Little Flower Petals

What are you writing with/on/about?

2012-01-27T09:19:00.000-08:00

I've barely touched my fountain pens since October. For writing at work and at home, with few exceptions, it has been graphite all the way: either my assortment of woodcase pencils, or my new favorite mechanical pencil, the Graphgear 1000, which I love for its pocket friendly retractable mechanism and its solid feel. It goes everywhere with me.

At some point in the future, I'll almost certainly snap out of this phase, get annoyed with the way graphite smears or the lack of contrast compared to a strongly colored ink, but at the moment, pencils are where it's at. No messy liquid ink, no delicate nibs to worry about, no gizmos to wear out or break, no surprises. Scrape the point on a page, it makes a mark. If the point gets dull, put it through a few turns of the sharpener. Doesn't get much simpler than that. Current favorites: the Musgrave Test Scoring 100 (may have more complete thoughts to post regarding that one in the next week or so), General's Semi-Hex, California Republic Golden Bears, Palomino HBs, and (perhaps surprisingly) Ticonderogas--though I still feel a major difference between the Mexican made ones and the Chinese made. The Chinese ones are way better. As for paper, I'm still stuck on a combination of composition books and loose-leaf.

I admit, what with my current music obsession, I've mostly slacked off on all writing save my journal. But this week, the itch is back. I've started scribbling notes and ideas again. This weekend, I plan to read back through my NaNoWriMo story--such as it is, what there is of it--and think about continuing. And I'm about done editing a short story.

I also should really write some letters. I am the typosphere's worst correspondent, bar none. The competition isn't even *close*.

I haven't been using the typewriters much, for whatever reason. I'm sure that pendulum will swing back eventually.

So...what are *you* working on? And what are you writing with: a particular pen/pencil/typewriter/program? What are you writing on: scrap paper/favorite notebook/fancy journal/large stones? And what have you been writing about?

Well...that was interesting. Ice storm!

2012-01-22T13:28:00.000-08:00

Lazy photo post today, because I'm still in recovery. We had a beautiful snow storm on Wednesday, and I was stuck at home, but it was kinda pleasant: I had electricity and heat and all, and I baked bread and read and played music and watched the snow fall.

Pretty snow...

Wednesday night, it was supposedly going to warm up rather rapidly overnight as the snow turned to freezing rain and then plain rain. The roads were predicted to be bad early in the day, but then everything would thaw out and be just messy and wet. Yeah. Right. Instead, we got ice, and lots and lots of it. By the time I woke up on Thursday morning, the power had been out for several hours, and the temperature in the house was beginning to drop.

Icy trees and cables

By the middle of the day, you could stand outside and hear a constant cracking, popping, thumping sound from the woods all the way around, as one tree after another lost its battle with the thickening ice. It was eerie, really. One of the trees in my backyard fell, one trunk at a time, about making jump out of my skin each time. That was loud! Fortunately the dog was in the house when it fell, and it didn't take anything out with it. Some houses and yards weren't so lucky.

What a mess!

Between all the fallen trees and the heavy ice hanging on cables themselves, it's no wonder there were so many outages...

I played mandolin quite a bit on Thursday, before the house cooled down to the point where it was too cold to play much. Wrote this tune, which remains untitled, more or less...or maybe I'll leave the temporary title in place in memory of this week:

Iced In

Power remained out until last night, and it got down into the low forties in the house and stayed there. Cold enough to see your breath. I hung out with neighbors on Friday, though slept here--with a sleeping bag and a bunch of blankets, it was OK, except I kept dreaming of power trucks coming and fixing the lines. And yesterday, I was *finally* able to get my car out of the snow and ice and out of the drive. The wreckage out there is humbling: trees down everywhere, and you can imagine just how many were over the roads before work started. I spent much of yesterday hanging out at coffee houses and grocery stores, reading and just savoring warmth. My Kindle really helped keep me sane in all this, I gotta say.

But it was soooooo awesome to get home last night and finally find the power on. Hot showers, real coffee, the ability to do *laundry*! I missed them so much!

The wind is really picking up out there as another smaller storm comes through. Crossing my fingers that it won't be enough to break things all over again...

Couple more ice pictures, just because...

Friends and Nemeses (and Emma)

2012-01-18T18:02:00.000-08:00

I could mention that I did *try* to do a typecast version of the index card note, since you're likely getting sick of trying to decipher my handwriting, but my typewriters don't care much for these cards and after a certain amount of arguing with them, I gave up.

OK, some of you asked for mandolin samples. This will teach you to be careful what you ask for. Here are a coupla tunes:

1. Emma's Waltz, with a friend playing chords. It's a little too slow. Also, because I'm petrified, there are no dynamics or variations or that. I do love this tune, though. It's purty.

2. Lark in the Morning. This second tune is one I've been fighting with tooth and nail: a four part Irish jig they play at the local Irish session pretty much every week. I took an instant dislike to it and it became a nemesis of sorts: every time I tried to learn it, my brain put up an instant barrier. "Uh-uh. Not letting THAT THING in here. No sir!" But this past weekend I decided to put aside past differences and try to make friends with it. It's rather growing on me now, though there may be a certain amount of Stockholm Syndrome coming into play. This is an imperfect take, but it was also about take fifteen. Good 'nough, I guess. You get the idea. Keep in mind that at a session, I'd be just one of a dozen instruments playing it...kinda boring with just mando, and you hear every stinkin' flaw.

I've gotten to practice a bit today, since I'm currently snowed in, and could potentially be so again tomorrow. Pretty stuff, though!

Not Dead Yet

2012-01-11T15:28:00.000-08:00

Reason #1 I haven't been blogging: I've been obsessively practicing mandolin and learning new tunes. Tunes I've learned since the beginning of November:

OK, I confess, I'd played Banish Misfortune before, but not memorized it, so maybe that one's a lie. Still, not bad all told, if I do say so myself. And most of them, I know well enough to play at the local Irish session, without toooo many stumbles. However, the list of commonly played tunes they gave me when I first started attending is sixty tunes long, and it seems like people toss out new ones every week, so this list is a drop in the bucket. I still have a lot of work cut out for me. Fun work, though, for the most part, with the exception of Lark in the Morning Jig. Don't ask me why, but I developed an instant antipathy for that tune. Maybe I'm not as much of a morning person as I thought I was. But I'll beat the Lark yet.

Reason #2 I haven't been blogging: I've been sucked down the e-reader rabbit hole.

Quite a number of family members have obtained Kindles over the past few months and all have been raving about them. And these days, you can borrow library books on them, which knocks down one of the mental barriers I'd set up against them. The selection of library e-books isn't great, but it's growing. And Kindles have come down a lot in price. A few years ago, they were what, $350? Now, they're under a hundred.

I got to play with my sister-in-law's new Kindle Touch for awhile over Christmas, and then when I was at Target on New Year's Eve, they had a returned one marked down to $69. Plus I had a Target gift card. Plus I am weak. It came home with me. Ended up having a bad USB cable, but my phone uses the same cable so I could charge it straight off, and Amazon customer service was happy to send a replacement for the original. Good deal.

I have to say, I'm smitten. There is much to be said for the ability to carry many, many large, heavy books in one bitty package, and the ability to request any classic (and a lot of other stuff) for free at the touch of a coupla buttons, without even getting off the couch. Also, it's lighter and more comfortable to hold than a lot of big books, lays flat, and I can lazily turn pages with one hand whilst eating lunch or what have you. I haven't bought much yet, aside from Mr. Speegle's short story collection, and Life of Pi, which I've been wanting to read for awhile and which I got for a dollar as one of the "special offers." But I've gone through half a dozen library books with more in the queue, plus have a bunch of classics and out-of-print goodies waiting in the wings. (First up, some lighter reading: lotsa PG Wodehouse and a smattering of Mary Roberts Rinehart mysteries.)

It doesn't replace real books by any means. There are still an awful lot of things not available for Kindle, for one thing, and I'm still likely to drag home large stacks of cheap used books, which isn't an option for e-books. Still, I'm seriously pleased with the little thing.

Anyhow, between reading and music, I've barely had time for things like, oh, bathing, let alone blogging. What did I miss? Are we there yet?

Awkward

2011-12-05T11:51:00.001-08:00

I wear a hat to bed in the winter, and use a sleeping bag as a comforter. This lets me turn the heat down at night, thus saving money for more entertaining things than heat. My favorite hat for these purposes is a thoroughly goofy thing I would never, ever, ever wear out in public: it's blue and white with a pseudo Nordic sweater print, a big pom-pom, ear flaps, and (at the ends of the ear flaps) two long blue and white yarn braids, like ragdoll hair. It's wild, but it's warm

So...Saturday morning, I get up relatively early, and--still wearing my goofy hat and my long johns--become engrossed in messing around on the mandolin. I found a really neat Russian klezmer-ish sort of tune and was all but dancing around the living room with the mandolin going to *town* on that tune (not your typical fare, but ooh, it's fun stuff!). And then there was a knock at the door.

My landlady wanted to let me know someone would be by soon to work on a minor plumbing issue. She was nice enough not to comment on either my attire or my odd choice of noise-making.

I have no idea what she must think of me now.

Out but not Down

2011-11-13T09:17:00.001-08:00

Halvah taking advantage of a momentary break...

I am officially throwing in the towel for NaNoWriMo 2011, at least as far as hitting 50k is concerned. If I had more free time, maybe I'd do some frenzied catching up, but I don't, and music is still taking priority. The fact that I feel great relief rather than guilt in letting go of this particular goal tells me it's the right thing to do.

I wrote a lot over the course of this year, pretty consistently, usually two or three pages a day. I've proven to myself I can take a story and finish it without needing a contest as motivation, so I'm not too worried. If this story is worth writing, it will be written.

Now getting ready for the type-in in a bit here! Wouldn't miss that, even if I'm no longer a Typewriter Brigade member.

Also working on a set of polka tunes: Bill Sullivan's / Dennis Murphy's / Sean Ryan's. Bill Sullivan is a decent chap, I'm in love with Sean Ryan, but Dennis Murphy is not my friend at the moment. Maybe I'll record these (albeit in rather bland solo mandolin format) once I get them down.

Music 1, NaNoWriMo 0

2011-11-06T14:37:00.000-08:00

Musical things I did this week:
1. Went to two concerts: one jazz/swing, with Paul Anastasio, an excellent fiddler (he played with Asleep at the Wheel, and for Merle Haggard, among others), and also saw Randal Bays, who is a highly decent Irish fiddler and also a great guitarist, both fingerstyle and rhythm (he was the rhythm guitarist on Martin Hayes' first few albums, for those of you who know who Martin Hayes is...) Both concerts were at a very small local venue, where you could really see what the musicians were doing. Lots of fun!

2. Went to the local Irish session for the second time. It's a somewhat humiliating experience in that I don't know the tunes yet, so everyone assumes I'm a rank beginner and treats me with the sort of condescending kindness reserved for beginning musicians in such situations. They're all very nice--don't get me wrong--but it can be a blow to the ego. Not that I'm advanced, but...I know I'm better than I seem to be. I hate that feeling. The other frustrating aspect is that the mandolin is *so* much quieter than a whole crowd of fiddles and whistles, so I can't hear myself at all. Even on the tunes I do know, I have to more or less hope my fingers are going where they're supposed to, and I'm very reluctant to experiment with playing along on tunes I don't know well because I can't hear how wrong or right I am.

We shall see how this develops. I'm determined to go regularly and really work on learning the music, no matter what, but I'm developing fiddle envy. The concerts didn't help this.

3. Practiced "some whole bunch," as a younger sibling used to say, including visiting a friend so we could practice Emma's Waltz, which we're going to do as a duet at the open mic portion of a monthly jam we both attend.

And I'm working on chords (memorizing plus executing), a bit of theory (modes and scales, mostly), and trying to learn the Irish session tunes, one or two at a time. It will be a long while before I've got even a fraction of them down well enough to play at full speed. :\ But you have to start somewhere. I also foolishly picked up a pennywhistle this week, and have been goofing around with that. Too fun!

NaNoWriMo stuff I did this week:
OK, so maybe it isn't quite a *zero* score. I have about thirty letter-sized pages written as of this afternoon, which I'm hoping to transcribe over the next few days. But even though the story is fun and the narrator interesting, I'm really struggling to stay focussed and motivated. I had some time off this week due to the wisdom teeth yanking on Monday (which went fine, by the way), and hoped to get ahead of the game, but I figure I'm about a day behind instead (hopefully a bit less by later today). Here's hoping the time change helps give me a boost over the next few days. I've learned from past NaNoWriMos that morning writing time is the make-it-or-break-it element for me: I simply cannot just make up for it in the evening. My mind doesn't work well at night. At all.

Now, if you'll pardon me, I gotta go play "Cup of Tea" about eleventy billion more times.

Lazy Update Just to Update

2011-10-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

I'd like to say I've not posted much because I've been so busy mapping out my NaNoWriMo story, but the truth is I've been obsessing about music instead. Note to self: the week before NaNo is not the best time to rekindle a fanatical interest in one's primary instrument of the moment (mandolin, in this case). But I still want to ride that wave as long as it lasts. So we'll see how November goes...

I did get out and wander a bit yesterday, in town and out, and pictures (even poor cell phone photos, as is the case) make for easy, lazy update fodder.

First off, I went back to the downtown Olympia, WA antique place I'm always yammering on about: Finder's Keepers, on 4th Ave. It's almost always a fun place to browse, whether or not I buy anything.

There were a number of typewriters this time around, some of more interest than others. This Royal was in pretty rough cosmetic shape and didn't have a case.

This Smith Corona standard is absolutely gorgeous...but it's also $75. Lovely thing, though.

This little guy tucked away on a bottom shelf looks kind of familiar, and likely a good candidate for a crazy paint job. But for forty dollars...um...no. Not even if I was in buying mode.

I was tempted by a number of vintage index card/recipe boxes. They almost always have some pretty ones there.

Oh, and toys! Look at this little doll house desk! Isn't this adorable? (Sorry about the glare--it was in a glass case, and I couldn't get a good angle).

I also saw this somewhat puzzling toy typewriter. I guess you had to rotate the little wheel for each and every letter. Good way to teach kids patience, I suppose...or drive little Johnny completely mad before his seventh birthday.

It was a beautiful sunny day, so I went off on a ramble down the trail as well--days like that are rare here this time of year! Most of the fall has...fallen, and the trail is thickly carpeted with leaves, still colorful (though not the jewel-toned brightness of the sugar maples back home in Vermont...). Along the way I saw a note posted on one of the mileposts offering a reward for the finding of a lost gold ring, and had to feel for the author: how is anyone to spot one tiny spot of gold in all that natural richness?

These little guys are out in force. I lost track of how many I saw along the way--dozens, for certain.

And now I suppose I should buckle down and NaNo plan for one whole day. Or an hour or so. I have wisdom teeth coming out tomorrow (joy!), so I doubt I'll be doing much in the way of deep thinking.

Untitled (and likely to remain so)

2011-10-21T10:29:00.000-07:00

Some of us have no trouble coming up with titles, sometimes even before we know what we're going to put in the story to go with the title. At the other end of the spectrum--the very, very, very distant other end--that's where I live.

Most of the poems I've written over the years are untitled. In my head and in my journals, I refer to stories by clumsy monikers like "the time travel story with the dog," and "the Philip and Maggie story," "the old space story," "the new space story," and "that amnesia thing." A very few have working titles, but even those tend to be awkward, hokey, or cutesy (examples: "Dangerous Memories," "Unlikely Angel"), and I pretty much uniformly dislike them all.

I've been trying to come up with some sort of working name for this year's NaNoWriMo, and once again feel like bashing my head against a wall. I have the basic story sort of laid out (in short, it's a rather goofy detective novel set in a future where there's magic, a frog turned into a woman who wants to figure out who did this to her and why, an impulsive and rather bossy fairy, and assorted other characters), but can I come up with a name? Of course not. I'd like something that sort of resembles the titles of old detective novels, being as how this is almost a parody...but the closest I've come up with are "The Color of Jealousy" and "When Worlds Collide," both of which sound disturbingly like bodice-rippers. Oh dear.

