I Made It!

Whew. That was a rough finals week.

I made it out alive, though. No grades are up yet, but it's the usual situation - I'm not 100% sure I got straight A's, but it's pretty likely. I didn't end the term as strong as I would usually prefer to...in fact, I ran up against pretty much all the deadlines and didn't put as much time into studying/final projects as I would like to. But that's the way it goes sometimes! All I can do is work to be better next term. (And hope I pulled off my A's.)

McKinna is doing well. I've recently discovered that the outdoor arena footing situation has improved to the extent that I'm comfortable riding out there! It had been a little deep over the winter. It's still deep-ish, but not bad, and the arena is big enough that I can do lots of canter work, so hooray for that. My mom and I had a lovely ride this morning in a brief window of sunshine, and then the rest of the day was rain/hail/general nastiness.

 Mom having a very nice ride

I'm still working on recovering from the sleep deprivation and mental tiredness of last week, so you'll have to pardon the short post.

Fun fact: today we went to the horse evolution exhibit at the Museum of Natural and Cultural History. Lots of cool stuff there. Also, they have a station where you can put your hands into knitted horse feet (!!!!!) from early, three-toed ponies all the way up through modern Equus caballus, and test them out on different "grounds" from soft, squishy forest to hard, flat grasslands. So cool. The one where your fingers are all spread out in the toes feels very nice on the squishy stuff but weak on the hard ground, while a hoof (which only has enough room for one finger) feels unsteady on squish but awesome on hard ground. Way cool.

Man, I am SO glad the term is over. It's slowly sinking in, but it always takes a couple days for me to decompress. The thing I'm most excited about is finally getting my brainspace back to myself. I can use my mind to think about things I actually care about (thesis research! fossils! ponies! grad schools! thesis research!) rather than things I don't want to do (projects projects projects why are there so many projects).

Look, we can canter!

Right, so. Now that I'm free, you expect a quasi-regular posting schedule again, and by quasi-regular I mean no semblance of regularity except that P(1 post/week) > 0.5.