Saturday, January 07, 2017

Saturday Is Kitty Day

Visit The Daily Kitten to read about Timmy and his family.

14 comments:

  1. Learning more about fountain pens and fountain pen inks. Santa Claus brought me two old Pelikan pens (made in Germany), and with the ink I have been using in my Japanese pens they write VERY wet. Evidently German pens tend to write wet, and need "dry" inks (many German, surprise!), while Japanese pens write dry and need "wet" inks. I want/need waterproof inks, which are not easy to find in fountain pen inks. I am pretty sure I am going to try a pair of modern iron gall inks from an old German company (Rohrer & Klinger, of Leipzig) in the Pelikans. One is a dusky purple, one a dusky blue; combined they come close to black, and are definitely waterproof. They are said to work well on almost any kind of paper, which is also a challenge for fountain pen inks. Will keep you posted.

    --Alan

    P.S.: It seems we are being blessed with a "Pineapple Express" weather system, bringing warm rain from the vicinity of Hawaii. The heaviest historical rainfalls in California have been of that sort, including the heaviest, that flooded a large part of the Central Valley back in the 19th Century. (It also melted the entire snowpack, which was a big factor.) They say it was possible to go from one side of the Central Valley to the other by (row)boat. The big dam upstream of us is releasing water for the first time in five years, to make room for what is coming; but the river (although obviously higher) is nowhere near flood stage.

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    1. Can't remember if I've said so, but your talk about pens and ink is very interesting. Before you got interested in the subject, it never occurred to me there was actually anything to be interested in, if you see what I mean.

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    2. Thanks, Cat. It grew out of my discovery that I could get considerable relief from pain in my writing hand by using a fountain pen, amplified by understanding that the reason my penmanship was unsatisfactory was that I had not been properly taught, not some native incompetence of mine. Now it is beginning to show indications of becoming a hobby. Fountain pens proved to be way more complicated than ballpoints. After I retire (less than two years, I figure) one of my first projects will be a penmanship course I purchased, which requires about an hour a day--religiously. Can't do that now.

      Alan

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  2. Agree with Cat about the pen talk!

    Wonder what I've ever done, looked at, researched that has made Amazon wonder if I might be interested in learning to play the ukulele?

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    1. LOL

      Well, you never know. You might enjoy it.

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    2. AMAZON SEES ALL, KNOWS ALL! YIELD TO THE INEVITABLE!

      Alan

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    1. Two comments:
      1) I presume the replacement would be a faith-based plan: pray you don't get sick.
      2) It has never made sense to me that the GOP would fight the ACA tooth and nail; it is, after all, basically a Republican health care plan. It was proposed by the Heritage Foundation, and carried out at the state level by Mitt Romney. What could this possibly mean but that the GOP has lost its moorings intellectual and moral?

      --Alan

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    2. Another though--the medical insurance companies' executives must be sweating bullets now. If repeal & delay passes, as least some of them are likely to panic, and panic could turn into stampede. The whole house of cards could collapse even without the ACA actually being repealed. If the insurance companies are spooked and the trump voters are waring up the tar and sharpening their pitchforks, the only credible way out of the mess will be Medicare For All, I think.

      Alan

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    3. "waring up the tar" = "warming up the tar"

      Alan

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    1. I wonder how much money he owes to banks controlled by the Russian Central Bank.

      Alan

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