13 Thursday: The Right Type
1. Favorite low-tech Christmas gift given to Josh by Colleen: A manual Smith Corona typewriter.
2. Or maybe it was the Christmas ball of lights made out of plastic cups that I got in the Christmas Eve Yankee swap and called “Steve Martin’s Brain.”
3. Pens appear out of nowhere in my house like socks disappear in the laundry.
4. And my bras lose their elasticity like gum loses flavor.
5. One of the strangest pens that recently showed up says “Select Sire Power.” Another one advertises online therapy at mytherapy.com.
6. When I quickly click through and view the pictures stored on my memory stick in my digital camera it looks like animation.
7. I once asked my siblings why they thought the letter E on my keyboards always wore off faster than other letters. “Do you think it’s because I have so many E’s in my name?” I asked. My brother Danny’s answer to my question was this: “Too many E-mails.”
8. My blogging niece Chrissie lost her two front teeth (partials) a couple of days before Christmas. I reminded her of the old song “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth.” I think she’s planning to write a blog entry with that title.
9. My Asheville potter son Josh wanted a manual typewriter for typing entries for his collage journals because he likes the retro font it creates. 
I love the sound of typing on a manual typewriter and the bell when the line finishes. It sounds like a writer’s jazz.
10. I once met a poet in Dupont Circle in Washington DC who would type you a poem with your name in it for a dollar.
11. I love the hand knitted purple scarf that my husband gave me for Christmas so much that I wanted to book a flight to Boston and go visit my family just to show it off.
12. WHAT are you looking at?
13. HERE is a virtual typewriter with a message typed on it for you.
Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13’s are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here.
December 28th, 2006 10:18 am
What a lovely Christmas! 🙂
December 28th, 2006 10:26 am
Old typewriters… I loved mine, but discovered MACs early on in college!
Happy Thursday!
December 28th, 2006 10:30 am
I had a manual typewriter that I stole from my mother that weighed a ton. I like the sound and the font, but I make too many mistakes. But it is a skill that I’m afraid will be lost in the future.
December 28th, 2006 11:03 am
LOl! I love the typewriter and I WISH pens appeared like magic in my house… they seem to disappear constantly. I know there is a pen gremlin somewhere sitting on 50 new pens!
Thanks for visiting my blog and Happy TT!
December 28th, 2006 11:08 am
If I had somewhere neat to set it, I’d be hunting for a manual typewriter. Just to do journal entries and type neat labels for my Artist Trading Cards (ATC).
Oh, and I moved to Pittsburgh, PA, two and a half years ago from Scituate, Massachusetts, just a bit south of Hull, where I spent too much time as a youth getting scared on the rollercoaster.
December 28th, 2006 11:23 am
#7 cracked me up. Your brother has a great sense of humour.
December 28th, 2006 11:26 am
Yes there is something mystifying about the satisfaction you get when you hit those keys hard and feel the rythym of the typewriter beneath your wrists…
Your 3rd comment came through by the way. Happy TT 😀
December 28th, 2006 11:35 am
My bras lose their elasticity too ASAP. It’s so frustrating too. And a typewriter? Wow! I learned how to type on a typewriter, but haven’t seen or used on in ages. Cool!
My 13 are up. I moved my blog so this is my first 13 in my new digs!
December 28th, 2006 11:41 am
My parents have one of the old, old manual typewriters with round buttons. I learned to type on a manual in high school typing class..showing my age here.
Colleen, are you going to do Photo365? Check out my blog to see what this is all about.
Susan
December 28th, 2006 12:02 pm
Great list and I love the typewriter..mine is up
December 28th, 2006 1:20 pm
Great post! Always love your 13s.
Memories of high school typing class, posted on my blog as keystrokes and keystrokes again. Like riding a bike, never to be forgotten.
Hope you are enjoying the extended holidays and have a great New Year!
December 28th, 2006 1:47 pm
With Josh’s new/old manual typewriter we took turns typing stream of consciousness writing, as though the typewriter was an oracle and mistakes were all part of the charm of it.
I loved typing class in school and it proved to be one of my most valuable classes. It was also my first form of meditation. I felt magical typing away, but as soon as I thought about what I was doing I would make a mistake. I tried to get my sons to take keyboarding, knowing how important it is (especially now in this computer age) but they didn’t listen. I love the fact that I can type without looking at the keyboard. I miss the cent key though.
