Typecast: Honk Not

I might add, laying on the horn does not excuse the drivers themselves from slowing down and using a bit of caution at the crossing, let alone entitle them to speed up and blast through, as many of them do.

Ramble About Town, March 22nd 2014

Just a tiny fragment of the delights on hand at The Tea Lady in Olympia, WA.
 
It had been awhile since I spent a Saturday just wandering, and with a bit of spring weather setting in (if only temporarily), I may have had a bit of cabin fever as well. So...this Saturday I did a ramble about.

Went to the Tea Lady first. I've professed my love for this place so many times before, it seems a little redundant to state it again, but...I love this place! I'm currently off coffee (if only temporarily), which made a shop full of nothing but tea all the more exciting. I'd sort of planned to buy a teapot, but they mostly had large ones, too big for me unless I start throwing daily tea parties. So I'm back to obsessing on-line on that front. Still came away with some new green tea, some fillable tea bags for times when it's less than convenient to fiddle with a filter basket, and an interesting herbal blend with citrus, turmeric, and ginger. The instant I left I got requests from Dad and my sister for teas of their own, so I have an excuse to go back soon.

Next up was downtown, and the antique mall: Finders Keepers. It's always a fun place to browse: different vendors rent cubicles within the building, so each has a different assortment and you never know what you'll find around the next corner. First thing I noted was this boxy Hermes 3000. It's $145, or I might be giving you a review rather than just a photo. Looks pretty clean.

Lots of other little assorted writing related things about:

Pencil sharpeners

 

Inks...and Shinola.

 

Ink erasers and assorted pencil leads.

 

Typewriter cleaner.

 

Some sorta old cash register? And a steno machine.
 

SCM Coronet, just to be equal opportunity to the electrified among us.

 

One of those heavy old staplers that could double as a blunt force weapon.

 

Slide rules! The big one here is about standard size for these. The little one is little bitty. Shirt pocket sized, or smaller. Cute.

 

Close-up of the little guy...

 

If Hop-along Cassidy says it's his favorite ice cream, who am I to argue?

 
Had lunch afterward with a friend at The Bread Peddler: peanut curry chicken soup. Good, as is only to be expected from The Bread Peddler. Yum!

UJTU: Walk, Run, Snow, Play

Our Saturday to Sunday snow storm left me a bit buried...

The walking project continues apace (har har). I will need to fit in a few short evening walks or longer weekend jaunts in order to make up for a few slack days, but otherwise, I'm on track.

I *am*, however, thinking of once again attempting to get into running. Nothing fancy: it would just be nice to be able to handle 3-5 miles of slow jogging. Even at a slow pace, it'd be quicker than walking the same distance, thus freeing up some time for my next resolution-to-tackle, "Write More."

I actually planned to start this weekend by jogging the last half mile or mile of my usual walk. This may seem counter-intuitive, leaving it to the end, but I don't usually find my rhythm even for walking until I'm a couple miles in, so I think waiting a bit until my legs become my own is best.

However, Saturday afternoon a snow storm blew through. Nothing like what some of the east coast has seen, or what we used to get in Vermont, but six inches of heavy, wet snow put a damper on my plans all the same. I did go out and walk in it yesterday (three miles of laps between two half-mile markers), which was HARD WORK, but probably burned as many calories as my usual longer walk...but there was no way I was going to try running in the stuff, especially over uneven, footprint pocked trail.

But sometime this week, I hope. May have to wait until my legs recover...my calves are awfully tired and sore from that snow workout.

In the meantime, I got a good start on my "Play More" resolution. I've had the tenor banjo out pretty much every day, working on triplets and trebles and tunes. Currently I'm trying to polish up Humours of Tulla and The Clumsy Lover and learn Garrett Barry's and Pinch of Snuff, to name a few. Also continuing to practice Gravel Walk in the vain hope that someday I'll be able to keep up with the insanely fast pace they play it at the local session.

I need to change strings before Wintergrass. Especially mandolin strings. But changing mandolin strings is something I tend to put off as long as humanly possible....

January Retrospective

I was going to finish up my NaNoWriMo story. I was going to finish up other stories. I was going to roll up my sleeves and start carving up some older drafts to make them more fit for human consumption.

Instead, the only writing I've done has been diary entries and the new walk log.

But I have walked more. Quite a bit more, in fact. In the past there have been times when I pretty routinely got in three miles before work (plus a brief warm-up and cool-down bit I don't count in my pencil logged mileage). This month, I wondered how much longer five miles would take. About thirty minutes longer, as it turns out. And the turn around point brings me to one of the more scenic parts of the trail, right alongside a river (albeit generally a river in the dark at the moment).

