Pens

I like pens. I'm not a pen expert, or a pen connoisseur, but I like a good pen with a comfortable grip that writes well. This is the story of my favorite pen. My memory is a little spotty with exact details, but the pen count should be accurate.

For a while in high school I used a Parker Jotter, which wrote really well but didn't last very long. I ended up taping the plastic and metal sections together, then gave up on it and didn't buy any refills for it.  Then I graduated to a pen/pencil combo that fit well in my pocket. This also did not reveal itself to be very durable.

When I was in early high school, one of my neighbors showed me a pen that he was using, a Quad Point made by Yasutomo & Co. I decided I had to have one, and my long relationship with the Quad Point was born.

The first QP I owned was a matte black model, as seen below:


It is the most elegant and wonderful writing instrument I have ever owned. It writes in black, blue, red, and 0.5 mm pencil. I had that pen for the end of high school, through my entire mission, and into college and marriage. I loved the pen and the pen loved me. I wore through the finish on the grip and turned the matte black shiny with use. I dropped it through a vent grate at BYU and fished it out with a name tag magnet and a length of leather cord (thanks, Alison). I could tell you how it got every ding and dent. The action stopped working and I shipped it to the factory for repair. We made a wonderful couple.

Then, inexplicably, the pen disappeared. It happened around the time we moved (in a hurry) from Wymount Terrace in Provo. I had a backup pen that Alison and I had bought together (how romantic! Matching pens!)

but it wasn't the same: I didn't love the color, It just didn't feel right. Then, around the time of a cadaver lab session, it disappeared. Alison gave me hers, but it wasn't without its problems. A drop had chipped the red at the grip in a way that made it inelegant. The pencil jammed. It was relegated to my church bag as my full-time backup, and I started using cheap ballpoint click pens (or, at times, a Zebra F-301, a good stand-in but not even playing in the same league). I found out that the model I loved had been discontinued, and that QPs were getting harder and harder to find.

Some years ago Alison surprised me at Christmas with another matte black QP which she had found from perhaps the last retailer available. I was so moved that I just stared at it, unable to speak, nearly in tears. I wasn't sure I could even touch it. In time it became, again, my everyday carry pen. (She later bought me another one as a gift, whose fate will be related below.)

Imagine my dismay when, cresting a rise on the white roller coaster at Lagoon several years later, I watched my beloved pen (and small spiral notebook) gracefully fly out of my pocket and fall to the ground into the garden below. I searched in vain with a flashlight. It was never found.

My spare black pen was packed along with a spare change of clothes when we did the Dirty Dash in 2014. When I was changing at my sister's house, it was gone. It was never found.

At this point I was trying to figure out how, after I had had my original for so many years, I was unable to keep one in my possession for very long.

When I had bought my backup black pen, I also bought a QP in the platinum finish as a backup, and to use as my dress pen.

Since my black pen went missing (again!) I have only had a QP to use when I am in dress clothes. I went back to the Web site and, finding that there were about fifteen more platinum models in stock, bought six of them: one as my backup and one for each of my children on their eighteenth birthdays (although Jamison didn't exist at that point, so I may be investing in another one...). I have considered using the platinum as my EDC pen but I am really worried about losing it. I recently got my red one out of my church bag and I think I will be using it as my EDC pen for the time being, although I still don't know how to get the pencil to work without jamming.

Incidentally, Y&C kept making QPs, but they look terrible:


Today I went to the site of the manufacturer, Yasutomo and Co, and found out that there is a new model with a black lacquer finish.

Sorry the image is so poor. It's better if you squint.Anyway, you can see that it has a shinier finish with chromed (not gold) accents. Scandalously, although Y&C's site says it is on sale, when I clicked the link it was nowhere to be found. They only had platinum, silver, and red for sale.

So, here we are. A tragic tale of love found, and lost, and found, and lost, and found, and lost, and substituted with a fine platonic relationship. If anyone knows of a matte black pen to be had for a reasonable price, I would love to hear about it. Heck, even the black lacquer would be ok at this point. Or, I guess I could just use one of the pens I have.

