Yesterday I was asked independently by two friends to recommend fountain pens to newbies, and this morning a third mentioned it and nudged me into making a post after I showed her The Atlantic's "How the Ballpoint Killed Cursive."*

The article does a good job answering the question of "why fountain pens?" I initially got into fountain pens for the colors and the temptation of yet more stationery, but that only got me in the door. What turned me into an exclusive fountain pen user was how much less pressure I needed to write, and how much easier it makes writing in cursive, or writing for long periods of time. I never liked ballpoints to begin with, finding the ink waxy, chunky, the points scratchy, and I was always hunting for a better pen. If you're not a fountain pen person and want to know what I do recommend, I like rollerballs and gel pens, notably the Uni-ball Vision Needle and the Uni-ball Signo. If you are curious about fountain pens, this post is for you.

As a lefthanded overwriter, I thought hand pain was par for the course, but in the course of using a fountain pen I learned two things. 1) It's all the pressure I used to make my chicken scratch, and 2) apparently everyone taught to write after the 1950s has been taught to finger write, which strains the hand. Yes, while researching left-handed writing solutions I learned that we're all writing wrong, and it's largely thanks to the mechanics of ballpoint pens.

Which isn't to say that fountain pens will cure all your ills; it's just why I like 'em and why I recommend 'em.

On to the bit everybody wants to know. What do I buy?

There are many "best fountain pens for beginners" posts floating around out there, and they all look a little something like this:

Pilot Varsity: $3
Platinum Preppy: $3
Pilot Kakuno: $13
Pilot Metropolitan: $15
Pelikan Junior: $16
Platinum Plaisir: $20
Pelikan Pelikano: $20
Kaweco Sport: $24
Lamy Safari: $28

Almost any "top five beginner fountain pen" list will be mostly made up of these pens. There are other pens in the same price range - various Jinhaos, some Sailors - which will occasionally make an appearance, but for the most part, these are it. Partly it's because these make up the bulk of "less expensive" pens.

To me, a nearly $30 pen is not a beginner's pen, but I'm a Millennial and many of my peers don't have that kind of money to spend on a lark. So if you're looking for the quick and dirty, here are my actual recommendations for a beginner:

Pilot Varsity: $3
Platinum Preppy: $3
Pilot Kakuno: $13
Pilot Metropolitan: $15
Pelikan Junior: $16
Platinum Plaisir: $20
Pelikan Pelikano: $20
Kaweco Sport: $24
Lamy Safari: $28

My usual spiel goes a little like this: how much are you looking to spend? Because you should really try the Platinum Preppy. It has a fantastic nib, is one of the most non-fiddly pens I have, and the seal on the cap means I'm not even sure it's capable of drying out. I once had a cartridge in there for 6 months.

If you're able to spend the $20, go for the Plaisir. The Platinum Plaisir has the exact same innards as the Preppy, but an aluminum body rather than a plastic one, making up for what appears to be the Preppy's only flaw: the plastic cap is prone to cracking. If you want to get a converter, you may as well get the Plaisir and a converter because anything over $25 gets you free shipping from JetPens.

BTW: a converter is a refillable ink reservoir that goes in your pen. A cartridge is not refillable (without tinkering) and nearly all pens come with one so you can start writing right away.

But mostly: get a Preppy. And tape the cap.

I will add some love for the Pilot Kakuno. I've just started playing with it, and it writes like silk. It is a children's pen, so it has a molded grip which may be a turn off for some, but it doesn't stop me as an hook-writing southpaw. I can't say much else about it, so I won't recommend it as enthusiastically as I do the Platinums, but so far, it is nice.

The Pilot Varsity shows up on the beginner lists because it's the easiest of easy. It's basically a regular disposable pen with a nib on top. There's no cartridges, no nothing, to mess around with. It writes exactly like those colorful pens we all used back in middle school. Personally, I find the grip rather uncomfortable compared to the Preppy and I don't think popping on a cartridge is all that taxing for a beginner. Honestly, you're going to have to learn some pen maintenance anyway so may as well start with the Preppy because who cares if you ruin it.

I love the Safari (I have two, I am a sucker for limited edition colors) but at $28 I think it's out of most first timers' price range. It is, however, worth every penny.

The reason I don't recommend the Jinhaos is because they're knock-offs. Not bad knock-offs, mind you, they are excellent pens for the price, but they're not as good as some other pens and most people recommend swapping the nib for something like the Goulet #6, which sounds like gibberish to most people.