And so, little NaNo novel, you are likely to remain "the magic detective story." It's OK. I'll love you (and hate you) just as much as other folks do all their tidily named tales, I promise--bless your undefined heart.

NaNoWriMo Pencil Reunion

2011-10-18T21:48:00.000-07:00

That was then:

This is now:

(Click the pics to view on Flickr if you'd like to see identifying notes).

They're all a bit battle-hardened (or shell-shocked) now. They've seen things--terrible things: some of the worst prose ever penciled. You young guns can't possibly understand until you've been there...

I did use some other pencils--Rhodia, a few different Staedtler pencils, a General's Layout...whatever happened to find its way into my pencil box on any given day. But those pencils took the brunt of the work. The relative length isn't necessarily an indication of how loved they were. I'm actually not sure how the Golden Bear came through so unscathed, for one thing! And I had trouble with the Oxford lead breaking, so that's part of how it ended up so dinky.

Another NaNoWriMo approaches now, and as I've mentioned, I'm starting off with pencil again this year, though I reserve the right to switch to fountain pen or typewriter or what-have-you (do *you* have a what-have-you?) if burn out or whim strikes. This year's line-up looks something like this:

Somewhat in the same line as last year, with a few new faces. Yes, that Blackwing 602 is already sadly shrunken and marked up. What can I say? It's getting used. I really like it. Once I use up the first Blackwing 602, I'll probably save the rest for journal writing and short story scribbling and other less crazed writing pursuits. I can't resist using at least one in this mad venture, but it isn't as though I don't have plenty of other pencils to fill the void...

I'm still getting to know the Musgrave Test Scoring 100 pencil (which needs a shorter and less fussy name...maybe I'll call them all Bob). In feel, it's a little like the Helix Oxford HB, though slightly less...waxy? Seems to hold a point better than the Oxford, which makes me wonder if I was over hasty in classifying it as something like a 2B. I'm not really sure *what* it is, grade-wise, but so far I like it, despite its rather poor reviews in the pencil blogosphere...which makes me wonder if my opinion is at all valid, or if I'm too ignorant to know good pencils from bad. Or maybe I just need to spend more time with it before disliking it...heh. I may yet do a highly subjective mini-review one of these days, after I've had more time to develop an accurate opinion.

I'm pleased to welcome some Ticonderogas back into the mix. I had a few newish Mexican-made ones around last year, but was unhappy with them: the lead was scratchy and pale. At some point in the past year, I picked up some Made in China Ticonderogas (the unsharpened kind that come in paper boxes), and these are entirely different. Not sure if it's batch variance, a different formula for boxed vs. pre-sharpened in blister packs, or the country of origin...but I quite like the new ones.

I guess I don't have to run through the entire line-up. They're all good, solid, dependable and (most importantly, perhaps) easily obtainable, so I don't have to feel afraid of using them...aside from maybe the Blackwing, which is so pleasant to use I just don't care.

Out of the running: I don't think I'll bother with any Mirado Black Warriors this time around. I *so* wanted to like these, but at least in their current iteration, they are disappointingly poor quality. I think the lead itself is actually pretty nice, but of those I've sharpened so far, one was warped to the point where the lead rattled and clicked inside the bent casing at certain points in its life, and others had lead so poorly centered that they were almost impossible to sharpen and they wobbled as you wrote. Maybe there are some good pencils in the package, but I don't have the heart to mess with them quite yet. I haven't had the same issues with the yellow Mirado Classic. Just lucky? I'm not sure.

You'll notice I have more in the line-up as a whole. Part of this is just because I...um...they kept following me home. Part of it is because I learned last year that variety is the spice of NaNoWriMo, and because I found it was much easier to keep my flow going when I had a whole bunch of pencils sharpened and at the ready for each writing session rather than stopping to sharpen along the way. I'd sharpen before I went to bed, and work through pencils the next day, tossing one aside when it got dull and reaching for another.

Now if I just had some idea how to start writing this thing....

Monsters and Musgraves

2011-10-15T22:23:00.000-07:00

Sometimes my desk looks like I killed a large, blue-blooded monster and tried to mop up the evidence.(In reality, this was just an unfortunate incident with a sample of Private Reserve Electric DC Supershow Blue--luckily most of the ink made it into a pen!)

And sometimes, even though I can't draw, I doodle monsters. Like this guy. (Apologies to Hank Sr.!)

In other news, I already broke my pencil buying moratorium. You knew that was going to happen, right? It's my birthday Monday. I used that as an excuse. That and the free shipping on Amazon orders over $25. Has anyone else tried the Musgrave Test Scoring 100 (especially Speculator)? If not, I may pass some out. I'd be curious to get your thoughts.

A NaNoWriMo Related Self Pep Talk

2011-10-09T20:53:00.000-07:00

As I was avoiding writing today, I started playing with the various writing implements on my desk. I like how these look together...autumn leaf colors!

It's frustrating. Two weeks ago, I was in writing frenzy mode. I wanted to spend all day every day scribbling everything that popped into my head. And my head was busy. My mind was bubbling over with ideas. I was so excited about the prospect of NaNoWriMo I could hardly see straight. This week? Not so much. There were days I didn't even manage a brief journal entry. Once I start one I usually manage a few words, but...ugh...I'm not feeling it. Doesn't bode well for November.

Or does it? Isn't that, in a nutshell, part of what this whole NaNoWriMo thing is about: to show us that even when we have the writing blahs, we can still do great things? As Jack London so colorfully put it, "You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."

Watch out, Inspiration. I've got you in my sights.

An Open Letter to the Search Bots of the World (Concerning Haters)

2011-10-04T19:54:00.000-07:00

And I would like to add, as search bot bait, poem haters poetry hater h8ter. Mmmkay?

Tell me I'm not the only one to get some odd repeated search terms!

Of course, *after* I write this rant, it occurs to me that maybe these people are all dyslexic, and really are looking for poetry haters or some such thing. Whatever. I'm determined to have my rant, nonetheless!

Happiness is a New Box of Pencils: Palomino Blackwing 602s!

2011-10-02T15:40:00.000-07:00

Actually, true happiness is another subject entirely. But pencils don't hurt...

Ever since I first heard California Cedar Products had come out with a new version of the famed Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602 pencil, I've wanted to try some, just to say I did. And I finally broke down and bought a box.

At 19.99 a dozen, they are very pricey as pencils go, though less than comparable high-end Japanese brands: a dozen Tombow Mono 100s will set you back $28(!!). I'm scared to even try those! My Blackwings arrived at the end of last week, and I spent part of the weekend putting one through its paces and comparing to other pencils. ( I finished the rough draft of a short story--woot!)

This cracks me up...hooray for old school, over the top slogans!

I have to say, they are awful nice. Sooo smooth, and they manage to write a pretty dark line without needing a ton of sharpening, just as the reviews say, and without much pressure. There is something to be said for a pencil that requires almost as little pressure as a fountain pen. And because they're so smooth, they take longer to get to that draggy stage you eventually hit with a less-than-sharp pencil. Also, they're gorgeous: glossy, metallic charcoal grey, the distinctive gold ferrule and flat eraser, and with that famous (if a bit goofy) slogan down one side and the model name down the other in gold lettering. From what I've read, there was a certain amount of brouhaha over the choice of using a black eraser (the original had a pink eraser), but since I never used the original, I don't really have strong feelings either way. I think the pink eraser might be a cool-looking contrast, but the black eraser looks sharp and works well.

My problems with them are mostly just that--my problems. If I had unlimited funds, maybe I'd use nothing but Blackwings forever. But I don't. And they're twenty bucks a dozen. I can just about buy a gross of California Republic Golden Bears for the same price as a dozen Blackwings. Do I really like the Blackwings enough to justify that much of a price difference? I doubt it.

Also, I'm intimidated by them, partly because of their price, partly because of their beautiful glossy metallic finish. I've gotten accustomed to the lonnnnng points my Classroom Friendly Pencil Sharpener produces, but it does leave marks on the pencils. At first I just sharpened a Blackwing with the hand-held Kum wedge, but I missed the long point terribly, and finally broke down and used the big sharpener. It left marks, of course, which hurts. I spent a certain amount of time this weekend explaining to myself that pretty though they are, these pencils are tools, and I should feel OK with treating them as such, but...

Still, I'm glad I get to experience them!

And now I really, really need to not buy any more pencils. Like...ever. I came across an interesting acronym among yarn craft folks the other day: SABLE. It stands for "Stash Accumulation Beyond Life Expectancy." I have a fairly optimistic view of my own life expectancy, but...well...sometimes I veer dangerously close to SABLE status when it comes to paper and ink and pencils.

These Books are my Friends

2011-09-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

A Beautiful Mess of Pencils

2011-09-27T09:37:00.000-07:00

The positive side of my NaNoWriMo transcription project (aside from the fact that I now have a digitized NaNo novel, such as it is and what there is of it) is that it reminded me of just how much fun I had playing with pencils that month--lots and lots of pencils, lots and lots of hours spent with them. I've been more or less fixated on the fountain pens lately as I'm working my way through all my pretty ink samples from Goulet Pens.

But last night, I got the pencils out and started working on a short story idea. The wonderful tactile realness of pencils combined with their optional impermanence makes them one of my most confidence inspiring writing technologies. Love 'em.

How's this for a lovely cluttered autumn palette of pencils? (Please to ignore the eraser crumbs and cat hair...)

Pencils of the evening yesterday were the General's Semi-Hex (love those: dark, *and* they hold a point forever) and the General's Layout. Unintentional theme.

No real point to this blog post. Except gratitude, I suppose! Life is good.

NaNo Liar, Pants on Fire

2011-09-25T16:03:00.000-07:00

First of all...I had to laugh at this comic. Note that this could apply equally to pencils and typewriters. Old school FTW!!

Ahem...moving on.

Brought to you via Elmer, the Lettera 31.

A Long Expected Rereading

2011-09-22T10:01:00.000-07:00

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,

Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,

Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,

One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

I first read J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy when I was about thirteen. Sometimes I wish I could go back to that first read-through, recapture that first wonder. It took my breath away: that vast world with all its many races, cultures, languages; the varied landscapes, the maps and runes, the staggering scope of the history. Although it's an often criticized aspect, I loved the richness of the many layered names for people, places and things. I warmed to to the innocent, comfort-loving hobbits, felt for them as they left innocence and comfort far behind in order to do what needed to be done. I felt the panic of being chased by Black Riders, by evil unknown. I felt the awe and wonder of the hobbits at Rivendell; like them, I wanted to linger, listening to the songs and stories of the wise, unthinkably long-lived elves. And then, at Rivendell, just when the adventure seemed about to end, the true quest began, filled with danger, beauty, darkness, love and friendship--and an ultimate victory that, as is so often the case, is nevertheless touched by sorrow and pain. And along the way, I fell deeply in love most particularly with two characters: the sweet, ever-faithful hobbit Samwise Gamgee, and the brave, wise, and utterly romantic Knight of Gondor, Faramir. (Ladies: just try reading his scene with Eowyn in the Houses of Healing without swooning a little...)

I don't need to go through every detail of the entire story. Those who have read it are likely already wandering there in their minds. Those who haven't...really should.

It's a long story in its own right, but for better or worse, I quite literally would not be where I am right now without these books. You could say they were, in a very real sense, entwined in my own destiny. And it had been too long since I last read them.

Today, I begin the adventure anew, starting with Frodo and Bilbo's birthday, which happens to fall--funnily enough--on September the 22nd. When I was planning to set aside some time for this reread, it seemed an appropriate day to begin the journey once again. I am very much looking forward to it.

Too Much

2011-09-13T19:35:00.000-07:00

Some reflections, partially drawn from my recent brief blog hiatus (the virtual type-in dragged me back...;)

NaNoWriMo roll-call

2011-09-06T10:06:00.000-07:00

I was going to preface this with this year's web badge, but they aren't up yet...

I know we're still a few months out, but since it came up in the type-in and since I've seen a few whispers elsewhere...who's planning to participate in NaNoWriMo this year?

And for those of you wondering 'What's a NaNoWriMo?', go here and be enlightened. Essentially, you spend any free time you can wrangle up during November writing your brains out to get to 50,000 words. (Unless you're Mike Clemens, in which case you spend one week's free time writing your brains out at X-TREME WARP SPEED, and then spend the rest of the month twiddling your thumbs and smiling indulgently at the rest of us still slogging and stumbling and whimpering through the muck.) (Not that I'm bitter.) (OK, maybe I am a little.)

This will be my tenth year (!!), which is sad, in some ways. I am exactly the sort of person who the NaNoWriMo naysayers ridicule: all that writing, and for what? Most of the stories are still utterly unfinished, many of them are not worth finishing. But you know what? I've had fun, and I've made friends along the way. That's good enough for me.

I don't exactly have a set-in-stone plot (do I ever?), but thus far, I'm thinking something off the beaten track: kind of a detective novel set in the future, in a world where magic has become part of the "real" world, which...complicates things a bit. And so far, I'm thinking I may write by hand again. Except, this time around, I'll actually transcribe as I go, more or less. I'm still working on transcribing last years--finishing that is one of my goals for September, actually.

How about you? Any clue yet what you'll be writing about? What typewriters/pens/pencils/paper/computer software you'll use? Any special plans you'd like to share for keeping organized/focused/caffeinated/sane?

Virtual Type-In!

2011-09-03T19:38:00.000-07:00

Eek...I go away a couple of days, and blogger has completely changed the interface on me?

Anyhow...today, we made typosphere history: at noon PDT, Adwoa, Richard Polt, notagain, and I met up for a completely virtual type-in via a "hangout" (video chat) on Google+. It wasn't flawless--in particular I had some trouble hearing Adwoa some of the time, and anytime we all typed or talked at once, it was hard to hear everyone. Still...I'm pretty impressed at how well it worked! Here are my messy, messy notes from the event. Aside from the typos, I also managed to drip water on them. Yay for the brutal honesty of typecasting!

There were quite a few other typewriters in attendance, besides those mentioned in my typecast. I sort of gave up trying to keep track of them all. Peter (notagain) has an interesting Noiseless (love the sound that thing makes!), and Adwoa, of course, had all sorts of cute and colorful typewriters. Fun seeing them all! There were also quite a number of feline attendants.

I believe others planned to stop by but missed out--we were there an hour, but then some needed to get going. I think some folks were going to meet up again at midnight PDT, for anyone who'd like to stop by!

Darkness and Light (whole bunch of type-cast poetry)

2011-08-21T20:26:00.000-07:00

I have a tendency to take things much too much to heart. Last Saturday afternoon, someone removed a comment I'd made on one of their Facebook posts. I can't come up with any sort of reason why, and I was too shy to ask. I was so mortified by the experience, trying to imagine what they must have *thought* I meant, that I was practically non-functional for the rest of the weekend.

Things like being removed from a friend's blogroll paralyze me, even while intellectually I know I've talked about a lot of different things over the years, and since I haven't broken things out into strictly compartmentalized blogs and I bounce around a lot (an understatement), some people will drift away. I try to figure out what it was I did that offended, and beat myself up for imagined wrong-doings. I've also found myself stat-watching, fretting over how many page-loads I get or don't get.

And all of this is just silly. If I'm taking these things so seriously, I think maybe I need to take a step back from this whole Internet thing--or at least the blogging portion thereof--for awhile, take a deep breath, get some perspective, do some writing that will only be seen by me instead of jumping up and down trying to get attention, and then half the time not knowing how to take it if I do get some. Oh, and maybe catch up on letters for once--what a concept.

I'll be back, probably sooner than I intend to be, but I'm taking a vacation, at least for a few weeks, maybe a month or so.

So...hey, if I'm gonna go out for a bit, I'll go out with a bang... First off, here are a few poems I actually wrote a number of years ago, but refrained from posting because of their darkness. I'll count these as my final two vignettes for Art of the Letter's July challenge.

And something a bit more lighthearted--a little poem I wrote back in the late 90s, when I was in Germany in the Air Force. I like this one. It makes me smile.

Vignette #13 - Visitor

2011-08-18T19:27:00.000-07:00

Figure I might as well finish them out, since I only had a few more to go to complete the #15. OK, so I'm nearly three weeks late and it's really a little too long to qualify. Oh well.

I think this one may grow into a short story.

