I find it impossible to choose, though. That means I’m not buying anything until I can choose, which may turn out to be never. Really, I simply cannot decide which one I love more. It’s so not right having this pen addiction. Well, at least it’s neither illegal, immoral, nor fattening. There’s that.

This morning, I checked on the weather and all the local weather stations said the humidity was around 56%. And I thought...huh, wonder why everything feels damp if the humidity is only 56%. I opened the back door and closed it again really quickly because the air outside felt like a wet blanket. What the heck.

That got me to thinking that maybe today was a good day to acquire a hygrometer. Because this was driving me a little nuts and I had nothing to satisfy my curiosity.

While out and about I stopped by a couple of stores to see if anyone had a small hygrometer. I found a little digital one for a pittance and brought it home. Of course, one never knows how accurate these things are, but I plugged a battery in and let it go. Within an hour the thing was telling me that my household relative humidity was 77%. No way. Couldn’t be right. How in the world could my household relative humidity be 20 points higher than the several local hygrometers? So...quite possibly my little cheapo digital one was miscalibrated.

Well, now what to do, since my curiosity was burning holes in my brain by this time.

Why...make my own, of course. My Dad used to have a wet/dry thermometer set-up and a chart to figure out the relative humidity. They’re about as accurate as you can get. Low tech, too. I could sort of, kind of make one. If I could find a thermometer. I dashed over to K-Mart, thinking there might be a thermometer in the kitchen section. Shows what I know. All the kitchen thermometers are digital now. That wasn’t going to work. I wandered around the house repair and hardware section...no thermometers.

And then I passed by the summer clearance (already!) table and saw some swimming pool thermometers. They were encased in a plastic tube with a cute little blue rubber dolphin head on the top. I figured that I could tear it apart to get the thermometer out. And since it was designed for water, all the better.

I brought it home and tore it apart, wrapped a piece of gauze around the thermometer bulb, and plunked the gauze in water. Well, first I built a little hygrometer stand, roughly on the order of this cardboard one.

It’s not much to look at, but this is what I ended up with.

I forgot to mention that the swimming pool thermometer displayed the same temperature as the three other household thermometers, so that was a good start. After the thermometer’s gauze sat in the water for a while, the little red line dropped to a little more than 74°, but not quite 75°. The house temp was 80°. According to the chart on the above referenced page, that put the house relative humidity at....77%. (It later dropped to about 68%, bounced around for a bit, and is now heading toward 80%.)

Okay, so I guess the house really was almost moist enough to start growing clouds today. Still doesn’t explain why my relative humidity was so much higher than the several different weather stations in the area. By a rather significant amount. I must live in a special house. Opening the door only made the humidity go up to 79%, though. So maybe it’s just a special neighborhood. A different world or something. I don’t know how to explain it, but I’m pretty sure that my two hygrometers were telling me the truth. It was humid today. Where I live...on this street...in this house. It wasn’t my imagination.

Misguided only because he left himself wide open for concerned parties to throw sensational hissy fits over it.

I’m so sorry that John McCain got shot down and spent five years in Hanoi Hilton. I am. No one should have had to endure that. But you know, that was 40 years ago. Time marches on and just what does being a POW forty years ago have to do with the price of eggs (which were $4.99 at my grocery store this weekend)? He’s the one running on his war record and POW status rather than on his vision for the future. The media eat it up with great big spoons.

Have the media happened to notice lately that things in this country are in bad shape? I’m sure it’s more fun to write about so-called scandalous statements that seem to be mostly of interest to the insulated and privileged journos, but come on.

It’s getting rough out here. Gasoline is well over $4 a gallon here. Diesel is over $5. Heating oil is $5/gallon. Natural gas has taken a leap upward. Electricity has taken a huge leap upward. Food has taken a monstrous leap upward. And probably will get monstrously worse after some 5 million acres of prime corn and soybean crops got washed away this past month in Iowa and immediate environs. Corn prices have already exploded. Cattle eat corn, too. Watch meat prices soar now. Watch ranchers slaughter their herds because they can’t afford to feed them this winter. Iowa is, incidentally, the leading corn producing state in the US—and one of the leading exporters.

We also have a teensy credit problem ongoing in the country. We have foreclosures at record highs. Consumer confidence is in the crapper. We have people living in their cars and in tent and parking lot cities. We have bank failures happening and more about to happen. More and more economists are starting to talk about a total banking system collapse in the near future. Scares the hell out of me. It’s beginning to make the Great Depression sound quaint.

Does anyone in the media care? Beats me. They can’t seem to focus on anything important. No one talks much about things coming apart at the seams. If they ignore it, maybe it’ll go away? I don’t think so. We are coming apart at the seams.

I agree with Wesley Clark. I just don’t find John McCain’s POW experience particularly germane to the overwhelming issues at hand in 2008. Middle Eastern terrorism isn’t the only war we’re fighting. Lots of people are just plain fighting for survival. Like the 125,000 households in Massachusetts who had their utilities terminated this summer because they can’t afford to pay—with thousands and thousands more about to hit a brick wall this coming winter.

