Virtual Brush Box

Contact Page History, State of the Blog

Reference page. I wanted to keep track of these links & the changes in my contact history. However, they don’t need to be on the public facing contact page. State of the Blog [Archives]

CURRENT

Email

virtualbrushbox@gmail.com
rodneyssaga@gmail.com

~~I check both.~~ I have gotten out of the habit of checking, since the majority of the messages are from people who want money to Make! The! Blog! Better! A comment is probably the best way to get in touch. Or a comment telling me to check my email.

Instagram, @virtual_brush_box, notification account

Facebook, Rodney’s Saga, notification account

RSS feed, Rodney’s Saga

Related Blogs
Rodney’s Storage
rodneyafterdark
Rodney’s Saga workaround on Blogger
Virtual Brush Box Placeholder with the VBB url, https://virtualbrushbox.wordpress.com/

Updated July 2024

PREVIOUS

Email: virtualbrushbox@gmail.com
rodneyssaga@gmail.com
I check both.

Instagram: Virtual Brush Box
@virtualbrushbox
Canceled by Instagram [New Title, New Instagram … or Not]
… and we’re back.
@myvirtualbrushbox
[Be Vewy, Vewy Quiet, I’m Back On Instagram]
… and I’m off again. I have a habit of getting drawn into too many projects.
Last Instagram post [Cosy Cats & The Ground Underfoot, Instagram March 2020].

Facebook: Rodney’s Saga
Got off FB as well, “Ending daily link posts. I am taking a personal break from Facebook. Too much angst. There is gracious plenty of that from the news. Don’t need to look for more. Since I have no self-control, that means a blog break from FB as well. I can’t seem to sign on, post the link, & leave. For daily posts, you can Follow by Email over on the blog, or bookmark the page, same bat time, same bat channel. Thank you. Hope to see you there.” RSFB message, May 19, 2020.

RSS feed: Rodney’s Saga
~~~
Other stuff. Feel free to explore. Listed for my reference.

(semi) Active Blogs
Virtual Brush Box Placeholder with the VBB url, https://virtualbrushbox.wordpress.com/
Rodney’s Storage
rodneyafterdark
Rodney’s Saga workaround on Blogger

Past Incarnations
Back To Eventing, list of posts
Back To Riding

Inactive Accounts
Instagram: @rodneyssaga
Blog: Off Topic
Flickr Stream: Rodney’s Saga
Twitter, content: @RodneysSaga
Twitter, notifications: @RodneySagaBlog
Facebook, Back To Riding

Twitter: Virtual Brush Box
@box_brush
That’s the handle Twitter assigned.
Later. Not Twittering either. Have never grokked Twitter. Tried repeatedly. Retreated in defeat each time.

Press Clips
BehindtheScenes: USDF Connection
Mathilda in USDF Connection
Rodney in Horse Illustrated
The Horse writing links
USCTA News/US Eventing links

~~~
Created August 1, 2014
Updated June 8, 2018
Updated September 19, 2020. Notices of lack of activity on Instagram, Facebook & Twitter.

~~~END~~~

Onwards!
Katherine

Cool Water For A Hot Day, Photography

Photography of the outside world. Total support for photographers doing their jobs. However, the cameras surrounding Biles are certainly a thing. Imagine competing under those conditions. On the gripping hand, in modern sport, media brings in the money.

~~~

Cool Water For A Hot Day
Fountain Detail
Old Mill Square
Shelby County Arts Council
Columbiana AL
1 August 2024

“The fountain originated in the 1800s in Milan, Italy.” Shelby County Reporter: Three-tiered fountain debuts in Columbiana, Dawkins, June 26, 2020.

Temp: 99oF, Feels Like 110oF. Heat advisory. Did not stick around to check my pix.

Technical Details

Fountain, f/7.1, 1/800 sec., 112 mm, ISO 100. Manual mode & auto-focus. Post production: resized, border, & watermark. No cropping.

Border colors. Gray for project, yellow for Nikon. [Photo Safari The First], [Quarry, Photography, Things]

Onwards!
Katherine

Summer Driving

Awareness of the outside world. I am late to the party. Ilona Maher is awesome.

~~~

Stepping Stone Farm has been summer camping, so I’ve been having driving lessons lately. Easier to fit in before the camp day starts.

The driving is going well. Are the lessons going well *because* I’m not riding? Or because I’ve been doing it long enough that it’s about time I learned something?

Andre has less auto-pilot than Optimus so our lines tend to wander. I discovered that if I remind him to stay up and straight, the steering takes care of itself. Imagine that.

With Optimus I practice maintaining our pace and turning with intention.

Overall, trying to use my ears as well as my eyes. Trying to hear what’s happening with the gait in addition to watching the horse. This is not a natural for me. [The Music, and The Mirror]

Onwards!
Katherine

Summer So Far

Awareness of the outside world. Dark Sky: Eiweiler Star Village becomes the eighth International Dark Sky Place in Germany, Reagan, July 29, 2024. Article does not have the cool comparison photo that was posted on Instagram. @darksky_intl, July 29, 2024. We can light the ground without lighting the sky.

