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Day’?s Verse:
Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.
They will be a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck.
Proverbs 1:8-9
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One evening as I sat doing homework my Junior year in high school, my mom came into the room with something in her hand. She set it on my desk, and I saw that it was a fountain pen, still in its packaging, along with a couple ink cartridges. I had commented before in passing that I thought fountain pens were pretty cool, but never expected to actually handle one, let alone own one. Mom explained that she had found it among my Grandma Sullivan’s belongings, but Grandma didn’t have any use for it. Thus was I united with my first-ever fountain pen, a rather ugly thing made in West Germany in the 1980s. At first, I used it as a novelty and scattered drops of ink behind me like bread crumbs. Eventually, though, I came to love the feel of writing with a fountain pen, and it became my primary — and, ultimately, sole — writing instrument type. No more ballpoints or rollerballs for me; pencils have their place, but not very often in my writing world. Throughout college I slowly collected fountain pens, purchasing them to mark special occasions: I received one on my and Ian’?s first anniversary at the Columbia Winery; I bought one in Paris during my MQP; we bought one in Boston on a romantic weekend away around Valentine’?s Day in 2006; I received one for Christmas from my grandmother-in-law; I received one for college graduation; and at least a couple others I bought or found. Now I have about eight fountain pens, including one I leave at work for all work-related writing. Continue Reading >>
The weather for today is predicted to be “Definite Haze.” I suppose that’s what the sticky, humid, bluish tint to the air is called. It makes breathing harder and sweating profuse but useless. Water has condensed inside my front headlight, causing it to randomly start flashing of its own accord. The hot weather advisory actually recommends avoiding outside work and staying in air-conditioned buildings. Ian and I sweated uncomfortably through the night and woke sticky and unrefreshed, with the depressing prospect of more such nights on the horizon. This is weather that strikes my Seattle-bred mind as pretty darn unnatural. 
