Virtual Brush Box

Premise: Main character has a vehicle that changes according to task.

Previous: [Quantum Truck, A Writing Sketch] & [Quantum Truck II, Fiction]

There are discrepancies. Work in progress.

🛻🛻🛻

She looked out of the apartment window to check out the parking lot. A neon pink, two-seater Porsche Boxster sat square in the middle of her parking space, its lime green roof folded back behind the seats.

A sports car! Cool.

However, she wasn’t sure what that meant. A truck was for moving things. A sedan was for moving people. A sports car was for what?

She checked the car again. Driver. One passenger. Barely space for a shoebox behind the seat.

So. No cargo.

Sports cars were fun on the open highway. Perhaps a courier mission.

Sports cars were small. Perhaps going to a place where parking was tight.

Sports cars are pretty. Perhaps a parade? No, you’d want a big, luxe, four-seater for that.

If it was meant as a personal gift, she’d rather have a Jeep. Low-slung cars could be nerve racking when you are half the height of anything on the road.

Still, this was going to be fun. Whatever it was.

The open top didn’t bother her. She never worried about the vehicle getting stolen, no matter what shape it was currently in. She took standard precautions and assumed the car could look after itself.

🛻🛻🛻

Afterword

I like the idea of a changing car as a story device.

However, I have two issues.

One, I am in need of plot. Standard issue problem for me.

Two, specific to this story, I am in need of an explanation. Why does the car change? Divine will? Aliens? Time travelers? I have no idea. Part one ponders the lack of cause in story. However, the characters may not know the underlying causes, but the author should. I think I may have to fall back on magical realism. As far as I can tell, this means having weirdness in your story but not having to explain it. This feels like a cheap shot. Handwaving does not count as worldbuilding.

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. USDOT: Where was the First Walk/Don’t Walk Sign Installed?

~~~

Ending my walk at Kymulga Grist Mill. I’m the green dot in the middle. Photo by Greg Walcott. [Water Study]

Milton was off, so we weren’t doing morning pasture walks. I used this as a reason to find new places to walk. [Milton’s Yearly Drama]

All walks 1 mile, July 2025.

Day One

Old Mill Square
Shelby County Arts Council
Columbiana AL

Day Two

Kymulga Grist Mill
Talladega County, AL

From my 5K there, I recalled that the creek path was the driest. I also figured it would be harder to get lost. Follow creek out, turn around, follow creek back. [Skirting the Swamp]

Day Three

Sidewalk
Cahaba Heights
Birmingham AL

A rare sighting of a suburban sidewalk. Note the lack of sidewalk on the other side of the street and the numerous driveways crossing the sidewalk. Still, it exists. Baby steps. Yes, I went there specifically to recognize that stretch by walking it. In the commercial zone, I saw one other pedestrian, which was one more than I was expecting.

After walk, got back in truck, drove half a mile to next stop. Would have been a perfect distance but the route between had no sidewalks, crossed two major roads with no lights or crosswalks, and took place in a space where drivers are not expecting pedestrians. Even on the sidewalk, I had to be ultra defensive & assume the cars would not see me.

Day Four

Melrose Park at Chelsea
Chelsea AL

The walking trail was still theoretical, so I walked on the verge. The road was the park access road. Not busy.

Day Five & Future

Nope. Had to stop going places for walks. Generally, I can’t get anywhere interesting until 11 am at the earliest. Not good during a heat alert. Back to the pasture. Measured the walk to confirm that five laps is in fact one mile. Check.

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. timeanddate: Pythagorean Theorem Day. 7² + 24² = 25².

~~~

Razzy
The Hunter Place
July 2025

Onwards!
Katherine

ASHAA Fun Show
Stepping Stone Farm
Chelsea AL, USA
Saturday 19 July 2025

All photos by Greg Walcott

10 Academy Driving – 2nd of 2
With Optimus. Thank you to the Gray & Parr families

30 Academy Showmanship Adult WTC – 1st of 1
31 Academy Equitation Adult WTC – 1st of 1
Ridden as combined classes with 32 & 33 Aca WTC 14-17.
With Bubba. Thank you to Courtney Huguley.

I learned three things.

One. A leg up is possible. I had a tack hold before my first riding class and had to get on sans mounting block. Turns out Coach James is tall enough and strong enough to heave me up. I was impressed. It’s been years since I have been able to execute this maneuver. [Getting a Leg Up]

Two. I was not the only one who needed to be reminded to change disciplines. The previous class had been a hunt seat class.

Bubba: hunt seat.
Me: saddle seat.
Bubba: hunt seat?
me: No, saddle seat.
Bubba: are you sure? I’ve been doing hunt seat.
Me: Yes, I’m sure.

This is after we trotted into the ring and Coach Courtney reminded me about my inner saddle seat rider. I wondered – possibly out loud – do I have an inner saddle seat rider?

Three. I discovered halfway thru the second riding class that my fitness level is 1 & 1/2 classes. Fortunately summer classes move quickly.

Parting Thoughts.

You’d think I would be all over the ASB hunt seat class. In reality, the class is closer to UK Show Hack than US Hunter Under Saddle. Plus, the only point of an under saddle class is to Jump! All! The! Things! But I digress.

