This transcript was generated from an audio file by AI, and may contain inaccuracies.
Transcript
We didn't talk about NaNoWriMo when we weren't recording. This will be interesting. Yeah, I'm using gel pens.
Whoa. Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 18 of the erasable Podcast. And I also like to wish you a happy NaNoWriMo because this is November, and November is National Novel Writing Month. We'll be talking about that later. And also talking to our good stationary friend, Gary Varner, who is going to be launching a new web store of stationary things called notegeist. But first, I'd like to introduce my favorite co hosts I've ever had on any podcast I've ever done. Johnny Gamber and Andy Welfle. Hey, Phyllis.
Hey, Tim. I would like to say that you are my favorite co hosts on any podcast they've ever done, but my wife and I had a podcast in 2006, and I think she would be mad
if I said that.
How was your Facebook group?
Like, very successful. Barely existed then.
I understand.
I'll definitely say this is my favorite podcast and you two are my favorite pencil people, so that works.
All right, well, let's jump right into it. Let's start out with our tools of the trade. Johnny, get us started.
Well, I just finished Pete's Major Dickinson's Blend Coffee, which was delicious. And if you French press it, it sort of tastes like chocolate dirt. And I mean that in a good way. Really good. I love Peetz, but now I'm drinking. I don't know how you pronounce this. La Croix. What are those? Bubbly waters?
La Croix is what we say.
Okay, that sounds better.
Yeah, I call it La Crux just to be Lacroix. Kind of like an Australian accent.
Lacroix.
Well, I drink a Lacroix every day. Yeah.
Yeah, we love this.
Which flavor is it?
I have a lemon one right here.
It's my favorite one. My favorite is the lime, but we just found a place that sells the orange one, and it's super good.
It doesn't have enough bubbles. It's flat.
Lime and lemon are my favorites.
Yeah, Costco sells the lime ones, like, in bulk, and we just. We just buy a crapload of it.
We can start our Seltzer Water podcast.
You know what we would have listeners.
I'm sure we'll do a Bubbly Water episode.
We've gone off brand to bring.
You be a lot of belching.
Johnny, I've been meaning to ask you since your tools of the trade last time, or maybe the time before that, you said you had French pressed Dunkin Donuts, Pumpkin spice.
Yes.
How did that Turn out, because I just. It's on sale at Target, so I just bought, like, two pack. Like two packs of it, which I usually get whole stuff.
So if. Because if it's already ground, it's gonna be a little too fine.
Sure.
But whenever I do Dunkin Donuts, I feel like I need to add an extra scoop and an extra minute, and then it just tastes like somebody took some of the water out of Dunkin Donuts coffee and made it a little. Like it's delicious.
So.
But you, like, pressed it like you said, and then maybe poured it straight into a carafe or something instead of keeping it in there.
Oh, I just put it right in my cup and go chugging.
I have a really big, big cup. Oh, okay. That works. I'll just drink it straight out of the French crust. Yeah, just pour the French press in my mouth. What are you writing with, Johnny?
Oh, I am actually writing with as fine a piece of French stationary as has ever been in my house. The Rhodia 80th anniversary pencil and pad set.
Is that the thing that has the diamond cut on the mic on it? Is it a diamond or not diamond, but.
Oh, it's got some sort of weird logo pattern, and the paper is cream and it's so pretty.
Yeah.
But that's one of my fresh points, so I'll keep that short. How about you, Mr. Tim?
I am drinking wine and kind of a nut for Botobox wine. Have you ever had Botobox?
Oh, I love Botoboxes.
Yeah. I mean, it's just. It's pretty incredible for the price you get. I mean, it's basically four bottles of wine for.
They're the best box wine, I think. Yeah.
Yeah.
The Target wine cubes are pretty good, but Botobox is my favorite.
We don't have those here because we're Tennessee and we don't do such liberal things as sell wine at grocery stores. We're not scandalous like that. We'll sell, you know, natural light beer by, like, the 48 pack.
That's that alcohol for $1.50.
But I'm reading. I'm drinking the Boto Redvolution, which is their red blend, and I am writing on a field notes TEDx Portland. That is fancy edition. Yeah. I'm really excited.
Is that the one you won?
Beautiful. Yeah, I won it in the field notes or field notes anniversary drawing, where there's, like, 25 winners and I won a single field nuts Tedx. And it's beautiful. It's really well put together. Nice Notebook with this one, I am sort of saving it for certain things. I'm using it for a big career, future project kind of thing. And then in the back half, I'm doing podcast stuff. That's cool. So two big things.
This is your future career. Right, so.
Right, exactly.
So we're all going to be. We're all going to quit our jobs and just be professional podcasters.
Yeah, it's going to be a daily podcast, basically, just live podcast our lives.
We're selling sponsorships if anybody's interested.
It's going to be like the Truman show, but only audio.
Yeah.
What's that, Sal?
What's he doing? The flesh.
Listen to us sleep.
I snore very loudly. That would suck.
See, that's good podcasting right there. Yes. I love this notebook. I really have enjoyed breaking it out. I have it in my Davis leatherworks, his kind of foam Adori sort of thing. And it's in there with my Red blooded. They're hooked in together like a Midori style. So what about you, Andy?
I am drinking a beer made by a company called Chapman's. It's brewed fairly locally in Angola, Indiana, which is just maybe 45 minutes north of us in Fort Wayne. And it's interesting, I think, that the Chapman's comes from John Chapman, who's Johnny Appleseed, which he's said to have been buried in Fort Wayne. So he's kind of like a local. A local myth. Well, he's. You guys have heard of Johnny Appleseed, right?
Oh, yeah.
Okay. I never know if that's like an Indiana thing or if that's like a lot of people have heard of.
I definitely have from. From like school in Indiana.
That's true. You. That's right. You were. Yeah, but it's a. It's an English dark brown ale and it's really good. It's somewhere that. That sort of. Or it's something that is kind of a cross between like a brown ale and like a. Like a porter or stout or something. Like it's. It's a brown ale, but it's a little bit thicker. It's really good. I don't know how far out you can buy it, but when we. When we all get together and do our drink trade, when, you know, we get some black wing lager from Johnny and Tim. You bring your doctor Enoughs or something. Yeah, and then I'll bring some of this. It's super good. And I am writing as I have been in for the last couple weeks in my Rollbahn notebook. We Talked a lot about this on the Erasable Group, and I can't remember if we talked about it on the podcast, but a friend of mine who is a designer and graphic artist and is doing some work for my company, he had one of these, and I was just like, what is that? So I looked it up, and it's a Japanese notebook. That sounds German. Like, everything's in German on the front of it, which is kind of funny. It's kind of like Le Pen. If ever you use one of those, it's a Japanese pen, but it kind of sounds French. Yeah, but, yeah, it's a. It's super nice. It's like a nice creamy paper, which is what I really like. And it has. It's a little bit thinner than Rhodia, but not quite as, like, matte. I just like it a lot. So I think I'm gonna buy the full size 8.5 x 11 ish1. I have the. The half size one. I never remember any of the names. Like a 6B5. I don't know.
But, yeah, European. You don't have to worry about it.
Exactly. So that's what I'm running with. It's interesting that, you know, kind of independently, we all didn't talk about what pencil we're using. We talked about what we're writing in.
Which.
Mine has a pencil with it that matches.
Oh, that's true. Yeah.
I was just thinking. I just skipped it because of the Pencil of the Week.
Yep.
That's what I'm writing with the pow.
Do you think I should come up with some sort of a pow sound effect? Like a. Or something like that?
Like a Batman.
Yeah. I'll see if I can find something to insert.
My son does a good pow sound.
Maybe we can record him and get him to. We'll just use that.
But then he asked for cookies.
Yeah, we'll pay him royalties. Yeah. Henry says cuckoo.
Cuckoo.
Yeah, man.
Whenever I see those Le Pen things that you mentioned at Books a Million, I always get like, this overwhelming feeling of. My first reaction is, how could somebody be that lazy to half translate something? Yeah. We want this to sound sophisticated. So what should we call it?
They're really nice, though. You can get them in, like, super thin. Yeah. Yeah. I don't use them. Should we talk about our pencil? Pencils of the week.
Let's do it.
So, yeah, this week it was. We kind of made executive decisions and bypassed the group's voting. But it's the general's test scoring 580. And what did you guys Think of it. Love it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Johnny is our. You know. You've been using it for a while, haven't you?
Yeah, I used this before the Musgrave one, which is probably why I don't like the Musgrave one, because I already like this one. But they're so expensive.
