The Pen Addict 27/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	27
Title:	I Need To Take A Shower
Release Date:	August 16th, 2012
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 27
Audio File:	Audio Episode 27
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 27
Length:	3333 min <br />0.55 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to episode 27 of The Pen Addict podcast. I am your co-host and I have returned. I am left-handed, poor handwriting, Myke Hurley. We're going to get to that in a moment. And I'm joined, as always, by the man with the impeccable handwriting, the Dalai Lama of the pen world, Mr. Brad Dowdy. Hello, sir. How are you?

Brad Dowdy: I'm good, Myke. How are you?

Myke Hurley: I am very well, thank you.

Handwriting Defense

Brad Dowdy: I'm trying not to bust out the laugh as you go through the intro so I don't interrupt you too bad. I'm sitting there holding it in.

Myke Hurley: I didn't know where I was going this week, as always.

Brad Dowdy: I was about out of breath.

Myke Hurley: I was away last week.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, you were. We had a really good time with Mr. Hackett, I will say.

Myke Hurley: Really great episode. I enjoyed it thoroughly, except one part.

Brad Dowdy: What? I don't know what you're talking about. What part could that be? That show was awesome. It was off the charts.

Myke Hurley: You two absolutely ridiculed me and my handwriting, and I feel I cannot allow something like that to occur without me defending myself a little bit.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, I kind of remember something along those lines. Yeah, yeah. I think that topic might have come up last week.

Myke Hurley: Just a little bit. I believe that it was said that I had been dropped on my head as a child. I'm pretty sure was what had been discussed between you and Stephen. Now, I want to defend myself here. I feel I can adequately defend myself a little here.

Brad Dowdy: You know, you are part of this show, so I think you should at least get equal time on this topic.

Myke Hurley: The notes that I take for the show notes with the pad in front of me, I am scribbling those things down. Now, admittedly, I do have bad handwriting, but my typical handwriting is better than that. And, you know, you and Hackett were sitting on high with your right-handed, everything's dandy. The handwriting submissions that you have both made, you knew were going to be submitted. Therefore, had the ability to tidy them up a little, is what I'm saying here.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, all right. I mean, that's a little bit lame, but I think I can buy into that. Now, mine wasn't submitted specifically for the show, but it was submitted specifically for a pen review. And there are the assurances that, you know, I'm doing this knowing that my handwriting is going to be photographed for a pen review, right? So, I do take a little bit of extra care, but, you know, I don't exactly sit there and do it really meticulously, monotonously. You know, it is at my, generally, my normal writing pace. But I will agree that, you know, if I'm scribbling notes or just doing something fast and offhanded, and, you know, you're listening to this in your ears, you know, you're talking on the microphone, you're watching the recording and writing at the same time. That does come into play when, you know, putting pen to paper, how your penmanship is going to look.

Myke Hurley: How funny you defend me now when I am in front of you.

Brad Dowdy: I'm very two-faced that way.

Myke Hurley: But, yes, that's all I wanted to say. I just felt like I had to defend myself.

Brad Dowdy: That was pretty rough, though, Myke. I mean. Yeah, it was bad. Man. Okay. It was bad, yeah. But you know what? Good on you for just saying, hey, this is what it is and throwing it out there. And you owned it. You own that crappy handwriting.

Myke Hurley: I do own it.

Brad Dowdy: That's right.

New Gear

Myke Hurley: No, it doesn't belong to anybody else, Myke. So, we both have some new gear. Yeah. I have a few little bits. But why don't you tell me what you have?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. We talked about the last episode. Both of us were on two episodes ago. I mentioned that I've been tempted and I've been trying to hold off. And the temptation was too strong to bear to finally go in on a Lamy 2000.

Myke Hurley: Now, I want one of these suckers.

Myke Hurley: So, I wanted to talk about this with you so we can decide whether I need to buy one.

