Sunday was a super busy day.  First, I headed off to the barn to visit my ponies.  I rode Nyk in a full bridle and then took a very brief spin on Blondie.  Neither horse was worked for very long, but they worked well, so that was all good. 

Then I stopped at home and changed out of my riding clothes.  The awards banquet was at Baker’s and I had to be there around 2.  I hate these social functions, because I’m not a very social person.  I forced myself to go, anyway.  I packed up the camera and off I went.

Getting all ready to head into the festivities

This is the only reason I went.  So I could feast on bland catered food.

The mac and cheese was awesome!  The mashed potatoes were good, too, but the gravy was very salty.  The chicken was, well, kind of tasteless, but most chicken is.  The beans weren’t hot sellers, and I kinda realized why after I ate a few.

This is Audie – she had too much sugar and was a little out of control.  We are used to her and her weird behavior, though, so hardly anyone stared at her as she wiggled around on the bench.

Yay!  The high point winners were given a bag with a horse embroidered on it.  I got one!  And I also was given a red, gold, and white reserve ribbon.  Yay, Nyk!  He really did all of the work, but I don’t think he would want either the bag or the ribbon.

Another happy bag winner!

So happy to have won a reserve championship ribbon!  Oh, yay, she got herself a bag, too, so almost everyone from the barn will be sporting the spiffy bits of luggage around this summer.

Overall, this was a fun afternoon.  What wasn’t so fun was driving home in the rain – which turned into snow halfway there.  Ugh!!  It was like a blizzard when I got home!  So much for spring.  Now I have a sore throat from the weather change.

Last week I had a couple of really good riding lessons.  The weather is finally starting to warm up, too, so spending time at the barn isn’t so unpleasant.

Tuesday, I rode Nyk in a show bridle for the first time.  It went very well.  He didn’t pull on the bridle and he just trucked along like he is supposed to.  I have to work on keeping his nose in, and not let him charge down the rail. 

Wednesday I rode him again in a training bridle.  Over all it was a good lesson, but he kept burying his head.  Thursday, I headed to the other barn, and I rode Caveat, which always means lots of no stirrup work.  He is the horse that will travel along the rail with no reins.  Still freaks me out that I ride him with no stirrups and no reins and he stays on the rail.

I sort of fell off the horse a few times, while trying to rotate around in the saddle.  While I think this was supposed to help with my balance, I think all it really did was give the trainer something to laugh about.  When you think about it, she has to watch all of this bad riding, which probably makes her want to cry, so every now and again she needs a way to make herself smile.  Watching your students clumsily attempt to turn around in the saddle must be a form of stress relief.

On Friday, I rode Nyk again.  Amber was in the lesson, too, and we worked on cantering down the center of the arena.  In a straight line.  While I can usually pick the correct lead going the long way down the center, I just can’t get the horse to travel in a straight line.  Still, simple lead changes were nothing to Nyk, though he made me work at asking him.  He didn’t cut me any slack.

Today is the awards banquet for the academy show season.  I hate going to these things, but I am forcing myself to go and try to be a little more social.  It will also give me an excuse to try uploading pictures with the new cell phone.

After the craptastic meal at TW Amigos, I have to admit that I was a little hesitant to try another new restaurant.  My fears were happily unfounded, and Blue Fin turned out to be a wonderful meal.  Great service, nice surroundings, and very tasty food.

Things got rolling with a bowl of miso.  It was saltier than normal, but there were many chunks of tofu floating around it the murky depths of the bowl.

Getting ready for a sushi binge

 

The salad was better than the typical pale lettuce served at most sushi places.  The dressing was an unappetizing color, but there was a nice variety of lettuce and no onions!

Is that foundation or dressing? 

Tea!  I had many, many cups of this.  The waiter made us feel special with all the attention he gave us, refilling our cups as soon as they were empty.

We ordered a few rolls to get in the mood for raw fish.

The eel and tuna is Jen’s. We weren’t allowed to touch them.  For some reason, Kim and I had to share the eel rolls and the shrimp tempura rolls.