Yeah, yeah, I definitely like. You know, I like the performance of it, but as I was. We were talking about earlier, it's just kind of boring looking like it's black. It has just a plain old ferrule and an eraser.
But the eraser is the perfect pink.
Yeah, it is a good pink of an eraser.
I feel like the eraser erases the darkness of this pencil much better than blackwing erasers do on a black wing, if that's intelligible, I think. You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
It's nice and soft, but it does a good job.
Yeah, I think. Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's. I don't know if I would. I haven't decided yet if I would pick this over the test scoring just because I love the. The wide, wide core and the feel of it. Maybe it's because I tried that first. Kind of like the opposite of you. I definitely wish I could have kind of a mashup of both of them.
Maybe just the styling of the. Well, I don't care for the typography on the Tesco. On the Musgrave. Well, I do, but it's kind of like in a kitschy sort of way.
If there could be a. Like a lacquered version of the Musgrave, that would probably be much better now, but. Yeah, I mean, it's a. It's a. It is a nice kind of classic look. I sort of appreciate the. The simplicity of it, just because it kind of gives you a. This is made by some dudes in a little factory somewhere. You know, it's not. It's not kind of overdone. But at the same time, if for their sake, you want to say, you know, people who aren't that into pencils, if they see this somewhere, they're not going to be drawn to it.
Yeah. So I really got the feeling kind of that my takeaway from the performance was that it. It's a little bit. It's maybe not as dark as the Musgrave, but it has better point retention.
Yeah.
It doesn't smear as much.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's a neat, dark line.
Yeah.
Love it. Love it.
Yeah.
I like that they're Black. Because they'd be hard to cheat with on a test. That's those really big, fat, sharp sides on a. The Musgrave. If I had that, I'd have been tempted.
Wait, like, to write on the sides. I've never heard of this.
Yeah, it's right on there.
I keep an eye out for that.
What is the formula for the area of a cone?
Johnny just narcked all your students out, Tim.
So if you see them carrying that pencil, man, break it.
There's a kid the other day. Sorry, I'm kind of getting off topic, but there's a kid the other day that was not cheating, but he. We were taking a test. We were working on something. He set his pencil down, and he had an Eberhard favor. Faber American Natural.
Yeah.
What?
Yeah. Wow.
Parents.
He probably just drug that out of a drawer or something. His grandparents gave it to him or something.
For sure. I have no idea. I didn't ask. I thought about just, like, not saying anything, but just walking up and trading a pencil.
Just giving him just, like, three pen. Yeah.
Give him one of my Golden Bears.
Easy. A, bro.
I think the. The Generals, though, it does. It writes really well, and I think it might maybe in the long run, kind of top out the Musgrave. I think the Musgrave. I think this one's better. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the Generals is put together better than the Musgrave. I like the writing experience better with the Musgrave, but the thing that really threw me off in the solid week of using it was that the getting that sort of silver dust all over me, it was like, kind of decomposing in my hand. I think that makes the Generals kind of. Kind of edge it out, I guess.
Yeah, Makes sense. Would you give it a grade?
It looked good in a cup.
Yeah,
I would give this an A. Freaking plus, man.
You said freaking, so I can't give you the typewriter bell.
We could do it again.
No, it's all right. Maybe I'll just do it for fun.
I'd give it an A minus, which I think I gave the. Did I give the Musgrave a B plus or. I think I did.
Yeah. I'm gonna go with Tim and give it an A minus, which is a little better, I think, than the Musgrave. So.
Yeah, so I think we give it like a 93, 94%.
Yeah, it's pretty good if we grade it on a curve.
No, actually, that's on my school's grading
scales, so, yeah, we should. So next week, do you. Should we return to the voting?
I think so.
Yeah. Maybe we should even do it a little bit early too so we can have more time with it and also kind of, you know, not feel pressured to stick with the whole thing. Stick with it all all the way through.
We could talk about it after and post it tonight.
Yeah, that's true. Ding, ding, ding.
Yeah, it's a solid pencil. I mean, Johnny said it's expensive, but I feel like we always. I wish we could put like a audible asterisk next to that because it's, it's expensive, but it's still like less than a dollar a piece.
Yeah, yeah.
Which I guess should just be a permanent disclaimer for enjoying pencils. Even an expensive pencil is pretty cheap.
Plus they come in that cool sleeve. We never mentioned the sleeve.
That's true.
Yeah.
Packaging is definitely better than the like plastic baggie that the Musgrave.
Well, they put it in there because it's already ugly. So ugly.
It's a fugly pencil.
Let's go ahead and get into our fresh points. Johnny, why don't you get us started?
Well, as I mentioned earlier, I have one of Those beautiful new 80th anniversary pad and pencil sets from Rhodia. So I sort of experienced some really good customer service this week. So I thought I would share a link to them even though I didn't tell them I would do it. I don't know, maybe they'll send me another one.
Haha.
But anyway, they sent me one and the shipping was free and it arrived pretty smashed. So they asked me to send a picture. Like no, I'm not gonna send a picture to send me a new one. So they sent me a new one free of charge, ultra packed. And they're like, keep the other one. So the pencil got a little smash, but the pad's fine. So I sort of have a free pad. Oh yeah, Giveaway. But I like it, so I'm not gonna do that.
Dibs.
Just have to. But there's a link in the show notes to their Amazon store. It was $11.99 with free shipping, which is great deal because everybody else is gonna charge a lot more for shipping. And I think now, especially if they know you're a pencil nut, they'll pack it very well. Just score. Also on the pencil on the paper front, did you guys get the field notes glitch in Cherry Woods?
Did I?
Did I didn't get the glitch, but I'm planning to get some cherry wood.
Man. They're nice.
I. Did you open the, did you open both of them?
Yeah. I'm using a cherry wood right now.
That's cool.
It's like half dead, half full. It's sweat stained.
No, the really bent the paper in the cherry wood. It's, it's graph and it's, it's lighter than the shelter wood.
Right.
It's just like the craft edition paper. Right?
Yeah. So the whole notebook feels more like a regular notebook now, which is good.
I guess that's why they actually, they list it on the web store as a, like, right next to the craft editions.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The suggested uses are the same as the craft edition, but not having that thick paper, it's sort of, I don't know. With the thick paper of the shelter wood, when the COVID was damaged, it would sort of split and not flex. And I'm finding this one flexes like regular paper. I love it. If the shelter woods were like this, I probably would have liked them a little more.
Yeah.
Although the paper is nice.
I love that paper. That thick. I wish they had that in a, in a graph.
I wish they just have it in any stock edition.
Yeah.
They should make it like the heavy edition.
Yeah.
Buy this one, but aluminum covers. Did you guys get the glitch?
I did, Yeah.
I thought about it, then I skipped it.
Yeah, I was actually out shopping when Andy sent the text and bought one in the middle of the store.
Just, just stand there.
Can I help you, sir?
No, Henry, Henry, calm down. Calm down. He's buying field notes. I had to buy him some cookies.
I, I, I appreciate that. Field notes seem to go out of their way to make sure that people were only, you know, people weren't hoarding this because it would have gone real quickly, I feel like, if they did that.
Yeah. Like, didn't they like, threaten to just, like, cancel your order?
Yeah, I think so. I think so.
Just awesome.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's great.
But, yeah, it's, it's cool that they did that just because I know they, they really limited the stock at XOXO compared to last year's. I know. Just listening, kind of seeing what people had to say about it. But, yeah, I'm glad they, they offered it to the public just because it was such a kind of a unique concept that they did. Although I'm apparently a little disappointed because it seems like even though it's like, looks like, like a runoff or something like that, it's not because. Did you, did you notice this, that, like, the glitch, like, pack to pack. The various notebooks look the same.
Yeah. I didn't know that until I opened them.
Yeah.
Like, oh, look, mine looks like they're on the website.
Oh, it is the one on the website.
Yeah.
So I thought it was, like, legitimately going to be something they, like, purposely screwed up, but.
Yeah. Plus the collectors would have a connection. Sorry, collectors?
Yeah. But that's cool. Yeah. I have an open mind. But I'm. I'm just about to finish my. I feel like I've been saying this forever, but just about to finish my Night sky. But I'm like, legitimately on the last two pages, so. To figure out what's gonna be next.
Did you open your glitch yet?
No.
See the lines? They're wacky. Yeah, but they're all wacky in the same way.
Yeah.
So sort of predictable.
How are they wacky? I haven't seen the inside.
They're sort of kind of off kilter. Yeah. There's a sort of margin at the top that shouldn't be there, I think. But I dig them. They're pretty cool. It's a good excuse to ignore the lines and just draw pictures of your neighbors that make you crazy.
Pictures of butts.
