duck-shaped pain

I'm visiting my mom again, so I can start working on the catalog project I'm theoretically supposed to start on this week. As you may recall from earlier entries, the town where my mom lives has only one or two major places to shop, one of which is a ginormous Wal-Mart SuperCenter.

On Sundays, the already small selection of stores shrinks to nearly zero, and WM is the only place to go. We had to pick up some things for dinner, so we headed over there. In addition to food, the local WM is the only place I've found on the entire Western Slope that carries refill cartridges for my fountain pen, and I was on my last cartridge.

Admittedly, fountain pen refills are the last thing you expect to find at a WM. I've searched everywhere around here in the last few weeks: little pen and paper stores, large, anonymous office supply warehouses, all for naught. So WM it is, for now.

I went and located my refills, and wandered around for a bit while my mom bought food. They had some clothes that looked okay, so I decided to try some on because I was really bored.

I took the ill-fitting clothing into the dressing room, and apparently made the grave error of taking my refills into the room with me. I did this because a) nobody said anything about it and b) there was no other place to put them. So, when I came out, disgusted about the clothes, the dressing room attendant saw that I had the pen refills, gave me a look which ranged from alarmed to panicked to very, very angry, and got on the intercom to announce, "Security camera, sweep section 9." I have no idea if this had to do with me, but I guess it did, since she seemed to freaked out about me.

So I spent the rest of my trip there wondering if some camera was tracing my every move through the store, and wondering what the security-cam jockeys were thinking about what I was doing. I felt much too hyper-aware of everything I was doing.

"Hmmm...she's spending too much time in Intimate Apparel. Alert the manager."

"That magazine sucks. I might bust her ass just for that."

"She's examining plantains. Nobody buys plantains. Obviously a front for further crime."

God knows what they thought about my twenty minutes in School Supplies, debating the merits of various notebooks.

However, I managed to escape the WM without further incident. Another reason to never go there.

I've been trying to keep my food diary for the last few days, with little success. Amazing how little you want to think about food when it's mandated. The best news so far is that I don't seem to be allergic to beer [1] as was previously thought. I ran some stringent tests today, one with some Pyramid Hefeweizen and another with a few bottles of Sierra Nevada Porter. The results so far are heartening.

Speaking of pen refills, I was reflecting today on how excellent my fountain pen is. Actually, most fountain pens are excellent, but mine is the best one I've had so far, an amazing feat considering it only cost $6. I once owned another fountain pen, made by the same company, which cost a bit more, and it didn't work even nearly as well. [1]

Fountain pens spoil you. They write so much smoother than any other type of pen, so when you get used to them, it's almost impossible to go back to any other type of pen, especially ball points. I hate ball points -- they feel horrible and you have to fight with them constantly to get them to write anything, like you're writing with a moist toothpick or something like that.

I've always loved fountain pens. I have quite a few that I've picked up at yard sales and thift stores that are nice to look at, but are so gunked up with dried ink and scree that they don't work anymore. Still, holding them in your hand and pretending to write with them is sort of pleasing in its own way.

I also like to look at really nice pens in stores. I'd probably never buy one or be able to justify the expense, but it's still nice to look. The mall I used to work at, years ago, had a really nice pen store in it where I would go on my lunch hour, just to look around. It was easily the most interesting store in the mall, and it was as far away from my coworkers as I could get on my short breaks. Still, it was hard to look at them, knowing how many hours it would take at my crappy job in order to be able to buy one of them. Even now, looking at pens online almost gives me a heart attack.

Viva six dollar fountain pens.

Then again, here -- chartreuse. My favorite type of pen, in my favorite color. [3] Can't get much better than that. Bizarrely enough, this is called a "sports pen" -- whatever the hell that is.

[1] My dad, the homebrewer, has been adamant for days that I'm not allergic to beer: "There's just no way. It's not possible. That would be completely wrong."

[2] Then again, the current pen has a fine point, and the older, more expensive pen had a medium point, which makes a big difference in smoothness and readability, especially when you have really crappy handwriting, like me.