PencilWraps, Pens, Pencils, Notebooks, and some day-to-day happenings and such as...
I just had to stop everything and share this. This is actually my journal entry for yesterday. This is literally all I had time to write. As soon as I had this written down, something else hit my desk and I had to put my journal away. The previous entry is from November. Things have been super crazy busy but I look forward to getting back into the habit of writing everyday, as well as posting to this site, very soon..
Into the Fray!!!
The Aurora Ipsilon Satin Fountain Pen now being offered by Jet Pens caught my eye. Unfortunately that’s exactly where it punched my wallet as well. I’m going to have to save up for this beauty but it will be added to the pen wish list.
Gel pens are my favorite. This Parker Urban looks like a gel pen kicked up a notch and has the price to show for it. It will be nice to have a twist-action gel pen to add to the arsenal. (I would have chosen the pic for the other one but it had twilight in the name.)
For the artist that wants to make the doodles on their clothes pop, Sharpie is accommodating. These Stained brush tip fabric markers are made to be used to draw on your pants, shirts, hats, or whatever you’re wearing. I would have gone for something like this back in high school when I would doodle on my pants when bored in class. They resist fading during normal cold wash cycles and if you only hang dry the garment.
Earlier last week Pencils.com announced that California Republic Stationers has a new series of hand crafted notebooks that will be revealed starting this Monday, September 19th through Friday September 23rd. Newsletter subscribers will have first dibs during a subscriber only presale on the 26th. The items will sell to the general public the next day. I can’t wait to see all of these to know how many will make their way to my shelves.
This Mont Blanc Writers Edition Carlo Collodi Pinnochio Fountain Pen is something that I’ll probably not add to my collection. It’s beautiful but I have a mortgage to pay.
And for those of us that follow the GTD guidelines for always staying current with our work, Staples has 100 packs of 3-Tab manila folders on sale for 50% off. I know that David says that you need to keep at least 100 on hand so here is our chance to stock up for half off.
Last week I had the Stabilo Point 88 Fineliner markers on the New Arrivals post. Shockingly The Pen Addict has already reviewed one after picking up a couple. Check out his review of Ultramarine Blue.
This is not a sponsored post and I am not affiliated in any way with the vendors that I mentioned above. I’m just pointing everyone in the direction of where to get the loot I like. If, in the future, one of these posts is sponsored, it will state it clearly at the beginning and the end.
The survival horror video game Dead Island was released this week. It was a trending topic on Twitter for a while because of the black screen that many PC users had to stare at when the game was supposed to load. The premise is that you’re on the tropical paradise island of Banoi, which turns not so paradise-y.
The player is drawn into the world of Dead Island on the brink of a mysterious epidemic that suddenly, and without warning, breaks out on the fictional island of Banoi. As a guest of the Royal Palms Resort, the player’s stay was supposed to be a dream holiday; a luxurious getaway to the beautiful beaches of a tropical paradise. But faced with the reality of a zombie apocalypse, there is only one thing left to do: Survive.
This is Dead Island… a paradise to die for.
While watching a video of gameplay yesterday, I noticed that when you are offered missions or tasks, they show up on a handwritten, bloodied-up piece of paper. (no g/m² specified so I can’t tell if it’s fountain pen-friendly) What is that? A Next-Actions list! Sure there are little extras written down like what your reward will be and the difficulty, but mainly, it’s your next action. Look at that pic above. There is one thing to do on that page and that is to “bring the security keycard to the lifeguard tower from bungalow #11″. OK, so your immediate “next action” would be to go to bungalow #11 and pick up the keycard, I know. But you don’t really have time to write, “take keycard to lifeguard tower” after you cross off the first part when you’re in the middle of being chased by brain-hungry, lunatic zombies. And besides, since you’re not exactly sure how many next actions you will have, and civilization has broken down, you need to conserve paper in an environment where you can’t just run to Staples and get more.
What have I learned from this? When the zombie apocalypse happens, (oh and it will believe you me) paper, a handy writing instrument, and GTD will help you get through your most important list of next actions in order to complete your “Get Off This Crazy Island” project.
