[RosieCotton]

And for a NaNo ending present...kinda...I now own a *manual* typewriter. 'Cause gosh knows the electric one wasn't luddite enough fer me. I didn't want to say anything until I figured out if it was gonna turn out to be a doorstop or not. ;-) It was on eBay, the opening bid was a dollar, and it was a seller only a few hours from here, so shipping was under six bucks. Didn't think I'd win the auction, but...oops. Oh well... It is *the* ugliest typewriter I have ever seen - matches the nasty yellow color of my toilet - but after a tiny bit of cleaning, it works dandy. And it's loud and obnoxious and has a very nice typeface.

Wonder where its been. It has a plate on the back from a shop in Zurich, and the extra characters (usually there are a few besides numbers and punctuation) are umlaut letters and such. Also has the z and y reversed - German keyboard layout. And it's obviously been very well-used. Paint all worn off the corners and plenty of scratches. Probably has had some interesting adventures.

Found a new ribbon for four bucks, cleaned out the gunk around the typebars so they aren't sticking anymore, and I'm in business.

Yes, I'm crazy, and I don't expect anyone to understand. ;-) But I think I'm in love with the thing.

Guess I should grab dinner, now that I've spent the whole evening playing...

Oh, and here it is in all of its hideous, worn, baby poop yellow glory:

[Ramius]

Far out. :-)

I think that's actually pretty cool. I'm a closet luddite too. Having grown up in accounting during the days of pencils, five-column paper and green eye-shades, I've never been convinced that computers and software ended up doing us any real favors. But don't tell anybody I work for. :-)

[sigh]

There's a SOX thread I'm trying to avoid for the moment. I've written a reply or two that I've already had to just abandon because I devolved into usage of something less than the Queen's english.

Maybe I'll try again tomorrow.

[sip]

Dammit. :-)

[SuziQ]

Cool typewriter!

SirKit's Mom had a old Royal electric typewriter, and we had a devil of a time finding a new ribbon for it! When we did find someone who sold them, we bought several for her. She didn't like the newer, IBM Selectric that she used where she worked, so the Royal was just right for her.

[300winmag]

Oh, and here it is in all of its hideous, worn, baby poop yellow glory:

That looks like a 1950s-vintage portable. Positively jet-age styling. Also, that was a very popular color for Volkswagens.

[JenB]

That's quite something. Amazing what you can find on Ebay.

[Overtaxed]

.I now own a *manual* typewriter.

Hmmmm....it matches 2J's Bug.

[HairOfTheDog]

Oh, and here it is in all of its hideous, worn, baby poop yellow glory:

So this is why you were making a special trip to UPS!