I'm not really good at drawing butts. My daughter is.
That's all. Charlotte? Yeah.
Alarmingly good. Speaking of Charlotte, we got packages in the mail this week from Anna from the well appointed desk, and Elaine from Jetpens. And they both threw in something really cool for Charlotte.
Super sweet.
So she has thank you cards in the mail to the.
I feel like she's our mascot on this show. She's like our unofficial fourth host.
She used a gel pen today at a coffee shop instead of a pencil. I was kind of disappointed. I almost gave her a lecture, but,
daughter, I am disappointed.
Then she shoved the gel pen inside of a crayon and it doesn't work anymore. Maybe she did that on purpose.
We've all learned a valuable lesson today.
Mental approval for that. Yeah. But Elaine sent some vintage hello Kitty pencils for Charlotte in a little box she was very excited about.
You know what's funny? She sent me some too. She. I got a pack of Tomoe river paper that I'll talk about a little bit later. But she. She threw in some hello Kitty pencils that she. She said she had laying around the house that she didn't send to Charlotte. So I think maybe she. She found more after she packaged.
They're really nice.
Yeah, they're cool.
I was gonna steal one from her, but I'm not gonna be mean. I like hello Kitty.
Yeah.
So those are my points. So you want to go next, Mr. Andy?
Absolutely.
Andy.
Andy. So not last weekend, but the weekend before, I was in San Francisco, and I was kind of bumming around, waiting for a friend of mine to. To be done with what he was doing. And I basically just sort of just walked around. I went up to the marina, looked out and saw Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge, and kind of went over. By the way, this is an amazing story. I got recognized for the podcast. I was wearing my erasable T shirt, and I was in line at a little coffee hut right on the marina green. And this woman in front of me was waiting for an order, and she looked around and she kind of stared at me for a minute, and I felt a little like, what's going on? And then she goes, is that. Is that your T shirt? Is that a podcast about pencils? I was like, yeah, yeah, it is. And she goes, my husband totally listens to that. And so I was like, what? So she. She bought me a donut. They also had that at coffee shop. So that was. She and her husband organize a dodgeball tournament on the green every week. A giant, like 40, 50 people dodgeball tournament.
That's amazing.
So she invited me to come join him, but I was busy walking around. But I don't know Annie's husband's name, but if you're listening, hi. It was nice to meet you and your wife. But anyhow, as I was walking around, I went over to Union street, and I was just kind of wandering around, and I ran across a shop called Itoya. Top drawer. And top drawer is one word. So I went in and it was amazing, guys. It was like, I don't know. There's no store like this in Fort Wayne. I'm assuming there's some stores like this in Baltimore, but they had a bunch of Midori stuff you could buy. Covers all the little accessories. Notebooks. They mostly sold pens and pencils made by, you know, the proprietor. The person there said itoya, but it's Ito y a, so ito ya. I don't know. It was. It was so cool. They had a bunch of different kinds of paper. They had these really cool little notebooks called Life notebooks.
Oh, I have one of those.
Those are cool.
You're about to have another one.
I really like it.
Yeah, I just bought the pocket ones. They had larger size ones that I wanted to buy, but I couldn't fit them in my. My luggage because I was traveling light. Yeah, they're. They're super cool. They have these pencils that are just gorgeous. They have, like, this really nice, like, ma varnish on it. And the erasers are. There's no fair rule. The erasers, I'm assuming, are kind of glued onto the end of the pencil. There's probably a little peg in there. And they. They're kind of rubbery. They don't work super great, but they're not too bad. And the pencils just. It's really high quality, just beautiful. They remind me a lot in shape and size of the duraflame pencils that pencils.com sells. Have you guys seen those?
Just from your pictures.
Okay. Yeah, they. I think even they sell them on pencils.com but, you know, California Cedar is a sister company of Duraflame. Duraflame was actually created kind of out of California Cedar, but for a long time they just had these pencils kind of laying around the office. And I picked a few up and I think now they sell them. But I haven't talked to Charles about this, but I'm willing to bet these are. Maybe Itoya made these, or at least inspiration was derived from them because they're. They're gorgeous. So, yeah, there's. Then she gave me the. The name of a few other really cool stationery shops in. In San Francisco. I meant to go to the Muji store. I'm kind of in love with the notebooks they have there, but I wasn't able to make it. But the lady. Lady. I had a really good chat with the lady who was running that store. In fact, I think she just joined the Erasable group not too long ago. But, yeah, she told me about a couple other things, and I can definitely see myself spending a lot of money there, so I need to temper myself. Speaking of Japanese products, I have recently sort of realized that I haven't read any good reviews of pencil writing on Tomoe river paper. And if you listen to the pen addict, you probably know what this is. It is a really thin, almost vellum, but not quite paper. But apparently it's. It's supposed to be really great for fountain pens. It's supposed to just like, just lap up the ink. And even though you can see through the other side of it, it's supposed to just like, not let bleed, like, you know, let the ink bleed through.
Yeah, it doesn't feather hardly at all.
Yeah, I haven't used it with a fountain pen yet, but Jetpens just started carrying packs of it. So I actually requested Joe Lebo sending me some Tomoe river paper and my Jetpens order came before his stuff did. But thank you, Joe. That's awesome. So I actually sat down and used my General's testing pencil writing a little letter to you guys when I sent you some itoya stuff that I got. Yeah, it works really nice for pencil. You can definitely see through the other side, but it's really smooth and. And unlike a lot of that thin paper, it doesn't really tear when you erase it. And it doesn't really.
Oh.
Kind of like Rhodia sometimes does. The pencil. The graphite doesn't just lay on the top and smudge easily. It's pretty cool. Yeah. But it's such weird paper. I have no idea how it's made or I need to find out more about it.
I have a couple sheets. I think Joe actually sent me some too, but it was a while ago with some ink samples. So.
Thank you, Joe, but just so awesome.
I haven't definitely. I haven't used it with pencils. I have a couple sheets and I had used it with fountain pens. What was I gonna say? But I really. I want to try the. They make a notebook.
Oh, the Seven Seas Writer.
Yeah. I really want to try one of those. J. Robert Lennon talked about it on the Pen Addict, about how he was writing his new novel one. And I really wanted to try one of those because the size of the paper, or at least the pages I have is kind of, you know, oddly shaped or huge.
What's interesting about that is, you know, that paper is so thin. Like, I think those. Those Seven Seas writer has like 450 pages in it.
Yeah, it's.
To me, that's a little much like. I feel. I feel. I feel. I feel like there's a lot of pages, but really, like you're only going to be writing, I guess, on one side of that.
So.
Because it really is so thin, like you can see through it.
It's almost like tissue paper for like packing a gift.
Yeah.
But just like really dense.
Yeah. And it's. Yeah, it's. It's super nice. Yeah. Those Seven Seas Riders are really beautiful. And those. Oh, isn't one of the Teiko Planners, the Habonichi Planners? Aren't they made of the river paper?
Yeah, they are.
Yeah. That's. If I ever were to go back to a paper calendar, which there's lots of times I want to. And I never, like. I just. So much stuff I do is on a shared calendar I have to do electronically if I ever Switch back to that. I would in a second get one of those. Those are really cool.
They should send us some for review.
Yeah.
Do a planner episode.
Yeah, there's a lot of, like that stuff that I really want. The other thing I like and I can't even. I don't even know how to say it. It's all in German. It's like taga. I don't even know. It's like a little notebook holder. It's made of felt, you see.
Oh, I've seen those. Aren't they astronomically expensive?
Yes, they. They're extremely expensive, but they're cool.
Rotor Foden, Tessa Baglaita or whatever.
Yeah, that was really good.
Yeah, they're like. They're like 250 bucks or something.
Oh, yeah. And a lot of black wings. Yeah.
So.
So, yeah, that. That's my. Those are my adventures. I've been. I haven't. I haven't done a lot kind of with my kind of internal pencil collection, but I. I've been seeing a lot of stuff just kind of out there. San Francisco is home to a lot of really cool Japanese products. Apparently this Itoya store is the only one outside of Japan, the one that's in San Francisco.
So.
And I just. I just stumbled on it. Like, it was. Actually, I almost literally stumbled on it. I was walking. I was walking down one of those like 45 Degree Hills and I was wearing a. Like a giant backpack on my back. And I sort of.
You're rolling down the hill. Somebody opened the door, came right in.
Well, right.
Yeah.
Right before I got there, I was walking down a hill with that giant backpack on my back, and I kind of stumbled forward and. And caught myself in my toe. And I put so much weight against it that my entire toe was bruised. So it didn't hurt, but it was pretty stiff. But yeah, I mean, that was. I was kind of. I kind of limped onto that, into that store.
