When Typewriter Nerds Dream

Last night I dreamed I was meeting up with someone in response to a Craigslist ad. I don't remember the ad itself (as is so often the case with dreams, this one started abruptly at a given moment, with no history), but I do remember I was expecting a portable. Instead, she showed up with a HUGE Hermes Ambassador.

Or...kinda. Really, it was as if my subconscious took all the features I like about various '50s and '60s standards, slapped them together, and painted them Hermes green. It was sort of like a broad-headed Olympia SG-1 with Hermes keys.

Being me, instead of examining it poker face and coyly leading into a discussion of price, I gushed on and on about all things Hermes first, and then asked how much. "$73.58," I was told, and even as a dream price that seemed ridiculously specific. But I also realized that a) it was way out of my price range, and b) I hadn't brought any cash along anyway. I told her I had friends who sort of collected typewriters, and wanted to take pictures of it so I could show it to them, and she agreed.

But then I noticed a wall-sized mainframe thing in the back room and got obsessed with taking pictures of *that*, which was tricky because the lighting wasn't good and I couldn't get back far enough to get the whole HUMONGOUS thing into the frame. When I finally got enough decent pictures to satisfy me and went back to look at the Ambassador...it was gone. She'd taken it away somewhere. So, sadly, I have no proof and cannot promote the sale of this rare beast.

I think all this was brought on by the fact that we currently have some server room equipment (primarily a large enclosed rack) for sale on Craigslist, and said rack currently resides in a storage cage in the basement of a building where we used to have offices, and the last time I was down there, an IBM Selectric (III?) languished in another cage, and I coveted it mightily. Probably long gone, poor thing.