This Is Drivel

Category: play

  • Lazy Sunday

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    Here it is, my last day before I start my new day job and how do I spend it? I cut up a bunch of lumber, because that’s what guys do. Not sure how much is enough to qualify as a bunch. I cut up a few odds and ends to make some doodads and… Read.

  • A Trip to the Silver Eagle

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    My Darling B and I went to the Silver Eagle yesterday afternoon. It’s the closest neighborhood bar to our house and we went there because we’d like to have a place we could walk to for a beer and a quiet corner to sit and chat. Even at five o’clock in the afternoon, this does… Read.

  • Man Buys IBM for Three Dollars. Film At Eleven.

    I can’t believe my good luck: I am now the ecstatically proud owner of an IBM Selectric II. And I paid just a little over three dollars for it! How does this even happen? Well, just like this: I found it on the bottom shelf in the electronics section of a Goodwill store here in… Read.

  • Finders kee … how much?

    While I was prowling the aisles of the Madison Antique Mall this morning I spotted this Corona Sterling sitting amongst the china, figurines and other bric a brac. Carefully picking my way past the tightly-packed shelves so as not to become the not-so-proud owner of a newly-broken Humel, I managed to get a close look… Read.

  • You Too Can Afford To Grind Your Own Coffee Beans

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    New coffee toy! It’s a coffee grinder. My grandmother had one of these; I think my aunt (her daughter) has it now. Not exactly like this one; hers was a wooden box with an iron crank on top. If memory serves, she kept pennies in it. The last time I asked her, she said she… Read.

  • Just Hanging Out

    I’m of two minds when it comes to recycling parts of old typewriters for jewelery or other artwork. My first reaction is revulsion. Typewriters have an intrinsic value to my nerdy sensibilities that is so great I could probably be persuaded to sentence key-cutters to jail terms that would raise an eyebrow on Charles Manson.… Read.

  • Books!

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    I finished off the last of the books I’ve been reading this month: Of A Fire On The Moon I’ve never read anything by Norman Mailer before. This is one hell of a way to start. I’ve picked up Of A Fire On The Moon at least twice, once when I was in high school… Read.

  • All the live-long day

    Gloomy & wet all morning, cold and gray all afternoon – perfect day to stay in the basement, playing with trains. Haven’t done that in quite a long time, and the neglect is apparent in one glance at the layout: track torn up, box cars lying on their sides. You wouldn’t look at it and… Read.

  • Smith Corona Super Coronet

    I stumbled upon this Smith-Corona Super Coronet waiting on the counter for someone to take it home from the Willy Street branch of the Saint Vincent de Paul’s thrift store in Madison. Unfortunately, I didn’t take it home because I couldn’t figure out how to make it fit in my book bag and carrying it… Read.

  • Gotham

    I’ve been lusting after a hardbound copy of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 ever since I spotted it on the shelves at Paul’s Bookstore on State Street. Alas, it was priced way over the limit of what I’ll spend on any book (five dollars) that isn’t about rockets or choo-choo trains,… Read.

photo of the author and the author's best friend