Last night Matt kidnapped me into the city so we could watch Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith in the city. I hadn't eaten much all day and I was CRAVING popcorn, so we paid $50 for a popcorn and diet coke which I happily slathered with butter and enjoyed for the next 3 hours. We got PRIME seats and the movie theater was ginormous! The screen was huge and the movie was played on digital film (IMO sooo much better than normal film, can't see any other movie any other way now). The movie didn't disappoint. Matt said that George Lucas finally got settled in and made this one right, which he did.. the special effects were all incredible and even Hayden Christiansen didn't bug me as much as he did in the previous movies. He does the dark brooding thing very well.

Afterwards we grabbed a slice of pizza at Blondies Pizza and wandered around downtown for a total of 15 minutes before we decided ENOUGH of the crazy city.. lets get back to Pacifica. I'll gladly take suburbia over urbia (?). :)

We got some groceries on the way home and after we got settled, I began to not feel so good. My stomach felt really acidic and I spent the rest of the night lying next to Matt on the couch in pain. I'm not sure what was wrong with me.. Matt thought maybe the butter was rancid, ugh.. I think it may be an ulcer. :P In any case, must eat better.

Iguana XXX Hot Sauce. The best hot sauce EVER MADE. I just bought 3 bottle.. one goes to Mark and the other goes to Mom/Lizette if they want it. YumYUMYUM.

Ugh, forgot to take my Zyrtec this morning so I'm sniffly today. :( The past few evenings my allergies have been acting up with all this springtime weather coming in. Yuwk.

This past weekend was Laquel's BBW in Berkeley. She had it in Strawberry Creek park - a very cute park on the corner of Addison and BONAR. I never knew this park existed! It was shadey and the picnic tables were set right next to a little creek. So very cute. It was fun seeing the gang and playing frisbee with folks.. China was EXHAUSTED after going for a 2 hour ride in the morning with me then running around trying to mooch off food from everyone at the picnic. She also stunk to high heaven because she managed to roll in poop without me catching her somewhere along the trail.

Holy crap the people outside my office scared the BEJEAZUS out of me just now by spraying their pressure washer at my window. WTF people.

Anyways, last night I rode Isabella in the arena. It was the first time we really schooled in the arena since the Jerry Tindell clinic back in the beginning of April. We worked on leg yields and bending, both of which she was more responsive (but not great). There was a lot going on outside the arena so I worked on getting her attention on me. We cantered in her good direction (left lead) and she seemed less discombobulated and more balanced than before. Then.. her bad direction. I bent her hindquarters over to the right and asked for the right lead and my little girl got it immediately! I couldn't believe it! People, this hasn't happened in over a YEAR. I guess she really did learn something at Jerry's clinic. I praised her lots and we stopped after that good note. Whatta good girl, I'm so proud of her. :)

Haha.. Matt said something pretty funny the other day that I thought I'd share. After observing the horses out in pasture, we were watching Isabella munch on her beet pulp and he says to me:

You know, horses are a lot like people in the ghetto. They'll all be hanging out and chillin' and suddenly one of them will start running and the others will get all hyped up and start running too. They don't know what they're running from - but they do.. once they realize it's nothing they'll all calm down and go back to chillin'.

HAHAHA.. totally funny observation from a non-horsey person.

To clarify, I am *NOT* a lesbian. FREAKS!

IF I were a lesbian... I would be...

You scored as The Pretty-Boi Dyke. You can be a bit cocky at times and ever the heartbreaker, but no one knows that you're really just looking for true love. The Pretty-Boi Dyke 50% The Sprightly Elfin Femme 50% The Surprise! Dyke 40% The Quasi-Gothic Femme 40% The Student Dyke 30% The Stud 30% The Magic Earring Ken Dyke 20% The Femme Fatale 15% The Hipster Dyke 15% The Little-Boy Dyke 10% The Vaginal-Reference-Making Dyke 10% The Bohemian Dyke 5% The Granola Dyke 0% What Type of Lesbian Are You? (Inspired by Curve Mag.) created with QuizFarm.com

How fun! (Stolen from Darkviolet)

The idea: type each letter of the alphabet into the URL bar on your browser and report what the result is. (done in Firefox, which stores what you viewed most recent, not like IE which stores things alphabetically):

a - Andy and Lizette
b - Bay Area Equestrian
c - Craigslist
d - dooce
e - ebay (of course)
f - Friendster
g - Yahoo Groups (for my CTR horses fix)
h - Helpdesk at work (boring)
i - Insidehermind, of course!
j - R-Wild Horse Ranch (random site I was checking out horses on)
k - Kevin's Hiking page (I was checking out the Quicksilver park for the endurance ride)>
l - Livelink page for work (boring)
m - Bay Area Equestrian Network member's board
n - Blogger post page.
o - NOTHING!
p - PostSecret Blog - I love this site
q - Elsie's Endurance ride story site
r - Rosie's blog - I still love her no matter what!
s - Soopahviv!
t - More boring work stuff
u - Reading up on gastric ulcers in horses
v - Valley Vet Supply
w - Work's home page (boring)
x - Xerox Blog - hilarious, from Krissy's site.
y - NADA!
z - ZILCH!

