The side effects of a social life

Well, so much for writing every day. However, I feel I should mention that the day to day details are rather tedious, because it's a lot of the same. Still, it's been too long. The problem is that ever since I found out that Kate, Greer, and Alyssa live two floors below me, my evenings have been spent chilling with the ladies until much too late at night. Outside of that, I'm doing homework, class, and I joined the dance club. So, yeah, things are a little crazy.

Anyway, enough with the excuses. Life is good here in Michigan. Fall has struck. Leaves are changing color and dropping. The wind has that clean Fall bite to it, and the weather keeps fluctuating between too warm and chilly. You'll hear no complaints from me, though. This is my favorite kind of weather. It's perfect for riding and makes me miss my pony.

This week was the second week of lessons. I haven't rode the same horse twice yet which makes sense, because Danielle, the coach of the Dressage Team, is seeing how I do when on different horses. So far, I don't have a favorite. I'm unlearning a lot of the hunter tricks that I was taught the first several years of my riding career and relearning how to put my leg on correctly and sit right. It feels weird, but I'm not getting the back pains that I used to get, so I must be doing something right.

Classes are good. I have three papers due on Friday. Yikes! One of them is for philosophy and has an eight page minimum. I'm supposed to take the public policy theory that this guy Ellis takes 200-pages to tell you is impossible to do in our current government and then apply it to a different public policy. I've decided to write about the child-killings that have been occurring on Daytona Beach. It's this place where cars are allowed to drive on the actual beach, and despite that there have been an increase of children hit and killed by the cars, the city has decided to keep the beach open to autos because of the tradition it stands for. It's an interesting article, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to have trouble lengthening it into eight pages. I haven't written anything that long in my entire college career. If you have any advice, pass it on, please.

The first Dressage show is the 16-17 of October over at Michigan State University. I think I'm excited. For those of you who know me, you'll understand my confusion. For my newer readers or those who just don't know me as well, I have a hard time showing emotions and on the rare occasion that they do show up, I don't usually recognize them. I say "I think I'm excited" mostly because I figure that a normal person would be excited for their first show. Anyway, yeah, first show in a couple weeks.

I went to a rodeo last weekend. The equus club was going and I wasn't going to go, but I was drawn into it by the ladies. I'm not a fan of rodeos. Oh, I like barrel racing and reining, but I'm not a huge fan of the rest of it. My mom rubbed that off on me. Beyond that, though, I'm also not a fan of rodeos because despite that they claim that they are not affiliated with any political party, you walk in as a moderate or democrat and you feel like you've just crossed into no man's land. Needless to say, it was a little uncomfortable, but it was fun chillin' with the ladies.

Then last night I was met with my first opportunity to play drinking games. Sorry to disappoint some of you, but I turned down the chance. For one, I was getting motion sickness just from walking around. For two, I'm just not the drinking game sort. For all you How I Met Your Mother fans out there, there's that one episode where Marshall and Lily decide to be mature and have a wine tasting while Barney and Ted go out to a club with Robin. Well, I would be the "boring" people sitting on the couch waiting for the wine to breath and playing trivial pursuit. So, don't expect any wild stories, though I promise that if there ever is a wild story to tell, I will blog it. Instead, I chilled with Kate, spending the time I should have been writing down Sam (R)'s birthday present talking about my stories. Basically, I've gained another fan before I've even had anything published. My books better live up to all your expectations or I'll feel pretty dumb.

In a little bit, I'll be off to go design T-shirts for the equus club to sell at our barn shows, then we're tie-dying the club shirts. I helped design the logo for this year! I'm not the artist though. I can draw, but this girl Megan is incredible, so her design won but we paired it with my idea. I'll take a picture when I get my shirt.

And there you have it. I'm all caught up. I'll try to do better about writing more often, but no promises. I have four papers and a presentation due in the next two weeks, plus these stories I'm working on outside of my novel and planning the outline of the Loft class I want to teach next Summer. Plus, there's this whole problem about having a social life! *sigh* Things were so much simpler when I was an anti-social study freak. (That would be sarcasm, btw.)