9 down, 1 to go

Ran the Rock 'n' Roll San Antonio over the weekend. Nice city, though I wasn't crazy about the race. Met a very cool woman named Tia Harrison on the plane back. She is from Chicago, working on 50 state marathons and has some very nifty fund raising ideas. She has also won a woman manager of the year award and runs a business with her husband and has 3 kids who all run too! Running, like riding, is a fun way to add to your life community.

Finn continues to do well. He appears to have grown a bit, was pretty butt high for a while, but looks more even now. Had a fun hill work yesterday, though the gnats were out, leading to the "dolphin-canter" up the first hill (one buck, one canter stride - feels like you might imagine riding a dolphin would). Keebler is settled in Michigan with Lynn Cronin. Hard to imagine a better place for him and she seems to be enjoying him, and totally onto dealing with his, as she says, "8 year old boy antics" I look forward to hearing about their progress. Meanwhile, in Florida, Hilda has put Isabelle back into work. We're not sure how thrilled she is about that (Belle, not Hilda), but I'm looking forward to eventing her along with Finn in the winter. Almost time to start looking at schedules. I'll be down there this weekend, so will get to make plans with Hilda and ride the girl. Wish I had unlimited time and money as there are so many really cool horses available right now. It would be fun to buy 4 and just ride for a year (assuming that unlimited time and money thing)

Lottsa

The SMDM meeting was held in Hollywood October 17-22. I am now a member of the board, which is a huge honor and affords opportunities to be even more involved. We also got to visit the family while in Southern California.

I attended my Stanford 25th reunion October 23-25th. It was great seeing the campus and catching up with some classmates and faculty members. If I can figure out how to get photos from my phone to my computer, I will add a couple.

Finn continues to improve. His flatwork is getting very good and moderately consistent. Better in the indoor, where there is less that he wants to lift his head up to look at, but he remains unphased by all kinds of things, including the totally Hitcockian birds that hang by the hundreds in the trees beside the arena and then on some unknown signal, simultaneously fly across the arena into some other tree. We had a lesson Saturday and he ended up jumping through a little grid (2 trot poles, cross-rail, one stride to rail, bounce to plank vertical, two strides to small vertical) perfectly multiple times, putting all of his fee down correctly each time, so that was exciting.

Too much rain, but love the lighter mornings now.

Expecting the Phillies to pull off the miracle, but glad that it is also football season and the Eagles seem to have pulled it together following the totally embarrassing loss to Oakland.

Two more half marathons to finish out the year.