Hey everyone! Sorry I went MIA for a while. I officially graduated with my Bachelors in Equine Science! I passed with As in all of my classes except one, where I got a B+. That last week was very stressful, but the final weekend was nice. I worked at Garden State Horse Show that Friday and Saturday (5/5-6), and it was a great experience. On that Saturday I was able to watch a few professionals competing. They were jumping jumps that were biger than I am! (I'm 5'7"). The awards ceremony for the equine department was pretty dull. Senior Week wasn't terribly thrilling, but the President's Ball on Thursday was pretty fun. I went with Tweedledee, Tweedledum, and two other friends. They had two of their friends, as well, so there was a good-size group of seven of us. They played decent music for about half an hour in the middle of the dance, but the rest was obnoxious ghetto thug music. How on earth are people supposed to dance to that? It seriously felt like we all should have been riding around in cars with lights under them that did wheelies to the music. I did have fun chatting with my friends, though, and we piled into a photo booth for some fun pictures. Overall, it was a nice evening to end on. The next day, Friday, I packed up. I was planning to head home on Saturday when everyone was busy with graduation on the other side of campus, but they were supposed to get a big storm in the middle of the night that wasn't supposed to let up until Monday. I ended up heading out late Friday night. Thankfully, I managed to make it home shortly before midnight.

On Saturday, my middle brother and his wife came over for dinner. We were celebrating Mother's Day a day early since my sister-in-law's parents were having a crab feast on Sunday. I also started strawberry plants in some planters to hang around the property. Hopefully the birds don't take them. Sunday was an adventure. We found a little red eared slider (a kind of turtle) in our swimming pool, just hanging out. We put him in a tupperware container and took him down to this little stream at the bottom of our property. I named him Terrance the terrapin.After Terrance was released, Mother showed me where all of the wildlife cameras are on the property, and we collected the SD cards. When we replaced the cards we tossed some bird seed for the animals. Apparently, they get a ton of animals around here, and have gotten some really good pictures and videos. After that, I wandered over to Urgent Care. I thought I had a sinus infction. Turns out, that turned into strep instead. Yaaaaaaaay. My doc at the Urgent Care place actually offered me her horse. For free. No strings attached. Pretty awesome deal, if I only had a place to keep it. Figure I'll ask around and see if anyone is interested. On the way home I stopped at Tractor Supply and picked up seeds for cucumbers and baby watermelons, the two things Mother hasn't started yet.

Today has been a pretty productive day. I was thinking of starting to unpack, but opted to work in the yard instead. I did a lot of weeding in the front yard, swept the entire driveway, and weeded Ponderance Place (a part of the yard I plan to decorate and make it nice to sit there... Hoping to get a hammock for it, too). Got to drive the Polaris to drop the weeds in the woods. I still have more weeding to do in Ponderance Place, but it already looks a lot better. When Father got home, we weeded around the pool and trimmed a large hedge back there. Overall, it was a nice, productive afternoon.

How has everyone else been?

I know, Sunday came and went and I didn't put up a post. My weekend didn't really go as planned, and I didn't have time to put one together yesterday.

We have three full weeks left of classes (with one hanging monday). It's nice to finally have the end in sight, but with everything left to do, it feels so far away. For the major, in order to graduate, we have to fill out a "Practicum Book", where we have to do specific tasks a certain number of times, and management or a professor has to sign us off for it. It's general horse-related things like cleaning stalls, applying poultices, cleaning equipment, etc. None of it is terribly difficult, it's just time-consuming given how much we have to do, and I transferred in, so I have half the time to do everything. I have about 1/3 of the book left, and I am trying to do at least a few more things every day. I made myself a little calendar and wrote a couple things in every day, and if I stick to it I will have most of the last full week free to work on my thesis presentation. The presentation is another thing stressing me out. It has to be a 15 minute (exactly) presentation on one study I used to write my paper. I have been trying to plan it out, but the people around me are taking up so much of my time, I don't get to work on important things.