What delicious treasure is hiding in this box?

It’s Kim’s eel bowl.  She was greedy and didn’t offer any to the rest of us.

Oh!  Here is my chirashi.  The only thing missing was tamago.  I had to order them afterward.

Feast your eyes on all of those succulent pieces of raw fish!

I wish there had been a few more veggies sprinkled in, otherwise, this was the best chirashi I’ve had in a while.

My tamago!

I used to hate these things.  Who in their right mind puts sugar in their egg??  I must have gotten used to them, because now I can’t get enough.

I went all out and even ordered dessert!  Green tea ice cream, anyone?  Too bad, I wasn’t about to share.

Yum!  Not too filling and hopefully not too full of calories.

Here is Jen’s dessert.  Flaming ice cream. 

This got extra points because the waiter set it on fire.  Flames always deserve extra attention!

We all attacked this with gusto.  So much for not so many calories.

I knew this place would be great when they sat us near a horse!

This was a fun, relaxing meal. The service was phenomenal, and the food was superb.  The three of us ate like little fiends, adding to the tab when we realized how good everything was.  Total came to 81 bucks, but we pounded down the sushi!  And the ice cream! 

I highly recommend Blue Fin if you’re passing through Howell.

I had a pretty crappy day today.  I don’t usually blog about the crapper side of life, preferring to focus on the positive, but there wasn’t much positive to zero in on today.  I should have skipped riding, or better yet, just stayed in bed.

I headed out to the barn, and knew that things weren’t going to go right when I detected a weird atmosphere lingering in the barn aisle.  Maybe it’s just because my greeting was ignored by the only person in the barn.  Don’t know for sure, but I had that sad sinking feeling in my stomach that told me to just go home.

I started to get Blondie ready, and M appeared a little while after that.  Someone was going to come and look at Gizmo for a breeding, and she was going to start getting him looking presentable.  I finished up with Blondie, and then M asked D if he would oversee my lesson.  The very long pause before he agreed also set me on edge.   Great.  Just wonderful – I so love it when someone who doesn’t really care is going to give me a lesson.

Things were going ok until he had me start cantering figure 8s in the middle of the ring.  I have a terrible time with this on a horse that knows what it’s doing, let alone a horse that doesn’t.  This was a disaster, and M just happened to be looking in on the tragedy as it played out.  She took over the lesson, but by that time I was a frazzled mess, and so was the mare.  Why can’t we start doing these kinds of things with Nyk?  He knows what he’s doing.  I don’t.  Neither does Blondie.  I hate doing pattern work and really felt that today I was asked to do it so I would get all frustrated.

What an awful lesson.  I felt that I took many, many steps backwards during the twenty minutes I was out in the arena.  This is on top of not doing well in the equitation classes at the show on Saturday.  I sucked.  I now feel like all the work I’ve been putting into this was wasted and that I’m not getting any better.  F*ck.  I hate feeling like this.

Last night was one of our “girls’ night out.”  Kim and Jen agreed to accompany me to a horse show, so I showed my appreciation by feeding them.  A couple of times.  We even headed to the swanky Best Western of Hartland (review to follow) so we could hang out until all hours of the night.  That turned out to be around 10, because Jen crashed like a house of cards in a hurricane. 

We were eager to try Amigos, which seemed like a fairly new establishment.  I don’t usually travel to that side of town, and happened to notice it when I was exiting the freeway.  We headed over there, starving,  and I should have know that it would be a disappointing meal after we entered.  The first smell to greet your senses is not that of wonderfully prepared food, but the reek of cigarette smoke.  We asked for the non-smoking section, which was right next to the bar, and all I could smell was smoke.  We should have left, and hindsight is priceless.

Getting prepped for our big night out.

The salsa and chips weren’t so bad, thought the salsa was bland and more like tomato paste than salsa.

Here is the bland salsa.  There was also a green salsa, but it tasted mostly of vinegar.

