Hey everyone!

I know it’s been a while and I kinda disappeared off the face of the earth, but I finally got around to starting up my own blog.  This will be the last time I take up any space on the lovely Horse Farm Diaries, but I just wanted to update anyone who might be interested in what I’m up to.  If you get the urge, feel free to check out my blog at www.aliontheloose.blogspot.com , I would love to hear from you.

Lori, thanks so much for the chance to post on your blog.  And everyone else back home, know that I’m missing all my fellow barn rats, and I look forward to seeing you guys this summer!

Tuesday, September 23

Just a few random pictures today, in honor of Haley’s randomness, of course.

You can’t quite tell what this is, but basically I did my homework in a willow tree the other day.  The weather has been just amazing and I can’t bear to spend time indoors.

The flora was lovely too.

I liked the shadow on this one, even though you can’t see the flower very well.

This is Rand hall, where the architects do their drafting.  I don’t know any architects.  Neither does anyone else.  As far as we can work out, they just live in Rand.  The signs up in the windows say things like, “Help!” “What am I doing here?” and “Someone get me coffee!”

Ihad work again today, and it didn’t leave me nearly so exhausted.  Probably because I can drive the tractor now, so I don’t just shovel all day long.  I also accidentally recruited one of my floor mates to work with me.  She used to ride and was in love with it, but because of an eye defect she can’t ride anymore.  Apparently excessive bouncing could cause her retinas to tear.  Ouch.  But she loves being around horses so much that when I mentioned my new job, she started jumping up and down she was so excited at the prospect of working there.  Well, all but the early mornings.

Here’s the polo ponies all out in the arena.  The really interesting picture of course would be them all running up the aisle to get to the arena, but I’m actually supposed to be doing stuff during all that.  I just snapped this one on my way out.  I think a new employee who stood around taking pictures like she had never seen a horse before might be a little odd…  I’ll wait until they know me better.  Well, until they know me well enough to know I’m a different type of odd.

Speaking of odd…  My roommate got her new sleeping bag in the mail the other day, and was so excited she had to try it out.  She’s going on a rock climbing trip with the Cornell Outing Club soon and needed to be prepared.  She said it was so warm she wanted to use it in the dorm– she’s a Californian, and not so used to the cold.  I’m a little worried about her, because it’s hardly chilly yet and she’s been sleeping in long underwear, fleece, and a down comforter.  Hope she toughens up before real winter hits.

Right now, though, it’s hard to imagine more perfect weather.

Well, work has kept me crazy busy these last few days– busy and sleep deprived.  I do love being around the horses again, but I really prefer being on them to cleaning up behind them.  Ah well.  I did manage to snap a few pictures.

The sky this “morning” as I was walking to the bus stop.  Chuck and Lori, I totally sympathize.  It is quite difficult to function properly so early, and with so little sleep.  Not to mention when I have no idea what is going on, or which horse is which, or who gets what supplement.  Yeah.

These are some of the polo ponies.  Yeah, only some.  There are 30 polo ponies and 30 lesson horses in the big barn, plus the 20 or so in the boarder barn.  The ones in the big barn are mostly in these tie stalls, which we clean out using something that looks like the front of a snow plow on the handle of a shovel.  You basically just push all the bedding into the middle of the aisle, where the tractor scoops it up.  I really meant to take a picture of the tractor, this giant classic green John Deer, because I got to drive it today.  It was very exciting

I was trying to take pictures of all the buildings that I have my classes in, but I missed one.  Here’s what I have, and I’ll add the rest later.

I’ve already posted this picture, but here it is again.  This is McGraw Hall, where I have my writing seminar.  It’s a really small class, which is nice because we actually get to have real discussion.  I also really like that my professor is a novelist.  I’ve never actually talked face to face with someone who has published books, and it’s interesting to here from him.

This is Baker Hall, which you have to walk up an ungodly amount of stairs to get to, plus another couple flights because of course my class couldn’t be on the first floor.  I have my linguistics lecture in here, which I really like.  It’s “the science of language,” whatever that means.  I’m still figuring it out.  Right now we’re learning the phonetic alphabet, but I’m not really sure what we’re going to do with that.  My professor is really nice though, she’s like everybody’s grandma.

Bailey Hall houses my psychology class, which is the largest lecture class in the country at 1,500 people.  The professor is James Maas, who coined the term “power sleep,” so he’s really well known, which I guess is why his class got so huge.  The first day, all the seats were full and there were another 200 people in the lobby hoping to get into the class.  It was kinda crazy.

This is Uris.  Because not all buildings at Cornell can be pretty.  This is where I have my macro economics class, which I’ve been trying really hard not to sleep through, because so far we’ve only covered material I already learned in high school.  Supposedly we’re going to go a lot further into the math part than what I did last year, and I really hope so because it’s starting to bore me.

I just thought this was funny.  In between classes, the walkways are just as busy as my high school halls.  A lot prettier, though.

So that’s what I’ve been up to.  I have tree climbing again tomorrow, and I will try to take more pictures, since it’s supposed to be a beautiful day.

September 14th, 2008 (from Cornell)

Thanks to all for the happy birthday wishes!  Chuck and Lori, the new horsey cam is great, and I loved the Cowboy and Faline pictures.  Knowing my horse, I can just see how that went.  I have a few more to add, that my aunt sent me with my birthday gift.

Cowboy of course was bored with his hat.  What’s the fun in this?

Now Faline’s reaction plays out like a flip book:

She sniffs, not sure…

She’s more nervous, with her “freak out” face on…

Full freak out: hat goes flying, mom gets rope burn.  Well, thanks for the birthday wishes guys!  I know that was a lot of effort.

Of course, my other pets had to send their birthday wishes too!