Brad Dowdy: Sure. So, I purchased it knowing that I was getting ready to move and I wanted to make sure I was able to get it at my old address so it kind of didn't get lost in transit. So, I was able to get it in time before I moved. And I had probably a good week with it at work. And then probably the past week or so it's been packed away and I haven't touched it. So, I don't have a full-fledged review of it ready to go. Like we've talked about fountain pens before, there is some break-in period, right? You got to get the ink flowing and the nib broken in and some things like that and get used to how it's going to work. And honestly, I'm having some breaking-in issues, I think, with it. And when I say that, I'm comparing it to my vanishing point. Okay. So, let's start off with the design of the 2000 because that's what really makes the pen. It is – it's beautiful. It's beautiful to look at. It's beautiful to hold. It's extraordinarily well-made. I love the hooded nib, which is where the end of the barrel kind of covers the nib. A little bit like the vanishing point, right? You don't have a huge flared-out nib like on a Twisby, right, or Safari, where you see the full extent of the nib. You just see that little bit that sticks out.

Brad Dowdy: It's wonderfully designed. The biggest selling point beside the design is the filling system. You know, just the built-in piston filling mechanism is super easy to use. I think it sounds crazy to buy a pen this expensive, which it was more expensive than my vanishing point.

Brad Dowdy: It sounds crazy to buy a pen just to say that it might be my ink testing pen. But it's so easy to load ink into it and then just flush it out with water. You know, you stick it in a cup and you twist the end of the barrel. The plunger goes up, plunger goes down. You just do that a few times. You get all the ink flushed out, then load up a new ink, and you're ready to go. I think it's going to be a really good ink testing pen for me.

Brad Dowdy: But I did get the black barrel one.

Brad Dowdy: I forget what the material is called. It's a weird name for the material of it. It's a lightweight material, but it's not overly...

Myke Hurley: Mac Rolon.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: It's a combination of fiberglass and brushed stainless steel. Yeah, I want one. I probably will get one, but it's out of stock at the moment in the medium on jet pens.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, good point. I did buy it extra fine as normal people would buy.

Myke Hurley: Normal people with lovely handwriting, eh?

Brad Dowdy: No, I'm just kidding. That's just me. Extra fine is pretty much the only option for me and umami. And it's good. The nib width is really good for me. I like it. It's not too fine. It's not too thick. It's a really good line. Compares... You know, it's a little bit wider than the Vanishing Point F nib. They're in the same general vicinity, though. But what I'm finding with the nib, it's a gold nib. I think it's a 14 karat gold nib. I'm not looking at the description in front of me. I feel a little more drag on the paper than I would expect.

Myke Hurley: I don't like the sound of that.

Brad Dowdy: The only bottle of ink I had unpacked... I had everything else packed away. I had a bottle of Aurora Blue. So that's the only ink I was able to use. And that's the only ink I've been able to test with it. But, um... So I want to try to see if, you know, a different ink... It could be the ink. I don't recall what other pen I've used this ink in to compare it to. But, you know, you definitely got to give it more than, you know, the one ink. Just because they all, you know, lubricate the nib differently.

Myke Hurley: It could have something to do with the stupid nib size that you choose.

Brad Dowdy: Well, I mean, I've got stacks of Safaris in EF. They don't faze me.

Myke Hurley: That was why I thought I would love this. Because I love the medium Safari. And figured that it was not going to be a worse nib.

Myke Hurley: That's kind of... I'm not sure.

Brad Dowdy: It's hard to explain it. But, you know, like if you're... It's basically like if you're... In this case, you're putting metal across paper, right? And sometimes, like my vanishing point... And I'm sorry to all the listeners I keep comparing it to. That's the best thing I can compare it to, honestly. Because they're in the same kind of price category and range of fountain pen. But when I use the vanishing point, no matter which direction my stroke is, the ink lays down consistently. Okay? And there's no... I never feel the metal on the paper. The ink just flows as I write. With the 2000 so far, what I'm seeing is certain direction of strokes, usually upward left to right, I think. It's been a week since I've used it. But I think if you're going from bottom left to top right, that direction, I'm getting a little bit more of a pull. Or more of a feedback, you know, when I'm using the 2000 nib. So it's noticeable to me. Because I'm that anal about it. But I think I need to give it, number one, some more time. And number two, more importantly, a different ink. Before I can make any type of judgment on that.

