Love In The Asylum

I HAVE EATEN ALL OF THE CAKE. AND SEEN ALL OF THE DEATHLY HALLOWS.

( possibly spoilery reaction )

I was at my mom's last night, and then had birthday-related family things all day - which was very nice of course, lots of hugs and cake and my dad is getting me a Pep Guardiola kit for my present. But I am kind of glad to be home now, and definitely glad I don't have to work tomorrow, because I think now I am going to have to binge on all the post-war Harry/Draco epic romance crackfic I can get my hands on. This should be a fun night.

Oh man, I am sore in some odd places, but it was TOTALLY WORTH IT.

We had a minor kerfuffle at the start of the day where my mom had intended to pay her client after we went riding so she didn't flake out and forget the whole thing, but she thought she was supposed to be paid beforehand, so she didn't bother to meet us at IHOP like we had planned and we had to hunt her down at her house (two blocks away and we still got wretchedly lost) and almost got eaten by a pack of chihuahuas. But we did finally manage to get the ridiculous money issues resolved, and M got us saddled up and sent on our way with her daughter.

I have to admit, I was pretty nervous going into this. I don't think I've gone riding even once since I stopped taking riding lessons when was about 13, and I guess I thought that by now I would have forgotten how to even, like, sit up and hold the reins in my hands and I was instantaneously going to freak out and fall out and make a tremendous ass of myself. Needless to say, that did not happen! Some stuff was kind of weird - when I was taking lessons I mostly rode English, not Western, and while the difference is not huge, I kept forgetting whether I was using a neck rein or a direct rein, and the pommel was deeply confusing to me, and the stirrups felt strange. But I did okay, I think, in that I didn't fall off and kill myself or anything like that. And M gave me the more excitable horse, because she knew I'd taken lessons and hanjuuluver hadn't, and I handled her all right - she had definite opinions about how fast we should be going and how far in front of everyone else she should be, which certainly made things more fun for me. I like not completely sucking at things. :)

The path we rode through the bosque was really pretty too - we went from up by my mom's apartment through the paths by the river to a pizza place in the village and then back again, about 3 hours worth of riding total. It's all cottonwood and salt cedar up there, lots of scrub brush and greenery because it's so close to the river, and nothing but birds and squirrels and lizards and the rare bicyclist to break the quiet. I always liked riding lessons because it was so goal-oriented - you go into the ring and practice a specific skill set until you get it - and that is both challenging and satisfying. But I think I like trail riding better, especially in such a nice area as the bosque. Except for the part where I got stabbed in the stomach with a branch. But aside from that it was pretty awesome!

And now I am going to take a hot bath and possibly ice my knee, because aside from the general 'new and strange physical exertion!!!' soreness, I did something to my knee to make it very sore and hurty. I don't even know, it's weird. Whatever, we still had a great time, and I would totally do it again.

I don't actually like Santa Fe all that much, because everything's expensive and the people are often pretentious jerks, but today was still pretty awesome.

As my birthday present, my grandma decided to take me to Santa Fe on the train and go see the new history museum there, and my aunt asked if she could come too. The Rail Runner train is...well, it's pretty similar to the Caltrain, except way more full of tourists, since it's only been running for about six months and thus still counts as an exciting novelty (we're, uh, a little behind the times). But when we got on, my grandma immediately saw a couple she knew from the art museum, so we spent the whole train ride sitting with them and I got to practice my charming conversationalist skills.

We got to Santa Fe around lunchtime and went prowling around the market across the street from the train station to find somewhere to eat. We ended up in this little tiny Japanese cafe that only had about five things on the lunch menu. Luckily, they were all fabulously delicious. I've wanted to try real (ie not out of a package) ramen for a long time, and this was wonderful - nice rich broth, and thick noodles, and green onions, and really tender pork - lovely!

The New Mexico History Museum has only been open a little while, and I've never been there before. It's really neat! The main floor is a big exhibit hall walking you through a timeline of NM history, starting with the pueblos and going through the colonization by Spain, the Mexican Revolution, and the settlement after it became an American territory. They had a really good and broad collection of artifacts, and I learned some interesting stuff about the different uprisings they had back in the 1700s and 1800s.  The lower level was more modern stuff - lots of contemporary pictures, information about the Manhattan Project, that kind of thing. The upper level was my favorite - they had a really neat temporary exhibit about fashion in NM from the early colonial days through modern times, very cool stuff. Lots of corsets!

And then, because my grandma knows everyone ever that is associated with the museum circuit in this state, we chatted up the museum curator. I think he did an internship a few years ago at one of the museums where she is a docent (Casa San Ysidro?), so she knew him really well already, and when we were on the upper level she asked one of the staff workers to see if he was busy so we could talk. He told us some cool stuff about the new collection they are getting next year from Sevilla, and also about the trip to Spain he just went on with his boyfriend. All very pleasant and fun.

I have to say, although I miss getting opera tickets (my grandma doesn't like driving at night, so now that my grandpa can't drive she only goes with the senior center, and obviously I'm too young - I might get to go to Don Giovanni later in the summer if they tickets left though), this was a really awesome thing to do for my birthday.

Fact: hanjuuluver is my favorite mad genius ever.

We met up today for early birthday-related fun times, and it was awesome! Even the part where hanjuuluver has the worst sense of driving direction in the known universe, so on our way to the movie theater we got off the wrong exit on the freeway four times in a row and had to keep driving in circles trying to get back on and back off. We missed the start of the movie by the time we got unlost, so we decided to just go to lunch instead and go to the 2.30 movie.

