Untold Stories and Lies by Omission: a Lettera at Last

The paper I was typing is kinda wrinkly due to my stamp experiment, so the scan isn't completely even...sorry 'bout that.

Woe.

Of Powell's, Poetry, and Paper

An odd assortment of titles, perhaps--mystery, sci-fi, poetry--but it's my kind of odd!

Paper bounty: Clairefontaine staple-bound notebook, Rhodia staple-bound notebook, Leuchtturm 1917

Leuchtturm as compared with a Moleskine--the Leuchtturm (top) is slightly wider.

Blurb from the back of the Leuchtturm 1917

Letters, Lists, and Letteras

Midweek Update Just To Update

The suffocation/choking picture I was talking about is this one...somehow he's become sort of our mascot.

Milk crates full of memories...

Faced with housework, I procrastinate in every way possible. This weekend, I organized my journals while putting off vacuuming. After my move this spring, they'd been crammed onto shelves in no particular place or order, so I gathered them from the four corners of the house and arranged by date. (Mostly by date, anyway--for some reason, there are a few journals in 1997 that overlap. Apparently 1997 was the Year of Living Disorganizedly.) They span some twenty-seven years now: that little one all the way on the left was given to me for Christmas when I was six, when I was first learning to write.

And of course, once they were all nicely organized like that, I proceeded to yank them off the shelves (those classy milk-crate shelves...) and look through them. Some are in better shape than others. The colored journals I favored in the nineties fared the worst: the blue fountain pen ink I used in some entries vanished, and at least one journal was the victim of temporary storage in a damp basement. And there are large gaps in the record: I tend to write more when there isn’t as much going on, which means that most of my entries, especially those in the most recent journals, are mundane daily details and rambling. Their value is in the writing of them: they help me process my days and sort out thoughts, and many may never be read again. But other content makes me smile, or laugh out loud, or get a little weepy. Inconsistent though they may be, they contain a lot of memories, these books.

There is evidence of my long standing fascination with office supplies:

Translation: John and Jim got a car. I got crayons.

There are birthday reports:

I recall this as one of my best birthdays *ever*, especially the bird seed, strangely enough!

Book reports:


I’ve waxed poetic:

I was twelve when I wrote this entry, and apparently hadn’t yet learned appropriate apostrophe use in its vs. it’s. I guess I’ll cut my young self some slack....

I’ve attempted artsy:



Sometimes relatively casual entries make me smile, looking back. Stumbled across this comment about a conversation with my brother as I was flipping through...


A wedding and several children later...I’d say it turned out pretty well!

I’ve recorded thoughts on births, deaths, current events, pets, books and music, bemoaned my own bad habits and worries about the present and future. Reading through these, I’m amazed at how much I’ve changed in some ways, and how little in others. It’s kind of fun to revisit once in awhile on a rainy afternoon.

And speaking of revisiting and rainy afternoons, tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the day I picked up the gloriously restored Olympia SG-1 from Blue Moon Camera.



Happy rebirthday, big guy!

The SG-1 Returns!

A sampling of the Blue Moon wares









A few of the antique typewriters on display at the store




Olivers!



Note: I tried to get some decent pictures of the newly shiny SG-1, but need to wait for better lighting. Trust me, though, it's stunning!

Mission accomplished!

Addendum: just happened to think--the SG-1 is a 1959, making it 50 years old this year. A trip to the typewriter spa seems like a pretty nifty way to celebrate!

Psych me up, and other assorted blathering

OK, so this is really just an Update Just to Update (UJTU) in disguise. So sue me.

1. Psych me up.
Fact: for going on three years now, I've been wanting to get down to Blue Moon Camera, preferably with at least one typewriter-needing-help in tow. This is the time of year when I come closest to actually making the venture, but so far I've never quite talked myself into stepping out the door. Fact: statistically, I probably will *not* be instantly squished the second I drive out of Lewis County. Fact: this Saturday, the weather is supposed to be cloudy, but not raining, which is a rare occurance this time of year. I'm also not on call. The chance of both of these items coinciding is going to become less and less probable as time goes on. Fact: the SG-1 has several issues that I cannot fix on my own, but would be an amazing thing indeed if those were fixed.

So...lie to me. Tell me I can do this, and why I should. Tell me there will magically be a HUGE empty parking space with bright shiny arrows to guide me when I arrive at the end. Tell me I can get there in one straight shot without getting lost, despite my miserable sense of direction. I know, I'm not giving you much time to get me riled up, but if I wait too long, I'm afraid I'll lose my nerve again.

2. NaNoWriMo dreaming
We now come to that antsy stage where we have some idea of what we're going to write (even the pantsers like me), and have been conversing with our characters, feeling 'em out. I keep imagining whole scenes, the dialog, the way people are standing and moving and the state of their clothing, and not being able to write them down instantly is killing me. Urgh! I also need to come up with working names for characters. Right now I have names like bassist-who-is-off-visiting-Aunt-Somebody, accidental-children's-writer-who-hates-kids, Thump, and sister-of-Joey. Also, the whole thing revolves around people living in an apartment building, and a lot depends on shared walls/floors/stairwells, and I haven't yet decided on a final map. I need Legos or wooden blocks or something.

3. Computers are evil
On my birthday, my friends introduced me to the Bejeweled game on Facebook, which is, essentially, crack in game form. You have to slide little colored gems into rows in order to make them explode. Sounds so innocent and dull, doesn't it? But oh, it will suck your life away. I spent about an hour last night saying to myself, "Just one more game, and then I'll quit. OK, just *one* more...." I love and loathe it. It is yet another reason I'd be far better off avoiding the computer for most of November.