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Remembering Jim Fisher

Monday, Aug 7th, 2023 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

On Thursday I woke up to the terrible news that my long time friend and mentor Jim Fisher had died suddenly.

The day before a friend of mine had been contacted on Facebook to see if anyone knew about his whereabouts. I passed along the message to his local HAM community, but I didn’t think much of it (because Facebook, right?). His death came as a tremendous shock to me, and I spent moments here and there throughout my day on Thursday talking to my friends in ##phillyhams. Sharing in grief helps a little.

I met Jim when I joined the Ubuntu Pennsyvlania Local Community team in the mid aughts. He was active in events and finding new communities for us to be engaged with. He had many connections throughout the region and was eager to get Ubuntu-based computers in the hands of folks in need. As a result of his outreach, he worked with everyone from computer recycling organizations to non-profits that helped young people. It was a real golden age for the promise of desktop Linux that had been renewed by the development of Ubuntu. Jim was a whirlwind of welcoming energy at all these events, making sure newcomers were seen and encouraged, and encouraging us all to try new things.

He also always made sure we were all fed. His day job was for a bakery and so he’d bring goodies to all our events, and had the inside scoop to venues that would be good for Ubuntu release parties all around Philadelphia. As I was looking through photos on Thursday (which I’ve collected here), I was reminded that even for events he couldn’t participate in, he’d drop off some pastries and cake for us to enjoy. I fell in love with those Oreo cakes, and even once I moved to California, I could depend upon him bringing one to the annual FOSSCON event in Philadelphia, which I almost always attended.

I don’t recall the precise timing of when he joined the amateur radio community, but once he did, we all heard about it. He brought even more enthusiasm to that community and my visits to Philly kept seeing more and more of my technical friends getting into or resurrecting their interest in amateur radio thanks to his encouragement and excitement. Even I succumbed to it, getting my ham radio license had always been on my to do list, but I am not sure I ever would have prioritized it if not for Jim’s encouragement. In the summer of 2021, I passed my test with him right there with me (virtually, pandemic times). As I read through the AJ3DI – Silent Key posts on the The Phil-Mont Mobile Radio Club mailing list, I could see that his involvement and encouragement of others was tremendous.

From Linux to radio, Jim encouraged countless people to be fearless, and to tinker and fail. Then he was right there with us to celebrate our successes, and immediately jump into our next challenge. As someone who tends to be a careful perfectionist, his voice was what I needed at key points in my life, even on matters that were a lot more personal. We kept in contact via IRC, so I was still chatting with him a couple times a week, even though I moved to California over a decade ago. The last conversation we had was just last week about my kids, and some of the challenges I was experiencing. His wise words of acceptance were, once again, exactly what I needed to hear.

I will be a bit unbalanced without his humor and guidance when I start taking myself too seriously, there aren’t many people in my life who throw out raw wisdom like he did. I already miss him.

Filed under: reflection

Big screens and new TVs

Sunday, Aug 6th, 2023 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

The last time I was inside a movie theater was in the spring of 2021 when we rented out The Chabot Theater here in Castro Valley for our 8th wedding anniversary, and did a private screening of Star Wars: A New Hope. Prior to that, I have to look all the way back to May of 2019 for the last time I saw a commercially released movie in a theater when I went out by myself to see Captain Marvel. I’ve never been huge into movie theaters anyway, but it’s 2023 now, that’s a long time even for me!

So last week I jumped on the Barbenheimer bandwagon and went to the movie theater twice.

The first outing was the easiest, heading back to The Chabot Theater to see Barbie. The theater is within walking distance of home, and it’s a pretty standard length movie. I took a Sunday afternoon and walked over to the theater for a 2PM showing while Aaron was napping. I was back home with MJ and the boys shortly after 4PM.

The theater was more crowded than I’ve ever seen it, there was even a line going out the front door when I arrived at 1:45! But I got my ticket and candy, and settled in for what turned out to be a much more emotional experience than I expected. As a working mother, the movie definitely spoke to me, and I admit that there were some serious tears a couple times during the movie. It was also visually extraordinary and a lot of fun, I’m very glad I went, and it was a great movie to break my theater drought.

Oppenheimer took a bit more planning. First of all, it’s a 3 hour movie, which is quite the investment of time. And as much of a fan of historical docudramas as I am (The Manhattan Project looms large in our country’s mythology), I probably would have skipped it in the theater if it wasn’t for a simple fact: it was filmed for 70mm IMAX format, only 30 theaters in the world were playing it on this format, and one of those theaters was less than 20 minutes from our house, in the random suburb of Dublin, California. How could I miss this opportunity? I couldn’t! Which brings me to the second matter of logistics. The first showing I had my sights on sold out, so I had to adjust my plans and ended up with tickets for a Wednesday showing. My seat wasn’t great due to how close to the screen I was, but I was mostly centered and my seat reclined, so it was a pleasant experience.

