What is the lesson?

Grace under fire? Humbleness? Go with the flow? Uncle, shall I say it again, uncle? I get it I get it I get it. Or maybe I haven't, and that's why I keep being thrown onto the mat again, and again, and again. Just as soon as I get the keys from the gods of "through", "connected" and "on the aids", the demons of spring grass rear their green heads and run cackling down the barn aisles.

I should have known when I turned Ren, fully tacked up, to go back into his stall, and he planted himself, and with every possible communication skill he possesses he said, no, we need to head out that door to the green, get it lady?, grass. This, even though he always goes back in the stall tacked up while I go put on my boots and helmet. It gives him a few more minutes of hay time and well, I can run to the room of rest if need be. What was he thinking? I was going to take him out to graze with a saddle on? Sigh. I should have known.

I took him into the indoor arena and longed him. We did it all, he did it pleasantly, no bucks, all business. Great. Got on him with the intention of walking out the door into the lovely afternoon and down the hill to the outdoor arena for our session. Hmmmm. I should have known. He came out of the arena as though he were performing for the crowds with a pack of wolves at his heels. Interesting. I should have known. It usually takes me 30 minutes of work to get that engine going, and here we were, as Patty so aptly put it when she saw us in the parking lot - all fired up. I kept walking around the driveways, the parking lot, the grassy areas, mulling over whether heading down the hill in the wind to the faraway outdoor arena was really the smartest thing to do. I decided no. So we walked some more, he's still on his toes, I keep my seat bones planted, asking him to go left, go right, do this, do that. Finally, I say, let's go into the arena. He stops, backs up, goes sideways, telling me, not softly, that that's not on his agenda. Well, that starts a 30 minute tango of go forward, okay, well, then back up, okay, you like forward better don't you, taking off, coming back, hauling me sideways, head tossing, and after a couple of boots, really just jumping up and down. I tried faking him out, heading on a slight diagonal towards the door, praising all the while. He balked halfway there. There was no tiring him out. When I found us in a tight spot between two buildings and his pants all in a twist, I hopped off and lead him into the arena. Alright, already, uncle.

I walked him around briskly while I cooled off. Then I got on. He promptly tried to haul me out the door. I said uh no, and we had a little tiff. He was obsessed, and it seemed as though nothing I could do would help him turn off of the path he was on. I tried all the things that worked so well over the weekend. I was pretty determined to make it all go just that well again, when he popped his tongue out. At 15 years of age, my beautiful horse has chosen to show his tuning out by hanging his tongue out of the side of his mouth while going around the ring. I immediately backed off, loosened the rein, the tongue returned to its normal location, and I just rode him on large loopy circles that I determined. He couldn't haul me out the door, but I couldn't force the issue. It was a draw.

What is the lesson? I have control over very few things in my life. I have control over my reaction to things. Renny is not a bad horse. He is just a horse. He has opinions that are not mine, he tries to tell me, sometimes I can hear him, sometimes I choose not to listen. We muddle through. Sometimes we have moments from the gods, somedays those demons run amok with glee. But in the end, we have each other, and we are the better for it.

School's out for the summer

For all my many readers, hehehehe, the MLA class is over. This blog is not. I've enjoyed writing here, so I will most likely continue. Until the next time, happy trails.

The end

This is the end. My link to Rollyo in my earlier post was so not a link. I finally got it. I think. Persistence has paid off. I may even make more of these little personal search engines. Kinda cool.

I'd like to thank my colleagues for putting up with me during these 9 weeks of this 8 week course. They have graciously listened to my squeals of delight and my groans of despair and looked with real or feigned enthusiasm at the new (possible) tools of our trade.

Rollyo

Select...DressageSearch The Web

Week 8 - Mashups

http://rollyo.com/dashboard.html

This is the link to my Rollyo dashboard. I created my own Dressage search engine. I tried it out with the word "half-pass". This was the advanced and optional part of exercise 2 in Week 8.

Honestly, I thought exercise 2 and the privacy writings was more difficult. I really didn't want to read too many of them. I chose two - one by the Shifted Librarian and one by the Librarian in Black. Shifty made me aware that I may be the insane one because I haven't accepted the fact that my private life is really public and that resistance is futile... LIB gave me an article on 6 tips to protect my search history privacy on the web - the six went from easy to ridiculously difficult IMHO. I can't switch IP addresses at work, and I don't know how to do it at home, neither do I want to learn... And using some software program like TOR? Okay, I give up, privacy is an illusion, and I will just continue bumbling around looking at horse sites and buying household goods from Amazon. Now you know all about my sordid online adventures...

Seriously, thank you to all the MLA instructors for broadening my Web 2.0 horizons - I never would have stretched so far on my own. Have a great summer!

Week 8 - Mashup

Well, that was great fun! Yesterday when I first started looking at the most popular mashups, I wasn't impressed. Especially when the blog rater I chose rated my blog a big zero! Who am I kidding? I knew it was going to get a zero, zilch, nada, big nothing rating. No one reads my blog (except for you instructors, of course), much less comments on it, and there are no ads...

Anyway, I tried Programmable Web today, and discovered Coverpop and Phylotaxis. Coverpop takes covers of books, magazines, seed packets, you name it, makes a mosaic and as you mouse over the lovely to behold poster, each individual bit comes up and you can read about it, or order it! Amazing! You could sit there all day, all week, years could pass!

And Phylotaxis makes keeping up with science news around the world a very fun endeavour indeed. You launch the program, and it allows you to manipulate the images towards science or culture (agitation is allowed, even encouraged), and then you can choose an image marble for perusal. Oh what fun!

I forwarded both these mashups to colleagues, so we could all share in the adventure.