leejooheon | Reading

R at the barn was encouraging me to record a pattern with Dandy, since I am teaching him to do Liberty with me.

I thought, yeah, we could give it a shot. I was thinking "I have a few days to work on this before the virtual show closes for entries"....

Then I remembered that my Sweetie is going to his niece's wedding, and since Dandy is at home, not at the barn, I would have no one to record us...

Unless...

I decided to just GO FOR IT tonight, pretty much with us never having practiced this pattern AT ALL.

It took four tries, after some warm ups, but I think we did quite well.

There's one spot where we turned around that probably should be a proper turn on the hindquarters, and we won't score well for that, but everything else looked pretty darn good.

I am proud of Dandy, since we really only just got to him trotting beside me very recently, and for him to trot beside me and then do a good, solid halt is pretty impressive. Staying with me so well in the circles is VERY good for how little we've worked together this summer.

I was a little gruff about getting this done, as I had just realized that we had to do it NOW or not get a video for this show (which really wouldn't have been the end of the world), as well as we were running out of daylight.

This was done at about 9:30 at night, and the clock was ticking.

Still, I am very happy with how well he did, and for how I managed to stay focused too.

No, I'm not leading him with any kind of neck rope or anything, he just sticks right to me at Liberty.

https://youtu.be/_ZT-k9O50zQ?si=FrXhKNry9xn43nkN

sushiflop

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simplyn2deep posting in

1word1day

Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Harrumph (verb)
harrumph [huh-ruhmf]

verb (used without object)
1. to clear the throat audibly in a self-important manner.: The professor harrumphed good-naturedly.
2. to express oneself gruffly.

Origin: First recorded in 1935–40; imitative

Example Sentences
Trump is far from the first US president to harrumph at Europe's reluctance to do more for, as well as spend more on, its own defence.
From BBC

"Trousers," exclaims the Prince Andrew character, with a fruity harrumph, as though taken aback by a female interviewer wearing trousers.
From BBC

I humored her harrumphs when my best friend and I waited in line for hours to see the second batch in the late 1990s.
From Los Angeles Times

They treated an audience that knows how to harrumph to a smorgasbord of how things should be done.
From Washington Post

In one harrumph, Trump charged that no incumbent president since 1960 had failed to win the general election after winning Iowa, Florida and Ohio.
From Washington Post

Now YOU come up with a sentence (or fic? or graphic?) that best illustrates the word.

Current Mood: blah

adore

There's a Cozy Up With Fantasy book blast happening today, with cozy fantasy ebooks on sale for 99 cents. I picked up a bunch!

Claws and Contrivances by Stephanie Burgis. I enjoyed Scales and Sensibility, the first book of the duology, so I'm excited to get to read the second one now.

Weaving Hope by Celia Lake. I've read many of her other books and I know this one will be soothing to read during Moontime (which is due any day now).

The Season of Dragons by Tansy Rayner Roberts. It's a Pride & Prejudice retelling with dragons, I hear. Sign me tf up.

A Rival Most Vial: Potioneering for Love and Profit by R. K. Ashwick. It's MM and been on my TBR for a good while.

Elemental Affections by Jaime Ryan. It's second chances twice over: the heroine is returning to magic school and rekindling an old flame. I love a story about fixing regrets or following wistfulness to a satisfying conclusion, so I'm hoping this one will hit that spot for me.

I'm a fan of buying directly from authors and sales like these have introduced me to some new-to-me authors. \o/

Current Mood: excited

gottawonder

Today I am grateful for:

A very solid sleep.

I had a nice dream about going back to university, and needing an apartment so I didn't have to drive every day (did not mean selling our place).

Usually dreams about finding myself in an apartment mean that they are from my past, and usually sort of full of old boxes of stuff I have to get rid of, or being ashamed for being back in that place again..something like that.

This was a big, nice, clean apartment that I was going to be sharing with another student, and there was nothing from my past in it.

When I went to the university, it was a little odd, because the feeling wasn't that I was already aware of my direction, but instead was looking around going "what should I take?".

So, it was a lot more pleasant than most of my "apartment in the city" dreams.

I didn't "do" much today. I did chores and such, then headed to town.