Jen ordered fajitas.  Here is the plate of fixings for it.  The rice was similar to what you would get at a coney island.  Tasteless.  The beans were so salty that none of us could eat them.

Jen was very disappointed with the presentation.  She ordered the combo, which came with shrimp, chicken, and beef.  The shrimp was great, but the other meat was served in big chunks, not smaller slices that fit in tortillas.  The veggies were the same. The green peppers were quartered.  She complained that there was too much cheese, too.

Kim's chicken nachos. The chicken was shredded, but she didn’t like the way it was spiced. She didn’t have much to say about her meal, except that it gave her a stomach ache.  Jen’s gave her indigestion.

Here is my dinner – chile rellenos stuffed with chicken.  Or that’s what I thought I was ordering.  I asked if there were onions, and was told no.  See that gross glop on top?  That is a mash of onions and some other indescribable ingredient.  Don’t know what it was, and scraped most of it off my food.  It was gross.

The other disappointment was the chile rellenos.  They were supposed to be chicken chile rellenos, not cheese chile rellenos with shredded chicken dumped on top.  The chicken seasoning had a very strange, slightly unpleasant flavor.  I ended up scraping that off, and just eating the chilies – which weren’t cooked all the way.  This meal was just a disaster.

The service was pleasant, but very, very slow. The place was very busy, with most customers heading to the bar first, and then being shown to a table, lugging their booze with them.  Since the only thing I could smell was the cigarette smoke, the food was doubly unappealing.  I will say that you get a lot of food, but this is a clear case of quantity over quality.  Cost for three meals - $33 bucks.  If it wasn’t for the chips, we would have had to stop at Taco Bell for something to fill us up.

Chances of eating here again – only if I’m dragged kicking and screaming.

Today, we traveled over to Madison Heights to sample the dishes at Fuji.  This is a Japanese buffet, and the only words I needed to hear to want to eat there were – all the sushi you can eat.  Holy crap!  How can you resist the call of all of those little rolls of raw fish???

We arrived just after noon, which was a good thing.  It wasn’t very busy when we got there, but by the time we left, there was a line going out the door.  The place is huge, too.  It occupies an old Sweden House space, and they have broken up the restaurant into several rooms that were just crammed with people when we left. 

We didn’t waste any time getting started.  There were about eight serving stations, including one with dessert.  You could also order hot pot, but that was not included in the buffet.  And in the corner, you could order up some udon.  I had to skip that, unfortunately, because I was soon stuffed with everything else. I am also sad to admit that I didn’t get to try even half of what was available.  I felt like a buffet rookie here, and that’s hard for me to accept.  At a Indian buffet, I can usually pack away a little bit of everything.  Here, there were so many dishes to choose from, some of them totally unfamiliar to me, that I was spinning in circles around the serving tables trying to decide what to eat. 

I started out with crab, an assortment of dumplings, and all kinds of shrimp. I am a slave to shrimp. I can't resist it's siren call. There was tempura, and shrimp on skewers with a tasty sauce, and peel and eat, and shrimp that I didn't even know how it was prepared. Shrimp with shells, legs, heads, etc. So much shrimp!

The crab was wonderful! It was my favorite part of lunch, and I ate a whole lot of it! The yellow stuff was like a seafood casserole. It had scallops, shrimp, crab, squid, weird things I couldn't identify. It was slightly sweet and very addicting. Yum!

The first of many, many, many sushi rolls.

This was not the best sushi I have ever had, but I'll admit that it was exhilarating being able to load up a plate with 15 different kinds. So much! The traffic pattern at the sushi table was heavy, so the turnover of the food was very fast. There were about 6 guys working back there, slicing, dicing, and smooshing rice.

More sushi

Yummy!! I didn't even know what most of it was! One had cream cheese, and that was a downer. It was only one I didn't like.

More crab! And a squid ball!

The crab was so good! Very messy, but so good!

I even daringly mixed dessert with the main course!

