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| Last night we watched Stranger than Fiction as our one nod to the holiday. I have had a minor interest in this movie since it came out but never got the opportunity to watch it or heard much buzz surrounding it. What a great movie! Will Farrel was totally believable and absolutely likable. I liked the rest of the cast too and the story. All in all a great choice for us and I nice little break from reality.
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 Just a week left until Burghley. Here is the very impressive cross country course. Paste the link into your browser and click through.
http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/galleries/main.php?g2_itemId=2573
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 I have been doing some research on skull caps (helmets without brims) and I believe that I have fond my next one. I have really enjoyed wearing my Tipperary Sportage and I am hoping that the Tipperary Titan skull cap fits and feels very similar with a little more protection. Just like I am with everything else, I am pretty picky about my headgear. I like something to be safe first and foremost but in a addition I like a good fit and a great balance. Hopefully this new helmet will be exactly what I am looking for. So far it is only available on backorder until October and can be found at both Dover and Smartpak. I think I will probably go with Smartpak because their shipping is generally cheaper.
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This is my second post about Stephanie Meyers Twilight series. I have finished all 4 books in record time and am salivating for more. Luckily I am not the only one not ready to let go. Stephanie herself has not had enough and is continuing on, this time from Edward's point of view. In Midnight Sun she goes back to the beginning and rewrites Twilight, originally written in Bella's voice, from Edward's persective. She has kindly released the first few pages and they are brilliant. I can hardly stand the wait. If you want to check out this exerpt for yourself or read more about the entire Twilight series and all things Stephanie copy and past the link below into your browser and press go.
http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/midnightsun.html
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I'd like to announce to everyone the launch of a very interesting new website. This site in oriented towards travel nurses and is designed to help them book engagements while saving both the employer and the employee money. I am talking about large amounts of money, 10s of thousands per period each. Sounds like a win win to me. If you'd like to check this out for yourself in further detail visit the following link.
http://ejane.com/
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| with my blog posts right now. Between the Olympics (go Mike and Selena) and the books from the Twilight series (I'm on the 3rd one right now) I am getting practically nothing done. The one day that I was without a book and and volleyball was on I got all kinds of things accomplished. Still, productivity be damned, this is my favorite time of year, the Olympics are on and books with this kind of captivity are hard to find and I'm just going to enjoy the whole thing.
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| with my blog posts right now. Between the Olympics (go Mike and Selena) and the books from the Twilight series (I'm on the 3rd one right now) I am getting practically nothing done. The one day that I was without a book and and volleyball was on I got all kinds of things accomplished. Still, productivity be damned, this is my favorite time of year, the Olympics are on and books with this kind of captivity are hard to find and I'm just going to enjoy the whole thing.
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A friend gave me book to read last week with one warning - its addictive. I figured that meant it was a good book. I don't even know if its a good book or not. I just know that I can't stop reading it and when I do put it down I think about reading it. I can't get to sleep at night, I am late for work and I can't get anything else done. In short, its addictive. Twilight by Stephanie Meyers is the first of a series of books written for a similar age group to the famous Harry Potter series. For those of us beyond high school and first love it will bring you right back to the headiness of that time adding the excitment and intrigue of vampires and the thrill of the hunt and the fight to survive. To find out more at her official website.
http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilightseries.html
Happy reading and don't say I didn't warn you.
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 If you like riding horses but don't actually like, uh, horses...boy do I have something for you. Introducing the ultimate schoolmaster, otherwise known as the Ridemaster Pro. Created by British firm Racewood Ltd the Ridemaster Pro is a dressage "simulator". Gone are the days of mucking, grooming and animal interaction, now you can "ride" in the comfort of the indoors. Can't keep a horse handy? Just get the Ridemaster instead. The dressage simulator has the ability to do walk, trot, canter, flying changes, leg yield, shoulder in, half pass, piaffe, passage, pirouette and dressage tests. It also has a saddle sensor that gives balance feedback.
Racewood Ltd currently offers eight different models that simulate everything from racing to polo, with the promise of this dressage version entering the market soon. Myself, I prefer the real thing. But don't think I'd pass up a chance to try one out if one were around.
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 2008 Marks the First Time Equestrian Events Will be Available in Their Entirety
Gladstone, NJ - July 30, 2008 - The 2008 Summer Olympics marks the first time equestrian enthusiasts will get to watch the competition in Dressage, Eventing and Show Jumping from start-to-finish, thanks to NBC's decision to stream 2,200 hours of live coverage of 25 sports at www.NBCOlympics.com.
For some odd reason I am unable to paste the entire message but suffice to say we will be watching the Equestrian coverage!
Go to NBC for more details. I
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| Well 2 of the babies had their first race today. A friend of mine and part owner of them was there to watch them go and called to tell me how they had doen. Apparently there was a problem at the start and they had to take all the horses back out of the gate to scratch one of the horses and load them all back up again to start the race. Our horses were not bothered by this at all. In fact Century Gold was trying to graze while he waited. Baltic Shore didn't get a good start and ran a consistant but not brilliant race. Century ran right up front until he tired in the stretch. So all in all not a bad first outing for both of them. I hope they come out of it having learned something, feeling confident and strong and wanting to try again.
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 I'd like to alert everyone here to the celebrity we have on board. Non other than Scheaffer the donkey. Scheaffer creates my favorite blog and I am ticled to have him join us. Below is a link to his site where you can find his musings and accompanying pictorials.
http://sheafferdonkey.blogspot.com/
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| I never knew they were such good movers... Enjoy!
