weather	:		clear
outside	:		18.0°C
mood	:		calm

I kept a "Book of Shadows" through highschool. I just transcribed poems, beautiful literary exerpts and other stuff that I liked into it. I've referenced that book for poetry and neat stuff over the years.

I had a good time writing in my little Book of Shadows. It was a nice, solitary activity. The parents were just fine with it. What more could I ask for? What more could THEY ask for?!?! =) There was no pressure to make stuff up, no pressure for it to be good and no writer's block problems to overcome. And I didn't have to analyse the literary works to death, there would not be a test at the end of the poem. I'm not a creative person. I can feel inspiration, but it's not in my nature to write. I letter, I pen, I don't write.

There was definitely a shift in maturity level of the things I thought were cool from the short, cute rhymie things near the beginning to the longer, more grown up cool things in the later pages: The Highwayman, all the Robin Hood poems, Paul Revere's Ride, Edgar Allen Poe, Li Bai, Faraday's Law of Induction (it sounded INCREDIBLY cool to me at 15, uh-kay?!), and on and on.

From time to time, I wonder why I don't have more of these books. I think I'd like to try starting another one. It might make some interesting handwritten posts =)

I was also thinking about getting a good pen to do this with. I don't know if this is a part of growing older but, more and more, I'm finding comfort and satisfaction in owning quality, heirloom-ish, investment-ish material objects. Sure, I don't need them and I certainly don't need to be spending hundreds of dollars for a freaking writing stick, but there's a "measure of success" feel to it and even a small amount of companionship in these possessions. I'm beginning to understand it in my old age.

I suppose I shouldn't be too stunned by the lack of high-end writing instrument aficionados on LJ or on the internet in general, for that matter. I did an LJ interest search for "Mont Blanc" and came up mostly... well, blanc. *znerf* Sorry. =D

Oh, oh, wait, one more: <shakespearean>If there were a community for Mont Blancs, Parkers, Watermans, Sheaffers, Pelikans, Rotrings, etc., it ought to be called penis_mightiers. </shakespearean> *snick* *snick* Okay, I'm done. XD

Anyway, I did some quick reading. It looks like what I want is a Mont Blanc Fine Liner. I prefer thin barrelled and fine tip pens. I have small hands. I can't write with a baseball bat.

My Dad is a Parker Man™, himself, I should ask him. It must be mean of me to laugh, but I think he just doesn't like Mont Blancs because he can't pronounce it easily. XD XD

I think fountain pens are interesting, but I don't know how I'd fare using one. It doesn't need to be idiotically easy to use. I was born with some tinkering ability and I can mil. spec. solder picoFarad capacitors by hand, so I do have a little more manual dexterity than your average oyster. But I don't want it to be so fussy that it's more frustrating than interesting.

A few hundred dollars is not out of my reach. It's just a question of how much I want to have a pen in exchange for that few hundred dollars. This is definitely not a high priority and it could very well fall off the radar, but this entry is here to remind me that this is something I want to read more about and try to find people to talk to about it. And who knows? Maybe I may buy one. One day. Maybe.

It's exasperating talking to The Husband about these things: "Does it play MP3s? Don't they know that the very definition of 'high-end' is that it has to play MP3s? Even shoes. Does it have GPS? Does it have an FM tuner? Does it have a laser pointer on the end? Does it at least have blinkie-flashie lights on it? For a $300 stick, it needs to do all that."

He does have a point though =)