Soooo. I know this entry is the first in, well, a while. I decided I needed a break from my frantic studying of biochem. Yesterday I had the great pleasure of going to my first juggling convention. Now I know most of you will be very puzzled...juggling? Anna?. I kid you not my friends, I have gotten eaten by the juggling bug. Just to let you know, this new hobby is not taking the place of any of my others (sorry, mom, I still need a horse). But anyway, back to the story.

I left in the 1:30 car, vs the 9am car or the 7pm car. I got a good bit of juggling in in open gym, but I also got to see other jugglers show off. It was, needless to say, extremely cool. This one guy did 5-ball endurance for like, 7 minutes! Also, in the best-trick contest, one guy did a 2 diablo front flip!! OK, so I was impressed and inspired. My goal: 5 balls by senior year. I think it's possible.

As night fell, we took our posse of Cornell jugglers to CVS for some food, got hit on by a drunk, and finally made it over to the place where the show was held. On the walk over, I learned a few new tricks to work on. Nate helped me do two-person 3-ball cascade. Which is different than Dean's helping me with passing (so cool!). I need more practice, but I'm getting there. I also want to be able to juggle over my head, so being the lazy me, I can juggle while lying down.

The evening show was pretty cool. I must say my favorite performances were by Wes Peden. He also did a two-person act with his dad, in a group called Airplay. The main performer of the night was Michael Karas. Although his act was good, I actually liked Wes better, oh well. Oh yea, by the way, Wes, Michael, Joe Showers, and a ton of other people there are very good, like winning medals in INTERNATIONAL juggling competitions. Wow.

So all in all it was a fun day, and we leave Nate to stay overnight and try and cram 12 people into two, seats-4-comfortably cars for the hour car-ride home. Unfortunately I got stuck in the car with a driver who has different tastes in music...I'm sure the Billing car had a little Sim Redmond action going on, I would expect nothing less of Greg. So about 20 minutes away from CU, we see the dreaded blue lights go off behind Greg's car....shoot...so we slow down and pull off into this side street. As we're waiting, still crushed in the back seat, another cop car pulls up behind us. Luckily he was very nice and our driver had a clean record. He joked around with us because we told him we were coming from a juggling festival, and he asked the normal question, "can you juggle chain-saws"... so our cop pulls off and we sit waiting for the Billing car to get on the road again...and we're waiting....and waiting... while Pat tells us stories of how all police officers think Greg's a terrorist so that's why he gets pulled over...one phone call from Steph a few minutes later though, we find out that the car was not being striped searched, but they made everyone get out of the car, searched it, then Greg and Jon juggled for them....Haha, can you imagine juggling for the cops that pulled you over? I really wish I had been in that car. What did the people passing think? "Man! if that's the new sobriety test, I gotta get working on that!" Oh, what fun, so now they have an awesome story to tell.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, thankfully because I was really tired and ready to go to bed. So here I am, back in the old apt, studying biochemistry...off to work at 1... maybe i'll find someone at the wall to practice passing with...

On a much better note, we're getting a new puppy!! It's very exciting, I think i've been dog-deprived long enough. Unfortunately I won't be around that much this summer to play with her, but mom did a good job training Lobo, I think she'll do just fine with ____ (fill in name here...). At least I'll get to meet her this monday, I can't wait.

I feel I need to educate some people on the beauty of the Rolex CCI****. First off, it's one of only a handful of four stars in the WORLD, and the only one in the states. It's an olympic level course with incredible competition. To put it lightly, it's the biggest day in American eventing, the superbowl of the horse world. As the announcer said, there's not a single rider that would not like to add this to his list. Just to BE at the event would give me goosebumps, and I can only dream of riding in it.

Three day eventing is the triathalon of the horse world. First day is dressage, second day is a gruling cross country course (see picture) and the last day is stadium jumping. The horses must be in top physical condition to even get close to this event. The stuff they can jump is just mind blowing, for example, in the picture, that's a 6 foot drop...into a pool of water... To ride in this you not only need to be fearless, but physically strong to harness the 1,200 pound animal that's running at a solid 30 mph.