Myke Hurley: Well, it'll be interesting to check back in with you on that one, I think.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I want to give it some time, honestly. And, you know, I don't plan on reviewing it yet for the blog just because I need to, you know, I want to give it a good solid month and a good, you know, two or three inks to see if there's any issue. Because none of my other pens are loaded with this Aurora Blue ink right now. So I don't have any direct comparison to the ink. And like I said, all my other inks are packed away right now and probably won't be out for, I don't know, maybe this weekend if I'm lucky.

Myke Hurley: So I bought some stuff this week. But before we get to that, I want to say about what's in my cart at the moment at JetPens.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, my goodness.

Myke Hurley: So there's two of one thing that I'm going to talk about in a minute because I actually bought one of them. I have a Tombow Zoom 505 Liquid Ink Rollerball Pen. Because it just looked pretty cool. And it got some pretty good reviews.

Tombow Rollerball

Myke Hurley: So it looks, you know, it looks cool. I'll be one of those in the show notes. Have you ever used one of these?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I've used, God, it's very similar. And I can't remember the name. I'd have to search back on penaddict.com. And there's a Tombow Rollerball that I'm exceedingly pleased with. It's a really, really good pen. And it was around the $25-ish range. So it looks similar in design to the Zoom. But it's a jet black. I mean, it's black clip, black everything. And I just can't remember the name.

Myke Hurley: The Tombow Object.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Tombow Object Rollerball. So I'm very happy with that pen. I carry that pen a lot.

Myke Hurley: Cool. So, yeah, I've got one.

Brad Dowdy: So, yeah, I think you'll like the Zoom. I would wager to bet you will like that pen. It's very well built.

Myke Hurley: That's just like, you know, when I say, I always look in the top lists and just maybe pick one or two things that interest me. I also have, I hadn't seen this before, the Kaweco All-Rounder Fountain Pen.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, is that the new one?

Myke Hurley: It is new. And it is stunning.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that one looks pretty good. There's the, what do they call the...

Myke Hurley: This is a full-sized fountain pen as well.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, this is... What do they call the other? The school... What's the other full-size Kaweco on jet pens? I'm blanking.

Myke Hurley: No idea.

Brad Dowdy: But anyway, I've been asked to review that several times. And I've just never gotten around to it. But that All-Rounder looks very impressive compared to this other one that I'm thinking of. Let me find a name.

Myke Hurley: Do you mean the special? They have the Kaweco Special AL Fountain Pen and it's full-size.

Brad Dowdy: I thought it had something with school or something like that. I could just be delusional.

Myke Hurley: All I can see is the Kaweco Special.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, Kaweco Sports Student.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: Similar in shape and design to the All-Rounder, but the All-Rounder looks nicer. Looks like a little bit upscale of the Sports Student.

Myke Hurley: It's $100.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm. That looks great. I really like the...

Myke Hurley: Doesn't it look good?

Brad Dowdy: Anything Kaweco is pretty much good by me.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. See, I really want to try a broad nib on the Kaweco. Okay. Because I went with medium, didn't I, on the Sport that I have. Maybe it was a little bit too small for me. A little fine. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Because, see, I have a medium Prera. I can't even use it.

Myke Hurley: See, the medium Prera is too fine for me still.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And that's just way too wide for me.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: That's what she said.

Brad Dowdy: But, yeah, I like the barrel colors of the All-Rounder, too. I like that the blue is muted and the red is really sharp and bright. I would be tempted to go non-black in this one and just go with one of the blue or red one.

Myke Hurley: I would go for the black with this.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I would go for the black. Very nice. Very nice looking pen. I do want to get one. It's in my cart and I'm thinking about picking it up quite soon. So I'm going to talk about some things that I did buy this week. But before we do that, let's talk about the people that make these purchases possible. Absolutely. Squarespace. Squarespace. Do we love Squarespace, Brad? How much do we love them?

Squarespace

Brad Dowdy: We love us some Squarespace. We love them. A whole lot of love.