It was a good movie, though I think it would have been more IMAX fun if they had more explosions, it was a movie about The Bomb, after all.

In other screen news, we recently bought a new TV. I wasn’t entirely on board with this plan, partially due to just how much is on our plates and I wasn’t keen on The Whole Project it would be to move the TVs around so we could finally replace the failing plasma TV in the family room. It’s just showing cartoons and baseball! Who needs a perfect picture? Well, ultimately even I had to admit it was getting quite bad, and the other day we even had some major audio distortion which rendered it unwatchable. We got this plasma TV in 2010, and it was fine for a few years until we replaced it with a much lighter, cooler, 4K TV. The plasma went into a box until four years ago when we pulled it out to use in the family room, and ultimately mounted it on the wall.

Our new OLED TV arrived last week, but we didn’t yet have a plan to install it, until an opportunity presented itself. Our two former au pairs reached out to ask if they could take the boys to the beach on Saturday morning! We quickly agreed and suddenly we had some child-free time that could be spent moving around huge TVs! Our plan was to take the plasma TV off the wall and pack it up. Then move the TV from the living room up to the mounted spot in the family room, and install the new TV on the TV stand in the living room.

It took a few hours.


As is often the case with these projects, we encountered several bumps in the road. Where was the plasma TV base, which we needed to return it to the box? Where are the spare screws from the mounting kit? Thankfully, we were able to find everything we were missing, and there were no panic trips to the hardware store, or worse. Taking the plasma TV down was no small feat though, did I mention it’s heavy? It’s very heavy.

The rest of the project went rather smoothly, just a bunch of manual labor in the form of lifting TVs and twisting screws.


Unfortunately my current lifestyle with two little kids and a full time job means I don’t have a lot of time for watching TV. Hah! But it’s nice that Shaun the Sheep is being reliably presented the correct colors now. I actually found myself with some time the other night when I was ready to sit down and watch some TV downstairs, but I had a snack and fell asleep to a podcast instead. Sorry TV, I’ll meet you some other night.

Filed under: tv

Beaches and boats in San Francisco

Sunday, Jul 30th, 2023 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

We haven’t brought the kids to San Francisco very many times. The pandemic put a damper on a lot of city outings, and then we were just juggling a lot and bringing a couple little kids to the city was a bigger challenge than we were prepared for. Things have calmed down a bit now, and this month we decided we were in a much better position to bring the kids on little trips to the city.

The first adventure was a long day with both a trip to the zoo, and a visit to the beach. It had been over a year since we’d been to the San Francisco Zoo, so Aaron was only a year old when we were last there. Adam seemed to remember it somewhat, but he definitely seemed more interested in the gardens and running around than the actual animals. That’s OK though, there was plenty of both for everyone to have a good time!

We got there in the morning and stayed for lunch, and then made our way across the street to our second destination of the day, the beach!

The last time Adam was at a beach was when we were in Florida all the way back in 2019. Aaron had never been to a beach! But they’d both seen them on TV plenty of times. They knew about the sand and water, building sand castles, and were pretty excited about the prospect of going. I wasn’t sure it would live up to their expectations, especially with how cold the ocean water is in northern California. I had nothing to worry about, my little California boys basically want to live at the beach now.

Little Aaron was definitely feeling the chill of the ocean water, but even through shivering, it was hard to get him out. Logistically, I think I was the only one who struggled a bit with it all. Sand gets everywhere, and there was so much stuff to clean. Plus, beaches are 45-60 minutes from home, depending upon traffic, and that’s a lot of time on the road for a beach visit. I think our next step is to find some non-ocean beaches closer to home. And as a bonus, non-ocean beaches will have warmer water!

The following weekend was spent with another trip up to San Francisco, this time to attend a birthday party for one of my friends in Golden Gate Park. It was great to see him and I’m glad we went, but MJ and I were the only parents there wrangling kids among a crowd child-free San Franciscans, so that was a little awkward for me.

When we wrapped up at the party, we took the kids over to see the bison paddock, and then what turned out to be the big event of the day for the kids, paddle boats! I had never done paddle boats as an adult, and I always kinda wrote it off as an expensive, silly thing, but it was actually a lot of fun, and now Aaron asks to go on boats all the time. Maybe next we’ll do a ferry in the bay.

