dragon_moon

It's supposed to rain this weekend. Feeling a bit like Eeyore at the moment. lol. It'll pass. Got Monte Pittman's The Deepest Dark album in the mail last night when I got home, so I'm looking forward to hearing it!

Thursday night I almost got in a car accident, but thankfully nothing happened. Someone in the lane to the right of me put on their blinker to come left, but there wasn't room for them to come over so I sped up to get out of their way - almost instantly they started coming over, but managed to stop in time. It felt so freaking close I'm amazed we didn't hit. WHEW.

Last night, Heather and I met at Olive Garden for dinner. We wanted popcorn with the movie, so we just had appetizers for dinner which worked out really well. I tried their new mozzarella fondue thing and it was delicious!! She had calamari, mushrooms and ravioli, and then we shared the Black Tie cheesecake. OMG, GOOD!

Normally we both tend to avoid opening night for movies, but we couldn't resist Secretariat. It wasn't too crazy all things considered. We got there super early anyway. It's kind of nice that they run the previews for shows and stuff - it's a much nicer way to kill 30 minutes rather than watching the same five slides over and over again. *G* We want to see Tangled and...the runaway train movie. Looks intensely suspenseful but awesome. Anyway, Secretariat was really wonderful. You never know how horse movies are going to turn out, but they did a fabulous job with it and it was very entertaining. It's on my 'to buy' list when it comes out.

Ebert did an excellent review of it - going to copy and paste because I worry about sites deleting stuff. lol.

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Wow! A vacation sure does a body good! ^__^

Part of the family went on a trip to Eastern Oregon this week - my grandfather has been talking about the round barn that was built over 100 years ago, and how interesting it was that this rancher had decided to build a round barn for breaking in his draft horses and such. So we finally got organized and went to see it! With the added bonus of seeing part of the Malheur Wildlife preserve and possibly the Steens Mountains (home of the Kiger Mustangs, you know!).

( many rambles )

Last night, we went to Knights of the Realm at the Fairgrounds. Which, in itself, is kind of odd because the fairgrounds haven't been all that equine friendly for a few years! Regardless, the show was there and we were interested to see what it was all about.

Turned out to be a lot of fun! They started out with just introducing all the knights, the king and so on. Brought out a gorgeous, GORGEOUS grey Andalusian who showed off some pretty moves and was just really incredible. Utterly beautiful. Then they brought the knights back out for some mounted games (big & small rings, spear the hay bales, etc) - great fun to watch! Our section was the bad guy section, of course. LOL. One of the other knights was on a huge black horse - not sure what breed that one was, but it almost looked like it might have been a Warlander - had the long back and friesian head, but no feathers and not the huge mane & tail of a Friesian. Anyway, neat horse regardless. The red and yellow knight was on a spanish horse and the others were on quarter horses or paints. They were all really awesome.

After the games, they proceeded with the jousting. The first pair was the green knight and the templiers (templars? They had a cross, but he pronounced it like temp-lee-ars?), so I was watching them since we were in 'their' section. All of a sudden I realize the green knight has fallen off his horse and is rolling madly! Turns out it was just part of the show, but I didn't know at first and was confused if we should be worried or cheering on our guy. lol. Anyway, after he was unhorsed, they proceeded on with fighting with weapons. Pretty awesome fighters! And when they would both have the swords, you could see actual sparks fly! Three feet! LOL. It makes sense with all that steel, but I'd never thought about it before and don't recall seeing it in any movies. Anyway, it was actually a bit distracting but really cool. They kind of followed that formula through all the pairs, and then had a huge war (well, four vs four) at the end after the "other" bad guys showed up.

Anyway, you know how these go - a little contrived, but still a whole lot of fun. I'm definitely glad we went and enjoyed the show and the beautiful horses a lot. ^__^

http://www.travelchannel.com/Video_&_Photos/Video_Detail?playerId=1388782660&categoryId=138164828&lineupId=1387552920&titleId=1387550796

Just outside of Sydney, Australia there is a 'traveling restaurant' named Clydesdales. Kind of a cool way to explore the town! Definitely an unusual eating experience. *G*

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18507564/

Yesterday's Kentucky Derby was fantastic to watch! We actually were all rooting for Street Sense, even though it seems fairly rare that your favorite actually wins. *G* We enjoyed the story of his trainer (the first Derby he won, with Unbridled I believe, was for that 92 year old lady and it was just such a cool win!) and liked the look of Street Sense. So it was absolutely wonderful to see him win, especially seeing how he manuevered from 19th to first and made it look pretty darn easy. *happy dancing*

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18510365/displaymode/1176/rstry/18507564/
A few more photos here. Street Sense, Hard Spun and pony horse Chopper are the only equines pictured.

Otherwise, it's been a good weekend so far. We picked up some burgandy lamb tips at Trader Joe's last night and had them for dinner, along with mashed potatoes with goat cheese. Mmmm. It was all delicious! Today I got to ride Jeffrey a bit early in the morning, then used Mom's new camcorder to tape the first two rounds. It's a neat little camera! Hopefully I did okay with the recording. lol. Poor Nate was super sore this morning, but it was kind of nice for him not to be caterwauling all morning with excitement. ^___^

http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/horse/news/story?id=2747087

Sad news. Barbaro had to be put down due to further complications. That really sucks after trying so hard to recover. :(

Ok, spent most of the afternoon looking at horse pictures, then got onto model/resin pictures from there. Google image is a neat thing, but it's frustrating when it shows you a picture that is NO longer there and you want to see it bigger. ;D

http://www.purdyhorsefarm.com/

Anyway, if you want to see a fantastic horse go to "resins" then click on the extra photos for "Maximus/Max". They have a celtic max, a LotR max and one with a wolfhound. Really neat.

http://community.webshots.com/album/261539759dTkEtx

There's some more of a really neat looking Maximus there, and a Bailador resin that is just beautiful as well. I was looking for Waylander (friesian/andalusian crosses) photos, and stumbled across the webshots entry because she shows hers as a Waylander. Neat idea!

These are some older icons. I've experimented with borders and a heart brush on a couple of them, but for the most part they're not that fancy. Should I keep posting both bordered and non-bordered? Any preferences?

( graceful thunder )