Awareness of the outside world. When I was stopped for speeding, I never for a second feared for my life. This should be the default for everyone. [Be Careful Out There]
In other news, second vaccine shot today. ~~~
Loot Took a while for all the loot to get mailed out. I don’t think the organizers were planning on shipping quite so many shirts and stickers. “As of this writing, we have 1637 total participants. 1388 in the riding division and 285 in the non-riding division. Participants are from 12 different countries, with an age range from four years old to the mid 80s.” [Tevis Tuesday Reappears For An Update]
Requested a bandanna for me. Who am I kidding, I could never bring myself to wear the shirt. Milton’s rider is less uptight about such things, so I got him a shirt. Stickers for both of us. Yes, I have the bandanna and stickers framed, as promised. [The Tevis Sippy Cup]
Turtle Power The official results are an alphabetic list of finishers. Sensible. The point of Virtual Tevis was to ride, not to race. However, I did check us out on the RunSignup results. Drumroll ….
Bottom 10.
Not bottom tenth percentile. Bottom ten. As in 8th and 9th from last. Approximately. There were some weird things going on with numbers down in the basement. I counted 7 finishing behind us. Out of nearly 1400 riders. That’s some serious slow.
Take-Home Lesson Horses take a long time to come alongside new ideas. I knew this. Nothing like doing most of 100 miles at a walk to give you time to feel it.
Both horses will now stroll at a calm walk around the pasture. This took waaay longer than one might think reasonable for such a seemingly simple request. Not our decision to make. We tried to do it at our pace. The outcome was suboptimal. “Then, anxiety about having to canter again caused the cheese to slid off his cracker.” [Virtual Attitude]
For the second inning, we let them dictate how fast they were learning. We could watch them make progress day by day as they absorbed the idea. “This week’s miles were all at a walk.” [The Restart]
Horse training books should have one exercise and then 100 blank pages.
In Conclusion Yay! We did it. To finish is to win.
~~~ Process notes For my reference. Sketched idea with actual pen & ink. Drew Bezier curves in Inkscape. Freehanded initial shape adjustments, i.e. grabbed the lines and put them where I wanted them. Sort of. Grid used as a tool rather than as a replacement for drawing. This feels like artistic progress. Still, most nodes are placed on grid intersections. What can I say, I like regularity. OTOH mathematical precision doesn’t always look right in lettering. The 3 is one grid space wider in one place to make the bottom of the shape appear heavier. GIMP for border & watermark. Close to what I had in mind. Actually, the 0 came out better. Originally, the flourishes were on the sides. Looked too much like a face. Also, the 0 now matches the 3 better, which I didn’t see until after. ~~~ Three Trips Down The Rabbit Hole “A common graphic variant of the digit three has a flat top, similar to the letter Ʒ (ezh). This form is sometimes used to obstruct changing a three into an eight with fraudulent intent.” Wiki: 3. ~~~ You will get an X ribbon if you place third in Y. Yellow – New Zealand, Sweden, UK, US White – Australia, Canada, Germany, Netherlands Red – Czech Republic Blue – Norway Wiki: Horse Show, Awards ~~~ You probably know that less than + three = heart, <3. Did you know that semicolon + three equals cat smile, :3 ? BTW, these are emoticons. The Guardian: Don’t know the difference between emoji and emoticons? Let me explain, by Hern, 2015.
Exports As a tourist, you will be busy with all of your amazing lunar activities! You won’t have time to take in the industrial/business side. Most of the corporate sites are proprietary and therefore restricted. Separate travel arrangements will need to be made through the granting company.
This is short introduction to give you an understanding of how the lunar colony works and explain some of the things you might see out of the portholes when you take your tour of the surface. Ask your travel expediter for information and tickets for Lasso The Moon’s popular Tailored Surface Tour.
Mining The main export from the moon to earth is raw materials from mining, both lunar and asteroid. The moon is used as a base for ship building, repair, and resupply.
Moon Rocks And of course lunar souvenirs. Ever since the first space ship touched down on the lunar surface, we have been bringing back moon rocks. Naturally you can trust the Smithsonian moon rock but beware of initiations! Studies show that 90% of “moon” rocks come from the nearest gravel quarry. Unfortunately moon rocks and earth rocks can only be told apart with expensive testing. Don’t get taken in. Trust Lasso The Moon souvenirs when shopping for your moon memories.
Entertainment Permanent lunar residents try to be as self-sufficient as possible. Earth luxuries are not deemed to be worth the price of oversight from people who don’t even live on the same astronomical body! Some items still need to be imported, mainly machinery and tech supplies. So, earth currency needs to be earned.
One major source of gravity well currency is digital entertainment: writing, drawing, digital painting, specialized hand lettering, video games, creative coding, and so on. Anything that can be produced by rearranging electrons! No raw material required. No transport costs. The only costs are time, computer usage, and electricity. The last is in abundant supply from truly amazing amounts of solar power.
One of the most popular exports is a the well-known comic strip Moon Rats. What you may not know is that the name started as a slander against the permanent residents. As with other groups before them, Moon Rats took the insult and made it their own. First as the title of their famous comic. Then as a collective noun for themselves. Leaning into the skid, as it were. Lasso The Moon does not condone derogatory treatment of individuals based on their place of residence.
The Ghost of Airlock H is a Moon Rats story about an airlock that does not open if there is a problem with the EVA equipment. Is is haunted? Is it an urban myth? You’ll have to read the comic to find out! Selene Publishing titles are available through Lasso The Moon as well as other text retailers.
In case you are wondering who wrote or drew these stories, we don’t know! Moon Rats live within a collective framework. Individual authorship is neither credited nor appreciated. You will often hear them use the phrase, ‘We live here.’ Attributing authorship to a group is an example of the WE part of that belief. ~~~ Editorial note. A graphic novel with a comic strip as a play-within-a-play. From someone who can’t draw. That sounds all kinds of feasible.
