Virtual Brush Box

Blogging About Blogging

 
Awareness of the outside world. Wondering about Nashville. Contacted friends who live even vaguely near. As one does.
~~~
The blog kept going. Everything else treaded water. For 2020, that counts as victory. “So that’s my schedule: blog, bike for exercise, horses, stare into space.” Still true, although more walking than biking recently. Maybe 2021 will bring a more optimistic direction for all of us. [Blogging In A Time Of Crisis] May

One Thing That Changed
This year, I took the plunge into current events.

[Wishful Thinking, The New Normal, Non-Fiction Version] April

[Whither?] April

Started Mood on Monday posts in May. Have done 18. Until I create an archive, they can be found by typing Mood or “Mood on Monday” in the search box at the top of the post. [The Mood On Monday, The Ugly Bits] May

Started Awareness of the Outside World introductions. Off & on. [3000 Dots] June 10. [Mood On Monday, When?] June 15. Started regularly [Doctor Whooves Is Going Places] June 19. In response to the explanation post, y’all said to keep on with it. [State of the Blog, Awareness of the Outside World, Taking a Poll on a New Feature]

One Thing That Almost Changed
In August, I announced that I was reducing the blogload … [State Of The Blog: Weekends Completely Off]

… and then I decided not to. [State of the Blog, Weekends NOT off]

Stayed with weekend posting but made it less daunting. Have to keep reminding self that blog is not a comprehensive documentary. At most, it is a highlights reel.

One Thing Doesn’t Change
I have a hard time picking favorite posts. I conflate form with content. For example, I’m very fond of the Virtual Tevis series. Is that because the posts were gems of the blogging art? No. Or because I enjoyed the VT? Yes! [Tevis Archives]

Picking my fav section is easy …

Guest Posts & Photos
10q!! I love hearing other people’s stories.
[What Riding Means To Me by Lizzy Plaia]
[Green Horses on the Wall, Lisbon, Portugal]
[The Reason I Had To Write This Book!]
[We – The Unicorns … Arrive]
[We – The Unicorns … Go On A Road Trip]
[In The Footsteps of the Inca]
[We – The Unicorns … Bring Their Magic To The Magic City]
[Virtual Kicks On Route 66]
[Vaccine Trials Volunteer]
[The Repost, Deuce Completes The Virtual Tevis]

Popular Posts
Technically, the stats are for the past 365 days as of yesterday rather than for the calendar year of 2020. Barring a recap post going viral, these should represent. Although, there was a slight shake-up in the all-time list since I drafted this last week. Anything could happen. But I digress.

Top 10 for 2020, written in 2020
Guest Posts – 2
Virtual Tevis – 3
BreyerFest – 3
[We – The Unicorns … Arrive, Guest Post]
[The Tevis Sippy Cup]
[I Came, I Saw, I Sat On The Couch, Show Report, Virtual BreyerFest 2020]
[Mood On Monday, Minor Inconveniences]
[The Reason I Had To Write This Book! Guest Post ]
[Virtual BreyerFest 2020, Haul I, Kentucky Horse Park Gift Shop]
[Get Off My Lawn, And Take Your Warmblood With You]
[And They’re Off, The Virtual Tevis Starts]
[The Crack Of Dawn, Virtual Trail Report, Tevis Sippy Cup, Miles 45 through 61, September 2020]
[An Exercise in Green]

Top 10 for 2020, written in all years
I continue to be mystified by the popularity of the Fever Rings post.
[Fever Rings] 2013
[ Saddle Seat Versus Dressage, In A Nutshell] 2017
[We – The Unicorns … Arrive, Guest Post]
[The Tevis Sippy Cup]
[Colors Of The Year 2020] 2019
[I Came, I Saw, I Sat On The Couch, Show Report, Virtual BreyerFest 2020]
[Mood On Monday, Minor Inconveniences
[The Reason I Had To Write This Book! Guest Post ]
[DIY Blanket Rack] 2016
[Virtual BreyerFest 2020, Haul I, Kentucky Horse Park Gift Shop]

Top 10 all time, written in all years
[Fever Rings] 2013
[ Saddle Seat Versus Dressage, In A Nutshell] 2017
[Watching The Tevis] 2013
[USDF Interview: Heidi Degele, Dressage-Horse Sales Agent] 2018
[Fotography Friday: Texture] 2012
[Why I Ride by Rachel Wamble] 2017
[Why I Ride by Katie Wood] 2015
[The Naked Challenge] 2015
[What Happens at a Model Horse Show?] 2015
[Why Green?] 2013

Last Year
[Looking Back, Blog in 2019]

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine Walcott

Images

 
Awareness of the outside world. From the bookshelf. What Is Color? by Arielle Eckstut & Joann Eckstut (Abrams 2020)
~~~