I haven't been doing pottery for a while, just because I've been using Monday as kind of another "free" day since I've had a lot of catching up to do with health tests and such, and sometimes I just don't want to be as busy.

I did go to Winner's, needing picture frames for the prints we bought at the art walk. I found one that will work for sure with one print, not sure what to do about the other print as it's a tougher size.

I got groceries, and I am very grateful to be able to do so.

I came home and my Sweetie remembered to pick up the frozen cat food. Yay!

I put the animals out into their larger pastures while I sat with my Sweetie outside. He worked on putting the cardboard tubes into the holes that will be filled with concrete to become pilings for the car port.

Then we watched the rest of the newest "Mission Impossible". Other than the fantastic stunts, the movie itself was confusing, felt chopped up with all the flashbacks to earlier movies, and felt frantic without you ever really feeling for a moment that anyone in the cast was in any real danger.

sushiflop

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stonepicnicking_okapi posting in

1word1day

kerning [kur-ning]

noun

1. the setting of two letters closer together than is usual by removing space between them. Kerning can also set the letter glyphs wider apart, if the layout designer so chooses. The most commonly met kerning tightens the glyphs up (by a varying amount for each pair of glyphs, as adjusted by the typographer) to make text more readable.

examples

1. The finishing airbrushing of an illo, the final tweak or kerning of an art headline, was important to him.
"Pacific NW magazine honors the life and work of art director David Miller" Seattle Times 12/16/22

2. It highlights just how much thought goes into making sure the thickness, kerning, and size of a font is optimal for the environment where it’s viewed. "How to change your font in Slack" The Verge 09/11/20

origins

French carne corner, from French dialect, from Latin cardin-, cardo hinge

profiterole_reads

duckprintspress's Pride Bundle 2025: General Imprint Short Stories (not available any more, but most of these stories can be found on DPP's Patreon) was absolutely delightful!

DPP is an indie press publishing diverse original works by fanwork creators, so it's not surprising that I vibed so much with these stories. Most of them are speculative.

There's non-binary rep (they/them, neo-pronouns, pronoun combinations or no pronouns), f/f and m/m.

gottawonder

Today I am grateful for:

Getting good sleep.

A slow start to the day with my Sweetie.

Yesterday my Sweetie got a little bobcat from our friend, and today he's using it to move a big pile of dirt that's just been sitting in the way in the horse pasture for about ten years.

The dirt WAS nice clean topsoil, brought in to help plant a row of spruce trees along the lane (they are a good size now), but we really didn't need such a large amount.

So, I have used some here and there, but it soon got full of grass roots and impossible to use for anything now, so we're spreading it out into some low spots in the yard.

He only got about half of it moved today, but it's a start.

I pulled some weeds for about an hour, then it rained.

My husband stopped moving the dirt when it rained, but really, he didn't need to. It was over in ten minutes, BUT he stopped, came inside and cleaned up, and thus talked himself out of actually finishing the job.

So, he came with me to see River instead. It hadn't even rained at R's place.

River was still a bit sore, so another day of gentle work, focusing on our yields. I also worked with him to get a better, more forward walk. Good work to do on a day where we can't do more than walking.

Then we came home, and watched the first hour of the newest "Mission Impossible", and so far it feels rushed and messy, but with huge amounts of exposition that covers what happened in the last movie, and in the distant past, and so on. Kind of a mess. I hope it gets it's shit together. I feel like this might be the last "Mission Impossible" with Tom Cruise in it, and it would be nice for him if it ended on a strong note.

Then I went back outside and worked with Dandy and Wonder. Lots of running for me today, but I did get decent attention from Dandy after some effort.

sallymn posting in

1word1day

exculpate [ek-skuhl-peyt, ik-skuhl-peyt]

verb:
to clear from a charge of guilt or fault; free from blame; vindicate

Examples:

He devises a daring, sometimes distracting but ultimately inspired format by saving his commentary for footnotes that contextualize, teasingly contradict and occasionally exculpate Rodgers from her unsparing self-assessments. (Charles McNulty, Stephen Sondheim and Mary Rodgers, late Broadway greats, have brilliant last words, Los Angeles Times, November 2022)

An amnesty could exculpate as many as 1,400 activists and politicians involved in the attempt to separate Catalonia from Spain. (Spanish Socialists and Catalan Junts reach deal for government support, amnesty, Reuters, November 2023)