At this point we were getting into “long day” territory and we had to decide whether to drive home, or visit the San Francisco sushi place we frequented when we lived in the city. We went back and forth a little, but decided to push on forward and get dinner in the city. It was a delight to see the owners and sushi chef who we used to see on a weekly basis, and this was their introduction to our kids! But just like the party in the park, it was a jarring experience to be socializing with people who had known us before kids, and suddenly our conversations and situation were so different.

Still, we go to enjoy a bunch of our old favorites, and even managed to find food on the menu that the boys would eat so they had a healthy dinner.

It was fun driving into the city, but I think our next visit will be via BART for a visit downtown. The Adam hasn’t been to Pier 39 since he was very little, and Aaron has never been, I think a stroll along the Embarcadero will be a lot of fun for all of us, and maybe a visit to the aquarium, given how much Aaron likes to watch fish.

Filed under: animals, family, kids, life, san francisco

Summer 2023 by the Bay

Monday, Jul 24th, 2023 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

It’s been very summer over here with the boys.

Living in northern California means that most of the year is pretty great for outdoor adventures, but we still technically have seasons, and with summer break it does seem like there are a lot more events this time of year. Plus, it is a bit more pleasant to be outside most days.

So first up on our reel of fun, there was a summer fair at the library recently! It was on some random Thursday morning, and I happened upon it while looking for weekend plans. As fate would have it, I had very early calls that Thursday, which gave me some leeway with my schedule and I was able to accompany our au pair on a walk over the library. It was a small affair in the library parking lot, but more than enough for us!


One afternoon after work, I also decided to indulge in the interest in kites the kids have developed. I’m certain it comes from watching cartoons that have characters flying kites, so I wasn’t sure how it would pan out in reality for a two year old and a four year old. So I did a quick search of a local place that sold inexpensive, no fuss kites, and whisked the boys out to pick them up at our local hardware store. As for actually flying them, it turned out better than I expected. We had to go to a park, since our back yard is small and our front yard has too many power lines, but it actually went quite well once we were out in the wide open spaces of our local park. It wasn’t very windy, so we only got the kite up briefly a few times, so the boys swiftly lost interest, but it was fun while it lasted and we got to spend a little time at the playground.

As for weekends, plenty of our weekends are filled with adventure but for the most part we’ve stuck to our usual routine, which includes the local farmers’ market, our usual restaurants for lunches, and a garage sale or two. I had been focusing on garage sales that I could walk to with the boys, but I recently convinced MJ to start coming along with us, after deciding to drive to a handful myself after all. I’m 100% the flea market/garage sale person of this family, and I wouldn’t say he’s completely shifted to my way of thinking, but a few deals here and there have softened him to the idea of second-hand purchases.


In early June, MJ was in Seattle for a work trip, and during his absence I brought the kids to the Oakland Zoo. That meant he hadn’t gone with them to the Oakland Zoo in quite some time! We decided to rectify that with a visit over the 4th of July weekend. As members, we can get in at 9AM (an hour before general admission) and since it was quite a warm day, getting in early was a wise move. I had only intended on staying for 90 minutes or so, but I don’t think I’ve ever managed such a short zoo visit in my life. The visit quickly turned into multiple hours and we even ended up having lunch there.

It quickly became apparent that the boys enjoy the zoo very differently though. Little Aaron is totally enamored with the desire to “see animals!” while Adam takes a much more map-focused, analytical approach to zoo visits and keeps us moving at a swift pace. It’s nice that they each seem to get a lot of out if, I see more Oakland Zoo trips in our near future, we only live 20 minutes away.


On the actual 4th of July we didn’t really have plans. Indeed, pre-pandemic we tended to spend the 4th of July where it all began, Philadelphia! The stars just didn’t align this time around and there were too many blockers to planning a summer trip this year. We made the most of it by taking the opportunity to use our day off from work and school to enjoy another family day by driving out to the nearby city of Dublin to enjoy a morning at the park and then lunch at a local brewery we go to from time to time. The park was a huge hit, it has a large playground AND wide open fields, and everyone enjoyed all of it (though, as usual, Aaron preferred the playground and Adam preferred the gardens and fields).

The day after the 4th of July I took the train to the city to meet up with my friend Mark, who I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic. I’m slowly reconnecting with people in-person post-pandemic, but with two small children at home I can’t fully put blame on the pandemic for my loss of social connection. Fortunately for me, the friendships I’ve cultivated are the sort where you can go a year or more without seeing someone and then pick up where you left off, with a bit of social media filling the void in the meantime.

