multitasking

Yesterday was a super boring day at work. Practically nobody was in the office. And we had a big event the day prior, so everyone who was in was operating on a low-ish level, myself included lol. 

So I took a couple breaks. I will call the breaks well-deserved. Your mileage may vary. 

ANYWAYS... taking a few breaks meant putting a dent into my massive backlog of unread posts that has somehow skyrocketed. Seems like a couple bloggers out there are experiencing similar slowdowns and feelings of ennui (with which I totally commiserate!). 

But some of y'all are doing pretty cool things that totally make me want to live vicariously through you. 

Meanwhile, as L. Williams from Viva Carlos mentioned recently, USEF Network has live streaming of the Pennsylvania National Horse Show, which has been running on my smaller, secondary monitor since last week. (Yes, I have two monitors at work. Comes with the territory of number-crunching nerd-dom). 

So as I'm perusing the various blogs and watching some awesome helmet cam footage of Britt & Foster over at A House on a Hill (congrats again on an excellent show!) on my larger primary monitor, I kinda had a meta moment and snapped a pic. 

Then I went ahead and grabbed a screenshot too, just to give you a real sense of the view. Hint: it was awesome.

Yep. This is what my work break looks like on a lazy Friday afternoon. That's two different video streams on side-by-side monitors, simultaneously. One is rainy novice cross country (seriously, follow that link above and watch!), and the other is gorgeously turned-out 3'6" hunters.

And I soon found out that Britt wasn't the only one who posted some great video evidence of an exciting weekend. Sarah from Eventing in Color shared footage of her recent derby dressage tests (congrats again!) and I got to keep the magic going a little while longer lol. 

It was actually a really welcome distraction from an otherwise meh day. Sorry not sorry. 

My riding plans for the evening were partially foiled (again ugh). The arena lights are fixed and look great (yay!!), but I didn't realize that a planned Wine & Ride event would be IN the ring. Last time it was in a field... So I couldn't use the ring anyway. 

there was a band, camp fire, pony rides, and christmas lights strung everywhere

At least I got there early enough to pack in a 20-ish minute walk-trot dressage school in the field before the sun set. 

good practice since our next HT test will be on grass

After some initial speed walkin around to check out all the activity, Isabel actually settled into a very workman-like trot. I was quite pleased. Just focused on keeping myself correct: stabilized core, straight back, long legs, and shoulders and elbows aiding contact instead of my hands... Also spent a lot of time just talking to Izzy, with lots of praise. She was a little sticky past the corner of the field closest to the barn, but mostly worked through it. 

My goal was to feel her light and swinging and moving FORWARD. My tendency is to get too rigid with my hands/arms and actually kind of box her in. Trainer P refers to it as getting her 'stuck.' So I just wanted to feel a nice, fluid looseness through Isabel's neck and shoulders, helped along by an occasionally exaggerated inside bend. 

We didn't work super hard or long (lost the light quickly), but I was happy that Isabel could snap right back into work after four days off. Good girl!

Anyway, that's pretty much what I got right now. Actual fun stuff is happening this weekend, tho, I swear! :)