hah ha! so, i was sorta right with the horseback riding thing! for my birthday, karl took me to the triple w ranch in northeast pa, for an overnight horseback riding/camping trip.

we got there just in time, after hours of being lost in the wilds of northeast pa. the directions said to take 476 north to exit 56, but turns out that the last exit is #39. then the road ends. thanks, mapquest. after calling them, and talking to someone who said something about the wilkes-barre exit, then #17 to route 191N (none of which actually existed), we found a map in my car (check me out, being all prepared and stuff) and found our own way.

we arrived to find 40-some-odd horses "on the boards" (chained to a wooden fence, standing on a boardwalk of sorts (a horse boardwalk--what would that be like? hay vendors ("getcher hay here! best hay on the boardwalk!"), carrot and apple and sugarcube booths, that kid horses would beg their parents to stop at, strongman horses who'd be pulling heavy things and flexing their big horse muscles)). most were already saddled, with those bigass western saddles that must weigh 50 pounds. we filled out the expected release forms (no, we won't sue you even if you personally break our legs). of the 4 of us going, only karl had ridden less than "100+" times. he'd ridden once. but whatever. they assigned him to domino, a big paint (doesn't every barn have a paint named domino?). i was on venus, a big bay. kathleen was on timmy, a smallish blood bay, and dan was on sahad, a grey arabian who had only been gelded last year, at the age of 21. he has yet to learn a full complement of social skills.

they gave us a brief lesson in how to ride western (i'd never done it before) and off we went. mostly walking, but we got to trot and canter a bit. we were mostly in the woods, and the ground was *very* rocky. i was frankly surprised they even let the horses walk over that. i wouldn't have. but who am i? karl had a few moments of not being able to control domino (like when we were headed in the direction of the barn, and domino got it into his head that we were done) but otherwise did really well. and it was so great to see such a big smile on his face, on a horse.

after a couple hours, we stopped at the campsite. put the horses in a little corral, and lit the campfire. karl and i brought burgers and s'mores. oh, and a bottle of wine. mmmmmmm, camping in style. karl said the burgers were the best he's had, which was nice, since i made them (good ground beef, with some a1 sauce, oregano, black pepper, and paprika). it was the first time he'd had s'mores (poor english boy), and didn't really care for the melted marshmallows. freak.

we slept comfortably in my tent, in our bags, on our new thermorests. aaaaaaahhh. next morning, we packed up and rode an hour back to the barn, where yummy bagels were waiting for us for breakfast.

book reorganization

15 July 2002 - 11:51 am

we got home yesterday, showered, then i collapsed in a heap of post-camping tiredness. after recovering from that, i decided that the time was right to rearrange the furniture in my apartment. really, i was mostly concerned with the bookshelves. like any good graduate student, i have *way* more books than i have bookshelf space for. (actually, that's recently been fixed, and i now only have slightly more books than bookshelf space). i took them all off the shelves and piled them on the floor. after moving the bookshelves across the room, i put the books back on, but i wanted to organize them this time. before, they were just thrown up there in any old way--i'd never gotten around to sorting them when i moved in. this time i made categories: non-fiction (e.g. cadillac desert, pulp fiction (e.g. stephen king books), children's fiction (e.g. the wind in the willows, mr. lunch borrows a canoe, and captain underpants and the perilous plot of professor poopypants), sci-fi/fantasy, american literature, european literature, asian literature, russian literature. i have a lot of american lit. a lot of british lit. small amounts of german lit, italian lit, french lit, and greek lit. very small amounts of canadian lit (really, just the one margaret atwood book) and south american lit (borges' ficciones and esquivel's like water for chocolate), small amounts of japanese and chinese lit, and really just insanely huge amounts of russian lit.