I don't think I could ever get tired of watching Mark Lamarr singing "House of the Rising Sun"

If we had the money, we'd really like to take over the empty movie theater behind our apartment. Now that it's no longer being used as a small concert venue for teenagers, there doesn't seem to be any current plans to use it for anything, and it's in really good shape. We could show old Shaw Bros. films, 70's grindhouse classics, silent movies, cult films, et cetera. It's a college town, surely we could keep it going on late-night monster movie showings alone.

We got called in today to put up hay at my work, the first time I've seen the place since May, when summer break hit. Some things are different- for one thing, the giant manure swamp is gone- and some are the same. The hay got done eventually, and we got paid, and headed home for a shower and back out again to Buffalo Wild Wings, which carries the UFC pay-per-views.* It's a pretty neat system; you can sit there and eat dinner and watch for as long as you want, but they make up the lost revenue by charging for refills on drinks, which they normally (like almost everywhere) wouldn't do. It's not that much more on your regular bill, the food is good, and they have lots of big screens.
It's always impressive to watch Nogueira, but for our money the best fight was Pearson/Barboza; we thought it was going to be really one-sided, but Pearson is quite a bit more nimble than he looks and it came down to a split decision.


* We're not much into boxing, as far as combat sports go, but we like the MMA stuff. There's a lot more strategy involved, and, with judo, greco-roman wrestling, Muay Thai, and Brazilian Ju-Jitsu all being popular fields of expertise, there's a lot less punching someone repeatedly in the head for an hour. Sure, there are injuries- it's a fight, after all- but there are a lot of other ways to win besides massive brain damage.

“He is your friend, your partner,
your defender, your dog.
You are his life, his love, his leader. He will
be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat
of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of
such devotion.”

- unknown

Argh, stupid Ebay sellers not understanding how used tack works. If I wanted to spend two hundred dollars on a Courbette bridle, I'd buy a new one.

This is Pippa*, being remarkably quiet for pictures. Getting her to stand still before work takes a fair amount of doing; she is more than happy to move, and less happy to stand still. This is after work- guess how many walk-halt transitions we did by the time we got to this picture!** :)

Also, this is not where I work, but where I board and take lessons.

* I didn't name her.

** Yeah, I know, she's not square. That was as square as we got for today :)

So, I liked Pippa- the mare I tried out. I liked her a lot. She's a TB, just shy of sixteen hands, a chestnut without much in the way of markings, and a rather delicate frame. She's also a nice mover, with three good gaits. She's also a really fun ride. If I'm on my game, she does exactly what she's supposed to. If I'm slacking, she takes advantage, but she comes right back and doesn't fight about it. She spooked in a corner because one of the swallows that live in the roof flew in her face, but I told her the big bad birdie wouldn't eat her, took her back to the corner, and even though the swallow was still there, hovering a foot away from her face, she didn't even flick an ear. That was impressive. She's good in the stall, seems to like being groomed and fussed with, and is very easy to handle. I'm taking a half-lease on her to start, with the idea that I can move up to full lease if I want to later.

8 Tiny Things That Stopped Suicides

All of them are touching, but these guys, Mr. Ritchie and Mr. Shige, who live near cliffs popular for suicides and go out every single time to talk potential jumpers out of it, touched me deeply. I quote from the article:

"On days when you just want to watch the world burn, remember that for every dickhead in the world bullying gay teenagers there is a guy like this."

Earthquake today. Neat.

A watercolor painting by the aforementioned Andrey Avinoff. I wish I could find a better copy of this for you guys; the original was on display at the Carnegie, and it was astonishing.

Edited to add another image - Found another one! We stared at this one for fifteen minutes in person and I don't think we managed to pick out all the details. These are *watercolors*. Unbelievable.

Working hard on an art project, which I am very excited about- although I was unable to pull my normal get-home-from-Michaels-with-supplies-put-on-a-rifftrax-and-work-until-it's-done process due to the limitations of the medium, today I should be able to finish, which is cool. It's a gift, which makes it even more fun.

Also, I am going to try another horse today for a possible lease; the one I had been going to half-lease pulled his shoulder in a stumble and has been off for some time, and he is a little stumbly by nature so maybe I dodged a bullet there by sort of backing away from the lease. At any rate, this one is a mare, green but willing, and sounds like fun.

So I ended up in Gettysburg yesterday, which was interesting. Nojim and his lovely wife were moving, and he was unable to attend, so I picked up for him in an 11th hour substitution. We couldn't have asked for a nicer day weather-wise; it was bright and clear the whole way down, which was good because those roads through the Alleghenies are challenging enough without the addition of rain or fog or what-have-you. We were part of a convoy who moved pretty much all of their stuff in one trip, which was nice, and the actual moving-in part was pretty painless and only took a couple of hours. The only thing that was difficult was coping with the temperature; it was 97 degrees and we were all wearing jeans, which was, in hindsight, not the brightest course of action. (It was only in the 70's at home, and no one really expected there to be that much of a difference down there. Live and learn.) I hitched a ride with Dagdamor on the way back up, and we had a good time, with a lot of interesting conversations, and we were home at 12:30, which isn't bad for a 600+ mile round trip with moving furniture in the middle and a stop for dinner in Grove City on the way home. But I am still a little tired.

Also, the Freeman pics have made The Daily What Geek on the Cheezburger Network. So that's pretty awesome, too :)

It's been a pretty awesome weekend so far; Friday night we went to the Creekside for dinner before heading to the Sunset drive-in for a two-fer of "Cowboys And Aliens" and "Captain America." They were both very entertaining and we had a great time, and made it back home just before two. We then managed to crawl out of bed some hours later, eat the rest of our burgers for breakfast, and hopped in the car to head for the Carnegie Art Museum. We got caught in some ridiculously backed-up traffic, the cause of which we never quite ascertained, but it put us an hour behind. We still got there with four hours to spare, and spent them trying to cover the whole collection. We were especially enthused with the watercolors of Andrey Avinoff, but there are a lot of amazing paintings to look at. We even managed to find some time at the end to quickly run through the dinosaur exhibits, and they have done some amazing things with the Hall of Dinosaurs since the last time we were there. It was nice before, but it's really very striking now, and there are two Tyrannosaurs, which is awesome. We successfully navigated back out of Pittsburgh without any issues, and stopped for a very tasty dinner at the Elephant and Castle in Grove City. Now we're home, and tired, and we still don't have the computer that has the camera software on it up and running yet so pictures will have to wait.

Anniversary...

Duamuteffe: I found you a photo of Tina Fey dressed like Dixie Cousins. You're welcome.
Owlvark: Oooooooo....
Duamuteffe: Who loves you, baby? Besides Kojak, I mean.

see more Funny Graphs

#The Owlvark is singing along to the rather suggestive music on Pandora radio and the noise of next door having their roof repaired#

Owlvark: Eighties softcore music...Punctuated by nailguns...

The Owlvark ended up pulling a really long shift today, so to cheer him up I read him five Seanbaby articles in a row. Now we have headaches from laughing so hard. It's awesome :)