So why am I writing about my favorite event, halfway through it's air time? Because some guy (who is obviously clueless and there's absolutely no hope for him) asked if it was all right if he changed the channel.....yea, sure buddy, I guess i've got to study anyway....Sigh....It just made me remember how much I miss the eventing world. This may sound really cliche, and I oppologize, but horses and eventing for me is like breathing. You can hold your breath for only so long, but then you start to feel that burning in your lungs and it slowly gets stronger and stronger until you just need to take a gulp of air....and I've never been good at holding my breath.

If you want to learn more about the event, go here.

It just seems like we ran out of time...I don't want school to be over! Luckily though, I'll be staying here over the summer, and it turns out a bunch of my friends will be too. I can't wait to hang out in the evenings (after work dad, don't worry) and go swimming on the weekends :D. However, it's going to be very sad not being at home very much. I'll be able to stay at home for about a week or so at the begining of the summer, and probably another week in the middle to either go to the cottage, or home. I'm sad that i'll probably be missing "the lake" too...perhaps we can work out a night to sneak down there and sleep by the water. So this summer looks like it'll be fun, but at the same time I'll probably get really homesick.

To move onto a happier subject, I went slacklining again with Julie and some other people I work with at the wall. The weather was beautiful and it was a ton of fun. I noticed that it really works my back muscles because i'm usually contorted into this weird posture when i'm on the line. I guess that's a good thing. Some of the guys were doing crazy tricks and falling all over the place, it was awesome. I'm still working on walking it when it's pretty loose and turning around (which is very difficult!). I'll probably find some trees to set one up over the summer and Julie and I can just get really good :).

OK, Alias is about to start, so i've got to claim the TV while I still can.

Speaking of which, the week was a ton of fun. I got to hang out w/ KT, Adam (aka hoss), Steven and Amy and we did a ton of hiking, and a ton of riding in a too small car. Adam's house and family were very nice and it was amazing to stay there. It was also good to go home for a bit and see everyone. Possibly one of my favorite moments on the trip was Adam admitting that my mountains are pretty good :) We'll need to go back and finish camel's hump one day...and get Owen to deliver a pizza, yum. Other than that, there's just too much crazyness that i can't even begin to describe what it was like, so i'll just say that it was really fun.

OK, on to my third point. I got my orgo prelim back today, and i actually did a lot better than i expected. I got a 73, and the mean was a 63.8 i think. It's kinda sad that the prof makes a test that has a mean of a 63...anyway, i'm happy with the grade, considering i was expecting to get way below the mean (actually, the lowest score was a 3!). The standard dev. was a 17 or so, so i probably got around a B overall. But i still have the 3rd prelim and the final to go, so we're about 2/3 the way through the grades...I still have my micro mid-term and my farm animal behavior mid-term to get back, but i think they went ok.

Oh, and welcome back mom :)

OK, so i'm sitting at this computer in Olin (1st floor, i.e. best place to be on a friday night...except it's not friday...but anyway) minding my own buisness, just doing some microbiology work, when this girl getting up from her chair catches my eye. In big, bold writing across her butt is "juciy"....The first thing that comes to my mind is this day old colt I went to see with Melissa a few days ago. The barn manager comes over to say hi as we're looking at this pretty boy and makes the comment about how he's unfolding nicely, but his butt is a little "gooey" (it's tough being a day old, all the systems don't quite work right off the batt). I think that's the term she used, but gooey and juciy can often times mean the same thing. I wonder why people would want to put such odd phrases on the back-side of their pants. I also saw a pair being worn by an overweight girl about 14 years old that said, "soft-ball"....she obviously wanted to show her love of the sport...but c'mon, buy the wrist band! All right, I should get back to work, here's my upcoming week: farm animal behavior mid-term tuesday, orgo prelim tuesday, microbio mid-term wed, neuro brain quiz wed, resume due friday, starting that on wednesday...fun stuff. Then spring break! (oh, appropreate family in VT, i may be coming home for a day/night, but we still need to work out the details). Sorry for the spelling/grammar errors, i'm too lazy to find, then fix them... :-P

"Use ATP to turn cyclic AMP.....I'm sorry.....to turn...um...to turn AMP to cyclic.....right....what am I saying?...OK, to make cyclic AMP...sorry, I got a little confused. This is the stop here, the phosphodiesterase breaks it down back into AMP."

