It’s late autumn in 2009. I’m at the local neighborhood bar with Victor, my husband. For a Saturday night, the place is relatively quiet. The lights are low, music is playing and Victor and I are tucked back into the far corners of a booth made to seat 6 people. He’s on his second or third beer and I have a Guinness.

“What do you think about Mystery Bags?” I ask my spouse.

“What do you mean?”

“Like, those bags or boxes of junk you can buy for a like $1 and you have no idea what’s inside.”

This, a completely normal conversation to have while slightly intoxicated, developed into a full-on brand, a full-on business, a full-on retail concept.

It became Send Me Something….Where we Send You Something!

Here’s what the deal is. You go to the site, you pick a certain size Something (A Little Something, Somethin’ Something or SUPER Something), we curate a collection of items, expertly wrap them, include some extra goodies, a hand-stamped certificate of authenticity and a handwritten note and mail it off to you or the person you ordered it for. We’re basically curating a story of sorts. At checkout, you can request specific items or general suggestions so we curate a better selection of things for you/your recipient.

We kept the site up and fully functional for about 12 or 18 months, I have no idea. Then, my business doubled in size and I turned the shopping cart off.

This past Sunday night, I couldn’t sleep. I was laying there, awake, for no reason. I picked up my phone and pulled up Google Analytics. I was going to check in on traffic of one of the 55 websites I track (yep, 55 websites.)

By accident, I clicked on Send Me Something instead of Simplicity Embellished (they’re next to each other in the list). Surprise!

10,000+ hits in the previous 5 days.

5 Days?

10,000+ hits?

I fly out of bed and rush into the living room. Victor is sitting on the couch reading something, also not able to sleep.

“VICTOR, SEND ME SOMETHING GOT 10,000+ HITS LAST WEEK.”

This is bizarre because:

a. We have not discussed SendMeSomething for well over 2 years.

b. I turned off the shopping cart.

We log in to the site and I turn the shopping cart back on. I drop over to Google Analytics and I see that there are 81 people on the site currently.

81 people. At once.

Then we hear a little noise come out of my computer.

A sale.

10 minutes later:

2 more sales.

By 3 am we have a significant number of sales.

So, I guess we’re back up! 

I just wanted to share this with you because it’s kind of cool and exciting. This was a little idea we had in a bar years ago and it’s fun to see it up and running full speed. As for the traffic…where did it come from? We think we found the source but aren’t sure. A national comedy show made mention of it, sort of. People are just Googling for more information.

In celebration of this, I’m posting a discount code here for 10% off any order. Shipping is also just $1. The code is DANG. It expires at the end of May. If you have someone you don’t know what buy for, this might be a good solution. Judging from the comments, most of these orders are for fun gifts. And, if you want to see some of what has been sent out in the past, visit the Gallery of Somethings here. No new orders will be posted in the Gallery until after they’re received by the recipients so we don’t spoil the surprise.

Please note we have longer shipping times due to how the items have to be curated. Just be aware!

So, there’s something you don’t know about me.

Now you know!

The Flight 93 Memorial is off the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Pennsylvania. Actually, it’s about 20 miles off the interstate till you get to the National Park entrance, and then an additional 3.5 mile drive back to the actual memorial, and then a .25 mile walk to the actual site.

I was really interested to see this memorial for a few reasons.

First, because it’s really in the middle of nowhere. I was wondering how trafficked this National Park really was and if many people were interested in visiting. It’s sad, right?

Second, I wanted to see the memorial given the controversy that surrounded it and the years it took to get it open.

Third, I didn’t particularly want to be reminded of September 11, but I did recognize the value in revisiting a piece of recent history.

September 11 was a day I ‘grew up’ a lot as a 16-year-old. I saw the attacks as they were happening live. I was home from school that day because my Grandfather died and we were going to bury him. He was to be buried the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. I was rehearsing the eulogy I had written for him, sitting at the end of my Mom and Dad’s bed, while watching Katie Couric on the TV propped up on my Dad’s dresser and seeing the planes hitting the towers. I drove with my parents and my sister to the church for the visitation with the radio blaring news of the attacks. My Mom could not even process it. I remember sitting there in the back seat of the van on my way to the church thinking about much more than just burying my Grandfather. He was already dead, but thousands of people were actively dying as we were driving to the church. How could this be? That day really shaped my perspectives on death because of the juxtaposition of the events of that day. I remember reading the eulogy I had written in a new light that afternoon. I was reading those words with a much broader perspective than I had on September 10, or even just that morning. The value of an individual life became more than just a nice phrase I could mutter in conversation with adults, and really became something I had an understanding of.

