunday, I posted a picture of the giant bruise I got from my stirrups. On Friday, "my" horse, Gremlin, bit my arm!

Today was the in-house dressage show.


Here's Gremlin in his stall, and me going in to convince him that I'm not going to eat him, and neither is the bridle.


The Faceless Rider leading her horse out, and warming up in the big indoor ring, where some regular riding lessons are taking place. The woman in the red coat on the right is Carolyn, my new riding teacher.


Leaving the warm-up area (about 30 seconds after mounting), and the best shot from my first dressage test. Poor Gremlin wasn't really warmed up, and I hadn't had time to get ready either -- I didn't anticipate the amount of time it would take just to figure out where the show was taking place, and where my horse was, and how it was all supposed to work! We placed 3rd out of 3, but the judge said it was a good first test. We got 60%, which is very acceptable; Carolyn says 65% is quite good, and 70% is really good, and if your horse bucked through the whole test and didn't listen at all, then you might get a score in the 20's, percentage-wise.


Posing outside for some pictures on the way to my second test.


Trotting around the ring, to keep warming up and to make sure that Gremlin remembers there are Tables and Judges and all sorts of Potentially Horse-Eating Monsters in there.


Coming to a nice, square halt to salute the judge. Apparently, in both tests, my straight lines and halts were considerably better than any of the elements that involved, you know, moving.


Trying to get Gremlin to trot at the letter (the little blurry signpost under the horse's nose). I think we failed on this particular one, although he was really pretty good in this second test. We placed 4th out of 4, but the competition had much higher scores than in the first test. We got 62%.


A nice view of the little indoor ring, where we competed.

Week 8: Windshields, Valentine's Day, etc.

On Sunday morning, we woke up to a LOT of snow, as you saw last week. Here's the snowman we made. Adam is building a snow fort in the background.


It turns out that it's really not a very good idea to make snow angels when you're wearing pajama pants instead of snowpants. :)


The weather has been crazy this week. During the school week, we had highs from the 40s to the 60s. The tree outside my apartment window started budding. Now it's in the 30s again.


On Wednesday I broke my windshield. :( It's really hard to tell the cracks from the melted snow drips here -- this picture is for scale.


Here's a (somewhat) better picture of the damage.


On Wednesday night our department team played basketball again. Adam is the one with the inside-out jersey, and the other blue player is Ben, who organized the team. In this shot, they're not so far behind Team Monica, but later they got mercy-ruled -- in this league, they end the game when one team gets behind by 30 points.


Thursday night was the Women of Whiting social event for the spring. We served desserts and wine. I made Elizabeth and Lisa come along with me. We had a pretty decent turnout -- about 30 people. We're also raising funds to bring Valerie Young to campus to do a workshop. I didn't think we'd possibly be able to do it -- our budget for the event would be about $3500 -- but we've already raised $2500 from various departments in the engineering school, including $300 from applied math, and the (very flush) biomedical engineering department has promised to make up whatever difference we need.


Since we were so busy during the week, Adam and I held Valentine's Day (Observed) on Saturday. We played video games, did some homework, watched the first half of The Fellowship of the Ring, and cooked a lovely dinner together. Adam made Trattoria-Style Spinach Fettucini with fresh and dried tomatoes and carrots and feta cheese, and I made salad for the dinner and fudge for dessert.


This morning I was feeling a little homesick, so I made waffles! The last one in the batch was a little small, but it was a pretty shape.


This picture doesn't really convey the pain and suffering I went through ;) but here's the welt my stirrup leathers (or my jeans?) left on my calf during my riding lesson today, with my other foot for scale.

Johari Window

This is one of the new cool things to do among bloggers: I've created a Johari Window for myself. Go check it out and help me be narcissistic, yet contemplative. :)

Week 7: Adam's birthday, more D&D, SNOW!

Last Sunday, I picked Adam up from the airport. He had gone home to Massachusetts for his birthday weekend.


On Tuesday night, Adam opened his birthday presents at my house.


On Wednesday night, our department's intramural basketball team had its first game. It was a close game, but they beat the Hong Kong Student Association, 31 to 27.



Saturday afternoon, we played another round of Dungeons and Dragons. Leann made a delicious blueberry cobbler.



When we got back to Adam's place on Saturday evening, it was snowing pretty hard.


In the morning, we were totally snowed in! This is a pine tree outside his living room window. Later in the day, it made a good snow fort. :)


We got a foot of snow! (By the way, in case you didn't already know, you can click on any photo to see a much bigger version of it...)



Besides playing in the snow, we also did Important Grownup Work; we shoveled Adam's front walk together, along with the part of the community walk that hadn't already been shoveled, and we brushed off our cars. I'm not really beating Adam's landscaping to death on the right, just throwing snow.

First Week of School

This was the first week of school. It was a busy week! I figured out when all my classes are (several of them had to be arranged). I had three riding lessons and a Women of Whiting meeting, and I did lots of other fun things too. Here are some of them...


Here are Lisa and Ben eating lunch in the graduate commons room.


Adam at lunchtime.


The Women of Whiting meeting. This is the only photo that's on our webpage right now -- I keep forgetting to bring my camera to things, and we only have this one because Sarah (back row, left) went and got her camera. Yasmin (front row, second from left) is in the Catholic Community choir with me (back row, second from right).


On Tuesday, we played Dungeons and Dragons at Scott and Joslyn's house with Keith and Leann. From left: Joslyn, Leann, Keith, Scott, Adam.


Here are some things I've been making this week... I made a spinning ferris wheel with the (motorized!) K'nex set Adam gave me for Christmas. I made chocolate-chocolate-chip cookie bars. And I'm learning how to knit on four needles! Without gaping holes running down the sides! This is going to be a sock, if it's not either too big to fit Adam or too small to fit me... Notice the math homework in the background!


Today I've been wrapping presents. Adam's birthday is tomorrow!