(no subject)

So far things are going as smoothly as they possibly can, in large part because of all of you, and because the Citibank people near my office are actually nice and helpful. I have to make some phone calls, and may have to return to the branch later today, and live off quarters until possibly Monday, but it's getting done.

The Germans have peripherally optimistic news as well, but because things are always vague and peripheral here, I do not take them seriously, and do not intend to rely on these reassurances. I will allow people to help me, and if I have the good fortune to be able to pay them back before I leave for my trip, so be it -- postcards all around.

These things said, I couldn't eat yesterday, stayed up too late, and have almost fainted three times this morning.

the other things going on

A brief summary of the rest of my life outside of the stress --

Amazing riding lesson the other day (which is indirectly how one component of the stress came to light). I rode Sham who is a very different horse from Benny. He's not as smart (but he's not dumb), and as such he's less impatient with me as an unexperienced rider. He's a real interesting guy, because I've been told he's very high spirited in the outside rings, fairly well behaved on trails (he's good at sensing beginner riders and is nice to them), and crazy patient on the inside ring. Benny won't stand still once we get him into the ring (fun for mounting oh yes -- the mounting block offends him... he must walk away from it), and it's frustrating. Sham does not move a milimeter until we tell him too, and when he trots, he seems insanely speedy because he's a bigger horse and his strides are huge. ALso he has a bad side that's got some stiffness, and when trotting in the direction that affects that, he sort of has to do this little leap to get into the trot, which is insanely alarming to me.

That said -- did more trot than I ever had before and was able to post a bit. We're still in the Western saddle, and my instructor has him on a lead line, but this is a huge chunk of progress for me.

The other item of note is that I've just contacted an LJ'er I don't know about using something they wrote as a performance piece I want to submit to a festival here in the city. I'm really excited about it, and hope it pans out.

Finally, it looks like I'll be doing a play reading next week. Nothing huge (and nothing I can invite you to), it's for a playwright who is at the stage of needing to hear the piece outloud, but it's something to do, which is fantastic.

I also had to turn down an audition for a Columbia grad film today because I'll be in Australia during filming.