I joked before meeting up that my move to the east bay effectively made me a tourist to San Francisco, and I totally latched onto that by visiting Ferry Building before meeting up for a ride on the California Street cable car, stopping by the Cable Car Museum, having a pizza lunch in North Beach, and then checking out the new Central Subway, starting at the station I hadn’t seen yet in Chinatown. It was great to catch up, and on my way back to the suburbs I took a vintage street car, putting me at 4 different types of public transit for the day!


On my way out of the city I also dropped by the Market Street Railway Museum to pick out a t-shirt for me and a toy streetcar for the boys, which just happened to be the same one I saw outside the museum just moments before, and snapped a photo of.

Getting out of the house with a friend to visit some of my favorite places, activities, and foods, was exactly what I needed. It doesn’t cure the exhaustion or feelings of overwhelm I have as a working mother of two young children, but it helped me feel like my old self again, which was a welcome change for a few hours.

Filed under: family, food, kids, life, rails, san francisco

+25 pounds

Saturday, Jul 1st, 2023 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

I weighed in at 212 pounds this morning. I’m not pleased about that, but it’s worth writing about.

Two years ago I wrote a blog post titled 50 pounds. In it I chronicled the path I walked to lose 50 pounds from my high point of 237 pounds just prior to my second pregnancy in 2020. At the time, I acknowledged my belief that the magic bullet was breastfeeding, since that bought me a 500 calorie deficit every day without changing diet or behavior. I was right. If I look at my weight over the past two years, it started climbing up from 187 when I stopped breastfeeding at the end of 2021. For all of 2022 I was hovering around 205, and this year it’s been around 210. They say that most people have a “set point” where your body kind of naturally settles, and for me that seems to be at 210. If I eat decently and do my regular clean-the-house-and-chase-kiddos-around exercise routine I stay around 210. If I eat excessively or make other bad choices about my diet, it goes up. If I make major positive changes to my diet, it goes down.

Still, I don’t like this set point and I’d like to change it. I liked how I looked and felt when I weighed less. As I squeeze into my jeans and frown at how Medium unisex shirts hang on me now, I’m unhappy. It’s also not healthy for me, I am at high risk for Type 2 Diabetes, and that’s nothing to play around with. My A1C levels are OK for now, but that could change if I’m not diligent about my diet and exercise level.

But mental health plays a role here too. I am a stress/comfort eater. I love white rice and sugar. Carbs are my best buds. I still crave soda. I have a better grasp on how these things impact me. White rice? Sends my blood sugar through the roof! And yes, I know how much sugar is in a soda. But in the moment, it doesn’t really seem to help. I really, really want that piece of cake. It does lift my mood slightly, and in those tough moments when I’m really struggling, it’s a shortcut that I have been taking a little too often lately.

Having a look at that blog post, there are a few other things I’ve been leaning a bit too far into.

I started adding in fast food sides again, because french fries and jalapeno poppers are tastey! But honestly they aren’t that good and I should probably switch back to healthier sides, or no sides at all.

Soda. I haven’t gotten to the point of buying it for home, but I’ve come close, and I’ve had it while eating out a few times recently. I just need to put a stop to that. I have my flavored sparkling water and Hop Tea!

I keep eating too much. I need to stop when I’m satisfied, not when the pizza is gone. Do I want that slice of cake? Cool. But I don’t need to finish it if I’m feeling better! And news flash: I can throw it away if it goes bad and I haven’t felt like eating it.

Speaking of cake, there’s been too much dessert. Moderation, lady! Bedtime cookies are not necessary, and easy enough to skip and just go to bed without thinking about them again.

If I do all of the above, I think I can put a stop to my weight continuing to increase. From there, I can tackle the weight loss question again, if I find I need to.

Honestly, what I’m most hoping for is an improvement in my mental health. My life is overloaded with responsibilities right now, and I feel like I’m drowning all the time. Staying disciplined with a diet that doesn’t necessarily help my mood has proven impossible under these circumstances.

Filed under: health

Cars, baseball, and the rest of Father’s Day weekend

Tuesday, Jun 27th, 2023 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

At two and four, both of the boys are finally at ages where they can really enjoy family outings for what they are, so it was really fun to go into Father’s Day weekend recently with a bunch of family plans.

The first event of the weekend was the Castro Valley Car Show. We go every year, and they shut down Castro Valley Boulevard for several blocks to showcase individuals and organizations bringing in all sorts of classic cars. We met up with a friend of mine around 3PM after the boys got up from their naps and had a lovely afternoon strolling along the boulevard.



