Faces In The Crowd At The Ice Cream Shop, Fiction Exercise


Hannah bit off a piece of her cone and tossed it to the sparrow. A lot of folks thought of them as flying rats. Wait, that’s pigeons. Given their size that would make the sparrow flying mice. She knew she probably shouldn’t encourage their dependency on humans. When humans and wild animals lived in close proximity, it never went well for the animals. Don’t get her started on those bristly anti-bird devices. Those are just plain rude. If you don’t want birds on your building then don’t build something that birds can use. Spikes give a place on unfriendly vibe.

🍦~🍦~🍦~🍦~🍦

The woman with a horde of kids, each eating a boutique cone, is wondering about investing in a home ice cream maker.

🍦~🍦~🍦~🍦~🍦

Afterword

Inspiration, The Errant Moon: Big City (No link. Blog removed. Sad face.) Blog rehomed. Yay!

Previous exercise. I have to say that upon rereading, I don’t hate what I came up with last time. [Faces In The Crowd]

Location, Big Spoon Creamery, Avondale AL. Note, the anti-bird devices were NOT at Big Spoon. I had seen them elsewhere and was still annoyed about them.

The plan is to do more of these. Same process as photography, Go somewhere; do something. I figure, any fiction is better than none. Motivation to go places is good for me at the moment. Perhaps one will spark a story. If not, at least I’ll get a blog post out of it.

Note to self. For this exercise to be successful, choose high traffic areas.

Note about the photo. This one was complicated. One hand to hold the ice cream cone. One hand to hold the phone in such a way that I could press the shutter button. Then, I needed one more hand to tell phone to focus on the ice cream in the foreground rather than on the leaves in the background

Onwards!
Katherine

Landing Moon, Photography

Awareness of the outside world. EarthSky: July full moon is the Buck Moon on July 20-21, Goss, July 20, 2024. Space.com: Full moon names for 2024 (and how they came to be), Rao, January 18, 2024. Royal Museums Greenwich: Why do we have special names for full moons?

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20 July 2024
Highway 65
Shelby County, Alabama

On this night 55 years ago, Apollo 11 arrived at Tranquility Base. I hereby propose a new name for the July full moon – the Landing Moon.

Technical Details

Phone camera.

Onwards!
Katherine

Practicing In A Vacuum, Saddle Seat & Two-Point

Awareness of the outside world. You see them everywhere, but did you ever wonder who makes them? SeeCoast Manufacturing Company, Coin Operated Binoculars, Fairhope AL. “SeeCoast’s viewers can be found in every U.S. state and in over 80 countries throughout the world.” About

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Your random theory moment for the day. I can’t grasp the saddle seat position because I don’t need it. Not on a school horse. Not the way I would firing down the judge’s line on a park horse. It’s like trying to learn two-point while jumping crossrails.

The purpose of two-point is to stay in balance as the horse heaves over a jump. If the jump is small, there is no heaving. Nothing to stay in balance with. Yet we have to practice. So, we end up practicing in a vacuum.

Same with saddle seat. There is no reason to have my hands up around my ears when I’m trudging around the arena on a school horse. However, if horse is rocking the chesspiece headset, those high hands become a straight line to the bit. [Center of Gravity, High Hands]

Also, as I understand it, you sit in the back seat to give your horse room to lift the shoulder. No reason to give room if shoulder is earthbound.

Unfortunately, the time when you need these positions, say over a large fence or powering around the show ring, you also need a horse that will not tolerate beginners. So we learn have to learn first and apply second.

Onwards!
Katherine

ISO Wheels For Milton

Awareness of the outside world. The Archaeologist: This incredibly preserved 4,000 year old wagon made of just made of just oakwood, unearthed in Armenia. 2022.