In a perverse circular logic, the crime itself can come to seem like the clearest evidence of the condition that is held up to exculpate the mother - and also like its own form of punishment. (Eren Orbey, A Husband in the Aftermath of His Wife's Unfathomable Act, Reuters, October 2024)

Cato attacked him for this, and Lucilius ran the risk of losing his tribunate, and many of the friends of Pompeius came forward to exculpate him and said that he did not seek that office or wish for it. (Plutarch, Lives)

Origin:

'to clear from suspicion of wrong or guilt,' 1650s, from Medieval Latin exculpatus, past participle of exculpare, from Latin ex culpa, from ex 'out of' + culpa ablative of culpa 'blame, fault.' (Online Etymology Dictionary)

There's no need to say 'my bad' if you're unfamiliar with exculpate; while the word is far from rare, it is most often encountered in formal writing in reference to the clearing of someone of alleged fault or guilt, as in 'they were exculpated of any wrongdoing.' You may be more familiar with a pair of terms that, like exculpate, come from the Latin noun culpa, meaning 'blame' or 'guilt.' One is the adjective culpable, used to describe someone deserving of condemnation or blame. The other is the Latin phrase mea culpa, which translates directly as 'through my fault' and refers to an acknowledgement of personal fault or error that is more formal than, well, 'my bad.' (Merriam-Webster)

gottawonder

Today I am grateful for:

A lovely day with my Sweetie.

He did some kind of work before I got up, not sure exactly what he was working on...but something.

I made a conscious decision to dress nicely to go to the city today, and I'm glad I did. I enjoy dressing up, I've got lots of nice things, and I need to overcome the feeling of possibly being over dressed. I was fine, no one really cares anyhow, wear what pleases you.

Our goal was to do the Artwalk in the city, which is exactly as it sounds. There's a part of the downtown that is all blocked off for artist's booths, and there was SO MUCH to see.

I am always blown away at how many very good, very interesting artists there are out there, all of them striving to sell their work.

We walked around for likely close to two hours, and I was pretty burnt out at that point. It's a lot to take in.

We did buy some very reasonable prints, a couple of art cards, and a little pottery puffer fish.

We were going to eat at one of our restaurants, only to discover that it was closed, though they may have moved. It's sad if they are out of business, because we often saw the owner there, and this place was his personal dream.

We ate at another one of our regular places a few blocks over, and it was good as usual.

Then we got ice cream for my Sweetie, and we went walking around the valley again, not far from where we were last time.

I love walking around in the trails in this city. It feels so different, it's all little trails through the trees with a creek, bridges, and parts of it give you views of houses and yards, and even the streets near this path are so interesting. They are old houses, with lovely yards, and wouldn't it be so amazing to live that close to such nice walking areas?

It's a far cry from all the soulless new divisions with identical Mcmansions with no yards hardly, and no sidewalks either. You can't even plant proper trees in those areas, and the city won't plant any to line the streets now. Soulless.

So it was quite a day for walking. LOTS of walking.

Then we came home, let everyone out into their pastures and put the water on the garden, and then we just sat outside on our swing for an hour or so.

The weather was perfect for it.

Summer just flies by. I love summer, but you feel almost this panic, like HOW MUCH SUMMER CAN I JAM INTO EVERY SINGLE DAY, because winter is just so...winter.

We re-watched the second most recent Mission Impossible, so that we can soon watch the most recent one and have some idea of what the heck is happening.

profiterole_reads

Netflix's German movie Brick was intriguing. People end up stuck in their building when a mysterious black wall suddenly surrounds it.

I thought the explanation at the end was solid (movies like that tend to either leave you without an explanation or have an explanation so basic that no explanation would have been better).

Matthias Schweighöfer (Ludwig Dieter in Army of Thieves, Jack of Hearts in Heart of Stone) stars in this.

gottawonder

Today I am grateful for:

Good sleep.

My Sweetie renting the hole auger and making the holes for the pilings that will support the car port.

He also got the kayak from a Marketplace seller.

When I got up and outside, we used the auger to also dig holes for the cedar shrubs that I have procrastinated on planting. I knew that where we wanted to put them was clay soil, and miserable digging, and there never seemed to be a "right time" to tackle it.