Ok I admit it.. I checked out Britney and K-Fed's show last night, ya'll. I really really wanted to sympathize with Britney.. I wanted to feel the paparazzi was cruel to her and that her relationship with K-Fed really did have depth, substance and meaning.. I really did. But that snarky laugh of hers and the whole premise of them meeting (her flying him out to Europe for a booty call, but wanting "love and commitment") just shot all that out the door! She wanted a fairy tale life - falling in love, making a home, having baby - so she bought hers. End of story! It's sad because I do feel like she's a pretty down to earth person beneath it all.. but her relationship just looks like a disaster. Dunno if I'll check it out again next week because rather than being juicy and funny, they really tried to hard to be serious and the show ended up being just annoying.

Isabella is still doing well. I was really tempted to hop on her last night and ride her around.. but I promised that I'd give her a week off. So she's living the life of luxury right now.. I pull her out of pasture where she's grazing, and let her graze some more on tall grass along the property, then feed her beet pulp, supplements, and lots of treats. Yumyum.. it's a hard horsey life I tell ya.

Vote Carrie!

Quicksilver Spring Endurance ridestory is up!

American Cities That Best Fit You:

70% Honolulu

55% Austin

55% San Diego

55% Seattle

50% Atlanta

Which American Cities Best Fit You?

American Idol:

It's interesting, now that we're getting near the end all of the 4 singers have way different singing styles and would fit into different niches of the music world pretty nicely.

Carrie - I love her! I love the songs that she sings (yes, I like country).. although the second song she sang was kind of 'eh'.
Bo - Ok, the guy can sing and he's cute, but I don't think I'd be a big fan of the music he sings. Kind of like generic grungey rock. Not a big sell for me.
Vonzell - I wouldn't buy her music either, although she is a good singer also. What was up with the crying? Was there actually something going on or did she just cry because she forgot the words and did a bad job?
Anthony - the kid is growing on me. I thought he was so horribly cheesy and bad before, but his voice is improving as the weeks go on. He's appealing in a Jon Secada kind of way.. although when he looks at the camera and tries to be sexy it makes me want to gag and puke.

Last night was the season finale of 'Sex on the City' on TBS. I think it was the last episode ever? Carrie went to Paris to be with the Russian guy but turned out to be not so happy.. so Big (later we find out his name is John) goes to Paris to bring her back to New York. Sooo romantic.. :) I see a lot of myself as Miranda.. kind of cynical and opinionated. She's a very self-sufficient, independent, strong woman that changes when Steve and Brady enter her life. I think it's interesting how the writers developed her character.. at the end of the show you see her caring about Steve so much she invites his mom, who had a stroke and isn't doing well by herself, into their home. Having a child, husband, and caring for her husband's mom changed her into this loving, giving person.. which I love!

Tuesday night = teh best TV night.

5 days and counting until the Quicksilver ride. I'm planning on doing the 25 with Isabella.. getting a bit anxious about it! Friday in the morning I'm working from home then I'll be picking up Isabella (with China) and heading to Quicksilver Park for the ride on Saturday. This past weekend at REI I bought a long sleeve white shirt I can wear during the hot day so my skin doesn't get seared in the sun, and a few pairs of socks. The socks I have now are in a sad state.. I think that's why my feet got so sore last week when I walked down the mountain with Isabella.

Good news is that on Saturday I rode Isabella for 13+ miles without her getting sore on that foot she gashed last week with the Easyboot. Bad news is, I could see that she isn't really all that interested in food after the ride. She's never been a big eater after rides.. she half heartedly eat carrots and won't touch apples. However, she did chow down on beet pulp. I'm thinking about buying some neigh-lox for her to see if that helps with the nervousness.

Off to quadrille practice..

