Thanks for notes of advice & understanding regarding the pen repair fiasco. Much appreciated. I guess if my hands were more like fine musician's hands rather than like slabs of boxer's mallets, that would have helped. Anyway, onto cars, and 4WD vehicles...I bought a 2015 last of the line D22 Nissan Navara 4x4 dual cab pick up, or ute, in 2015. I'd always liked them since back in the early 2000s and, apart from an engine, they haven't changed at all, and I like that. Whilst ISIS chose Toyota, because ISIS had more money than I did, I went with the humble Nissan. A good turbo diesel 2.5 common rail engine, heaps of used parts available, and a good long record as a strong vehicle. I kinda bought it as my 'final' car, trading in a 2011 Mazda BT50 2WD single cab one ton alum tray ute. I wasn't sure of the wisdom of this at the time as the Mazda was very good, with a 2.4 common rail diesel engine...but it could only fit 2 people in it, unless the third was an armless and legless Laotian person in the middle. The Nissan has been really quite faultless in the drives around the tropics, the drive down here, 3000km to melbourne, and getting round the Melbourne streets. It is not a city car at all and yet does everything with a simplicity that I like. It features 4 ash trays and an actual cigarette lighter and a 6 stacker CD player...but no other technology per se. The only thing that beeps is the horn, and there is no screen entertainment, just a pretty shitty radio...but everything works simply and is predictable. The Mazda BT50, 4 years older, was somewhat more advanced in some ways but it did always fishtail out on turns and I kept reversing it into poles and other cars due to the cramped vision out the back. Anyway, yesterday's massive downpour here was a great way to see how the Nissan went in absolutely horrid flooded road conditions, and it did so very well. Sure footed and secure and never missed a beat even with a few hundred gallons of water coming into the engine bay. The high engine snorkel seemed, for the first time, a pretty smart choice. I'd recommend to anyone the last of the line 2003-2015 unchanged D22 Navaras...still some of them near new with low mileages...nothing pretty but designed to last a long time. Minor dents and scratches simply add to the truck's appeal...and it pretty well can and will go anywhere. The engine isnt as free-breathing as the Mazda's but then the Mazda was 2WD and so benefited by being lighter...but wow, did it fishtail in the wet...and I was tired of reversing it into cars especially. Very unpopular. The Nissan does give you a higher view of the road and the landscape, and I like that too. The worst car I guess I've ever owned was a Russian Lada Niva constant 4X4, years ago but still it had its strengths and the strength was...its strength. On a country dirt road it stayed on the road and when it hit a cow, as it did once, at 50 miles an hour... no damage to the Lada at all. Poor bloody cow was a mess. Fortunately I was a remote area Director of Nursing at the time so I pumped the cow full of morphine by the side of the road and stayed with it til it left the world. The Russians didn't build a good car, but, fuck it was strong.

