skewered through and through with office pens

There is no restraining men's tongues or pens when charged with a little vanity.
-- George Washington

I [quite willingly] am postponing the to-do list of the day, which includes such exciting activities as mailing tax payments and buying electrical converters, to report on an exciting new discovery:

This morning I found a fabulous brand new inky (as opposed to ball point) Cross pen I didn't even know I had (in case anyone is wondering, pens are still the most popular graduation gift; I've made it my mission to graduate from something every few years just to to make sure).

Mechanical pencils were my writing utensils of choice until the law office converted me to pens, and from ballpoint bens to the kind with actual ink.

Chief among these was the Mont Blanc, of course, except that it always was a little snobbish (give a pen an instruction manual that spans twenty pages and five languages [this is only slight hyperbole] and see if you can get it to stay humble). Then again, I always thought the purpose of that pen was (like many lawyer accoutrements) just to have it sticking out of your portfolio to impress other lawyers by being expensive.

Then I have had my favorite commemorative ball points, like the Reeses pen from the Hershey factory (O, the sadness the day that pen scratched its last!), or the valued green summa cum laude pen. But for some reason they always make those too fat to hold comfortably.

Now, since school started again I've reverted to the old mechanical pencil and let the ink-hungry pens fall into disrepair.

But my discovery this morning makes me want to sign something in real, black ink.

Something other than my taxes . . .