Virtual Brush Box

Jasmine and Rose, One Month Of The New Dogs

Awareness of the outside world. BBC: Dogs look like their owners – it’s a scientific fact, Robson, 2015. PDF of study available online.

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Jasmine & Rose arrived home with us on Thursday, 1 December 2022. Notes from their first month.

Day 0

Dogs attend graveside service. Behave impeccably. [Jasmine and Rose, Meet The New Dogs]

Ditto, road trip home. [Jasmine and Rose Have A Big Basset Adventure]

Due to these events, especially the first, they have permanent gold starts on their records, regardless of whatever comes next.

Week One

The smells! So! Many! New! Smells!

Sniffing. Done Sniffing.

Portrait of a Snoot (gotta give equal time)

My superpower is finding nap spots.

The reign of the nap queen continues.

First Walk. Rose came along for a lap of the pasture. She trotted along at people-walking speed for the entire lap, except for going up the hill. Understandable. She only stopped once to sniff, at the water trough. Also understandable. Better than some horses I could mention.

Things take a long time to get used to. ‘Oh, a nice photo of the dogs. I need to remember to send that to Greg’s mother. Pause. No, that’s why we have the dogs.’

Week Two

Shopping for a dog pen to air on sunny days. We’ve decided our dog area is too hardcore for the ladies. Also had their first(?) burger and fries on this outing. Rose didn’t know what to do with a french fry until Jas showed her.

Added ramp over front stairs for short-legged, senior dogs with iffy backs.

Cats feel we did not file correct forms to increase the house allocation.

Week Three

Waiting.

Cat sleeping on dog bed.

Dog zoomies in pasture.

Week Four

More waiting.

MSM for Jasmine. Moving better.

Both have gained weight. Jas looking good. Rose is a bit more of a sausage than she needs to be.

Onwards!
Katherine

When Weekends Go Wrong

Awareness of the outside world. As before, I may leave the outside world to its own devices, depending on my energy level on any given day. [Farm vs Outdoor]

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Dude! No! Not good life choices!

Colic surgery last Saturday.

Two weeks at clinic.

One month complete stall rest.

Then, stall rest with hand walks.

Oy.

Also 🤞 (crosses fingers).

~~Update. Patient report page listed in banner/Menu, or link in footer.~~ Page & footer have been discontinued. Medical status posted as part of regular blog content. [Begin]

Onwards!
Katherine

When Zoomies Go Wrong

Awareness of the outside world. What science says about the “fresh start effect.” In search of an attainable New Year’s resolution. Volpe, Dec 11, 2022. Time to crack open that brand new calendar. I hope 2023 is blessed for all of us.

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Milton’s shoulder. Notice the distinctly hoof-shaped nature of the injury? Worry not, the discoloration is dirt, not bodily fluids. The abrasion itself had already started to heal over.

No lameness. Minor swelling. A day off from work and a light handwalk to get everything moving.

Their games are more about feinting than connecting. We figure someone was in the wrong place or the other one miscalculated their reach.

We know it was zoomies rather than a fight. Due to …

Activity in the cow field next door. This always sets them off.
Catching part of the show while shoveling poop.
Massive quantity of skid marks in the field.

It was a very Rodney-esque injury. Dramatic. Enough to get time off and sympathy. Not enough to be actually harmful or to cramp one’s style.

Aftermath. Milton continued to be fine, but the material from the swelling had to go somewhere. We got to watch the swelling progress down his leg. The migrating wodge was stone cold and unilateral. Still, even when your horse is perfectly sound, it is never fun to see a swollen leg, knee, ankle.

Thanks guys! Let’s not do this again.

Onwards!
Katherine

A Moment of Calm To Start The Year

Awareness of the outside world. Rockport MA: Protecting our Wetlands & Beaches

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BearskinNeck
Rockport MA, USA
November 2022

Sound on.

Watch on YouTube, here or “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1OydWtn8b8”

A pleasant diversion in an otherwise unfun trip. [New Dogs]

Onwards!
Katherine

Hypothetical Travel, Planning a A Virtual Trip

Awareness of the outside world. Delish: 15 New Year’s Foods For Good Luck, Lowder, Dec 20, 2022. Waiter, I would like to order a meal that has all 15 foods, please.

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[When?]

Each year, I used to go on a group vacation to New York City. [NYC Archives]

That hasn’t happened in a while.

So, I imagined a virtual trip to NYC. Friends and family at home while sharing online.

Unfortunately, this is just as hypothetical as an IRL trip. My connection to the Internet lacks the bandwidth to pull this off. Here’s what I’d do if I could. A fantasy of a fantasy.

Welcome Package

Pick a fiction book for us all to read before the trip. Order and send dead tree postcards to arrive when the trip is scheduled to start.

Hotel

I would create a Discord/Zoom/virtual room that would be open 24/7 for the duration. Trip members could drop in anytime to see who wants to chat.

Meals

Zoom (or whatever) banquets. Eat at home; share online.

Have each person order The Smoked Salmon Medley from Russ & Daughters. Ridiculously expensive, but think of the money saved on hotel beds and plane/train tickets.

