Virtual Brush Box

Awareness of the outside world. Several cat foods have been recalled due to bird flu. Keep an eye out. I would assume that dog foods may follow. Ditto.

~~~

The good news is that Rose is speaking out more. The bad news is that she’s doing so because her needs have increased.

Unfortunately, she began having problems with her back a week or so ago. At 2 am, she was fine. At 6 am, she was wobbly. She recreated in a few hours what took Jasmine several months. Vet lit agrees that there are two types of this problem, one slow onset, one fast.

Fortunately (unfortunately), we know how to shift Basset bulk and could ramp up immediately.

Unfortunately, Rose did not initially like the constant attention of minions. Jas saw it as her due.

Fortunately, Rose is getting used to being hauled about. She is realizing than the minions are trying, even if we get it wrong.

Unfortunately, she can be just mobile enough to get up and wobble off.

Fortunately, she’s coming to accept living in easily accessible spots, rather than hiding in corners as she prefers. She has discovered that the floor of the entry way is an excellent kitchen monitoring position.

Unfortunately, she has been know to bite off more than she can chew. Go running around the yard and be worn out the next day. Go up the hall to empty the cat dish and run out of steam partway back down the hall. Portable fencing has been deployed.

Fortunately, she is learning to go slowly when she is walking. She is learning to accept help. She is learning to ask for what she wants, i.e. Minion, more water. Minion, I require being taken outside.

Unfortunately, we hadn’t realized how much work a wobbly dog entailed because Jas eased us into it slowly.

Fortunately, Rose still does outside things outside.

Unfortunately, she is a 13-year-old Bassett Hound with spinal cord issues.

Fortunately, we are doing what we can with what we have, for now.

Dog posts [archive]

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. Small candle. In weaning self from Audible, I signed up for Hearts of Space, an ambient music site. My card was declined for being “out of character.” Apparently, the banking bots think I am unmusical. They are not wrong. The last time I spent money on music, it was probably a CD. I did get it sorted. I now listed to music instead of audio books to fall asleep.

~~~

Content warning. Medical miscellany. If that’s not your thing, you might want to come back tomorrow.

I don’t bruise. I get hurt, I have pain, but I never develop the technicolor, dramatic skin tones that garner sympathy. I’m more likely to be in the position of pointing at my pale, pasty skin and saying, “No, really, this hurts.”

Therefore, after getting landed on by well over half a ton of horse, all my poor foot had to show for it was a small scrape on the arch. As gravity worked its magic, a small bit of discoloration appeared and worked its way down to the toes. [Playing Footsie]

Saturday afternoon, day 3. I don’t recall what moved me to take a photo of my foot.

And then.

Heavy storms Saturday evening. Weather folks imploring people to take this seriously. 5 out of 5 on the sh*t hitting the fan scale. Spent most of Saturday afternoon watching local weather guru James Spann point at various parts of the state on his screen.

And then he pointed to our part of the state.

And there we were, in the polygon.

Kennel Up and move everyone to the basement. Multiple trips. Fortunately some of the cats are willing to cuddle puddle so it wasn’t even more trips up and down the stairs. Then going up and down to check the tv since there is no reception in the basement. Going up and down to check the YouTube channel when rain fade took out the broadcast. Pacing. Okay, clear.

And here we go again. It was a long night. We got to bed four hours later than usual.

My foot was not pleased.

Sunday, post storms.

Turns out, I do bruise. But it takes several tornado warnings to make it happen.

