There are few occasions in which I will break from my habit of writing a pen dry before cleaning and changing ink: Christmas is one of those occasions. My ink palette, while mostly satisfactory, was not festive; blues and oranges do not, in my mind, signify Christmas. It was time for a change.

My company is having an off-site meeting next week; in fact I fly out tomorrow. I do not know what kind of notes I will be taking, but surveying my currently inked pens two things were lacking. First, I have been itching to try the custom italic nib I ground on my TWSBI Vac 700, and what better time than an airplane ride. The vacuum mechanism has a gasket that seals the reservoir off from the feed, which makes me feel comfortable bringing it with me on a plane. Second, I want to have a pen with red ink, and I have low confidence that my Konrad won’t leak during take-off. So, my Pilot Prera returns to duty with Noodler’s Park Red.

The CEO of my company is coming to town. It is because of me that he has begun his own journey into fountain pens. I could hardly do anything but invite him for a pen meet over dinner. To that end, I asked if there were any requests as to which pens I bring. So it was that I filled a few favorite pens and radically increased my currently inked count to ten.

Quietly, but assuredly, my currently inked pens reached nine. At the same time my life grew busy in arenas that limited, rather than expanded, my use of my pens. This trend appears to be continuing, despite my best efforts. Thus it was time to retire some pens, for now, and return my inventory of full pens to a more reasonable six.