February 2005 Archives

It looks like there must be some kind of bug going around. First Bruce got sick with a bad cold, and since he's never sick for years at a time, it really hit him like a ton of bricks. THEN, it's my turn catch the cold. Needless to say, we've been spending the week mostly trying to rest up, eating chicken noodle soup and trying to do the best one can at work. Since he started his new job, he doesn't really have any sick leave.

I went into work when I would have been better off just staying at home since I have plenty of sick leave and it was Friday anyway. It's the machoism in me, I guess. So today we just slept in, went over to Bob Evans to get breakfast since we really weren't in the mood to cook, and then went back into bed. Hopefully we'll feel a lot better tomorrow. I just can't wait for winter to be over.

Meanwhile, now that I have a new home for my domain, I've been searching out plugins for Movabletype. I recently came across this interesting plugin - MT Blogroll. This is just what I needed. All the while, I've been cutting and pasting into the template to create the list to the left of this post. It's time-consuming, though, because it requires several steps. This way you just go into blog admin view and paste in the title and URL, or open up a bookmarklet that is supplied in this plugin when you see a blog you want to save and the bookmarklet will copy the needed info - you just click Save and then Rebuild. So now I'm going through the blogs and saving it into my Blogroll table. Not that bad, really, I just went into the template, copied the code for the blogs, did a search/replace to add target=_blank; I've got Safari set to open links with “_blank” in a new tab.

Needless to say, this hasn't been a good month for knitting - I do miss it. But I will back at it before too long, I'm sure. I just can't wait for spring to come - it will be wonderful to see all those flowers peeking out in my garden.

There are many brave bloggers in Iran, and several of them have been arrested, and some released. Simply because they dared speak their mind. Now, Arash has been sentenced to 14 years in prison. This is a truly outrageous sentence. One has to fear for his life because of what has happened to other bloggers while in detention, being tortured and forced to write false confessions. So . . . here's where you can go to find out more:

As a child, I remember my grandfather's pens. He had beautiful handwriting, and he always had a nice-looking pen in his shirt pocket. He tended to use both ball-point and fountain pens. However, for several years before he passed away, he had senile dementia and gradually lost interest in his hobbies, playing violin and doing crossword puzzles.

Recently I came into possession of pens that he owned. Thee are not in the best conditions, since these hadn't been used for over 10 years. Also, one of the pens grandfather had given to me when I was a child, and mother kept it for me.

So . . . here's the pen that he gave to me:

I've learned that it is a Parker Vacumatic. There should be two bands at the lower end of the cap. There's a fracture in that area so that may be why the bands are missing.

At the end there is a push button, which I've been told is a replacement:

And here's a Parker Duofold:

Obviously, it's not in the best of shapes. This is mandarin yellow, and apparently caps in this color have a flaw that causes this to happen. But properly restored, it can be fixed.

And looking at this you can tell that it is old.

Parker Duofolds are supposed to be top of the line and very durable. I'm really looking forward to trying this out once it is restored.

Finally, here's a Sheaffer PFM:

Supposed to hold a large supply of ink. You just untwist the cap, dip in the pot of ink, push down once and it will drink up all the ink it needs. Due to it's being unused for years, and I think there's dried ink inside, I can't get it opened. It will need to go to a pen spa as well.

Fortunately, I've got other pens that I can use. But of course, I'll be impatiently waiting for these to be restored.

Web hosting service got hosted, then couldn't rebuild the software needed to run the blog, so I had to move over to another one.

Just what I need - another obsessive hobby. You see, I've become fascinated with fountain pens. I don't know what triggered this. Perhaps it was the fact that Grandfather gave me a Parker years ago and my mother had held it for me until I was older and more responsible. Perhaps it was the look of a sheet of paper covered with writing using a fountain pen as compared to writing with a ball point. Perhaps it was the incredible range of ink colors that are available.

And, it does seem more environmentally appropriate . . . instead of filling up the landfill with discarded ball point pens, one can get by with an attractive pen, an converter and a bottle of ink. True, if you get the paper wet the ink will smear. But I've found this company that is based in US, Noodler's Ink, which makes ink that are supposed to be water proof after the writing has completely dried. The guy who owns the company is dedicated to his goal of eventually producing 88 colors and is always tinkering with the formula in search of better ones. Plus it's very economical - 3 ounces for just about 10 dollars or so. The best price I've found is from Swisher's Pen. Customer service is great, as well.