Also.
When you're from the flatlands of Indiana and you're walking up and down these hills, it is not fun. I thought I was going to die at some point. So, Tim, how about your fresh points?
Well, a good place to start. My fresh points is. And I think, Johnny, you'll be proud of me, but I sold a fountain pen this week on. Yeah, well, I sold it on ebay. And it was one that was given to me that I just don't ever use. Like, don't have a use for it. It was too kind of executive for me, you know, and so I just didn't really have a use for it. It's one of the things I was
looking at a Waterman or something.
It's a cross. Oh, yeah, yeah. And it was 18 karat gold nib. Real nice pen. But I just didn't really have an interest in it. I sold it on ebay and got 115 bucks for it. And so I was able to get. I got a tactile turn mover pen, one of those, like, machined aluminum pens, and then I used part of it to pay for to buy a handkerchief from our buddy Jay at Huckleberry Woodchuck. And it hasn't come in yet, but I'm really excited. Which one is it? It's the red flannel.
Oh, I love those flannel ones.
Yeah, it's the red, like, red and yellow flannel one. And I had had my eye on that one for a long time. And so I had sent him a message with a picture of it and said, when will you have these? Because this is the exact one I want because he mixes it up so much because he' different fabrics and he'll make new ones. And so I got. I got that. Really looking forward to getting. And then just. This is my killer segue to my last point. My other point is that the last part of it, the last portion of it, went to paying for my pledge for the Twist Bullet pencil by Jay and John, who he had on for the last pencil. And so I just wanted to talk with you all about the ending of the Twist Bullet pencil. I. It ended at the very satisfying number of $14,500. It's like, so perfect.
I'm so excited for them for reaching that. That stretch goal. I didn't think they were going to be do. They were going to do it.
I was pretty shocked myself, too, that they reached all three stretch goals. That's pretty amazing because I mean that and I think feel like a lot of that happened in the last maybe seven or eight days, something like that. Like, it really amped up and there were some days where it seemed to jump up a couple. Couple thousand, which is pretty amazing. So I was so happy for them.
I mean, I'm sure it's our podcast, you know, when they came on that
really gave it that last Totally, totally our response.
Yeah.
Because of us.
Yep.
Solely. Yeah.
Right.
Nobody listens to this.
The show will never air.
This is just. Yeah. Are we recording right now? But I do want to know. I thought it would be a good idea if we talk about what each of us Pledged for like what option did you go with?
Absolutely.
Or if you decided they, or maybe I don't know if everybody is settled or if you might have changed it or deciding.
But yeah.
What's the deadline for that?
I don't know if there's a specific deadline. I think it was just.
I'm having trouble.
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, why don't you start?
Yeah. So I pledged the $55 level. So I'm getting two, two pens or two bullet pencils. I didn't do any of the add ons. I, I, I didn't really want the pen. And then the clip is super cool, but I think I'm going to kind of buy those aftermarket just because, after, you know, they go on sale. Just because I didn't want to add any more to my pledge at that point because, because I was going to have to pay for it. So, man, it took me a long time, but I think I'm going to get one brass tip and one aluminum tip. I think the aluminum tip is going to be the pointy one and the brass one is going to be the round one. Just because I wanted one of each variety. Even though the pointy one's a little pointy for me, I still, you know, it still looks good. And then I think I'm going to get a black and a blue barrel. I think the, I was thinking about how each of those barrels will look in my opinion, equally as good with those, with each of the, you know, each of the tips. So that's, that's my plan. The green, the first green that he had, you know, kind of when they, they first started showing colors, I feel like was a little bit brighter than the green that they settled on. It's more of a forest green or
might have been a, might have been a, an Instagram filter.
That could be too. Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and then I'm, I'm just, I just naturally tend to go toward, you know, more of those cooler colors than the, than like the, the red. Even though that red, that red is gorgeous. And, and the silver is nice too. But I just, man, if I can get a color. But yeah, I think, I think either the, you know, the black one can be my like dress bullet pencil or something. And then, you know, then the concept.
Yeah, your black.
This is my fancy, my fancy dress. Yeah. My black tie and tails pencil.
James wedding Bond edition.
I need to get a insert that's like a laser or something like that.
That, A laser sharpener.
Yeah. So yeah, if he's gonna make add ons in the future. Like a little knife or like they were talking about. Maybe they can do a laser scissors. Yeah. Bomb. Yeah. No. Anyhow, I think I'm gonna need a black one and the blue one.
So that's the. I think they chose well with the colors they went with because with having the brass and the aluminum pretty much any combination.
Yeah.
Will look pretty cool. The only combination that I would never want personally would be the silver barrel with the brass tip. I feel like that would look how wonky for me. But all the other combinations would look great.
I really wish there was an orange one because I would have probably picked that up. And I know Brad Dowdy is a big orange fan, but there's a lot
of people in our little community that are just bonkers for orange.
Yeah. And though I know that, you know, the orange would look good with the silver, but it would not look good with the aluminum or with the brass. I don't think.
Yeah. That's true.
Yeah.
Well they may. Maybe they'll come out with more colors in the future.
Yeah. If they. If they sell well maybe like after the Kickstarter and because. Because I was surprised those. The minimums for anodizing was pretty was a lot, I think you said. Speaking of anodizing, we just got word from the. The other bullet pencil project which should be delivering mid month. I guess he's going to be anodizing that aluminum. So just kind of give it. Give it a little. Little better for you know, for wear.
Nice. I needed to keep my. Keep an eye out for that one because I actually just from a. Purely from a funds available situation, I wasn't able to back that project. So I need to. I'm going to keep an eye out for when those are. When those are available because I'm going to. At some point in the future I'd like to pick up one of those because have both projects because that was a really cool project too.
And I'll be happy to pass mine around if they're not available.
Johnny, have you. Have you decided on which one you're going with?
No. I know I'm not doing brass because I'm holding out for full brass because I want like a five pound pencil in my pocket.
Johnny's gone full brass.
Yeah.
But I don't know.
Be heavy.
I was thinking of doing all silver but it just seems. I don't know why they have all those colors, but I like silver. Yeah. The one that we all carried around was silver and it was pointy so I might just get that one. Yeah.
That's exciting. With, like, the Keras custom stuff I get. I have almost all their pens. I have the render K ink and the bolt, and I went with silver on all those. I mean, I think that looks. It's a good look for. Especially for the. The machined product kind of thing. It's, you know, it's like the equivalent of a natural finish on a pencil or something, so. Well, cool. I'm really happy for. For them and glad that ended so well. And I'm such a. Yeah, just such a good point. Able to meet all the. All the stretch goals.
It makes me. It makes me just happy that, you know, a year ago, maybe a little over a year ago, bullet pencils were barely a thing still again. And, you know, there was a lot of kind of momentum, you know, between people blogging about it and that Jungle is neutral blog post about it. And all of a sudden, like, it's like there's two Kickstarter. There's two successful Kickstarter projects, and one of them, you know, made just like, well past its stretch goal.
So almost three times.
Yeah. So I don't know.
Almost three times its original goal.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, kind of what, you know, if this is all kind of within the pen and pencil community or, you know, if it reached out to people who truly. Because. Because it is. It does really tap into that, like, EDC philosophy and community, which I. I don't really understand quite yet, even though I'm interested in it.
Oh, I guess I didn't say what I went with.
Oh, yeah, that's true.
Oh, oops.
I. Sorry, Andy. And I also cut you off.
Oh, no, no, please. I was just rambling about edc.
I went with. Whoops. Just dropped my notebook. I went with the same level that Andy got and I got one black. And were they calling it. They didn't call it a barrel? What'd they call it?
Tube. Tube. I think.
Yeah, that's what they said. Yeah. So I went with two. The two tube option I got. I went with one black and one red. And then I went with one round bronze tip and one round al tip. I wasn't really interested in the pointy. Yeah, the pointy tip and the bronze. I want more just for that red and bronze combination. The Iron man edition.
Yeah.
Just because I like that. That color combination, but might not use the bronze as much. Just wait for weight reasons. But I wanted to have both so I could switch back and forth. So that's what I went with. I'm really excited. I'm kind of already very early. I know. But I'm planning what pencils. I want to use each of them.
Oh, no, absolutely. I definitely think a Musgrave is going to find its way in there. And one of these generals, this black general's test scoring in a black, you know, bullet pencil is going to look. Oh, yeah. Pretty good.
Oh, yeah.
Pretty nice.
Very nice.
Very nice. Okay.
No, I'm thinking the black one. I'm gonna put Blackwing Pearl.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. That would be nice, too.