The Sailor Clear Candy was actually my first non-Preppy fountain pen and I had a bit of trouble with it because of the barrel grip and the way I hold pens. I like them now, but I probably wouldn't recommend them to a beginner. Also, at $18, you're probably better served by grabbing something else. Also also: I hate screw-caps.

And finally: how do you write with a fountain pen?

Pretty much like any other pen. Fiddle around with it in your hand until you find the angle at which it puts ink on paper. Continue as normal. Same for choosing nibs. I recommend getting a fine or medium depending on how thick you like your pen to write (medium is closer to the standard 0.7 mm pen).

Congrats on buying a pen virtually no one in the office will steal because they all find it too intimidating!

Next up: Pen Maintenance, or in the alternative, When Did I Touch the Nib and How Did That Ink Get There.

*How the Ballpoint Killed Cursive.

This entry was originally posted at http://damselfish.dreamwidth.org/86616.html.

I’ve seen a couple mentions of converting a Sailor Clear Candy to an eyedropper pen, but I haven’t seen anyone actually do it. So here is my contribution to the world of fountain pens: I have converted a Clear Candy to an eyedropper.

I already have another and I really do like this pen from among the under $20 selection. At $16.50, it’s just inexpensive enough where I have no qualms potentially butchering one.

The cap at the bottom of the barrel means that the pen isn’t watertight, and I’ve heard people mention superglue as a potential means of sealing it. I just so happened to have aquarium silicone, which is meant to seal water in/out and adhere to things, so I used that. It went pretty well except I smeared a bit inside the barrel, where it will be forever. Oops.

A little bit of silicone grease on the threads and I’d made the seal and tada! Eyedropper conversion. If you use an o-ring you can’t screw the cap back on, and I don’t see any leakage problems anyway.

If you’ll notice, the ink does seem to dribble out the nib if you turn the pen upside down (I did for about 5 minutes to get it to start based on my experience with some Noodler’s eyedroppers). I’m not sure if this is a Clear Candy thing or if it’s part of being an eyedropper, as my other Sailor is opaque. There’s no further dribbling from the nib and after a week of use this has been a very well-behaved pen overall.

A+ would recommend converting if you’re the sort that likes eyedropper pens.

( the pen in questionCollapse )

This entry was originally posted at http://damselfish.dreamwidth.org/86410.html.

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to post some pictures, but here’s my green cheek conure, Coquí!



Even before I got the bird, people asked me what I intended to name it, but I’m one of those people who believe that names reveal themselves. I was originally thinking “Uffizi” or “Chickadee” because I am of the firm opinion that a bird’s name should be fun to say.

Then the bird came home and began… croaking. Soft little frog sounds. I couldn’t call her Froggie, but then I remembered that my grandmother loves the little coquís. Even though my bird is much quieter than a coquí frog, Coquí she is!

I went through a whole host of name possibilities with my sister, and she said “those all sound like nicknames.” “I can’t name the bird Sir Birdington of Avianhamshire!” “Why not?”

I admit, she made a compelling point. My bird should be landed and properly titled.

Coquí still makes those little frog sounds, but she’s been adding more to her repertoire: a buzzing fart noise, a wide assortment of grumbles, and tiny “skree!” cries, especially when she’s getting rough. I haven’t heard a lot of the sounds I hear from green cheeks on youtube, but that may come with time. Or not, she lives in a relatively quiet house and gets the most response to her croaks (because they’re so cute). She’s still a baby, so every day is some new behavior.

Which… often causes me to wig out. I did a lot–possibly too much–research on parrots before I decided to get one, so I’m often on the lookout for behavior that needs to be nipped in the bud. “Is this aggressive, or is she playing?” is something I ask myself at least daily, because green cheeks have three settings:

1) Cuddly
2) Hungry
3) FIGHT ME

All these settings may exist simultaneously. I have learned that FIGHT ME means “play with me!” because she’s a bit of a rough and tumble bird. I learned that none of her behaviors are aggressive but she is occasionally giving me a bit of sass. I have seen advice that says never ever ever let a bird engage in any sort of aggressive behavior because it will grow up thinking it’s dominant,* but this is just the bird trying to entice me to play (according to the vet). This lesson was driven home because after a little too much strutting around the keyboard, she’d start regurgitating.

