Virtual Brush Box

Awareness of the outside world. Bham Wiki: Hoover Country Club.

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Awards Banquet
American Saddlebred Horse Association of Alabama
Hoover Country Club
Birmingham AL USA
20 January 2024

Me
Academy Driving – 1st of 1
Academy Showmanship – 3rd of 3
Academy Equitation – 3rd of 3

Stepping Stone Farm
High Point Academy Rider, Adult (not me, person in Walk Trot)
High Point Performance Rider, Junior
High Point Performance Barn

“”Am I looking for two local shows in order to scramble onto the bottom of the points ladder of the Adult Academy division so that I have somewhere amusing to go in the depths of January?” [Lesson Thoughts, August 2023]

“The plan was to ride in three shows … If I had come up with this plan earlier, I could have done a smaller fun show rather than one of the big shows.” [The Red Queen Returns, Show Report, Alabama Charity Championship Horse Show 2023]

Did I go to Alabama Charity as a third show to qualify for year-end in driving? Absolutely. Shows usually have only one driving class. I needed three classes; therefore I needed three shows. What if there hadn’t been a year-end carrot? I would have talked myself out of going. The labor and expense is not insignificant, even with someone else taking care of the horse. I’m glad I went. So, I’m glad the lovely, fluffy, year-end carrot was there to lure me in.

Academy Driving was the first division announced, so they didn’t have the slide show going. [A Last Look Back at 2023, Driving photo from here]

Photos of me by Coach Courtney. Why do I have such a goofy expression? Same as last year. I’m starting to think of this as my banquet face. [Dinner and Ribbons, ASHAA Banquet for the 2022 Show Year]

Will I do this again in 2024 for the 2025 banquet? That is not the plan. Twice is enough. Time to move on. Grow. Try new things. Sounds good, doesn’t it? I fully admit that I may weaken when the summer shows come around.

By “this” I mean doing the minimum number of shows with an eye toward year-end awards and the banquet. I’m open to grand & marvelous adventures that end up garnering year-end awards. I have no idea what such adventures would look like. But I digress.

List of shows attended [Saddlebreds of 2023]

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. Per article, extreme temps are deadly & should be given the same attention as other weather events. CCN Sports: NFL’s policy over cold-weather games questioned after fans treated for hypothermia and frostbite at Chiefs-Dolphins game, Morse, January 20, 2024.

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[Winter Wonderland] repost

Per usual, I am writing this before the weekend. By the time it sees the light of day on Monday, we will have been through the second half of our bout of severe-for-us weather. Two nights of teens, one day of not-above-freezing. Not quite as cold as round one, and without benefit of ice. As my husband said, it will be *%#* cold, but it won’t be *%#*, *%#* cold. [The Cold Is Coming]

Meanwhile.

Water. Carrying hot water to the barn. So much water. So many buckets. We actually started before the cold, to be sure they were as hydrated as possible going in. Nervous? Nous? (Twitch. Shudder.)

Blankets. We replaced their Rambo blankets with updated versions. We figure it bought us about 10o. Rodney wants to know what took us so long.

Drips. Remembering to drip a faucet. Remember that hearing a drip is a good thing. This is house water. Barn water has been drained for the duration.

How are the horses taking it?

Shenanigans! In frozen mud!

Milton: I left this nonsense behind in Canada.

Onwards!
Katherine

Linguistics of the outside & of fictional worlds. “For my presentation at Scintillation 2018 on Linguistic Myths and Fictions in Myth and Fiction, click here: Vardomskaya Scintillation Presentation.“ Tamara Vardomskaya.

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Part I. [DragonCat, Guest Art]

Part II.

DragonCat arrived from Tamara Vardomskaya in a cloud of electrons.

He was sent over the wires to a place where he could achieve paper form, in preparation for getting a frame.

I arrived to meet the embodied DragonCat.

Lovely.

Initially, DragonCat is excited about getting a new home.

We discussed frames.

Perhaps something classic in wood?

Good in theory. In practice, it was the sort of thing one would use for Important Certificates.

Gold frame? Too flashy.

Why don’t we work on mat color.

How about green?