Myke Hurley: Of all of our hearts. So you've heard us talk about Squarespace 6. You know, this is absolutely fantastic news. Great news that there is a brand new Squarespace platform. Squarespace gives you everything you need to create an amazing website. Everything is integrated, design, hosting, support, which their support is award-winning, by the way. Okay. Also, domains. If you buy one of their annual or buy annual plans, you get a custom domain name integrated straight away for you. Just in the sign-up process, when you purchase the yearly or buy yearly account, buy annual, sorry. You just ask, would you like a domain name? You just say, yeah, I would like, I would like dalai lama of pens dot com. And if it's available, they'll register it for you. You don't need to worry about going around and changing all this stuff and making sure your DNS settings are correct. They just do it for you. If you want email as part of it, they have Google Apps integration too, so they can just make that happen for you. No problem. Let's talk about Layout Engine. Layout Engine is Squarespace's page builder. It allows you to create custom layouts for each of your pages. So you add blocks of content. So let's say you want to set up a new page. Let's say you want to set up a contact page. This is one that I built and used the layout builder really effectively for this. So you say new page and you want to drag in a contact form. So you go to the Layout Engine blocks mechanism and you just drag in. You literally drag and drop. You don't like click a button. You drag and drop a contact form into there and it allows you to fill out what information you want in the contact form, where you would like the responses to be sent to. Then I dragged a text block so I could explain to people, please, you know, if you want to get in contact with me, fill out the contact form or you can hit me up on Twitter. That sort of stuff. And I was able to just drag all of that in, flip it around, make it look the way I want by dragging the elements around and make sure they fit nicely on the page. That sort of control in a web browser is incredible. And that is an absolute prime example of what makes Squarespace so special and such an amazing product. I want you to go and try out Squarespace. Squarespace and we have a two week free trial for you so you can go try it out yourself. You can import your blog using their fantastic blog importer and just play around. I have a couple of friends that are doing this at the moment, people that you wouldn't expect to switch. And I fingers crossed hoping that they will because this is the service that everyone should be using, in my opinion. If you go to squarespace.com forward slash 70 decibels, that's 70 D-E-C-I-B-E-L-S, you can sign up for your two week free trial and you can use the offer code 70decibels8 to get 10% off your first purchase. This also lets Squarespace know that we sent you and that will help them to keep wanting to support us. So thank you to Squarespace and thank you to everybody that has signed up as well. If you signed up using our code, I really appreciate it. It means a lot to us. Thank you very much for supporting the network.

Myke Hurley: So there we go.

Myke Hurley: Are you still there, Brad?

Brad Dowdy: I am still here. I was basking in the glory of your wonderful Squarespace job there. You did great.

Myke Hurley: Thank you very much.

Brad Dowdy: I will say I haven't had much computer time or internet time this week, but the last post I made Monday, just kind of telling everyone I was going to be off the grid, did it right in the iOS app on the iPad and I love that thing. It makes my life a lot easier.

Myke Hurley: No doubt.

Myke Hurley: So I bought some stuff.

Brad Dowdy: I saw one picture and it looked, it made me jealous, put it that way. So tell me what you've been up to.

Myke Hurley: So I obviously bought some new Retro 51 products.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, that's the picture I saw.

Myke Hurley: Why wouldn't I do that? You know, everybody knows me by now. I have yet to buy the limited edition Invader Retro 51, which is the Space Invaders. Cool. Which that's on the, that is on the list for some time in the future. It's not too high up on the list right now. I want it, but I think it'll be around. But so I bought, I bought a couple of, of Retro 51 regulars, you know, you know, the, the,

Brad Dowdy: the roller balls. The tornado.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Retro51 Pens

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: I bought one that is a giraffe pattern. Okay. And one that is red and white striped, like where's Waldo, or Wally as we call him. Where's Wally in the UK?

Brad Dowdy: Actually, I've seen that one. That one's actually really good looking. I like the design of that one.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it's called the Yipes edition. Now, I've only been able to find these on the retro51.co.uk site. So I've put that, that in the show notes. Okay. You can take a look on their website. If you're in the UK, they're fantastic. I ordered at 10 o'clock in the evening. They arrived the next day.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, wow.

Myke Hurley: I don't even understand how that happened.

Brad Dowdy: It must be across the street from you or something.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. And it's just standard shipping.

Brad Dowdy: Wow. That's crazy.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I was very, very happy about that.

Myke Hurley: I bought one of the minis.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. You've been talking about that.