Thanks for notes of advice & understanding regarding the pen repair fiasco. Much appreciated. I guess if my hands were more like fine musician's hands rather than like slabs of boxer's mallets, that would have helped.
Anyway, onto cars, and 4WD vehicles...I bought a 2015 last of the line D22 Nissan Navara 4x4 dual cab pick up, or ute, in 2015. I'd always liked them since back in the early 2000s and, apart from an engine, they haven't changed at all, and I like that. Whilst ISIS chose Toyota, because ISIS had more money than I did, I went with the humble Nissan. A good turbo diesel 2.5 common rail engine, heaps of used parts available, and a good long record as a strong vehicle. I kinda bought it as my 'final' car, trading in a 2011 Mazda BT50 2WD single cab one ton alum tray ute. I wasn't sure of the wisdom of this at the time as the Mazda was very good, with a 2.4 common rail diesel engine...but it could only fit 2 people in it, unless the third was an armless and legless Laotian person in the middle.
The Nissan has been really quite faultless in the drives around the tropics, the drive down here, 3000km to melbourne, and getting round the Melbourne streets. It is not a city car at all and yet does everything with a simplicity that I like.
It features 4 ash trays and an actual cigarette lighter and a 6 stacker CD player...but no other technology per se. The only thing that beeps is the horn, and there is no screen entertainment, just a pretty shitty radio...but everything works simply and is predictable.
The Mazda BT50, 4 years older, was somewhat more advanced in some ways but it did always fishtail out on turns and I kept reversing it into poles and other cars due to the cramped vision out the back.
Anyway, yesterday's massive downpour here was a great way to see how the Nissan went in absolutely horrid flooded road conditions, and it did so very well. Sure footed and secure and never missed a beat even with a few hundred gallons of water coming into the engine bay. The high engine snorkel seemed, for the first time, a pretty smart choice.
I'd recommend to anyone the last of the line 2003-2015 unchanged D22 Navaras...still some of them near new with low mileages...nothing pretty but designed to last a long time. Minor dents and scratches simply add to the truck's appeal...and it pretty well can and will go anywhere. The engine isnt as free-breathing as the Mazda's but then the Mazda was 2WD and so benefited by being lighter...but wow, did it fishtail in the wet...and I was tired of reversing it into cars especially. Very unpopular. The Nissan does give you a higher view of the road and the landscape, and I like that too.
The worst car I guess I've ever owned was a Russian Lada Niva constant 4X4, years ago but still it had its strengths and the strength was...its strength. On a country dirt road it stayed on the road and when it hit a cow, as it did once, at 50 miles an hour... no damage to the Lada at all. Poor bloody cow was a mess. Fortunately I was a remote area Director of Nursing at the time so I pumped the cow full of morphine by the side of the road and stayed with it til it left the world. The Russians didn't build a good car, but, fuck it was strong.

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LIFE LESSON: Tragic. I love fixing things. Sometimes I fix them well. I fixed the fake UBOAT Italo Fontana wristwatch last night and was so happy, and it gave me the confidence to fix the fountain pen my father in law gave me about a decade ago... Chinese communist party peace treaty signing pen, gold coloured, heavy, huge, blood rubies imbedded in the top, perfect 1950s East German Iridium nib that I dropped and bent awhile back... and anyway, inspired by how well I fixed the watch, I set about fixing the beautiful pen nib and at one point I actually had the binary nib points aligned and signed my name with it...but the two points were​, although aligned,​ still just bent a bit and so I tried to make the nib perfectly straight and...crack...one of the binary points just broke off. Sigh. I doubt I can find an East German pen-smith master from 1950 to make it right, ever. It is actually stuffed. Damn. So I have walked about today calling out Damn! I expect I will continue to call out Damn! occasionally for quite some time because nothing can be done to fix it now. Ever. Damn!​ It is like the lessons in the Koran.​ There have been quite a few Damn! occasions in my life. Damn! And yet I know I will still go about trying to fix up important things and half the time I will get it just right....and half the time I will get it just wrong. Damn!

The Spring Yard a poem for Matsuo Basho by John Fitzpatrick, 22 November 2017. A magnolia bloom tumbles onto the dead fence and all is tumbled new. there is work tomorrow.

A magnolia bloom  
tumbles onto the dead fence 
and all is tumbled new. 
there is enough work tomorrow.

In the great scheme of things, if North Korea could ever develop a nuclear war head they could fit to an intercontinental ballistic missile and hit Hollywood with it, who in their right mind would think that could in any way be a bad thing? The thing is this...the little rockets that NK fired over Japan recently weren't taken out by the massive US military intelligence and massive forces in North Asia...because they couldn't do it. They couldn't hit them. This kind of war is very hard to do. America can't do it with any accuracy at all. It is highly unlikely that somehow North Korea will work out how to do it, so it's all kind of silly.