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. “We know this is not a particularly satisfying answer in light of the many concerns that we have heard from you about our members who need to enter the United States and what they might encounter trying to cross the border.” Seattle2020: Statement From Worldcon Chair, Bond, March 20, 2025. This is who we are now. Although I am not a fan of panel discussions, I have signed up for a virtual membership to this year’s Worldcon in support of their efforts.

~~~

Last Tuesday, I posted about my foot getting stomped. I wrote and scheduled the post on the Friday before due to possible power outage over the weekend. [Playing Footsie, Morning Walk Stories, Or Lack Thereof]

I was mostly correct. It did take a few days. Now it’s taking a few more days. Recovery always takes longer than you want.

One good thing. As we have gotten older, we have accumulated a growing pile of wraps & braces. A quick survey turns up one or more therapeutic items for back, knee, ankle, finger, and as it turns out, foot. It’s basically an Ace bandage in sock form. It keeps my foot bones from spreading when I walk. Since Rodney’s weight hyper-spread them, the bones, tendons, and other foot mechanisms are happy to be held together. Makes a world of difference.

How are the horses handling it?

The incident curtailed our Wednesday walk. No walks thru Saturday. On Sunday, we did a short walk. Gradually built back to the standard five laps.

On the first day, I declined to lead Rodney at the start. Let someone else drag him out of the barn and get him going. I had to lead him for the rest of the walk, but I started with Milton.

Milton was fine with it.

Same on day 2.

Day 3, Milton was over it. ‘This is not how this is done.’ Hello Mr. Crankypants.

Day 4. We went back to status quo ante. Harmony reigned.

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. Forbes: Do Boycotts Work? As Target’s Traffic Declines, Tesla And Others See Consumer Shifts, Melville, Mar 17, 2025.

~~~

Last Thursday night was below freezing, once again.

Blankets. Drain the barn pipes and hoses. Hot water for drinks.

Standard freeze protocol. Truthfully we blanket and serve hot water on chilly nights anyway. Truthfully truthfully, they get silver tea every night, even in summer. They like it and we like to see them drink. But I digress.

Temps dipped below freezing for a few hours, so we did not have to break out the deep freeze protocol, i.e. completely draining the water system, wrapping the faucet, and double blanketing the horses. This was warmer, relatively, so less stress.

We’re all good and done with this for a while. Cross fingers.

One upside to cold weather is hot chocolate.