I like it. I've been getting up that half an hour earlier to get in those extra two miles, me and my Black Diamond Gizmo headlamp, which has been a trooper. And I've walked through wet weather and cold. (But not ice--I don't do ice. See a few entries back where I fell down the stairs. That's clumsy me WITHOUT ice. I really, really don't do ice.)

I started doing a little quick math, and if I can average 25 miles a week (doable, if I'm willing to stick it out in the rain and occasionally sneak in some evening and weekend walks when I have to miss the morning excursion), I can walk 500 miles by the first week of June. (And IIII would walk five hundred miles and IIII would walk five hundred more...)

It's a nice round number to aim for. We'll see how long my gumption lasts (not to mention my shoes).

But I haven't really managed any of my other resolutions this month.

Maybe I should start one resolution a month until I finally (hopefully) have all of them going at once. Like learning to juggle, starting with tossing a single ball from one hand to another.

Next month should probably be "Play More," as in music. Wintergrass is just around the corner!

Walk Report (AKA Yet Another Excuse to Scribble in Field Notes)

As part of my "walk more" resolution for the year, I thought I'd start keeping a notebook, because I'm a nerd and I like the idea of being able to look back on at least some of my data. Bonus: knowing I'll get to write something down with a nice pencil in a cool notebook is motivation to get my fanny out the door in the mornings.

Don't have a set format yet, but I'll get there.

Kaput

This is apparently Kaput Week around here.

This weekend I bought new sneakers. Because I am a knucklehead, Monday morning I went for a three mile walk in said sneakers, without having worn them around the house long enough for them to get used to me and I to them. Gave myself a blister.

I limped in to work that day to find that one co-worker had messed up his back and another had pulled a muscle in her calf and was also limping. And one of the uninjured had to leave early because her furnace broke down. Also, Comcast throughout the region had network glitches and intermittent outages most of the day. Not fun.

Well, I chalked it up to "Monday" and figured it was over. Bought blister bandages on the way home, and was able to walk as usual on Tuesday (albeit in old shoes). The work day was hectic, but without major outages. Everything seemed to be looking up.

Then this morning I stepped out the door onto the waterlogged front steps (which, I might add, I've traversed hundreds of times in far worse conditions) and my feet went out from under me. Came down HARD on my tailbone, wrenched my shoulder. It. Hurt. One of those moments where you can't decide whether to curse, cry, or maybe both.

So I'm back to limping.

Is there a lesson in all this? Not really.

Except that, maybe, though we've escaped the Polar Vortex, we in the Pacific Northwest are in the grip of a Vortex of Kaput.

Be careful out there, folks.

Mmm, Sweet Summer

Took a little walk down the bike trail after work last night, and came home with this bounty! That's about four cups, which isn't bad considering.

They were hard won, though. By the pricking of my thumbs...

I ended up making a sort of cobbler with them, and ate some warm with cream drizzled on top. Oh, luxurious summer!

Around Town: Finders Keepers

Vacation week continues! After several seaside adventures, yesterday I stayed closer to home. I went to one of my favorite coffee places (Mud Bay Coffee Roasters) to do some catching up on my journal, met a friend for a chocolate malt at Grandpa's Soda Fountain, and also wandered through one of my favorite Olympia businesses: Finders Keepers, a really interesting antique and collectibles store, with all sorts of nooks and crannies. It's made up of a whole bunch of different vendors, all with different focuses. Makes for a fascinating stroll, even if I don't end up buying much.

Quite a few typewriters this time, though pricey ones and nothing that totally grabbed me.

Remington Monarch

Classic 12

Corona in a dark back room--hard to photograph

This poor beauty was practically buried!

This one appeals to me. Yes, it's just a Classic 12 (?) in a different suit, but a pretty snazzy suit. It's like an old car...

One vendor apparently has a thing for Siamese cats (as do I...)

There are always some quirky novelty items.I should have put something with this eraser for scale. It's HUGE--maybe eight inches long? Just plain goofy, but it made me smile.

This, I don't even...

Old Speed Ball sets, plus Eagle pencil leads...

They also had stacks of variations on the old Chief tablets (and copycats).

This made me think of a certain Tacoma area typecaster...

Fun trip, overall! And I didn't come away empty handed. I bought this plain little Lane cedar box. My Mom had one just like it (they must have made many thousands of them, I'd guess), and it's nothing fancy...but I love the smell of a cedar box!

Also, as it turns out, it's a perfect fit for pencils!

Other Ports of View

Monday at Ocean Shores was such a good day, I decided to explore another Washington State beach yesterday. It turns out the state has an awful lot of coast line. Who knew? After a bit of dithering over where to go, I drove out to the Long Beach peninsula and did a little sightseeing and wandering. I grabbed a lemon pastry at the bakery in downtown Long Beach and then went down to the beach.

