Month: October 2020

What is it about 3:00am? I wake up then. Not all the time. Enough to not like it. I have read that if you have trouble Sleeping, Get Up. I have taken to that. Today I am adding “no computer, no phone” rule to it, the getting up thing. When I get up I can write or read. My wife says it is OK to type. I do not want to disturb her. She can get back to sleep and I do not want to wake her. Maybe I can get back to sleep. Maybe not.

Today I followed through on the write and read plan and went back to sleep. I wrote “Morning Pages” and it went well. Two pages in 21 minutes. I tend to take 10 – 12 ménutes to write a page. After that, I enjoyed a novel. More on it later, after I finish it.

Side note: (much better now) In these One Typed Pages run 250 to 440 words. When I was a beer journalist I would write 1000 – 1200 words per column. It seems that I need to work on my stamina. A novel? Short story? That is a whole bunch more words. Another side note: when I was in radio a 30-second spot, advertisement, was around 100 words give or take a few. That kinda spoiled me for long wordy explanations. Say it quickly get what you can in your 30 seconds. It in very languorous to take the words, to take the explanation, to take the reflection, to say what you have to say. Yeah, I am trying for that. In these few hundred words. My side notes are getting to be longer than what I started with. Let me see what I say side note, digression, on next.

Ballots are … wait, sorry, I am not going into that topic.

I think, wait back up here. After my stroke I had problems reading. I could not read a book. Two items, 1) I could not concentrate on a book while reading it, 2) I could not physically read a page. The second one was helped with therapy. The concentration was helped by summarizing each chapter. Perhaps I can reverse that bit, write an idea. Expand it. Expand it again.

This is thinking out loud. It is time to go off and think out loud with a pen or pencil and something to write on Probably a journal. That means …

Hold those thoughts, thoughts, something. I will be back.

— MichaelRpdx :: ih3k

They sang. I listened. They beckoned. I deterred.

After months of denial, I gave in. I was lured by a Kickstarter for Dutch Ovens. It cost less than a new one less than my – oh wait, another temptation I fell to – so a typewriter and a dutch oven. Then today three (more) Fountain Pens. OK, a typewriter with the key layout I have been looking for for months. A dutch oven with a reversible set up you can use it as a pot, or turn it over and use the lid as a cooking surface and have the pot part as a lid, like an oven, for bread in my case. And then the fountain pens, costing less than either of the others, and I have the ink that is beautiful. Such beautiful ink. They do not lend themselves to scribbling like my best in the world ballpoint pen, a Jetstream, that flows over the paper while I keep it in a supply of refill barrels. They lend themselves to a considered bit of prose going forward slowly, like the considered cadence of a judge.

They sang like the Sirens and I did not have a crew to tie me to a mast of self-control. I was not an Odysseus (or Ulysses if you prefer the Latin telling) not by a wide or narrow margin. So I have a typewriter in hand, a dutch oven a few months away, and fountain pens somewhere in the care of the USPS, soon to be delivered.

That is how I fell. By paying attention to things that I was prone to listening to the call of good goods. It is not like I do not have typewriters, five functional or pens, a number of which I cannot count, and two functional fountain pens or cookware of which we have enough to feed 50 or 60 guests a variety of things. No! I have plenty of those things that I purchased after the Siren call of a typewriter with a key layout like I do not have, pens with a different feel to their writing, and a dutch oven with a lid like one not found on any we have.

Maybe I am a slut, a glutton for something slightly better than what I have currently. Maybe. Perhaps.

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PSA: it is the time of year to get a flu shot. We did today. It is painless. It should protect you.

—- MichaelRpdx :: ih3k

It was a bright and stormy day. So windy! So stormy!

We were happy to have rain again. So much rain throughout the night, through the day and night. Through the day I read Noir and watched “Typewriter Club LIVE: Fix It or Forget It?” Seems that most of the people fix it, or at least try. It was interesting in that they were joined by people in Portragul and Japan, Tokoyo. The video is quite the marathon – two and a half hours. It does make for an afternoon of stormy weather. You can curl up and watch it while looking out the window and watch the people move in. Watch them Surreptitiosly (sp)

There were things to write about. Now, what were they? I seem to have this problem a lot.

I am going to quit trying and quit boring myself and you.

-— MichaelRpdx :: ih3k
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Books seem like the best pals of people who type As an Idaho teenagers they were something I loved. I would read as much as possib@e. Other people did not think so. They thought books to read were for when you had run out of things to do. Get outside to do something. Anything. I like books and rain. When it was raining they did not expect me to be outside doing something.

It rained today. And I had to take MY PRIVATE PROPERTY back to the library. So I bought a copy. I don’t like prose poetry. I don’t like long poems. Yet I love this book. Check it out of a library to see what I mean.

I check books out of the library to see if I like them. If I like them a lot I will buy a copy for myself. But then, as I do now, need to get rid of a couple of books. I have a lot. Many in boxes where they have been for two decades or more. There are plenty of books to rid of. Fortunately, there is a nice collection of free libraries. Some of them need some books. I am ready.

I see that Cat is on Instagram. It is a great place to be when you are not typing. And my gawd: What a typewriter collection she has. Even if there is not a Hermes there. 🙂 (I am MichaelRpdx there and most other places where you have to or get to choose your name.)

I’m a book slut.
I’m a book glut.
A book glutton I will get it to check it out.

You? Are you a book glutton? My newest checked out of the library is NOIR from Christopher Moore. It is heavy with, well it is filled with enough wordplay to make it weigh like a vial of mercury. The surprising tidbit about it was the date of publication – 2018. He would compete with Chander or Macdonald or Thompson. Except they wrote a long time ago and none of them would have so much allegories or synonyms or well, get a copy of it or one of his other novels to find out for yourself.

I am going to read more of his prose.

— MichaelRpdx :: ih3k

P.S. = What do you call, or refer to, a typwriter with a key layout different from the normal (OK, American English) set of keys? International Hermes 3000 seems wrong.

This is not a Hermes 3000 as I know it. Or as most of you, I believe, know it. It has no zero, 0, key. There is no one, 1, key. That is a capital o and & lower case L. Why might you ask? ¿por qué? Well, señor, or señora, because they needed to use space for the special keys that create  [the diatricials needed like ´ ^ ` and others] yes those are the special bits needed to create most of the alphabet used by European typists. Do I call it a “European 3000”? Well, in any case, I have this “new” 1969 Hermes. I am thrilled.

It also needs replacement platen knobs. have on it makes it tho wide to fit in the hard case. Which measurements show that it should fit the one from my Hermes 3000. Ah, goshums. Have I said that I am thrilled with it yet?

What do people need a § for? Heck, what is it for? I mean I understand a *. You cannot clean up your f**king language without them. 🙂

I cannot think about other things again yet.

— MichaelRpdx :: ih3k