December 28th, 2006 1:53 pm
oh, where did you get the typewriter! I want one!
December 28th, 2006 2:01 pm
I got it for $10 at a used furniture store. Keep your eyes open at thrift shops and yard sales. Typewriter ribbon is sometimes even harder to find. Although you can order them online, I got mine from Office Max. In years past I looked and couldn’t find any anywhere.
December 28th, 2006 3:16 pm
Hey, Colleen! Thanks for stopping by West of Mars — typewriter talk is PERFECT for a writer like me. But as for your bras losing elasticity… where are you buying them?
Scary…
Love the rhyme and rhythm of your entry. Nice going! Happy TT and see you next week, I Hope!
December 28th, 2006 6:46 pm
#4 – don’t put them in the dryer! I always air-dry my underwear and they last longer.
#9 – there was a song using the sound of a typewriter and that bell, but I can’t remember the name of it.
I miss the cent key as well. I wonder why they don’t have it on computers? My letter “N” is the first to go and “E” follows that. I don’t understand about the “N” – do I type No too often?
December 28th, 2006 7:14 pm
I don’t own a dryer. The problem of bras wearing out too quick is related to breast size.
I checked the wikipedia on typewriters. About 3/4 down the page there’s alisting of typewriters in music which sounds like someone wrote a song on one. I think E is the most often used letter, so N, I don’t know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter
December 28th, 2006 10:30 pm
I remember those manual typewriters and all the white out and do-overs we had to do any time a paper was due. One tiny mistake, one extra paragraph removed and it had to be done all over again…
Now, they cut and paste and proofread in no time at all.
December 28th, 2006 10:55 pm
I just noticed today about that animated thing when you switch pics fast on your computer My Pics! My niece is sticking her tongue out on one and the next pic she isn’t so when you go back and forth it looks like she’s sticking it in and out!
My bathingsuit elastic gets eaten up by chlorine in a few months of swimming! It becomes see-through!
December 29th, 2006 4:55 am
As always, Colleen, Inforative & Fun! You give Great Thursday Thirteens, my dear…lol!
Christmas was lovely…! And now, on to New Years!
December 29th, 2006 9:16 am
Just to show my age–I loved it when the prices of electric typewriters came down ’cause manuals would make my hands hurt. Of course having computers like we do now is even better. No nostalgia for me there, Colleen. I remember in college having to retype an entire page due to one typo. Nasty stuff, that.
Michele sent me over to remind myself that you live in Virginia, not NC, ’cause I keep forgetting!
December 29th, 2006 9:46 am
I had a manual olympia somewhere stashed in the garage. I suspect it made its way to a sale. A very interesting post. I’m going to take a bowse around because I’ve been out of blogworld for a few days!
Seasonal Greetings!
rashbre
December 29th, 2006 5:38 pm
You brought back great memories. OH, how I loved my Smith Corona! Like you, I still love the sound of those things. I think I learned to type on a manual Royal but for Typing II, we got upgraded to a Selectric….very fancy. And the word “computer” wasn’t even in our vocabularies or dictionaries back then.
December 29th, 2006 6:50 pm
Thanks for the nice virtual note! I didn’t even know if you could still buy typewriters. Personally I hate them but I imagine for poets and writers and artists they can be very nostalgic.
Maybe all my pens are climbing the mountain and escaping to Floyd and your house! I can’t find mine half the time and every time I buy a great one Martin steals it!
December 30th, 2006 8:33 am
I love your list. As for pens and socks, they both disappear like magic in this house never to be seen from again. I dont’ know where they go either, I suspect an alien coming down and using them as fuel. We all know how kids’ socks smell.
Hmm, bras, I had two with wires, both ended up coming out because they slipped through some how.
I got a typewriter one year for christmas, now it’s in my garage. I’ll have to pull it out one of these days and see if it still works. My kids called it an old timer computer. Don’t ask, I’m not that old.
December 30th, 2006 8:27 pm
~~ I remember typing class in Jr. High…and the typing pages we had to do that when completed, made some kind of picture on our typing paper. The Really bad memory of typing for me, was when I worked for the Calif. State Park Dept. and every secretary had to type out 6-page forms..all carbon copies. One mistake, and all 6 pages had to be corrected.
~~ I see typewriters off and on at local thrift stores ~~ Cheap. An’ my pens must go on vacation. That’s all I figure…