Norman was waiting for Amanda when she got home, sitting on the bottom step with his knees drawn up and the old blue coat she'd given him last time pulled tightly around him. The coat was much the worse for wear: filthy, the edges of the cuffs hanging in ragged, sodden tatters. Duct tape patched a hole in one sleeve; greyish stuffing spilled out on one side where the tape had pulled loose. He jumped up with an open grin as she approached, revealing a new gap--one of his top teeth was missing. "Heya, sis!" For a moment, he seemed about to embrace her, and she drew back involuntarily. A shadow crossed his face; he held out a rough, black-nailed hand instead, and she grabbed on, swallowing her disgust.
"Norman," she said. "It's been awhile." His hand was not only dirty but also cold as ice and clammy. It took all she had not to pull away immediately. "I gave you gloves," she said. "Two pairs."
He shrugged. "I get by." Which meant, of course, that he'd given them away. He always did. It was a wonder he still had the coat. Probably no one else wanted it.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
He looked away. "Just wanted to see you."
"Really."
He raised his head to look at her, his grey eyes thoughtful, but said nothing. She sighed.
A neighbor pulled up in the drive next door; the woman stared at Norman with alarm as she climbed out of her car. Amanda felt her face flush, and felt simultaneously angry with herself for her shame and with Norman for shaming her. She managed a weak smile and a wave. "'Afternoon, Marie!" she called out. Marie smiled back uncertainly, and hurried up the stairs and inside, glancing back over her shoulder, her face pinched.
"Thinks I'm going to mug you or something," Norman whispered cheerfully. He knew--that was the worst of it. He knew, and yet...
Amanda pursed her lips and turned away. "You'd better come on in," she muttered. She stepped past him up the steps, unlocked the door and banged it open, switched on the light, dropped her keys with a clatter in the tray by the door, and went into the house, Norman following silently at her heels. They'd done this often enough to have a sort of ritual, she thought bitterly. No words were needed. Norman waited with his hands folded in front of him while she dug out some clothes she'd picked up for him in the interim; he took the shirt and pants, underwear and socks, pulled a plastic grocery bag from the bin by the laundry room, and went up to the upstairs bathroom to clean up. Always the same thing. And as always, when he came down, shaven and scrubbed, carrying his dirty clothes in the grocery bag, she asked her usual question: "Have you eaten?"
And as usual, he tried to make light of his situation. "Depends on what you mean by that. I couldn't possibly have arrived at my current age and state of being if I'd never--"
"Norman," she said sharply, "are you hungry?"
The half-smile faded and something like sadness flickered in his eyes for a moment. "Yes," he said quietly.
"OK, then." She slammed the refrigerator door open and started taking out containers of leftovers, banging each one in turn down on the counter as Norman stood silently waiting in his clean clothes and his stocking feet, blinking a little at each impact. Why was she being this way? she asked herself. To punish him? For what, exactly?
When the last option was set out, she turned around, leaning back against the counter with her arms folded and demanded, "Which one? And don't say it doesn't matter. That doesn't simplify anything. There's chili, tuna casserole, turkey for sandwiches, or I can heat you up a burrito or make an omelet. Which?"
He gazed at the containers, swallowing. "Chili," he said finally.
"Fine." She snapped the lid off, set it loosely on top, and shoved the container in the microwave. "And sit down, why don't you?" she said, pointing at a chair. "You're making me nervous."

View From Inside the Kaleidescope

2011-08-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

This is the way my mind works.

Lamy Safari: Official Typospherian Fountain Pen?

2011-08-15T23:09:00.000-07:00

I would like to declare the Lamy Safari the unofficial Official Fountain Pen of the Typosphere. Seriously, how many of us have 'em? Stand and be counted!

I have two, neither of which are colors that photograph easily: an orange (medium nib), and the new aqua (fine nib), which in reality is a fairly dark turquoise. They've been my ink sample pens, for the most part, because they fill and clean easily, and because they just write so nicely. And it's nice to know if something *does* happen to a nib or converter, they swap out easily. Cheerful, bombproof pens they are.

Star of the County Down...sort of.

2011-08-15T20:26:00.000-07:00

I think I'm going to start putting these music posts up on occasion--not normally this frequently, but now and again--primarily as a means of working on the stage fright I mentioned. Even faced with a microphone, I go dry-mouthed, so this is a good exercise: just recording them and letting them hang out there all public-like.

I can hear the nerves in this one, big time, but I'm done trying for the perfect take. It's an instrumental fingerstyle arrangement I did of an Irish song called Star of the County Down, which is often done in a more march-like 4/4 version...but this was the way I first learned it.

I swear, I *can* play in keys other than A minor. Honest, I can!

Thoughts on Becoming

2011-08-13T17:30:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I've gone off into rhetorical rambling. This is probably a good thing, but I'm gonna break the fast and do some anyhow.

Guitar goofing and goofing up

2011-08-09T22:25:00.000-07:00

At the type-in, the subject of playing music came up, and someone (Justin?) asked me if I played with a band. I answered (tongue in cheek) "Not currently." And then spent the rest of the day worried someone had actually believed I meant it, and that I can actually, in fact, play well enough for such things. I can't.

But I have had the guitar out more since then, out of shame, so there has been that benefit.

Here's something I came up with years ago that I've been goofing around with again: two chords, very simple melody, fingerpicked. Lots of the audio equivalent of typos: my fingers were tired and I kept buzzing, my guitar wasn't completely in tune. Not to mention Tam gets in his two cents at the end, sort of throwing me off. The tune needs a title one of these days. It's in A minor, so the "A minor thing" name on the track means that it is, in fact, an A Minor thing. Not a minor thing. Or, actually, it is a rather minor thing, but...

Oh, never mind.

Anyhow, it kinda feels nice, having sore fingers again!

Find of the weekend: Sheaffer Cartridge Pen

2011-08-07T10:55:00.000-07:00

I went to the antique mall in town yesterday for the first time in awhile (for those of you at the type-in, think a bigger, more cluttered and varied sort of Deluxe Junk, with lots of books and kitchen stuff in addition to furniture and what-have-you). It's called Finders Keepers. Love that place. They occasionally have typewriters, but this time, the only ones there were electric. One of the electrics had a really interesting san sarif typeface, but it was still electric, plus $69. Not my thing. However, I did make my first ever in-the-wild more-or-less-vintage pen purchase: a Sheaffer "Cartridge Pen". I figured it was an acceptable risk, since there wasn't a filling system likely to need restoration. It's a lower end pen, nothing fancy, but still...cool!

The cap is a bit tarnished, but otherwise it seems in decent condition. Friction fit cap.

It has a conical nib, which the nice folks over at Fountain Pen Network inform me is a "Triumph" nib:

(Please ignore the capitalization weirdness in the title of that thread. Ugh!) It has a little tip-up at the end, which I'm told is normal. And it's a pretty nice writer--fine, but fairly wet, and very smooth if you hold it at just the right angle (something I'm still learning to do).

The cartridge missing from the box slot on the left was still inside the pen. I rinsed the pen, added a little water to the cartridge, popped it back in, and the little guy fired right up! It was a little scratchy, though, so I refilled a cartridge (via syringe) with Noodler's Blue-Black, which works better. Eventually I may try to find a converter for it, though I'm not sure modern Sheaffer converters will work. I have a feeling they may be too long.

One of the reasons I suspect this was early as cartridge pens go is that the instructions include info on essentially using the cartridge as a converter in an emergency--apparently assuming most folks would have easy access to bottled ink, but not necessarily to cartridges!

All in all, not bad. For twenty dollars, I may have overpaid compared to some on-line sources...but hey, instant gratification!

(If) There Can Be Only One

2011-08-04T18:10:00.000-07:00

(Epic fail at doodling a recognizable fountain pen...but that's a subject for another day...)

This post is partially inspired by a question in a recent letter from Justin: no doubt bemused by the too-many pens I brought to the type-in, he asked which I preferred, fountain pens or typewriters. My answer to that question, I'll leave to the response letter (Cliff Notes version: it depends), but it led me to ponder a related question: what if you had to choose?

Imagine one day you were told that you had to pick a single writing technology, whether it be pencils, typewriters, fountain pens, ballpoints, Alphasmarts, computers, stylus on clay tablets, sky writing, or what-have-you. (In this fantasy world, this particular choice doesn't affect what we use at work, and we'd still have the Internets and all--this would just be what you'd use for first drafts, or bulk writing of whatever you tend to write: poems, letters, short stories, novels, essays, whatever. In other words, the device you use first to get ideas out of your head and into the world.)

Hopefully I won't be disowned by the typosphere and pencil comrades alike for admitting it...but I think if someone held a proverbial gun to my head (drat those proverbial guns!) and I *had* to choose, I'd go with fountain pens. Yes, they're slower than anything with a keyboard and fussier by far than a pencil, but I like the way I think with one in my hand, and the look of wet ink on a page, and the feel of a good nib on good paper. I like their easy portability and quiet nature (I'm still not one who's going to pull out a typewriter at work or a coffee house). I like the way they make me slow down and consider what I'm composing and yet let me cross out and continue without breaking stride. I like the immediacy and directness of hand-on-pen-on-paper: much as I like typewriters, there are some times when they make me feel as though I'm trying to do delicate work with heavy gloves on--as though there's a barrier in the way.

What about you? If push came to shove, would you cling to typewriterly clickity-clack? Pen or pencil and paper? Become a die-hard Alphasmartian? Or would you reluctantly set aside all the more tangible tools and retreat to the speed and convenience of a computer? Or, to throw another option out there, would you choose something wordless, like a camera? What would you pick, and why?

All that said...I'm really glad I don't have to choose!

Double Vision: one image, two poems

2011-08-02T18:53:00.000-07:00

Two very different poems, both inspired by broken glass I encountered on a walk.

Bitter:

Sweet:

Type-In Report (warning: many typos ahead!)

2011-07-30T20:02:00.000-07:00

Oh, and this typewriter shall be called Gerard. Edit (where are my manners!): I should mention that notagain was the generous soul who gave it to me. Thank you again!

Oh, and one more edit: here's the fountain pen test scribble sheet. I like Strikethru's little people!

Vignette #12 - Priorities (plus bonus mini-poem)

2011-07-29T21:56:00.000-07:00

And yes, I realize my priorities are as skewed as the other extreme...still working on that whole balance thing. For the record, I *did* do dishes and laundry today...

And a sort of a word doodle sort of thing I scribbled down at work today:

Vignette #11 - Campfire

2011-07-28T17:05:00.000-07:00

Smells: smoke of burning pine and burning maple, mingled spicy-sweet. Hot dogs, some charred. Melted chocolate, ketchup, mustard, sweet relish. The sticky golden smell of toasted marshmallows. The round green-wintergreen smell of the sharpened, bark-peeled-off birch branches we use for roasting marshmallows.

Sensations: gravel beneath my feet, the wind, smoke following a dance around the fire to sting my eyes and touch my hair. The rough and sandy bark of the gathered tree branches we break to toss on the flames. A fleck of ash touches my cheek: a burning brand. I've a pebble in my sandals--shake it out, shake it out!

Sights: Flames, blue-tinged at the depths and orange and yellow and disappearing as they rise. The sharp orange glow of coals, the blackened wood. Sand and grass and big soft leaves that flutter in the breeze. A blue sky that goes a deep purple-black as the day falls behind the darkened hills.

Sounds: crackle-pop, and the whispering roar of the flames. Laughter, crickets, an owl, the snap of breaking branches. The final hiss as we douse the flames, and amid sleepy murmurs of conversation, retreat for the night.

Score another point for the Classroom Friendly Pencil Sharpener...

2011-07-27T18:04:00.000-07:00

Get it? A point? OK, so I should have used one I'd *just* sharpened, but...

I keep a handful of pencils at work, but since at the moment I just have the one Classroom Friendly Pencil Sharpener, I cart pencils home for sharpening and back again. A few days ago, my boss (another pencil user) got her battery operated sharpener working after a hiatus, and went around the office sharpening pencils. When she got to mine, she looked those lonnnng points over and said, "Wow, yours sure don't need sharpening. How do you do that?" I just smiled and told her I have an *awesome* sharpener at home. I should demo it.

In a meeting the other day she complained about the quality of the pencil she was using to take notes. I'm thinking I may have to bring in some Forest Choice and General's Semi-Hex and such. May have another convert.

For Julian: A Tribute

2011-07-26T08:50:00.000-07:00

Flame in a bottle

A brightly soaring spirit

The red betta swims

Going on four years ago, friends at work bought me a red betta fish for my birthday. He was a feisty little guy, all fins and attitude. I named him Seamus. For about three weeks, he lived on my desk, flaring at all passersby and rocketing through his little tank.

And then, he died. I was heart broken.

But I missed him, missed having something to watch during thinking moments at work. And strangely, I missed the sense of companionship--an odd thing to say about a fish, but just knowing he was there was nice.

A few months later, I bought another little red betta. I debated giving him the same name, but a co-worker joked that I should give him a gentler name to make him tougher: "Boy Named Sue" syndrome. After discussion, we decided on "Julian," both because it sounded a little less confrontational and because (I admit it, I are a geek) I had quite a crush on Julian Bashir in Star Trek:Deep Space 9 back in the day.

I got him all new food. I carted water from home every few weeks, in case there was something wrong with the water in my work building. I bought some fancy aquarium water treatment stuff instead of the inexpensive drops. And he thrived. For three and a half years, he was my work buddy. He hovered when I looked at him, as if listening. He danced around at feeding times until he caught my attention. He flared at everyone who stopped by my desk, whipping his tail and darting forward and back, looking for all the world like an angry little yappy dog. He spent hours carefully constructing bubble nests. He swam, with that gorgeous tail casting sparks behind him.

This weekend, he passed away. He'd been slowing down these past few months, spending most of his time resting on the bottom of the tank, so I knew it was coming. And as betta lifespans go, his wasn't bad, I don't think. He would have been fairly mature when I bought him, so he must have been over four years old, at a guess. It's not a tragedy, his death. He had a good betta life. But I already miss him. One of these days, I'll find another.

Maybe I'll name him Sue.

Vignette #10 - Garden Song

2011-07-25T21:35:00.000-07:00

Whole buncha inky thoughts and blots

2011-07-21T19:00:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd share few thoughts on some of the ink samples I've had a chance to try thus far. The photos are of swabs I made for my own use, on paper that's really too thin for such purposes and therefore went all curly, and I make no promises as to the accuracy of the colors...

Diamine Majestic Blue:
Ooh, I like this. It's a medium-to-dark blue with a certain depth to it, and on some paper (most notably the Staples bagasse paper I use for work and in my "sketch book"), it has a fascinating red-purple sheen at certain angles. I don't have anything else that's really close to this. Lovely, creamy, gorgeous stuff. Downside: it can be tempting to spend meetings endlessly flipping my notepad around trying to make that red pop out.

Lamy Blue/Black:
This ink is vaguely interesting, but not really much more than that. It has a little bit of iron gall content, so it goes down a pale slightly slatey blue and gradually (overnight or longer) changes to a greyer shade as the iron gall content oxidizes. It's an antiquey sort of color. Apparently Lamy is changing the composition of this bottled ink and will soon cease making it in its current iteration...so even that slightly interesting aspect will soon be gone. Not really on my buy list.

Private Reserve Electric DC Blue:
Very bright true blue. In theory, it has some reddish highlights a la Diamine Majestic, but they are far less pronounced. It's a truly lovely color, but like many other PR inks (in my personal experience), it is something of a drama queen. It takes a long time to dry. It smears when "dry." It is a pain in the neck to rinse out of a pen. I love Private Reserve inks for their vivid colors and their smoothness, I really, really do...but this ink just reminds me I should probably sell off or give away the bottles of PR I already have, because they annoy me enough that I don't use 'em. I bought a small lot of them from a poster on FPN a few years ago, and despite the lovely shades, they've barely been touched. I have little tolerance for emotional ink. Plus they don't have any water resistance or other such qualities to make you overlook their bad sides.

(And now that I've just bashed them up one side and down the other...if anyone has an interest in PR Midnight Blues, Black Magic Blue, Fiesta Red, Sherwood Green, Avacado [sic], or Lake Placid Blue, drop me a note back channel and maybe we can work something out.)

