A Few Quick Notes 368

-Today was definitely not as nice as yesterday. For the better part of the morning and early afternoon it was raining. Eventually things cleared up, though the earlier rain and low temperatures and lack of sun meant that everything was still wet at sunset.

-For the past few weeks I have been more frequently using the nice fountain pen that Neil gave me a few years ago. While I have been using this pen intermittently for the past few years, this is the first time that I have really given it sustained use. Now that I am using it on a regular basis I keep wondering why I haven't been using it on a daily basis since Neil gave it to me.

The only downside about my present rate of use is that I basically need to top-up the refillable reservoir once a day, and sometimes more frequently. Amazingly, the bottle of ink that I acquired a few months ago still appears to be quite full (so I guess each pen refilling session really doesn't use that much ink).

-I received a nice batch of four free samples this afternoon. I had been expecting that they would take much longer to arrive than they did. As the samples are all mens toiletries I will likely have a more stereotypical man smell for the next few weeks while I work my way through the body wash, shampoo, and anti-perspireant that I acquired today. Fortunately, the free disposable razor (the sample I am most looking forward to using) shouldn't impart much of a scent (unless you count blood from the nicks and cuts that are sure to result from my moderately inept shaving).

-This afternoon I learned that John Hodgman has a podcast. As far as I can tell there are only about 8 episodes so far, each of which is less than a minute, so it should be easy to catch up (though I still have a few episodes to go before I am fully up to speed with things).

-My lithotripsy session seemed to go well this morning, though things were a little delayed so I had a little more sitting around than I expected. The other thing that I keep finding weird about the experience is that during the history taking part of the process (which happens shortly after I arrive) they keep asking me different questions. The result is that it looks as though I am giving them different information each time I come even though I keep telling them the truth. I find this not only unpleasant, but very upsetting. I keep thinking that by the second or third time I should know how the process works and not be continually thrown for a loop during the history taking part of the process. Oh, and if you were curious, I received 3000 shocks at power level 3 (not that that means all that much to me).