My biggest stressor comes from the people around me. Everyone is under a lot of pressure given it's the end of the semester and half of us are graduating, but I have been trying to stay out of it. I don't like being involved in drama, especially when I have more important things to be doing. Unfortunately, they all know where I live, and find me to throw me in the middle of their petty problems. All they have to do is knock, and my roommates let them in, regardless of what I say. They have kept me up way too late every night this weekend. It's exhuasting. I have chronic insomnia already, and I am getting older. I can't fully function on just three hours of sleep every night. Not anymore. Plus, I definitely caught a cold. It's been building up for the last couple of days. As much as I want to spend time with them and enjoy the last few weeks, I also need to get work done so that I can actually graduate. I have tried being around them and working on things, but they can get very obnoxious and loud, and will help themselves to my laptop to close out of what I am doing so that I can give them my full attention. It's aggravating. Just because you don't care about your own grades doesn't mean I don't care about mine. This is hopefully my last semester for my last piece of paper. I don't want to screw it up now.

I haven't had a chance to game or really watch anything this week, so I'll skip those sections this time around.

April 17-23 is Penguin Random House's #ProjectReadathon Million Minutes campaign! I am so excited and going to do my best to read at least 20 minutes per day. Here is the description of the event: "From April 17 – 23, the week leading up to UNESCO’s World Book Day, you have an opportunity to #ReadWell and to help young readers in local communities throughout North America. All you have to do is read. Browse and read the free, timed excerpts from our books and authors on this site – from Biography and Memoir, to Health and Wellness, and from Sci-fi & Fantasy, to Young Adult and the Classics – triggering book donations from Penguin Random House to Save the Children, up to 300,000 books." You don't ned to sign up for anything, you just pull up the page, click on a book that looks interesting to you, and start reading! You can sort by genre and average read time (anywhere from 5 minutes to over an hour). If you are interested in participating or want to know more, you can check it out here!

Hope everyone had a great weekend, and a happy Easter if you celebrated!

Ever feel like holding on to someone, knowing they're slipping away, but don't because you don't want to be seen as needy or clingy and end up chasing them away?

Well, I think I'm coming to terms. I'm not happy. Nowhere near, in all honesty. However, I am getting better adjusted to the quiet. It's a painful, lonely quiet, but it hurts less now that I have more things to do to fill my time. That's the plus side of the semester finally kicking in. I have to write my senior thesis paper this semester, which will take up plenty of my time and help me stay focused on something other than the silence.

We have had two weeks of classes already. My riding class is really small, with only 3 of us, which means more individual instruction. I am really happy about that. Our instructor also wants to give us horses that we enjoy riding, and has ideas for musical rides, drills, and creative jumping lessons. I am really interested to see what she comes up with. She seems like the type who will push us hard, but will cheer us on while doing so, which is rare to see in this competitive industry. As for my other classes, I am taking Fundamental Theories of Riding, Management of Equine Activities, Equine Nutrition, and Senior Seminar. Management is pretty dull. It's pretty much all about running hunter/jumper horse shows... It's like this school forgets there are more disciplines than that. Nutrition is pretty cool so far. THe other day we spent the entire class weighing every horse in the barn (all 96 of them). We were also assigned project horses for the semester. We will be doing a semester long small group project where we analyze the horse's health and create a feeding plan to get them to a proper weight and maintain it. My group is doing a horse that just arrived a couple weeks ago. His name is Leo ("A Midsummer Night's Dream"), and he is a gorgeous bay warmblood who is only 12 years old. He is a tad underweight at the moment, but fit, so our goal will be building up what muscle he has and maintaining his condition while packing a few more pounds on him.

