Your pictures/faces

Wow, Percy, you sure have kept off any extra weight.Very thin.

OK, Laminatorcen, I finally have gotten around to poting a picture of myself.This was taken in December.

double postThis message has been edited by schrafinator, 02-03-2005 17:11 AM

Oh, how silver-tongued you are, especially for an orangutan.Let me just warn you, that was taken at a wedding. I spent a full 20 minutes on my appearance that day. I don't always look that good.Anyhow, thank you kindly, jar.

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Schraf, I think I`m in love

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Too bad we don't have any "audio avatars"; I have a thing for Aussie boy accents. When I asked my husband (who's sitting right across the room) if he minded if I flirted on line a bit with someone from Australia, he asked "Does he have a big knife?" I answered, "I hope so."heeheehee

Okay, okay, I can take a not-so-subtle hint that everybody in the world wants me to have a horse avatar.I'm actually pleased that the old avatar has been so popular.I dug up a new one. Her name was Saussaye ("France" was her stable name) and she was my all-time favorite school horse from college.She was not easy to ride and was what we liked to call in the business "hot"; meaning very excitable. She had a "Alpha mare" personality and was not a cuddly, sweet sort of horse; she was all business. She also was not particularly well-built for jumping because her but end was higher than her shoulders so it was hard for her to rock back onto her hindquarters to jump well. Once, when somebody else was riding her in a lesson, they let her get too fast and flat (very bad for her "downhill" build) to a solid jump and they flipped her.France and I got along great, though. She and I showed in Combined Training competitions for two years in row and placed fifth or better in every class we entered out of pretty big fields. Not bad for a little cross bred school horse and a student.She was sold to a classmate of mine a few years after we graduated (I think she was around 15) and a few years after that she got a pretty bad illness and had to be put down. There's a couple of foals by her out there somewhere.Once, when I came back to visit the college year or two after I graduated, I went into her stall to visit. She had just gotten fed her grain, so she had her face in her bucket, but I went over to her and spoke to her and started stroking her neck. She brought her head out of the bucket and stuck it between my arm and my side; the equivalent of a great big horse hug that I had only read about but never seen. She kept it here, chewing the whole time, for about 5 or 10 seconds, then went back to eating.That was a moment I will never, ever forget.Sorry for the rambling, although I hope you liked hearing about France.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 02-03-2005 22:49 AM

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What is that, like "real name" and "porn star name"? Or like T.S. Elliot's Book of Practical Cats, horses have multiple names?

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Lots of horses that go to shows or who are pure bred with registration papers have fancy, long names that would be silly to use for every day.Like if you owned a purebred Arabian horse, his registered/show name might be something like "Ibn Sahrouf Mustafa el Sanhedrin" which would probably reflect the names of his parents, but you wouldn't use that whole stupid thing around the barn. You'd give him a name like "Barney" or "Izzy", or "Skip" or something like that.

Yep, that's true.My mom breeds rough collies.

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In other theads you usually criticize the fact that guys seem to find only certain female "looks" attractive. I always assumed from your level of (my perception) anger that you felt outside of such a category or were somehow put down as being ugly.

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Well, you should have seen me in seventh grade.I was hideously homely. Lots of braces, lots of zits, skinny, boyish body, kind of a big nose, and really stupid hair. Lots of boys had no trouble telling me how funny looking and unattractive I was.Since I grew up in an unsupportive and basically unloving family environment, I was pretty much left to my own devices in the self esteem department, and it didn't go too well. I had sports and books to escape to and to help me feel worth something. I may not have been pretty, but I could hit home runs and catch almost every ball that came my way when I was playing soft ball.I was a really cute little girl in kindergarten, an OK-looking tomboy through middle school, but once puberty hit, I didn't look anywhere close to normal until I was about 17. I didn't consider myself attractive at all until I was in college, and it's only been in the last 10 years or so that I have ever considered myself pretty good looking.I know that my perception of myself for much of my younger years was probably somewhat inaccurate, but I've seen those school pictures. I think my asessment is pretty much on the mark.

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Now I am a bit mystified as you seem quite hot and within conventional "attractive parameters".

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Thanks, but I wasn't always like this, as I said above.

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Is it instead that you are upset that so many guys tell you how attractive you are on a daily basis and wish not so many did?[

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HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!I have never, ever in my life had "so many guys" tell me how attractive I am on a daily basis. I wish. This message has been edited by schrafinator, 02-04-2005 12:21 AM

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a saucy one eh? nice pic - is that from one of the shows?