That last sentence doesn't even fit with what he was trying to explain to us, that ATP is turned into cAMP. What's this "stop" he's talking about?! And it doesn't help that he said the next few sentences at lightning speed so nobody could actually catch what he was talking about. Sadly this is not a one-time occurrence, he's like this all the time. *Sigh* I hate paying hundreds of dollars per lecture to listen to junk...then get graded on it. So I guess I'll try and decode his lecture notes even more...

On Thrusday, I only had 2 classes and was out by 1:00. Since my exam was at 7:30pm, i figured i'd use this time to study a bunch. But I got some sort of block and just couldn't get into the material, so I managed to waste about 4 solid hours. Dinner with part of the gang (Katie and Adam; Cris showed up later) managed to calm my nerves before the test. I didn't think the exam was that bad, and looking at the answer key online now, I think I did fairly well. We'll see what my actual score is probably later this week.

Cris and I had more of a v-day celebration after my exam. We were finally able to relax and watch a movie ("motorcycle diaries" very good). The tradition of a back-rub after the stress of Orgo was also continued. It's amazing how you get so happy after a good exam, it's like all the worrying just evaporates. So it was a good night.

Now I'm trying to catch up on all the other work I've been putting off 'till after the exam. I've also been climbing a ton, thanks to Adam (Katie's boyfriend). Hopefully I'll get really strong again. OK, back to the books now, I'll probably head up to the library later for an exciting library date with the boy (he's got an exam on Tue AND Thr, poor Cris).

P.S. Thanks for the card and candy mom :)

So apparently there's this "problem horse" that had been passed from owner to owner until Cheryl came along. She's not a trainer, but noticed that the horse, Romeo, was rather mouthy, so she decided to put a paintbrush in it. I guess the paintings are more of a collaboration rather than purely the horse's work, she picks the paints, the canvas color, but the horse holds the brushes and makes the strokes. It seems pretty cool, there are defintly a lot of interesting experiments that could be done with animals that can "paint".
http://www.paintinghorse.com/index.html

From what i've read, it looks like the horse is actually doing the painting, and enjoys it (anyone who has worked with horses knows you CAN'T make them do anything). That being said, i think the paintings are pretty pricy for a piece of therapy that the horse does. Granted there must be some production costs, but $50 for a small square of canvas?

Anyway, I'd better get back to something that resembles work...

"If I lived back in the wild west days, instead of carrying a six-gun in my holster, I'd carry a soldering iron. That way, if some smart-aleck cowboy said something like "Hey, look. He's carrying a soldering iron!" and started laughing, and everybody else started laughing, I could just say, "That's right, it's a soldering iron. The soldering iron of justice." Then everybody would get real quiet and ashamed, because they had made fun of the soldering iron of justice, and I could probably hit them up for a free drink."

enjoy: http://www.newyorker.com/shouts/content/articles/060109sh_shouts

If you like the quote above, check out more at: http://www.cco.net/~jpete/deepthou.htm

I've had success with Cris's Christmas gift! for everyone out there holding their breath... it's not exactly what i wanted, but i hope it'll pass expectation :-P I also found $20 today! we were at ski rack and i saw a bill by the counter, when I asked if anyone had lost one (there was a lady at the counter paying for something) they said no, so yey! $20! haha, that'll go towards the 18 hundred i need to find before the 10th when the college bill is due...hmmm...but at least i told a remotely funny joke :-P

"Throw the covers off my head
Shake my body out of bed
Stretch my arms up
And look out the window
Sun is rising
birds are singing
I am greeted by the gift of another new morning
And I know tonight as my head hits the pillow
I will ask myself as I look out the same window

At the end of the day
Did I laugh and dance enough?
Did I tell my friends how much they really mean to me?
At the end of the day
Did I really push myself?
Or was I too afraid
To give my heart away"

I'm not going to lie, these pictures are intended for Cris, but anyone is more then welcome to look too. Click on a picture to make it bigger. Enjoy :)

Here's a few side notes: first, there are more pictures for anyone who has access to a facebook account. Second, I forgot to say in my e-mail, but Cris, I did not get your text message :( and lastly, random question, but I was wondering if you still have your textbook for 222.