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. “There was no such thing as ‘handwriting’, even – because there was no such thing as ‘writing that wasn’t done by hand’. There was just ‘writing’.” Calligraphy Skills: History of calligraphy (and ‘calligraphy’) in Europe.

~~~

Process Notes

We’ve all see fantastic, swoopy, swirly letter embellishments. Alas, these are not my forte. [Swashes 2016, Faith 2019, Anniversary 2022]

Hence, square flourishes. I apologize to any traditional calligraphers out there who are appalled. I do it out of love.

I tried to keep the flourish related to the structure of the letter. Some more successful that others. A few have squares that are part of the letter rather than flourishes, i.e. add-ons. Looking at you, F. Oh well, artistic license.

No attempt at a cohesive alphabet. Quite the opposite. Tried to do different things with each letter. The result is a bit of a visual mess, but I think there is something there. It’s still a WIP. Perhaps more small squares at the end of strokes, as with R? Endless possibilities.

Inspiration

What Is A Flourish? an online presentation by Nina Tran for the Washington Calligraphers Guild. All artistic errors mine.

WCG Posts. I have a tangential interest in calligraphy and live nowhere near DC. However, if you have the slightest interest in the field, I recommend joining Washington Calligraphers Guild for their outstanding zoom presentations.

[Genealogy Linkfest, Family On The Blog] from lettering Your Lineage with Holly Monroe.

[Shapes In Blue, Geometric Art] from a presentation by Aisha Changezi.

[Welcome Winter, Graphic Art] from Alphabets & Letters & Accordion Books, Oh My! by Julie Wildman.

WCG runs the Graceful Envelope Contest. [2024, 2023, 2022]

Onwards!
Katherine

Before the dawn of the electronic age, all of the future devices had a meeting. Well, almost all. The computer keyboard was not there yet.

The computer keyboard was taking its time. The computer keyboard knew it was going to to be big and wanted everything to be just right. When it got to the numbers, all of the other machines had left the dressing room. The computer keyboard was on its own. It looked at the numbers one way. It looked at the numbers the other way.

“Well,” it said, “Only one way makes sense.” So, it arranged its numbers and went off to the meeting.

When the computer keyboard arrived, it saw that the numbers on its own keypad where in the opposite direction from the other devices. The computer keypad had 7-8-9 across the top row. The other devices had 1-2-3 on the top.

“Why are all your numbers on upside down?” The keyboard asked.

The telephone spoke, “We aren’t upside down, you are.”

“Nope,” said the keyboard. “You count DOWN from nine to one. You don’t count up from nine to one. I’m right. All of you are wrong.”

They fell to arguing.

Telephone Handset: Telephones were the first. I have tradition on my side

Computer keyboard: You are going to be old news. Enjoy your time in the sun. It won’t last.

ATM machine: Telephones you were still rotary when I started. I have the authority.

Computer keyboard: Cash, really? How quaint.

Cell phone: I am modern and I have numbers in the the traditional order.

Computer keyboard: Yes, you are popular, but your keyboard? People touch a name, or click on an icon.

The computer keyboard looked around the room. It addressed all of the other machines.

“It doesn’t matter which of you came first. I’m going to be bigger than all of you and I say the larger numbers go on top.”

That is why to this day, computer keypads have numbers different from the rest of our devices.

Afterword – Inspiration

Write a fable. Imperfect Patience: YOU MIGHT TEACH WRITING, February 15, 2025.

Make it ridiculous. Imperfect Patience: FRAMES & RLP, February 5, 2025.

Afterword – Back in the real world

Why are the keyboards different? No one knows, not definitively. All of the versions I found are presented as theories, or “possibly apocryphal” stories. Touchtone phones had 1 at the top to mimic rotary dial phones. Perhaps. They were arranged awkwardly to stop speedy fingers from jamming the system. Call this the QWERTY explanation. Computer keyboards descended from adding machines, which had smaller numbers at the bottom. Maybe. A theory on one site is debunked on another site. The WayBack Machine has a compilation of answers from various folks, WayBack Machine: Keyboard Trivia, 2013

If anyone can find a confirmed source, please advise.

Afterword – Methodology

Wrote first, surfed later. Looks like I completely overlooked calculators, and may not have been correct in the order that things evolved. I knew I might be making errors. I wanted to get the fictioning done in isolation before I got distracted, or contradicted, or derailed, by research.

The plan was to work on my fiction skills, which need practice, rather than my research & expository skills, which are strong. By way of proof, I give you this post, which has an afterword almost as long as the story it discusses.

Anyway.

Result. A complete fiction piece with a beginning, middle, and end.

Onwards!
Katherine

Awareness of the outside world. WHO: Proportion of safely treated domestic wastewater flows (%), 58% in 2022. World Toilet Organization. I do not know anything about this organization, good or bad, but their stats are startling.

~~~

Septic work done by Crimson Septic And Construction at our house last month. No photos of anything squishy, I promise.

Large machines in wait.

Pulling up trees the way a person would pull up handfuls of grass.

Can I have some of this for the barn?

More trees uprooted.

The digging begins.

T-shaped trench. Septic tank outlet at top of frame.

Filling trench with gravel.

A pile of septic pipes.

Gravel. Pipe. More gravel.

Trench with lining in place. Ready for dirt.

Filling the trenches back in.

Like nothing happened, with the side benefit of clearing our overgrown dog pen.

Bonus gravel left to fill in our driveway.

Thanks to Shane, Daryl, and Jimmy, for their excellent work. The precision was amazing. Using a huge claw, the big yellow behemoth picked up a tree that had fallen on the fenceline without touching the fencing. When filling the trenches, the driver tipped just the right amount of gravel in just the right place with subtle hand gestures from the dude in the ditch.

Other residents were not so happy. The cats hid in corners. The dog tried to run across the parking lot. I have no idea where she was going.

I did not check on the horses. Given Milton’s feelings about loud machinery, I was concerned. OTOH, they had the entire field to get away from the clanking. During stormy weather, we do not check on them. It can make the situation worse. I chose to use the same theory here. Since I didn’t hear any thundering of hooves, I left them to it. They were fine when I went to see them after. [Our First Blue, But …]

Process Notes

No deals. No arrangement with the company. We were customers. They came and fixed. I was home, so I took photos in order to keep partner at work updated on progress. Blog post because I’m not going to let that many photos go to waste. Ba-dum ching.

Onwards!
Katherine