So very true.
Fixing Stupid
Curiosities
February Mail
There is a group of people who will be exchanging mail in February. It is the InCoWriMo, aka the International Correspondence Writing Month group. It exists to “Challenges you to hand-write and mail/deliver one letter, card, note or postcard every day during the month of February.” This has been going on since 2014. (? about seven years now)
Some of the FAQ q&a:
- You can miss a day, just write two the next.
- You do not need to write to a different person each day.
- It must be hand-written. Though I expect there are people who will typewrite them.
A fun part for me is to write to people I do not know. And for that, they have a web page where people can list their address. As I have done. I also went through all of them and found there are about 90+ people who do not live in the USA. There are people in every continent of the world. Of them, 26 indicate they will reply or respond to every letter they receive.
There are, as you might expect, several people who are doing this for the first time, me included. At least one who has been there since the group was started. There is also a nurse who will not be doing it again this year because of the Covid weight on her time and energy.
Final Thoughts: Some people are submitting their Instagram addresses as part of their introductions. 28 letters or cards starting in a week or so. I must admit it is a lot of writing to do.
Big Dog Backyard Ultra
This is a fascinating ultra marathon run. You do not know how long it is until you drop out our win. The Big Dog Backyard Ultra does 4 1/24 mile loops each hour. You can run four miles in an hour? Great! Now do it again. And Again. And … that is the point.
You can follow one of these links to get more information. Or read about in on Wikipedia.
You may haven noted the distance – it is set to run 100 miles each day. They run a lot. The record to date is “75 laps or 502.95 km or 312.525 miles by Karel Sabbe at the international part of Big’s Backyard Ultra in October 2020.” Over three days of running.
Perhaps you will enjoy this video of it.
Falling to Prey
A Dutch Oven, three (more) Fountain Pens, they have lured me and I fell prey to their charms. Like the Sirens that bade Odysseus (or Ulysses if you are Latin) to join them. He was tied to a mast so he could hear but not fall prey to their sweet songs.
I fell prey to a Kickstater lure because it has a … reversible? … lid on it. Flip it over and you have a grill for backing on. You can see it here.
I fell prey to Fountain Pens because, well, they’re nice. And I tried a couple of them here at home with all the other pens. And one that was $5 and it works. I’m trying three of the Jetpens Top Five Fountain Pens for Beginners. We shall see how they flow and all that kind of stuff one looks for in a pen. In contrast, I like a refillable ben point pen that takes to the paper and flows. Which I have. But what will I like from Fountain Pens? They arrive in a week or so. I get to try them out.
At least with books, there is Project Gutenberg. Thousands of things to gluttony be a book slut over. All for free. When I’ve got an urge to get something I think I will go with Project Gutenberg. Not that I have a desire for more books. I have a TBR pile from the library.
New from 1969 Typewriter
At first glance, it looks like a Hermes 3000. Like my favorite typewriter. But the platen knobs are mismatched, one black, one brown. Where did the 1 key and the 0 keys go to? The comma and period keys have their shifted states producing? and ¿ for Spanish. At the right-hand part of the keybank there are keys for a tilde, cedilla, grave and acute accent characters and more. This is not an American typewriter.
This is my new 1969 typewriter. I’ll refer to it as an International Hermes 3000. It has most of the combinations to make Spanish, French, and German alphabets. The upside down ¡ exclamation mark is not there. And the quotation marks for French is missing. I guess they will have to live with quote ‘ and double quote ” characters.
It is mine now. Now I have some typing to get used to the new layout.
