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Notebook | Nov 02 2005

For several months now I’ve been carrying around a little pocket-size spiral notebook in my jacket. It’s there in case I think of something to write down.

The notebook is produced by a company called Roaring Spring and is the plainest one I could find. The cover is black with a gray swooshy logo at the bottom. I don’t mind the logo so much—it’s simple and unobtrusive—but I’d still prefer it wasn’t there.

I keep the notebook in the right-front pocket of my jacket, along with my favorite kind of pen, a black uni-ball extra fine point, which I clip to the notebook’s front cover to prevent it from falling out of my pocket. So far this has worked well.

At my gym I carry the notebook everywhere I go, along with a towel and water bottle. Whenever I ride the recumbent exercise bike, I slip the notebook into a slot at the back of the bike. When I first started doing this, I was concerned about possibly forgetting the notebook and having to come back later to retrieve it. Twice I’ve done this with keys. Somehow though the notebook is different, and I’ve never forgotten it.

One time I thought of writing my name and phone number on the notebook’s inside front cover, just in case I lost it, but unfortunately the cover is made of plastic and can’t be written on, besides being black. If I wanted, I could write my name and phone number on a piece of paper and tape the paper to the inside cover, but this seems too much. I used to have sheets and sheets of mailing labels, which would be perfect for this job, but then a few months ago, during the process of moving, I threw them away, recognizing that I hadn’t used them in almost ten years and would likely never use them again.

The notebook came with 46 sheets. I didn’t count them at the time, but this is what it says on the back and I have no reason to imagine otherwise. I remember standing in the aisle where I found the notebook, thinking that 46 was a strange number. Why not 50? 50 sounds like a reasonable number, while 46 seems scant. This almost prevented me from buying the notebook, but then I told myself I was being ridiculous.

I’m glad I listened to myself that day, it really is a nice notebook, perfect for my purposes—small but not too small, and nearly as plain as possible—although so far I haven’t thought of anything to write down.