Micrology Monday

micrology ~ study or discussion of trivialities

Anybody else out there keep a journal? Anyone?

I’ve kept a journal off and on for most of my life. Normally my journals are some form of hard covered note book with lined pages - sometimes plain, sometimes fancy covers. While I love the idea of those awesome journals with the moleskin covers, they’re a little bit out of my price range, so I usually pick from whatever the nearest Chapters bookstore has to offer.

However, when it comes to pens for my journal, I’m a little pickier. In the beginning I vaguely remember using a fountain pen, as much for the coloured ink you could get as for the feel of the pen. However, the ink was totally washable and tended to fade easily.

At that point I started keeping an electronic journal. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but after a while I missed the tactile sensation of writing by hand. Now I have four or five years worth of my life locked away in password protected WordPerfect files which I am unable to access. Not only have I long forgotten the password, I don’t even have a program capable of opening them.

So I shopped around for a new pen and found the Pentel Superb pen, black ink only please. It was a slender fine point pen that had just the perfect glide to it. But then, of course, they stopped making them. It seemed to take me forever to find a replacement pen.

It couldn’t be just any pen, it had to fit properly in my hand and it had to have the right glide to it. Too fine a point and my hand would start to cramp after only a few minutes. To easy a glide to it and my handwriting became illegible. Markers were a little too bold, ball points tended to leave a residue behind.

Then I was in Staples (an office supply store) and there in the discount bin was a package of three Jetstream Retractable pens. The colours were green, indigo, and purple, but the shade was so dark it was almost black. Perfect! I’d been toying with the idea of adding a little colour to my journals and these pens would make a nice transition.

However, I started with the green one and I didn’t even get a whole page written before the ink began to sputter and faded right out. So I switched to the indigo one. That one lasted about three-quarters of the journal before giving up the ghost. So sad!

I tried looking for a replacement on-line and they just don’t make them anymore. I did see a bunch of pens that were insanely expensive though. They were nice and all, but not that nice.

I remember the office supply store Grand and Toy fondly. You could go into one and test various pens until you found the right one. Now they’re all sealed tightly in packages and you pretty much have to cross your fingers that it’ll be as good as it looks.

I did find three-packs of Jetstream Retractables, but not, of course in the colours I wanted. My choices were black, blue, red, or green. And the three colours looked a lot brighter than I was comfortable with. Basic black it is.

Just as soon as I can figure out how the darned things work. ;-)

On Pens . . .

This post is brought to you courtesy of an email in which a friend confessed that she'd tossed a bunch of pens. And not only did she toss them, she tossed them without even checking to see if they worked. I confess, there was a part of me that cringed.

I love pens. I have ball point pens and felt tipped pens, gel pens and sparkly ink pens. Fine point, medium point, markers . . . And it doesn't matter if they come from the dollar store or a high end business depot. All pens are worthy in my eyes.

This is the mug of pens that sits on my desk. Though to be fair, there's also a few mechanical pencils in there, a couple of swizzle sticks, and an orange peeler. And you can see the sonic screwdriver front and center. :-D

When I was going through a few plastic bins in my office on the weekend (with an eye to getting rid of some of the clutter) I found one bin that was filled with stuff from my desk when it had the hutch with all its wonderful little cubby holes in it. One of the things in this bin was a glassful of pens.

Keeping my friend in mind, before incorporating them into my pen stash, I checked them out first to see if any of them worked. Two things to keep in mind here. First, they've been in that bin for more than five years. Probably closer to ten. And second, the bin itself was on the lower shelf of the bookcase right under my window, and right above the heat vent.

The pile on the left are the pens I *gulp* tossed because they no longer worked. Yes, even the bright blue one in the middle that had the laser pointer built in (the laser wasn't working either). The pen in the middle is a Pentel RSVP and it is still working. So if anyone out there wants to stock pile pens, that's the one to stock pile. They come in a variety of colours too. The pen on the right is my alien pen that lights up with a red light when you press down on it. It doesn't work but I'm keeping it anyway 'cause it's so cool. :-)

Now this next picture shows the leftover pens that don't fit in my goblin mug:

See that white and red ball point pen in the upper half? The white part is a light. You have to click it about three times to get the light to come on, but it's really cool. I should keep it upstairs on my nightstand for when I get ideas at night.

I got that pen from my hubby. He and his brother own their own business and they used to get a ton of free pen samples from different companies all wanting them to use their pens for advertising. To keep me from stealing their regular pens (not that it ever really worked) he'd bring some of them home for me.

Now these are the pens I keep hidden in my desk drawer so no one steals them:

Mostly highlighters and fine point markers that I use in editing, but there are a few with coloured ink for (theoretically) writing letters with. If you look carefully at the plastic baggie on the left, you can see my last remaining fountain pen (the big black pen).

I once had a love affair with fountain pens, back when I was a teenager. There was just something so romantic about them . . . My colour of choice was either peacock blue (which was hard to find) or green. And if you look in some of my really old files, like writing I did in highschool, you might even stumble across a draft or two that was written with a fountain pen.

But the problem with fountain pens, at least the ones I had access to, is the ink isn't waterproof. And trust me, there's nothing romantic about sweating over the draft of a story, only to have it disappear if you happen to be caught in the rain.

For a long time my favourite pen was a black fine point with a slim barrel. But I find as I'm getting older and it gets harder to hold onto a pen, I'm starting to like a wider barrel on my pen, like the Pentel RSVP in the picture. Gel pens . . . I have to be in the right mood for a gel pen, but I have three of them in some really unusual colours that I don't want to use for fear of using them up because they're from a discontinued line. And fine point markers are great for, well, marking things up.

So what about you? Do you have a favourite pen? Tell me all about it . . .