Last semester, Dragon Age Girl adopted herself a freshman. Let's call her Lamb for now. For most of last semester, Lamb was very quiet and went to great lengths to avoid interactng with people. Towards the end of last semester, I officially brought her into my little group of mionions, as I like to think of them. They call themselves my ducklings, and now there are 3. Well, the poor unfortunate Lamb is stuck in a riding class with the Tweedles, and Tweedledum, specifically, has been aggravating her. Lamb, having no social skills and plenty of anxiety troubles, immediately demanded to her advisor that she get her scheduled switched. Trying to be a supportive older friend, I explained to her that in life she won't be able to pick everyone around her, and this university is a better place to learn to deal with people than out there in the real world. I offered her skills for dealing with them, because since I've known the two of them I have had to come up with plenty. She shot down every single one in favor of simply demanding to her advisor and to the department chair that she be allowed into other already filled classes just to get away from them. I'm sorry, honey, but the real world won't just move to oblige you because you don't like someone. Coping skills are vital to learn, and better now than later when your job and income depend on your interactions with others. Well, her advisor told her the exact same things that I did. I guess advice only matters when it comes from someone who is tenured. Or maybe it was because she realized her little tantrum would get her nowhere. She is now avoiding them like the plague when she isn't in class. The down side is that she has been messaging me an average of 14 messages an hour for the past week and a half since I gave her my google name. The reason I gave it to her, and I told her this flat out, was that it was the quickest way to get ahold of me if she needed a ride back from the barn after her riding lesson (she rides directly after I do and the shuttle doesn't always run that late). That was it. In case of emergency. Well, she has been abusing the ever-living hell out of it, messaging me to bitch and whine and complain about Tweedledum. Like, I get it, you don't like them. Fun fact: No one around here does. But we don't have a choice, so we cope, put up with what we have to, ignore the rest, and carry on with our lives. Besides, you asked me for advice, shot it so far down it downed in the Indian Ocean, and acted like a spoiled brat who thinks the world should bend to suit you. I don't like self-entitled brats. Get over yourself, learn to have an actual conversation instead of a 24/7 bitch session, and then try talking with me again. I like to converse when it goes both ways. I'm happy to give advice if you ask for it and I can. But I have better things to do than humor your petty childish whining. I'm not sorry.
TL;DR: This freshman is really getting on my nverves by constantly whining to me and thinking the world revolves around her.

Last weekend I was super excited because I got to see my best friend. I really needed to see her and relax with a friend for a while. I don't get to see her often, as we always seem to be a state away, but when I am at school she is only an hour away, so I can visit her once in a while for a day. We hung out and chatted for a bit. She is madly in love with Prompto (FFXV), so there was plenty of teasing~ (ilu and I will ship it for as long as I feel like it). We hit up an outdoor mall by her, which was a lot of fun. I picked up the book The Color of Magic (Pratchett), which is the first Discworld book. There was an awesome little candy store where I got more than I should have >.> I regret nothing when it comes to my candy store purchases. There was even a Peeps store! You know the marshmallow peeps? They had GIANT plushie bunny peeps, tons of marshmallow-y goodness, and Mike-and-Ikes galore. I picked myself up a super comfortable zip-up hoodie that says "Chillin with my Peeps" on it. Cliche, I know, but I have a secret love affair with peeps and I geeked pretty hard when I saw the store. Anyway, I had a ton of fun with my bestie and I am hoping to visit her again sometime soon.

Games: I haven't gamed too much lately. I've been trying to focus on schoolwork. I have played some FFXV though! The Moogle Chocobo Festival started on Mon Jan 23, and it is so freaking adorable!!! I managed to knock out all fo the quests and I have done all of the activities at least once on each difficulty. I want to grind some of them to get the chocobo racing trophies and buy the car decals and paint colors.

Books: I set aside The Ocean at the End of the Lane for a little while. I got to a lull that I was having trouble focusing through. Instead, I have started The Color of Magic (Pratchett). I have about 40 minutes between clsses on Mon/Wed, so I manage to knock out about 20 pages at a time between all of the interruptions. So far it is quirky, but nothing exciting yet. I have heard great things, though, so I plan to stick it out and see if I feel the same as others.

TV/Movies: I have made it to Supernatural S5:E13. Progress. I am definitely not as into it as I was in the first few seasons. I am trying hard to stick it out, but the writing makes it difficult. It realy did, in myopinion, lose a lot of its charm and what made it uniquie when they decided to go the Angels route with it. I have also been watching Glee, for something out of my usual genres. I have to admit, I went in with a lot of skepticism. Some of that skepticism was justified, it seems, but a lot of it was also proven wrong. Most of the actors have truly incredible voices. I am very impressed (It helps that they were all about a decade older than the characters that they portrayed). The show does get very "after school special" way too frequently. I'm on season 3 episode 14 and so far it has felt like every other episode gets in your face with a moral issue. I get it, television is a platform for moral issues, and it's a show for teens so go out there and accept yourself and be you. But there are plenty of shows who have managed to get the same message across without being so... overwritten.