So, with the holes mostly dug, I did get them planted today, and also planted the little columbine over with the other flowering perennials beside the house.

When I went to see River, my Sweetie went to the climbing gym, after he returned the auger in the afternoon before the rental place closed (so he was just driving all over the place today).

River was just not into it today, sluggish and slow to react. It was pretty warm, but still, he's usually more "on" than that.

I did work with him on his yields, and that wasn't too satisfying, but it was practice.

Then I decided just to hop on and go for a mosey around the pastures and yard (the pastures are rotated, so some get to rest for a while, and you can just ride in them). R joined me at one point, and we chatted and enjoyed the rather lovely warm evening.

I texted my Sweetie to let him know that the young woman with health challenges wasn't having a lesson today, so I'd be done a little early if he wanted to meet me at home in decent time. We could try to go kayaking if we were right on it, since it's light out until 10:30 pm.

We were swift and decisive, and got the kayaks loaded and just went, without dithering. It worked out perfectly.

We got to the little lake down the road just in time for that lovely cool part of the evening with only a light breeze, so the water was pretty still.

My Sweetie was very happy with how this new to us kayak handles, he has no problem keeping this one travelling straight.

It was wonderful to be out on the water with him, and not have him struggling with his kayak, and not feel badly the whole time that he wasn't enjoying himself. We both like to get out onto the water, but we weren't going as often because it was less enjoyable. Hopefully this sparks a new era of paddling again.

puddleshark posting in

common_nature

( A walk in the July woods... )

supermario128

I’ve been working a lot more on the personal website recently. Looots of cleaning up and reorganizing, mostly (like using better fitting HTML tags/attributes), though I have added new stuff to it (like a favicon that resembles the GameCube logo plus a button for Nicktoons Unite). I also added a robots.txt file, though I’m a bit doubtful it’ll actually do shit, especially with all these genAI startups that don’t respect that file.

I tried to look into what it would take to insert repetitive HTML code such that I could change just one thing and have it update on all applicable pages (so the code for a footer, for instance), and apparently the only options are either Javascript or iframes, and iframes aren’t recommended for this. Blagh!

( Read more... )

Current Mood: sleepy

yourlibrarian posting in

common_nature

After returning to the 84/30 we ended up at the Bonneville Dam in search of a bathroom! It was a good stop though as the view (and sound) of the dam was impressive.

( Read more... )

gottawonder

Today I am grateful for:

Good sleep.

I did the dishes before heading outside to do chores.

Then I mowed. And mowed. And mowed. For about an hour and a half.

When my Sweetie got home I took a break to eat.

While we were inside I got him to help me navigate paying for another online class with a different organization, and their registration and payment is different.

What a relief to get that done with. For some reason I've been procrastinating on that one for a while.

Then we went back outside. I dumped a bunch of weeds that were sitting in wheelbarrows, and then picking up the piles that were all over, and dumping those.

My Sweetie moved some things that were in the way of him hopefully getting some concrete pilings poured for the car port.

I peeked at the garter snakes that live in the composting manure. They only started staying in our yard when we started putting a tarp over the compost pile, and now any time you look there are a few napping in there.

Today I saw a little wee one and a bigger one, both looking shiny and clean from a recent molt. You can see all kinds of skins on top of the compost; they like to molt in there. My Sweetie later saw some teeny tiny ones when he was moving a turned over water trough.

Then my Sweetie whacked weeds while I pulled more away from a mulched area. Our mulching only seems so effective. I guess it needs to be deeper?

I also worked with Dandy and Wonder in the round pen, and Dandy is making some great progress. He's staying with me at a trot (and I was really moving), which is a big step. It takes a while for them to feel okay with you running, as it can make them think there's something scary going on. He was able to stay with me around the pylons at a trot, and halted really nicely.

Wonder's general attitude has really improved since I started doing Liberty with her last summer. She seems a little less reactive to me interacting with her, and seems to look for connection. It's really nice to have something to do with her, since I decided I wasn't going to ride her.

Then I came in and we watched "Ghostlight", which is a WONDERFUL movie.

soullessserenity

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innitmarvelous_og posting in

dw_community_promo

+++

About the comm.