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Milton is recovering well from his cart incident. A small bump remains on the outside of the offending leg, but minor swelling is gone. Rehab helped along by excellent bodywork from Anita Miller of Robin Hood Therapy, LLC. [Delay Of Game] & [A Bout of Bodywork]

The cart, on the other hand, does not self repair. We are using this time to get a vehicle more suited to Milton.

The easiest thing would be to buy another jog cart. Light, inexpensive, easy to find. Unfortunately, Milton prefers to have as little weight as possible on his back. Hence driving over riding. Since a jog cart has two wheels, the shafts balance on the horse’s back. Also, it tends to bounce around since our backyard has more variable terrain than one would find in a ring.

Our marathon cart has four wheels, so it supports its own weight and thereby takes the weight off his back, but he thinks it’s heavy. He’s not wrong. [New Equipment: Carriage]

The ideal conveyance would have …

The lightness of a jog cart,

The four wheels of carriage,

But not the price tag of a fine harness buggy.

Onwards!
Katherine

Loot By Loot, Virtual Tevis 2024

Awareness of the outside world. “we really living in the the most difficult section of someone’s AP gov exam in 2053” @peachyblackg0rl Jul 21 2024. Hat tip to M.

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Virtual Tevis Prizes

Our loot for this year. Two shirts, medal, & sticker.

IRL Tevis Breed Report

The 2024 Western States Trail Ride was this past Saturday & Sunday. The Tevis Cup: Preliminary Entrant List

No Thoroughbreds this year.

Three & 1/2 Saddlebreds. Socks & Kathleen Daley got as far as Last Chance, 50 miles. Brave & Natalie Law and Coco & Layla Law got as far as Foresthill, 68 miles. Tevis Cup: Standings

All three are CH-SH, i.e. champion sport horse, which I guess you’d just about have to be by the time you qualify for Tevis. ASHBA: CH, CH-EQ, CH-SH and CH-HS

Sheba is listed in the Standings page as Arabian X and on The Prelim Entrant List as National Show Horse (Arab x ASB). Sheba & Charisse Glenn got to Last Chance, 50 miles.

No Standardbreds on any of the official forms. Ranger is listed as a Kentucky Mtn Horse. Facebook comment said Ranger is a Standardbred cross. Ranger & Annette Phillips got as afar as Michigan Bluff, 62.5 miles.

Much more happened, both good & bad. I’m going with this since it is my area of interest.

Winning story [will post when I find coverage]

From 2021 when one of these ASBs finished, ASHBA: CH-SH Mo’ Motion Jack Finishes 37th in the 2021 Tevis Cup 100 Mile One Day Ride.

Virtual Tevis 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.

Virtual Tevis Posts [Archives]

Onwards!
Katherine

Alfalfa Strike

Awareness of the outside world. CDC, National Wastewater System: State and Territory Trends. Hat tip Your Local Epidemiologist: A Summer Covid-19 Wave, Jetelina, Jul 18. 2024

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Both horses have turned their noses up at the current load of 80/20 alfalfa/timothy hay. Yes, you read that right. 80% alfalfa and it’s not good enough for them. (We don’t feed straight alfalfa because $$ and it’s too hard to handle.)

Anyway.

It’s perfectly nice hay, recently purchased. They’ve been on this meal plan since early 2023. It’s not the idea. It’s this particular load. We’ve tried several servings from the same semi. It’s the back bales in the recent hay photo.

[Hay Stall Redo]

Nice looking hay, right? The front bales are 20/80 alfalfa/timothy. We mix & match as we go. Or, at least, we used to.

Milton will eat the 80/20. Eventually. Under protest. Rodney doesn’t so much as disturb squareness of the flake.

Massive eyeroll. 🙄

Gourmet chocolate is nice, but we don’t feel that this batch is quite up to our standards.

However.

We are reluctant to play chicken with their diet. Milton because of his tum. Rodney because he’s a skinny senior citizen.

So, we are waiting for the new load to come in.

🙄 🙄 🙄

Update [Hay Update]

Onwards!
Katherine