This page used to be about people and books and music. However, after a little while I realized that people don't deserve to be classified as "things," so I gave my friends their own page. Then I decided that I was interested in many more things than books and music, so I added a couple more sections for those. Now I have realized that having two sections about books (this page and another one linked from here) is just not a Good Thing. So this page will now be about everything I'm interested in, except books and people. And the things that I've forgotten to write about, of course. :-)
To make it easier to navigate this page, here are some topics and targets (ooh, alliteration!):
Riding
Cats
Costuming
Abroad
Music
First of all, I must take this opportunity to share with you my latest passion, horseback riding.
I always wanted to ride but, as a city (or, more accurately, suburbs) girl, never had the chance. Well, perhaps I could have, but my parents don't ride, so I didn't. I had a few chances to go on trail rides during summer vacations, but that's really not the same thing.
Mount Holyoke has a very good equestrian program, so when I got here, I took beginning riding the first semester. It was a really tight squeeze to get into the class; eighteen people were signed up for a class that could only take six. There was a lottery to see who could stay in the class, and I had the supreme good luck to get in. If I hadn't, I would have taken it the next semester, anyway, but I'm glad not to have lost that semester.
I've been riding for nearly two years now, which is nearly nothing compared to the length of time that everybody I know has spent on horseback. Seven years, most of them, if not more. I'm completely awed. I permit myself to think I'm good (at least I'm making strong progress), but there are some things which only tons of practice can give you, and I don't have them yet.
I made great progress this January with that sort of thing, actually. Here is a picture of me on Windsor. (Click on the picture to see a bigger version.)
Sorry it's so blurry; my mom took it with a disk camera of hers which is not actually all that good. I was coming back from a lesson, and I tried to get Windsor to stand still and look pretty, but he didn't understand why I wanted him to stop. He's a hard one to stop, anyway; he doesn't like to stand still. But there's me on a horse, in any case. (And that's not bad posture; it's just a baggy sweatshirt.)
Me with my favorite horse at MHC, Trilogy:
He's a sweetheart. Well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. He's the oldest horse in the barn (26?), but he's in very good shape. He's smart, and he knows lots of tricks to intimidate people and try to get them not to tack him up and make him work, so he's horrible to deal with on the ground. I think he likes me, though, and he's nearly always very sweet with me. Once you're in the saddle, of course, he's wonderful. He's very lazy and slow, so you always have to keep at him to go faster, but he's also very dependable and knows what he's doing. He's my favorite, as I said; I don't know why, but I love this horse.
During the last school year I speny at least about 9 hours per week at the barn; however, this summer I'm working at a stable, so I spend that much time there per day. It's a great job, because I get to ride for free.
I want to keep riding as much as possible; I'm going to try out for the riding team at MHC. Eventually, I want to get involved in endurance riding. However, that's probably at least ten or fifteen years into the future, when I have my own horse and am good enough to get into something like that.
I can't believe that I have gone this long (until March 2000) without even touching on my passion, cats.
This is my darling, Goldie, when she was just a kitten (that's my mother's dress, with my mother in it, under her). She will be eight years old in June 2000. She is, obviously, a calico, and very sweet. I miss her a lot.
We also have a cat named Midnight. He is eighteen years old, arthritic, and grumpy.
Another of my passions is dressing up. This is somewhat related to my liking fairy tales, but I have always adored long, fancy dresses and lace. My mother made me dresses, as long as I wanted them, since her mother had never let her have long dresses because they weren't fashionable. She resolved that her daughter would have long dresses if she wanted them, and so I did, and I loved them.
There was one in particular that I had in fourth grade. I wore it as much as I could until I grew out of it, and I would wear it still, if it weren't much too small for me. I don't have any pictures of it scanned, unfortunately. (Gaah, another for the to-do list.) I wore it to school once, with a hoop skirt made out of a hula hoop, for a book report on Catherine the Great. I thought it was fabulous.
I haven't always had great taste in clothes (she says immodestly). There was one Halloween when I got a costume pattern which had the possibility of either laces or ruffles. Of course, I wanted both, and of course it looked horrible. It didn't help that it was of stiff, slippery peach-colored satiny stuff. I wore it that once and never again.
Now that I am older, my mom does not make me dresses so much; we make them together. At Thanksgiving 1999, we made a lovely, floor-length black skirt, and over Christmas we made the spaghetti-strap top that goes with it. (It's a lovely ensemble, but unfortunately I have never had the opportunity to wear it, only the skirt.)
When I was fifteen, my family went to a Renaissance festival south of Dallas called Scarborough Faire, where I rented a costume. It was new, and I was the first person to wear it. It looked great on me, and I was hooked on Elizabethan costuming. (Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of that costume scanned, either. Sorry.)
The only problem was that I couldn't keep that costume, so I resolved to make one myself. That plan did not come to fruition until my senior year of high school. My mother and I spent the whole year, off and on, working on this project. It came out nicely, if I do say so myself!
I have this costume with me at Mount Holyoke, and I wear it occasionally to impress the heathens. :-)
I flatter myself that I am an international person. For a long time I have been interested in languages. I started studying French when I was nearly thirteen, and though I have doubts about the merits of my initial instruction in that language, it apparently hasn't hurt me that much.
Before I was born, my parents hosted an exchange student from Japan named Mitsuko. I heard about her when I was growing up, and I resolved to be an exchange student myself. After beginning to study French, I decided that I wanted to go to France, and I did. It was both a fun year and a hard year. I was fluent when I left France, but my ability has decreased in the years I've been gone, unfortunately.
I went back to France for spring break 2000, to visit my host parents. It was a wonderful trip. My French came back very easily.
I am also studying German. My German class last semester was a theater course; we did a pre-show in German for the theater department's production of the musical Cabaret in April. I think it was very good for my speaking ability, at least as far as pronunciation and intonation. I hope that when I go to Hamburg next fall, this experience will help me speak and understand better there.
Classes in Germany don't start until the middle of October, so I'll have prepatory language courses for the first six weeks in Germany, which will also help. I'm not planning on coming back to the United States over Christmas; I may go to France or Sweden or the UK. However, there is a two-month break from about February to April, at least part of which I may spend in the USA. My final return will be in late July, and then I'll start back at Mount Holyoke in September. What a year!
And music is always fun, too. I enjoy listening to classical music sometimes, but mostly I listen to alternative rock. I like a lot of things; however, I most definitely do not like sentimental, trite pop rock or rap or really heavy metal. I like things that are a little original, but of course it can't be too off the wall. Does that sound too picky? I suppose it is. Ah well, c'est la vie. In any case, here's a bit of a sampler of some of my favorites:
Music
The
Art of Noise
Cranberries
Sheryl
Crow
Cure
Dead
Can Dance
Enya
Garbage
Sarah
McLachlan
Moxy Früvous - Früvous
Dot Com and Frühead Dot Com
REM
Talking
Heads
10,000
Maniacs
They Might
Be Giants
Tripping
Daisy