Making the most of a parking ticket

Image via WikipediaNothing like getting a parking ticket right in front of your own house. But that's what happened to me this week. I usually park in the back, but after having my gas tank siphoned twice in a week, I decided to park in front of the house, where a gas thief will be more exposed, until I can get a locking gas cap.

Geez, didn't I just write something in my last post about trying not to bore people?

Anyway . . . because I'm not used to parking out front, I forgot that the streetsweepers come through on the first and third Tuesday mornings each month, and my wife wasn't here to remind me, so I got a ticket.

So, how did I make the best of it? I got out a nice Crane's envelope, my newest pen, and my wax seals . . . and sent off perhaps the most elegantly posted parking ticket payment the processing center will see all month (if you don't take my handwriting into account):

I'm wondering of the clerk who gets this will even notice it among the hundreds or thousands of others to be opened that week. But of course, I didn't do it for the clerk, I did it for me. It's such a pleasure to use the good stuff!

Making the most of a parking ticket

Where did that month go?

What month? The month that I didn't post, that's what month!

I know it's customary to return from such a lengthy and unannounced hiatus with a post explaining one's absence, but . . . I'm not going to bother, because it would bore you silly.

Suffice it to say I have some posts in the queue and should be back to 1-3 posts a week starting . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . now!

Where did that month go?

Exacompta A5 Index Card Giveaway Winners

The envelope, please . . .

The winners are Chia and Amber, both of whom, it appears from their comments, are teachers. What are the odds that the random number generator at random.org would generate two numbers between 1 and 16 that pick the two teachers from among the 16 entries?

Some of you might be saying:


 

But I did use the random number generator . . . honest!

Exacompta A5 Index Card Giveaway Winners

If the Statue of Liberty were holding an uncapped pen instead of a torch, would the cap be posted?

Since the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France,
I think it goes without saying that if she were
holding a paper tablet instead of a stone tablet,
the paper would be Cairefontaine

I've seen some people rule out pens completely because it is impossible or impractical to post the cap. They can love everything about a pen, but if the cap won't post or it makes the pen top heavy, forget it. That's a dealbreaker.

I was having a chat with someone at the pen show last month about non-posting caps. Her view: that the only people who seem to be bothered by non-posting caps are Americans. Everywhere else, she insisted, people overwhelmingly write unposted.

So, is posting really just an "American thing"? Given that the USA is, according to Wikipedia, anyway, one of only three countries that continues to hold out against the metric system, some stubborn nonconformity when it comes to posting would not surprise me. But it is true?

If the Statue of Liberty were holding an uncapped pen instead of a torch, would the cap be posted?

Review and Giveaway: Exacompta A5 Index Cards

My crappy photography really washed out the green

Karen at Exaclair sent me these index cards gratis for me to review, and I was thrilled. I've been dying to try these for some time now, but did not want to buy them because I was not sure I had a use for them. I had an idea or two, but wasn't committed.

After trying them out, I am going to find a use for them, even if I have to make something up, because they are awesome. 

And, I'm going to give some away! The sign-up instructions are at the end of this post.



The Review


The quality starts with the packaging. Index cards sold in office supply stores are sold in shrink-wrapped stacks. Once you open the shrink-wrap, your cards are all over the place. Exacompta came up with this ingenious idea to solve that problem. It's called a box (or, as they say around Exaclair headquarters, un carton). Which means you can take out however many cards you need and throw the rest back in a drawer and they all stay together. Man, what will they come up with next?

Better yet, the box is not a conventional box. The cards sit on a long piece of cardboard, the ends of which flip back over the stack. The whole stack slides through the outer sleeve, sort of like a matchbox, which makes it really easy to grab the cards you want. A cutout in the end of the box let's you see your supply.

The cards come in a 100-count box, with 25 cards each in blue, yellow, pink and green. They are marked on both sides with a 5 x 5 mm grid of violet lines. The lines are a little heavy for my taste (virtually all gridlines are) and not as pale as I'd like. I thought they'd interfere with readability, but even fine and extra fine ink lines read quite easily, at least so long as the ink is highly saturated. Also, the cards are nice and sturdy, made of 205g card stock.

The writing experience is everything you would expect from an Exacompta/Clairefontaine product. Very smooth, a real joy. I was a little worried when the very first ink I tried (Levenger Cardinal Red) feathered rather severely, but most of the other inks I tried didn't feather noticeably. The only showthrough came with a Sharpie marker, and even then on only the yellow and green cards.