The is banana pudding! I didn't know quite what it was when I scooped it up, and thought it was vanilla pudding with graham crackers. It was banana, with nice chunks of banana and wafers.

Crème puff.

The crème puff was better with banana pudding - the crème had no flavor.

Dessert! Green tea ice cream, chocolate coffee mousse, green tea cake thing, and a gooey peanut concoction.

The service was brisk, refilling our beverages several times, even with the massive amount of people there. Lunch was $35 with tip - we would easily have spent over 50 bucks if we went out for sushi somewhere else.  Again, not the best quality, but the quantity can’t be beat.

The weather took an epic turn for crap.  Last Friday was 70 degrees, less than a week later it was in the twenties.  I'm so tired of winter!  It's getting me down and making it difficult to focus on my goals.  The gloomy weather - rain since Saturday, snow today, is having a major effect on my mood.  The spring-like teaser on Friday only made things worse, as I was stuck at work pretty much the entire day. 

In the group lesson, we worked on transitions.  M set a chute up with cross rails, and we either walked in, halted in the middle and walked out, or trotted in and transitioned to a walk.  I rode Nyk, and the walking/halting, was a lot easier than the trotting/walking.  This is something that I really need to work on - most of my transitions just suck.

The Thursday lesson at Barn #2 was a bit of a challenge. I rode Storm in a show bridle.  She is an 18 year old country pleasure mare and she still has plenty of pep in her step.  After getting over the usual confidence issues when presented with a new mount, i decided that I really like her.  Her canter gave me a bit of a problem at first, but after S pointed out that I was clamping my legs on her when I was asking, I forced myself to relax and everything was so much better then.  Amazing how that works.  Now if only I could stay relaxed every time I ride! 

S told me that Storm was like a process marker for me.  It would show me how much I have improved, and this lesson really did show that to me.  I was able to keep my hands steady for the most part, even with S getting the horse aired up.  I was able to rate my speed without falling apart.  I didn't jerk the mare's mouth around and kept her bridled.  I thought that she felt great, and S said that she looked great.  It was a very satisfying lesson.   With show season just around the corner, I am looking forward to seeing if all of the work will pay off with my horses.   I just ordered a bridle for Nyk, and I can’t wait to get it.  I have never ridden him in a show bridle, and I wonder what he’ll be like.

Saturday was rainy and gloomy, and it turns out, my eagerly anticipated lunch at La Fuente ended up being a major disappointment.  Let me share with you the Tale of Too Many Onions.

Things started off great.  We were given a basket of chips and a beaker of salsa, which was very tasty.  It had a rich tomato flavor, hardly any onions, and some diced garlic and cilantro. 

The disappointment arrived shortly after. I ordered shrimp simmered in a hot sauce. I get this at El Patio a lot, and wanted to compare. When the waiter put the plate in front of me, I felt like someone had kicked my puppy. It was basically a platter of sautéed onions, with a few shrimp on top. I freaking hate onions!!! The thought of paying 15 bucks for a plate of freaking onions still has me upset! There was no mention of onions on the menu.

Yup, here it is - ten pounds of onions and 12 dinky little shrimp. Oh, and a small scoop of beans and rice, too. Can you even see the shrimp?! What a major bummer.

Here is Dean's lunch. It had shrimp, scallops, fish, and assorted vegetables. And NO freaking onions! Even though the menu claimed that it had them! WTF?! Order onions, don't get them, don't order onions, get them. Grrrr.

Dean, being the weasel he is, couldn't stop telling me how wonderful his lunch was.  Yeah, just keep rubbing it in, why don’t you.

This was one of the worst lunches I’ve had in a while.  The service wasn’t bad, but my food was misrepresented.  Plus, it was very expensive, compared to El Patio.  51$ with tip!!  WTF!! 

Tuesday, I headed off to the barn, happy that it was a little warmer than Sunday had been.  At least my water didn't freeze when left sitting in the car.  While I got Nyk ready, M informed me that she put Blondie on Nyk's joint supplement, too.  She was a little off when she was working her, and she thought that might help.  I thought I had asked that they both be on it when Blondie came in, but no matter, she's getting all of her vitamins and minerals now.  I think she's just sore from working on Sunday, because she was finally using her back end and getting collected, for the first time in ages. 