Sigh.

Oh, by the way, my and my family's total expenditures for QPs has been somewhere around $475. That averages to only about $40 for each year of our marriage, which is totally reasonable, am I right? I figure I will be buying at least two more, one for Jamison and one that is totally not an announcement of any kind but will be good to have on hand just in case.

Faith and Testimony

So, my boy was baptized in July of last year, so we switched from baptism prep Gospel Principles study to Preach My Gospel study. I had gotten out of the habit of reading with kids at night and we recently restarted, along with starting family scripture study in the morning. It feels great to be back in the saddle, and I feel a lot closer to them being more involved. I forget how easy it is to talk about the Gospel with kids. As Elder Holland once said in a great talk, you don't have to sneak up behind them and whisper religion in their ears.

So, I am reading Book of Mormon scripture stories with girl and boy #2 (boy #2 has started baptism prep, but wanted to finish Book of Mormon stories previously started), and reading Preach My Gospel with boy #1. I read with each of them for 5-10 minutes and pray with each one individually, and most of the time let them each pick a song.

The reading of Preach My Gospel has been especially great because it is giving me a chance to have deeper Gospel discussions with the baptized one. We recently did a dive into the justice/mercy/atonement topic, and a while ago started talking about faith. We read highlights of Alma chapter 32 and discussed the process of gaining one's own personal witness through the Holy Ghost of the truthfulness of various Gospel principles. I have stressed that it is totally normal and okay for a person to not have a secure belief right away. We talked tonight about how we need to first desire to believe, and prepare our own soil to receive the word. If you never read the scriptures or pray, it is a whole lot harder to gain a witness of the importance of scriptures and prayer and the reality of God's existence. A testimony isn't a gift that is just bestowed upon us, it takes work and persistence and a willingness to not cast out the seed by our unbelief. You have to read the Book of Mormon to gain a witness of it. You have to pray in order to receive answers. And the longer you go without reading or praying, the easier it is to listen to the voices - internal and external - that try to convince you that you are foolish for believing. It must have been hard to be a Nephite waiting for the birth of Christ, knowing that you would be killed if the sign didn't come and wondering if it was really worth holding on.

Anyway, I invited the boy to join me in the morning for my personal reading before we wake everyone up for family reading. I want to shepherd him through the process of receiving that confirmation. I know I can't give it to him, but I can help him develop the habit of reading and the love of the word. I won't pressure in this, just persuade. I want him to have a head start. I love the scriptures and I treasure the answers to specific prayers that I have received in their pages. I can feel my son light up when I tell him about them.

I wish more people were willing to acknowledge that they are still striving, especially in testimony meeting when my children hear everyone - especially other kids their age, who I am sure have the same lack of firmness - say what they know. It made me happy (and, I'm sure, some people uncomfortable) to have my boy get up a couple months ago and say that he doesn't know, but that he knows someday he can. It seems like in our church we have two main groups of people: the ones who seem rock solid in their conviction of Gospel principles, and the ones who wonder what is wrong with them because they aren't. We need to shed some light on the hard work involved in the formation of that solidity. We need to relearn how to do spiritual work.

Not the Marimba Project

So, I derailed briefly to do this. I'm really good at starting projects and not entirely finishing them, but Clara has gotten some play out of it.

The roof is glued on and the garage door has been attached, but the garage doesn't have a roof yet and the other half isn't done so you can't close it. Yep, project finisher I ain't.

Woody New Year

So, after a couple suspenseful weeks, I have finally picked up my wood from the Ellis Planing Mill in downtown Ogden. I ordered oak pieces to replace the pieces on the base that support the bar trays (see previous post), and many feet of 0.25" X 0.5" maple. It would have cost $70 just for the maple if the mill had cut them to length, so I will be cutting it myself. All the wood (which is uniformly cut and beautiful) cost me just under $70, which will come out of my piggy bank. My poor allowance jar is feeling sad from the expenses (but, since it used to be labeled "marimba fund," I guess that's fitting).