That's to go with the whole. The whole formal. Formal penguin.
Absolutely.
The funeral pencil
can sign the guest book.
I'm sorry for your loss. Check out this bullet pencil.
Bam.
Well, let's get into our main topic. What do you say?
Absolutely.
Yeah. This week or this episode, we wanted to talk about National Novel Writing Month, which is November. It's been going on every year for. I don't know the exact number of years, but it's around 10 years, isn't it?
I think it's more like 15.
Oh, really?
Wow.
Okay.
So definitely it's 10 to 15 years somewhere in there. And the concept is writing a certain amount within the month of November. And for the general public for nanowrimo, which is kind of the shortened version of it, is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. That's the basic version. There's also a young writers program they do for younger kids. And I've done it with students at my school where younger people basically set a personal goal so they'll decide how much they want to have by the end of the month, and they'll work towards it. Because 50,000 is a lot. I forget what the breakdown is per day.
The number of 1667.
Yeah.
Which is a lot. It's a lot.
Yeah.
Especially if you're fitting it into an already, you know, full life. And if you're working, if you're not working at the time, it's still hard to do, you know, it's still hard to keep up with, just because with everything else that's going on and you just have to set aside that time to sit down, which is the idea of it.
And that doesn't include, like, edits and stuff, right?
Nope.
Right. The idea. Yeah. The idea of NaNoWriMo is that it's just a brain dump. It's just get the story out of your head. Don't worry about editing. I've seen things that say, you know, don't even erase or cross something out when it's wrong. Just keep going and then at the end of the month, you can go back and shape it.
You know, get one of those Hemming writers.
What is that?
Oh, did you see that on the erasable group?
Oh, man, those things. You look cool and expensive.
Oh, I think I missed it. I'm gonna go look.
I'll send you the rank.
Yeah, okay.
It's a. Oh, it's a little like computer. It's kind of like those alpha smarts back in the day, but it feels sort of like a typewriter.
And yeah, they look loud.
Yeah. And like the buttons don't even have like letters and numbers on it, but it's a standard keyboard layout and it's sort of like a word processor in that you see like the last few lines of text and then the twist is that it will sync to Dropbox or to Evernote through WI Fi, which is really cool. But if I am not mistaken, it seems like you can't erase and it seems like you can't do crazy formatting or, you know, obviously you can't go on email or anything like that on it. It reminds me a lot of the alphasmarts, which is just like a little portable writing machine, which also then reminds me a lot of the emate, the Apple Newton emate, which I had and I just loved. It was a best writing machine.
It's really interesting. So it's actually a physical option. Like a physical object.
Yeah.
Wow. So that's pretty cool. One thing that, that reminds me of though is the. Have you seen the Hanx writer, the new app? Oh, yeah, Hanks spearheaded? Yeah, that's pretty cool. And that's kind of a comparable thing using an iPad to simulate a typewriter. And you can actually turn off modern delete options.
Yeah.
And I actually thought about using that for. For NaNoWriMo this year, but. Which I'll get into this later. But the direction I went, I just decided that I wanted to totally, totally handwrite. So yours is.
So yours is. Nah. Oh, no, you're handwriting in total. Yeah, sorry.
Yeah, I'm handwriting everything until the end and then I'll transfer it over. So have you, either of you done it before and are you doing it this year?
Johnny?
I did it in 2007 and I finished. I bailed in 2010. Last year I came very close and bailed. And this year I'm giving it another go.
Nice.
We'll see. How about you, Mr. Andy?
I've never really done it just because I've always been much more a short form guy. Like, you know, I went to school for journalism. And like that 1600 words is like each day is kind of a, like a good size feature story. And. And then also not on top of that, like, November's always been just kind of an insane month anyway.
This, this month, this year, Thanksgiving is very late.
Yeah, it's only the fourth.
Man, you could do it.
Oh, man. Yeah. If. If I could make this something that was like in May, I. I would totally be all over.
Well, they do one in the, in the summer called Camp Nano Remo, I think July.
So part. Part of it is I just have never had that sort of like novel inspiration. Like the idea that I want to run with. I've always, I've always. I've written some, like, short stories before, but I've never really been just hit with that kind of long form stuff. So eventually I would definitely like to do it. And I just kind of. The way things are right now, like, the attention span of doing this is just beyond my capabilities. Let me stock up on some Adderall from the web. The deep web.
I'm going to go buy some coffee and Adderall.
Exactly.
Yeah. This is the third year I've attempted it in a row. The last two years I did fiction, and it took me those two years to kind of figure out that the process of NaNoWriMo doesn't. It doesn't work real well for me. Or maybe I'm just kind of in denial. But I feel like I'm a little too much of a perfectionist. I like to take my time. I don't, you know, so sometimes the rushed nature of it, kind of like getting it on paper, I feel like, hurts me because if I, if I just go for it and in my subconscious I'm thinking, okay, that last part I know needs to change. I don't like that chapter or whatever I just wrote, but I just need to keep going. A couple days will go by and then I'll keep thinking back and saying, okay, that bad chapter back there that I don't like, everything else is being affected by that bad chapter back there. It makes me feel like I sort of took a wrong turn, but then I just keep following it. I just get a little too much into my own head with that. So the last two years, I think I got to the. I want to say the 20,000 mark by the end, but that was with me finally saying, you know, screw it, I'm going back. I'm gonna look at that again. I'm gonna fix it. I'm gonna fix it.
So if you're writing this longhand. How are you gonna count your words? Are you gonna go more with, like, number of pages?
Last year I did handwritten and I used. Well, we'll get into that later. But I just had like a notebook and I, I basically. They're pretty loose about it, but I just, I calculated the average. Over the course of like 10 pages, I came up with an average number of words per page handwritten. And then I would just. Just estimate by the number of pages that I wrote.
That's cool.
Basically, yeah, is how I did it. And then you can just go into the NaNoWriMo and you can find these basically gibberish editors or generators and just say, okay, Today I wrote 500 words and it generates 500 words of gibberish. And you put it into the. To the website and then it records the number of words for you.
That's cool.
Which is kind of the workaround.
I count them.
Yeah. I don't have patience for that.
I don't either. I did it on a computer once and that took care of itself. And then one year I tried the average. But then I started, you know, my Catholic guilt came in. I'm like, I'm cheating. This page is a lot of dialogue. I know this isn't 500 words. And then, you know, you're like, I want my up. I want to up my work. And I know this one's longer than 500 words. So last year and this year I started counting them, which takes so long. And it's really frustrating when like your kid walks down the steps and has to go to the bathroom and be like, oh, my God, I have to start over. But it's a good wind down. Like just counting handwriting that you can't even read.
You literally just wrote it to wrap up.
Like, what does that say?
Yeah, I contemplated this year doing something if I did fiction to do like a. Just to just for myself, just change the goal from 50,000 to saying, I'm going to fill this notebook up. You know, like taking that route. But I.
How official is NaNoWriMo? Like, you say there's like a website where you can do this. Do they have like. Obviously they're not going to, but do they have like stringent rules or, like, what. Can you still participate in their official thing if you're not doing it like that officially?
Not really. Oh, I think they're pretty. You can tell their goal in the whole thing is just to get people writing. So they're not like, really strict and they, they encourage people to Just go for it. But as far as participating in the quote competition, you know, they like when you finish it and you get 50,000 words, they say you win. You know, you've. You've won NaNoWriMo this year. Yeah. It has to be within their parameters as far as being, you know, a book length thing that you're recording the page numbers of. So. Yeah, and you have. I mean, you make a login and you log your process, a login, username and password, and it collects your progress and you fill out information about it and you can become friends with people on their website.
Oh, wow.
At the end.
Yeah, it's like a social. There's a social element to it, which is pretty cool.
Yeah, I've never done that part, but I'm trying to do that a little more this year. After failing two times in a row
this year, I'm intentionally doing something different. I decided not to do fiction this year and I just went in and changed it completely for myself and just turned it into one poem a day. And so, yeah, we talked about that earlier.
I think that's hard.
Well, for me it's just. Doesn't feel harder because for me, the length of the poem is not necessarily long, but instead of worrying about getting my 1600 words in or whatever, I can just worry about getting a draft of a poem down and then even reworking it a little bit throughout the day and then calling it a day. And I feel more satisfied by the end of the day doing it in that method.
So I guess then to, you know, bring it around to pencils. I guess the question is what. What are some good pencils to be doing this with? Some nice Hardy German HB pencils. Yes. What are you, what are you using for your stuff? Tim?