Myke Hurley: Oh, no. No.

Brad Dowdy: No, not so hot?

Myke Hurley: It's just some random refill in it.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, really? Yeah. It's not a, not like a modified version of, not a, I guess the Schmidt doesn't make a smaller cartridge that is comparable.

Myke Hurley: And it's just like any ballpoint pen. Mm-hmm. So, listen to this.

Myke Hurley: I don't know if you heard it, but that just went in the pen cup.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. That's, yeah. Mm-hmm. That's too bad.

Myke Hurley: Nice to have. And, you know, if I ever can find some small refill that might fit in it, you know, I'll be willing to try it out.

Brad Dowdy: Take a picture of the refill for me. I'd like to see it. All right. Or give me a, or, you know, send me the model number or whatever. I'm, I'm, now you've got me curious.

Myke Hurley: It's probably on the retro, they probably have it on the retro page, don't they? So, they're refills. Well, I'll take a look at that.

Brad Dowdy: That's too bad because it's built, it's the same build quality as the Tornado, right?

Myke Hurley: It looks amazing. It's like, it's like an Alice in Wonderland version. That's too bad. That's too bad. It's, yeah, it's a real, real shame. I was very upset about that, actually, because I was looking forward to it. I thought it would be like this awesome little pen that I could have in my pocket all the time and have a retro with me. I didn't expect it to be exactly the same, but I didn't expect it to be as poor quality as I've got because that's not what I've come to expect from them.

Brad Dowdy: Exactly.

Myke Hurley: And it might just be that Schmidt don't make the refills, so there's nothing they can do. Sure. But such is life.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, because it's still, does it still use the same twist mechanism? Yeah. Okay, yeah, that's going to be a problem. Yeah. Yeah, you almost don't have to send me a picture now that I think about that. That's going to be a problem. Huh, okay. Interesting.

Myke Hurley: I guess there's nothing they can do about it. I assume, I don't know.

Tornado Fountain Pen

Myke Hurley: I think I have the refill here, but I'll send that to you later. Yeah. I also bought something that has now become my favorite pen.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So, from the last time we've talked until now, there's a new favorite pen in town.

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Brad Dowdy: Wow. So, what do you, what, all right, spill it.

Myke Hurley: It's a tornado fountain pen.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, wow. That's cool. Yeah. I desperately want to try one of those. I just, you know, haven't had the opportunity to get one in the cart and get it shipped. But they look super cool. Is it, how good is it? It's obviously really good. If that's jumping, jumping lots of things you've been using for a while now.

Myke Hurley: I love it. I love it. It's, I got a, it's, it's such a thick nib, which is incredible. Um, and it's excellent build quality. Like, cause it's the same build quality. Like, it's, it's plastic. Um, but it's the same sort of, you know, it's all the stylings that you come to love. You know, it's got, um, it's got like the, the, I don't know what you'd call it. Like, was it gun metal?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, right. Exactly.

Myke Hurley: Right at the top, but that's just part of the cap. And the, um, the clip is the same. Um, and I got it in black, but they have some that I, I'm now going to, buy a bunch of these. They're difficult to find. You see now they have, there is a nickel one, um, which they brought out with the metal Smith series. You know, the ones that I was talking about a few weeks ago, right?

Brad Dowdy: There were different, uh, like copper and different, different other different metals. Yep.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So they have some of these, so that might be even nicer, like an even greater build quality. And I think that one's a little longer as well, which might be nice, but it combines all of the things that I love because, um, it's got the styling of the retro that I love, but the, the nib is just excellent from the moment I picked it up. It writes exactly how I want. It's the, it's the perfect thickness, um, for me, which is a chunky line. Right.

Brad Dowdy: Medium or greater probably. Yeah. Fair to say.

Myke Hurley: Um, I think I've got a medium here, but it's like a, you know, it's like a Lamy medium. Right. It's a, it's a medium. Yes.

Brad Dowdy: It's very stout.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. And, and it's just very smooth. And it's for all this week's the only pen I wanted to use.

Brad Dowdy: Wow.