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Yep, she was saucy all right. Thanks, I like that one a lot and have it framed in my home. It's not from a show, it's from a cross country jumping clinic.

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I took riding for a year in high school at a local stable. one day they put me on a 15 hand dappled gray stallion who took one look at me snorted his bit into his teeth and was three farms away before he slowed down (with me still on top and a plethora of school people in hot pursuit -- we were jumping real fences not the knock down ones, and things could have gotten ugly). for some reason they wouldn't let me ride that horse again.

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Hahahaha. I've had that happen to me a couple of times when I was retraining racehorses. Did you know that the harder you pull on the reins of a racehorse, the faster he will run? LOL!Did they teach you the pulley rein after you got run away with?

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Hey; no analysis! Pictures. Faces. Get with the program

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Shut UP, Sylas.He was telling me I was hot.That kind of analysis is perfectly fine.

LOL! thanks, that's funny.

Boy, I hear that story over and over again; someone rides for a while, has a bad experience, then never rides again and ends up being pretty scared of horses for the rest of their lives.You don't sound scared of them, actually, so your story is different, but it is a shame that anybody in the states can throw up a shingle and call themselves a riding teacher. There's recently (in the last 10 years or so) been a movement to certify instructors through various programs, but I don't think it's caught on much.

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Allowing kids (and adults) to fail is also crucial to their learning. A school that does not fail students that fail to learn does not teach.

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I agree, and I have a story to go with.I was once teaching at a riding school in NY state, and as I was new I often was given the students that nobody else wanted to teach. The lazy, the obstinant, the talentless, etc.Well, I was teaching private lessons to this one fellow, a man in his thirties with a wife and several kids, who said he wanted to learn to ride because he had this dream (red flag) of buying several horses and ponies for the family so they could all trail riding together. I can only imagine that the reason the rest of the family wasn't there was either because he thought he would teach them what he learned, thus saving some money, or that nobody else in his family was interested and this was his dream only.Anyway, he repeatedly told me, week after week, how athletic he was (used to play football) and how brave he was (used to jump out of airplanes in the service). The big problem with this guy was that he was completely uncoordinated and had no talent, whatsoever, for riding horses. He was also a chicken.We always put him on this great big half-draft Appaloosa named Jack who was bombproof and a little hard for beginners to get going (a good thing), but which I (and other more experienced students) could walk, trot, and canter all over the place with no problem because we knew the "buttons" to push.So, week after week, this man couldn't even keep Jack trotting around a single circle. He just couldn't feel or anticipate when Jack was slowing down or about to poop out on him, and wasn't coordinated enough to do the rhythmic "hug-release-hug-release" with his legs while posting or sitting Jacks very comfortable trot.The icing on the cake with him was that every singe week, he nagged me about when he would start to learn to jump. Even though I told him that he would have to learn to keep Jack trotting through at least several circles in a row, plus keep Jack trotting and keep his own balance through trotting poles, he kept asking over and over again.One week, there came into the stable a very sweet little horse that we thought would be a perfect family horse for this man, so he had his lesson on it. This horse was a little bit springier mover than Jack, but a much smaller horse. He also was a little easier to get and keep going, so the man was doing OK at first. This little horse knew how to jump, so we set up some trotting poles so this fellow could practice those. I told him that the horse would be a bit bouncier through the poles than Jack and to expect to absorb more spring. Well, this guy got up into his jumping position, holding on to some mane with both hands, pointed that little horse to go through the 4 or 5 trotting poles I had set up, and the horse carried him perfectly through those poles, lowering his head slightly, trotted with great lift and springiness through the poles, never changing his rhythm.This "athletic, brave" rider, immediately upon feeling the bigger bounce, stiffened all of his joints and very nearly was bounced right off the horse. That's right, he nearly fell off!I was SO PLEASED that this happened, because maybe, just maybe, he would now realize that he needed to master the fundamentals before trying to do anything advanced like jumping, because it's the fundamentals that keep you safe when doing the more advanced stuff. ...and that's exactly what I told him.After that lessonHe said he was going on vacation and would call us to schedule another lesson when he got back.We never saw him again.

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Besides, what are the minimum requirements for calling yourself a scientist anyways?

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A professional scientist?I would say that you should regularly test theory to call yourself a professional scientist.