The Pen is Mightier than the Sword....or at least more expensive!

Tomorrow is our 23rd wedding anniversary, and Bill made plans to celebrate it today by going to the Washington DC International Pen Show, and then to our current favorite restaurant, Bonefish. When we told a few of our friends about the plans, he got more than a little bit of ribbing about taking me to a pen show--how romantic...NOT! Even I had my doubts as to how we would be able to spend a whole day looking at pens. One redeeming factor was that the theme was Calligraphy, and in fact, the Washington Calligrapher's Guild was going to be there. I am a former member of the guild, and enjoy their annual Calligrafest where there are demonstrations and vendors with all sorts of supplies. They are sponsoring the annual Letterforum next year. I would LOVE to be able to go there! It's very close by this time. Usually it's on the other side of the country, and the cost and time away is prohibitive, but it's possible I may be able to go to this one.
Much to my surprise, and I'm sure, our skeptical friends as well, I had a great time, and ended up buying more pens than Bill. He bought one new pen, and some ink and blotters, along with a little gift for Nathan and Micah for being babysitters while we were gone. Their pens were shaped like a dragon and a cobra from the Egyptian collection. I bought a necklace pen (magnetized so the barrel stays in until you need it); a dual tip pen that has a brush calligraphy pen on one end and a rollerball on the other end (bottom one in the red box); and a fountain pen that has a flexible nib and should be good for copperplate lettering.
There were some very beautiful and unique pens. One company's most expensive pens was a dual tip pen made of solid gold and diamond chips and sells for $72,000. Yes, I said $72,000!! It was beautiful, but I just can't imagine having that amount of dispensable cash that I could buy a pen like that. They did throw in a custom pen stand that allowed the pen to rest horizontally to keep the ink from drying in the pen.
On our way to the restaurant at 5:30pm or so (yep, spent the whole day there--shocking, isnt' it?), we called them to make a reservation so the wait wouldn't be as long. They told us there wasn't a wait, so they weren't taking reservations. When we got there, though, there was already a 35 minute wait. I remarked that not five minutes ago, they had told me there wasn't any wait. The manager happened to walk by at that moment and offered a table near the kitchen and an appetizer on him. That seemed reasonable to me, so we took the table. Later, when we told him we were celebrating our 23rd anniversary, he threw in a free dessert as well! Delicious and FREE...now that's my kind of service. :o)