thisamericanlife’s Neighborhood

Hey everyone! I hope you all had an amazing Holiday!!  :)

For the New Year, I just thought I'd post links to 3 of my favorite charites. I'll go into more detail on each one later, but for now check out their websites. All are real players working for our planet.

The New England Wildflower Society

NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council)

The Center for Biological Diversity

So I got a laptop bag from Erika (thank you) and a gloomy from Charles (thanks). I hate the idea of riding around with a HP devil computer logo and I have a lot of Gloomy. With the help of MANKILLER-FANG industries, I had help making my idea come to life. So. I'm pleased!

My step-father-in-law took some pictures yesterday of the freezing fog.  It was really beautiful.  I yoinked these from his facebook page, hopefully he'll post more because it was really spectacular out yesterday.  There was a pretty neat looking frozen spider web, I hope he got one of that.

Looks like our big snowstorm today is going to be a bust.  It will only be rain for the next few days.  Hooray!

Merry Christmas to all!

Why did I leave lines blank? It has to do with three fun Christmas presents my wife got me.

Part one was a Lamy Vista fountain pen, a derivative of their Safari pen. The Safari has a following among collectors as it writes well, inexpensive without being cheap, and is a tough pen. They are great about stuffing in pockets, carrying everywhere, or letting a 5-year-old daughter have a try. It is one I recommend to folks who are getting their feet wet in fountain pens.

To the left is the nib and section of my new Vista, next to my Safari. Pretty straight-foward. In additional to Safaris being cool pens, I thought a Vista would be fun for a few other reasons. One key one is being able to show my daughter (and others) how fountain pens work. Fountain pen companies have made "demonstrator" pens for years--I thought it would be fun to have one in my collection. There was one other use...

Part two is a black light flashlight. You may have seen these at the airport, when TSA asks for your papers and makes sure you don't have 3.1 ounces of juice. I wonder what my new pen looks like if I point the black light at it?

It glows! But it looked empty? That's part three of the present: a bottle of Noodler's Ghost Blue ink. This is the only invisible ink I'm aware of that's safe for fountain pens. It reveals itself under UV light. Let's look at that text again:
You may have to make it full size, but you can see the text there. I apologize--it was hard to get the words to show with the UV flashlight on the camera--the point where the beam is brightest is a bit blown out.

Why invisible ink? Very little reason other than fun. It could be simply sharing notes with my daughter (or others). Or writing my own gripe in my notebook. Or possibly putting an "easter egg" in some note that I write--if it happens under a black light, it will be revealed.

In any case, It is definitely high on the cool and fun scale! Isn't my wife great?

I bring you: a cat in my lap this holiday. Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! I did!

I waited until most of you have gone to sleep to whip out some of my favorite Christmas music.  Who would've thought that an atheist like myself would prefer Christmas music about Jesus?