Fun-loving adventurous Canadian male seeking attractive older w... Oh wait -- wrong site! Heh heh heh... let me just tuck this credit card away and start over.

*ahem!*

It all started back around 1980. I had just moved and started attending a new school that September. It was the pencil-to-pen transition year: grade 5. My teacher, a school marm named Miss MacCallum, insisted that the proper way to learn to write with pen-and-ink was with a fountain pen. So, the Sheaffer School pen intrudes itself into my life and thereafter I'm sliding down that slippery dark slope...

Throughout high-school, ballpoints were "it", but I'd always kept that trusty fountain pen around -- hidden away safely in my plaid pencil-case. Throughout all of the chess tournaments, playing Dungeons and Dragons, getting beaten up for lunch money, gabbing about that cool new movie TRON...okay okay, I'm getting carried away. The point is that I kept using that pen on and off.

Gosh, I really wasn't that much of a geek in HS, was I? Hmmm... Fast-forward to MANY years later -- I'm now a somewhat successful IT manager type with a pen and ink addiction. Yep, you heard it here. I've got a problem. Know what it's like to get wasted on Aurora Blue? Er, me neither.

*cough*

For pens, I tend to bounce back and forth between moderns and vintage. I love flex. In fact, I do it all the time with what little muscle tissue I have. But I *really* love flexxy nibs. I have a coupla nice Waterman pens (Watermen?) to prove it. I also love italics and stubs. So much so that I've been know to go nuts with my Dremel tool. I can honestly say that I can't remember very many nibs that I've completely ruined (too many to count?) but I've churned up some nice ones. My cat, Spike, does a much better job with nibs. Er, Motti- who? ;o) (if you're readin' this, John, then ya know I'm teasin'. From one Canuck to another, eh?). Heh, betcha didn't know that John M was a fellow Canadian, eh?

The best part of pens are the people. Funny, if I were to utter those words around non-collectors (read: anywhere else), I'd get these funny looks. But you all know what I mean. The people are fantastic. It's what makes the hobby worth the empty chequebook. I love seeing people interact. Meeting people in person with whom I've spent hours conversing with online. And when we finally meet, talking about all sorts of stuff, pens or no pens. Heck, sometimes I'll pretend to know less than I really do just to sit back and listen to others. It's great. Of course, that has the adverse effect of people thinking that I'm a complete idiot, or a little slow, so nowadays I try to strike a balance. :o)

There you have it. I just thought that it was a-boot time I wrote a-boot myself. (no, I don't really pronounce it "a-boot" -- no matter what anybody says). Just a boring lad with not much sense of humour and even less imagination.

Jimmy.