The Typewriter
I had a great start to the year - On the first day we were back I broke my laptop.
After deciding it would be a good idea to leave my bag unattended on the table, without anything supporting it, and walking away for a mere second! the whole bag back-flipped off the table and landed computer-side-first on the floor. I didn't much of this as the computer was still intact in the bag when I came to recover the remains.
Yet when I powered it up, I saw one faint discoloured line on the screen... and as the day continued more and more lines popped up on the screen.
By the end of the next day the computer screen went fully dark and it was completely unusable. kudos to Apple for a great retina screen.
And thus so this began my adventure in furstration.
While I have a desktop computer at home — several in fact, though most are quite antiquated machines (Windows 7 or XP) which by the way, are good for doing everything still (except for schoolwork that needs Google Docs - ugh webapps). I at the time did not have a working printer at home which posed it a problem because now I couldn't print at school without a working laptop
And so came the ingenious idea to bring out the typewriter which had been sitting in the back of the closet for some thirty or so years (I'm assuming).
An Olympia of some sort.. "Made in Western Germany"
I didn't buy this typewriter, by the way. It's (practially) a family heirloom! haha! Well, a "found in the back of a dusty closet" heirloom, but still valuable to me! Absolutely awesome stuff.
It desperately needed cleaning (mostly dust from sitting) and a new ink ribbon. Other than that, it worked flawlessly.. I didn't even needed to relurbicate any parts, which was quite surprising to me.
And so Of Course, I purchased a new ribbon for it, and I put it in. Well, actually the first time I put it in, I put it in the wrong way round, and so ended up ripping the end of the ribbon off the spool (oops), but I fixed it with some stick tape and rolled it back the right way, and we were back in business!
So I've been using it to type up some documents (well for a while), but now I did get my printer working and got ink for the printer (which cost a helluva lot more than the ribbons)... but hey at least I have a very cool typewriter "family heirloom", and I did find a nice niche for it... very good for typing up 3x5'' index cards and flash cards... Also, Letters! I love a good typewritten letter and so this thing will be brought out for special occasions letters and birthday cards amongst other things.
And so yeah...I really like this little typewriter and eventually will settle it a permanent spot on my desk... hopefully to many more wonderful years of use!
This typewriter (or well any typewriter) is, to me, a lot more than a typing device. It tells us a story of a time that no longer exists. A story of a much simpler time... and of when things just worked...
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