The basic order for the work right now is as follows: disconnect the legs from the base frame, disconnect the central support from the base frame, replace the central support, fit the bar supports to the base frame and do the final joining, lay out the bars and mark the string support post locations, mortise all the post holes, cut the posts to length, drill holes, and string bars. At that point it will be playable while I work on the legs etc. When I list it all like that it seems like a hopelessly large amount of work.

***Time passes

So, after some work last night I have the legs off. Things got a bit more complicated, but let's dump in a bunch of pictures to explain more.

 This is the new wood, neatly bundled.

The maple strips have nicks on the ends from the saw, so they gave me some extra feet of it.

I decided this morning that I will be constructing an entirely new base frame for the box.

The yellow lines in the picture outline the nice big center post, where the legs will attach. The red lines indicate the rest of the box frame. I will be mortising the corners (probably) and the end pieces will be screwed into the center post for nice-and-strongness. The idea is that the box panels will not be holding any of the load. I will probably put the legs farther out toward the sides than they were originally, for greater stability. I may have a third leg support in the middle - I haven't decided yet. I will be doing the legs last.

You may remember the end of the post held on by copper wire and a terrible-looking nail. The wire finally came off.

Yep, lots of bad nailing on display here.

This is one half, laid out for leg removal. It was harder than it looked because it turns out the triangular support pieces were attached with brads (it looks like someone shot a bunch of brads into it with a pneumatic gun or something, I'm not sure). There was no way to disassemble it without causing damage, so I just tried to be as gentle as possible with the panels. (Just off screen: Guardians of the Galaxy playing).

The triangles pretty much all got some damage with removal, so I will be replacing them. I have a dilemma with all the pieces I will be attaching to the panels, because they are relatively thin. I am not sure how I will be attaching anything to them.

Here's the front half with the legs removed. I pulled the legs off the back as well, and ended up cutting one of them (another was already broken in half). I have pretty much given up on the legs, at least in their current form.

Here is the box laid out on the floor with the legs removed. At this point I started to measure (three or four times, since I worry about error) to lay out the new frame. I still want to make the bar supports first, but I need a plan for how big the base will be so I can make sure the bar support frames will rest nicely over the top. I had a panicked thought about the bars at this point: what if I build the frame and then find out the holes in the bars don't line up? I decided I had to lay out all the bars over the frame (one joint of which I have not yet cut, so there's room for some change if needed).

The naturals bar frame, laid out. I still need to decide exactly what the spacing is going to be. I ended up moving the rear support forward about 1/8 inch, then all the holes looked like they would work out ok. I had had a nagging feeling about the bars - they're so inconsistently made in terms of thickness and width. The only way to make all the string support pins the same length, with the string holes in the same place, would be if the holes in the bars were drilled a uniform distance from the top surface. This turned out (unsurprisingly) not to be the case, which means that although I can make them all the same length, I will have to vary how far down the posts I drill the holes for the string based on the measurements of the bars next to each post. It will make the project that much more difficult. I also will not be able to put the posts exactly centered on the horizontal supports, because the holes in the bars are not spaced exactly right. Every one will have to be individually measured, cut, and placed which leaves a lot of opportunity for messing things up. I am out of honeymoon phase with this project and having serious concerns about what will happen if I put it together and it sounds terrible. I feel like I got a good price for it, but it was hard to get a good sound on the bars to gauge the tone when I was looking at it pre-purchase. What if I assemble it and it sounds bad or looks bad, and I can't sell it to anyone else? I won't have the excuse that it needs some TLC and is an investment for some future buyer because it will essentially be a mediocre finished product (I am a really good worrier because I get so much practice). I will just keep plugging along at it and deal with things as they come up.

On a lighter note, some of Aaron's pets provided some much-needed assistance with this project.