 
Ultimate Gray + Illuminating (yellow), Pantone
Orchid Flower, Coloro + WGSN, announcement says 2022. Typo or forward thinking?
Aegean Teal, Benjamin Moore
Urbane Bronze, Sherwin-Williams
Epoch, Graham & Brown, also a wallpaper of the year
Aqua Fiesta, Accent Color of the Year, Glidden, Coatings World

Other Colors of the Year
Behr went with 21 colors in a “Color Trends Palette”
Valspar chose 12 colors.
PPG picked three: Transcend, Big Cypress and Misty Aqua. Two neutrals & a pale blue.
Shutterstock: Set Sail Champagne, Fortuna Gold, & Tidewater Green. Pinkish neutral, gold, & green

Of Interest
Acrylic Pouring, Artistcoveries: Illuminating and Ultimate Gray

Vogue: Pantone’s Color of the Year Is Really Weird—Just Like Everything Else Right Now, by Katy Kelleher, December 9, 2020

“To commemorate over two decades of Pantone’s color choices, the palette below matches each color to imagery from some of my favorite artists and photographers from around the world.” Adam Fuhrer: Visualizing Every Pantone Color of the Year

Fast Signs: 2021 Pantone Color & Pantone Colors of the Decades, by Jayme Nelson, Dec 30, 2019

Last year
[Colors Of The Year 2020]

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine Walcott

Words

Writing About Writing

 
Awareness of the outside world. Free fiction. Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi. Subterranean Press: Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge by Mike Resnick. Bending Genres: You Had Me At Blue Hair by moi.
~~~
Past Fiction
Fiction posted in 2020. Upside, wrote more than I realized. Downside, no closer to completing that award-winning novel or short story.

[Faces In The Crowd]
[So Many Questions]
[Origins of the Lunar Colony] Moonrats 0
[The New Normal]
[Warts And All] Being Neighborly
[Moonrats I]
[Moonrats II]
[The Sixteen]
[The Sloth’s Pawprint]
[Belly Up To The Bar]
[Dark Journal, First Entry]
[Magic Is Real, Now What?]
[Let’s Play]
[Preliminary Material For A ‘Magic Is Among Us’ Plot]
[Quantum Truck II]
[The Basement]

Past Contests
End of 2019 to early 2020.

[Can You Write Short?] start
[Short But Frightening]
[Overstayed Welcome]
[Let It Go]
[The State You’re In]
[Warts And All] first section, end contests

Past Pondering
Because writing about fiction is so much easier than writing it.

[State of the Blog, This is a Horse Blog, What’s With All The Off-Topic Fiction?] includes list of pre-2020 fiction
[Fiction Prompt Prompting]
[Forms of Fiction]
[Let’s Play With Fiction] second section
[Fiction Restart]

Future Fiction
Did a few micro fiction contests. Stopped because reasons. [Warts] intro

Stopped 750 Words. Again. Wasn’t liking the daily guilt, self-imposed but real to me. Wasn’t happy paying for what I’m capable of doing on my own. Which is ridiculous since I pay many times that for virtual races that I capable of doing on my own. Mainly, I don’t need help spouting words. The blog proves that. I think it’s a great program for people who need help getting in the habit of generating text. My weaknesses lie elsewhere. [Restart]

So.

Gonna do something new for 2021. Dunno what yet.

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine Walcott

Fit To Ride

 
Awareness of the outside world. When one & one’s spouse are a pair of curmudgeonly hermits, Christmas 2020 doesn’t look that different from any other year. I realize this is not the case for others. If your holiday has been disrupted and you are worried about tomorrow, remember this. December 25 is just another day. Norman Rockwell was just a guy selling magazine covers. Christmas in pajamas is not without its pleasures.
~~~
Catching up on the last bling walk from 2020. Turned out to be a disc golf course. [Bling Walk Archives]