Noodler's Zhivago:
I've been curious about this ink for years now, but it varies enough in reviews I've seen that I felt like I really needed to see it in person before committing to a big bottle. It's an odd sort of color: either almost-but-not-quite-black, or a very dark green tending toward olive, depending on the pen and paper. In most pens, it's a grey-green-tinted off-black. It interests me, and it'd be really cool if I could trade PR inks for some... I want some eventually, for sure. I also love the name! Tragic and bleak and depressing though it is in so many ways, I really like Doctor Zhivago.

Diamine Syrah:
Nice. It's a lovely rose pink color with some shading, and it is silky smooth. However, it's somewhat similar to Noodler's Black Swan in Australian Roses, of which I own a whole bottle, and which has a "bulletproof" component that won't wash away in water or fade with time. I'd say Syrah is more ruby and BSiAR is more raspberry, but they're at least in the same family, and I don't really need both. But it's pretty! Recommended.

Diamine Oxblood:
This is another interesting color, and one that I could not for the life of me capture with camera or scanner. (You can tell how much I tweaked this one, trying to get it right.) It really looks like its name, which is...fascinating but perhaps a bit icky. Ever bought meat at a butcher's counter? You know those stains all down the front of his apron, or the stains you see on the paper your hamburger comes wrapped in? That's what this looks like. Not only that, but as it comes out of the pen, it's a fairly bright red, and then it *dries* to that rusty brown-purple oxblood color. Ew? And yet, it's a very attractive shade.

So far, I'm most tempted by Zhivago; and by Diamine Majestic Blue just because it's like nothing else I own and because it performs beautifully. And the Oxblood is on the "maybe someday" list. But overall, I'm not coming out of this wanting to buy full bottles of most of this stuff. For one, my archival paranoia keeps flaring up--I more or less trust the Noodler's Black because even the oldest journal entries made with my first bottle of the stuff remain unchanged, unlike every other ink I was using at the time (the difference between Quink Black and Noodler's Black is particularly striking). Many of the other Noodler's colors have a similar durability--some portion of the color may fade with time or wash away if they get wet, but they have a core that remains no matter what. I don't trust most other fountain pen inks for anything but day to day notes and drafts, and to an extent it annoys me to have pens filled with inks I can only use for certain purposes. I'd rather have inks I can count on through thick and thin.

Gratuitous shot of my favorite ink, just 'cause. See all the subtleties going on in there? Oh, I love this stuff...

It has been fun satisfying my curiosity about lots of "I think I like it, but..." sorts of colors. I'd saved up a number of them over the years. And it's fun just playing a bit with inks outside my norm, without any long-term strings attached. But when it comes right down to it, I'm liable to fall back into my Noodler's ways, and in my heart-of-hearts I prefer conservative colors for most writing: dark blues and blacks and browns...maybe green now and again. Having a few different colors/shades in circulation is nice--I like to alternate so I can see where one day or one writing session ended and another began. But I don't need a ton of inks to do that. And while brighter colors are fun, if I'm spending more time thinking about the color of my ink instead of getting down to business, there's something wrong. I'll make an exception for Black Swan in Australian Roses. It's just that pretty. And hey, you need a contrasting color or two for editing or off-days, no?

Black Swan and Syrah together--not the same by any means, but sort of cousins.

Vignette #9 - School Bus

2011-07-20T22:32:00.000-07:00

Vignette #8 - Sharp

2011-07-19T19:15:00.000-07:00

Since I've slipped into poetry, and while I'm in revealing-my-dark-side mode...I present another not altogether cheery piece...

Vignette #7 - Talk at Twilight

2011-07-19T07:51:00.000-07:00

A poem this time. Not sure I like this one...there's maybe too much left to the imagination of the reader for it to make sense.

Vignette #6 - Spat (and now for something completely different...)

2011-07-18T07:10:00.000-07:00

Total fiction this time around, and right at the edge of what I'm comfortable with writing.

I may expand this into a short story some day. I'd like to know who these people are, and...maybe not so much redeem them as set them off on the road toward redemption.

Made myself a story board!

2011-07-17T14:32:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned a few posts back, I decided to go back and try to untangle and complete a sci-fi sort of story I started years ago. That story is, in short, a mess of epic proportions. It has multiple plot lines and narrative voices, and--just to make it all the more fun--the original plot line upon which all other plot lines were constructed...wrote itself out of the story. It doesn't fit anymore. Most of the characters that were a major part of that plot line don't fit. Which means the whole rest of the mess needs to be extricated from the grip of the dead plot line and rewritten to stand alone.

Now, as I've mentioned a time or two, I'm pretty much a seat-of-the-pants sort of writer. Planning would not have kept me from this mess. I end up in these sorts of situations every darned time, planning or no. But now, I need to redo time lines to make bits and pieces match up, and trying to hold it all in my head wasn't working. It's the primary reason I shelved the story to begin with. I need to visualize where people are supposed to be and when and where so all the narratives line up.

I've tried coming at this a few different ways: writing up a synopsis (I got lost), drawing up tables (I got lost), attempting to draw a time line on paper (I got lost, ran out of room, and kept remembering additional scenes I needed to cram in). I decided I needed something I could easily see all at once, *and* restructure until I have it all straight. A cork board seemed like a logical choice: something I could see and touch and move around to my heart's content.

Cork squares are on sale a lot of places this time of year--they're a cheap alternative to full bulletin boards. Not as nice looking, no, nor as sturdy...but you can make a four foot bulletin board for under ten bucks! Not bad. If I lived somewhere with really awesome thrift stores that had used cork boards in great condition, I'd probably do that instead, but I don't. These should work fine for just paper, though, which is all I really want them for. And it was nice to be able to define my own shape.

The squares I bought came with little foam mounting squares. Not knowing if they'd come with such a thing or not, I bought some Scotch brand mounting squares. I didn't buy quite enough of the Scotch squares to use all around, because I grabbed a pack *before* I decided to get two packages of cork squares. In retrospect, and for future reference...I should have bought more Scotch squares. The mounting foam thingies that came with the cork squares were eeeeeeeevil. Horribly, horribly evil. In particular, they had an absolutely maddening tendency to adhere to their own backing paper, so when you tried to peel it off to reveal the stickum, a whole layer of foam would peel away, revealing a completely not-sticky and useless interior layer.

I said some bad words in my head a few times on the squares where I used those. The Scotch squares, in contrast, were easy peasy--peel, stick, peel, stick. No drama. And they strike me as much sturdier as well. Worth the price of admittance.

I still have to play with this setup and figure out how best to make it work for me, but I have a good feeling about it. I'm going to mark some dates or at least year markers on the paper strips, and for the moment I'm using different colored cards for different characters--not really essential, but I like how bright it looks. Hopefully I can finally get this thing figured out so I can get back to writing!

Vignette #5 - The Big Old Tree

2011-07-14T21:34:00.000-07:00

I sat down and read a bunch of definitions of what a vignette should be, and I think I'm more confused than ever. I'm not sure most of my previous blurbs qualify, and I'm equally unsure about this one, but it's what I wrote, so it's what you get...

Awful lot of repeated phrases and words and other such things, but this being a typecast...what you see is what you get.

Vignette #4 - Daybreak

2011-07-12T19:54:00.000-07:00

I'm behind on these things, I think...had a bad cold/flu thing over the weekend that pretty much put me down for the count. For the record, reading peculiar sci-fi whilst feverish can lead to some interesting sorta waking dream type things. I'm not sure if that's good or bad. This has nothing to do with the vignette, however.

In other news, somewhere between the peculiar sci-fi and the waking dreams and some other reading, I'm really fired up about finally finishing my first sci-fi novel...not this past year's NaNoWriMo project, but an older story. It needs to be taken apart at the seams and completely and ruthlessly rewritten, so I'd shelved it for ages. But now...I think I have enough distance from the initial writing that I can carve it up and start again. Yay for a summer writing project!

Vignette #3 (experimental stream of consciousness style...)

2011-07-06T20:45:00.000-07:00

July Vignette #2

2011-07-05T18:26:00.000-07:00

I'm terrible at titles. Everything that occurred to me was cheesy. It shall be nameless, poor thing.

Penmanship: an On-going Odyssey

2011-07-04T14:01:00.000-07:00

My mother had beautiful handwriting. Even her everyday hand was pretty nice, and when she took her time, she could write just like the examplars in the Zaner Bloser handwriting books we used as kids. (By the way, does anyone else remember those funky shaped blue and red Zaner Bloser mechanical pencils? Loved those!) Sometimes, to give us extra practice, Mom would write additional sentences and exercises out on our practice paper, in penmanship so perfect that it could almost have been typeface. And back when she was in college, if friends had to miss a class, they often asked her to take notes, because they knew her handwriting was wonderfully legible. My father, on the other hand? Let's just say no one in their right mind would ask him to take notes for them.

Guess whose writing I inherited?

I managed to write more or less decently in school, but as time went on, my penmanship sort of...went feral. As in...became truly appalling. I could have been in the running for worst handwriting of all time. Don't believe me? I have proof. Here's a scrap of a story I wrote for my little sister back around '02 or '03.

For years, I kept journals in this sort of chicken scratch. I knew it was bad, but since I didn't do a whole lot of re-reading my journals, I just lived with it.

Then came my first NaNoWriMo, when I got back into fiction writing for almost the first time since high school. I discovered that I liked writing by hand, and that I liked what I wrote by hand, and often found it easier to find the right words when writing by hand rather than on the computer. Plus, I could write wherever and whenever. Just one issue: interpreting my own handwriting later on was a painstaking, tedious chore, especially if I'd been trying to write fast. Sometimes I had to paraphrase when transcribing, because I simply couldn't read my own writing. Ludicrous. That was also about the time I started getting into fountain pens in a big way, and it seemed shameful to write so horribly with nice pens. I decided I had to mend my ways.

At first, I worked on writing more like I had in school: the Zaner Bloser style cursive I'd learned in grade school. But then I came across mention of cursive italic writing, and--more specifically--a book called Write Now that provided instruction in this style of cursive. It's less ornamental than some styles--pretty no-nonsense, really--and faster than printing. Since my main goals were legibility and speed rather than anything fancy, it sounded like just the ticket to me. I ordered the book, and began the process of completely revamping my penmanship. I practiced whenever I could. It was during a period when I was also moving across country, taking on many other new challenges. I remember hotel rooms in Pennsylvania and Iowa, where I spread out Write Now and Clairefontaine paper (another new discovery) on unfamiliar tables to practice writing individual letters over and over again or copy out poetry.

It didn't exactly come easily. I'm the sort of person who couldn't draw a perfect circle to save my life, and since I was fighting against years and years of muscle memory and bad habits, it was often frustrating. And I admit, in the end, my day-to-day writing isn't even as good as the writing I did on those practice sheets. I will never be one of those people with effortlessly beautiful penmanship. But I did come out of it all with (in my opinion) a much more legible hand. Here's a page from a current notebook, casually written at a good clip.

It isn't perfectly neat by any means, but I can read it! Lately, though, I'm noticing some backsliding. In particular I struggle (as I always have) with keeping the slope of my letters even. Also I can get sloppy with the connectors between letters, which can make some words confusing. With the new ink here to play with...I'm thinking it's time to return to handwriting boot camp for a bit. My penmanship is still very much a work in progress.

Tiny Tenino Type-In

2011-07-03T16:01:00.000-07:00

Oh, and one more piece of exciting news!! There is a very good chance that the Tribe of Clickity-Clack will soon include an Olympia with a Senatorial type-face again!

And for my own reference if nothing else, here is Notagain of Manual Entry's earlier blog post about ink making and local oaks.

EDIT: notagain now has a type-in write up on Manual Entry.
EDIT AGAIN: just noticed that I repeatedly referred to the Lettera 31 as a 33 in my typecasts. I know better, really I do.

July Vignette #1

2011-07-01T18:05:00.000-07:00

Here we go, per Art's challenge... Hopefully this counts as a vignette?

It's here, it's here, it's here! (My first Goulet Pens order)

2011-06-30T18:46:00.000-07:00

I arrived home today to find a package waiting!

After removing the bubble wrap, I ended up with this oblong object, all wrapped up in the Goulets' signature blue saran wrap. (And yes, as you can already see, I went a little overboard on these things...)

Each (tightly capped) little vial contains a generous portion of the given ink, and is nicely labeled.

I also bought this syringe kit, to make it easier to transfer ink from the vials to pens. The bottom of the vials is cone shaped, which should make it easier to fill a pen, but I imagine you'd still have trouble getting the last little bit. Plus, I are clumsy.

So, rather than futzing with dipping the nib, I took the converter out of my orange Safari and filled it with ink using one of the syringes. Selecting an ink to start with was tough! I admit to using the very childish close-your-eyes-and-grab-one method, and ended up with Diamine Majestic Blue.

All fueled up and ready to go!

I put the little Safari back together, waited a second for the ink to start, and we were off!

Looking forward to playing this ink for awhile, and with the rest of the colors as time goes on!

Mini-Typecast, Lame Photo Update Just to Update

2011-06-27T09:08:00.000-07:00

I'm getting a bunch o' ink samples, mostly Diamine. It's my first time trying this service of theirs, and I'm pretty excited.

Speaking of inky things, this stuff is pretty awesome for a number of cleaning duties, one of which is getting ink out of the bathroom sink...

However, the lack of the apostrophe in the official name was driving me crazy...so I added one.

Lousy photo of today's fountain pen rotation: Bling (Pelikan M200, Noodler's Air Corp Blue-Black ink), Stealth (Lamy 2000, Noodler's Black), Click (Pilot Vanishing Point, Private Reserve Midnight Blues) and What The...??? (Rotring Core, Noodler's Black Swan in Australian Roses)

Revelations

2011-06-22T12:50:00.000-07:00

I did accomplish one thing this weekend aside from noisy fiddle repair: I cleaned up my primary desk, and also did a buncha sorting through the various drawers and cups and storage bins where writing supplies and other junk tend to accumulate. Threw out a lot of things, cleaned up others. In the process, I discovered a few things.

For one, I may have the largest private collection of those correction tape dispenser thingies in existence:

Seriously, there are about a dozen! I guess I can stop buying 'em for awhile, now I know where they all are...

Also, after clean up, I'm even more perplexed by my complete and utter inability to ever find a Sharpie on those occasions when I need one. I mean...they were everywhere! More than half a dozen of 'em, spread throughout the house!

They are corralled now. Hopefully they'll stay that way.

Don't make me set up a webcam to keep an eye on you while I'm out and about, Sharpies. I don't want to hurt you, but I will.

Death to Delay (typecast poetry)

2011-06-20T07:59:00.000-07:00

Reading between the lines...I didn't exactly accomplish much this weekend. (Except for--with phone assistance from my luthier sister--putting a new tailpiece on the fiddle I keep attempting to play. I can make LOUD HORRIBLE NOISES now. Woot!)

Leuchtturm1917: Moleskine Killer?

2011-06-15T22:45:00.000-07:00

I'd intended to write up a sort of review of my first Leuchtturm1917 notebook, but...well, it didn't happen. At this point, I'm on my second of these notebooks, having finished up the original black blank one I bought at Powell's City of Books. The second, my current journal, is a purple dot grid version. So...due to procrastination, I have experience.

Apologies in advance for my usual crummy, yellowish indoor lighting photos. I do try.

I went through a period a few years back when I used Moleskines quite a bit as journals. This was when they were first gaining popularity. I liked the sleek feel of them, their simple, elegant appearance, the nice little features like the back pocket, bookmark ribbon, and elastic closure. Ultimately, however, I couldn't justify the cost, particularly since I had lots of issues with the paper and fountain pen ink: feathering and bleeding on some pages, beading of ink and smearing on others. Frustrating.

Moleskine feathering--see all the little hairy looking extensions on my letters? Eek! Oh, and the content of this entry may be familiar to some of the typospherians...

Bleed-through on the back of the page. Note that this was not a particularly "bleedy" ink, or a broad nib.

Since those early days, about a zillion Moleskine clones have showed up on the market: compact notebooks with the hard cover, the pocket, the elastic, the bookmark. The Leuchtturm1917 is one that is recently gaining some attention on fountain pen boards and such, and when I saw them at Powell's for a fairly reasonable price, I grabbed one to try.

