I'm hopelessly addicted to another reality show. My favorites so far are in the bottom 4 tonight :( No fault of their own!! They just got crappy partners. Ryan got the freaky albino chick, and Melody, who is a little petite thing, got partnered up with the biggest guy on the show. Hopefully they don't get voted out next week. I love Ryan - he has this crazy Yu-Gi-Yoh hair and he dances on his head. Awesome. And Melody is totally cute and is from Daly City (bay area HOLLA). OMG I can't wait until next Wednesday!!! haha I'm so lame.

This past Sunday was Matt's 30th birthday (hooray, Happy Birthday again sweetie). Coincidently, Isabella turned 11 on Sunday as well.. two of my favorite creatures are born on the same day! Not only that.. China's 4th birthday was on the 20th! Happy birthday to everyone.. :)

We celebrated by having pizza and a bonfire on Saturday night with the gang. Merima, John, Walt, Amit, Mark and Jennifer all came over to join in the festivities. After trucking all of our combustables across the beach at night (which was so much fun, not) we made a pitiful excuse for a bonfire. It blazed but never really got to its prime. The night was good though, it stayed fairly warm for the most part of the evening and we just sat around and chatted till midnight or so.

On Sunday we joined Matt's parents for a birthday dinner at the Foreign Cinema in the Mission. Just before the movie started, a clip was shown on the screen with a guy chatting with subtitles (just like the movies that are shown). He began talking to his girlfriend, Emily, about how wonderful she was and how fortunate he was to have her in his life, then asked her to marry him! Across the restaurant, we saw the same guy get down on one knee and propose. It was very touching. :) She nodded yes through her happy tears and everyone applauded for them. Dinner was delicious, we had calamari and shrimp to start off and I ordered the seared ahi tuna which was scrumptious. We ended the night with fancy pineapple, grapefruit, and raspberry sherbert with some chocolate cake. Delish. Matt said his favorite part of the night was the proposal.. which I thought was very sweet.

Other than that the weekend was pretty quiet. I got two of my trailer's tires replaced and slept A LOT. Haven't been feeling 100% and so I think my body caught up on a lot of needed rest.

One of my most secret guilty pleasures is watching "A Wedding Story" on TBS. My TIVO likes to pick up the show on my Suggestions list (along with a billion episodes of 'The Planet's Funniest Animals' and 'Family Guy'). It never fails.. I always start tearing up when the couples describe the proposal and by the end when they're reciting their vows I've gone through a few tissues! I'm a TOTAL wuss!

Today Vinny and I visited the 'Lactation Room' here at work. Ever since we got the email announcement of the availability of this room, we were eager to go check it out and 'hang'. We grabbed some free monthly bday cake and headed over to the room, which we found conveniently located across from the bathrooms. Making sure no one was nearby, we ducked in (Vinny pushed me in front, JIC). Our visions of what the Lactation Room was going to look like were shattered! No big screen plasma TV, no big huge comfy couch, or soft pleasant lighting.. just a dank tiny room with 2 chairs and an IKEA lamp. LAME! We hung out for a while in the 'Lactation Room' then tried to sneak out, but were caught by someone in Finance who involved Vinny in conversation about the 'Lactation Room'. I quickly ducked into the bathroom until the woman left, then came out and laughed at Vinny. haha. Good times.

This past weekend was the Swanton endurance ride where I suckered (hahaha) my non-endurance barnmate Annie into drag/safety riding about 16 miles towards the end of the ride. It was the last stretch for the 75 milers and the 2nd to last for the 100s, so we didn't get out on our horses out onto the trail until about 8pm. No worries though, we hung around the Cascade Ranch vet check until the last riders came in for us to follow. I saw a bunch of people I knew from endurance rides as well as NATRC including Becky's daughter, Julie, who was riding in the 75 miler. Unfortunately Becky's horse Solerro hurt himself a week before the ride so she had to pull.. but she got to live vicariously through her daughter, who before this weekend had never even ridden past 25 miles, let alone by herself! Pretty amazing. I'm not sure yet if they completed, but at the Cascade check both looked great and Lady, her bay arab mare, was way too busy to say hello as she was chowing down on everything in sight.

