O Captain! my Captain!

Carrie wanted to introduce Shane to a new horse today, Captain.

Captain is the new Korra. 

Korra had started to become more finnicky and even aggressive whenever Carrie worked with her. On several different occasions, Korra threatened to charge on the lunge and narrowly missed with a kick once when Carrie was trying to pick her hooves. Her behavior was consistent with a horse who had been drugged for a long time to be calm who was slowly going through withdrawal. We never had her blood checked when we bought her (just a vet check), so there's no way to be sure. 

However, Carrie rides for fun and not for work. Horses are large and can do some serious damage, so she made the difficult decision to re-home Korra rather than put herself at risk.

Captain is the new guy. He's young, but already social and has gone for a trail ride up a mountain. He's the most demonstratively appreciative horse I've seen when it comes to scratching.  

Shane was interested until he found a rope he could swing from. 

Here's how it went: "Who's this?" --> "I miss Korra" sad face --> smiles and pets new horse ---> "Can I swing from that?"

At least everybody was happy. I drove Shane to TKD after a bit, so Carrie could ride without her little monkey spooking the horses to stampede.

Korra Thoughts

I believe God has a sense of humor.

I feel like I see a glimpse of it whenever something incredibly ironic happens.

Carrie was working, so I had to DVR Korra. After her riding lessons, she came home to watch with me. My wife was on the edge of her seat the whole time. Then, right at the very end, the recording stopped. It took a second to register. Carrie's eyes grew wide and she yelled out a "NOOOOOO" as I started cracking up. There could only have been a few moments left, but it cut out at such a cliff hanger. Triply so, because it was about to resolve something that brought my wife to tears an episode prior.

The situation was so ironic, I couldn't stop laughing. This didn't make me popular with my wife, btw. She spent several hours trying to watch the last few seconds online and probably collected several dozen different malwares in the process (Carrie couldn't bear the thought of waiting until Nick posted the show legitimately a day or two later, ha ha).

Without any spoilers, I wanted to post a few thoughts on Korra.

1) Loved it! I'm looking forward to season 2.

2) That said, I prefer endings where there are hints of the truth throughout. Whenever there is a twist, but there is nothing to foreshadow the twist it feels a little weak to me. I love the effect of pulling off a twist and watching people's reactions as previous information clicks in to place. "How did I not see it!?!?" To me, that's the mark of a brilliant twist.

3) My wife will forever be a fan-girl. There were tears in her eyes at the end of one episode (as I mentioned earlier). She gets so into these things that it makes it more fun for me, as well.  Excitement can be contagious.

4) They could make a great game out of this world. RPG, action, paper and pencil, computer/console...., but I bet they won't. Oh, I'm not doubting they'll make a game. I just bet it won't be a great one.

Korra Reaction

It's good to have Carrie home again. We went for a long walk with the boy and marveled at the different style of houses and update decisions and found a path to a park. I really like this neighborhood.

We also watched Saturday's Korra episode. I wasn't allowed to watch it since Carrie was out of town. It was an emotional one. Without giving away any spoilers, my wife finished the episode with tears in her eyes.

I bet next week's season finale is going to rock.

Home Again

We're here.

There's still 2,000 and 1 things to be done, but our whole family is home at last. Grandma drove Shane up to visit and he brought a few new words with him ("Uh Oh!").

I'd write more, but I'm about to go clean up and unpack again. Carrie and I took a short break to watch Korra, and after she went to bed I went on a quick drive around the neighborhood to see where all the noise was coming from. Apparently, the local high school is in a state tournament and the sound carries really far. It's not so much that I'm bothered by it, as I'm really looking to figure out the lay of the land. Every area has its own idiosynchracies and figuring them out is half the fun (or challenge if it's a not so pleasant surprise).

I really like the feel of this house. Who knows? Maybe we won't move in 5 years and this could be our final destination. For now, I just need to unpack enough that I feel like I'm living in a house and not a box fort. (Not that box forts aren't cool, but there's too much stuff in my boxes to crawl through.)

Carrie's Korra Predictions #501337

During the latest episode of Korra, there is a quick radio snippet promoting "Cabbage Corp, a technology leader for the past 50 years." I can't recall the exact wording, because my wife has only made me watch it three times. Anyway, the annoucement happens in the very beginning of the episode when the Fire Ferrets are practicing for the tournament.

I laughed. In the first Avatar, there is a cabbage salesman that suffers a mishap almost every time you see him. I thought the radio ad was a nice hidden homage to one of the running jokes of the original series.

My wife, had a different take. "What if the cabbage man is helping the Equalists!??!?"

Fact: The cabbage man got his cabbage cart smashed repeatedly by benders.

Extension: He could've been pretty pissed off. Also, the Equalists used some new tech in the episode. Someone had to design it.

Wife's Theory: The Cabbage Corp has something to do with the Equalist agenda.

So, there you have it. Cabbage Corp commercial: a quick homage to a running joke from the original series, or a hidden bit of foreshadowing of things to come?

New Korra Conspiracy Theory

My wife sent me this email out of the blue a few days ago:

"If [Amon] truly is missing his face, he could have made a deal with Ko, the face stealer, for the power to remove bending. But, he still has his eyes...."

One of the things I love about my wife is how passionate she gets about things. We have a Potato GlaDOS on a shelf, and a Bazinga! shirt in her closet. Can you tell how much she loves her TV? I think she's still holding to her first prediction about Amon being Aang's son, but I didn't doublecheck before I wrote this.

I'm the one who started her on the whole Avatar binge. During Snowmaggedon, I showed her the original series. We watched several episodes together and then I went outside to shovel out the cars. I ended up helping out several of the neighbors and spent more time outside than planned. Naively, I assumed my wife would wait for me to come back to watch further into the series. Carrie was 8 more episodes in when I finally got done. I didn't want to watch things out of order and she didn't want to wait for me to catch up.

She finished all three seasons by the end of the next day.

Today's a new episode day for Korra and I am prohibited from watching it before Carrie gets home from work. Can you see the irony?

Korra Prediction

My wife is calling it: Amon is really Aang's non-bender son Bumi (or however you spell it.)

Apparently, I'm unobservant. I didn't realize different benders had different colored eyes based on what their element is. Carrie said she thought Amon had grey eyes on a close-up, and she made her prediction.

My wife is normally pretty impressive with this sort of thing, so I'm not betting against her.