The wife just brought in my Cross Pen.

This is really good news. My wife tells me I am "naked" when I am without that pen, and I was 'naked' for the entire trip to Colorado. And was chagrined to not be able to find the pen when we got home.

Have been wearing that pen, and it's matching chromium pencil, since high school graduation.

That's thirty years, folks.

Not this actual pen, of course. Just the inside mechanisms. I've worn out and replaced the outsides of the pen several times. Have a second chromium version that I bought to replace the pen when I thought I'd lost it, years ago. It is filled with red ink, and that pen has worn down through the chromium and through the soft metal beneath.

Yes, I've been told that Cross will replace worn out parts for free, but then I wouldn't have them anymore, would I?

So, anyway, the wife found the pen.

Really lost it once before, and blamed the boys for the loss. For almost a full year. And then, as the year passed by and I again had opportunity to open one of those files that I only open once a year, there was the pen. In the bottom of the manila folder.

Oooops.

So where was it this time?

In the washing machine. Apparently went in with a shirt. But I checked all the shirts in the dirty laundry when we got home, so it had to have been washed before we left. Which means it has been run through the cycle at least four or five times now.

Disassembled the mechanism, and a glop of water dropped out. Fortunately, it is a blue ink cartridge, and blue jeans. And it still writes!

So, that's our New Year's Eve so far (the boys' plans for a D&D party fell through...bad highways): laundry and diaries. But the shrimp is cooked and cooling in the refrig, and the wife is making her own personal shrimp dip, so the celebration should begin soon...