I. I started using pencils last year and I started using them because of Elizabeth over at Little Flower Petals. That was her. The first post I had found of hers was when she was writing about doing NaNoWriMo with pencils. And that was how I ended up at her blog maybe a year and a half ago or something like that. And I think I subscribed to a similar method because I know she has a lot of different pencils. But for me, I learned that picking a specific pencil wasn't for me. I have a handful of them and they're all sharpened and they're ready to go. I'm not a very superstitious person. I have a handful of pencils that I really enjoy and make sure they're all sharpened as I'm going Like last year when I was doing fiction, I would just have a 4 or 5 when I sat down. And by the end of it, I would have just cycled through them. And I tend to go with things like the Blackwing 602 and the Palomino HB I definitely use. And this year I've been using a pretty wide variety. Just even in these first few days. I use the uni penmanship pencil that Elaine sent me the other day today. And I guess with the poetry, it ends up being just basically a different pencil every day.
Yeah, makes sense. How long do your poems tend to be?
I would say somewhere in the
20
to 40 lines, something like that.
Okay.
And they're not perfect by any means. And I actually was gonna say just to give people a reason to go out and do it, that like, you don't need to be a professional writer to do it. You know, you don't like it. The whole point is just to get writing and get stuff down. I was even gonna offer to read something just to show that, like even what I'm making, you know, if you haven't done this before, you should go for it if you're interested in writing. Because it's. It's a matter of getting stuff down on paper even if it's not perfect.
Yeah, no, that would be awesome. Roses are red, violets.
I love pencils. And you should too.
Yay.
Yeah. And this is one that I actually. This was the first one I did. And this is not edited at all. Like, that day I didn't even, like, go back and change things. So there are some pretty cringe worthy phrases and word choice in here. But I hope that for anybody considering jumping on early in the month that this will be inspiration, that it doesn't need to be perfect. You just need to. There's something really valuable in going through the process of getting your thoughts down. And then you have the rest of your life to rework them and mold them. Yeah. But this is a poem that I tentatively calling tribal Autumn. I stand in the dim light, the cracked blacktop holding the thin warmth. And I see for the first time that darkness doesn't come to me, but it's the light that goes away. My dog high steps among snags of crab grass, checking for messages from dogs everywhere. And she trots around the house toward the overgrown raised beds of pygmy peppers and brussels sprouts. I stay and stare into the line of trees across the street. Great fields of corn, pumpkins. And the light leaves. Darkness is on my side and what little light is left hangs on the branches. I see great tribal masks in a row that only exist in the vague light and crisp details of heads indoors and the immense all knowing darkness settles on us and softens our edges. The dog is gone, so I go and look. My bare feet roll over loose bits of blacktop and settle into the shaggy grass. I hear her jingle, her fitful motions taking in a darkness I'll never know, and her white coat glows softly. The eyes of tribal masks behind us I see no tail, her ears or sorry, her eyes do not shine but she runs along the sunflower line encircling, sorry, handwriting's bad. Encircle my feet, a soft white piece of movement. She leads me to the door. I wipe my feet of the black stone crumble.
That was beautiful.
Thanks.
Whatever. No, that was awesome.
Well, thanks. So that was. So that's. That's one of the, I guess four that I've done so far and it's something that I haven't polished and I'll probably go through, you know, 15, 20 versions where I'll take out I was. I actually found myself in some of the times that I stuttered. I was editing myself as I was reading. Like I used the word twilight and I avoided it and changed it like as I was reading because I was
like, you're such an English teacher.
Yeah, so it's.
That was great.
And that was in pencil and it was scribbled and it was messy and I just love it. I actually am doing this year I'm doing my NaNoWriMo stuff in my black wing slate.
Oh cool.
That is my notebook for NaNoWriMo. I mean I had already been using it but all my NaNoWriMo poems are landing in this notebook.
Which pencil did you use for that poem?
You know, I don't remember. My guess would be it was at school so it was probably Palomino HB I'm guessing. But yeah, today I use the Musgrave or I sorry the Generals 580.
That's cool.
In the years past I've used fountain pens and I usually the last two years I've used Piccadilly notebooks. Have either of you? I really like using the big blank page to Piccadilly notebooks. They're like I guess five by eight or something like that. No, they're probably bigger than that. Seven by nine, something like that. But I really liked using that. That's what I used the last two years and this year just I guess the form of poetry just fit better with A smaller notebook. Johnny, what are you using?
I was sort of around and around because for something this big, I like to use cheap paper, like some composition books, which is what I did last year. But I find, you know, it's not going to fit in one, so you've got to find. Oh, I want three. And these matches. So I ditched those and I bought some legal pads, but the lines were so dark they were making my eyes cross. So I have this really big paper blanks book called the Baroque Fintaglio. Probably butchering it, but can you repeat that?
You were breaking up anyways, so whatever.
Oh, I'm sorry. It's the paper blanks. Baroque Fintaglio. That's a good pronunciation. It's really, really, really big book. Maybe like 8 and a half or 9 by 12 with 240 pages and, you know, those fancy little clasps. It looks like some medieval.
Oh, these are gorgeous.
Bible. Yeah, they're really pretty. And I actually got it for 10 bucks when I was out with my daughter last year because our local Utrecht was getting rid of all of their paper blanks books and I should have bought all their paper blanks books. But in the back, the description talks about penning an opus in there, like, oh, a tick. I'm totally using this. But I've been using pens because I'm sure you guys could relate to this. But being a pencil blogger, every time I do it, I'm like, I don't really like this pencil. Or like, you know, I would enjoy this more if I sharpened it with a wedge instead of the crank sharpener.
I can understand that.
Yeah.
So this year I was around and around and around and the paper and paper blanks. This is really nice. You can write with any pencil on there and it's great. But I haven't used gel pens. But it turns out the ones I was using, the Signo 207 BLX ones that are so pretty they don't dry. I noticed they ghost like a pencil after like a day, which is unacceptable.
That's interesting.
I'm probably gonna wind up weaving pencils back out tomorrow. Plus, I'm trying to write small because I want to fit the whole thing in this one book. Although I realized that I could fit like three novels in this. It's enormous. Yeah, I got a lot of funny looks using it yesterday at jury duty. Yes, I'm writing in a book.
That's your tablet.
Such a hipster.
Yeah, I'm like, embarrassed to take it out.
You're like the people who Bring like a manual typewriter to Starbucks.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, bring a chewed up Bic pen if I ever take it outside. Like, no, I'm not that guy, man. It's just a cool book.
So rather than reading us an entry from your book, would you be. Would you be willing to just kind of tell us a brief kind of synopsis or. You know, I hate it when people are like, oh, what are you writing? What's it about? And, you know, it's.
I don't know what it's about. I couldn't come up with an idea, so I just kind of sat down and started writing. So I figure I spent my 20 studying philosophy, so that's got to work in there somewhere. And there's a really good line from William James, who was one of my favorite philosophers, that says, reason is one of a thousand possibilities in the thinking of all of us. And I want to start a one man crusade to eliminate teaching logic in schools. Because people are stupid and you shouldn't learn logic because that's not how the world works. And you just get frustrated. Like, why are people so stupid? Because they're stupid. But yeah, it's sort of like, I guess, I don't know, sort of coming of age, little jerk philosopher, reads his Nietzsche, hates everything and then grows up
a little bit, picks up some ayn rain. No, no, no, no philosophy,
no disparage it. You know, that's not really philosophy. Well, either Nietzsche in some ways.
Yeah. Yeah.
Especially after he went nuts. I love Nietzsche, but. Yeah, that's as close as I know what it's about so far. And there's a lot of really bad language. I can't help myself.
I think we should do a. Eventually we should do an After Dark episode where, you know, we just. Johnny just reads a passage from it and we'll just put the explicit tag on it and put it up there.
It sound like prop comedy. Be like, beep, beep, boop, boop, beep, beep.
Sound like that guy from Police Academy.
Yeah. Sound effects guy.
Yeah. I guess if we had to like decide on what good pencils would be, the sort of lame but true answer is whatever pencils you like. Because you don't want to while you're writing. You don't want to have to think about it. Yeah. You know, you. You don't want to be like, this one's not doing it for me, I should switch. Because then it's just losing time. So you should just. I think the best method, in my opinion, when you're sitting down to do your day's writing is to pick. Have three or four pencils. And for me it would be sharpened with a classroom friendly, like a real sharp point that's going to last a long time. And it might be four of the same pencil for you or it might be four different ones. But just pick four that you never doubt, you know, like ones that you would never not use, you would never opt out of and say, I don't feel like using that today because we all have some of those, you know. For me it would be the 602, the Palomino HB, probably the Musgrave still. Just because I just so used to using that. And then maybe even like a Blackwing Pearl or something, which that's very palomino heavy, I realize. But there's a reason for that.