Anyways, our main goals for this ride were to 1) pull ribbons and glowsticks 2) stay out of the way of the riders in front of us and 3) not kill ourselves. We managed to achieve our goals (mostly). The trail started off as a nice wide fireroad that kept climbing and climbing. We trotted where we could and stopped often when we caught sight of the 2 100 miler riders in front of us. Annie was riding her 16hh chestnut thoroughbred, General, who was approached by more than one person in awe of how big he was. On the other hand, Annie, who had never seen an endurance event, was in awe of all the "little greyhound" arabs (being an eventer/dressage rider she's used to gigantaur warmbloods and also rides a 17hh monster Trakehner). We climbed what turned out to be the first of 3 big mountains and ended up at the top ridge as the sun disappeared. The view from the top was incredible.. all around us we could see tree-covered mountains, some covered with thin foggy mists, and off in the distance to our left was the glimmer of a big orange moon that would eventually provide us with some light along our way.

As darkness fell, the trail became increasingly more technical. Both of us brought headlamps but mine burnt out after less than 15 minutes (nice). The hills were becomming steeper and narrower as we worked back down the mountain.. I'm not sure if we would've been better off if we were able to see the trail as those switchbacks down were quite treacherous! I was giving Isabella her rein but stopped trusting her completely after she tried to walk off a sandy edge into the pitch black (EEK!). After we arrived at the bottom of the hill it was time to work our way back up. We saw the riders in front of us by their headlamps glinting through the trees halfway up the mountain. This mountain was mostly covered in big eucalyptus (or pine? couldn't tell!) trees that provided us with "shade" from the moon. In other words, it was pitch black here. I let Annie in front so we would be able to see from her light if we were actually on the trail or not. We became quite adept at spotting and pulling ribbons in the dark by this point, although a few times we ended up with handfuls of draping moss. :)

More switchbacks down the hill led us to a big creek where we stopped for a little while to provide distance again with the riders in front of us (we weren't going fast at all). We met up with the fireroad again and had a nice long trotting stretch before we reached the lumberyard. There we found the 2 100 milers we'd been tailing, wandering around, a bit lost. Together we found the next glowstick in the distance and walked into the Sawmill vetcheck, no worse for wear. By this time it was midnight and we were offered a ride by the ambulance driver back to camp, which we graciously accepted after learning the two riders we followed were fit to continue (yay!). We managed to find my rig back in ridecamp, which the previous drag riders had driven, and loaded up to leave at around 1:30am after giving our brave steeds some time to rest and recuperate. Despite the one little mishap towards the ridge edge, this ride really proved to me how amazing Isabella is to me, there were times when I was not able to see the trail at all and she was twisting and turning around the bends with her nose to the ground, smelling the horses that had trod there before us. Ridecamp was absolutely beautiful under the moonlight as we drove away and after unloading the horses back at the ranch, I finally flopped into bed around 3am to sleep. What a night! We had so much fun.. I admire all the riders who trekked through these tough trails after 50+ miles of riding already! Isabella and I probably have 2 more years to go before we're ready for a ride this long, but now that I've seen the trail I'm definitely looking forward to it. :)

I remember I used to ride Isabella bareback all over the trails in Walnut Creek. I haven't been riding her bareback much these days because I've been riding at a much faster speed, but last night I wanted to take it easy on her and hopped on. By the end of the 6-7 miles or so, my pubes were taking a beating! Lets just say the bareback pad was rubbing me the WRONG way. Ouch.

Today I went and shipped another saddle that I tried on Isabella (with no success). I've been going to this UPS store in Daly City that is manned by an older Indian guy. Last time I was there he chided me for shipping such an expensive saddle in a crappy beaten up box. I think he was trying to be helpful. In any case, we chatted again and he mentioned that he had been on a horse once in his life - at his wedding. He said it was a traditional ceremonial thing.. he also mentioned that as a kid he and his friends would try and ride the donkeys near their house, but the donkeys were smart and would kick them away, haha!

The UPS store was right next to the Spiral Noodles restaurant so I went in and had a soba dish (Kitsune) that had seaweed and fried tofu. The tofu was kind of yucky.. it was the sweet tofu that they use for sushi so it didn't really go with the dish. But the seaweed was quite yummy. I like eating slimey dark green things.. it makes me feel healthy. :)

This past weekend Matt and I took a trip to Pt Reyes for a ride down the coast. He brought along his bike, I brought along Isabella. We staged at the youth hostel next to the Coast Trail and rode about 10 miles out and back. The Coast Trail is relatively flat and runs well.. right along the coast! It was the first time I rode Isabella since the Fireworks ride and she was striding out very well. I had been nervous because there was a bit of a lump on her right hind.. but she trotted out willingly and we even cantered for a long stretch. It's so nice to be able to trot/canter like that.. the trails around Pacifica are so hilly it's difficult to find a 10 foot stretch of good trotting! Anyways, we had a lot of fun although Matt's ass was pretty sore afterwards..