Page o' samples. I smeared the Black Swan...oops.

What I like:

I've had almost *no* issues with bleed-through or feathering with fountain pen or dip pen inks. A very, very wet ink could possibly feather or bleed, but even my fairly wet medium fountain pen nibs do pretty well, as did dip pens with sumi ink. Also, the paper has just a hint of texture to it, making it nice for pencil as well.

Back side of the page. There's show-through due to the thin paper, but really only the Sharpie bleeds, and only an eensy bit. Not bad...

And an attempt at a close-up, to show that there really isn't much if any feathering, even with pretty wet inks. Nothing like Moleskines, in any case.

Although I could buy a dozen Wal-mart composition books for the same price as one of these (and the Norcom comp books are still my choice for scribbling), as premium notebooks go, the Leuchtturm1917s are fairly inexpensive. I purchased this additional notebook from Writer's Bloc for $13 for a large notebook. Compare that with more like $18 for a Moleskine of the same basic size.
Pretty colors: many of the Leuchtturm1917 sizes and styles are available in a number of colors, for them what likes such things.
They have page numbers! Major bonus for me. I like to be able to gauge how much of a notebook I've used/how many pages I have left/how many pages I've written in a given day, and typically the first thing I do with a new journal is to sit down and mark page numbers. It's a tedious task, and I am very, very happy to have this done for me. The page numbers are very small and subtle and don't take up oodles of my writing space. Nicely done.

Dot grid format! I'm a new convert to this style of notebooks. They give you the freedom of a blank page, but with just enough of a visual guide to help you write neat lines. Also, the dots are subdued enough not to get in the way of lighter inks and pencil writing.
It's a small thing, but a nice detail nonetheless: these notebooks come with a variety of labels for archival purposes. I always date my journals after use, so I appreciate this. Another little detail that's a nice touch: the blank version came with a backing sheet that can be used behind the current page, with grid on one side and lines on the other.

Lots o' Labelage

What I don't like:

Although the pages lay *mostly* flat, there's definitely more of a "hump" than you get with Moleskine notebooks. It's perhaps my favorite feature of Moleskines, and I'm a little disappointed these are as bumpy as they are.

Even held flat...you still have to write into a bump. Don't mind my inky fingers...

Although I didn't encounter bleed-through or feathering, the pages are very thin (I kind of think they'd be better off making these with fewer pages and thicker paper) and there is a certain amount of show-through.
The covers are thinner and less substantial feeling than Moleskine. Overall, it just doesn't feel as sleek and ruggedly made as a Moleskine, though that may just be perception. I carried my first one around in a backpack crammed full of other books and odds and ends for two months with no ill effects whatsoever.
The elastic isn't as...well, elastic.
When new and newly unwrapped from their protective wrap, these notebooks smell funny. It's sort of a press-board sort of smell. It quickly wears off, fortunately. It's been awhile since I unwrapped a new Moleskine, and I'm sure they have a "new notebook" smell as well, but I don't remember it being objectionable in any way.
I've experienced some skipping issues: the paper, while very ink friendly for the most part, is pretty sensitive to skin oils. Fountain pen ink may skip on spots where you rested your hand. I sometimes have similar issues with other quality paper, though (i.e. paper that doesn't absorb ink like crazy). It's a trade-off.

Indifferent details:

The last eight pages are perforated and can be easily removed. Personally, it's not a feature I imagine I'll use.
In addition to the numbered pages, there's a blank table of contents page at the front to assist with organizing. At the moment, I'm not sure how I'd use this in a journal. For significant dates, maybe? Dunno. But it's there for those of you who would use such a thing.

Bottom line:
They aren't perfect, and I wouldn't declare them a Moleskine killer. For the zillion and a half people who use gel pens or ballpoints and who don't care about the other little features the Leuchtturm1917 offers, Moleskine may remain the better choice. And Moleskines are everywhere, after all. (Even Target, now!) They're convenient.

I'm sold, nonetheless. The Leuchtturm1917 notebooks have most of the features I like about the Moleskine (hard cover, bookmark, elastic, pocket, at least kinda lays flat) and a few others I really appreciate (page numbers, dot grid format), the paper is way better, and none of the drawbacks are utter deal breakers to me. They're my journal of choice for the time being. I just hope the price remains reasonable-ish!

Vitals as reviewed:
249 slightly off-white dot grid pages
Acid-free 80gsm paper
A5 size (5.75 x 8.25")
Designed in Germany, printed and bound in Taiwan

In Which I "Demonstrate" the Making of Inky Messes

2011-06-12T14:56:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning I gave blood. Last few times I've done this, I've attempted to continue my day without any reservations, and have had some wooziness later in the day. It's not a nice feeling. This time, I resolved to be a good girl and mostly take it easy and drink plenty of fluids; chill out, catch up on my journal, read a bit, maybe watch some TV.

Now...for the TV part, my brother and sister-in-law recently turned me on to the show "Hoarders," which is about people who compulsively buy/obtain and hoard...all kinds of stuff, from food to toys to old construction materials to...well, you name it. It's like watching a train wreck: tough to watch at times, and yet you can't turn away. It makes me feel a bit better about my own lack of organizing skills and...umm...collecting tendencies: OK, so I may have something like...erm...a few dozen empty notebooks waiting to be used, and that's pretty ridiculous. But at least I don't have so many notebooks they spill out onto the floor or out into the yard or keep me from getting to the kitchen. Yay me!

On the other hand, it makes me frantically want to prevent becoming such a person. I finished watching my first episode earlier in the week, and ended up staying up late vacuuming and putting things away, and after another episode on Saturday, I ended up going through drawers I've barely touched since I moved in, sorting. In the process, I came across some pens and such I'd pretty much forgotten about. For example, the Pilot Plumix I bought for four or five bucks at Target awhile back.

It's an odd looking little thing...I continue to like Mike Clemens' "baby squid" descriptor. But it is comfortable to hold and has quite a nice smooth italic nib. I used it a bit at first, but the ink went dry, and I debated with ordering cartridges, or a converter (to use bottled ink) that would probably cost as much or more as the pen itself had. In the end I stuck it in a drawer to deal with later. And there it stayed, until now.

It comes with a single ink cartridge. This cartridge *could* be refilled with a syringe, and that was sort of my plan, but as I was rinsing the last of the original blue ink out of the pen, it struck me: the barrel of this thing seems pretty water tight. Why not fill the whole barrel with ink and turn it into an eyedropper pen?

I have a Platinum Preppy pen that is converted just using silicone grease smeared on the threads, and I figured this would probably be enough for the Plumix as well...but I also added an O ring of sorts: I still have about a zillion of those dorky orthodontic rubber bands used to adjust one's bite as part of the whole braces thing, and some of them seemed just the right size (the Stellar's Sea Lions, for dentists/orthodontic patients playing at home), so I added one of those as a precaution. I'm not sure it really does anything, and it's not the most attractive of O rings...but it makes me feel better.

And then, using an eye dropper, I filled it up with Waterman South Seas Blue! Two reasons for choosing this ink: 1. it looks mahvelous in this pen, and 2. it is the most washable of my current inks--just a precaution until I'm sure this thing isn't gonna explode...

I then tried it out, and it seemed to work great! Flushed with success, I ran to the Internets to see if anyone else had had the same brilliant idea. They had, but many also mentioned having plugged the hole at the end of the barrel. Say what? Hole??? I ran back and checked the thing...no leaks, fortunately. But after a few minutes, I could wipe a tissue over the end of the barrel and get a smudge of blue, so apparently there *is* a hole there. I emptied out the ink and dribbled some super glue in the divot there and let it cure. Hopefully it's enough.

The cap feels like relatively fragile plastic, so I don't think I'd just toss this pen in my bag with everything else (it holds a *lot* of ink, after all, and what a mess *that* could be!), but otherwise, it seems to be holding together pretty nicely. As I said below, it's a bit of a dry writer, but a fun little pen.

So there you have it: a quirky italic "demonstrator" (i.e. you can see the inner workings) eye dropper fountain pen for about five bucks. Pretty nifty. I'll have to update if it ends up developing issues later on, but at the moment, I think I have a good excuse for keeping it. I mean, it's not hoarding if I'm using the thing, right? Right??

For additional information on making eye dropper pens out of cheapie plastic fountain pens, Jetpens has this nice little article with more info and far better pictures: How to Do an Eye Dropper Conversion.

Storms and Crashes and Grillin' and Marshmallows: What I've Been Up To

2011-05-31T18:49:00.000-07:00

I am lame: no typecast, no pencast, no nuffin. But there are pictures! Lots of pictures!

The end of last week was rough. Thursday morning, I was in a car accident on the way to work. Another driver pulled into me from the side as I was going by, and the whole passenger side of my bitty car is scraped up. Looks like someone keyed it with a Really Big Key. Her insurance company and my insurance company are duking it out, and the whole process makes me queasy and uneasy. I guess I've been really fortunate...aside from a few minor parking lot bumps and the one time I slid partly off the road in the snow and popped a tire, I've never had an accident. And as accidents go, I guess it's pretty minor. Still...oof.

And then Friday, I woke to news that there had been a major hail and wind storm back home in Northeastern Vermont, like nothing anyone had ever seen before: roads washed out, vehicles and homes flooded, trees knocked down. One of the biggest roads near town (Rt. 5, which runs North/South) is closed down due to a major cave-in.

I've driven down this road I don't know how many times...it's hard to fathom this kind of damage. And many of the smaller roads are at least as bad.

Closer to my own heart, the pond where we used to play growing up is gone--the storm took out the embankment that held it in place, and there's really nothing left but a big muddy hole with a little stream running through it.

The big gap left after the storm rolled through...

Obviously, it wasn't that big or that deep to begin with, but it's still sort of impressive that it disappeared literally overnight.

I actually shed tears, though I realize how silly this is considering that a) this wasn't even our property and b) others suffered far greater things. Fortunately no one I know was hurt or anything like that. Still...the pond! I don't know how many hours I spent down there as a kid, skipping stones, catching bugs and frogs and salamanders, sailing toy boats, coming home muddy and smelly and wet... Good times.

Apparently one of the neighbors on the road is hoping to start a fund to repair it, since the young man who now owns the land is likely unable to be able to pull it off alone. Here's hoping it lives again. Poor little pond!

But this weekend was good, if busy. Things I did this weekend:

1. Played with inks, including the very pretty new Noodler's Black Swan in Australian Roses.

(Those of you on my letter writing list should have a chance to see this ink in person soon. Yes, I'm actually getting caught up on letter writing. Try not to faint.)

2. Planted a bunch o' flowers and herbs: petunias, alyssum, marigolds, basil, rosemary, dill, and a few random others.

Hopefully at least some of them survive. I have a tendency to go, "Oooooh, pretty!!" whenever I walk into a greenhouse / garden center, end up purchasing more than I set out for, and then forget to water come July when Washington suddenly becomes high desert. But for now, everything is doing well except the basil. I'm batting 0 for about 5 where basil is concerned. It's starting to feel personal.

3. Went on a nice long walk with thedog, down paths now green and leafy. These pictures are actually about a week old, but I didn't think to take any this weekend...so you get old footage.

Gratuitous shot of the trees Jeff liked a few posts back. I'm not quite sure what these are, actually! They aren't the standard white "paper" birch we have back home, though in certain light, they do look like them. But they're more silvery, and the bark is pretty solid.

4. Bought a bitty little gas grill, and after a day where I debated using it or taking it back (I sort of had post-purchase sticker shock, I guess)...I broke down, put it together, fired it up and was very pleased with the results. Best grilled chicken I've ever made, by far! And it's just big enough to make dinner with leftovers for the week without having to do batches.

I also grilled mangos (they're on sale this week, and ohh, I love mangos!) and avocado. The avocado in particular was a revelation. Cut it in half, took out the pit, brushed with olive oil and slapped it down on the grill for maybe six minutes. It was soft and creamy and subtly smoky. I put a little salsa and sour cream in the middle and...nom. So good. I'll be making those again.

And I didn't torch any major structures! Yay me!

Now I have a very, very short work week, and then a brother I haven't seen in awhile and my baby sister will be visiting. They'll mostly stay with another brother and his family up near Tacoma, but I may kidnap 'em for a day or so to show them the sights. Next weekend there's a music festival in Winlock, WA, and I'm hoping to drag my brother to that. It's maybe my favorite local music festival, for a number of reasons: first off, there's a wide variety of acoustic music from bluegrass to Celtic to...whatever. Also, after the concerts, everyone hangs out to just play music for hours. Also--and this is important--there's a pavilion with an open fireplace where you can roast marshmallows. I mean, c'mon--marshmallows!

Speaking of which, I was at Fred Meyer this weekend and they had GINORMOUS marshmallows. Like...almost-the-size-of-a-small-apple marshmallows. What is this world coming to? Aren't regular marshmallows more than enough sugar for the average person? And yet...giant marshmallows are just awesome, especially if (like me), you're one of those people who toasts marshmallows by burning the outside, peeling it off and eating it, and repeating. You could go a long time on a marshmallow like that. Woo-hoo! If, on the other hand, you're one of those weirdos like my Dad who like to carefully, carefully toast marshmallows to a perfectly even golden brown outside and complete inner gooeyness, I'd guess these'd get very messy.

I didn't buy any, but I keep thinking about that open fireplace deal coming up next weekend. Hrm.

Ode du Spam Folder | The Kindness of Strangers | Microsoft Bob and the Gardens of Time

2011-05-23T20:33:00.000-07:00

1. Ode du Spam

Well, I thought it was funny. Made up of actual lines from my spam folder. There's something particularly evocative about the second and third lines...or maybe it's just because I'm currently reading Raymond Chandler and my mind is influenced thusly.

In any case, it makes about as much sense as a lot of other modern poetry.

2. The Kindness of Strangers

On a completely different subject (abrupt switches are what I do), I would like to say thank you to MT Coalhopper. After the recent dip pen post in which I mentioned the Esterbrook 313 Probate nib, he offered to send me some Esterbrook 312 Judges Quills, which are similar in some respects, but a much finer, more manageable point. I received his package this week, and not only did it contain a generous quantity of the nibs in question, but also a selection of other points and this beautifully handcrafted little box with slots for each. I'm very much enjoying trying these out.

3. Bob
Another abrupt change in direction: does anyone at all besides me remember the travesty that was Microsoft Bob? Essentially, it was supposed to be a kinder, gentler Windows-Within-Microsoft-Windows. You could set up a virtual "house" with various rooms and various images linked to programs. For example, in your office, you might set it so when you clicked a pad of paper sitting on the desk, it launched your word processor, or clicking the kitchen stove might open a recipe card program. Really, it was all rather insultingly cartoony and foolish, and it bombed in a big way. (Except that someone smuggled the various "assistants" out the back door and into Microsoft Office. You know that irritating bouncing paperclip? Blame Bob.)

Although I never actually used it as a user interface, I wasted I don't know how much time decorating my Microsoft Bob house. I was incredibly drawn in by the ability to set up rooms, rearrange furniture, change decor, etc. etc. at the click of a button, likely due to my lack of any real-life housekeeping or gardening skills.

The punch line? This weekend I stumbled into a Facebook game (Garden of Time) with two components, one of which is a rather addicting game with two subsets (find-the-hidden-objects and spot-the-differences, in various historical time periods), and the other has you set out your "garden" on a grid, Visio style. Both components sucked me in this weekend. I accomplished pretty much nothing, aside from endlessly shuffling white flowers and park benches (with dreamy music playing in the background) and clicking on hidden playing cards and pineapples.

Well, that, and I did type up some eight or nine thousand words of the last NaNoWriMo. I'm somewhere past the halfway point on that project.

Oh, and I broke down and ordered some Noodler's "Black Swan in Australian Roses" ink. For that, I blame Adwoa.

(And tonight, I did actually work in the real garden for an hour or so...though somehow, there are a lot more weeds and bugs in the real world...)

First Morning Bike Commute Complete

2011-05-17T15:45:00.000-07:00

Here's hoping the ride home goes as smoothly!