Myke Hurley: Um, the ink that it came with was abysmal. It would take like seriously about a minute to dry. Yeah. So I went to, I found a local art supply store near work and I bought some roturing ink. Okay. And that's incredible. I bought a brilliant blue, a roturing, brilliant blue cartridges and it dries like instantly.

Brad Dowdy: So the cartridges fit in the, in the retro.

Myke Hurley: It's a standard cartridge.

Brad Dowdy: Standard cartridge. Okay. Does it take a converter? Do you know?

Myke Hurley: Um, probably, but I've not, I mean, cause if basically it's just a standard cartridge, you get like a standard cartridge converter and it would probably take that. That's true. Um, so yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Wow. I didn't see that coming. I have to say.

Myke Hurley: Neither did I. I really didn't. I thought this would be nice. You know, it'd be nice. Yeah. But, but no, it's, it's all I've wanted to use. Wow. That's pretty cool.

Brad Dowdy: I'm going to have to get that. I'm going to have to get, uh, I would like your opinion.

Myke Hurley: I would like your opinion because obviously I have an unwavering bias, um, to everything these guys make. Right. But I would like you to, to, to get one to try out so I can get your, get your professional opinion on it.

Brad Dowdy: I'll, I'll work on that now that I have a, uh, a solid mailing address again and things won't get lost in, in transition. Yeah. I'll, uh, I'll get one. I'll, I'll work on that this week and I don't know if I'll have it by next show, but, um, certainly pretty soon thereafter.

Myke Hurley: So I also bought a bunch of paper products.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, really?

Myke Hurley: Mm-hmm. So whilst looking for the ink in the local art supply store, I heard angels in the background and some glowing white light. And I went to investigate and lo and behold, what did I find in this little art supply store in North London, in England? And Rodeo Web Notebook. Ah. Now I have been looking for one of these things for a very long time. And I got the orange as well, which I was very pleased about. Mm-hmm. Unfortunately, lined.

Brad Dowdy: Okay.

Notebook Quality

Myke Hurley: But I can overlook that. Yep. We both don't like lined, but this thing is the best notebook I have ever used.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, man. I'm starting not to like you, Mr. Hurley.

Myke Hurley: Why?

Brad Dowdy: Because I have two of these and they're wrapped up in plastic and I've never been able to use them and they're tucked away in a box. And now, you know, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to go home and dig it out and

Myke Hurley: start using it. Let me tell you what I love about it. So the outer pad, the outer cover is like a soft padding, which is really nice. It's just nice to hold. But the paper is incredible. It's great to write on. Ink dries so fast and nothing bleeds through. The paper's so thick. Now, bear in mind, I'm coming from Moleskine's.

Brad Dowdy: Sure. Sure. Yeah. That it's, it's there. Those notebooks should not even be in the same category. No. In my opinion, they're that different of, they give you that much, a big range of, a wide range of performance. I'm trying to say, you know, one pin in the Moleskine is going to perform completely differently in the Rodeo web notebook. It's, yeah, I, yeah, I recommend Rodeo products a lot and I've, I've ordered the web notebook to, to test out for myself and I just haven't, you know, it's on the list. It's one of the many things on the list that I just got to get to, you know, it's kind of like, you know, that when, with Steven and I talking about last week, you know, starting that new notebook, you know, just sometimes you just got to man up and start writing. You know, get over yourself. And I, I have that problem. So sometimes I order things like that, knowing that I want to try them and want to use them, but I'm scared to start them. So they just sit there. Yeah. Cause I have two of the orange, orange cover, uh, dot gridded ones.

Myke Hurley: Oh, nice.

Brad Dowdy: They're still in plastic.

Myke Hurley: So I know I'm, I'm going to, the next time I need some books, I'm going to be getting the planes. Yep. But I also bought some, I'm starting a new job here in a couple of weeks. So I needed some other notepads for different things. Um, so I've bought a couple of other rodeo products. Um, I bought some of the staple bound books. Sure. Um, just in a couple of different sizes. I also bought, um, a paper diary, which I've not done for a while. I went for a Moleskine paper diary. Um, just one of the small 18 month ones, which is, which is, you know, fine. And I also bought, there's some new star Wars additions.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. They came out with a new series. Like a, I don't know if they call it series two, but they had the original ones last year and they came out with a new batch this year, right? Different characters, different images.