~~~

Summer 2024

Intense heat.

Segued to rain & daily thunderstorms.

… without losing the humidity.

One horse behind the wall for equipment refit. [ISO Wheels For Milton]

One horse doing a credible imitation of a retired show horse, even though he has never been the former and isn’t officially the latter.

What we have are lots of … rest days. Yeah, let’s what we’ll call them, rest days. Our summer of R&R.

Onwards!
Katherine

Post By Post, Virtual Tevis 2024

Awareness of the outside world. The test by Chipmunk and Jung was poetry. That is how eventing dressage should be done.

~~~

The other pile of loot from our Virtual Tevis, 17 blog posts, including today. The above is a screenshot. Links below.

Titles

After the first few entries, I noticed I had backed into a theme, X By X. So I kept it going. Some are more of a stretch than others, and in one place I duplicated. Overall, a fun side quest.

Problems

While I can generally spin a blog post from promises and moonbeams, I struggled in the middle. We walked around the pasture only gets me so far. Still, if thin content slowed me down, I would not still be blogging after all these years. So, I yammered on.

Blogs

… or lack thereof. The first year was able to link to seven other blogs. That gave all of us more to read. Not so much anymore. People are still talking about their rides but not on formal blogs, or at least not ones that I could find. If there are sites I’ve missed, please LKM .

Entries

These days the majority of the reporting appears to be a photo and a brief recap on the Tevis Cup Virtual Ride Facebook page. It also seems that the virtual ride has settled down to horses and riders for whom the virtual ride is a useful goal.

In the beginning, our snail pace put us at the bottom of the pack. Not that placing matters. This year, anytime I checked the results, we were hanging out in the middle of hundreds of entries.

The Finish Line

With this post, we close the door on Virtual Tevis 2024.

Results Recap (repeated for consistency)

Virtual Tevis Cup 2024, 100 Miles in 100 Days, 10 April to 21 July.

Rodney, 100 Miles, 10 April to 24 June.

Milton, 100 Miles, 10 April to 1 July.

VT blog posts, reverse chronological

Virtual Tevis Posts [Archives]

Onwards!
Katherine

Fly Spray For Ear Bugs, Horse Management Hack

Awareness of the outside world. “That idea is that we hold these truths to be self-evident … We’ve never fully lived up to it — to this sacred idea, but we’ve never walked away from it either.” ABCNews: Read the transcript of Biden’s Oval Office address on decision to leave 2024 race, Hutzler, July 25, 2024. America, bright and dark.

~~~

Milton is weird about his ears.

He used to be normal.

Then he got a tick in his ear.

It hurt.

Once it was gone, he still remembered that his ear had hurt at one point.

For yeeears, he remembered this.

No touchie! No touchie!

These days, if you are quiet and slow, you can scratch the inside of his ears, which he quite likes, right up until he remembers that he doesn’t want his ears touched.

Needless to say, if he gets tick in his ear now, there is no going near it. For the duration, we have to unbuckle the headstall of his halter instead of sliding it over his ears. There is no way to dig anything out of his ears, short of tranquilizers and a livestock press. Ask me how I know.

Sometimes, if the bug is close to the edge and I get lucky, I can slip it out. Not this time. This one was deep. It would have been a delicate maneuver with Rodney and he’s good about tweezers flying about his ears.

My brilliant barn partner tried a squirt of fly spray aimed – very quickly – at the affected area. By the next morning, the bug was gone.

Coincidence? Causation? We’ll find out next time.

Onwards!
Katherine

Fractal Alphabet V, Graphic Art

Art of the outside world. Git Hub: Joscelyn. Also Font Desk: Jocelyn Font. Designed by Peter Baker. Hat tip to G.

~~~

Violet

For My Reference

As with U, border in Inkscape. Did not do comparison with GIMP border this time. I think I prefer the beveling of the GIMP border. Or maybe just used to it.

[Fractal Alphabet]

Onwards!
Katherine