Wednesday, June 29, 2016

I has new pens!

I've been craving new pens for a while.  And new, pretty inks.  It wasn't helped by Odysseus suggesting that the next volume in the Liquid Diet Chronicles (to be written after I finish the current project of the 4th, but CLEARLY not last Modern Gods book, at this point in the writing process) should be done in a burgundy or dark crimson.

Anyhow, I resisted the temptation...and then I gave in.  Odysseus told me to go ahead and make the order I was considering from Goulet Pens, and I did.  I ordered a Platinum Preppy because I've heard a lot about the silly little $4 pens (yeah, they're cheap, and kinda ugly, but damn do they write well), a TWSBI vac mini (it posts, was a little bit less than the full sized one, and something I'd been really wanting for a while, now), a sample of Noodler's Black Swan in English Roses (gorgeous, water-resistant red burgundy), and a full bottle of their Red-Black (which looks like you wrote in blood, and it dried).

I hadn't ordered pens or ink for myself in about a year.  And Odysseus told me that this was my early (but not by a lot) anniversary present.*

I also ordered a set of Jinhao shark pens for my imp, who held his grades to all A's and B's (with the exception of his handwriting, which is still better than his daddy's).  My imp, who loves snitching my fountain pens, and requests a few inked up with his favorite colors every so often, gave me one of his set of seven pens, and gave the pixie another.  And the dumb little things are absolutely spectacularly nice writers.  The little black shark in Chinese fine (finer than European fine) is incredibly smooth.

In any case, my fingers are ink-stained a bit, I have spatters on my left shin from where I dropped an ink syringe that I was using to fill a converter from a sample vial for the pixie, and I couldn't be happier.

In other news, my local Walmart had finally restocked their smaller Pen+Gear brand smaller 5-subject notebooks.   Hadn't happened in a while, and my current favorite is that particular notebook that I'd written out the rough of Bite Sized in (I'm excited--that book has eight reviews, more than any single one of my other books, and all are 5-star), and am working through drafting Gods and Monsters in the second section.  Walmart had three left.   

Had.

I now have those notebooks in mint green (my old one), royal blue, red, and black. 

I also snagged a package of their top-spiral memo books and mini-comp-books (same size as the little spiral books)--at $0.88 cents a pack (three in the comp book pack, four in the spiral memos), it was worth a try.  I'm shocked and thrilled by how well they stand up under fountain pen ink, and am now questioning my choice to give the kids one of each out of the two packages to go with their new composition books.

Hi, my name is HH, and I'm a pen and paper nerd.  And I share the voices in my head with anyone who wants a listen.  

*I've already collected part of his Father's Day gifts, and know what I'm doing for his anniversary presents. 

I didn't need this.

So.  We've been having some issues with the imp.  Major boundary pushing issues.  Yes, he's closing in on eight, so it is to be expected.  That does not make it any less infuriating.

Several weeks ago, he got some of his Transformers toys confiscated.  One was a complicated blue Corvette.  That one was the core of the issue: two weeks ago, he'd earned it back through good behavior.  All he had to do was wait until Friday evening.

He didn't.

Instead, he got the step-ladder step-stool, got it down, and put another the same color in its place.  And then, he lied about it.

That got both toys put in the trash, and the trash taken out to the dumpster.

Two mornings later, the imp has a Transformer--playing with it on the couch while watching Transformers.  I'd slept in, assuming (like an idiot) that the kids were trustworthy.  He told me Daddy had gotten it down for him, and the pixie told me the truth: that he'd gone outside, dug through the dumpster for the bag it was in, and pulled it out.

That.  That got him in really big trouble.  He got banned from TV for the rest of the day, got all of his Transformers toys taken away from him until school starts, and got him banned from watching Transformers until school starts.  And then that got delayed, because he started nagging us about it.

Yesterday morning, he snuck out of his room a little before five in the morning (against the rules--they're not allowed to get up and stay up until six at the earliest), found the remotes and turned on the TV (also against the rules--they're not allowed to do that until after Odysseus leaves for work around half past seven), and watched an episode of Transformers: Robots in Disguise on Netflix (which we only found out about by checking the history).  When confronted, he lied and denied it.

If he hadn't deliberately disobeyed, then lied about it, he'd have only been banned from TV for the day, like his sister was.

I also told him that the next time he lied to me at all, he'd lose all his blocks, and all of his wood rails.

Guess what got confiscated this morning?

Going by his record, he's going to end up with nothing but his bed, desk, books, lamp, dresser, and clothes in his room within the next two weeks.

I so don't need this to deal with right now. 

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Visionary.

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded--here and there, now and then--are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck."
--Robert Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

The floor is open for discussion.