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I never knew they were such good movers...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ljkQJdoYws&feature=related
enjoy!
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| Well the 2 of the "babies" are headed to thier very first race. They are both entered at Colonial Downs in a 1 mile race on the turf this weekend. I am pretty excited. I have been working with these 2 since last fall when they were very green broke. Since then they have become real pleasures to work with and seem to show athleticism too. Today we had a half mile breeze on the cup course and both handled it really well. It is such a pleasure riding well trained and conditioned horses in the company of an educated rider. Things that should happen do and it is so rewarding. All I am hoping for is that they get through the race better educated and feeling strong and capable. If that happens I will consider the outing a success.
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http://www.usef.org/_IFrames/newsdis...R.aspx?id=3340
Television Coverage of the Equestrian Events at the 2008 Olympics Announced
Release: July 10 2008
NBC Universal will be airing 3,600 hours of coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, including the equestrian events, which will be taking place in Hong Kong. This total amount of coverage will be more than the hours of coverage for all the Olympic Games since 1960 Rome combined. All broadcasts will also be in high definition.
The schedule is as follows:
Date: Program—Time (EST) on Channel
Aug. 9: 3-Day: Dressage—2:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. on USA
Aug. 11: 3-Day: Cross- Country— 6:00pm-8:00pm OXYGEN
Aug. 12: 3-Day: Stadium Team Gold Medal Final—6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. on OXYGEN
Aug. 13: Dressage—6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. on OXYGEN
Aug. 14: Dressage Team Gold Medal Final—6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. on OXYGEN
Aug. 15: Show Jumping—6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. on OXYGEN
Aug. 16: Dressage Individual – 5:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. MSNBC
Aug. 17: Show Jumping Team Gold Medal Final 1st Round—10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m on NBC
Aug. 18: Show Jumping Team Gold Medal Final Round— 6:00pm-8:00 p.m. OXYGEN
Aug. 19: Dressage Individual Gold Medal Final - 6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. on OXYGEN
Aug. 21: Show Jumping Individual Gold Medal Final- 10:00am- 1:00 pm
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With all the talk about improving safety in eventing it is so wonderful to see ideas being implemented. This new product is is extra special to me because Mike Winter, co-inventor, is such a good friend of mine.
Safer Building Materials, Inc., a new company founded by Canadian Equestrian Three-Day Eventing riders Mike Winter and Kyle Carter, is pleased to introduce "PROLOGS". Designed to increase safety when jumping horses over fixed obstacles, PROLOGS are frangible cross-country jump logs made of Expanded Polystyrene (EPS). The highly engineered EPS logs absorb energy in the event of horse impact and are frangible, (designed to be easily broken), when hit with enough force and/or velocity. Safer Building Materials feels the use of this exciting line of products will result in fewer serious injuries in a variety of types of falls, as well as significantly reduce the likelihood of rotational falls.
I think that this will revolutionize cross-country course building and will help bring the sport into the future. For the full article please click on the link below.
http://www.horsedeals.com.au/gallery.php?showID=4938
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http://repairpal.com/
This is a great site. If you don't know much about cars (I don't) and you are curious what your repairs should cost you can check it out on here.
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 So the myths are true. Turns out that horses do like watermelon rinds after all. I get to give treats to a couple of my horses and I like to find new things for them to try. George ate a couple of pieces and Connor ate all the rest of them. Next I am going to try the apples in our yard. They are a little tart for me but I figure the boys might like them.
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 OMG! We bought a house. It is so cute and I am completely in love. The actual moving and unpacking part is not so great but as a package I will take it :) . I sat outside on the deck drinking coffee the first morning we were here and I felt like I was at someone else's cottage. Coming from some pretty unattractive apartments, this is a real change. We are slowly getting things into order now, unpacking and finding places for everything. We even found a new sofa and chairs today at a local store down the road. The whole experience feels so full of promise and good things to come, it's just amazing to me.
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 Well the vet came out to see Sunshine 2 hours after I left the barn yesterday and apparently there were no signs of the lameness we saw earlier. So it looks like they have cleared him for the race Friday. 1 mile on the flat, kind of a different style for him than he has been doing. We are hoping it will get him a good run under his belt and he can step up from there. I hope so. Did I mention I really like him?
On the other side of the fence, I took one of the hunt horses out today thinking I would put and extra mile or so on him today and took a new trails to do so and promptly managed to get us completely and hopelessly lost. George stepped up and took control and somehow managed to find the road so that we could get home. I will never know how because I am sure he has never been there before and it involved a whole lot of twists and turns and forks in the road. I don't think I have ever been more turned around in my life. We came out about 2 miles up from his barn, further up on the road than I have ever been. I am so proud of him (and grateful). The longer I am around him the more I like him and I liked him a whole lot before. Its just so nice to see him getting so comfortable with himself, and taking initiative and enjoying being out and about and good at what he does. Thanks George, you were definately my hero today.
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 Well Arch is back from Colonial Downs. The four 2 year olds were champs and are just about ready to get their gate cards. He breezed Sunshine which went fantanstically until he started cooling out. When I left there the vet was on his way to see why he was starting to get tight in his left front. I will find out the news tomorrow. I hope he is ok. I have had more fun riding him this past few weeks than I have had for some time. He has truely spoiled me. He isn't the easiest but he is definately the most talented horse I think I have ever ridden and I have ridden some talented and accomplished horses. Jingles for Sunshine, lets hope its nothing big.
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