the humanoid

Want to contact me?  So you don’t have to get to the bottom of the canned meat product below you can email me at confetti dot airplane at gmail dot com.

I rode as a kid, kindof. I had family with a ranch, and my aunt would let us pack around on her ponies when she was there.  My parents packed my sister and me off to horse riding camp for a week at a time a few summers, to get rid of us and satisfy my constant nagging for riding lessons.

A long, long time ago

I came to riding properly as an adult, after I got a huge tax return back one year and was like “wait, I could spend this money on riding lessons!”  And I did. And I liked it.  After a year of riding in my university’s program, they cancelled it due to budget cuts, and I moved to my current trainer’s barn, and I leased a succession of her horses, who all taught me a lot.

Quincy was the perfect partner for being silly…

Or taking me XC schooling for the first time…

To teach me not to jump ahead…

That silly horses were really fun…

To take dressage seriously.

Then I went to live in Africa for a while, to do my thesis research.  I lived in Kenya for six months.

Sunrise over Mt. Kenya

And hung out with these guys every day.

Saidia inspects her reflection in the camera.

Saidia and Amahirwe playing.

My beautiful, mischevious, devil-in-a-chimp-suit, Jane.

Eva plays with Angela.

And these guys.

I saw this little lady enter the world.

I loved every second.  I missed riding, but there was lots to distract me.

I came home for two months and tortured myself taking intermittent lessons at the barn.  I got dumped twice in one lesson at the same jump. I loved it.

Then I went to live in Congo for six months.  I played with chimps every day again (my photos are behind a privacy wall, but I’m okay with that).  I got to do amazing, incredible, wonderful things beside my research!  Like have Jane Goodall live in my house for a week.

And help return this sweet, wonderful chimpanzee Wounda to her forest home on an Island, hopefully to live in the real forest some day…

And then I came home to my Jellyfish (who is perfection) and boyfriend and my family.

And I got a kitten. At a tack store!

And of course, Murray.

Who teaches me so much.

So I ride and I play with my kitten and I work on my thesis, and I think about going back to Africa.  It’s hard, having your heart live in two places.  But with any luck, I’ll get to work in Africa and in the US, and get everything I want.