After the show, we all went over to enjoy some Indian food for dinner. Adam is a bit of a picky eater, but we found a butter chicken (chicken makhani) a while back that he enjoyed, but was sadly discontinued. But we keep trying similar dishes and trying different restaurants. Aaron chowed down on the chicken makhani, but I think we’ll have to keep searching for Adam. And we all enjoyed the rice and naan!

Sunday was the Big Day as far as Father’s Day goes. We went out to an Oakland A’s game! In 2021 we went to a couple games, but made a big event out of it by bringing friends and renting a suite, but this time we decided to get seats in the stands. They were playing the Phillies, which was fun for us, and caused us to have amusing split loyalties in our gear; Adam was all decked out for the Phillies, while the rest of us wore green for the A’s. Truly, we all love both teams, so it was bound to be a fun game. Execution-wise, we took BART to the stadium, and agreed that we’d split up or all go home if it got to be too much for any of us (kids running off, troubled by too much noise, etc).


We made it through the game though! It wasn’t stress-free, sitting in the stands for long periods is definitely a struggle for them, and going on such a busy day meant that leaving our seats meant fighting our way through crowds, which was unpleasant for all of us. I think if we tried sitting in the stands again we’d go on a less busy day, or maybe even go to San Francisco where there are peripheral activities for the kids if they get bored of the game.


I think what really made the day was the end of the game when kids got to run the bases! Apparently this is a Sunday tradition that some parks follow when there isn’t a home game the next day, but it’s not something we’ve ever experienced. The line for it was incredibly long and patience was wearing thin, but it was worth it. MJ took Adam around the bases and I took Aaron, and we all had a lot of fun.

As a bonus it meant that we didn’t have to wait in line to get on a packed BART train to get home, we were able to leisurely walk to and wait for the train, and all got seats on the trip home.

We skipped naps for the boys to attend the game, so Aaron actually fell asleep in the stroller on the train, and I found Adam zonked out on the couch right after dinner, so we enjoyed a relaxing evening for the rest of the day.

Gift-wise, I’ve struggled to find something MJ would actually use, so in addition to a small gift the boys picked, I went the route of getting a piece of furniture that belonged to his grandparents fixed. During one of the moves (apartment, storage, pod, garage…) the top became detached from the base, and we weren’t confident in our ability to fix it ourselves without doing damage.

I contacted a local furniture restoration shop and they picked it up, got the top re-attached, and dropped it off! I then spent the next couple of days cleaning it, which was a transformation unto itself, and then got a pair of tight-fitting tablecloths that cover the remaining blemishes.

The table replaces the big, plastic folding table that we had in our upstairs entry way, so the chairs are re-united with their table now! It’s a smaller table, but it looks much nicer in the space, and less space for stuff to collect is probably for the best anyway.

Filed under: castro valley, events, family, kids, life

Adventures with my little ones

Friday, Jun 16th, 2023 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

We’re fortunate to have in-house childcare during my work hours, so when MJ went away on a work trip last week I wasn’t left completely alone at home with the kids for four days. But solo parenting is still tricky when you have built everything up around having two parents participating in the childcare formula. My duties for the day began around 6AM and wrapped up around 9PM, with chores and sleep slipping, and any unexpected things that arose (and they did!) becoming incredibly hard to handle.

So, what did we do while MJ was away?

The first thing to know is that Adam is a runner. He gets distracted or just goes off in his own little world and suddenly he’s gone. This is annoying at home, since the entire house is not, in fact, child proof. During outings it’s more of a problem, for obvious reasons. It’s something we’ve been working on with him, but it’s not a solved problem and ultimately we have to be very careful about what activities we agree to, knowing his proclivities.

Still, I decided that on Sunday I’d take the boys to the Oakland Zoo, by myself. I can’t begin to stress what a Big Deal this is. No one has ever taken our running four year old and a our two year old to the zoo solo.

Thankfully, it went really well.


The boys had some freedom outside of the stroller. They were convinced with promises of lunch at the zoo to not completely abandon me, and even on the playground I was able to attend to little Aaron’s interest in climbing every bronze animal while Adam stayed withing visible distance running around. We had so much fun! And yes, we did ultimately get lunch, which we got to enjoy up at The Landing Cafe, which is part of the upper part of the zoo at the end of the California Trail.


