Another Monday night with tight deadlines, so I went out to the garage looking for one of the boxes — I know they’re out there — in which I tossed pens I couldn’t bear to throw away. (I have a fixation on pens. And office supplies. But we’ll get there, probably sooner than later.) I thought such a box would be easy pickings on a late night.

But I didn’t find any of the pen-filled boxes. Instead, I found this:

Box 9: Monday, Jan. 9, 2023

CONTENTS: This box is filled with light-switch and electrical-outlet covers. And pens — a half-dozen of the Bic Mark-It ultra fine point permanent markers. It turns out that we replaced all these covers in the Missoula house in 2006 before selling it and then brought them to Corvallis because — I don’t know; maybe we thought we’d need replacements and the City Council had banned the sale of new plastic outlet covers? Yeah. That makes sense.

DISPOSITION: The covers are headed to Habitat’s ReStore. As for the pens, the Bic Mark-It ultra fine turns out to be a solid offering in the ultra fine point permanent marker category — as good as the uniball Air, but maybe not as good as the Pentel Tradio, which has the benefit of being refillable. The uniball Air technically is refillable, too, but I’ve never been able to find refills, and — oh! Am I talking too much about pens? I warned you. Two of the Bics are out of ink. I toss them, and I toss the red one, because I never write with red ink. My wife, an accountant, says she uses red ink, so she claims that pen. But, yeah, I’m keeping three of them handy here on my desk.