“No way, bird, you’re 3 months old, you are not trying to mate with me.” So I called the vet to find out what could possibly be happening. That could be head bobbing, maybe she’s hungry, bring her in to get weighed! I spent the day fretting that I was starving my bird, and when I went to the vet the diagnosis was in: birds are weird, and she likes me lots. Diagnosis proven because a few days later, the head bobbing resulted in successfully bringing food up from her crop.

Remember this post with the adorable baby green cheeks?

“Does my bird like me that much?” I wondered.
Coquí: *barf * I saved u dis cheerio. I earned it for being good at step ups.

Thank you, Baron Coquí. For being cute, less so for the chewed up cheerios.

*There’s a lot out there about parrots and dominance theory, which seems to be mostly bullshit.

**For those interested in a few more pictures, I have them on the tumblr post here.

This entry was originally posted at http://damselfish.dreamwidth.org/86265.html.

Unforeseen Consequence of Having a Bird, Exhibit 238:

Having a bird that likes to spend hours on your shoulders and the back of your neck means you get really great at squats because you don't want to bend over to pick stuff up off the floor for fear of disturbing it.

My legs are gonna be so awesome, y'all.

This entry was originally posted at http://damselfish.dreamwidth.org/85935.html.

My new apartment is next to a golf course and on a canal. It's only about 60 miles north of where I used to live, but it may as well be another country for the sound scape. I grew up on a canal, which means I can pick out an osprey's call right away, but the other sounds I hear are totally foreign.

And there are a lot of contenders.

A mute swan patrols the area in front of my balcony, unperturbed by the people who stop to photograph them (myself included).

American coots cackle over some private joke.

There's even wood storks out here, and I spotted a kingfisher!

I also hear honest-to-god bird song, which I have never heard in Florida.

But what caught my ear were two calls, which I dubbed the Aggressively Disappointed Squeaky Toy, and the Sqwak.

I'd hear the Squeaky Toy every night, and the Sqwak around morning and evening, but I had never in my life heard a bird sound like that, and I have heard lots of birds. Especially Florida birds. Finally, with my fresh new internet, I started googling. It took a lot of googling.

Meet the Squeaky Toy, also known as the limpkin. I'm pretty pleased with this one, because I saw a bird a few days ago and went "yup, that there is a limpkin." Why do I know what a limpkin is? Hell if I know.



And the Sqwak, the black-crowned night-heron. I don't recall having seen a night-heron around here, but I'm not surprised.

I am in Delray!

The move has been a rather hilarious clusterfuck the whole way through and I'm shocked I have yet to be reduced to tears at any point. I have neither furniture nor internet, and on hearing this my boss said "what do you do!?" "I read books." "Oh, well, that's intellectual, at least!" "Depends on the book...." (swan_tower, why couldn't Basilisk come out last week instead of next!?)

I have attempted to procure the coaxial cable to obtain internet but apparently Office Depot no longer sells them because they've been phased out. Everyone uses HDMI. ...I have never seen an HDMI port in a wall. Apparently Comcast would have set it up for me but I only paid for internet and bought my own modem. I am one of those cable cutters, moreso because I only have cable right now due to inertia (it's part of my condo's maintenance fee. I barely watch anything as it is).

I can't believe it's only Wednesday. I feel like I've been going nonstop. Except I can't have been because I have all that enforced downtime with no internet or tv or anything, just sitting in quiet with the window open, listening to waterbirds outside.

There's one that sounds like an aggressively disappointed squeaky toy.

I went to see a doctor yesterday, who I hadn’t seen in a month and I needed to catch her up on everything that’s happened this March.

And I realized that I have had a whirlwind of a month. I have this tendency to keep plodding along through life (which will serve you well in law school) no matter the stressors that come at me, and I haven’t thought about how much has happened in the past, oh, twenty days.

- New job starts Monday, with all the feelings that go along with that
- My mother goes in for surgery on Monday
- I move after having three weeks of notice to find a place
- I went to appeals court for the car accident case last Thursday and I was totally freaked out about it. The case ended up all but being laughed out of court and the only question I got was “do you have anything to add to… that?” re: the testimony of the uninsured driver who struck me. “That” indeed
- I received amazing writerly news that I cannot share with you yet
- I was tested for low thyroid and yup, it’s low, the constellation of symptoms make a lot of sense now (I should’ve listened sooner when my doc said I should test my thyroid because that can cause depression, but no it was when I asked my dermatologist “yo is my hair thin or what” and she said “I can test your blood right here!” Vanity.)