We have a membership now, so I didn’t stress about cramming in activities. We saw some key animals, went on the gondola, played on the playground, had some lunch, and happily went home around noon so the boys could get naps. It didn’t work perfectly (Aaron, why won’t you nap?) but with some refinement I could see this being a regular thing. Particularly if I wasn’t doing in solo.

That Sunday late afternoon we stayed close to home and I got a whole pile of chores done while the kids watched some TV. The most notable thing about the TV afternoon was that Adam asked to put on Blue’s Clues for the first time in a while, and he didn’t ask me for help writing the clues in his Handy Dandy Notebook! It’s an activity we always did together, so it was a rather engaging TV time, as TV time goes. It was a little sad for me, admittedly, but I am so proud of him for navigating pages in the notebook and copying the drawings down.

The work week was a little trickier than Sunday. Our au pair had the kids while I worked, but I’m still quite present since she’s still learning about the kids and their routines. At the end of my day I decided it would be fun to leave the house, so on Monday we all went out for pizza, and on Tuesday we did a BART ride to Target before returning to our home station for dinner at our favorite local restaurant.

I’d say Wednesday is when all hell broke loose. The boys tore down the built-in shelving in their bedroom during the hour they spent playing in their room in the morning. I actually intervened much earlier than usual (before their green light wake-up at 7AM) due to the shelf-collapsing noise. The boys preceded to get into trouble out front, which our au pair handled, but ended up being a pretty stressful situation afterwards. By the time my end of day rolled around, I was feeling the impact of less sleep and I decided to take the boys out on a walk. We went to the comic book store, grabbed our latest mail at the post office, and then swung around to the grocery store to pick up some necessities and some supplements to dinner. At this point some of the chores slipping was starting to catch up with me, but I was so tired it was hard to fix.

It was a fun week with them, but I’m glad that MJ is home now. In spite of flexibility, I’ve simply built a career that’s too demanding to have the capacity to spend vast amounts of time on childcare too. I’m definitely grateful I’m not doing this on my own all the time.

We’re now eagerly barreling into the Father’s Day weekend with plans to attend the Castro Valley Car Show downtown and perhaps take in a baseball game on Sunday!

Filed under: animals, family, kids, life

1975 Olympia Traveller de Luxe, it’s portable!

Thursday, Jun 15th, 2023 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

I mentioned that the Alameda Point Antiques Faire was where I got my wide-carriage Royal FP Elite. A couple weeks ago we went back, on the first Sunday of the month, to try our luck again. I saw a lot of Royals there, but after my experience with the Magic Margins on my Royal FPE, I wasn’t keen to get another, plus, I already had one!

Ultimately, we picked some great old vinyl albums, and on my way out I picked up a 1975 Olympia Traveller de Luxe. I had passed it the first time around the fair with a price tag of $150, and offered the dealer $125 upon my return. He accepted, and I brought my new portable treasure home with us.

It needed basic cleaning, if I had to guess it had been in a garage with a shop, since it had wood and metal shavings inside. I wiped down all the typebars and got to what I could of the base without taking it apart. It’s very pleasant to type on now, though I still need to fiddle with it a little to get the “a” key to stop sticking, it probably just needs a dab of typewriter oil, which I bought recently.

Then I needed a ribbon! Thankfully, TheModernTypewriter once again had my back, and quickly answered my question about which spool and ribbon listing I could use for this typewriter. About $10 and a few days later I had a new ribbon, this one in black and orange.

The black and orange looks really nice with it, and I’m grateful that I once again dodged the need to re-spool a ribbon myself. As much love and care as I put into the Skywriter, and debugging I did on the Royal, I wasn’t quite ready for a whole new project just yet, so it was nice to just get comfortable with a whole new brand and style. It’s also much newer than any of my others. Until I brought home this Olympia, the newest one in my fleet was from 1959 (that Royal), so 1975 is quite the leap, and it definitely has a bit more of a modern feel, but not too modern!

With this acquisition, my typewriter fleet expanded to five, with another on the way via friend. Six typewriters is probably too many, so I decided to send this one to our townhouse in Philadelphia. It’s nice and compact, so I’m hopeful that MJ won’t have any trouble carrying with him when he goes back to Philly on his own in a couple weeks. Though I do admit being a little jealous that he’s the one who will get to carry on a typewriter, and not me.

It will join typewriter number three, wide-carriage Remington KMC that I picked up at WPM Typewriter during our last visit. That will give me a standard and a portable there, which will make me feel right at home.

