There’s nothing like a good bribe to provide dissertation motivation.  Usually this takes the form of something tasty at a local coffeeshop — exiled from the internet and provided with something snacky, I’m usually good for a couple solid hours of revisions — but I most recently purchased some shiny new office supplies to get me in a writing kind of mood.

As I’ve mentioned before, I almost never lose things, so pencils and pens tend to stick around the Jejune household for a long, long time.  Ergo, I can buy some nice new pens without fearing that I’ll lose them.  I am a huge fan of Jetstream ballpoints, so I got one with a nice squishy grip and a 4+1 (four inks plus a pencil!) version, plus a boatload of refills.  It took some major discipline not to pick up a bright orange version while I was at it, I tell you what.

I’ve had the same two mechanical pencils since 2002, so I couldn’t justify buying any more of those.  Plus, digging through our pencil mug is a kind of archaeological exercise.

Who do we know, for example, that went to church in Anderson, Indiana?

And what is this “IKEA”?  Never mind.

And there’s these guys, hot from the two-for-a-quarter pencil machine installed outside of the main office of Del Mar Heights Elementary circa 1986.  The unicorns, disappointingly, no longer smell of strawberry. (And doesn’t that just sound like the title of a literary memoir?  The Unicorns No  Longer Smell of Strawberry, and Other Reflections on a Lost Childhood.)

What, you don’t come to this website for moodily-lit photographs of writing implements?

And then!  And then I was at Nota Bene recently, and got sucked into their strategically-located table of colorful 2010 planners.  I don’t even use planners.  I had a Palm Pilot way back in the day that eventually met its untimely demise on the linoleum floor of a Wisconsin Craft Mart, and since then I’ve happily used Google Calendar to obsessively schedule things.  You can’t sync a paper agenda with Google, after all.

But!  I’ve finally begun to carry a little notebook with me in my bag at all times, and it fills up astonishingly quickly with grocery lists, ideas, notes, appointments, and generally serves as external storage for all manner of brain detritus.  Wouldn’t it make sense to have something in which I can order this information?  Something in which I can check dates for future events on the spot, instead of mumbling something about having to check when I get home?  Something colorful and shiny?

Of course, instead of buying a normal, boring pocket agenda at the drugstore, or going a step up and getting one from Clairefontaine or going even more obnoxiously hipster/pretentious writer and getting a Moleskine, I decide that I need to pay twice as much for something imported and delightfully plasticy.

But it even has pockets on the back!  And the perfect (for me) week + facing page of note space layout!

And the information in the back tells me how to say “I am from Japan” and other helpful phrases in five different languages! And there is a sure-to-be-helpful conversion chart to aid in the translation between Fahrenheit and Canadian (tm Xander) degrees!  And subway maps for all major Japanese cities, so I am prepared with a map of Osaka’s underground in case of any eventuality while on the go!

2010 does not know what’s about to hit it.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 10:10 am and is filed under bits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.