After  the usual walk, trot, canter with Nyk, we worked on patterns.  There is discussion that the pattern at the championship academy show will be changed, so we practiced a canter serpentine and a canter figure 8.  The serpentine wasn't elegant, but at least Nyk picked up the correct leads.  The figure 8 was ugly, ugly, ugly!  He kept picking up the wrong canter lead when I was asking for the left lead.  M had me keep trying, and as I was cueing, she pointed out what I was doing wrong.  After about three times, I started to understand that I was bending his neck and head to the inside, so his hip was in the wrong direction, and he kept taking the right canter lead.  When I get out in the middle of the arena, I just get confused and think that I have to over-steer.  I'm so happy that I only have to worry about patterns during the academy season.  I couldn't handle the added stress of working a pattern during a big show - I don't know how the kids do it.

Last night, I rode Blondie, and I let Sarah ride Nyk because Wildchild had been used in an earlier lesson and she was too hot to go again, unless Sarah was willing to stay a couple of hours to get her dried off.  We worked on collection and transitions, and I think I am finally beginning to understand how to stay anchored to the saddle and not brace in the stirrups when I'm asking her to slow down.  The light bulb started to go on with Nyk during the cantering figure 8s, and I think it is finally sinking in. 

Blondie had one major spook, when she was terrified of her own shadow, but other than that, she was a good mare.  She even was more collected during the canter than she has been.  Nyk gave Sarah a bit of trouble at the canter, because he'll drop out of it if you don't keep his head up, but it looked like he was behaving most of the time.

Sunday was bitterly cold.  I bundled up, and headed off to the barn.  It turns out that I shouldn't have worried about being cold because Blondie was being an utter turd and it seemed that I had to fight with her most of time I near her.  I should have known that something was up because she was being just horrible in  her stall.  She would not stand still, and D even came in to help get her bridled. 

It turns out that he was also going to be in charge of us in the arena.  This was a little odd, as he hasn't been involved very much with lessons the last six months or so.  I knew that I was going to at least need help getting on the crazed mare, so I was glad that I would have some help with that.  After getting on, we started down the rail, the second way of the ring. 

Almost at the end, Blondie decided that she wasn't going to go forward, and she started spinning around and getting a little light on her feet.  I kept kicking her forward; I just wanted her to move ahead instead of backwards, like she was starting to do.  We got turned around, I gave her every opportunity to go forward, and then I grabbed the whip in one hand and just whaled on her all the way down the rail.  She broke into a canter but didn't give me any more problems.  In fact, she was more than happy to oblige any cue I gave her.  Wish I had a secure enough seat to have done that the other 200 times she's tried to pull that on me.  I’m not sure why she always has to push the envelope and make things hard for herself.

After that, she actually acted like a show horse.  It's the most animated she's been in probably over a year.  Hmmm.  Then we cantered some figure 8s and serpentines, which are hard for both of us.  She was steaming pretty good by then, so we called it done.

While she was cooling off, I got Nyk ready, and I decided to use Blondie's bit because Peanut had the driving bit that Nyk likes and usually wears.  Blondie's is a little less severe, so M thought the he might try to bury his head, but he didn't.  He stepped off with his head up and he carried himself like that.  I didn't have to do much, except at the canter, when he does dive his head and try to take off.  Because he worked so well, I didn't want to keep him out for long, so we just w/t/c and then cantered some figure 8s.  I was really happy with how he worked.  I just need to keep working at the canter, because it is a little four-beaty. 

Summer is back at the barn, so I waited around and watched her work.  She was very good for not being ridden much the past six months.  She's also really out of shape and didn't have to keep at it for very long.  Her mane is about 3 inches long and she looks like the Trojan Horse.  Or a zebra, depending on your preference.