My kitty, looking comically disgruntled.

And Muffin, who of course would much rather play hat than wear the hat.

Well, my birthday wasn’t quite the same without the high-stress showing situation and severe lack of sleep, but all in all, it was still a good one.  Some of the girls on my floor surprised me with cheesecake, which I thought was quite appropriate.  Other than that, I pretty much just slept in, went to brunch, and then tried to accomplish some homework in between calls and texts from various well wishers.  Again, thanks to all.  It’s so nice to feel loved

I was totally cheering for you all back here, wearing my amazingly appropriate “State” shirt.  (go team!)  I here you’re all doing me proud.  I’m still waiting for a final update call.

So I understand I have been thoroughly scolded for slacking off these past few days.  My apologies.  No, I did not get on the equestrian team.  But I did get a job out at the equestrian center: feeding, turnout, and stalls.  And the really good news is that this job will earn me enough money to take lessons from the equestrian team coach, if there’s a time where me, the coach, and a horse are all free.  I know you all know how those scheduling things go…  But the idea is that if I choose to try out again, I will probably have a better shot after learning from the coach, and if nothing else, I will get lessons from a guy who really knows his stuff.

No theme for the pictures today, just random.

Sidewalk chalk is a popular method of communication.  Pictured here are ads for an a cappella choir, the glow sticking club, and a Korean percussion group.  They pretty much have every club you could ever imagine here, including a Jewish scuba diving club called Scubbie Jew.  I thought that one was pretty clever.

This was right after our class picture, which was taken on libe slope.  We all sat on the steepest part of the hill and spelled out 2012.  It took forever (and of course it happened to be ridiculously hot), so when they finally told us we were done there was a mad stampede up the hill, which was rather dangerous.  Made a good picture though.

See if you can tell me what this is, or maybe more importantly, why was it spray painted on the side of a mailbox?  A cowboy on a bucking unicorn??  That was my best guess.

This is basically the prettiest library ever.  The book stacks go up 3 floors, with crazy spiral staircases and walkways.  It was A.D. White’s (founder of Cornell) personal reading room and book collection.  I only took one picture, because the atmosphere in there is insanely quiet, and I was getting lots of dirty looks from my camera’s bleeping.  Why can’t you put a camera on silent?

This would be Cowboy and Faline (if you can’t see their name tags).  They came recently for me in a lovely package from Katie, who I taught lessons to.  Now they hang out on my desk.  The cookies that came with them, however, are long gone.  Katie, if you’re reading, thanks so much for the thoughtful package!

Sadly I have no pictures for my last exciting adventure; my tree climbing gym class started yesterday.  Yeah, that’s right, tree climbing.  The COE, Cornell Outdoor Education, is a student run group that creates and leads the outdoorsy gym classes like rock climbing and hiking and apparently, tree climbing.  We will eventually be able to get up into trees that are too high to reach using belay ropes, then move from one tree to another without touching the ground, and our final class is an overnight in a tree.  Pretty crazy stuff.

The reason I have no pictures is because it was pouring rain, so I didn’t want to risk my camera, but apparently risking my life 50 feet up in very slippery trees was no problem.  We hiked out to some really tall sycamores that we strung belay ropes through.  Then we basically took turns climbing, 2 people per tree, for hours.  It was really fun, and now I am amazingly sore (the climbs are a little harder on us short people).  Because this is a long gym class, they’re required to serve us snack.  I was expecting granola bars or juice boxes or something, but no.  We had hot coco, french bread, grapes, and brie.  What a snack.

I guess when they say you can take any class at Cornell, they really mean it.

Hello from the main page!  Lori is being kind enough to let me post here so that you guys can comment if you want.  Thanks Lori!

Tuesday, September 9th

Yesterday I walked down into the gorge, and although the pictures hardly do justice, I think I got some good ones.

The stairs going into the gorge were insanely steep– like, halfway between a ladder and stairs.  That’s my friend from high school, Steph, at the top.  She and her brother are on their way to Dartmouth to start school, and they stopped to visit me and Albert, who also went to my high school and now goes to Cornell with me.  Phew.  Was that confusing enough?

Little waterfalls run down the sides of the gorge at places to join the main river.

Here’s another one.

The river is really shallow here, and their are several low waterfalls.

We walked around in the shallows, stepping up some of the smaller waterfalls.  Albert tried to keep his balance to save his camera.  Don’t worry, nobody fell in.

There are places around the banks that you can see from bridges above, and people always spell out words or initials in stones.  Since we were all Wisconsinites, we wrote out WI.

We walked out of the gorge on the other side, so we crossed the suspension bridge (which my mom would have hated).  Its a little unnerving, because the bridge sways as you walk across.

The view was priceless, though.  Between the two cliffs, you can just see the town of Ithaca in the distance, and the sun starting to set behind that.

Well, the wait for hearing about the equestrian team seems longer and longer.  I don’t know if I mentioned before, but my odds aren’t very good: 52 girls trying for 12 slots.  I can always try out again next year if I don’t make it, but still.

I suppose everyone back home is madly preparing for state.  I will definitely be routing for you from here.  I’m hoping Maddy will be nice enough to bring her computer so that I can say good luck to everyone through video chat.

My homework is calling me…

Hi everyone,

I know you’re all anxious to be writing back to Ali. Until we figure out a better way, I’m going to ask Ali to post to the main blog rather than on a page. So Ali, if you’re reading this, instead of Write a Page, go to Write a Post. That way people can get back to you. Under “Categories” in the post (scroll down below tags), make sure Ali is checked and then all your posts will be in one category if someone wants to read all of them.

Haley, any interest in posting as well? We would love to hear from you too.

Lori