What I want to know is what these political dudes plan to do about it. I want to know why the journalists and reporters aren’t asking questions about these things and demanding some on-the-record answers. I want to hear in-depth energy policies. Serious answers that have roots in reality and not in the most generous lobbyist’s purse. I’d like to see something that resembles Vision. They’re hard questions with hard answers, but being the president is no walk the park either. If they want the job, they need to offer us something relevant to current issues. After a certain point, I just don’t give a rip about what happened 40 years ago. Character only carries you so far. I want answers to things that are important here and now, dammit. And I want the journalists and reporters to care enough to Do Their Jobs.

I’ve been accused of being an idealist before, though.

I haven’t seen too many over the last week, but the other night one FLEW at the light on my dining room table. And I saw one clinging to the outside screen near the light. Yesterday, I snagged one that was near the back door, crawling up by the ceiling. I took that one over to a bright light and examined it closely. It was a plain light tan. Definitely a roach, but not a house roach.

So back to the internet to find out what other kinds of roaches inhabit places in the northeast. I now discover that we also have outdoor roaches that don’t breed in or nor live in houses. They like to live in the mulch and places like that. They are very light tan color and they are small...usually in the 1/4-1/2 inch range. Like mine. They are attracted to light and will try to find ways to get to the light, even in the house. And they do fly. Once in the house, they don’t know how to get out, but they don’t take up residence in the house. They’ll tend to cling to screens and hang out by the windows or light sources instead. Until they curl up their toes, I guess. But, when disturbed, they’ll run really, really fast...like most roaches. Still kinda creepy.

Coincidentally, I had a big load of mulch delivered a few days before I noticed the first one.

I went out to dig around in the mulch this morning. Lo and behold. That’s where they’re coming from. A free gift from my mulch guys. What a bonus. I’d like them to be gone, but haven’t come up with an appropriate way to do that yet. I’m not at all in favor of spraying poison all over everything outside. And boric acid isn’t a good outdoor solution because it’ll kill my plants. This is a new one on me. Have never had to try killing outdoor roaches before. I could have happily lived without the experience. On the other hand, the skunks might make themselves especially useful in this case. They have been rooting around in the mulch the past week or so. One could hope that nature might actually take care of it for me.

This is one of the snaps from the ship’s cam early this morning. They were in Porto Venere, Italy. Have to admit that I wouldn’t mind waking up to this view.

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I did not expect to ever own one, even though I’ve eyed them in my various pen magazines over the years. They are relatively inexpensive pens, on the lower end of Waterman’s offerings. In my experience, usually you get what you pay for in a fountain pen and I’ve owned my share of cheap ones. And it all started innocently enough.

I’ve been without a fountain pen for a few weeks now. My workhorse of a pen, a Jade Green Sailor Magellan, started leaking like a sieve a couple of months ago. It was a simple matter of replacing the worn out ink converter. Nothing wrong with the pen itself. It took me a while to get a replacement converter. And then, it was time for some new ink. I’d used the last of my supply.

Finding a bottle of decent ink around here is no easy task. There are no stores that I’ve discovered yet that sell quality ink. Obviously, there must not be much demand for it in the general public. But, I valiantly sallied forth with hope in my heart. Stopped at Staples and they had one single solitary bottle of Parker Quink Black ink. Not a good match for my Sailor pen.

And then it happened. I raised my eyes a bit and there, sitting on the shelf, was a gift box with a shiny new Waterman Phileas fountain pen along with a bottle of Waterman Florida Blue ink and a converter and a couple of ink cartridges in pretty colors. Well, at least other than blue and black ink. There was a sign below the display telling me the gift boxes were on sale. Sharply discounted, even—as in almost giving them away. And I thought....well, it’s a beautiful looking pen and if it turns out to be a piece of junk, I won’t be out very much and I get a bottle of good ink out of the deal along with a converter that I can use in my other Waterman pen, which has been sitting dormant because I wore that converter out, too....

I brought the blue beauty home and filled her up. The moment of truth....the nib floated across the page as smoothly as any pen I’ve ever used. The terms ‘smooth as butter’ and ‘smooth as silk’ popped into mind. And that was surprise enough, but this is also a medium point nib and I am almost always a fine or extra fine nib kinda girl.

After a week of use, I’m completely sold. The Phileas is a great pen. I am still surprised. Cheap pens aren’t supposed to work that well. This one does. Writing with it is pure pleasure. The pen is perfectly balanced and comfortable in my hand. It delivers a dependable flow of ink...not too fast, but not stingy. Just right. And smooth. Soooo smooth. And really pretty. It just doesn’t look like a cheap pen by any measure.

If I’d known years ago what I know now....

Of course, when one has a delightful pen in hand, the next step is outfitting it with pretty ink.

I’ve been poking around online for ink. I think I’ve settled on a couple of colors. A Diamine ink called Umber—it’s a dark green, like the darkest green part of an avocado’s skin. And a pretty gray Sailor ink for my Sailor pen (called Jentle Gray). And Private Reserve’s Copper Burst and American Blue. They’ll hold me for a while. Maybe....