Update Just to Update: Self-Derision and Hot Coffee Edition

2011-05-15T17:23:00.000-07:00

Dabbling in Dipping

2011-05-04T20:52:00.000-07:00

(Yes, I did a certain amount of smearing.)

I'm surprised by how much fun I've been having with these. I'd come to think of dip pen nibs as incredibly scratchy things that caught the page at every opportunity, and wondered how on earth people used them routinely back in the day...but now I'm finding that while some (particularly the very fine and flexible sort) *are* fairly scratchy (particularly if used wrong), other points are smooth, and some (which I find myself preferring, actually) are somewhere in between: they "grip" the paper a bit more than your average fountain pen, making my handwriting a bit nicer, but don't snag. And most nibs hold enough ink for a few sentences or even a paragraph.

I'll stick with more standard writing instruments when I'm out and about or not in the mood, but dip pens are a lot of fun to use in a journal, when I have the luxury of taking my time, pausing now and then to dip and think.

Some Randomish Linkies: Sumi ink is traditionally used for brush calligraphy styles. It typically comes in stick form and must be ground on an inkstone and water added to make ink for each use. I find this very interesting! The bottled liquid forms are newer and (I believe) somewhat scorned by serious brush calligraphists...but, in my opinion, far more convenient and more practical for pointed pen writing where one submerges the pen in the ink (you *could* load the pen with a brush, but I'm not that ambitious). The Moon Palace works great for my purposes.

I bought mine from John Neal Bookseller. They have all *sorts* of goodies there. Most are aimed at true calligraphers rather than those who want to play with dip pens for general writing, but still worth a look. Speculator also recommended Paper Ink Arts as a source for many things pen and ink, and in my dip pen wanderings I see he's by no means the only one to point them out. Their on-line catalog leaves something to be desired. I hear their paper catalog is much better. I plan to request it.

And one of these days I'm going to pick up some Winsor and Newton inks.

I also came across this very nice catalog of Esterbrook nibs with writing samples. Fascinating! It isn't all-inclusive, but a nice reference nonetheless. I wish I could find a similar reference for other common brands, but no such luck so far.

Oh, and finally...though it may be a bit premature of me to make sweeping recommendations of eBay sellers, I had a very positive experience with this seller. In addition to nibs, he sells beautiful rocker blotters, ink wells, and pen holders of all sorts. There will probably be another purchase sooner or later.

A Long Walk Makes Everything Better. Mostly.

2011-05-03T19:03:00.000-07:00

After a very unrestful Sunday, I arrived at work Monday to discover that my monitor had gone kablooey (technical term), and the day pretty much went downhill from there. And then this morning, I had to be at work at six. Yes, I got some breaks during the day, and I got to leave early, kinda, but still... And so I was crabby today. And I took some of that crabbiness out on one of our own. For that, I apologize.

However, we had a little sunshine today, and I got home early enough to take full advantage of it. I grabbed Cisco's leash, waited a moment for him to come back to earth so I could put it on him, and set out.

It's approaching what I consider the most beautiful time of year here in Washington. We're still a few days or weeks short--spring seems to have arrived late this year. The deciduous trees are leafing out, but the leaves are still small. The trees have an oddly unfinished look, like an incomplete painting: the shape and some under strokes are there, but the vital details have yet to arrive.

Spring is apparent in all sorts of different wildflowers, and other interesting plants.

But there are still signs of the winter we have just departed. Ferns are still brown around the edges, lacking the green of new growth.

And though later in the year, the sides of the path will be overgrown, right now there are still things left exposed. Bits of bare branches show, winter-bleached to the color of old bone.

And here and there, in the form of segments of rusted iron rails and wooden railroad ties, I come across signs of the trail's original purpose.

In a few weeks, the grass and weeds and brambles will have taken over again, but for the moment, the trail thinks back, and remembers.

And me? Feeling more relaxed and less crabby...though less so than I'd be if the trash guys would actually take *all* my trash like I pay 'em to do, instead of only *half* emptying the can. *sigh* It's always sumpin.

Another Saturday Ramble

2011-04-30T20:22:00.000-07:00

It had been a few months since I last checked out the downtown antique store and generally rambled around town, and today was a lovely sunny day, and so...why not? This time around, I was on the prowl for old pen points/nibs or pen holders as well as typewriters. Did I find any? Well...yes and no.

First up was the antique "mall" in downtown Olympia: Finders Keepers. As I keep saying, I really like Finders Keepers. I don't always buy anything, but I always enjoy looking around. There are lots of little divided cubicles with a whole variety of different goods. As soon as I walked in, I spotted this:

Ooh, shiny!

It looks to be in pretty nice shape, but at $125, well out of my range.

The only other typewriter-like object at Finders Keepers was this odd little adding machine.

There were also a few inkwell type things, not in great shape, and this bottle of Red Quink, which I was mildly tempted by, but passed on.

I realized *after* I got home that I'd photographed the Spanish side. Ah well.

I didn't find any dip nibs though. Or any other writing related items, with the exception of this little portable desk, which I'm still thinking about going back for at some point.

Twenty-five dollars. It's fairly roughly made and nothing fancy, but I couldn't help daydreaming about finding an inkwell that would fit that hole, and keeping all my notebooks and supplies inside. We'll see.

After Finders Keepers, I finally made it to the antique store where notagain found his Royal. It's called The Rusty Roostery, and they're open rather odd hours...not until one on Saturdays. There were no Royals in evidence today, but they did have an Olympia SG-1 for $30...

It's verrrrry filthy and fairly rough, and I didn't do much testing of it...but might be worth a look to someone.

I did break down and buy some Quink at Rusty Roostery. They had turquoise Quink. I cannot resist turquoise.

It isn't a full bottle and the label and box are pretty stained with old ink, but it was cheap and I figure I can use it with the dip pens, just for play. I think I'd be scared to put it in my fountain pens. It's a neat old bottle, though! They also had a single dip pen--a Speedball C nib of some sort (very battered) in a Bradley of Vermont holder (more battered still). Neither looked usable, so I left them where they were.

I also found something only my family would be likely to get excited about: a copy of the same desk encyclopedia set we used for word games and such for years growing up, tossing the books back and forth during rounds until at this point they've become battered almost out of existence.

I had to buy 'em.

And then I came home to find a sampler of dip nibs from Speculator waiting in my mail box, and have been happily making inky messes for the past hour or so. What a day!

Untold Stories and Lies by Omission: a Lettera at Last

2011-04-16T19:42:00.000-07:00

The paper I was typing is kinda wrinkly due to my stamp experiment, so the scan isn't completely even...sorry 'bout that.

Fountain Pen Love: a Cautionary Rant

2011-04-11T22:22:00.000-07:00

What with my feeling cranky at typewriters right now, I've had the fountain pens and pencils out more than usual this week. I've also been reading back through some journals lately. I just passed the five year anniversary of my move to Washington, and the five year anniversary of starting my current job. Time really has flown! When I first moved out here, my oldest niece was a few weeks old. Now she's a little chatterbox of a five-year-old and has been joined by several siblings. When did all *that* happen?

Anyhow, in reading back through my journals, I'm again made cranky (cranky seems to be my theme of the week) by certain inks, which include some of those *most* recommended to fountain pen newbies! Yes, they flow nicely, are relatively easy to clean up if you spill, and are more readily available than most. However, they fade like the dickens. Now...considering a lot of people seem attracted to fountain pens as tools for keeping long-term logs and journals, because they seem sort of romantic and old-fashioned and intimate, this worries me. I realize I likely can blame some of my earliest troubles on bad paper and low quality ink--for example, here's a page I wrote in the late 90s using a basic no-name fountain pen and the washable blue ink cartridges that came with it, in one of those inexpensive, gaudy journals you can pick up in drug stores and Hallmark stores everywhere:

Can you read it without some sort of digital cheating? I can't. Not except for a word here and there. And unfortunately, I didn't catch the disappearing act until it was too late. I'm guessing the paper is acidic as anything, and the acid acted as a slow-mo ink eradicator. It makes me sad.

When I discovered it, I (for the most part) resolved to stick with high quality paper and decent brand-name inks. But, I discovered, that's no guarantee either. Take this entry--nothing too earth-shattering if I lose it, but it's the principal of the thing. It's not even five years old, yet it has already faded. Waterman Blue-Black. Exactly what the fountain pen folk would probably recommend to a newbie, no? It's on Moleskine paper, which isn't great for fountain pen ink just because it bleeds and feathers, but should be pretty acid free. And yet...

I have similar examples written in Parker Quink Black, Waterman Black, and to a lesser extent, Waterman Havana. Granted, this example is still perfectly legible, but what will it look like in five *more* years, or five years after that? My guess is that while these inks are wonderfully behaved and very pretty at first, making them great for short-term notes, you shouldn't depend on them to stick with you for the long haul.

As a side tangent, while Waterman South Seas Blue fades maybe a teensy bit, but strangely (considering how much lighter it is) is far less affected--I used a basic Waterman fountain pen (a school pen not available in the states) for quite a few of my journal entries when I was overseas, and while the Florida Blue entries are faded badly, South Seas Blue is still pretty bright. (Even if it did fade quickly, you'd have to pry it from my cold, dead hands. The stuff is world-rockingly lovely, though if you even *show* it a drip of water, it will flee the page without leaving so much as a shadow behind.)

Waterman South Seas Blue brush scribble--it's even prettier in person!

Now...I dunno that there are really any archive-proven fountain pen inks--particularly as most companies have changed their formulas over the years, and many of the big names today haven't been around much more than a decade. You'll see lots of folks talking about family papers from relatively far back that are still perfectly legible though written in fountain pen ink, but my personal experience gives me pause. Lately I've mostly been using pencil, though I admit, I've slipped a time or two into my fountain pen ways. But I try to stick with inks that remain vibrant in my own older journals--it's not a *guarantee* of real longevity, but perhaps an indicator they'll be around at least awhile. Most of the Noodler's colors are good, particularly their "bulletproof" or near-bulletproof colors. I bought a few Private Reserve inks early on, and most of those look OK as well, though I found many of them more problematic than I cared to deal with on a regular basis (some colors are really hard to rinse out of pens, the inks take ages to dry on the page, and some ink colors faded or shifted in the bottle--Burgandy Mist, for example, turned to Industrial Sludge). I keep wanting to try some other brands, J. Herbin and Diamine in particular, but it's hard to know (without risk) if their current inks will last a good while. I'd be interested in the experience of others. I don't expect my babbling to last centuries, nor do I want it to...but it would be nice if it at least lasted decades.

For the most part, I'm something of a Noodler's fan girl. I've had good luck with most colors, and they seem to maintain their brilliance in my notebooks even after years on the shelf. Right now, I'm really, really fighting the urge to order more colors: some Black Swan in Australian Roses (that color and the shading makes my heart go pitter-pat) and maybe some Zhivago (I'm a sucker for subtle near-black inks, and that one has been calling my name for years now--and speaking of names, I like the name of it, too!)

Bottom line: if you really, really want something to last, pencil is a great choice--even some of my journals written in ballpoint are faded quite badly in places, but my old grade school journals written in pencil have held up very well. After all, they're pretty much written in stone, albeit stone in powder form. Stone doesn't tend to change much over time, at least when closed up out of water and wind... The paper will fail first. Dip pens, with the ability to use old fashioned iron gall and pigmented inks, are also likely a great choice, and one I want to try out one of these days.

And if you (like me) are in love with the fountain pens and the wonderful rainbow of ink colors available, either assume your writing is likely to sneak away as the years roll by and just enjoy the present moments, or choose wisely, and (unlike me) think ahead a bit.

Woe.

2011-04-08T16:40:00.000-07:00

Driving Home From Work on a (Very) Rainy Friday

2011-04-01T18:06:00.000-07:00

Naturally Gorgeous: USA Gold Natural Pencils

2011-04-01T09:34:00.000-07:00

Pencils in the buff: General's Cedar Pointe, Forest Choice, USA Gold Natural

Not quite a full review, and I know the photos are pretty lousy, but I couldn't resist at least a mention...

Last week, pursuing rumors of Rhodia notebooks on clearance at bargain basement prices, I stopped by my local Target. Alas, the only Rhodia notebook they had wasn't marked down all that much, and also looked like someone had dropped it on the floor and danced on it quite thoroughly in muddy shoes. So I passed. Since then, I've been able to fill my Rhodia longing at Powell's City of Books in Portland, OR, but at that moment, standing in the aisles at Target, what was I to do? I couldn't just walk away from the office supplies section empty handed, now could I? (Don't answer that...)

Fortunately I found an inexpensive consolation prize. Although I really, really, really don't need any more, I picked up a pack of pencils, namely some USA Gold Naturals.

Yeah, I got impatient and ripped into them before taking any pictures...

The USA Gold Natural is made in the USA, as they make a bit obvious on their packaging. It is natural incense cedar, and smells like it--mmmm. Very nice to sharpen. It's also nice to sharpen in that the lead has been nicely centered in every one I've used so far. This is important: poorly centered leads have become perhaps my biggest pet peeve when it comes to wood-case pencils. Like the Forest Choice, the Natural seems to have a light coating of varnish or other sealant to protect it from dirt and graphite grime and moisture...which does mean it won't get that fascinating worn-in patina that the General's Cedar Pointes do, for better or worse.

Like its yellow-clothed brethren (the standard USA Gold), the Natural is a little on the slender side. (I believe the Ticonderogas have also lost a bit in diameter over the years in order to conserve wood.) It isn't terribly noticeable, though, especially after a moment or two of use.

USA Golds have dandy erasers, small but much better than is typical in this class--they don't flake, don't rip the paper, remove graphite cleanly, and the leavings roll into easily-brushed-away strands. And I like the colors of the ferrule: brass and green. Simple, yet distinctive.

Classy ferrule on these, in my opinion...

It writes well. Personally, I find it tricky to describe graphite pencils, particularly since I mostly use reg'lar HB grade without a lot of variation. You can only say "smooth and dark" so many times before it becomes meaningless. I'd say it's darker than a Ticonderoga, lighter than a Palomino or my Helix Oxfords, relatively hard-wearing without being gritty, and fairly smear-resistant, particularly compared to other inexpensive pencils. Howzat? It's a good all 'rounder.

Ticonderoga/USA Gold Natural comparison. Difficult to show darkness and clarity in a scan... I ran a finger over the word "smear," but pencil doesn't smear easily on Rhodia paper!

It's not a premium pencil, but it's light-years beyond the usual plastic-wood-mush pencil-shaped-objects that are typical in this price range. I like it. Quite a bit.

The Art of Typistry

2011-03-31T18:06:00.000-07:00

Typewriter Mystery on Shordzi's blog
The ETCetera Archives (Note: the article on decorative borders was in Issue No. 48.)

(Oh, and yes, I know how to spell layered and essence. It's an authentic typecast, what can I say?)

Of Powell's, Poetry, and Paper

2011-03-26T18:13:00.000-07:00

An odd assortment of titles, perhaps--mystery, sci-fi, poetry--but it's my kind of odd!

Paper bounty: Clairefontaine staple-bound notebook, Rhodia staple-bound notebook, Leuchtturm 1917

Leuchtturm as compared with a Moleskine--the Leuchtturm (top) is slightly wider.

Blurb from the back of the Leuchtturm 1917

Letters, Lists, and Letteras

2011-03-24T19:22:00.000-07:00

Thoughts from the dental chair (short story)

2011-03-21T15:59:00.000-07:00

Probably a good thing the dentist couldn't read my thoughts as I was under the drill this morning. This is the (as yet untitled) story that was playing out in my head. It's kind of long as a typecast, so I typed it up for the high-tech route.

Dr. Mills turned to gaze out the window, into the soothing green and brightness of a fine spring day. He sighed into his mask, impatient with himself. In many ways, Karl was the perfect dental patient. He hadn't complained or flinched once, he opened wide when requested, and he seemed to have a nearly inhuman ability to suppress his swallowing reflex. In fact, he was probably the easiest patient Dr. Mills had worked on since the dummies they had learned on back in school. So why this enveloping uneasiness?