That's the latest in my little fragment of the world. Hope everyone has a wonderfully lovely week!
-NF

So much to do, so little time!

I think in my last post I had just gone home for the weekend. I had a really nice, relaxing weekend. Thursday evening, my parents and I went for a walk around the reservoir in our area. I took them up to see the quarry where I used to sit and write rather frequently. It's one of my favorite places in the world. I miss it all the time.

Friday I had most of the day to myself. I met Mother when she finished work, and we went ot Kohls. I now have a whole new wardrobe for summer! I needed a lot of cheap clothes to get me through summer camp, and I'd say we achieved our goal. Now I just need to find a swimsuit. Why does no one sell board shorts?! I'm not big on bikini bottoms, though I do love the tops, so I usually wear board shorts, too. Unfortunately, my Oakley board shorts don't fit anymore, and apparently nowhere around my house sells any... Hello, I'm from East Coast USA and we don't know what surfing is. So that's still on my to-do list to prep for camp.

Friday night I picked up my cousin Z and we stayed up kind of late playing Undertale. Well, I played Undertale and he watched both me and Dan Vs. I love Dan Vs. I find it to be a really funny show, and I knew he would enjoy it, so I put it on. Now, I feel a little guilty because I had an ulterior motive to inviting him over. Z is like a little brother to me. We grew up pretty close, and he is 2 years younger than me. Back in January he pretty much went off the deep end and dropped out of his final semester of college. Obviously, something big happened, but he won't tell anyone. On top of that, he has a lot of gender identity problems stressing him out all the time, and adding to that stress is the pressure from his parents. I wanted to spend some time with him and see what's been going on. Unfortunately, he dodged all of my questions like a pro. I taught him too well. Anyway, he spent the night.

Saturday was spent enjoying the outdoors. At the end of August last year, my family moved into a huge house on 3.15 acres. Mind you, we came from stereotypical suburbia, so it's amazingly wonderful to have so much space now. The house had 2 owners before us, and the first had a garden plot out back. The second never touched it. We spent the afternoon digging it out and setting it up so that come Mother's Day mother can start planting her vegetables. The garden plot is a short way down a pretty steep slope, so I dug the hill out and made rock steps for her. It's not the first set of rock steps I've ever made, but given the land I'm not sure they will last all summer. I told her and Father that they should look into getting it at least reinforced by summer, if not professionally done. Father seemed way more confident than I felt about my masonry, haha.

On Sunday I returned to campus. I was very hesitant about driving all the way back up here alone. I had other reasons to hesitate, too. Honestly, I would rather have walked barefoot down the entire Appalachian Trail than come back here and deal with this. It's a 4 hour drive and even on a good day I don't do well alone for that long. I don't get along with myself, to put it simply. In order to keep my focus, I listened to Coheed&Cambria's albums, starting from the first one. For those who don't know, their music tells a huge space opera scifi story. I spent 6 years studying every line and every comic book to figure it out. To this day I still am unsure about some parts. But anyway, I made it all the way through three and a half of their albums! I almost finished the main story! They also have a prequel album, 2 spin offs, and one album (their most recent) that's just awesome music and has nothing to do with the (completed) story. It was a pretty successful distraction. A couple of friends kept me company that evening for a while.

Monday was uneventful. My first class was Practical. The egocentric professor I mentioned last post amused me. As soon as he saw my note from the health center he practically threw my missed handouts and homework at me. Guess he knows he isn't always in charge. We set up a schedule for me to make up the quizzes I missed (he gives a quiz every class). I met with my building director and Student Life so that they could get my note on file and notify my professors officially. My Course Design class was uneventful. That night was room selection, which was pretty exciting! My group was #29 (there are I think ~40 apartments). We managed to get the second to last room in the building we wanted! It's even on the same floor and side of the building we wanted! We're all pretty excited, and looking forward to moving in in the fall.

