Annevil

Last night I got to ride for the first time in probably close to a month! It felt so good to be back in the saddle. I’ve really been wanting to ride but my first week and a half of July. I did go to the barn twice while my arm was injured but I just gave mom a lesson. Then after my shoulder got better we got hit with a heat wave, during which we were getting everything together for a surprise b-day party for my grandfather. It was a lot of work planning it, because we had a lot of family coming from far away. The party was fantastic so it was all worth it! Monday I got back from a trip to the airport to drop off some family members who were headed home, and I hurt my fingers really badly!

We were getting ready to put the dogs outside, and my dog, Milo, came into the dining room only walking on three legs, so I was looking at his foot, and it was really swollen. I figured he probably got stung by a bee while he was outside. Mom went to get Taffy (our little dog) from her room to put her outside. But instead of putting her right outside she stopped and came over to look at Milo’s foot. Taffy must have wandered over to Moose (our German Shepard, who she doesn’t get along with because she spent years bossing around the big German Shepard, until finally the Shepard realized she was just a light snack. So we’ve kept them separated ever since.) Anyway, it all happened very quickly but we think Taffy probably wandered over past Moose. Moose probably tried to sniff her, because Moose feels the need to sniff everything, Taffy probably growled and Moose grabbed her by the neck. So I jumped on top of the Shepard and I was trying to pry open her jaws which means I had my hands in her mouth, so naturally I got bit. [Obviously having your hands in a dogs mouth during a dog fight is in no way shape or form the smartest things to do and I in no way recommend it. lol.] But honestly I’d do it again if I had to, because even though, I was in agonizing pain for a week, have deep puncture wounds, still can’t write properly, and at the time there was blood everywhere!! The little dog was completely uninjured, not even a scratch.

Anyway, I rode Georgie last night, he was a good boy, especially considering I was having a really hard time, because of my hands. I only walked him, but we worked on bending and stretching the whole time. He had one OMG WHAT IS THAT moment, but it only lasted a moment and then he was fine. lol. Although Bonfire was convinced there was a horse eating monster in the corner.

Other than the above, I’ve been working on a lot of art work. I was working on a cartoon, but now I have to wait until I can draw again. I just finished a photo manipulation that took me 9 hours. Luckily my hands are okay enough to click a mouse and paint with my tablet.

Not much else to say, but i couldn’t sleep so I thought I’d update. Night!

Things have been pretty boring. Basically I’ve been drawing, reading, watching TV, and helping out with work around the house. I haven’t even been going anywhere because gas is so expensive. I don’t know how other people can possibly afford it. The gas prices here in central jersey are somewhere between 3.95 and 3.99/gallon, and because we have oil refineries in Jersey the gas is a bit cheaper than other states. Also my car is really dieing quickly, the brakes are barely working anymore, and it’s just getting really bad. We can’t afford to buy anything when we go out anyway, so there is no point is bothering.

So I’ve been reading the Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovitch, which are hilarious. Stephanie Plum is a bounty hunter, but she really sucks at her job, so lot of things go wrong. Her grandmother want to be a bounty hunter too, so like in book 2 her grandma is her sidekick and they go to catch one of the bad guys. They’re really funny, and Stephanie Plum live in Newark, so it’s awesome cause she’s always cruising through this one mall that I go to a bit. lol.

I’ve been helping out around the yard, so far I’ve help shovel out a large truck with a dump body full of mulch into three gardens, paint our shed, and put up some fence. [after doing that stuff the weather got really hot so we've put some of the other projects on the back burner.]

The rest of my time has been spent watching TV. Mainly i like to watch Trading Spouses/Nanny 911 on CMT from 12-2 during the week, and then impatiently waiting for the new episodes of Law and Order:CI on Sundays and Ghost Hunters on Wednesday. Unfortunately the Ghost Hunters new season ended so sci fi has gone from 5 hours of reruns and a new episode, to a couple hours of Ghost Hunters International.

Other than that, I’ve been making excuses to not go to the barn, and not work out lol. Actually I’ve been dieing to go riding. I hurt my shoulder last week, and it is finally starting to feel better!!! I couldn’t move my arm at all, so riding was out, but as soon as this weekend is over I am going to do lots of riding.