Santa Fe International Virtual 5K, Run Signup
Official – September 20 – October 31, 2020
Mine – September 21, 2020
Location – Inverness Nature Park and Trails
Time – 1:13:43
Results, Overall – 10th of 10
Results, Gender – 9th of 9, making gender assumptions based on first names
Results, Division – 1 of 1, by age I assume
Tracker – Map My Walk

Results

During Virtual Tevis, I had my tracker set to miles. Now that I am doing virtual UK, I switched to kilometers, in order to fit in with the locals. Turns out 5 kilometers = 3.107 miles. I have been off by .007 miles all year. Oops.

The Race
I think the race did not turn out the way the organizers hoped. Participation was close to non-existent. My race had 10 finishers. The half marathon had 12. The 1k had one person. I was sent a cheesy albeit colorful gaiter instead of the promised hand-painted medal. Included was a note along the lines of, I hope you didn’t just do this for the medal. Well, yes I did just do it for the medal. Otherwise, I could have walked on my own and skipped sending you money. Now the website sends up a security alert when I try to access it. It could have been a scam but feels more like poor planning.

The Park
Hilly. Wooded. Not marked aside from disc course. Never found the advertised 1.8 mile walking trail. Or maybe I did. Ended up returning to truck on the side of the road using GPS. Not a path for a fast time. I wonder how municipalities decide to build a baseball diamond vs a soccer field vs a disc course.

 
“Inverness Nature Park is a 77-acre, forested, passive park featuring …” Inverness Nature Park and Trails.

“In the context of this article, ‘passive’ denotes parks that don’t have sports fields or facilities, such as a rink or court where youth and adults play in organized leagues.” Parks & Rec Business: Passive Parks, by Randy Gaddo, 2018

Disc golf doesn’t seem passive to me.

The Sport
File this with the vast number of things I had no idea were out there. Professional Disc Golf Association

Tee

Course Map

Range of Equipment.

“Each of our different plastics offer unique characteristics and advantages.” Innova: Plastic Types Overview

Chart on the Innova site has six categories of discs with multiple options in each category. “Discs on the left side of our chart are better for throwing upwind, while discs on the right of the chart are better for throwing downwind. Less powerful players would be better suited to throwing discs on the lower right side of the chart as they require less power to get distance. More powerful players may choose discs on the upper left side of the chart for more control in all wind situations.” Innova: Discs

The rabbit hole is deep.

Disc Specs

Course Protocol

Any disc golfers out there care to comment on the sport?

Update: This was my Monday 5k the week I did three walks. Was waiting for medal before posting. Finally gave up. It had been so long since then & I did so many more walks later in the year that I forgot to opine on the three-in-one. Not much to say other than ‘Can I do it? Yes. I did it.’ [Wednesday, Friday]

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine Walcott

Riding Journal

Awareness of the outside world. “It’s fashionable to pretend that the US response to COVID-19 has been disastrously, unconscionably bad, but that’s really not true. We could have and should have done better, but we’re not really all that different from other similar rich countries.”