Nope? College and husband’s work both have green as their color. In fact, the green mat with a wooden frame is exactly how my diploma is framed. Moving on.

Yellow? Too sallow.

Double mats?

No mat at all?

At about this point, DragonCat began to lose patience.

Will you people please make up your minds!

Finally, we decided on wood painted to look like stone, giving DragonCat a lair from which to peer at the world.

Thank you to Craig Zernik and the team at Four Corners Gallery.

Onwards!
Katherine

Art of the outside world. Adazing: Lord of the Rings Book Cover Designs, McDaniel, April 12. Some I’ve seen. Some live/have lived on my shelves. Some I didn’t even know existed.

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Back when we had only just finished copying out books by hand, I worked at a science fiction & mystery bookstore. Fantasy was subsumed under science fiction.

I got asked for recommendations. A lot.

Customer: I like X. What else should I read?

I was good at it.

If I liked X. Here, read this. And this. And this one.

If I did not like X. Internal dialogue, I dislike that. Here, I dislike this one for the same reason.

Customers were happy.

The only book that I recommended across the board was The Princess Bride. You like the kind of books I like, here read this. You like the kind of books I don’t like, here read this.

Friends were happy.

You need to read the book. Seeing the movie is not the same. I’m not going all book snob on you. The movie and the book are different beasts. The frame narrative in the book is an entire plot unto itself.

Read it. You will thank me. I’d also try to find a copy without a movie cover, to help keep the two separate as you read.

But I digress.

My biggest victory was when someone came in looking for a book, the only thing they could remember was that it had a two-headed dragon on the cover.

I had no idea.

But I had a … feeling? I wandered around the store, looking like a water dowser without the stick. I put myself in book shelving mode. The feeling was stronger over … here. This shelf. I reached out and pulled down The Prophet of Lamath by Robert Don Hughes.

The customer was impressed.

So was I.

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Cover image from Goodreads.

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. “Birmingham’s high on Tuesday was 27 degrees, breaking the previous record in 1977 of 30.” AL.com: These 4 Alabama cities had record low high temperatures on Tuesday, Morgan, Jan. 17, 2024.

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Alabama 19o
January 2024

A coat of ice. Dangerous. Pretty.

Technical Details

Phone camera. Partly, didn’t want to drag big camera out into freezing temps. I’m sure cameras can cope. Wasn’t sure what precautions were needed. If any. Mainly, majority of my brain space taken up by arctic blast. [The Cold Is Coming]

Many more photos snapped. This was the lucky shot. Need to be a better photographer than I am in order to capture sun on ice.

Onwards!
Katherine

Internet issues. Have some cats.

Sebastien with ribbons

Blondie with saddle

Stepping Stone Farm

[Cat Pictures Please, Observer Effect]

[Cat Pause]

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. Kevin Drum: Is the world really all that scary? January 13, 2024. A) No. B) there’s always something to get your knickers in a twist about.

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We have been taking the horses for walks in the morning just about every day since April of last year. We’ve developed some habits.

Habit one. Toss the leadrope over the neck. Let the horse amble along on his own. Doing this depends where we are in the walk. The first lap often has a few stops while we all process the arrival of a new day. Also depends on the marching order. The following horse will follow. These days, the lead horse will often go on his own as well. And so on.

Habit two. Stop at a particular turn on each lap for cookies. This started as a reward for going solo. Now it is a tradition. Rodney often gets to the corner first, on his own, and has to wait for the rest of us to catch up. Cookies happen once the everyone is present. There is no point in getting there early. Rodney has not gotten this message. Fine. You do you. We’ll be along shortly.

So, last Friday. Early on. Rodney was marching down to the cookie corner. The rest of us were coming along behind. Rodney got halfway down the short side of the pasture, hung a hard right, and headed back to the barn.

From a distance, I reminded him about cookies.

He stopped.

He considered.

… cookies … barn … cookies …

Nope, I’m outta here.

The three of us – me, Greg, Milton – looked at each other. Storms were forecast for later. The sky was Wagnerian.

You know, maybe he’s got a point.

Maybe it’s time to call this game.

Took Milton’s halter off and we all headed home.

On Sunday, we were back to status quo cookie.

Onwards!
Katherine