I also wanted to see the Flight 93 Memorial because comparatively it wasn’t covered as much as the Towers or the Pentagon. And, I wanted to see how they’d deal with the site as a memorial. The crash was in the middle of nowhere, in a field. What do you say?

I learned quite a bit about the particulars of Flight 93. I didn’t know that the plane crashed upside down. I didn’t know that it crashed at 563 miles an hour. Or that up on impact, 7,000+ gallons of jet fuel exploded effectively cremating everything at once. Looking around at the vibrant blue sky and breathing the clean, cool air you couldn’t help but feel the contrast between such a violent crash and such peaceful, quiet surroundings. There was a farm off in the distance with a red barn and a wind farm too. Idyllic. It’s amazing to think that terrorism so violently impacted this little, idyllic, spot that only ever kept to itself.

What you’re looking at here is a long walkway lined with marble wall panels. Each panel has a name on it. You are looking at the path the plane took as it crashed. Beyond the wooden gate at the end is a boulder marking the impact site.

We were there about 4:30pm on a Monday. The park closes at 5pm. When we arrived, there were about 10 or so folks meandering through the site. Then, two giant travel buses pulled up and out poured 40 or so kids from an athletic team of some sort. They bounded off the bus and raced each other to the end of the Memorial walkway. So, it seemed to be pretty heavily trafficked for being so far out and kind of sad.

On our way out, I looked at the board with all the pictures of the people who died. I thought to myself how they were victims of terrorism.

Then I thought to myself about the terrorists themselves. They were victims too. Yes, they made a choice, but they were victims of something very dark too.

A few days previous to this, I took Victor to the World Trade Center site, but we weren’t there to see the 9/11 memorial or the new tower going up. We were there to see the church. St. Paul’s Chapel carries such an amazing story. First, it’s a cemetery in lower Manhattan. Second, it has an incredible history.

• George Washington went to church here on his Inauguration Day in 1789.
• It’s one of the oldest buildings in New York.
• And it didn’t even get a broken window after the September 11 attacks.

For me, when I first went to this site on a hot summer night by myself, the church is what put the whole thing into perspective for me. I think the same thing happened for Victor, too. It was quite a history lesson to travel from this spot in lower Manhattan to the Flight 93 Memorial just a few days later.

The church is a great place to stop if you are in NYC. Just visit their website and you’ll see what you can learn about 9/11.

So what is there to say? I think this whole experience relates back to something I hold very deeply. In planning for a future (your own or in general) you have to know where you’ve been to better understand where you are. And, you can’t effectively plan for the future unless you understand where you are at present.

Living in the present is about understanding the past. Preparing for the future is about understanding the present.

I spent all of last week working with clients in Pennsylvania and NYC. It was a great change of pace and working from somewhere new is just the best. I’m also preparing for a move and I’ve discovered I have ~10 fountain pens I’ve been using that I have not reviewed. I’ll have to remedy that in the coming months! xoxo

In January of this year, I ordered two Pentel Pulaman disposable fountain pens. One with red ink and one with black ink. (They also come with blue ink.)

I was definitely surprised when it arrived. The nib is plastic and I wouldn’t actually describe it as a fountain pen at all. It’s more like a felt-tip pen, but the plastic tip lets it flex a little bit.

Overall, it’s a fine pen, a great writer and very inexpensive. It’s just not a fountain pen.

The red ink is bright and clear, the black is very dark and opaque. When you write with it for extended periods of time, you can catch the tip of the pen and end up with a bit of splatted on the page…just like a fountain pen! It’s such a funny little pen in my mind. The term ‘fountain pen’ just does not accurately describe it.

My husband has adopted both and he really, really loves them. They are his go-to pens right now. His other favorite writers are the Parker Challenger Fountain Pen and the Cross Affinity Fountain Pen. He also really likes the Disposable Pilot Varsity Fountain Pen.

We’ve used these pens on Muji Notebooks, Moleskine Notebooks, scratch paper and 25% cotton paper. All take the ink just fine and no bleed seems to exist.

Final word: Great, inexpensive, disposable writers. Not fountain pens!

I ordered mine from JetPens here.

Are you into Disposable Fountain Pens? I wrote about three more disposable fountain pens here: The Pilot Varsity Disposable Fountain Pen, The Pilot Plumix Refillable Fountain Pen and the Bic Disposable Fountain Pen.

And a total dud of a disposable fountain pen here: the Dodec Disposable Fountain Pen.  

PS: Images above show testing on Muji Notebook paper.

There is one design in particular that my letter-writing friends I think will adore. It’s a roll of MAIL MESSAGES! How perfect.

The photo in this post belongs to Danni Hong/Oh, Hello Friend.

Here’s a link to her online shop!