But for some happy developments yesterday, the title of this entry would be “Who is Russell Stover and why is he doing these terrible things?” On a whim, I picked up a box of that confectioner’s products, and it seems that it was mislabelled as Assorted Creams. Experience shows that it was actually a box of milk chocolate-enrobed Personal Weakness Agitators; my wife had one and was beset by her asthma, while I spent about 25 hours in the grip of a migraine thanks to the single sample I made. There was no mention of kryptonite or holy water in the ingredient list, either.
To wrap up the whine portion of today’s blurb, the migraine was the sort that defied all remedies and the efforts of Morpheus, so did not sleep at all Saturday night. This led to a certain amount of creeping about on Sunday, but that creeping about was a manifestation of wanting to be very careful and not inadvertently damage myself or anything I interacted with– very much like the wise drunk, who is aware of incapacity and thus declines to drive. However, unlike the wise drunk, I did not decline to engage upon surgery.
The surgery in question was, of course, on pens, so the stakes were much lower than in actual medical practice. I was also committed to act, since yesterday was a firmly-set deadline for finishing up on a client’s pen I’ve mentioned a few times previously, a contrary and even wicked Waterman Citation. The problem with it was my old nemesis, India ink; mere application of ultrasonic cleaning wasn’t doing the job, and the only answer was to knock out the point and feed. The problem with that was two-fold; the inherent difficulty of doing this usually trivial operation on a Taperite section, and the bleeding India ink. Not only was it clogging the channel, but is added a brake to the feed. All my previous efforts had accomplished was to get the feed about 20% moved, and there it jammed, and it seemed no application of mallet nor heat nor lubricant nor invective could shift it. I had one last trick to apply, and if it didn’t work I would have to admit that I could not do the job, period.
The trick is an inversion of the usual response to a resistant pen– apply some cold. Saturday, moments before downing the delicious Asbestos-Curare Creme, I had nipped the offending part into the fridge. With the careful slowness that characterized yesterday, I got all the necessary tools laid out, retrieved the section from cold storage, and very briefly applied heat to the section. The theory is that the section itself would expand while the as-yet chilled feed would remain slightly contracted, and the two could be separated during this window of microscopically-increased clearance.
Mission accomplished! It isn’t something I’m eager to try to replicate, though.
Theory became merry practice. Those who have missed a whole night of sleep will know the dullness that wraps around one’s heart, and so will understand how any small uplifting becomes magnified. I was able to assert “be careful” over “caper about the room in a transport of glee”, but inside I was a colossal So You Think You Can Dance audition. Buoyed up by this little victory, I was able to concentrate almost as one who has slept on the cleaning up and the matter of reuniting the parts, and press on with a couple of personal projects (resacking a Wahl Oxford desk-pen, soon to be seen on a desk near me, and unbending the tines of an Imperial desk pen that I got at the same time as that enormous jug of ink) before the effort of holding a pen up near my face became more than I could support.
Is there a big moral lesson in this? “Observe personal deadlines vigourously,” or perhaps “You’re more capable than you realize?” The only ones I think I’ll cling to is “Being extra careful pays dividends” and “Working on a Taperite feed is as much fun as a land war in Asia.” I do, at least, have confirmation of the utility of a new tool (the nib-block attachment to hold the section without beating it up) and of an approach to coercing unwilling components, which may be Fate’s way of balancing the damage to my system done by going a full 36 hours without sleep.
Today’s pen: Parker Vacumatic
Today’s ink: Waterman vintage blue
What's up at Ravens March. 