Editorial note II. At first I thought Moonrats would be one word, after the Naked version. Now, I’m thinking two words works better, particularly if it first arose as a slur. Also, turns out that the phrase “Mole Rats” in Naked Mole Rats is either hyphenated or separate words. Dunno what I was channeling. Two words it is. Smithsonian: Naked Mole-rat cam
Editorial note III. I’m guessing about moon rocks being hard to distinguish from earth rocks. Sounds reasonable. Preliminary surfing appears to confirm. Would need to check more. ~~~ curtain ~~~
Awareness of the outside world. Mask mandate ends in my state today. I don’t expect much to change. I rarely see masks as it is. Either I am outside in a green space or inside in a red space. As for me, I will keep masking up until the lab coats recommend otherwise. ~~~
Trot
Canter
I put on my Big Girl britches and cantered the black crossrail. Rodney got overwhelmed and LEAPED into the air. He didn’t clear the standards. It just felt like it.
Awareness of the outside world. Today is World Health Day. Gotta admit, every day has felt like world health day for a while now.
More on Milton & his vast improvement with boots. I split this over two posts, because I can’t even.
I’ve never seen or heard anything like this. I have no idea how much of an improvement this will turn out to be in the long run, nor how long any gains will last.
Here is the weirdness for the moment.
Other Horses I’m all for horses wearing boots. As evidenced by the fact that I was able to dig up half a dozen pairs without upending the tack box. This is also evidence of the fact that I never throw anything away, but that’s a different issue.
All of my horses have worn boots to jump. Mostly front boots. Previous Horse wore hind boots as well. None of them seemed to care one way or the other. Boots. No boots. Meh. It was a requirement I imposed to theoretically protect them from whacking themselves while jumping. I’ve never had a horse who wore boots on the flat, or as a matter of course.
One of the Saddlebreds goes in hind boots. If he wears his boots, he’s a little happier in the canter and around the corners. You can tell. But it’s not a huge deal. It’s not night and day. Not like Milton.
Neither Milton nor Rodney ever jumped high enough to trigger the boot requirement. Roscoe (the name Rodney arrived with) must have worn boots but that data has been repressed lost in the mists of time. Milton was edging toward bootage, but I wasn’t motivated to buy boots for a horse who was only jumping anthills.
Trying an old pair might have occurred to me if we had started down that road. Not jumping. No need for boots. Right?
Silly me.
Milton History Since the Virtual Tevis, my husband has been riding Milton. They seem to get along. At least he (the husband) doesn’t look at him (the horse) and tear his hair (either husband or horse) out in frustration and despair. Unlike some people.
A week ago, he (the husband) asked if I had back boots we could try on Milton. There was occasional tripping. Perhaps Milton was interfering with his hinds. I thought any tripping had more to do with long toes and the shoeing schedule, but was happy to oblige. Found. Tried. Mild improvement. We were pleased.
Were these front boots? Did I have other back boots we could try? Sure.
In finding a second set of back boots, I found the red front boots. Washed them. Tried.
Heavens parted.
Seriously. You could see it in the way Milton walked. The look in his eye. He strolled around as a content and happy pony. They had been having trouble with canter transitions. Lots of asking on the part of the rider. Lots of trotting around ignoring the rider on the part of the horse. Wearing boots, Milton repeatedly picked up a cute little canter as soon as he was asked.
This whole thing was a total accident. We only tried the front boots because I found them in the pile.
We had no indication.
No hint.
There has not been the slightest ding or scratch or dent on his front legs. He doesn’t move in a way that would indicate any interference.
No hint. None.
We would have done something years go.
Long time readers of the blog will know we have tried everything we could think of. Feed changes. Mid-day naps. Supplements. Body work. Lab tests.
We knew we had not figured Milton out. It was a recurring topic of conversation around here.
For one thing, he was never happy. Previous Horse was a grumpy old man the day he was foaled. Despite being a cranky curmudgeon, he spent the majority of his life in a good mood, only expressing discontent when the world was not as he deemed it should be.
I’ll grant Milton attitude around mealtimes. That seems to be a racehorse thing. But he never seemed happy the rest of the time either.
Boots. Who knew. Well, Milton, but he wasn’t saying.
This is deeply weird. Deeply. But not out of character.
Milton doesn’t like to be touched. This is more of an issue with his torso than his legs, but perhaps his skin as a whole is more sensitive to the slings and arrows that beset a horse of delicate disposition.
Milton has been know to react in a … um … disproportionate manner. One time, he objected to the fit of his new shoes. This was not an abscess, not a close nail, just shoes that were a wee bit tight. He acted as if his front hooves were welded to the ground.
As long as I completely failed to turned Milton into a stellar event horse, I’ve felt a sense of disapproval trickling down from the north. I sent you a nice horse, what did you do wrong? What if we were talking about two different horses? On the off chance, we asked about Milton’s test ride. Was he, by any chance, wearing boots? Why, yes he was.
Hmm.
We also found out that in Canada, Milton was schooling 2′ 9″ on cross-country. Two! Foot! Nine! Inches! I’ve had to jolly him around classes where all the jumps put together didn’t add up to 2′ 9″.
Canada, boots; Alabama, no boots.
Again, hmm.
In Conclusion I have no explanation. It could be a trick of the light. We could want change so badly that we are imagining change. The whole new attitude could go up in a puff of vapor tomorrow. I don’t think so. It has the feel of ‘Finally, the minions got it right.’
Wonderful if it lasts. At the moment, I am dumbfounded.
Virtual Brush Box 