He forced himself to turn away from the window, back to the task at hand. "OK, Karl," he said, trying for that breezily confident tone of voice that usually came so easily. "Feeling pretty numbed up now? I think we're about ready to start." Karl answered with a grunting sound Dr. Mills took for affirmation. But come to think of it, he hadn't spoken a full sentence since he'd arrived, had he? Then again, that wasn't altogether unusual. When your mouth is full of holes and gauze, and someone keeps telling you to stay open a little longer, you tend not to speak in full sentences. Dr. Mills was well acquainted with a full vocabulary of grunts and groans, gestures and moans. Even he and Melanie, his dental assistant, tended to fall under the spell of silence, passing instruments back and forth wordlessly, communicating with glances and finger-pointing. Beneath the blare of the piped-in music, the clinic was as hushed as a mausoleum.

Mausoleum...the word laid a cold, damp hand on the back of his neck, and it was only with difficulty that he shook it off. Melanie too seemed to be inexplicably on-edge, and at one point, out of the corner of his eye, he saw her shiver.

He finished drilling and began to fill the cavity. As he was doing so, his gloved hand brushed against Karl's lips, and he very nearly jumped back in surprise and revulsion. They were strangely cold and clammy--extraordinarily so; and it wasn't as if it was a particularly cold day.

He had a sudden desire to take Karl's temperature, to quantify what seemed like an impossibility--but dentists didn't tend to need to take vitals. There was probably a thermometer in a drawer somewhere in the building, but what was he going to say to the patient if he did dig one out? "Pardon me, but I want to take your temperature because your cold lips are creeping me out?" He dismissed the thought.

At last they finished the filling and polished it up. Dr. Mills concealed a sigh of relief. "You're all set," he told Karl. "If we have your information, you can go without even stopping at the desk." Karl grunted again, then rose stiffly and unsmilingly from the chair. Before leaving, he shook Dr. Mills' hand with a hand as cold as his lips had been. Melanie stepped quickly to the other side of the chair and started tidying up--Dr. Mills had the impression she was trying to avoid a handshake of her own.

As Dr. Mills passed the waiting room on his way to see the next patient, he spotted Old Man Barnes hunkered down in a corner seat (from which he could see the whole room and keep an eye on the door). The old man's knotty arms were folded tightly across his chest, and he scowled squintily at anyone who dared look in his direction. Dr. Mills suppressed a smile. Old Man Barnes was a long-standing patient and quite the character. He'd turned up at the office one day, refused to provide any sort of ID, and demanded that Dr. Mills remove and replace every filling in his head, "Because my last dentist--he put microchips in there. I can hear 'em, sometimes, on clear nights, saying things in my head, and broadcasting everything I say to God knows who. They're listening now, but I haven't told them where I'm going. And I pulled out the tooth that had the GPS tracking device, so they couldn't trace me here. See?" He grinned to show a bleeding gap in his left-side molars, and the receptionist gulped and cleared an appointment slot for him.

Since then, he'd turned up for cleanings every six months like clockwork, always paying cash ("or they'll find me, you know...") and usually with some new conspiracy theory to share. Last time he'd come in wearing a slightly more sophisticated take on a tinfoil hat, and it was only with difficulty that they had convinced him to remove it briefly so they could take x-rays. He wasn't wearing it today--a new conspiracy theory must have taken precedence. This time, he had a string of flashing cell-phone-like devices clipped to a web belt strapped across his body, bandoleer style.

As Karl passed through the waiting room, headed straight for the door without looking left or right, one of Old Man Barnes' devices came to life, red lights flashing and a loud, ear-piercing up-and-down siren. Old Man Barnes jumped to his feet and stood staring at Karl's retreating back. Other patients cringed, covering their ears, and one woman barged past Karl and out the door in a blind panic.

"Turn it off!" Dr. Mills demanded.

"Eh?" said Old Man Barnes.

"Make it stop!"

"Eh." As Karl exited, Old Man Barnes fiddled with the device until a sudden silence filled the room. He looked up at the door as it swung shut. "A nameless dread walks among us," he muttered.

"What is that thing?" Dr. Mills demanded, pointing at the device.

"Zombie detector," Old Man Barnes grunted. "Only has a range of about six feet right now. Been working on increasing the sensitivity."

"Oh," said Dr. Mills. He licked his lips with a tongue gone suddenly dry, and a chill trickled down his spine. He glanced at Melanie; she returned his gaze, expressionless.

"Linda," she called out with forced cheerfulness. "You're next!" There was just the hint of a quaver in her voice.

March 19, 2011

2011-03-19T18:30:00.000-07:00

Scrambled pencast

2011-03-18T09:26:00.000-07:00

Cats, Curiosity, and Peurile Paranoia

2011-03-15T16:21:00.000-07:00

1. Curiosity
Last night I went to bed way too late, after rigging up a temporary new drawband for the Lettera 33 out of beading wire stuff. It sort of works, but the carriage still feels wobbly, the margins still aren't catching most of the time, and the carriage occasionally stops short and has to be pushed by hand. It also isn't always locking into place...you can push it back and forth without releasing some of the time. So there's obviously something pretty wrong.

This morning, after tossing and turning all night worrying about the thing, I got up early and started in on cleaning the stinky, stinky case. I set the typewriter off to one side for the time being. I'd set the damp case in a warm place to dry and was getting ready for work when I heard a weird sort of sound coming from the living room. I went in to discover Halvah, who has never shown the slightest interest in my typewriters, mashing her head against the keys of the Lettera and purring. She'd gotten some of the keys jammed.

Blurry cell phone photo of Halvah at work...

And then she *fixed the jammed keys*. She was still poking at the thing when I left for work. Considering I haven't cleaned it up yet, I suppose she can't do much harm. It's already broken. I'm a little perplexed by her fascination, though.

2. Paranoia
Given all the people who could have commented on my misadventures but didn't, the paranoid portion of my psyche is picturing the denizens of the typosphere around a virtual water cooler, gossiping about me behind my back and looking down their noses at my stupidity (as if y'all don't have better things to do...)

"What an idiot she is, huh?"
"...got what she deserved."
"I'd offer advice, but I'm speechless. What a knucklehead."
"I'm glad *I* know better than to buy typewriters off eBay, even once every two or three years. Unlike *her*."
"*I'd* never spend more than $7 for a typewriter. They're everywhere, after all, no matter what she claims. I mean, I picked up six last week for thirty bucks!"
"Taking typewriters to a repairman is a sign of weakness."

In my defense against these imaginary critics, in the entire last year, I bought three typewriters, and I sold one of the three. I've taken a grand total of one typewriter in for repair, back in 2009. As for why I risked eBay, in all my years of looking, I've found about four manual typewriters at local thrift stores, three of which were late-model SCMs (my Galaxie is the one of the three I kept--the others were scrubbed clean and received new ribbons, but ultimately went to new homes) and the fourth was the Olympia SM-9 I sent off recently. I've never ever ever ever found an Olivetti Lettera of any kind locally, the closest to it being the Olivetti Studio I traded for at the type-in. It isn't a Lettera, and it wasn't truly local.

And as for repairs, as I confirmed last night, I don't have the patience, the skill, and (perhaps most importantly) the tools. There's only so much I can do with a five dollar mini-toolkit, a cheap hammer, and a pair of tweezers. It'd probably cost me as much to put together a decent work bench as it would to pay to have someone with good eyesight and, you know, actual skill.

Also, I don't have the luxury of having x number of a particular model so I can compare the broken with the functional.

I did at least *try* to fix it. Can I get partial credit for that, you faceless imaginary Internet naysayers??

Devastation (with updates)

2011-03-14T18:27:00.000-07:00

To begin with, the Lettera 33 smells like Stinky. But that, I expected. Also, it was packed with *nothing* around it...a few folded pieces of brown paper that did nothing except maybe keep the shipping box protected from the dirty case. And, though it may or may not have happened in shipping, it has several issues...and none of them things I feel hopeful I can fix on my own. The biggest one is that the carriage feels sort of wobbly, and the draw band is off, and although the whatchamacallit the draw band winds around still feels like the spring inside is working, it doesn't feel...right.

*sigh*

I should know better than to go near eBay.

On the bright side...um...the bright side? It came with a little Lettera 33 manual. Yay.

I guess there's always Blue Moon. Maybe this will have a happy ending after all. In the meantime, I guess I can concentrate on cleaning the case. I don't have the heart to work on the busted typewriter.

UPDATE (and this is precisely why I shouldn't work on my own typewriters): I fixed the draw band...sort of...for awhile...before everything went terribly south. The first time, the tension wasn't high enough, I don't think, because it would go about halfway across and then sort of lose steam. So I went to try again, and it was closer, but still too loose. So I tried another time. And *this* time, the screw I was using as a weight in order to lower the cord through the typewriter and attach it at the bottom of the carriage on the other side got stuck in the mechanism. And I can't get it out. At all. No amount of jiggling and tapping and yelling at it makes any difference. Neither did cutting the cord to it so the screw is in there all alone. The carriage is jammed to one side with that screw in there, and so far as I can see the carriage will need to come off to remove it, and there's no easy way to remove the carriage when you can't *move* the carriage. So not only do I still have to take it down to Blue Moon, but now I can't even take it in the case, and I have to admit what an idiot I am. I spent the better part of the evening trying to get the darned thing out, so I'm tired and cranky and I smell like mildew and I want to cry and maybe punch something.

So there's that.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: I got the carriage centered again. And I sort of rigged up a temporary draw band to let me play with it. The draw band doesn't work quite as it should...I probably still have the tension wrong, or it's too short. And the margins aren't working...maybe they weren't working to begin with, or maybe I busted 'em. In any case, I'm not attempting any further fixes on my own. On the bright side, from what little typing I can do...this is one comfortable, snappy little typer. Maybe all will come out right in the end...?

Anticipation...

2011-03-14T07:36:00.000-07:00

Today is the day the Olivetti Lettera 33 finally gets here!

The good news is that Fed-Ex Ground delivers to my work building first thing in the morning, so I won't have to wait nervously for hours before the package arrives.

The bad news is that Fed-Ex Ground delivers to my work building first thing in the morning, and there isn't a convenient time to stop and unpack and clean a typewriter in the midst of the work day, so I'll have to wait nervously for hours before opening the package.

It builds character, I suppose.

Rehashing, Revisiting and Re-reviewing

2011-03-10T10:02:00.000-08:00

For various reasons, I've found myself returning to some old posts, reviews, and thoughts, and I thought it might be fun to do a little recap post.

1. Remember this leather composition book cover I was so excited about? I'm still thrilled with it. For the last little bit I've mostly used it as a cover for my journal, since I keep coming back to using cheap composition books as journals--fancy notebooks intimidate me, I guess. The cord has held up well, the leather still feels and smells great and if anything has become more beautiful with time. I look forward to using it for years to come. Have any drawbacks arisen? One minor one, I suppose: it left what look like slightly oily spots on the inside cover of a few of the first notebooks that passed through it, maybe from the adhesive used where the edges fold under? A small price to pay for the use of that lovely leather, I'd say, but possibly a concern.

2. The Classroom Friendly Pencil Sharpener: a few months in, I'm still pretty psyched about this thing. I love the point it produces and the way it stops when a point is reached. No additional downsides have arisen since my initial review, but just to reiterate the two that I encountered: first and foremost, the gripping mechanism leaves little bite marks on the pencil, which may or may not bother you. Some days it bothers me more than others. Secondly, though this isn't really a fault of the sharpener and can happen with other sharpeners as well, if the pencil lead is off-center, the sharpener won't automatically stop sharpening after a point is reached...because the point will be lopsided and still sort of catch the mechanism. Just something to be aware of--if you run into a pencil that has this issue, just turn the crank a few times when sharpening and then stop.

3. Index cards: I admit, for story ideas, quick notes, poems, etc., I've mostly returned to using the small notebook I carry everywhere. Why? Because even though it's cluttered and jumbled and can't be reorganized, it's all in one place, bound together so it can't be lost unless I lose the whole thing (an idea so scary I refuse to let it fully take shape in my mind). I like being able to flip through it when I'm looking for inspiration, and not having to search for a card I used last week. I still use index cards a lot for to-dos, lists, addresses, etc., so they are always with me...but not as I had envisioned. I tried to use them for story outlining a few more times, and again found that no matter how much or how little detail I tried to include, once I started writing the story, the story veered away from any outline. Maybe this dooms me as a writer, I don't know. I have stacks of scene cards and character sketches that meant nothing four or five pages into the actual writing. Will this prevent me from trying again to plan ahead? Of course not. There's a fine line between an eternal optimist and a fool, and I walk that line.

4. My use of Circa things has also undergone some revision. I use Circa for my work notebooks quite a bit, since I like being able to move pages around and like that I can reuse scrap paper by just Circa punching it. I still use it some for binding typewritten pages, too: one of these days I'm going to put all my old typecasts into a Circa notebook, I think, since I can easily mix all the different sizes of pages I use for typecasts--not something I could do with a three-ring binder. But for everyday scribbling-in-a-notebook use, I keep coming back to the composition books. No, I can't reorganize the pages, which means I have page number references and arrows everywhere as I try to make sense of the jumble. But I like the size, the sturdiness, and they soothe my paranoia about pages going missing. And they're just so doggone cheap and friendly.

5. Yesterday I stumbled across a post I wrote about a lumberjack throw I made for my first little nephew, who's now...um...three. Actually had to check the date of the post to remember. Time flies when you're having fun! I had every intention of making several more of these in different color combinations for other family members, since they look pretty cool, work up pretty fast, and aren't too terribly difficult to do (I'm not exactly a master of crochet). I bought at least some of the yarn...but never started. Story of my life. Last night I decided to take the first step toward remedying this situation, and finished the first few rows of a second throw, which will use a slightly darker red. Crocheting is soothing--the rhythm of stitching, the feel of the yarn as it moves through your fingers, the way the piece slowly grows in your hands. Nice to come back to that.

The Penitential Psalms: Planning for a Lenten Pilgrimage

2011-03-06T17:15:00.000-08:00

Oh dear...

2011-03-05T10:10:00.000-08:00

Why, why, why do I do these things??

I appear to have acquired what is in all likelihood a candidate for the position of Stinky Jr. *sigh*

This is a prime example of why I should not be permitted to wander the halls of eBay unchaperoned. And unlike Stinky, I had clear photographs of the dirty stinkiness, so I have no excuse for my behavior. The second after I placed the opening bid, I started praying someone would outbid me, but they stopped short by about a dollar.

In my own defense, in several years of Lettera 22/32/33 stalking on eBay, I've rarely seen them go for under $50 not counting shipping, even when they're in poor cosmetic shape and described as non-functional. And it's the type pitch I was hoping for. And horribly, horribly filthy though the case is, the zipper looks intact. If it *only* needs a serious cleaning and maybe some general maintenance, it might not be such a bad deal. I can do cleaning (I have experience, for better or worse...) and I can postpone the trip to Blue Moon until it arrives just in case it has issues with ribbon reversal or other such common things.

Tentatively excited...'cause you know I've always wanted to be like Duffy and Ryan... It could be a total heartbreak...but maybe it won't be.

Wondering what that "CAMO" thing is all about. I reckon I need to come up with a good story or a means to cover it, 'cause it's likely to be questioned. A last name, maybe?

Midweek Update Just To Update

2011-03-03T18:56:00.000-08:00

The suffocation/choking picture I was talking about is this one...somehow he's become sort of our mascot.

To March, in sympathy

2011-03-02T07:49:00.000-08:00

Sent from Leo, a 1948 Royal Arrow, who arrived with the month. More on him later. My Royal slot is filled! (And aren't those commas beautiful?)

A sleepy morning sort of poem...

2011-02-27T07:01:00.000-08:00

Nice to just daydream for a few extra moments before getting up on a Sunday morning...though the daydreams always seem to get away from me!

A Mortifyingly Belated Introduction

2011-02-24T17:40:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of ITAM, I introduce and express my appreciation for my most loyal portable, the 60s Olympia SM-9...which really deserves a name! Shown here with Bernard, the SG-3 I no longer own.

The silver SM-9 should arrive at its new home tomorrow...can one ask for prayers for safe delivery when it comes to typewriters? Here's hoping it arrives intact and brings joy!