Tonight was the first night I ever saw Ghost Hunters International. It was a major disappointment! If your not familiar with the shows Ghost Hunters follows a paranormal investigating group known as TAPS (The Atlantic Paranormal Society). The guys who run TAPS, Jay and Grant, are pretty much trying to gather paranormal evidence by investigating haunted locations and looks for non-paranormal explanations and trying to catch paranormal activity with video cameras, still camera, audio recorders, thermal cameras, and an onslaught of EMF detectors (Electro Magnetic Field), thermometers, etc. The original series is awesome the guys that run TAPs are plumbers and they’ll crawl around all over the place to find pipes that are making the floors creek and sound like footsteps, and all kinds of heating and electrical things that could cause the claims of paranormal activity. The fact that they do all of this just makes the stuff they do find all the more incredible! My personal favorites are the EVPs they catch. [EVPs are basically voices that are imprinted on the recording devices but are not heard during the recording process. they guys basically wander around the house asking questions to the ghosts, and sometimes they'll find that they have answers when they review the tapes. - it's awesome.] They’ve caught some awesome things to, from EVPs that are crystal clear, and blatantly addressing them, to shadow people (black figures). I love the show, so i was really disappointed to see the international version isn’t on the same level.

I kind of figured I wouldn’t like the Ghost Hunters International (GHI) as much just based on the investigators involved. First NONE of may favorite investigators were in the commercial, but also the one guy, who was kicked out of TAPS thinks everything is a ghost he really doesn’t use any science. Then another one, he’s really good at the debunking stuff, but something about his personality is just really irritating, I’m not entirely sure what it is about him but whatever. Then there was one of the women who was normally on TAPS, and she’s good. Then there is another guy who I didn’t really recognize, and he is one of the team leaders. He’s okay, he just seems like he doesn’t have the heart to tell these people their place isn’t haunted though. Like on TAPS jay could have a ghost walk up introduce itself and shake his hand, but if he didn’t catch it on video, he doesn’t count it as evidence because it is just another story. This guy on GHI seems like he takes the personal experiences into account, which after watching TAPS, just kind of makes it seem weak when he says a place is haunted.

Sadly, I’ll probably watch GHI anyway, because I’m soooo bored!

Once upon a time there was an cute bay horse name Georgie. He was enjoying the warm summer day, eating in the field and playing with his good friend Bonfire. He put his head down to take a bite of grass when realized he was missing one of his pretty black bell boots. This made Georgie sad, because it was getting dark and there was no way he was going to find his little black bell boot in the dark. After a few minutes the Feeding Fairy came, waved her wand, and gave Georgie a big bowl of beat pulp for dinner.
“Georgie, your missing one of your pretty black bell boots” the Feed fairy said.

“I know.” Georgie said,”i was playing in the field with Bonfire and I must have lost it. But it’s too dark now, I’ll never find it.” A tear started to weel up in Georgie’s eye.

“Don’t worry Georgie,” the feed fairy said, ” I know just the thing to make you feel all better.” The fairy bent over and waved her magic wand by Georgie’s hoof. Sparkles and a glowing white light wrapped around Georgie’s hoof and took the form of a perfectly white bell boot. George looked down to see what the feeding fairy had done and…

“HOLY CRAP!?!?!?! IT’S GOT MY HOOF THERE IS SOMETHING EATING MY FOOT!!!” George ran off bucking and trashing wildily to get this mytsically white boot off of his hoof. Just when he thought it was gone, he looked down again and saw it was still there. He took off running again, and from a distanced the feed fairy yelled, “Hey stupid it your new bell boot, what’s the matter with you.”

THE END.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - read a few pages
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (parts)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - one of my favorite books of all time!!!
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - I loath this book.
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - read a few chapters, not bad, just got busy
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (4 books; Magician’s Son, The Lion, Horse and His Boy, Prince Caspian)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - the best ending of any book ever!
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (skipped this too :P)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath - good, read it one and a half times
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Not too bad, considering I don’t read all that much,