I run the opposite way. I like a Castell 9000 HB or even an F. If it's the Mars, then you don't really have to sharpen them. And if you want to stab your
book, it'll totally go through the book.
Yeah, they're pretty smooth for being hard. You know what I mean?
Yeah, I tend on the soft side. I might tomorrow. I was actually. This is the kind of thing people like us think about. But I was actually thinking about what I might use tomorrow for. For my poem. And I think I'm gonna use the Kimberly 2B.
I like the Kimberly's. Yeah, Tomorrow they make a nice F too, if you're feeling f tastic. Matthias turned me on to F pencils, so I've been trying them a lot. I'm like, man, there's something to this.
Who was it somebody wrote a really good thing about? Oh, the Japanese novelist and F pencils. What's his name? Murakami.
Yeah. Yeah, he said something about it.
Yeah, he. He uses F pencils a lot.
That's very specific.
Yeah, I'll have to. I have to find that. He. Yeah, it was a really good things and I. Man, it was.
Yeah, we need to find that it
was Matthias or it was like, like Sean from like contrapuntalism or something. But I'll. I'll track that down, put it in show notes.
Nice.
You know, there are a couple generals pencils that are pretty good for that. The cedar point keeps a point for a very long time. But I wind up sniffing the thing all the time, so it's a distraction. I'm like, I'm in. That's not a stimulating smell.
Your character just walks around and smells trees all the time, smelling cedar like
Sniffs wood, uses the F word, tells everybody stupid. I swear it's not an autobiography.
I don't actually think everybody's stupid. Talks in a doctor voice every once in a while.
Everybody's dumb.
Alright, well, I think we got a pretty good overview of what it is. If you're interested, you should check out the website. I think it's nanowrimo.org, is that correct?
I think so.
I think that's right. So nanowrima.org if you're going to do it, we encourage you to go to our Facebook page and leave a comment on the pinned post we had put up earlier because we'd like to see what you're working on or what you're working with. And maybe next week or next episode we can do a follow up because we'll be in the middle of things. So hopefully people who are. Yeah, so hopefully by the next episode, like Johnny said, we'll still be going strong and if you're still working on things, we'd love to bring it back up and maybe mention what some people had to say and any recommendations you had for the, the kind of gear you use to win, as they say, NaNoWriMo.
And if you, if you're a user on the website, maybe you could share your username so we can all be writing buddies.
Yeah, that sounds good.
Cool.
All right, well, what do you guys say we get Gary on the line? Now we're happy to be joined by longtime stationary friend and proprietor of the soon to be Notegeist, an online shop stocking all manner of writing equipment. And this person is of course, Gary Varner. Gary, how are you doing?
Hey guys. I'm doing good, Gary.
Happy Halloween, Gary.
I still have candy left. I don't know what you guys.
Kids took all my candy.
There you go.
It's kind of surreal. Just like, you know, Gary, I feel like I've, you know, we basically talk every day in the erasable group. So it's, it's interesting to be talking like in person rather than on little words typed on Facebook.
Like real life, guys.
Yeah, irl, as the kids say.
Like analog, baby, sort of. Except we're talking through wired and Internet and it's not quite, that's true, analog. But that's okay. It's good. You know, I've always enjoyed when I connect with people I meet virtually and finally get to at least talk to them because you always form these impressions in your head about how people sound or what they look like.
Yeah.
So it's always quite interesting to meet up Absolutely.
Well, before we get into asking you some questions about Notegeist, we wanted to give you a chance to join in to our weekly discussion of what we're currently drinking and what we're currently writing with. So could you fill us in on that?
Certainly. I am enjoying the last of my treasure. Shipyard Pumpkinhead, which is a nice seasonal brew. I think it's made in Maine.
Sounds delicious.
I scarfed up three six packs of it about a month ago and been kind of nibbling on it. Yeah, but it's the last one, but it's good celebration. Reason.
Yeah.
And I am writing with a new Kaweco sport fountain pen, I'm sorry to say.
Oh, those are nice.
A lot of pencil. Yeah, I've enjoyed it. It's very smooth.
Which color in writing?
It's a. The pen is the green. Green with brass adornment, but it's a very smooth pen. And I'm writing in a field notes steno pad, one of my standbys.
I need to grab a couple more of those steno pads. I filled mine up and I just love it.
So nice.
I know where you can get some, by the way.
Just.
We'll get to that later.
I have a box of them in my garage.
Speaking of which. What a good transition, I guess. Gary, one thing I'd like to know. I bet a lot of the listeners probably know who you are and what you're doing, but in case we have some who are not in the Facebook group or in field nuts, can you explain what your current initiative is?
I am a lifelong office stationery fanatic, as everybody is that's in this group. So it's something I've enjoyed my whole life. I've always been doodling with pens and pencils and notebooks of all sorts of types between journals and notebooks, etc. And so this new venture of opening up an online niche store came up out of that and a combination of justifying an out of control fuel nuts collection habit. And I suddenly realized I better either become a dealer or stop this nonsense because it does get out of hand. So I set out with a brilliant idea about three months ago to set up a shop. And that's kind of culminating soon. Will be opening very shortly. We'll get to that in a minute as well. But this is a passion and it's a sideline. This is not my day job by any means. I work in the corporate world as a communication specialist and have a background in about everything related to that. But this has become kind of a my Escape, so to speak. And connected to that back in the 90s for about 10 years. I was an online bookseller back when that was just starting up on the Internet. So I had some exposure then selling rare and hard to find books all over the world through that.
That's really cool.
I was fortunate enough to be in on that just before the Amazon craze hit, back when we could all make money doing it, and that went away. But I always enjoy the virtual connection with people all over the world and finding goods and packing and shipping goods. And that certainly is transferable into the note. Geist Venture.
What's the rarest book that you bought and sold?
The rarest book was a Get the date wrong 1635 copy of Don Quixote.
Wow.
The windmill thing. Yeah, it was wild. The boards were 3.8of an inch thick and covered in leather and tooled.
Wow.
It was an ancient thing. And I bought it for a book search for a customer. And I remember it very well. I had it for a whole weekend before I had to ship it. And I don't think I got any sleep that night. Somebody was gonna come in and steal this thing and I'd be out. I think it was like a grand back then. That was a lot of money.
Yeah.
But I nursed that one all the way through. But it was pretty, pretty awesome. It was almost one of those things. You couldn't hardly touch it, I'm not worthy sort of moment. But it was the most exotic thing. And then the second one was at a garage sale out in west Texas for 25 cents. I stumbled on to a first edition of Hunter S. Thompson's Hell's Angels book. So I went from a quarter and then flipped it and sold it for $700. So that was a good day. My sister in between all that was a bunch of junk.
Yeah.
My sister sells on ebay and she. She goes and she buys like. Do you remember My Little ponies from the 80s? Oh, yeah, yeah. She'll buy those for a quarter or 75 cents, and she'll clean them up and kind of like shampoo the hair. And she can. She sells them, I think, on average, 13 to $20. And she had one that was some rare German My Little Pony that she found at a flea market. And she sold that for like, $200.
Yeah, yeah.
It's amazing.
But it'd be like My Pony Little.
Yeah. But, you know, part of the thrill to that is the treasure hunt, because you never know what you're going to find. And that was always Fun. So this is kind of transferred to what I'm doing with this, too.
That's cool. So the notegeist, it kind of has an interesting niche. And what is that niche and kind of how does it fit in within? There's a million and a half shops where you can buy notebooks. Kind of. What is different about that?
Well, what my model is trying to do, or at least the way I have it in my mind, is to there's some stuff I'll carry that everybody carries, field notes, word notebooks, black wing stuff, because you want to have that there as well. But the things that I'm angling for to be different on are I'm not aware of anybody else that's carrying a deep stock of retired field notes, for one, and that's something I'm opening up with. I have everything back to and including Ravenswain in different varieties and a handful of the off prints as well. So that's different. And I think that that's a niche market. And I hope, you know, obviously the Field Nuts group and to some extent the raceables all get into that as well. And that's obviously a big client, customer source. But I'm hoping with Internet search engines that others will find me as I've gone out to try to find other people that are selling these. Just nobody out there.
And I'm really looking forward because I really like the Night sky edition, as do a lot of people, but it seems like the prices fluctuate a lot right now. I think I saw a sealed pack for like 25 bucks, but I've seen them for as high as 50 before and as low as 15, so. So I think I would like having an opportunity where I know I can get a, you know, a regular, you know, a regular supply of this without having to hassle about it.
