in case you haven't noticed by now I love the dog pics with captions

tonights episode of sytycd was awesome. I saw the bleeding love song on live tv, now I can die happy. And I fully intend on coming back to stl on October 31 to see the tour. One of my top favorite dancers since about the top 12 has been Jeanine, but I think Kayla deserves to win because she's simply amazing. I'm very sad this season is almost over, but I think I'm gonna get my roomie hooked on the show if she isn't already when I get to school in the fall. That's my thought of the day.

carano v cyborg

new barn?

Over the past year the topic of what to do with the horse has been an intensely debated topic. Being that I'm the primary rider of Toby, leaving town posed a problem. For many different reasons my parents want to sell him. Well ever since the economy tanked it's safe to say the market for buying horses is very, very, very slim. Not many people have the luxury of slapping down several thousands of dollars for a horse than paying insurance and board for it every month. While my parents want to sell him I've been arguing for keeping him even if that means finding a place an hour away that's cheaper. Barn management 101: if you own a fancy show barn in the west county St. Louis you can, on top of the price of board, charge exorbitant fees for just about everything else that is involved with horses. Unless we could find a well kept, cheap place our only option was to give him away to a college equestrian program. When you've spent 4 years with a horse, and it's your only horse (yes there are people with multiple expensive horses) you get to know how it works and moves and what its' personality is like. It's basically like having any other pet, you care about it (and with a horse you put a lot of trust into him that he's not going to decide to be stupid and run off bucking and rearing). Either way I've been upset about the day we were going to have to give him up.

But, recently one of our friends learned about a fairly new place out next to Castlewood park. Aptly named Castlewood stables. Me and my mom went to visit the place the other day, and it's a great little place. It's in the middle of the woods, the kind of quiet place that's impossible to get to on an icy day. The place is exactly the kind of barn I've been wanting to ride at for years. It's a really relaxed atmosphere, unlike the stress of my current barn. People ride both western and english, and they actually wear jeans. At my place I'm the only one who wears jeans, everyone else wears breeches (those tight white pants). The best part of all is that it's dirt cheap and they don't charge extra for a bunch of stupid things that my current barn gets away with. I'm excited about the fact that there's miles trails all around, on both the property and castlewood. They also don't have specific hours, which for us is amazing. As a rider I can't tell you how annoying it is to try and schedule your ride sometime between 9-4 when you've got a million other things to do and there's about 45 other people who need to ride at the same time. So, the moral of the story is that we're more than likely to move Toby to this new place and that makes me happy because now we get to keep him for the rest of his life.

best wedding entrance ever

big cedar

Because of weather instead of going to Kentucky I went to Big Cedar Lodge yesterday. It's a little known place where my family went to for vacations when I was a kid. It's down by table rock lake about a 4 hour drive from stl. It's a very chill place with cabins and old fashioned looking buildings along the lake. Since I haven't completed the boating course yet (required for everybody under the age of 25) and my mom knows nothing about boats we rented a canoe and paddled around in a calm area. Then we went on a trail ride. I haven't been on a trail ride since before I started riding regularly which was about 6 years ago. So to see places like that and ride those horses with a horsemans eyes is a completely different experience. I rode an awesome slightly neurotic horse named scooter (just as a side note if I ever get another horse, it's name is gonna be scooter because that's an awesome name). It rained the rest of the day but we went inside to the arcade where I beat my mom twice in air hockey. Since we were just there overnight we got the cheapest option of housing. The inside of the cabin was really nice but the outside made me laugh because it had a multi colored tin roof. I lovingly referred to it as the 'pseudo ghetto cabin' even though it was anything but ghetto by actual standards. It made me laugh because we saw a feral cat and I couldn't help but think of 'cat on a hot tin roof'. It was really fun seeing the place now and having all these childhood memories pop back into my head of when we use to go there. Even though the next few pictures don't show what the place is like I find them humerous.
AN EMU FARM-I know they're far away but I swear there were emu right outside sullivan, missouri
Oh no the speed limit isn't 12 or even 13 it's 12.5

positive

Just a thought of the day. It's not deep or meaningful but I realized how nice it is getting positive feedback. In an instance such as horse back riding, if the instructor gives out a million things to do at once it's really overwhelming and frustrating. I recently got an instructor who is very positive and makes a point of saying what me and my horse are doing right instead of saying what we're always doing wrong. I've had more fun and gotten more out of my two lessons with her than I have in years with my other instructors. I guess it's in part due to the fact that I'm advanced enough to figure out what to do when on my own without constant feedback. But, it's really nice to be hearing "You did that great" or "That course was beautifully done." For me personally, and probably for most people, positive feedback works a whole lot better than going over a list of what wasn't done right. Don't get me wrong, if I'm doing something wrong she tells me and that's what you want in horse back riding, but it's not the constant nagging that I'm use to. She's even positive, accepting, and proud of the decision of what major I want to do in the next few years. That two minutes of her saying how excited she was about what I want to do means the world to me. So just a lesson for myself for the day is give positive feedback about stuff.

