Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Bring me a great pen, or bring me death!


I don't know when it all started - this obsession with pens - but I do know that when I was a little girl, I was most happy with a pen in my hand, and lots of blank 8.5 x 11 paper with which to use that pen. Being that my mother was a high school business course teacher, there was always plenty of both items in supply at our house. She would have a collection of pens and pencils in a large empty coffee can which I would gleefully sort through upon arriving home from school for the latest additions to the collection.

I was the most disturbed as a child when a pen I was writing with ran out of ink, and that annoying scraping across the paper sensation occurred. And so, I suppose that since I first experienced that disappointing moment where in the midst of the expression of an idea, the pen ran out of ink, I have been trying my damndest to avoid that ever happening again. Hence my gargantuan collection of pens today!

And so while attending a birthday dinner at a popular Berkeley Japanese restaurant the other evening, a gentleman there suggested that I start a pen blog once he heard me pontificate endlessly about the new Sharpie pen which I had purchased as a gift for the birthday girl. Have you tried it? It is pretty cool looking, with a long silver retractable push-button experience, and a super tiny point, giving Sharpie lovers the Sharpie experience, but without the gradually drying and dulling nib that occurs when using the traditional Sharpie marker.