Samantha Ling

Chris mentioned the other day that I haven’t written any blog entries. And when he tells me this, it really means I haven’t written anything in a while. So I’m going to start a series called Ling Likes, which I am shamelessly copying from Jenn. She recently talked about her love of Sharpie pens, so I thought I’d write about my favorite pens.

I discovered these pens a few years ago and I haven’t found anything to replace them. My criteria for pens is pretty simple.

It has to be waterproof. I’m sure you’ve all spilled something in your writing and lost a lot of your work. But you know, my love of writing in bathes pretty much requires that I need something waterproof.

It has to be lightfast. I have several post-it’s scattered around my work computer and I noticed that a few of them had faded terribly in the Florida sun. There’s nothing worse than looking at something knowing that it was important and you can’t remember what you had written there.

A lot of pens meet my criteria. If you look up scrap booking pens, or archival pens, there will be a plethora of options that come up for you. Unfortunately, they were never quite right for me. But then I found the Uniball DX Um-151 pens and a love affair was born!

For me, I really like the fine points that aren’t available in the U.S. I actually got these from Jet Pens, who specialize in importing items from Asia.

I like these because they write smoothly, don’t skip, doesn’t dry up in the pen easily and they’re waterproof and lightsafe!

Here is a page that I dunked in water and then let dry. As you can see, only the pink colors have blurred, but you can still see what’s written there. (And I have a bit of collectoritis when it comes to getting all the colors available.)

I’ve tried several pens since then. Pilot pens and Pentel pens didn’t pass the waterproof test and the Sharpies, unfortunately, have felt tip ends which I abuse too quickly. Same goes for Sakura microns, Staedtler fineliner and various other art pens.

But just because I’ve found a favorite pen, it doesn’t mean I’m not on the lookout for more. Do you have a favorite pen? Tell me which one it is!

Crossposted to Samantha Ling, Dreamwidth and Livejournal

Guess where I’m at! And The Gap store doesn’t count. I will have more photos later in the week.

Crossposted to Samantha Ling, Dreamwidth and Livejournal

Well, it looks like my Nablopomo this year has been a fail. I should have known. I mean, I missed the first one, so I should have known I wasn’t going to keep it up this year. But you know, I’ll still try to do my best.

But you know, I had to try. Over the weekend, we went to the Z’s house and I monopolized baby #2. He’s only about 5 weeks old and super cute. And apparantly when they wiggle their head toward your body, it means that he’s hungry. He’s looking for boobies!

Steph is running a contest, so go look!

And I’m going to bed soon. My brain can’t handle this busy schedule I’ve made for myself. Woe is me.

Crossposted to Samantha Ling, Dreamwidth and Livejournal

I know a couple of you out there use Moleskine notebooks. I bought a bunch of them when you could only get them in boutique stores for $20, but I got mine for $10! (because I bought them in bulk from an art store). This was before it all blew up and became so popular. This was way back when Modo & Modo were the only people making these and they only made 2 models, the black ones in the original 2 sizes. Now there are ton of them and a ton of knockoffs.

I never did anything with the covers of my moleskines because I like the clean look of the black cover. I recently bought a knockoff from Borders (it’s the Picadilly version) for $5. I wanted to see if there was a huge visible difference. (So far, there isn’t.) But the Picadilly version had a big old gash in it where the rubber band kept it closed. I’ve never had that with my Moleskine one’s, but then I bought mine before B&N got a contract with them and they found cheaper manufacturers. So I don’t know if the quality is still good or what. But I’m totally going on a tangent here.

The gash bothered me enough to the point where I slapped on a Hello Kitty sticker just to hide it. And it doesn’t look half bad. I thought about doing the same to my Moleskine, but I haven’t done it yet. I still like how sleek it looks without any markings on it. It’s more mysterious, you know?

So I was wondering how many of you guys deface, I mean, decorate your Moleskines? I know people in the community do. You can see them all over the web. But i was wondering what you do with it?

Crossposted to Samantha Ling, Dreamwidth and Livejournal

Here’s a photo of where I was yesterday. if you have dogs, you’ll be placed on the same floor as this lake. It’s considered the first floor, or maybe the second… I can’t remember now. But there are tench doors leading out to here. We spent part of the afternoon sitting outside with the dogs.

The one thing that bothers me about the hotel is that the facade is painted. Though it looks great from afar, it’s startling to realize the brickwork you were admiring is painted on.

Nevertheless, the hotel is very nice. Definitely clean and I couldn’t even tell the rooms were designated for dogs, which is quite nice.

Until tomorrow!!

Crossposted to Samantha Ling, Dreamwidth and Livejournal

There’s a Subaru commercial in which a husband/boyfriend forgot his glasses. And so they go back through all the places they’ve been to in order to look for it.

Now, if it were me, I wouldn’t go back to all those places. I’d just pay for new glasses. And if it was Chris, I’d just pay for new glasses. And if it was you, I’d tell you to suck it up. They’re just glasses. You can replace them. You can’t replace my vacation time.

Now if you’d left them at the restaurant we just left, I’d totally go back. That’s not a big deal. But that’s as far back as I’ll go. I won’t backtrack to the beginning to find out it was on you the whole time!