“Cases are a different matter. The US really does lead in the number of COVID-19 cases, but we also have a very low case fatality rate, which is why our death rate is not too far above the average. Is this because we test more people and therefore include more marginal cases? Is it because our health care is better? Is it because we skew younger than most European countries? Inquiring minds want to know.” Mother Jones: The COVID-19 Death Rate In the US Is Fairly Normal, blog by Kevin Drum, Dec 22, 2020.
~~~

Micro, Intro Jumping

Rodney continues to regard anything between standards with misguided enthusiasm.

Rodney: Lemme go! Lemme go! I got this! I got this!

Me: Dude, I’m all for fire-breathing dragon. However, we are not heading into the jump-off of the Adult Final at Washington.

Rodney: Fast! Fast is the way to jump!

Me: No. You have to demonstrate that you can jump correctly before we turn on the after-burners. Trust me, warp speed is way too fast for a pole on the ground. Can we dial it back a notch or six? K. Thx. Bye.

Rodney: Basics are boring.

Micro, Intro Driving

Milton pulled a tire! First time tied to something since October of last year [Back In Harness]. We got close a few times at the beginning of the year, but plans fell through. Then 2020 fell on all of us. [Milton’s Moments]

Technically, Milton pushed a tire. One assumes that the horse in front pulls the cart in the rear. In reality, the horse pushes on the breastplate or horsecollar. The energy is transmitted down the traces to drag the cart forward. The shafts are for steering.

I will admit, I had my doubts. I had visions of horse and tire zinging back and forth across the pasture.

Milton was a champ. Took him about 50 feet to remember about pulling (pushing) things, then it was old hat. Steering is still a work in progress. ‘That’s my header. Over there. Right over there.’ With the tire on the ground, the traces ride lower than normal. Mox nix.

Gold star, Milton. I apologize for doubting you.

No pics since I was serving as back-up on one end of the horse or the other, either holding the leadrope or the reins.

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine Walcott

Blogging About Blogging

 
Awareness of the outside world. Commentary on the form, both from late 2019, Whatever: The Death of the Blog, Again, Again and Viva Carlos: Is Blogging Dead?, also a comment on commenting by VC [Meh].
~~~
Here’s to nine years and post #3195. [We begin. Again. December 22, 2011]

As I said back in 2015, I’m happy with the way the blog is ticking along. I have no plans to monetize nor to add Certain Words in order to score higher on Google searches, not matter how many cajoling SEO emails fill up my inbox. [Blogging Goals, Or Not]

I’d love to have the participation of Whatever‘s comment section, but I wouldn’t want his trolls. So, I’m good.

If pressed, I would confess to one change. I’d love more blogger meetups. I don’t count friends who are now bloggers. That is a good thing. That is a different thing. I’m talking about people you have followed online, chatted with, and are now meeting in shared airspace.

Screen shot of a recent post using a photo from a blogger meetup in 2018. Not me. My photo.

2018. Her version, Literary Dates: A New York Christmas Tour

2018. My version, [Armchair Travel Opportunity, #literarydatesbookclub]

2020. Photo reused for holiday effect (I assume), “After living in New York City for 15 years and having a couple of Christmassy book tours under my belt, I now feel it’s time to throw my ring into an ultimate guide to Christmas in New York City. Yup. I did it. This will be the ultimate of the ultimatest of NYC Christmas guides. And bonus…I’ll end with some cozy, Christmassy reads.” Literary Dates: Christmas in New York City- A Local’s Guide

The latter post is what gave me the idea to harp on about blogger meetups. Proper photo credit was given in both cases.

I have had two blogger meetups, both in New York City. One I wrote a post on, above. One I didn’t. Second meetup was more sit & talk, less engage in post-worthy activities. Contacting another blogger, also NYC, ended up as an invitation to write a guest post. [In Which I Reblog Myself]

Aside from these successes, I don’t seem to have the touch. I go to their town. They don’t respond. They come to my town. They are busy. We both go to a third place. We fail to connect. [The Weirdness That Is National Academy, A Blogger Non-Meetup]

Other folks aren’t as interested? Other folks don’t live in the middle of rural nowhere and don’t have a debilitating deficit of people in their lives? No idea. Well, they could be taking one look at my blog and running away screaming. Even my inner voices aren’t that paranoid. Mostly.

Of course, blogger meetups are on hold, along with everything else right now. Thanks, Covid. Maybe this time next year I’ll have an adventure with new friends to report.

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine Walcott