Now we get to today, which was also uneventful. I got to ride Twist this morning in my lesson, which was nice. I enjoy riding him, and am glad that my first ride back after everything was on him. After my lesson I spent some extra time pampering him. He even got his legs and tail washed! Farm Facilities was uneventful. We spent the class discussing trucks, trailers, and hitches. Woo. When I got back I knocked out my homeworks for my Practical class. I grabbed dinner with some friends, and one of them informed me that her roommate (they have been arguing lately) flipped shit and moved out this morning without warning. Honestly, that whole situation is like a horrible soap opera and it's highly amusing to watch. Tonight was also Lip It, the school's lip syncing competition! They host it every semester, and it never fails to disappoint. This time around featured "Black-Eyed Peas" (minus Fergie), "Chris Brown" and girlfriend, 3 different "Rhianna"s, and many more. The winner of this competition was a female "Ginuwine" who sang, danced, and thrusted to "Pony".

Not looking forward to tomorrow. I still have a 10 page paper to write, ideally by tomorrow night. Which is not going to happen. I have no idea when I am going to be able to finish it. I might be able to get some work done on it tomorrow between classes, but there is no chance I can have it finished by 6pm. I am going to devote all Thursday afternoon/evening/night to it, though, to try to have it done. Mother is coming into town that evening, though, so I'm not sure how much time I will have. We are going into NYC on Friday for a really col event. I will try to post all about it this weekend! Saturday, the town is hosting a spring festival, complete with a carnival and free M&Ms for everyone, so we will of course be checking that out. She heads back on Sunday, so I can work on it then, too, but I really want to have it done before Mother gets in to town. I really need to be done with it. It's adding so much stress to my every day. I can't wait until May 10, when the semester is over and I am heading home to kick back and relax for two and a half weeks. Just two more weeks... Gotta keep reminding myself of that.

-N.E.

It's been an incredibly long and frustrating weekend.

But more on that later. My week back hasn't been too bad, I guess. Nothing terribly eventful happened. Monday was pretty normal. I wish we could have gotten a day after break to readjust instead of jumping right in to things. Monday night I got set off pretty bad, and wasn't anywhere near recovered by Tuesday morning, so I didn't go to classes that day. By Wednesday I was doing better. Thursday was pretty good overall. I spent a good chunk of the day working with Twist and making him "show ready".

Now on to my long weekend.

This weekend, I set aside Friday to Sunday, all day every day, to work on a history paper. It's 10+ pages about the Space Race. Friday, Dragon Age Girl came over and hung out. I got a decent start on my research, not quite as much as I intended to, but I still had Saturday and Sunday. Friday night I spent a little time playing Ether One, which is a rather intriguing story. It was too late to get inivested in more research, so I figured I would play a little.

Saturday, I went to brunch with Dragon Age Girl. She had projects to do this weekend, as well, so we had planned to grab our stuff and head to the library. Well, when we got back to my apartment there were a whole bunch of people there having a very heated discussion. The way the apartments are set up, there are 4 people and 2 bathrooms. The fourth girl in my apartment has been out sick for this entire semester so far (she has a stomach disorder), and she finally came back. Her mother and 2 younger sisters had come to help her move back in. So, the other two girls who live here are both international students. One of them is really kind and friendly, and seems pretty mature. The other one is very rude, disrespectful when you try to talk to her, and her and her friends trash the kitchen at least twice a week. They never clean up after themselves. The other girl and I only ever use the microwave in there (I'm not risking my health in there, it's rancid... there were week old muffins with bugs living in them in the freaking oven, which was wide open). So when the fourth girl arrived, she and her mother flipped. Due to her condition, she has an very sensitive immune system. Honestly, I don't care how good your immune system is, that kitchen was a risk to everyone and anyone. There were dishes in the sink that have been there for weeks, since before spring break. So the building director called the director of Residence Life who came over, and they both were very awesome about calming everyone down and getting the messy girl (and one of her messy friends who was over and is also guilty) to help clean the kitchen. They really didn't do anything, just bitched and joked to each other in their native language (I'm not fluent, but I studied it and knew enough to get the gist -.-) and pushed dirt around for 10 minutes until the fourth girl's mother got sick of their shit and told them to get out. The rest of us scrubbed it from top to bottom, cleaned the living room, and even borrowed the custodial vacuum (which was AWESOME) to vacuum everywhere. The fourth girl's family didn't leave until 10pm. So I lost all day Saturday to work on my project.