gymness

I like working out...does that make me weird. I enjoy being at the gym, it's one of my favorite places. Recently I got a personal trainer for the duration of my stay here in St. Louis. She's a cool person and I knew it was going to be hard, but wow it's intense. All I felt yesterday after my first session was wobbly legs and when I woke up this morning everything hurt. It's been an interesting day, especially considering that it takes me about 6 seconds longer than usual to pick something up from the ground. But, even though it hurts I do enjoy doing it. Having a personal trainer makes me realize how much those people have to know about not just anatomy and muscles but how they all work. They need to know what kind of exercise/equipment does what and above all how to do it correctly. When it comes to weights and equipment if you don't do it right it can mess up whatever muscle you're trying to make stronger. As of now I figure that if I decide not to work with animals as a career a job as an athletic trainer or something in that field would be kind of cool.

horses

I get to go to Kentucky horse park on monday and tuesday. I've heard it's really cool and being a horse person it's been on my list of things to do for a while now. My main goal is to find the statue of secretariat and his groom Eddie Sweat (I've been reading a book about him and apparently he was the best groom/ horseman that's ever lived). And I'm hoping to find some sort of plaque about Seattle Slew in the Hall of Champions because he is my horses' grandfather. I'll be sure to bring back plenty of pictures.

double take

Normally I don't have a big problem with lyrics of songs or what message they're trying to get across. The singer/lyricist can sing about what they want without me really caring that much and if I don't like what the song is saying I'll usually just change the station; end of story. But I was listening to 93.7 on the way to the barn today and one of the songs kind of bothered me. It was a song called 'unanswered prayers' by Garth Brooks. I understand that there's variations in people's belief/understanding of God. And here's where I'm going to turn into the little Christian kid that I am and critique what he said. A line in particular bothered me it was 'Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.' Here's the lyrics if you want to see it in context. I was taught and still adamantly believe that God answers all prayers. It may be a yes or it may be a no, but he always answers. He doesn't do what we think is best for ourselves, but what he knows is best for us. Sometimes it's not fun when the answer is no. We take that answer as a non response because we don't see the results we idealized seeing. I'll be the first to tell you that I've gotten a whole lot of 'no, my way is better for you' answers. It's frustrating when you don't get your way but it means that you don't know what's best for yourself. I also believe, and I know how annoyingly cheesy and cliche this is, that in the end what God picks for us is better than anything we think is best. I guess if I were to change the lyrics it would be that some of God's greatest gifts are prayers answered with a no. Wow, I'm done being cheesy now.

interpersonal communication

I happened upon this web site a little while ago. It describes what interpersonal communication is in depth and goes into different parts of it such as self-disclosure,relational patterns and interpersonal conflict. I was especially interested in self-disclosure because up until about a month ago I wanted nothing to do with it. It's just some fun, basic psychology stuff that I find really interesting.

sytycd

Though this isn't my favorite dance I've seen on the show there's something about this particular dance that I really like

camp

I'm finally done with camp forever. Don't get me wrong some of the kids were the nicest and sweetest things you've ever met but I'm glad to be done. Being on your feet all day with kids and ponies makes you very, very tired.

Here's a story that basically sums up my camp experience. I was standing in the lounge that the barn has. My back was to a chair and one of the campers decides to jump on my back. So she has her arms wrapped around my neck. I decided to give my valued iphone to one of the guys sitting at the table watching this ordeal because I really didn't want my phone to break. He decided to take pictures and the first one is really blurry because I was trying to lodge the kid off of my back and therefore was moving around a lot.

couldn't help but laugh at this one

fun with snakes

I had a fairly exciting day today at the barn. I had my first close up interaction with a baby copperhead. Over the years I've seen a lot of adults on trails but they usually slither by so quickly you can hardly get a good look at them. Since it was a baby it didn't go anywhere and I got a good look at it. A few of the kids who lease ponies found it curled up in one of the barns and called us when they trapped it under a bucket. Nothing happened which doesn't make for a very good story but I figured I'd tell anyway. Their coloration is really cool and we got to get a long look at it before and after it was dead. We made the college guy who's working at the barn for the summer chop its' head off. I guess the only funny/ entertaining part of the story is that when we looked back at the entrance to the barn we saw seven small, curious faces peering around the corner.

yup I guess I'm a typical midwest person

this seems to be especially true today considering it's pouring rain and I've got a bunch of fun explosives.

just for fun

FIREWORKS!

Being the pyro that I am I love the 4th of july and fireworks. I've always wondered how some fireworks make that loud whistling sound as they ascend. This is the answer I found on this website which interviews a pyrotechnician who makes fireworks.

-What happens with the whistler rocket is that you have your rocket whistler composition, and it's in a cardboard tube that's only filled a quarter of the way at the top end of the tube. The rest of the tube is open. When you ignite your whistler from the open ended cardboard tube, as it burns, you get small sparks and explosions occurring. These small explosions cause the cardboard tube to vibrate. As it's vibrating, just like a tuning fork, you actually get a resonant sound occurring

well there you go. Have a happy 4th of july

school stuff

So I hear that since MU is such a big school the only real way to meet people and make good friends is to get involved in stuff. So I got a couple of ideas.
-get involved in the campus ministry RUF
-play on an ultimate frisbee team
-join the scuba club and hopefully find a friend to take diving with during spring break