On Sunday I felt restless and anxious, which came out to being very whiney. I think I'm feeling very unsatisfied with certain points in my life right now and it's coming out in my personal life. I was grumpy and "mopey" <--Matt's word, and kept picking fights with Matt since picking fights with China aren't as fun. :P :P He was very tolerant of me and entertained me by taking me out for a drive. We searched for Mega M&Ms for a while (and found they weren't so Mega) and then spent a few hours at the book store where I looked through horsey magazines and Matt looked through graphic design magazines. We shared a yummy toffee bar and a decaf Starbucks coffee and went home content. I felt much better after that.

Need a vacation.. Camp Far West is over Labor Day weekend but I decided to forgo that ride, save on gas (which is over $3 for diesel! UGH) and hang around town. We may go up to Santa Rosa for a mini vakay. Wherever we go, I'm looking forward to RELAXING!

Last night Matt and I went to Spiral Japanese Restaurant in San Bruno. I've been on this noodle kick for the past few months and Matt wanted to eat spicy tuna (who doesn't??) so we gave this restuarant a try after I read reviews on chowhound. Matt ordered 2 spicy tuna, which left much to be desired (it's nada compared to California Sushi's spicy tuna in Berkeley) and the deep fried spicy tuna roll. The latter was pretty yummy.. it was sprinkled with a very spicy red topping and the roll itself was just the right amount of cooked-ness. Not completely cooked through, which can make tuna rolls taste really dry.

I ordered the Spiral Noodle bowl with soba which consisted of some YUMMY seaweed, shredded beef, and a large piece of teriyaki shrimp. A few bites into it and I was engulfed in Japanese yummyness! The noodles were the perfect texture (although I prefer cold soba to hot soba) and when Matt reminded me to use the hot pepper sprinkles I was in noodle heaven.

Afterwards we went to Loard's Ice Cream and Candy shop in San Bruno for something sweet. Matt ordered Fresh Banana ice cream - and the server thought it was hilarious when he came out with an actual banana in the ice cream bowl. haha. I ordered the Pecan Praline ice cream which was pretty yummy.. but now that Matt has introduced me to the Mitchell's ice cream shop in SF, it's hard to compare.

Only other thing to note: we walked China by the beach yesterday. After running away from us towards the ocean, we found her with her legs dangling in the air, relishing in rolling in what looked like the remains of mystery bird CARCASS. SOOOooo.. gross. After which she got completely lost.. it's not like we've walked on the SAME ROAD EVERY SINGLE TIME we've gone there. She kept running from person to person, looking for us cuz she couldn't hear us yelling at her from downwind on the beach. Her birthday is this month.. she turns 4. She's definitely not getting smarter with age.

Fireworks 2005 Ridestory is up!

Fireworks 2005

Fireworks 2005
Originally uploaded by Julienne:).

Finish Line!

I'm off to Fireworks to do the 25! I'm getting excited.. Matt decided to surprise me this morning by saying he's going to come with me (YAY!!). This is big considering 1) he has to miss his art class and 2) it's going to be friggin HOTHOTHOT!! Nice boy. :) I'm just ultra nervous now.. please don't let me get pulled.. please let Isabella be okay.. no mystery lameness this time.. *good thoughts*

Wish me luck!

Shopping..

Shopping..
Originally uploaded by Julienne:).

This is totally Matt and me when we go ANYWHERE. :)

This weekend is the Fireworks Endurance Ride. Yes, the one we were pulled at last year. :( I'm am DETERMINED to finish this time.. we have no excuses. Isabella's been checked out by Dr. Cloninger, a racetrack vet who made me trot out Isabella all over the barn with nary a lame step. She's shod at 3-4 weeks now and has pads in the front. We're going to do it!! :)

If this ride goes well, I'm going to try and decide what our first 50 will be. The next few rides coming up are: Camp Far West - an "easy" 50, but very very hot. Or the East Bay Elevator ride in Oakland. The Elevator ride is unique in that you can sign up for the 25 miler, but after you're done you can decide to "elevate" to the 50. However, if you get pulled or don't finish the 50 in time, you don't get credit for the 25.. decisions, decisions!