Winter's Last Hurrah?

It's spring!

This is what the first day of it looked like here:

It snowed big, wet clumps of snowflakes all afternoon.

=^[ 

It hasn't snowed much since, though. We're happily enjoying some sunshine today. Melt, you ugly snow piles! Melt!

Winter seems to be clinging on in our TV program choices this weekend too. Instead of watching NCAA men's basketball like many are, we've been watching the World Figure Skating Championships in Japan. We find it exceedingly more entertaining. 

So far we've caught some ice dancing and women's figure skating, and we're hoping to see men's figure skating tonight. In general, the ice dancing outfits seemed gaudier and more risqué than the figure skating outfits this time around. 

I have most appreciated the figure skating of the Japanese women so far. Yeah, the Russian women seemed pretty much flawless and are amazing at the difficult, fancy jumps. I definitely preferred the more artistic, heart-felt style and music choices of the Japanese. It's a shame they didn't make it onto the podium.

Rika Kihira, the Japanese skater who came in 4th

Unrelated side-note: Behold! Pac-Man characters among all the boring ads on the rink walls! =) 

I hope the cute bunnies, Rika, and the ghosties help make up for the past-its-prime snow's ugliness, but to be sure, I will now show you some especially good-looking horses we encountered on HI2 this week.

Here is a sooty buckskin sabino wild Morab that UV and Bethany fluted on Friday afternoon:

Wow! Had her personality label been more interesting, she'd have gone to our Millennium Fields.

Bethany also noticed two especially cool horses in the livery that she wanted me to share:

Here is what his avatar would look like:

Here is what her avatar would look like:

Good thing for our horse slots that we don't buy horses solely based on looks. We're struggling lately as it is, and the most recent (temporary) slot filler is my doing.

This guy was going to the foreign bidder for a measly $4600. =( I couldn't let it happen.

Somebody's bound to want this sturdy, +6/6, marking-less black stallion. I've wanted a horse with this persona since we started playing the game (who wouldn't, right?), but so far no such luck. It's a shame his stats only add up to +47. I'm not sure I'll be able to put him in our ranch store, but maybe Lily will have the strength of will to do it. *Tears self away and goes to pet the new Noriker.*

I've named him Nifty. <3 Doesn't he look awesome in blue and red?

Felicity's Lucky Day

Even though the calendar says March, it felt more like January here this week. Being stuck inside meant a little more HI2 time for us than usual. We spent some time out in the mountains, but no wild horses ever crossed our path. It wasn't until we were back that Bethany and Halcyon fluted our one noteworthy horse of the week, this brown Shire stallion with awesome dapples:

He looks like a lighter, smaller, male version of Lily's Ganache:

His stats only add up to +57, though, so no fifth Shire in the herd. That's just as well, considering what else happened this week.

Now that Bethany has found her Coquina at long last, she doesn't have as much reason to livery stalk anymore. The habit dies hard, though. She was in there on Friday afternoon clicking through the equines, admiring the artwork and checking for any horses surrendered with great stats.

Halfway through the alphabet, she found this guy:

Whoa! We haven't seen a maxed +6/6 horse in the livery in quite some time!

It wasn't just the one either! A little farther down the list was this oddly spotted (and very cool) Missouri Fox Trotter stallion:

He has a cool personality too. Unsurprisingly, he didn't last long in the livery.

Even farther down was a third, this Selle Francais:

It makes me chuckle to see a Selle with this personality, since the Selle artwork has always seemed a bit goofy to me. From the horse's name, I'm guessing her former owner had similar feelings. :^)

In between the MFT and Selle alphabetically was yet another noteworthy horse. This one wasn't +6/6 or maxed, but he had the highest stats of the lot.

And he's a bay leopard!!! <3

We have 3 leopard appaloosas in the herd, all of them Felicity's: Xenon the chestnut leopard POA, Herbie the cremello leopard Nez Perce, and Kiwi the black leopard Bashkir Curly. No bays.

Bethany showed him to Felicity, and you can probably guess what happened next...

the white tail... XD

It's been a couple of years now, but we remember having a buddy once who really wanted a leopard appaloosa Noriker. She wouldn't have wanted this guy, though, because she was set on one with the bolder leopard appaloosa spotting pattern. Here's an example from the BBB:

Hmm, I get it, but I am a big fan of them both. :^)

I took over playing once we were all done admiring the shiny new Noriker. He's so cool that Lily didn't protest. Much.

While I was auctioning a couple of low-stat wilds, I noticed a very familiar horse also up for auction. Somebody else had adopted the Selle just to make money auctioning her to the foreign bidder. :(

I wished I hadn't noticed. It bummed me out. But, I was good and left the auction house.

As time went on, I couldn't stop thinking about the Marwari. Somebody else (maybe the same somebody) was bound to repeat the adopt-auction thing with him if they noticed him. I checked back a couple of times, and he was always still there.

In the end, I lost the battle with my willpower.

Aw, what a handsome pale dun avatar!

Since his stats don't make the +80 cutoff, I suppose we shouldn't keep him. We don't have a Marwari in the herd, though, and he's such a nice one... I guess we'll have to wait and see how the next few months pan out with wilds and decide then. At any rate, it's fun having him around for now. I thought the poor guy deserved a more orthodox name (I know Girls/Girls/Boys is a popular song and all, but it's not our taste as a horse name), so we're calling him Sandstorm. <3