Photo at top of post. Going into the extended trot, I heard a reminder from the sidelines about staying off my brakes. So I floated the reins & said go horsey. He went.

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. Today is Casual Pi Day, in countries with day-first numbering, i.e. 22/7, timeanddate: Fun Holiday – Pi Approximation Day. Amusing graphic on the topic of date order, MIT International Students Office: Date Format in the United States.

~~~

Back to our regularly scheduled walk each morning. One mile, first thing in the morning, back and forth in the pasture, combination of in hand & at liberty.

Same activity, slightly different each day. For example, on Sunday, Rodney wasn’t feeling it. He wanted someone else to lead. Me or Milton he didn’t care. He just didn’t want to take point. The next day, he was back to leading the parade.

Onwards!
Katherine

A break from the outside world. Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex, Larry Niven 1969. The sex life of Superman. NSFW? Depends where you work.

Update. A reader (waves hi!) reports an getting an error message from this link. Turns out some systems don’t accept the link directly to the story. My phone does; my desktop does not. I guess I never went back to test the link after drafting the post. Apologies, I will be more vigilant in future. Anyway. To get to the story – it really is worth it – start at the authors main site, larryniven.net > Writing > Bibliography & Search OR Short Stories By Collection > All the Myriad Ways, MoS, WoK > Notes, Read it here! Also, a link at the bottom of the error message will take you to the main site. Which I cannot double check because now the link works on my desktop. Go figure.

Later. My IT department says that my system was able to recognize that I had been to the site. Fascinating.

~~~

Milton was feeling left out of the dinner arrangements.

So he pooped in his feed bucket. [The Chamber Pot]

While it was being cleaned, we used a hay bucket, as we had with Rodney. [Rodney’s New Dinner Bucket]

Upside. Gonna stay with that. Less spillage. Less to clean up. Less dirt to get vacuumed up with the leftovers. The less dirt in Milton’s delicate insides the better.

Downside. A hay(muck) bucket wobbles more than a flat feed pan. So I hung it in a corner. The same corner where his hay goes. The first few times, he couldn’t find his dinner. Over here! I eat over here! He worked it out eventually.

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside worlds. One small step, 56 years today. Also Apollo-Soyuz, 50 years ago last week. General perspective, “Leonov surprised his U.S. counterparts with squeeze tubes labeled as containing vodka — in reality, they were filled with borscht (cold beet soup). ‘The best part of a good dinner is not what you eat, but with whom you eat,1 said Leonov.” Space.com: The Apollo–Soyuz Legacy Lives On, Fifty Years Later, Pearlman, July 17, 2025. Engineering perspective, “While the Space Race saw the two counties approach spaceflight as a competition, from this point on, it would largely be treated as a collaborative endeavour.” Hackaday: 50 years after a historic handshake in space, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project’s legacy still resonates, Nardi, July 17 2025.

~~~

Legend

First color square, NYC

Top, Stephen Wise. Nursery school. A synagogue school, so I got to celebrate both Hanukkah & Christmas. Colors: It may have official colors, but what I remember is a stone building with a red door.

Middle, St. Hilda’s & St, Hugh’s. Kindergarten thru 8th grade. My first nine years of education were in a small, high-pressure school run by conservative nuns. That’s gonna leave a mark. Colors: Internet says the colors are blue and white. When I was there, the colors were navy and gold. To this day, I prefer not to wear navy blue. To get the color here, I simply moved the widget until my stomach said, yup that one.

Bottom, Bronx High School of Science. After 8th grade, we all scattered to various magnet high schools. I took honors geometry and ran track. The start of high school was huge, and new, and temporary. Colors: Green & yellow. The orange bar is for my commute on the D train. I used to do my math homework.

Second color square, DC

Bottom left, Western Junior High School. Moved in the middle of 9th grade. From the city to the suburbs. From high school back to junior high. If there’s a fork in my road, that’s the big one. Colors: It is now Westland, history does not record the Western school colors and I don’t remember.

Walt Whitman High School. 10th thru 12th. It was high school. I rode a lot.

Third color square, NH

Dartmouth College. Met my husband there. Everything after age 25 was due to this choice. Big fork. Colors: “Since that time, the primary nickname for Dartmouth teams, again never officially adopted, has been the “Big Green.” D Sports: The “Big Green” Nickname.

Fourth color square, Misc Adult Classes

Inner square, Duke. Middle, UAB. Outer, U Chicago Graham School. Do you notice that the farther back the school, the more I am willing to talk about it? For a clever person, I don’t have the fondest memories of my school years. [Schadenfreude Saturday, My Pain Is Your Amusement]

Interstitial black & white squares

I leave these as an exercise for the reader.

Premise

I love graphic novels. Unfortunately, it is an admiration that is not returned. This project is to see what I can do for a graphic memoir without being able to draw.

Influences. In His Likeness, a dot comic that has been taken down.

Process Notes

Official hex# colors, if given, or sampled from website, or approximated.

If I do another iteration, I will consider how to incorporate the information into the images. Caption boxes underneath? Stylized lettering within the boxes? A combination?

Some text appeared previously. [Life in Seven States, Or Seven State-Like Entities]

Onwards!
Katherine