I rather liked Half-Blood Prince, although it was a flawed film in a lot of ways. There were quite a few scenes left out that I really wish, for purposes of plot and coherence and awesome, had been left in, and my feelings on Harry/Ginny and Remus/Tonks are well documented and not at all positive. But on the other hand the art direction and the casting was as lovely as always. When did Rupert Grint get so smoking hot? And Tom Felton, DAAAMN. I was quite happy that the movie had as much Harry/Draco stalking as the book, because crazy obsessive hate!love warms my twisted little heart. Favorite scenes: Ron and the love potion (ALTHOUGH EW SLUGHORN), Harry and the luck potion (EW GIANT SPIDER), Harry and Hermione's scene after Ron kisses Lavender (because I love Harry and Hermione's platonic relationship), the scene in the cave (OMG SO CREEPY), EVERYTHING WITH LUNA EVER. All in all, a good watch if not a great one.

And then we went back to hanjuuluver's house and there was puppy! Rio is fuzzy and floppy-tongued and hyperactive and made of cute and ears. Also he tried to eat my hair. I got lots of snuggling and rolling on the ground time and at the end we both smelled like puppy.

And I got presents! I AM HAPPY FOREVER BECAUSE I HAVE A BLUE BEETLE. And Booster is happy forever because he has a Ted now to hug and squeeze and grope while they watch bad horror movies. He is very articulated, which makes him much easier to pose inappropriately, and he came with a flash gun and the leg of another action figure in his box because DC is weird. Right now he is sitting in Booster's lap on top of my TV. She also gave me a set of smaller JLU actions she got on sale - Dr Fate, Flash, and Green Arrow. They are very neat, although not as awesome as Ted. I am already taking pictures for a Booster-and-Ted-get-reunited mini-story. In the meantime, here is Booster and Ted happy and together and holding hands. Better than canon!

Thank you to everyone here (and on Facebook) who wished my a happy birthday! And I definetely had one.

Work was loads of fun today - we got to play around in the computer system, setting up email and learning how to use Credit Browser, and stuff, and then in the afternoon we worked on how to do retention calls - basically how to talk a customer out of cancelling the service. I learned a ton, and the roleplaying practice was not as hard as I expected. I'm almost looking forward to getting out on the floor. All that's left is tomorrow's final, and then we start talking calls in transition pod. Also, after we came back from lunch, everyone sang happy birthday, which was equal parts nice and embarrassing.

Dinner with family was fun and delicious (especially the roast potatoes and the cake!), and I got more presents - a necklace, cell phone charm and money from my grandparents, and a brass box, Chinese luck charm, jeans and money from my aunt. We have to exchange the jeans, though, since they don't fit, which is actually kind of awesome, since it means I might be able to fit into the next size down. Yay! It was a nice evening, and now I still get to look forward to seeing my mom this weekend.

As a birthday present to myself, I went on the Barnes and Noble website and bought the following:

• Shout Out Loud vol 5 - oh woe, this is the last in the series! But at least it hopefully end in some sort of resolution in the gay hockey players/gay yaoi voice actors romance department.
• Formerly Known As The Justice League/I Can't Believe It's Not The Justice League! - the two trade paperbacks of the Superbuddies comics from DC, featurely awesome, inexplicably canon crack and extra helpings of totally gay Booster/Ted antics.
• Torchwood: Almost Perfect - Ianto suddenly turns into a girl. 'nough said, yes?

Just got back from Envy's 18th birthday party and am about ready to slip into a coma. Being with my friends just takes so much energy...Worth it, though, even if just for getting to watch Jacob change colors when he overhears something like "clonesex incest" or "I want to become a nudist." He has no ability to cope with perversion. It's almost sad. 

We went to Heaven Dragon for lunch, and Envy totally loved the linoleum tile square I gave her as a present, along with the spoon. She said she's going to hang it up in her dorm room - I really, really hope she does that. Then we went to Explora. It's always full of midgets, and we scare them, I think, which I suppose is rather the point - we certainly didn't learn much about science. We did spend ages riding up and down in the elevator, since it had a sofa in it. There was so much glomping...we have brought it to an artform, in my opinion. It's dangerous, though - I kept banging my arm against the wall, and Roy hit me in the face. These outings are not for the faint of heart. My only regret? If we were British, we could have taken her out and got her plastered, since she'd be legal, which would be either terrifying or hysterically funny. I'm inclined to the first one. I can't even imagine me drunk - I think I'd either be a babbling drunk, a fighting drunk, or an uninhibited slut drunk. All of which would be fun. 

Major source of angst now is all my hanging writing projects. I have a couple of FMA stories lurking in the back of my brain, especially the college fic that I still can't start because I'm not actually at school yet. Then there's the various lingering one-shots - my river Lethe fic, a Remus fic about him sleeping with Tonks as Sirius, one about him looking at Teddy and thinking about the life he and Sirius could have had, the second part of Raising Shinobi, the third part of He Just Doesn't See, and a Zack fic about paintball. And I reeeeeeeeally want to start my KH alt ending fic, but I'm not quite sure how to get it going. Gah. I feel so unaccomplished. I think I just need to stop comparing myself to incredibly brilliant authors like twigcollins and thorne-scratch, or the Shoebox writers. I will get there eventually!

And damn Roy. She got Banana Phone stuck in my head.