I had a rough night last night.. I swear, I'm full on self-torturing myself. First, Matt and I had spicy Korean food for dinner.. probably not the best dinner for an upset stomach, but hey, it was yummy. On the way home was our Eggettes boba place. Of course we had to get some, but no caffeine at that time of night.. so we chose to split a honeydew with boba. It tasted like melted honey ice cream.. mm.. but of course it was probably more than 80% milk. Strike two, but hey, it was yummy. After tossing and turning all night long, I woke at around 4am with searing pain in my lower intestines.. most likely from the milk. I don't know why I just didn't take a Lactaid.. maybe because I thought it couldn't hurt any worse than it was already. But oh yes, it did.

My morning was iffy at work. Every 30 minutes or so I'd run to the bathroom to make my deposits.. anything I was eating was going through me at mock 10. Then after lunch, which consisted of a yummy half sandwich and salad topped with an oatmeal cookie (probably not the best choice again for an upset stomach), my stomach finally settled down. It still felt queasy, but I no longer felt like I was going to blurp a mess in my underwear.

Since then I've felt okay.. except just now I had a drink of water that turned my innards into a rave gone wrong all over again. I think I have a parasite. Speaking of which, I just found 3 engorged ticks on poor China. :(

Yesterday at work I was feeling lousy. I felt so tired and achey, even after taking some Aleve, so I went home to sleep it off. My whole body had the chills, even though I was all yucky and sweaty. I slept for about 3 hours after I got home with all the windows open, managed to do a few overdue household chores, and then slept again at around 11. I didn't wake up this morning until 8am, oversleeping through my non-existant alarm (oops). My stomach has also been feeling really bad from yesterday.. like really acidic and yucky. I've popped a few TUMS but that doesn't seem to help much so I took a Tagamet and even that doesn't help anymore.

I've been sleeping pretty badly the last few nights also. I've been really restless and one night I even woke up totally perpendicular to the bed.. leaving me completely disoriented when I opened my eyes. I also had this bad dream about Matt. We had this huge fight and he called me a "fat fuck" before storming away. After that he was a stranger to me.. :( What a horrible dream.

Through all this I've really been trying to find some peaceful outlets (watching TV is NOT included). So yesterday after I woke up I managed to have some quiet time reading my Martha Stewart and Fitness magazines, and a little bit of my 'Art of Happiness' book. I've decided that the stress in my life is going to kill me if I let it so I'm trying to let as much of it as I can go.. and try and relax a bit more. It's even more incentive to try and leave the bay area eventually.. it's much to fast paced and stressful here. I wonder what the average life span is of those living here vs other more rural areas of the country.

China is so gross. Whenever we go out on the trail she always rolls in horse poop. Today she decided to forgo the poop to eat something very tastey - I told her to drop it. The 'it' turned out to be a dried up baby bird's neck and head. Ugh.

Isabella got injured out on the trail today.. she was wearing the Epics on her hind feet and the trail conditions made the boot twist on her foot. The metal teeth on the boot caught on her heel bulb and wouldn't let go, poor girl. :( The metal clasp was stuck also, so I had to pry that off first before I could turn it back and take it off. She has a lovely gash on her heel now. Of course this happened at the top of the mountain so I got off and walked the whole way down. Thankfully she wasn't off at all, not even sore. My feet were pretty sore at the bottom of the hill.. sock seams rubbed against my pinky toes. :( I put aloe vera on her cuts.. hopefully she'll heal okay.

Ugh! Found another tick on me.. gotta do a full body check.

Argh, so much rain! There is more that is coming later on this week.. thankfully I finally found an affordable riding jacket to wear if it starts pouring. I'm very bummed about my trailer too.. the window got busted open somehow and the glass shop says they can't repair it easily. It'll take 2-3 weeks and they have to keep the whole window piece if I want them to replace the window. WTF. Anyhow, I'll be calling Sundowner of CA to see if they can just drop ship the whole window to the glass company and have them install it. That's $100+ right there.. but the barn manager says their insurance will partially cover the cost since it happened on ranch property (yay).

Yesterday Matt and I went to visit a horsey friend of mine who just had a baby 3 weeks ago. She and her hubby had just gotten home from their river house and Shelby was crying and fussing because she was hungry.. poor girl. Probably not the best time to go and visit.. we stayed for a little while as Andrea nursed and we chatted to her hubby Paul a little bit about how awesome tractor pulls are then went home. Good times.

The women's bathroom at work is particularly disgusting today. Most notably the first stall.. the toilets don't flush completely the first time around (well, that's what I'm assuming although I haven't had a problem with this) so there have been varioius remnants of "presents" left for whoever uses the stall next. SICK.