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Yesterday Lou finally received her wedding dress. She has been fretting about this for a while, perhaps the last six months, and the news was -broadly - good. The dress is apparently stunning and she will look like a barefoot princess on our wedding day. The only slight problem is that due to it having been sent over from america, where they do things differently, it is a little smaller than we expected. Not a lot smaller, but Lou has to make a conscious choice between doing it up and breathing. The practical outcome of this is that we are about to become a living experiment in applied weight-loss. I am joining in because I'm a little porky myself and also because it would be mean to eat nice things in front of Lou if she is busy being good. My mum had a copy of "The 7 Day Diet" and we are embarking on that. We've done the shopping and made the soups so for the next week we shall be cheerfully detoxifying ourselves and preparing for a married live of svelte slimmitude.
An important part of attaining health, fitness and happiness is of course the exercise you take and today's exercise quotient was largely related to riding Joe. Although we had the saddle and other tack with us, Lou felt it would be a valuable exercise for me to do some bareback work - practicing getting the feel of Joe's movement without the props of saddle and stirrups. If you have never ridden a horse bareback it is a very strange feeling- without a saddle you can feel a lot more of the way their body moves. It also makes them feel exceptionally wide and I safely expect to be unable to walk tomorrow. In fact I probably won't be able to walk normally until about Wednesday. An interesting exercise we were working on this evening is to ride bareback on a lead and just close your eyes and consider your balance. For some reason, with my eyes shut my balance seems to wander off to one side or the other with only the slightest movement from Joe. Going round a corner, even at a slow walk, with my eyes closed I find the centripedal force enough to unbalance me. With my eyes open I don't even feel it.
In the post today I received my preview copy of our newly recorded songs. It's sounding really good, now I've got over the hyper-critical first listen, and I'm looking forward to being able to get the CD out where people can hear it. This is the first recording project of this type I have ever been part of from start to finish and the whole thing sounds great. I keep noticing little musical flourishes that I don't normally get to hear because I'm concentrating on what I'm doing or the mix isn't quite right and it makes me very proud to be part of such an amazing selection of musicians.
An important part of attaining health, fitness and happiness is of course the exercise you take and today's exercise quotient was largely related to riding Joe. Although we had the saddle and other tack with us, Lou felt it would be a valuable exercise for me to do some bareback work - practicing getting the feel of Joe's movement without the props of saddle and stirrups. If you have never ridden a horse bareback it is a very strange feeling- without a saddle you can feel a lot more of the way their body moves. It also makes them feel exceptionally wide and I safely expect to be unable to walk tomorrow. In fact I probably won't be able to walk normally until about Wednesday. An interesting exercise we were working on this evening is to ride bareback on a lead and just close your eyes and consider your balance. For some reason, with my eyes shut my balance seems to wander off to one side or the other with only the slightest movement from Joe. Going round a corner, even at a slow walk, with my eyes closed I find the centripedal force enough to unbalance me. With my eyes open I don't even feel it.
In the post today I received my preview copy of our newly recorded songs. It's sounding really good, now I've got over the hyper-critical first listen, and I'm looking forward to being able to get the CD out where people can hear it. This is the first recording project of this type I have ever been part of from start to finish and the whole thing sounds great. I keep noticing little musical flourishes that I don't normally get to hear because I'm concentrating on what I'm doing or the mix isn't quite right and it makes me very proud to be part of such an amazing selection of musicians.