Filed under: typewriter

A rodeo, 4 pounds of cherries, and “antiques”

Tuesday, Jun 13th, 2023 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite things about living here downtown in Castro Valley is getting to enjoy the smattering of annual events that take place just a couple blocks from our doorstep. It’s no San Francisco, but they’re charming events that connect us with the area in a way that I thought would take much longer than it has. One of those events is the annual rodeo parade. We’ve been a couple of times (they skipped a couple years due to the pandemic) and it’s fun to watch the boulevard come alive with a bunch of civic organizations, schools, companies, and other organizations.

The following weekend is the actual rodeo. I didn’t grow up in the west, so rodeos were always kind of a vague notion that I read about in history books. I knew they still existed, but it wasn’t something I paid much attention to. We talked about going last year but decided the boys were still a bit too young. This year we decided to go.

I joked that it wasn’t really my scene, and that’s a tremendous understatement. I think we all like to believe we have a bit of the wild west in us, at least in a playful way, but it swiftly became clear that I had grown into a city person with delicate sensibilities, much more at home with a book and a comfy fireplace than the dirt and excitement of a rodeo. Still, most of the events were exciting to watch and admire the talents of the men and women who were competing and performing.

But I’ll be the first to admit that I felt uncomfortable with some of the animal capture and tying events. I expect there’s a need for these skills and I appreciate the expertise of the folks who keep these skills alive, and I do eat meat, after all, but I didn’t enjoy it. Instead, I took the opportunity during these events to take the boys around to visit the vendors, browse the food stands, and get close to the animals.

Our walking adventures were quite enjoyable, except for a moment when I was walking around with Adam and the wind picked up, and picked up a vendor tent along with it. I went into instinctual protect-the-child mode and covered Adam with my own body and bore the brunt of a corner of a tent landing on us. After confirming Adam was OK (by panic-asking him about 30 times, hah!), I dusted myself off and assured folks around us that I was fine. I did develop a pretty nasty bruise on my elbow, but I kept thinking about how much worse it would have been if little Adam had gotten clobbered. Go parent instincts!

The following weekend was Memorial Day weekend, and we continued our spring activities by driving up to Brentwood for some cherry picking. I think it was one of the parent groups that clued me in to the cherry picking activity, but it was a natural fit given how much the boys love plants, and cherries. I didn’t quite appreciate how much they’d both enjoy it. They were both incredibly well-behaved as they took their little buckets around the orchard.

We had lunch in the nearby Brentwood downtown at Zephyr Grill & Bar. A festival was going on just outside and we were able to get a nice table outside where the boys sat peacefully for most of the meal, with the assistance of some cartoons on their phones. On the way back we stopped at a farm shop to pick up some last minute goodies.

Then we had four and a half pounds of cherries! We ate most of them straight up, but also took some to make cherry muffins, which came out really nicely.

The rest of the long weekend was a pretty low-key affair. Some local family meals out, a morning when I took Aaron out to a playground and a couple thrift shops before stopping for donuts. The following Saturday continued this with long Saturday walks around the neighborhood to stake out some garage sales, visit the farmer’s market and a playground, and a nice outdoor lunch at our favorite local cafe.

The final big activity was that Sunday when we returned to the antique fair in Alameda. I hadn’t quite gotten it out of my system the month before, especially after leaving behind a lovely old Underwood portable typewriter. I didn’t come across that Underwood again, but I did pick up a 1975 Olympia portable, my far the newest typewriter in my little fleet. Both MJ and I also picked up a few vinyl records, which made me laugh and bristle a bit at the whole things being called an antiques fair. But yeah. These vinyl records are from the 1960s and 70s, which means they meet the definition. And so do I, hah!

We had lunch there, and I ended up with a sunburn that would nag me for the rest of the week, but thankfully I had been more thorough with the application of sunblock on the boys, so I was the only one damaged. I think I did get the fair out of my system this time, so maybe our next second-hand adventure summer will be to one of the local flea markets.

Throughout all of this, we’ve also been adjusting to some change. I mentioned briefly that we welcomed a new au pair into our home, and that has meant getting her up to speed with not just getting to know us and the processes around child care, but also getting her settled in to the town, and doing lots of settling in paperwork. We also didn’t have our family car! Due to some problems with the head unit connecting to vehicle services, it was at the dealership for several weeks of diagnostics, hardware replacement, software updates, and who knows what. Thankfully, we had a no-cost loaner from the dealership during this time, but it was a smaller vehicle and we were constantly worried about getting it excessively dirty or damaged (muddy feet?! Shoes off!). While I’m grateful for the loaner, I don’t think I fully appreciated how low-key stressful the situation would be. When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I keep trying to be gentle with myself and acknowledge that little things can pile up. Oh, and guess who knows how to climb out of his crib now? Join me next time for the saga of getting a two year old and a four year old to share a room overnight!