Today, I saw this inspiring slideshow on my friend Hoo’s site. It has very good pointers on redeeming time. I’ve been very busy the last several months, but I know that there were pockets of time that I just let slip away. I’m glad that no one was following me with a camera every day because I don’t want to know what all those little moments add up to.
I must have subconsciously known that I had been wasting time here and there because I’ve been listening to my GTD audio book on the way to and from work again. My mind was trying to tell me that I was not taking advantage of EVERY moment and could have been doing more by being more organized and staying current.
Well, the massive project that we’ve been working on all year will reach a milestone this week where the work will taper off and I’ll get even more breathing room. It’s nice to know where the finish line is. But even if I didn’t get a break, I know that I’m re-implementing the tools and habits that will allow me achieve a “mind like water“.
Like I said in the previous post, we got the bug to organize more stuff at the end of 2010. My office has been bugging me for months now. I have been purchasing a bunch of notebooks, pens, and pencils since relapsing into my stationery addiction so I had stuff everywhere. I was stacking notebooks wherever they would fit on my shelves. I had a drawer that was bursting from the amount of pens that I had ordered and it was all overflowing onto my desk.
That last one was the main thing that I wanted to tackle. I wanted my pens to be nice and orderly. So, since pictures tell 1,000 things more than letters and such as, here go the before and after shots:
Bottom drawer before...
...and after.
Middle drawers before...
...and after.
Top drawers before...
...and after.
What you see above is my little storage drawer cabinet wood thing that I bought at IKEA over 10 years ago. (I painted it black myself) My desk is more of a studio recording desk so it has no drawers. This is my only storage for writing instruments besides the pencil cup you see and a plastic desktop organizer. I bought those mesh trays from the Container Store. I keep the pens/pencils for everyday use in that cup and the organizer that lives on top of my desk. This drawer thing sits to the right of me. Also, across the top you can see my Pilot G-2 pens that range from 0.38mm to 1.0mm. And of course my little toro from Madrid.
I took these pictures before I received my Niji 400s and 500s from Pencils 11, and before adding the Kuru Togas to the mix. So, that will add 8 more mechanical pencils into that bottom drawer.
Can you tell what’s in each drawer?
The last week of the year found us trying to get even more organized than we already think we are. Neither one of us likes to waste the precious time that we don’t have trying to look for something because it’s not where it’s supposed to be. The keys, wallet, and phones are always in the same place. The kids’ toys get put away into baskets every night. DVDs are alphabetically arranged on the shelves. Books are arranged by category and alphabetically by author. Bills and things to be processed are put in an “Inbox”, and so on. It may sound borderline OCD but doing this gives us more time to do the things that we want to do like playing with the kids. I mean, who wants to always be cleaning or picking stuff up just so you have space to sit on the couch? We tackled a couple of areas before the new year.
A week before the new year, the door on our pantry fell off the hinge. It had done that before several times until it finally broke. I had replaced the hinge and the door was better but it kept falling off. I think the reason it kept having problems was that there was too much weight on it. The previous owner of the house installed custom cabinets and went a little overboard on where he put the shelves. He added press board shelves to the door and I think that exceeded the weight limit of the hinges. So this time, I took the door off and removed the shelves from the door. Now, I told you that story in order to tell you another one. Since the door was off the shelf for a couple of days, Angela could see into the pantry every time she walked by. The fact that she had to take everything that used to be on the door and make it fit into the pantry made it look crowded in there. So, long story short, after a trip to the Container Store, certain items have found perpetual homes.
We purchased containers that could hold all the rice, flour, sugar, corn, beans, coffee, grains and cereal. We buy 25 pounds of rice at a time so it’s hard to find containers for it that will fit in the pantry. We got a large one to house the large part of it and a smaller container to be able to grab and measure out. Of course, my GTD-inspired labeler came in pretty handy so that we now keep everything nice and orderly.
Next is getting enough containers to house my son’s cookies, crackers, and other snacks so that we can get rid of those red and purple boxes. Those aren’t very airtight after being opened.
Did you do any New Year’s consolidating / rearranging?
Part 2 (My Office) coming up…