Like Biffybeans, I saw performance differences in the four colors. Pink was noticeably better than the rest, and green noticeably worse. But even the green wasn't too bad. I'll just remember it for my drier writers and for gels and rollerballs.



You may find these cards to be a little pricey. I haven't managed to find the A5 size online, but a slightly smaller size goes for $10-$12, depending on the vendor. At more than a dime a card, you've got to really like using these to buy them. But considering that Levenger's price for multicolored 3x5 cards works out to more than 7 cents per card for cards barely one third the size of these, the Exacompta price (whatever it is) is a bargain.

There are more photos in the Flickr photo set.

Keep in mind that cards you find at internet vendors might depart from what I've described. The product photos I've seen on various websites do not show the packaging. Also, they appear to be packaged with five colors (adding white to the four colors mentioned in this review), and I've only found them on U.S. sites in 4x6 in. and 5x8 in. sizes. I've been unable to find the A5 size for sale anywhere on the net. Anyone?

The Giveaway

There will be two lucky winners. Each will receive a sampler pack of 24 cards (6 of each color). To enter:

1. Leave a comment on this post.
2. Email me at notebookeresqATgmailDOTcom (there's a handy link near the top of the sidebar). Your email must give the name you used to comment and the subject line must read exactly:

INDEX

(Sorry to be so picky, but the email assures that I'll be able to reach the winners, and the subject line allows me to apply a filter to keep all the contest emails together automatically.) Entries will close midnight (Pacific Time) on Wednesday night. The winners will be announced on the blog and notified by email. If a winner does not claim his sampler pack by midnight the following Wednesday, I will select and notify an alternate.

Good luck!

Review and Giveaway: Exacompta A5 Index Cards

Deadly Pens!

Want a pen that will make you feel like James Bond? Then check out these 5 Tactical Pens for Writing and Self-Defense, written up by Brett McKay of The Art of Manliness. What's a tactical pen, you ask?

"A tactical pen is a writing implement that can be used both for signing checks and as a last ditch self-defense weapon."

There's not a Lamy, Namiki, Pilot, Sailor, Mont Blanc, Waterman or Visconti in the bunch!

Deadly Pens!

Taking a shot at Chancery Italic Script

I've managed to improve my daily printing a great deal over the past several months by practicing italic handwriting using the lessons in Write Now! by Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay. I haven't exactly mastered daily handwriting, and I haven't even moved on to cursive italic yet, but, because I've found italic nibs so much fun, I've decided to start on Chancery Italic Script, using the letter forms presented in this FPN thread but using lessons (i.e., grouping the letters and using the writing exercises) in Getty and Dubay.

Before I remembered to consult Getty & Dubay (who say simply writing the same letter over and over does little good), I spent my first practice session on lower-case As and Bs and my nom de blog, with the following results:





I had a hard time with nib size and lettering height, switching back and forth between a 1.1mm italic and 1.5mm italic (both on a Lamy Safari). According to the guidelines I read, the 1.1mm italic should be just about right for using the 5mm spacing on the Rhodia pad as a baseline and waistline, but I thought the lettering looked too spindly. The 1.5 mm should make for very chunky writing using the same 5mm spacing for waistline height, but I didn't think it looked too chunky — most of the time, anyway. Nonetheless, I may have to print out some graph paper with customized spacing if I want guidelines that yield a good look with these nibs.

The step-looking marks you see are me checking the nib widths against the line spacing. The Xs are where I was checking for the right nib angle. This is a bit of a challenge on the Safari, because my natural grip on the ergonomic section of the Safari does not place the nib at the correct angle with the paper at mu usual angle. I'm going to have to experiment with the angle of the paper a bit, and the line of the writing compared to my hand is going to be different.

I was pleasantly surprised at how consistently the nibs wrote. They are very prone to skipping on smooth paper if proper contact is not maintained. You may have seen that before in my ink reviews, especially with the 1.9mm nib (which I did not try in this lesson).

I don't think I'll be using Chancery Script to take notes in court anytime soon. ("Your honor, could you slow down a little bit? I'm having trouble keeping the wedge open on my lower case letters with you talking so fast.") But I think this is going to be fun!

Taking a shot at Chancery Italic Script