It wasn't the gorgeous weather we had Monday. The sky was silver and lead, and the water more dark green and black than blue. Not truly stormy, but definitely heavier than earlier in the week, and the wind was, as the poem goes, like a whetted knife. It was interesting to see how the colors and shapes of the sky and water changed with the weather. And again, I mostly had the farther reaches to myself.

I wanted to take pictures, of course, but as soon as I turned on my little Canon, it displayed three of the saddest words in the English tongue: "No memory card." And (this is funny in a twisted sort of way) when, as a compromise, I figured I could at least take a few cell phone pictures, I couldn't see the screen in the bright outdoor lighting, so I kinda just fumbled with it until it made the appropriate clicking noises. Turns out in my fumbling, I'd switched it to the forward facing camera, so all of my photos are some variation on Self Portrait With Hat. Guess I'll just have to be satisfied with memories!

The rain kicked in and the wind increased after I'd been out there awhile, and so I headed back in. I stopped for a late lunch of fish and chips and iced tea at Lost Roo on the way out of town. (Thank you, Kindle, for making dining alone a bit less awkward. It's a skill I have not yet mastered.)

Now that I know how to get there and what's what, I will definitely have to visit Long Beach again, preferably with a functioning camera! I didn't see the lighthouses there, for one!

Day at the Beach

Took this week off to do some wandering and relaxing, as I did about this time last year. Started off the week yesterday with a trip out to Ocean Shores, WA. The last time I went there, my younger brother and sister were visiting, and the GPS led us to the middle of parking lot at the local high school, and I got one of the worst migraines I've ever had and couldn't think well enough to get us to the beach (approximately twenty feet away)(OK, slight exaggeration, but only slight) and I did a lot of getting mad at my brother and sister for expecting me to take the big sister role and be In Charge and it just wasn't my most shining moment or the best day ever.

A few driftwood logs made a nice place to stop for a picnic lunch.

Yesterday...was solitary, but relaxing. I did learn that apparently Android GPS cannot be relied upon to get to Ocean Shores. The freebie Google Maps lady dumped me repeatedly, and though I did stop once to sweet-talk her into continuing to provide guidance, she turned her back on me again a few miles down the road. Fine, be that way, see if I care. She also pronounces "Rainier" as "Rain-yay" and Port Angeles as "Port Angles," which disturbs me, especially considering she knows how to say "Puyallup." Makes me wonder if she's mispronouncing just to annoy me.

I love all the different patterns the water leaves behind on the sand!

It being a weekday and not a particularly hot day, the beach was mostly empty. Once I got a few dozen yards beyond the access point, I pretty much had the sand to myself, except for about a bazillion seagulls. I believe they must nest here--there were *scads* of them, many of which didn't look entirely mature. Made me realize I've not really seen baby seagulls. There are quite a lot of gulls in Olympia: they wander the parking lot at work sometimes in unruly mobs, or fight the unruly mobs of crows in a bizarre bird gang warfare, but they all seem to be more or less adults.

I walked quite a long way, until I was tired and highly relaxed, and then walked back. Oh, I wish I could bring that *sound* back with me! That's what gets me the most about the ocean: the sound of the surf.

When I got back to my parking spot, I stopped long enough to buy an ice cream cone at a shop by the parking area, and then headed home. I did take a quick break in Aberdeen on the way back. They have a Staples *right next* to a Goodwill there. That's just unfair. Got a nice EMI recording of Mendelssohn's "Italian" symphony. I was good and didn't spend money at Staples, though I did wander the aisles a bit.

Today is my second day off, and I've accomplished considerably less. Mostly have been reading and scribbling and getting locked in pointless overanalyzing. For example, made a cup of Earl Grey tea, which I remember someone (Dad?) referring to as "perfumey," and started thinking about that word and how it really could mean just about anything considering how many types of perfume there are, and this bugged me, so I sat down to write a rant on the subject just to get it out of my system, and then I started looking up "perfumey" in various dictionaries, which were all very vague, which seems like a cop-out on the part of dictionary makers, but on the other hand, if they weren't vague, then they'd be defining "perfumey" based on their own life experience and that would be wrong.

So...yeah, it's after lunch time, and I'm just sittin' here sipping lukewarm Earl Grey. And thinking back on yesterday.

I like the way the water, land and sky all blend together here...

Oof.