Filed under: castro valley, events, family, kids, life

Wide-carriage Royal FP Elite

Thursday, May 25th, 2023 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Several weeks ago I proposed going to the Alameda Point Antiques Faire. I learned about it through the documentary, California Typewriter, but very specifically didn’t go there to look at typewriters. I like antique fairs! I wanted to browse some vinyl records! The fresh air would be enjoyable for the whole family! Besides, the secret was clearly out among typewriter fans. I actually joked with MJ by promising that I wouldn’t buy a typewriter.

You see where this is going right?

We came home with a 1959 wide-carriage Royal FP Elite.

I am not a typewriter expert, but getting to know the three typewriters I already owned deepened my familiarity with them, and the work I did on my Skyriter has put me into interesting territory as far as tinkerers go. Imagine my surprise when, after asking for permission, I popped open the hood and started fiddling with the mechanisms to do a quick assessment of the status of the device. I really do know my way around a typewriter now! The assessment there on the pavement was spot on, it was a solid machine that worked well, and actually needed less work than my little Skyriter. And at $40 (knocked down from $50 when I paused to contemplate) it was a steal. The hardest part about all of this was carrying it to the car. It probably weighs 40lbs!

The fact that it’s wide-carriage certainly didn’t help with the weight. The amusing thing is that I don’t NEED a wide-carriage typewriter and now I have two in my collection (the Remington KMC in Philadelphia is also wide-carriage). They’re actually quite unwieldy and arguably less aesthetically-pleasing than the ones that have carriages that stay mostly within the bounds of the body of the typewriter. But here we are. I may have to find something creative to do with wide-carriages.

At home I’ve taken my time with it. Life has been challenging for us lately, so it’s not like I’ve had hours to sit around by myself to work on a new project. An evening here or there, an hour while the kids are napping. In the course of these times I discovered Magic Margins. In theory, Magic Margins allow you to quickly set the margins on your typewriter with the tap of a lever. In practice, they’re over-engineered for a problem I have a hard time believing was severe (setting margins is not a hard problem!), and when they get out of whack, it’s not like it’s a simple mechanism that you can easily fiddle with until it’s fixed. I spent most of my time these past few weeks trying to fix the fact that the margins had gone to the center and wouldn’t go back, and I finally hit r/typewriter for some advice. They came through! A helpful fellow typewriter fan took the time to explain the concept, which equipped me with enough information to figure out the problem. Turns out the whole thing wasn’t “gunked up” but the little tooth that goes into the track was stuck in the track. Once I found it and popped it up, I was able to use the Magic Margin levers to set it the way I wanted it.

Then there was the ribbon. At first I thought it had dried out a bit and I started looking for a replacement. Thankfully I was saved by this Royal having a very specific type of ribbon and with a price tag that matched what I paid for the typewriter, I wasn’t going to jump on it. Turns out, that it was simply at one end of the spool, and on these Royals there is a switch to reverse spool directions. Once I flipped it to the other direction, it moved along the ribbon nicely and I got dark letters.

The final hurdle was sticky keys. I hadn’t cleaned the machine much at all, and some of the keys in the center would get stuck up after striking. I took some rubbing alcohol to the arms and slugs, which got me most of the way to unstuck keys. Then after a few minutes of typing they all seemed to be behaving properly. I do think that this was a temporary though, and I’ll have to get in there with some proper typewriter oil (which I have!) to give them a once-over so it doesn’t continue to have a “warm-up” period.

So, how is it to type on? It may actually be my favorite one to type on. Those white keys may not be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, but they are so delightful to the touch. I very quickly got swept up in typing on it.

What will I do with it? Who needs another standard! That’s the question. MJ was the first one to say “Lyz has a typewriter collection” because for me they each served a very specific purpose. But now that I have two standards here in California, resisting the label of “collector” is starting to become a challenge. I don’t actually want to fill a bookcase with typewriters since I want to make sure they all receive the love and respect they deserve. And I don’t have space. At the same time, I really do love these mechanical things. I’ll never be good enough to repair them professionally, and I want to make sure those who are stay in business and aren’t undercut by hacks like me, we need them! I need them! But the peace, frustration, and satisfaction I get from finding a problem and solving it on these mechanical devices is something I’ve fallen in love with. The debugging process is very similar to what I fell in love with on computers, but the mechanical nature of them makes it just different enough to be a fun new new thrill.

Filed under: typewriter
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