Not Write Now

It's my birthday, but I'm in no mood to contemplate it. More pleasantly, I have bought myself a little notepad to write on. As I've written in the past, I favor legal pads for general writing and the rare doodle or sketch (though of course I type things on the computer, but there's always some amount of handwriting that I still do). Regrettably, the legal pad is an awkward thing to carry on its own. I have it there at home, and I can take it along in my laptop case, but apart from that it is really unavailable for use.

It's true enough that my phone can take notes, but somehow it just doesn't do it for me. Often I can't quite get at my phone for one reason or another. My hands might be unclean, or the light is distracting to others. People also will get the wrong idea about what you're doing with the phone. For those reasons, as well as for the difficult to articulate feeling that some things just have to be written by hand, I picked up the little notepad.

It's got the spiral at the top, and makes me think of the notepad that Lieutenant Columbo sometimes referred to while questioning people. It was a devastating weapon in the arsenal of the lieutenant, who did not ever carry a firearm that I have seen. I would like to think that I could wield mine with such effect, but in all likelihood I will employ it only to jot down ideas and jokes. Perhaps some will concern Columbo himself.

Of course, it may not work out like I hope. I have the idea that I can slip it into a jacket pocket or even the back pocket of my pants, but it could get mangled. Furthermore, the pad is nothing without the pen or pencil, and I have not settled on a safe, reliable means of always having one, what with pens leaking and pencil lead breaking. We will just see, for 79 cents is a small price to pay for an experiment that could pay such dividends.