From my book "After the Wake...Stories from Palliative Care". Joe was 58 when he started ​actively ​dying from cancer and this was about the same time he was diagnosed. He was shocked at first, but then, didn't mind. He said he would never have had any kind of reconciliation with his 5 children except for the fact that he was dying. He was grateful they turned up and ​everyone ​wished everyone, including him, well, ​as was the truth of his and their time being. He traded in his Subaru Forester and bought an Alfa Romeo, knowing that neither he nor the Alfa, unlike the Subaru, needed a​n extended ​warranty, or needed to be reliable. His wife loved him anyway and she was a competent enough person to make a living, as she always had. He had no insurance and some debts...but there would always be someone who wanted to take the Alfa off his hands for almost nothing anyway. ​He was a man of reasonable virtue and reasonable reach, as he described himself.​ He offered his body to forensic science at a local university, so they would take it and chop it up etc and cover the costs for his Memorial Service. He was relieved, in a way, because the only way he could really afford to have a life he valued would ​have been to keep working until he was 80, ​as an engineer, ​and he never liked work at all, much anyway. ​H​e always just preferred not being at work, whenever he could​, and he liked not thinking about things more than was necessary.​ Joe died within the year as 99.9% with his diagnosis, do, and always have done, no matter what they say on TV, and he never once had 'a battle with cancer', and he really didn't mind it at all.

From my book "After the Wake...Stories from Palliative Care".

Joe was 58 when he started ​actively ​dying from cancer and this was about the same time he was diagnosed. He was shocked at first, but then, didn't mind.
He said he would never have had any kind of reconciliation with his 5 children except for the fact that he was dying.
He was grateful they turned up and ​everyone ​wished everyone, including him, well, ​as was the truth of his and their time being.
He traded in his Subaru Forester and bought an Alfa Romeo, knowing that neither he nor the Alfa, unlike the Subaru, needed a​n extended ​warranty, or needed to be reliable.
His wife loved him anyway and she was a competent enough person to make a living, as she always had.
He had no insurance and some debts...but there would always be someone who wanted to take the Alfa off his hands for almost nothing anyway. ​He was a man of reasonable virtue and reasonable reach, as he described himself.​
He offered his body to forensic science at a local university, so they would take it and chop it up etc and cover the costs for his Memorial Service.
He was relieved, in a way, because the only way he could really afford to have a life he valued would ​have been to keep working until he was 80, ​as an engineer, ​and he never liked work at all, much anyway. ​H​e always just preferred not being at work, whenever he could​, and he liked not thinking about things more than was necessary.​
Joe died within the year as 99.9% with his diagnosis, do, and always have done, no matter what they say on TV, and he never once had 'a battle with cancer', and he really didn't mind it at all.

After working in end of life pain control nursing for about 20 years, I arrived at being 50 and realising that most folk I'd met, most australian blokes like me, retired at 65 and then got cancer or had infarcts, went on cruises and died really quickly, so I decided my life wouldn't be like that...so at about 50, faced with 2 terminal diagnoses, one of heart and one of cancer, I jetted off, travelled the world, ended up in very bizarre and sensual places, lived a rich and incredibly expensive life, blew heaps of money, did things I thought I would never do, had things done to me I thought would never happen, and saw things and places that I never ever expected to see, and then, well, I came home and now, post my career in end of life care, I work in mental health nursing. it is still rare for me to meet anyone under 90 who has experienced life as much as I have. I'm not judging, I'm not boasting...I'm just noticing. I wouldn't be an adviser to anyone who has ever displayed congruent reason, and just stayed put at home, but at the same time, I have some good advices from time to time for fellow travellers.

The back yard lawn is verily mown. The long grass is thus smote. On the grass strip outside the house, near where all the private school kids get off the bus and toss their rubbish, well...all the rubbish hidden by the long grass for countless eons has been cut up into millions of tiny bits of paper and plastic and it is now all drifting in the wind into the rich neighbour's front yard where he has just washed his stunning Rolls Royce. Hard work is not without its subtle satisfactions.