The typewriter bone was tickling today, and since I had an adoptee to send out to a fellow Nano-er, I went ahead and turned it into a Friday Thrift Lunchtime Loop. The antique shop where I found the wounded-warrior Noiseless has a glass-keyed Royal, for the princely sum of $125. (I paid less than a quarter of that for the Underwood.) The holidays are coming, and I suppose retailers are battening down the hatches for shoppers in need of a good gift. They could do worse than that Royal, though at that price, I touched it only with my eyes.
The other spotting was an electric Singer-branded Smith-Corona, in the now very familiar black plastic case. I only propped the lid open far enough to confirm the presence of a cord and the familiar push-button style keys, and let it lie as well. November is coming. I can feel it, even though I'm surrounded by eucalyptus and palm and sequoia, still wearing their staid summer greens instead of the chromatic riot of a hillside full of oak and sugar maple sequestering away their resources to ready for another winter.
I'm ready, slowly watching the pile of extra machines on the porch dwindling, and hoping I can get them all adopted out or under cover before the rains start in earnest. It's time to bring The Beast out of its off-season home and place it in the designated writing spot between coach and coat closet. I'm pushing to get my November book read for my online book club, and am about ready to gather all the leaves of ideas I have scattered around on index cards and notebooks and see what story I'm going to start this year. True to form, it probably won't be the story that I end with, but I like to go through my own battening-down stage to weather the process.
Three weeks, folks. Just three weeks. That time will pass in the blink of a Rhino's eye.
