So, last night the wife and I are watching The Amazing Race while I rearrange my sock drawer, as one does on a Monday night when one has nothing better to do, and I notice my right hand is hurting.  It’s, like, really sore.

You know that constant dull pain you sometimes get in your legs when you’re very tired?  Like that, but much worse and in my hand.  Specifically the fleshy areas under my little finger and thumb.

Then it hits me:  I was writing yesterday.  With a pen.

Yep.  The first letter is making its way across the Atlantic as I sit here typing (I’m not divulging to which of my new pen-pals I wrote – I want it to be a surprise to them).  But apparently writing letters is harder work than I remember.  It really hurt my hand.

My big problem is that I have minuscule handwriting.  When I used to submit assignments for English in high school my teacher often asked me for a magnifying glass.  More than once I had the feeling she wasn’t joking.

A side-effect is that I scrunch up my hand very tightly while I write, leading to muscle cramps I have become familiar with during the many exams I’ve written in my life.  But this is the first time my hand has still been hurting hours afterwards.  Guess I’m out of practice.

Luckily I’m working to fix that 😀

Oh, and I’ve gotten another pen-pal, though she is currently in flux as far as an address is concerned so I can’t write her just yet.  But go say hi to Honoria Plum over at Plumtopia, a blog dedicated to the work of P.G. Wodehouse.  Don’t know who that is?  First, you philistine!  Second, he’s probably one of the funniest men who ever put pen to paper.  Even Sir Terry can’t make me laugh quite as hard as Wodehouse regularly manages.  Honoria is a bit of an expert on Wodehouse, so Plumtopia is well worth the read.