During the summer, I tend to bike the trail a lot more than I walk it, but the last few days, I've had the urge to play pedestrian. One thing I tend to forget when riding is how much more steeped in your surroundings you end up when on foot. You notice more small details along the way: a mole burrowing by the trailside, a jay scolding you from a nearby tree as you pass, snakes coiled in the sun. And you hear a lot more, whether you want to or not. There's no wind whistling in your ears as you cruise along, and encounters with other trail users are prolonged by your slow pace. You end up touched by all the lives around you, unintentionally catching fragments of conversations from other walkers, from joggers that puff by, caravans of cyclists: bits of gossip, parents keeping kids in line, smatterings of philosophical meanderings, scriptural reflections.

Sometimes it gets downright unpleasant. Today I set off on what was going to be a five mile walk, but just after the three mile turn-around point, I ended up behind a couple having a very loud, furious, foul-mouthed argument. I tried walking fast enough to pass them by, but it was taking so long (I think they kept speeding up in their anger) that in the end I gave in to embarrassment and turned back.

Yesterday's accidental eavesdropping was more entertaining, if not much less cringe-worthy. A couple (newly dating, judging from the clues) approached me from behind and then passed me. The conversation as they went by went something like this:

HE: (obviously excited and enthusiastic about this topic they've hit upon) "Yeah, that's great! Keep that up, and the next thing you know, you'll be down fifty pounds, and your heart rate when exercising will be what your resting heart rate is now!"

SHE: (after a barely perceptible pause) "Fifty pounds."

HE: (just the eensiest bit defensive/panicky) "Well...you know what I mean."

SHE: (rather coolly)"No. I don't."

(At this point they went by me--she was bit thinner than I am, i.e. within a healthy BMI range, though could stand to lose a *few* pounds and tone up a bit. If she lost more than fifteen or twenty pounds, she'd look sick. He, predictably perhaps, was on the pudgy side.)

HE: (starting to stammer a little) "Well, you know...there are like...long distance runners and stuff who have no...um...extra...um...material." Hastily added: "Not that I like that or anything, I'm just saying that--"

SHE: Inaudible.

HE: "OK, well, maybe not so much then. But--"

At that point they drifted out of earshot. Part of me rather wished I could lob some sort of audio surveillance device at them so I could hear if he actually managed to back pedal his way (so to speak) out of the situation. On the other hand, it's quite likely it didn't get any prettier, so maybe it's just as well I didn't get to hear the end.

I mean...dude! I know you meant well but...wow.

On the bright side, I with my clumsy conversational skillz suddenly feel most suave by comparison...so there's that.

Lazy Update Just to Update

I'd like to say I've not posted much because I've been so busy mapping out my NaNoWriMo story, but the truth is I've been obsessing about music instead.  Note to self: the week before NaNo is not the best time to rekindle a fanatical interest in one's primary instrument of the moment (mandolin, in this case).  But I still want to ride that wave as long as it lasts.  So we'll see how November goes...

I did get out and wander a bit yesterday, in town and out, and pictures (even poor cell phone photos, as is the case) make for easy, lazy update fodder.

First off, I went back to the downtown Olympia, WA antique place I'm always yammering on about: Finder's Keepers, on 4th Ave.  It's almost always a fun place to browse, whether or not I buy anything.

There were a number of typewriters this time around, some of more interest than others.  This Royal was in pretty rough cosmetic shape and didn't have a case.

This Smith Corona standard is absolutely gorgeous...but it's also $75.  Lovely thing, though.

This little guy tucked away on a bottom shelf looks kind of familiar, and likely a good candidate for a crazy paint job.  But for forty dollars...um...no.  Not even if I was in buying mode.

I was tempted by a number of vintage index card/recipe boxes.  They almost always have some pretty ones there.

Oh, and toys!  Look at this little doll house desk!  Isn't this adorable?  (Sorry about the glare--it was in a glass case, and I couldn't get a good angle).

I also saw this somewhat puzzling toy typewriter.  I guess you had to rotate the little wheel for each and every letter.  Good way to teach kids patience, I suppose...or drive little Johnny completely mad before his seventh birthday.

It was a beautiful sunny day, so I went off on a ramble down the trail as well--days like that are rare here this time of year!  Most of the fall has...fallen, and the trail is thickly carpeted with leaves, still colorful (though not the jewel-toned brightness of the sugar maples back home in Vermont...).  Along the way I saw a note posted on one of the mileposts offering a reward for the finding of a lost gold ring, and had to feel for the author: how is anyone to spot one tiny spot of gold in all that natural richness?

These little guys are out in force.  I lost track of how many I saw along the way--dozens, for certain.

And now I suppose I should buckle down and NaNo plan for one whole day.  Or an hour or so.  I have wisdom teeth coming out tomorrow (joy!), so I doubt I'll be doing much in the way of deep thinking.