I’m now the owner of a fountain pen, my first ever. It is a blue Waterman Carene with an 18 karat gold fine nib (here’s a photo of it without the cap so you can see the gorgeous top finial). No more drooling over Levenger catalogs (OK, I’ll probably still drool over them anyway), wondering if I should join the ranks of the pen elite. I was never really sure if I wanted one; I love roller balls (Uniball Vision is my one of my faves) and consider them to be a major improvement over fountain pens. My only “real” pens until now were a blue Cross Classic Century Ladies’ ballpoint that I use for writing checks, a beautiful, squishy grip Venetian Blue Sensa which takes Fisher Space Pen refills (I got black, blue, purple, and gold) that I use for journaling and other personal writing, and a brilliantly metallic purple rollerball pen with my name engraved on it which I got when I worked at Brio (of course it has the company name on it too). A good fountain pen is so pricey, considering I’m perfectly content with a $2 roller ball. But there’s something tremendously appealing about the beauty of a quality fountain pen. I’ve been using mine for all sorts of innocuous things at work all week: drawing class diagrams, sketching potential design patterns for web-based UIs, editing requirements documents, underlining key phrases in technical articles, and, of course, doodling during meetings. I suppose I should sit down with it and try some serious writing. But, wait, don’t I do that on the computer now? ;-)