Myke Hurley: So I bought a Yoda one for 2013. I will probably forget. I even have it, but it says, yeah, it says do or do not. There is no try. Exactly. Exactly.

Brad Dowdy: Exactly. One thing about those, those rodeo staple bounds, um, notebooks, they, and this is my geekness coming out. They have the best perf perforation I have ever used in any notebook ever. I don't know how they do it, but there's, it's, it's tight and solid when you want it to be bound into the notebook. But when it's time for it to come off, it's just like surgical precision, the way they make those things. I don't, I've never seen another notebook act like that before. It's crazy good.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I was, I was very impressed by that as well.

Brad Dowdy: Just one of those stupid little things that gets me in. It's like, wow, that makes a difference to me anyway.

Myke Hurley: So that's it.

Brad Dowdy: But yeah, man, what, how did you even, even go on vacation? It sounds like your vacation was going to the pen store. You, you, you, that was quite a haul.

Myke Hurley: That is a vacation for me. That's pretty cool. I wish there was a good pen store locally.

Brad Dowdy: You know what? I think you and probably 99% of the people that listen to this podcast or read the blog, right?

Myke Hurley: I would love to just go somewhere and look at things and pick them up.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's, you know, that's what, I know they have, I know they have at least one decent sized pen show, I think in London, or I don't know if it travels around the UK or if it's just based in London. But, you know, they just had a big pen show here in Washington, D.C. this past weekend. And, you know, since I wasn't doing too much on my blog or was too busy to really write or, you know, test out my pens, I was following the guys at Fountain Pen Geeks and they had traveled to the D.C. pen show and we're, you know, doing photos and all kinds of stuff. It's pretty cool. And that's the place where you, you know, you can make a pilgrimage, you know, not to a pen store, but to a pen show where you can try so many different things in one weekend's time. The only problem is if you do that, you need to have your whole budget ready to roll for that, right? Yeah. I mean, that can put a hurtin' on real quick.

Myke Hurley: Maybe we should just all move to Japan.

Brad Dowdy: That's right. Gosh. Yeah. That would be nice. That would be nice. But, yeah, it sounds like you had a really, really good week of new loot. That's pretty awesome. I'm going to have to get on the ball now. I'll definitely work on getting one of the Retro 51 Fountain Pens for sure.

Myke Hurley: Cool.

Brad Dowdy: Cool.

Fountain Pen Ink

Brad Dowdy: Well, I guess that probably about wraps it up. You know, I've still got boxes to unpack. I got web notebooks to find. I got fountain pen ink. I need to go find and unbox and see if I can ink up this 2000, see if I can get a little bit of different performance out of it. I got lots to do, man.

Myke Hurley: Yes, you do.

Brad Dowdy: I need to get on it. Plus, you know what? I could probably kind of use a shower too.

Myke Hurley: Excellent.

Brad Dowdy: Well, I'm very pleased to hear that. The things I do for you, Myke. You know, I've been packing and unpacking all day and I took a break to come over here and record the show just because I love you so much.

Myke Hurley: Oh, that's very kind of you to say.

Brad Dowdy: Thank you, sir. This is fun. It's something I look forward to every week and we appreciate everyone that listens and downloads or downloads two or three times on all their devices. You know, you don't need to just subscribe to it in one device. You can subscribe to it on five devices and stick them all. That'd be fine by us.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, please. Feel free to do that if you'd like.

Brad Dowdy: So, no, I do enjoy doing the show and I know Myke and I appreciate everyone that listens and, you know, we thank you all very much.

Myke Hurley: Indeed. I'm Myke on Twitter. I am YKE. Brad is at Dowdy S-M-D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. Let us know there what sort of stuff you're looking at at the moment. We always love to hear what people are after. Okay, sir. Well, thank you very much.

Brad Dowdy: Thank you, sir. And I will be talking to you soon and I will be getting my shopping carts filled and some things shipped to me hopefully within the next week or so.

Myke Hurley: Excellent stuff. Until then, we will speak to you all very soon, I hope. Yep.

Brad Dowdy: Talk to you later. See ya.

Myke Hurley: Bye. Bye.