Despite all this, I spent most of my time feeling like I wasn’t doing anything, and laying it out like that in a monthly view instead of daily journaling really drives home the point that I am terrible at maintaining perspective over how I spend my time.

Now if only I could keep that in mind when I take some downtime and I worry that I’m wasting my life.

Anyway, this is my last post from Miami-Dade! Next stop, Palm Beach County.

I really should update more, but I get trapped in that place of thinking that I have nothing worthwhile to say and that there's little in my real life that I should talk about (because either I try to keep real life separate or because I worry it's boring). Or, mostly, I write blog posts and work and then forget to post them when I get home. OOPS. Unless you really want The Pen Story.

But I have news.

I GOT A NEW JOB! I got a damn good job, from what it looks like, in a rather unexpected (but unsurprising) field. My experience in medicine has garnered more interest from employers than anything else I've done--regardless of what those employers actually do. Nearly everyone's asked if I can read medical records. "I do that all day." "Oh good, so you're not squeamish?" "...Hmmm, I want to tell you the turkey-tumor story but instead I'll tell you that I've done a lot of eye cases, that's pretty squidgy, if not as hilarious as the turkey-tumor." Growing up with doctors will warp your sense of what makes other people squeamish.

It also means I have to move. I've applied to jobs all over, got really excited for some of the ones out west. I'd love to move to Utah and be able to go hiking through the mountains every weekend. Well, turned out the job is a couple counties north of where I am now--still in Florida, so all the trouble of moving but none of the new, exciting possibilities of somewhere different. Except the town looks very cute and beachy, and very "Florida" in a way that Miami isn't, so I am super excited about moving. Sad to be leaving my condo of perfect perfection, but happy about a new place that looks like it may be a little more my speed.

I CAN HAS JOB.

This entry was originally posted at http://damselfish.dreamwidth.org/85538.html.

Do I need to write Wild West Succubus Vigilante stuff?

Probably, if this conversation with the irreplaceable Lora is anything to go by:

Lora: Rachel Manija Brown’s LJ cracks me up. her meme question is “most ridiculous plot twists” —
“There are bizarre premises (“I will break every bone in my body because then they’ll grow back stronger and I WILL BE INVINCIBLE”), the sheer weight of ridiculousness in a single book (the bone-breaking book also featured the near-death of the hero’s milk-allergic brother when the hero’s cheating girlfriend ate pizza, then kissed the brother), the sudden intrusion of absurdity into a previously non-bizarre book (two-thirds sensitive exploration of sketchy power dynamics, one third EVIL BALL OF MASKED S&M SMALL PRESS POETS), and unwanted intrusions by the author’s peculiar id (of course the most desirable whores have hooves.) Not to mention Terry Goodkind's infamous evil chicken. How to choose?”

me: ....I... want to know more about the hooved whores
what?
what kind of whores are they?
horse-whores?
demon whores?
human whores who just happen to be hooved? Cloven or single-toed?

I AM SO CURIOUS NOW

Lora: HAHAHA I AM KIND OF CURIOUS

me: LIKE I CAN'T LET THIS GO

Lora: HAHAHA MAYBE SHE WILL ELABORATE

me: I HOPE SO
but I'm sure the answer is not as exciting as the cursed-to-be-a-succubus-cowgirl-who-turns-vigilante I am now imagining

Lora: ahahahah omg that’s an amazing premise

me: and the title! The Best Whores Have Hooves! shit writes itself!

This entry was originally posted at http://damselfish.dreamwidth.org/85389.html.

I am not into New Years Resolutions--I frequently resolve or challenge myself to do something all throughout the year, with limited success, and New Years is the time when resolutions fail. But I've got a big one I wanted to share:

I'm on Goodreads again! Are you on Goodreads? Come on down and friend me! Also recommend some books to me, because I decided to try the "read X many books" challenge. I picked 36, so three books a month, which seems do-able. I have no clue how many books I read in a year. Sometimes I'll read a book in two days, other times I'm slogging through them for weeks. I used to be voracious and stopped reading in law school, and I've been trying to rebuild the habit ever since.

I'm also trying to read in more genres for that whole... be a better well-rounded human being. Thing.

( other resolutions, sort ofCollapse )

This entry was originally posted at http://damselfish.dreamwidth.org/85241.html.