Get takeout sushi from each person’s local restaurant. Order at least one roll of the same thing, probably a California Roll. I “offer” you a bite of mine. You pick up a piece. We bond. Similar for “refilling” your tea or sake. Hey, this whole thing runs on imagination or it doesn’t run at all.

Activities

Walking Tour One. Leigh Hallingby, Harlem Walks. “Now also available as a one hour Virtual Walking Tour on Zoom!” HW: Harlem Walking Tour. Also Spanish Harlem or Audubon Bird Mural Project. Preference for bi-directional participation, rather than a lecture with chat section. Back in 2021, I took an excellent virtual tour of the bird murals. Online – YouTube video “A Virtual Feminist Walk Through Harlem: Celebrating Remarkable Women with Leigh Hallingby.” Morris-Jumel Mansion.

Walking Tour Two. Keith York City. Does live tours. Runs an informative Instagram account, @KeithYork City. Has done at least one virtual tour. Cooper Hewitt: A tour of Carnegie Hill. If we have enough people, could be persuaded to do others? Or include virtual with IRL tour? Online – KYC: My Walking Project.

Walking Tour Three. Ditto The High Line. They offer private tours. See if they have or can arrange a virtual tour. Online – many POV walks along this.

Museum. Almost every museum has at least part of their collection online. A tour if possible, otherwise we browse together. One person is in charge of surfing & shares their screen.

Tourist Day. Empire State Building. Statue of Liberty. And so on. Joint website surfing. No lines, no waiting. Instantaneous transport from one place to the next.

Broadway. Sign up for a streaming service that has shows. Watch on TV to enjoy the big production numbers. Zoom on phones. Can talk all we want during the show & the rest of the audience won’t tell us to shush.

Sunday. Attend church services at Saint John the Divine. “10:30 am – Holy Eucharist
The Cathedral’s Sunday morning worship service is held in-person and streamed live to the Cathedral’s website, Facebook page, and YouTube channel.” SJTD, Spiritual Life: Services

Shopping

The Strand, of course. Group shopping.

Note

This is an entirely subjective list of what I have happened across. So much more out there. New York is both a big city and one that invites being written about.

Other than vacation, I try not to spend too much time living where I am not. It just increases my dissatisfaction with where I am. For example, this post, I took two pages of notes, stopped myself, put it away, and told myself to stop thinking about it.

That’s one reason I haven’t finished the books below. Well, that and shiny objects.

Books & Blogs
Either finished or read enough to recommend.

Metropolis, Ben Wilson, Doubleday 2020. Online – Literary Hub: Ben Wilson on the Invention of the City. Found while looking up pub detes. Have not watched.

The 99% Invisible City Website & book.

Subwayland: Adventures in the World Beneath New York, Randy Kennedy. St. Martins’ 2004.

Built. Roma Agrawal. Bloomsbury 2018. [City Letters]

Hidden Waters of New York City, Sergey Kadinsky. Countryman 2016. Hidden Waters blog, Companion blog for the book “Hidden Waters of NYC”.

Time and Again, Jack Finney.

Burglar series, Lawrence Block.

KYC Instagram Stories: Cars Rant. As someone who grew up in one of the few (only?) pedestrian cities in the US, I feel this. My family didn’t have a car until I moved to DC.

New York Cl1che. New posts have stopped. Enjoy the archives.

Literary Dates – from Page to Place

Books TBR

Intimate City, Walking New York. Michael Kimmelman, Penquin 2022. On order.

Onwards!
Katherine

Instagram Wrap-up 2022, Photo

Photography of the outside world. PetaPixel: Glass Plate Pinhole Camera Records Sun’s Path Over a Year, Growcoot, Sep 22, 2022.

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A post shared by k (@virtual_brush_box)

Photo Back-Up

Caption: Rose #bassethound #bassethoundsofinstagram

Posted one more photo to round out the year. Went with dog for variety. Rose looking noble.

Also evened up my home page.

Instagram 2022

“On Friday posts, I usually talk about my fitness efforts, such as they are. It’s difficult to generate content – particularly fitness content – with one’s foot in the air. [Bored] … So I restarted my Instagram account, virtual_brush_box.” 17 June

[A Foto For Friday, Reopening The Blog Instagram Account] 17 June 2022. One photo. ER mural.
[Cat Photos For Friday, Instagram Recap] 24 June 2022. Three photos. Two of cats, one of geese.
[Cat Photo Friday, Instagram] 1 July 2022. One photo.
[Walk, World Games, and Wee Mouser, This Week on Instagram] 8 July 2022, Three photos, what it says on the tin.
[Instagram Wrap-up 2022, Photo] 30 December 2022. One photo, dog.

While part of me would love to have an active Instagram account, I put the idea aside for the same reason as last time. A daily blog is sufficient occupation. “I don’t need more time sinks.” [State of the Blog, Missing Social Media Jan 2021]

At least, any more time sinks in a similar endeavor. I would quite like to investigate the time sink of trot sets to put fitness on my competition horse. But I digress.

In other news, I originally said the idea of an active Instagram account was appealing. Has anyone realized how close the words “appealing” and “appalling” are when one is a sloppy typist?

Onwards!
Katherine