Cult Au Jus

2011-02-23T19:19:00.000-08:00

So...in my defense, the story in that last post seemed a lot better at five-thirty or six in the morning than it did a few hours later when it was too late to pretend it never happened. I'll do the next best thing and move on quickly...to something equally silly. I just never learn, do I?

Thursdays are French Dip day at the deli downstairs at work. And it is a seriously popular choice--sometimes seems like half the building lines up for some. I usually pack a lunch from home, but every now and again, I have to resort to buying lunch downstairs, and I admit, the French Dip is good...but the nonconformist in me is bothered by following the crowd, even when the crowd *could* be right.

Fat Guy Short Story

2011-02-23T07:49:00.000-08:00

Remember this?

This morning I decided to run with it. This is what I came up with. Click the link to read the whole deal on Google Docs.

“You can forgive a fat man a lot for the sake of a good suit:” that’s what my Dad used to tell me. We Costa men can’t seem to help being the fat guys. Doesn’t hurt our health any, mind you. My grandfather and his five brothers all lived to roly-poly antiquity, or are still hanging in there. Round is our shape, and there’s no fighting it.

I wrote the first draft on the Olympia SM-9, so I didn't completely cop out on the typewriters. ;)

In Which I Utterly Fail To Find Typewriters, But Still Have Fun

2011-02-20T08:50:00.000-08:00

Nice day yesterday. It was cold and windy, but beautiful clear weather. I can deal. So I set off on a bit of a ramble around Olympia, partly in search of typewriters.

The antique store wasn't open yet, so I stopped into our biggest local bookstore next door for awhile instead: Orca Books. I picked up a new copy of CS Lewis' Screwtape Letters, as my last copy appears to have gone walkabout. I probably gave it away to a friend or sibling and then promptly forgot, as I tend to do with favorite book titles. I also picked up our most recent book club book (The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon), looked at the blank books (oh, the pretty red Moleskines!) but refrained from buying any, and then came across these items, which I couldn't resist, even if the typewriter keys are erroneously lowercase and even if they missed an opportunity to display an Olympia.

By that point, the antique mall next door was open. It's called Finders Keepers, and it's one of my favorite places in town.

In my experience, there tend to be two different types of antique stores: one type sells primarily very high-end furniture and glassware and paintings--you walk in and the place is nearly bare, and beautifully arranged. Fun to look, but since I know I'm not likely to make a purchase in a place like that in my lifetime, I feel nervous being in those stores.

The other type of antique store is wonderfully cluttered and jumbled, and they sell all sorts of interesting old everyday things and things in fully-lived condition rather than just the valuable stuff. There are old tins and kitchenware, vintage clothing, all sorts of bits and pieces and souvenirs, toys, books...you name it. Finders Keepers is most definitely this last type of antique store. They sell items on commission for all sorts of different vendors, sectioned off in booths/cubicles throughout the store, and you just never know what you'll come across.

I usually see at least a few typewriters, though I've yet to purchase one here. Often they've been out of my price range, sometimes I've come across them during a buying moratorium. I only saw two on Saturday, neither of them quite worthy of taking home.

There was this electric Smith Corona--such a beautiful color! Too bad it isn't a manual...

And this Underwood, tucked away on a bottom shelf. It was $40, which I suppose isn't bad for an antique store find, but not exactly in superb condition. I don't think it was functional. They do look cool, though, don't they?

I also came across this old pencil sharpener! In retrospect, I should have moved that tag so the crank was visible. I'm not sure it actually works. If I had a place to display such a thing, I would have been very tempted to take it home...but I don't, so I didn't.

The best thing about this store, though, is the Book Nook.

Lots and lots of mostly old books: classics, poetry, old boys' adventure books, old mysteries, old cookbooks. Even the oldest and most ornate are generally very reasonably priced. I bought a copy of Brideshead Revisited, as my last copy, like Screwtape Letters, seems to have gone walkabout.

I did a little wandering around downtown Olympia looking for any other likely spots for typewriters, but the only other antique stores were 1) an antique store of the first sort and 2) a very tiny place that didn't open until one in the afternoon. What's up with that?

No typewriter content in the next stage: I went to The Tea Lady, which I highly recommend to any visitors to Olympia. If you like tea, or think you might like some tea, or if you're at all curious about tea varieties...it is THE tea store to visit.

It's hard to even convey just how much tea they have here. This is just one corner.

All of those bags and boxes are tea! They also have a tea bar at the back where you can buy freshly brewed hot or iced tea, or try samples of a few varieties. And they sell tea pots and mugs and electric kettles and various other kitchen gadgets. I browsed awhile and then bought the Harney and Sons Hot Cinnamon Spice I'd gone in for (it's like atomic fireball candy in tea form, though they'd probably be appalled by my saying so...) and some coconut chocolate black tea (it's good!).

Aaand that's about it. I went to two Goodwill stores, but didn't see so much as an electric typewriter, and then stopped by a Value Village since it's near the library where I was dropping off books, but they only had a 90s (?) Smith Corona electric, very banged up and dirty. Still, a good day overall!

The Little Flower Petals Tribe of Clickity-Clack

2011-02-16T19:15:00.000-08:00

Strikethru has thrown down the gauntlet and challenged the typosphere to show their cards. Wait...that's mixing metaphors, isn't it? I hate it when I do that.

Anyhow, here's my current stable:

1. Sebastian, the handsome green Olympia SG-1, which I took to Blue Moon/Ace Typewriter for repair and renewal awhile back. It is the typewriter by which all other typewriters are measured. Coolest feature: that giant paper load lever. It's amazingly handy. If I've been using that typewriter a lot, I do phantom passes for the lever when loading paper into other typewriters.

2. Stinky, who you've all come to know rather well. He's actually pretty clean now save for some rusty spots, though still a bit whiffy up close. Although a late model SM-9 and therefore uncool even by stodgy SM-9 standards, he really types nicely.

3. I have another SM-9 in a spidery pica typeface, shown here with Bernard, the SG-3 I used to own. I'm just realizing I've never done a full report on this SM-9, though it was one of the first typewriters I ever purchased and, now I think on it, the longest owned of the current lot. It is, like Strikethru's SM-9, a fully refurbished model, which I think inspires a certain amount of guilt in me. It types like new, though, and took on a just a little under half the work-load during my first typed NaNoWriMo. It should be allowed out more.

4. Then there is the third SM-9, found recently at a local Goodwill, with an 11-pt. typeface like Stinky's. It's one I often reach for when writing letters, because I know I can depend on it. Solid, stolid and reliable, this one. It is, however, currently in the Most Likely To Be Traded/Sold/Given Away spot. I really don't need *three* SM-9s, especially two with the same typeface, and Stinky is here to stay.

5. My homely little Galaxie holds a special place in my heart because of its resemblance to my first-ever typewriter. And despite its decidedly unromantic appearance, it is the poet of the bunch. Until I met this typewriter, I had never composed poetry on anything with a keyboard--it was always done by hand, and then eventually transcribed. But at least once in awhile, the words just come to me when I'm banging away on the Galaxie. It also won me the typing contest at the type-in. For that, I owe it one.

6. And finally, there is the newcomer: the Olivetti Underwood Studio 21 that followed me home from the type-in. It has the most beautiful typeface of them all in my opinion, and is quick and quiet. I'll get real pictures of it one of these days, when it isn't sleeting.

It has 1/4, 1/2, and even an @...but no exclamation point. Makes me laugh. And isn't that red heart the prettiest tab key you ever did see?

I still have three typewriters on my wishlist:
1. An old Hermes 3000 like the one I stupidly stupidly stupidly let go during last year's move. Preferably pica or maybe some sort of techno typeface.
2. A Lettera 32, in the same exact typeface as the Studio 21.
3. And some flavor of Royal, just 'cause the snappy action amuses me.

We're Famous! (More Snohomish Type-in coverage)

2011-02-14T11:50:00.000-08:00

There's an article at KIRO News Radio, for starters--I haven't listened to the audio yet, but I will after work today!

We made the Everett Herald as well! I was particularly pleased to see that poor l'il Stinky got his picture in the paper (photo 8, along with my Galaxie).

I'm still coming down from the weekend, and trying to think of excuses to keep up the typing momentum. For one, I'm thinking we should type up some letters of thanks to send to Uppercase Books, no? I really wish I lived closer to them: that is such a neat place to hang out. Old books, new books, internet access, and caffeine. What more could you ask for on a rainy Saturday afternoon?

Goodwill Fail/Win

2011-02-13T21:17:00.000-08:00

See it? :)

Bit hard to photograph in indoor lighting, but it's what I had. And yes, that blue-green one in the middle is flocked. Wearing blue velvet. Whatever you want to call it. Kinda gives me the heebie-jeebies, to tell the truth.

I'd like to think there's some sort of art project I could make using these things, but I'm not sure. To ponder.

Home from the Snohomish Type-in at Uppercase Books!

2011-02-12T19:29:00.001-08:00

We are, left to right: A Treatise on Pedestrianism, Manual Entry, Strikethru, me, and the event organizer, Justin of Snohomish Writer.

Making a list and checking it twice

2011-02-11T07:48:00.000-08:00

With all the typos that mark a true typecast...and then some. ;-)

NOTE: the "excursion" of course refers to this Saturday's type-in at Uppercase Books.

Typecast Poetry: Finis

2011-02-07T20:27:00.000-08:00

Been awhile since I did a poem, hasn't it?

And here are the "before" pictures--I tend to start poems as a bunch of phrases that come to me every which way, starting with one initial phrase (in this case, I've been carrying "Crazy candlelight" around with me for a few months now...just finally started picking at it until it came apart).

Seattle Area Lovers of Type: Come One, Come All!

2011-02-03T12:52:00.000-08:00

I'm guessing everyone has heard by now, but Justin of http://snohomishwriter.wordpress.com has organized a type-in on February 12th at Uppercase Books in Snohomish, WA. There is a beautiful flyer and everything:

I'm very much hoping to attend, especially since I apparently completely overlooked an earlier type-in in the area. Snohomish is quite a haul for me...so we'll see. With the new Android with GPS capability, I'm feeling a lot less scared than I could be, but it's still a lonnnng way over unfamiliar ground. But hey, it'd build character, right?

I don't have a sweetheart to write to, but I figure a sister will do. ;) Or I could always do a live sorta typecast thing.

In any case, it promises to be an exciting event, and I hope lots of folks come out!

Poetical Forecasting

2011-02-01T09:02:00.000-08:00

Gotta love it when the human element manages to shine through despite technology. My Forecastfox Weather extension in Firefox tells me tonight is going to be "Cold with a star-studded sky."

I'm guessing no weather-modeling computer thingamabob spit out that particular line. Makes me smile.

Modern Convenience Revisited

2011-01-31T06:31:00.000-08:00

Remember this? Well...that was pretty much my weekend. Ugh. I finally got rid of my giant old tube TV, which made scary popping and sparking noises the last few times I turned it on, starting in about July. Incidentally, it steadfastly refused to do so when I finally found someone to help me take it to be recycled, and he (the guy taking it away) asked me to demonstrate what was wrong...so now I'm all worried I got rid of it for nothing. But it took me several months to get someone to help me, and every time I'd dared try it in the meantime, it was making That Noise...so hopefully I did right. But in any case, the good behavior at the last moment adds fuel to the fire with regards to the obsessive thinking I've been enduring.

I'm getting a tax refund this year, so I was hoping to use that (with a little extra) to buy a very basic new TV, mostly just for DVDs and maybe streaming a few things from the computer. But gee-willikers TVs are complicated these days! Not only are there apparently about ten times as many brands as there used to be, but they come in way more sizes and price ranges, not to mention have more detailed specs than the average computer: refresh rates, sizes, resolutions, upscaling stuff to let them display regular older TV content (something like that), internet capability, and all sorts of other whatsits. And every single model has at least some people claiming it ruined their life and the customer service people of TV Company X kicked their dog and insulted their mother when they tried to ask for help. It's a scary world out there. And I'm now crippled by the fact that I have enough knowledge to be completely bewildered. Yay me!

I really hate on-line research. There's never one right answer. And for big ticket items, I hate the responsibility of choosing one single option. *sigh* As a friend used to put it, I want an angel with a flaming pie to swoop down to tell me what to do. And when it comes to guidance in consumer electronics, I don't think the heavens are really gonna spare me a flaming pie.

Current Pencil Related Reading

2011-01-30T16:45:00.000-08:00

1. Bear with me for a moment on this first one...there is pencil content, I swear!

If you've never read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, I would like to highly recommend it. It is so wonderfully, richly written. The characters are heartbreakingly real in all their hopes and all their flaws, moments of beauty and joy, shattered dreams and struggles. It feels almost like a very vivid biography rather than a novel...and to a great extent, I suspect it to be just that in disguise.

It takes place in the few decades of the 1900s, and the primary character is Francie Nolan, an intelligent, sensitive, imaginative little girl growing up in a poor Brooklyn neighborhood. Her imagination is a blessing and a curse to her: there's one particularly poignant scene in the first part of the book where she and her brother are waiting in line with other poor people to buy stale bread from the bakery--loads are brought back from the local stores and sold at a cut rate price, first come, first served. As they're waiting, she observes a group of old men sitting in the back, enjoying the warmth for awhile before joining the line fighting for the bread. She focuses on one man in particular, dirty and shabby and with holes in his shoes and ugly, thick-nailed toes peeking out, and thinks about the fact that once upon a time, he must have been a sweet little baby with little pink toes that his mother loved to kiss. Once he was a young man, and went courting. And so on. She imagines his whole life...and then the current moment barrels down on her, the way he is now, the seemingly inescapable result of poverty--and she suddenly feels that if she doesn't get away immediately, she will find herself instantly changed in the same way. She is thrown into such a panic that she has to rush out of the room.

More than anything, she wants to learn; she wants to know. She can't wait to go to school, to meet other children, to be given knowledge. There is pencil content here, too:

Most of all, she wanted "school supplies": a notebook and tablet and a pencil box with a sliding top filled with new pencils, and eraser, a little tin pencil sharpener made in the shape of a cannon, a pen wiper and a six-inch, soft-wood, yellow ruler.

I'm intrigued by the pencil sharpener in particular. I wonder, were tin novelty sharpeners common right then, or was this a fond childhood memory on the author's part?

But there's no actual mention of her getting such a thing right then, and when she gets to school she is unable to make friends, has to share a desk meant for one person with another student, and is treated with contempt by most of her teachers because of her impoverished background. The students are given a single pencil to use during the day, which is taken back from them after use:

She accepted with pride the pencil the monitor passed out to her in the morning and reluctantly surrendered it to another monitor at three o'clock.

If that doesn't make you appreciate the modern world and the relative wealth we all possess...!

OK, so the pencil content isn't a reason in and of itself to read this book...but it does make me smile.

2. More on-topic, the next library book on my to-be-read pile is Henry Petroski's work, The Pencil. It contains a full and detailed history of pencils, and the men whose names now grace so many of our favorites--Dixon, for example, and Eberhard Faber, and Faber-Castell. It explains mysteries such as why (in the US, at least) most pencils are yellow. From what I can tell in flipping through it, it gets a little technical in places (lots of detail on the development of lead composition, for example, and the mechanisms in early mechanical pencils), but nonetheless it appears to be a must-read for any lovers of writing instruments. I'm looking forward to it.

As a final note, I just got my hands on some General's Semi-Hex pencils. I look forward to playing with them over the next little bit. Woo-hoo!

Doing the Deek thing

2011-01-25T19:50:00.000-08:00

Just because I feel like it...a Deek-style sort of journal entry.

Yow.

2011-01-25T09:30:00.000-08:00

This, my friends, is a demonstration of an effective method for training your human to play fetch with you whilst Internetting.

Translation from the Siamese is, roughly, "Now, throw the ball. Throw the ball. NOW! THROWTHEBALLNOW."

In the beginning you may find that you need to repeat yourself, or you may need to drop the ball directly onto their keyboard to ensure they get the point, or you might perhaps add some Siamese curse words to the mix; but with time, your human will learn to do as they're told.

(Sorry about the long dead-air segment at the end of the track.)

I Resolve: A Typecast Reflection

2011-01-23T13:36:00.000-08:00

Brought to you courtesy of the SCM Galaxie Deluxe.