It’s a stupid commercial.

Crossposted to Samantha Ling, Dreamwidth and Livejournal

I am doing my entries all out of order. But as long as I post something right? At some point, I went to see Vanessa Carlton as Epcot’s Eat to the Beat. She came with only one other person, a guitarist. From what I could tell he really didn’t need to be there. But I think touring on your own gets really boring. Having someone to travel with and talk to during the down times is much better. Even if you have to pay him.

I read that she liked touring this way because she liked the intimacy of just her and the audience. But when you’re doing this more intimate way of performing, I think that maybe you should talk to your audience a little bit too. Like tell them a story about traveling here or loving this song because it’s about your first love. Or you were inspired by this painting. Or just chatting with you. But she really didn’t do that. She just sat at her piano and sang mostly.

When you hear the songs back to back like that, they all sound a little bit the same. Which isn’t bad. I like her songs. But she did swear when she messed up, which is a total no-no at squeaky clean Disney. She apparently swore at an earlier performance as well. I won’t be surprised if we never see her at Disney again. It’s what I call self-sabotage. Too bad. She could really use this Disney gig. What else was she going to do?

Crossposted to Samantha Ling, Dreamwidth and Livejournal

I do not know how time got away from me today. So I am just going to do a quick post. Here are a few people at Disney wearing unusual hats.

I don’t know where they got these hats. I didn’t see them at Disney, so they must have brought them from elsewhere. They are unique to say the least!

Crossposted to Samantha Ling, Dreamwidth and Livejournal

I watched the new episode of the Housewives of Orange County. I know I shouldn’t watch this junk. It’s definitely one of those secret pleasures that I shouldn’t be telling you about. I’m actually a little embarrassed. But Anderson Cooper is watching it. He’s admitted it. So it can’t be that bad right? Actually, I think he watches the Atlanta one…which I also watch…

So anyway, I watched the new episode today. It seems to me that the OC cast seems to have the most issues. Are they snobbier than the rest or is it just me?

Of all the housewives, I think Tamra bothers me the most. She seems to be the most judgmental and acts more superior than the others. To me, she’s getting older and her whole identity was dependent upon being young and beautiful. And now that she’s losing that, I think she’s having a hard time.

I understand that too. I’m no longer young and skinny. There are times where I look at my old clothes and wonder where did all that time go? I look at my old pictures and think, Jeez, I was hella skinny. But I also think about those times and think about how young I really was and I had something to prove. I don’t feel like that so much anymore.

I’ve come to a point in my life where I’ve let it all go. Life’s too short to hold on to anything, especially those petty things said under stress or flippantly or said without thought. I’ve even let things go that were said with a mean spirit.

Most recently, an acquaintance said that my new haircut made me look older. I ignored her because she says such things. Then she repeated even louder for everyone to hear. I had a whole series of retorts that were both negative and personal attacks, and I said none of them. There are more important things in life than holding on those sorts of things. So if there were issues at some point, I’ve wiped it all clean and I’m pretending that none of it happened. What about you?

Crossposted to Samantha Ling, Dreamwidth and Livejournal

I recently found a box of office stuff that I originally thought i’d lost in the cross-country move.

It contained several notebooks along with a huge stash of pens. And I know that some of you are always on the lookout for waterproof or water-resistant pens. So I grabbed a bunch of them and did a test for you. Here are the pens (which are well over three years old at this point.)

Zebra Sarasa. These are relatively cheap and come in different colors. I wouldn’t suggest it only because some of the ink skipped for me and most of them had dried out already.

Uniball Signo EX2, Uniball Signo 207, Univall Vision Elite. These are my favorite pens. They are waterproof and bleach proof and they write smoothly without skipping. I’ve also taken these on planes and haven’t had a problem. But I think the new pens we get these days shouldn’t have a problem anyway. I use these also to write the infrequent check with. I highly recommend these. They have yet to disappoint me.
Zig Millenium. These guys usually make pens used for scrapbookong. I liked this one well enough, but as with all felt tip pens, they start to lose their shape for me because I sort of write a little hard. I abuse my pens pretty badly, so I need a metal nib.
Pigma Sakura Micron. This set of pens are for artists. Once upon a time I fancied myself an artist, so I have a lot of artsy stuff. I wouldn’t suggest this line because it’s a felt tip. It does come in a huge variety of colors and different sized nibs.
Noodler’s Ink Russian. This was one of my favorite colors. But what I found was that the ink totally dried up too quickly for me. Even if I did use it every day, the ink still clogged up my pen.
Koh-i-noor Nexus Art Pens. This is also another set of art pens, but I do not recommend these at all. The first pack that I bought had a couple of dried up colors in it, so I had to exchange it for other colors. After all this time, some of them were dried up while other times it was totally leaky. They say that this pen can write forever, but that is clearly not the case.
Prismacolor Premier fine line. This is another set of artist’s pens and they are felt tip again. I also found the tip a little bit mushier than usual.

And that concludes then pen evaulation for today. Do you have a favorite pen? Is it waterproof? Why do you like it?

Crossposted to Samantha Ling, Dreamwidth and Livejournal