Now we get to today, Sunday. Woke up around 9, ready to buckle down and get shit done, only to find out that, thanks to extreme winds, the internet and phone services were both out on campus and around town. They didn't come back until 9pm, way too late to start on my reasearch. Thanks, Universe. I set aside an entire weekend to do a project and all I get is a giant middle finger.

To top it off, those hours I spent working on getting Twist show ready apparently weren't enough for the riding director. She sent out an email at 6pm (the barn closes at 4pm on weekends, mind you) saying that a whole bunch of horses weren't up to par or whatever and said that we had to fix them and present them to our riding instructors before we are allowed to ride again. Now, before I started Twist, the captain of the Dressage team told me exactly what my riding instructor (the coach for the team) wanted done for him. I did it all and both the captain and barn management said he was good. However, he was on the list that the riding director sent out. I emailed my instructor (the coach of the team) and explained to her that I did what the captain told me to, and I was approved by both her and management. She agreed to meet with me tomorrow between my classes and look him over to see what isn't up to the director's standards, since by the sound of her email she thought he was fine. I'm so annoyed. Not only about having to redo him, but also because the director SHOULD have sent the email out Friday evening after they checked the horses, and not after the barn closes Sunday night telling everyone they need to be done by Monday morning. That is unfair to absolutely everyone. One more reasons everyone wants her kicked from her job. She runs her mouth, disrespects every discipline that isn't hers, acts like she is entitled to whatever she wants (ex: we have one outdoor ring, and she always calls dibs 15 minutes before her lessons so no one else can use it... she has kicked classes out of it before), bad mouths the other staff members/instructors/coaches, and has even bad mouthed students. She is so incredibly unprofessional.

Anyway, that was kind of ranty. I'm in a horrible mood thanks to getting next to nothing done on my paper, even though I set aside ALL WEEKEND to work on it. Add the bullshit of Twist apparently not being good enough. This weekend can kindly go fuck itself.

-N.E.

I'm pretty much done with everything ever.

Sorry, that sounded overdramatic. It has been an incredibly trying and frustrating day.

Class this morning wasn't terrible, at least. Got to visit Twist during it, too, which was nice. As soon as I got back to campus, things went south. My Win10 laptop has been finnicky since late last September. It kept popping up with "Restart to repair drive errors(C:)" all the time, but even leaving it "repairing" for 54 hours only got it to 43% finished. I shut it down after my morning class, and when I started it back up it decided to inform me that it no longer had a hard drive. I pried it open, readjusted all of the connections, and tried again, but it gave me the same error. Some more digging and it turns out it's fried. Go figure. Right before midterms. This is why I keep doubles of my files, and take notes in the cloud. This is also why I always have backup technology. I have a little tablet (freebie from my cell phone provider like 2 years ago, nothing fancy) and a faulty Win8.1 laptop that has no audio or microphone because Win8.1 is nothing but bugs. It works enough for me to take notes in Google Drive, at least.

So I spent 3 and a half hours on that this afternoon, doing everything that I could think of. My tech degree at work. Least that knowledge is getting a little use.

My night class went well. I surprisingly wasn't terribly lost the entire time. My professor has a tendency to jump all over the place, like how one night in 10 minutes he went 1871->1895->1884->1905->1917->1853. Mind you, it's a TWENTIETH century European history course... Tonight we went over 1900-1920ish in Germany and Russia. Thankfully, I already know a fair bit, so I could, for the most part, keep up.

Anyway, I have to get going for the night. It's late, and I have to get up early for my riding class. Catch you later, LJ!

-N.E.