Virtual Brush Box

Awareness of the outside world. Filled out my quarterly survey for the Johns Hopkins COVID Long Study. I have signed up for the repeating version. Looks like they will take single entries, “Participation includes a one-time, 20 minute survey.” ibid. I’m fine – which I am very happy about – but it makes the survey a long list of nope, none of the above, I’m good. I have to remind myself that every study needs control subjects. That’s me, a human baseline.

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Photo of the ears and neck of a brown and white pony

Razzy
The Hunter Place
July 2025

Razzy was her usual stellar self.

Much quieter at a walk to start, yay. A semi-private lesson, as the first one was. She wasn’t alone in the ring? I was different? The phase of the moon was different? Dunno. Just happy to stroll around the ring.

Canter exercise was half-seat down the long side. A small part of me heard the call of cross-country. Razzy was not averse to a touch of zoomies.

Will I be posting an ears photo from every lesson, even though it is essential the same photo every time? At the moment, yes.

Razzy [Salute to a Schoolmaster], [In Which I Ride A Horse]

Bubba & Diego [SSF Ears]

Onwards!
Katherine

Work Is A Four Letter Word, Morning Walk Stories

Awareness of the outside world. Cleveland.com: Mysterious life form found on ship that docked in Cleveland, Krouse, Jul. 2025.

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Horses have returned to organized exercise in the morning.

We do a warm-up lap together. Then I hand one horse off to the groundwork dude. They lunge while other horse and I do two laps. Switch horses. Repeat.

I get my five laps. Each horse gets some walk and some work.

I use the term work loosely. They trot and maybe canter a few easy circles. They expend more calories galloping in for dinner.

Nevertheless, on the first day back to work, both horses had temper tantrums. The very idea!

Both of them had gotten over themselves by the next day.

Onwards!
Katherine

Rodney’s New Dinner Bucket

Awareness of the outside world. Awkward conversation I couldn’t figure out how to have. There was demonstration held in my area. Them: If you cannot come to the main event, please gather in a local park and light candles or release balloons. Me: Um. Er. I support your cause. You deserve answers. Can it be done with more candle and less balloon? Can we protest for justice AND protect the planet? Sigh. I suspect my argument would not have been well received. This is not the time for that discussion.

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Pause.

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Milton eats his hay out of dedicated muck buckets. [Purple Muck Bucket]

Rodney used to eat out of a custom set up. [Rodney’s Dinner Table]

He now eats out of whatever hay bucket is available.

The custom table elevated Rodney’s dinner bucket, which was the point. However, he could and would tip it over on occasion if he got particularly forceful with his snoot. Plus, it was cumbersome to clean. I had to take it apart, drag the pieces out of stall, shove the big tub under the pass thru, and so on. I confess cleaning wasn’t getting done as often as I would have liked.

As a stop gap, we (the barn we) hung one of Milton’s hay buckets in a corner on a movable water bucket hook.

It was a brilliant fix.

The bucket is up high, so the eating surface is elevated.

The bucket is hung from one handle. The resulting slant means he doesn’t have to arch his neck to reach in. This was a problem with a previous set of on-the-fence feeders, which now live on as helmet holders.

The bucket is attached to the wall, so no tipping over. I’ve heard thumps as he swings it about.

Although attached, it is light and easy to move. This was the problem when we had a bucket tied to the wall. With the bucket on a hook, we simply toss the post-meal bucket into the aisle for Milton to check out.

There is less to check out. The base of the interior is rounded, so feed does not gather around the bottom the way it did in the feed pan. Clean plate club!

No dinner table.

Milton has several buckets, so there is always an empty bucket to hand.

Rodney seems happy with the new arrangement.

Onwards!
Katherine

Holiday Cookies, Food Art

Art of the outside world. Relics: A New World Rises. COMBINES DISCARDED AND FORGOTTEN HUMAN ARTEFACTS WITH INTRICATE LEGO® CIVILISATIONS.

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three star-shaped sugar cookies with red, white, and blue frosting on a blue background

Elizabeth Moore Chocolates
Pelham AL

I was fascinated with these decorations.

In Other News

Food photography continues to be hard. Multiple photo sets. Struggling to make the photos as good as the cookies IRL. Worrying about the frosting melting in the heat. I kept going out to take another round of photos. Finally took a bite out of one of the subjects to force myself to end the madness.

No deal with vendor. A happy customer of their monthly subscription box.

Update: Phone camera

Onwards!
Katherine

Sending A Message To The Future, State of the Blog

Awareness of the outside world. “A nice science-fictional idea, but there was no real story to support it. I learned very quickly that ideas are easy: it’s the story that’s the hard part.” The Director Should’ve Shot You: Memoirs of the Film Trade by Alan Dean Foster. Ideas are the easy part. I’ve said this for years. Here are some ideas. I release them into the wild. Do with them as you will.

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I use fictitious dates to keep my draft file organized.

A few of the drafts are posts that I am working on. A few of the drafts are things that I am waiting on. Most of the drafts are what a friend calls “evergreen” (waves hi!). These are posts that are timeless, such as Cat Pause posts or Taking A Break posts. I do these ahead of time and save them for days when I run out of time, or inspiration, or the ability to brain. [Cat Pause In A Cart or Taking A Break On A Porch, Or, You’re Welcome, Not Fiction]

Pauses & Breaks can go at any time. Other evergreens are for specific days, such as a Weird Photo Moment for Friday, an essay for Saturday, or an alphabet for Sunday. [Pinhole Photography or Square Flourishes]

To keep the different categories clumped together, I assign dates to drafts. Photo posts are scheduled for some time in the 2060s, art post for the 2040s, and so on. This way, when I sort the drafts by reverse chronological date, they fall into the order I want.

Yes, I enjoy sorting things, why do you ask? Doesn’t everyone create spreadsheets for fun?

Anyway.

These posts are all in draft mode. I don’t press the go button to literally schedule the drafts for those years.

But what if I did?

What if I scheduled a post for 2075? What would happen?

Most likely nothing. By then our information technology will have morphed into who knows what form. The post would go the way of a file on a floppy disk. It would never see the light of day.

What if it did get posted? What if WordPress turned into this company and then into that company and then into some novel form of organization, and each time all of the old files were grandfathered in? I could see it as a selling point. Stay with us and don’t lose your files.

And then in 2075, my post pops up.

It would be as if today’s post office delivered a letter from 1975. A voice from the past. Would it sink without a ripple? Would it be the pebble that sets off a chain reaction of events? Would it be read by a collateral descendant who suddenly was able to see me as a person instead of random name on an offshoot of a genealogy chart? Or medical science has hit big in geriatrics and I’m still alive to read it?

What other possibilities do you see?

Archives [State of the Blog]

Onwards!
Katherine

Fireworks, Recurring Guest Photography

Awareness of the outside world. “it would be safe to say, however, that independence from England is the most celebrated national holiday in the world, if one excludes religious holidays.” Pastor Mike Rinehart: Is Independence from England the most celebrated holiday in the world?

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Photos by Greg Walcott
Chelsea AL
June 2025

Municipalities around here had their Fourth celebrations the weekend before. We chose to view from a nearby parking lot rather than in the midst of the festival. Nice view, less traffic jam.

Date night.

Technical Details

Fireworks by G with big camera. Shadow photo by me with phone camera. Photos cropped as needed, watermarked & bordered by me.

Onwards!
Katherine