It's one part dream.
One part disaster.
And absolutely 100% fandom.

It's Your OTPs/Fandoms combined with our chaos.

Challenge(s) 2025:

Challenge 1: Hodge Podge A new challenge idea I came up with all sorts of things to get players rolling out the fills and scoring points!

Sign up: July 3 Rd to July 19th @ 8PM EST / 12AM GTM
Opening Date: July 20
Closing Date: October 12

I hope to have a variety of challenges in this comm, but they make take some time for me to figure out as I don't want to copy other comms out there. I have an idea or two for an abbreviated challenge after this one and I'll be working on getting it ready go if you guys want to play with me again after this round

WordsCharactersReading time

Current Mood: hopeful

gottawonder

Today I am grateful for:

Getting decent sleep, though it was only about six hours.

I got my follow up phone call from my doctor about the tests, things look fine.

I did some jittery tidying, fueled by the free range, pointless anxiety I get too often. I took everything off of the night stand and wiped all the grey grunge off of it, and put some of the books back on the shelf. I also moved the night stand and cleaned the grey gunge from underneath it, and gathered up all the shoes I am not likely to wear right away and put them away.

I put away a few things that started piling up in the hall by the bathroom (the front entryway, actually).

I took some of the pots with deceased house plants in them outside to reuse the dirt somewhere else, and brought a plant from upstairs to the bathroom.

I fixed a rip in my long sleeved work shirt.

I talked with "I" (person I knew a bit when I was younger, met up with again with a 25 year gap in between. In reality, we weren't super close back in the day, but it's fine to see her again now).

We talked a bit about guys we knew at the time, and the guy who made my life a living hell for about eight years. She REALLY didn't know what my life was like, because in her mind, this guy and I were actually a publicly acknowledged couple, and she wondered "what had happened to us"...but what really happened is that he never agreed to be an official, exclusive boyfriend, and just strung me along with the hope of something meaningful someday. The someday that never came. I basically just stopped all contact with him when I started dating my now husband.

It was funny, because when his name came up, she was like "oh, wasn't that such a fun time in our lives...", and I was like "no, not for me it wasn't".

Anyhow, we talked. We're trying to figure out when we can get together again.

I did chores, and headed to the barn a little early, because R asked if I wanted to ride around the yard for a while with her and the woman in the lesson before mine.

So I did, and it was nice to mosey around the yard together. It was part of this woman's lesson, to test her horse in a trail ride situation with other horses to help with some behavioral issues.

River was a bit sore again, so we decided to let him rest, and I used Ferrari to do a lesson. We did a bunch of ground work training with him, which was good. Ferrari is a very sweet horse, and very responsive and forward. Very different from working with River.

After my lesson, R brought out a giant gift basket of mostly tasty junk food items that I don't eat (but my Sweetie does), as River and I won the High Point score for the show a few days ago. That means that when you took our scores from each class, our total was the highest overall, though it was very, very close with the runners up. That's pretty cool to win that.

My Sweetie did go and look at the kayak from marketplace, and he likes it a lot, but was unable to make the bank transfer work today, so he's going back for it Friday.

I really hope this one works for him, so that we can do more kayaking together.

I got home and he arrived not long after. We let everyone out into their pastures, and we walked around for about an hour with Roxy, pulling more of those burr forming weeds. It's making a difference that we are doing this, but there are always a few more.

Roxy rolled in something horrific, so we had to bath her outside before she could come in the house with us.

Then my Sweetie went to bed, and I had supper (he ate on his way home somewhere).

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Page generated Jul. 22nd, 2025 01:26 am

that good old fashioned razzmatazz

Reading

I got a pattern done with Dandy!

good at the first bite, taking for lunch tomorrow

Tuesday word: Harrumph

A cozy fantasy book sale

Monday, July 14

???????

Monday: kerning

Pride Bundle 2025: General Imprint Short Stories

Sunday, July 13

Sunday Word: Exculpate

Saturday, July 12

Brick

Friday, July 11

July Woods

Website & Internet Backstory

Bonneville Dam

Thursday, July 10

Finished 'Honey Lemon Soda'

New Challenge Comm! First Challenge Signups Open NOW

Challenge(s) 2025:

Wednesday, July 9

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July 2025

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