Typewriters & Tea

2:50 AM- Writing this while I wait for the kettle to boil. Making chamomile tea to help me sleep.

So, the layout of the modern keyboard is based on the layout of the keyboard of a typewriter. Remember typewriters? Ink? No backspace key? Goes ding when there's stuff? Well they also have arms that hold the little reversed imprint of the character that actually makes that mark on the page. And if you push the keys in just the right order, or maybe the machinery isn't very well greased? Those arms get stuck. So the keyboard on a typewriter was laid out to minimize the possibility of someone pushing the keys in precisely the wrong order and getting them trapped.

We've picked it up on computers because *everyone already knows it*. Little sad when you think about it. I had a high school teacher who continually went on about having learned to type on a typewriter. There are probably people out there who learned to work on a mainframe computer with punch cards, or can fix a dot-matrix printer. This doesn't mean they know what they're doing.

2:57- Water's boiled now, but need to make the tea. Has to steep. And then not burn my tongue. Letting the tea cool down is important. So, there's all these shadows. It's really rather disconcerting. And I keep getting the impression that somewhere, just out of the corner of my eye, there's something moving. I'm getting just enough of it that my brain has this picture. Of this... I suppose person is as good as any, in like a coat or something, just walking by the window along the front of the house. I'm going to chalk it up to lack of sleep.

3:10- Water's cooled down. Drink the tea fast. Plains apes aren't meant to work in the dark. We really just aren't suited for it. We depend entirely too much on our eyes. Probably half the reason dogs were domesticated. They're strong in the two areas that we've let fall by the wayside. They hear well, and they smell well. I mean, hell dogs and cats both have that creepy reflective layer behind their eyes that actually *projects light* that it reflects out in front of the animal. Their eyes are like little flashlights.

3:20- Racial memory, or something like it, says that I should lock my door, draw the curtains, turn a light on and then go to sleep and not leave my back facing the door. I think I agree with it. I'm spooked. And also tired.