A Late Christmas

Since Lisa and I had so much going on at Christmastime, and I was just starting a new job(read: no paycheck yet) we decided to postpone our own Christmas celebration until later in January. On January 20th, she dropped by my office, we exchanged gifts, and then went out to eat. We set a gift budget of $100, and sent each other wish lists, so we'd actually get something we want.
The gift I want to talk about is my green Lamy AL Star Fountain Pen.

I've had a few fountain pens over the years, but they've mostly been a novelty for me. But hearing the guys at edcforums.com gush over the Lamy Safari in thread after thread made me want to have one of my own to try out. My pen is the same as the Safari, but it has an anodized aluminum exterior instead of plastic and is a little more expensive($32 instead of $23 from pendemonium.com).

Those same guys also gush about a brand of ink called Noodler's. Apparantly, it's designed to be archival quality and be impossible to remove once it has dried on the paper surface. Plus, the graphics on the bottle are fun, the inks come in a lot of interesting colors, and aren't very expensive($12-13 for a 3oz bottle). So I also put on my wish list a bottle of Hunter Green(sadly out of stock) and Legal Lapis(I don't really like blue ink myself, but it is preferred for legal forms, and is the only color of ink we use at the tax office).





If anyone wants to get into fountain pens ever, I highly recommend this combo. You can get a Lamy Safari pen($23), Ink converter($5), and ink of choice($12-13) for under fifty bucks from Pendemonium.com.

My other gifts included a replacement keyboard for my laptop, The Dunwich Horror expansion to the Arkham Horror boardgame(see previous entry), a couple of tshirts, and a christmas ornament. My gifts for Lisa included an iPod Shuffle and a sewing machine box(something she actually really needed). Overall this was a great system, and I'm very happy with the way things turned out.