Long To Do List Made Shorter by Lamy Safari Fountain Pen

Photo: Taiyo FUJII

Well. Tomorrow afternoon, Laurin arrives at the MSP airport and moves in. In theory, we're ready for him to move in. Or, at least we're as prepared as a couple of people in our situation can be.

However, the last week has been a test for just how many things we can try to cram into 7 days. Shelly started a new job on Monday and much of the rest of the week has been filled with paperwork, errands, cleaning and pretty much running around.

To manage that running around, we've created a sea of "to do" lists and have been crossing items off of them like mad. Performing the tasks themselves hasn't been much different than normal. However, the actual making of and striking through items on those lists has been made slightly more enjoyable because I've been doing it with my new Safari Lamy pen filled with brown Noodler's ink.

A few months ago, I tackled the problem of my horrible handwriting. That problem has followed me pretty much since I scratched my first letters onto that blue-lined penmanship paper when I was in kindergarten.

My illegible handwriting has long been a source of some cognitive dissonance. I love paper and pens, but have never been willing to spend the money on fountain pens (or really nice roller ball pens for that matter) because my penmanship was pretty much a mockery of the fine workmanship in a nice pen.

However, with my handwriting repaired, I've been thinking about taking the plunge and getting into fountain pens. I bought the Safari, a plain, plastic-bodied pen that has a decent reputation as a starter pen. Michael Randall has called it:

…perhaps the cheapest you can get that’s actually good.

That's a pretty good match to my goals whenever getting into a new hobby. If you're not sure you are going to want to REALLY get into it, you don't want to buy the stuff that the dedicated participants do. However, you also don't want the cheap crap that they sell to those who are just dabbling.

I was also intrigued by the nostalgia of using bottled ink. I figure if you're going to use an old-fashioned pen design (think 10th century innovation, 19th century improvement and 20th century perfection), using cartridges seems like missing the point.

Adding to that entirely non-rational justification of looking at bottled ink was my also entirely irrational hatred of blue ink (which comes with the Safari). This particular preference is actually something of a holy war in our house. You can determine who owns any pen you find lying around here by checking the ink color.

If it's blue, it's Shelly's and if it's black (or nearly anything else), it's mine. It's yet to be seen how Laurin's ink color preference will tilt the balance of power in this particular war. I'm hoping he's not a blue ink heretic, but I'm accepting of other people's deficiencies :).

Fortunately, I've also been reading lots of recommendations for the Noodler's inks. I went somewhat off the beaten path and ordered a bottle of the Noodler's standard brown, but will probably get some of the bulletproof black eventually. I also ordered the pen itself and the converter that replaces the blue cartridge.

It's that pen and that ink that have been dominating the to do lists this week.

I did put the blue cartridge in to use the pen for a couple of days because the ink was delayed, so I got to try the whole process of flushing out the wretched blue ink and filling it with the brown, which worked the first time, as advertised. No mess whatsoever.

I'm pretty sure I see more fountain pens in my future, but never any of the $8000 pens in the catalog that came in the package. I just can't see that ever happening.