Well, that's part of what I hope to provide. Now, the downside of it is it's not exactly a warehouse you can go buy these from, right?
Yeah.
And I've spent three or four months scrounging and got quite a pile. How long they'll last, we'll see. And how sustainable this part of my model is. Will also see. Yeah, because, you know, in pricing them, I'm trying to be fair, but I'm not trying to give them away. And I'm not trying to get ebay dollars either, because I want to be a source. People can scoop these up, but there are, particularly in the older ones, when you just have a handful of them, you can't let them Go too early, too cheap. Yeah, but yeah, that's. And there's a lot out there of it. I mean people are sitting on these things and it's just a matter of them surfacing. So it's not impossible to find them. But it's getting harder and harder and more people are getting into it. The other side of what I'm trying to do is I am a bit of a scrounger and I like to go to auctions and I troll ebay. And so I pick up some weird interesting things along the office stationary, vintage pencils, vintage notebooks, type stuff and node guys will be an outlet for offering those up. They'll be kind of one of a kind things. Definitely looking forward to that as tonight, waiting on your call. I was working on the first issue of Note Geisting the newsletter and I just took pictures of five or six things I don't have listed in the shop yet. And one of them is this 12 inch tall chalkware of this really. I guess it's neat, it's kind of spooky looking. Corn cob guy who in the middle of them is a middle area of him is a little notepad, see, hanging on the wall. And he got a little notepad to write on. And it's from the 50s probably, but he's colorful, he's green and orange and that sort of odd little thing. But there's a connection because there's a little notepad on it. So there's things like that. Another thing I scored was some paraphernalia from a brewery in Pennsylvania that went out of business in the 70s. I've got some notepads and pencils and I'm blanking on what the name of it is. So I'm scooping up stuff like that to try to offer in bulk if I can. Just odd one of a kind, strange stuff in addition to the retired rare field notes. And then the third part of my model that's different I think is I'm going to be doing a lot of packs and samplers and we did that. I did that one on Erasable with a little pack of mixed pencils.
I love that thing. That was so much fun.
Yeah, they are fun. And I mean I'm doing the things I like to buy, which is part of my real philosophy is I'm not gonna carry stuff I don't like or don't use just because everybody else does. But I think the packs at Sanford will be interesting. We'll see how they're received. They're not that Profitable, but they're a neat thing to do. People love them. I had the guys overseas kind of lament that they couldn't get in on those packs. So one of our members, Giles or Gilles, offered to be the receptor. And I sent four packs over there. And then he distributed them around Europe for the four guys that wanted the little. So there's ways to get around.
He's your mule.
He's my mule. So I may try to do more of that. But that's kind of, in a nutshell, what I'm trying to do. And because it's a side passion, I clearly don't have to live on the profits. And if anybody's been around these sort of things, they're not exactly huge money makers. But it's very enjoyable. You get to touch a lot of neat stuff along the way. Cool.
What are some of the other things that you know when you become a dealer of stationery that your average Joe wouldn't think of, that you've had to deal with?
Well, you're always. You're part of the game when you're in a group like the Nuts or Raceables, and you're trading with people and then suddenly you step up in your dealer and people become a little more wary of trading with you. But I have pretty good relations with everybody. I'm upfront about what I'm doing. And sometimes I do trade for my own little collection. And sometimes I tell them I'm trading for stock. So that's been a little different. It's harder to pay retail for anything now than I used to because I have some angles.
Yeah.
Which is very strange. But there's still some stuff I can't touch because of the scale certain manufacturers want for reseller accounts. I can't get to certain things, but I still buy out on the open market. I bought the Furrow books, I bought some of the Baron Fig prints, you know, paid retail for them. So I'm still toying and playing with what comes up, see what it's like. So. Because part of me is still the individual non dealer who enjoys fiddling with the stuff. And then the other side of me is the dealer looking for bulk buys that I can turn around and offer up. The other surprise, though, has been I don't want to ruin any trade secrets for anybody, but I sort of had the impression there was a bigger margin in this stuff. But it really isn't a fairly tight little product. And your business model really has to address a volume situation. If you expect to make a lot of Money with it. So, you know, you have cases like jet pens, which we all adore, and I'm sure they do very well. And you also see the kind of inventory they carry. They're huge, and they offer everything, and that spurs it off. So for the little guys like myself and some of them, my other people I connect with that are similar type dealers, I mean, you're doing it because you love to do it, and that's cool too.
So I think one of the most fascinating things about looking through your store and seeing the kinds of things you're going to have is of course, the field notes collection and the rare editions. And I was wondering if you could tell us how far back your personal field notes collection goes. Have you collected all. All the way back? Are there any that you're missing that maybe you're hunting for, not for note Geist, but for your own collection?
Right.
Good question.
Yes. I've got everything but the first four.
Oh, wow.
So from butcher orange to butcher blue
to
grass stained green to Mackinaw, that's all I'm missing. But I also made it.
I'm sorry, I was just gonna ask, so for that first year, were those first four the first year or were they not necessarily doing it seasonally at that point?
No, they were the first of the colors. Yeah, they came out quarterly.
Okay.
That first year when none of us knew about them. And you know, I was certainly had eye open, eyes open for everything, notebooks and pencils and all that back then. But I never saw those. I don't even know if I would have clicked to them at that time. But. And I should also say I'm. My personal collection is the singles collection. I'm not collecting packs because I kind of can't wait trying to collect it. So when I looked at the prices, I went, geez, yeah, I can scoop up packs of everything, plus my other angles. I can buy a pack of something like Ravenswain, split it open, keep one, sell two.
Oh, sure.
And justify paying the obscene prices.
That definitely makes sense.
But I also am not. I also not going down the rabbit hole on chasing Aldi.
Sure, you're not. You're not gonna sell off the family farm to get a butcher orange.
Maybe, maybe the back back 40.
I'm like, you know, I, I remember when. So I bought some of the Kraft Brownfield notes probably within the first few, few months of them existing. And I remember when they started doing colors, and I just remember thinking, this is stupid. Like, why would I want to buy these colors? Like the blue is cool, but the orange and I just want the brown ones. And I'm just kicking myself now because
I tell you, when I picked up some of the older ones, you know, you have this sort of holy feel about them.
Yeah.
And you score a couple old ones and you get them and they're brand new because they're only a few years old.
Yeah. Yeah.
We're not talking a long period of time. So that's kind of weird in the head.
That's why I feel ridiculous for some of the prices people pay for these things. It's like this, this thing came out three years ago.
I know.
It's gained such a deep history in such a short amount of time. Like, it's kind of crazy when you think about it.
Yeah.
And my girlfriend keeps whispering Beanie Babies to me.
When's the bubble gonna burst?
So, yeah, my parents got. Went nutsy on that and Garcia bins and bins of those dumb things.
And then my sister had the Princess Diana beanie. Beanie Baby. Yeah, that bear. And she was like, oh, man, this is going to be worth thousands of dollars someday. And no, I tell her, I says,
hey, hey, at least I can write in these afterwards. She says, yeah, you're going to write in a $53 and a half inch, five inch notebook.
We found a use for our original Garcia after the bubble burst, and they weren't worth anything. And it became one of our dog's favorite toys for a while.
That works. So you never know if this is going to die off, but, you know, doesn't seem like it.
Yeah.
And certainly going forward, they're getting more creative with each issue and building bigger following, so who knows?
They're supposed to announce next week, aren't they? They're Winter edition. Yes.
Wow.
Yeah.
Even though I have an inside ear, I don't know what it is either.
When you're not recording anymore.
Yeah. Nobody's listening to this. You can tell us.
Yes.
One of the big disappointments when I became a reseller for field notes was you don't get to know any earlier, you know, the same day as everybody else.
So they're real.
They're good about that. And that helps.
Yeah.
So. So how do you. How do you plan on keeping, like, what's your. What's your plan for keeping a regular stock of. Of items like, of the. Especially of the rare items. Like what. As far as moving forward, is it going to be just a. As you get things, you put it up just very organic or what's your plan for keeping a Regular stock.
Well on the, on the one off stuff, it's just a scavenger hunt. And you know, I talk as I find them on the field notes, retired. I mean I'm actively buying and trading to get those and have feelers out. I've gotten probably half of my stuff from overseas contacts and those contacts are still alive and I can get stuff from there at least for a while. It's challenge there is the shipping is expensive to pull it in but for some reason over in the east
they
still have a bunch of these. I mean the Europe's Europe shops are pretty much exhausted of the old stuff. You go over to Thailand and Philippines and you can still stumble on.
That's interesting if you can tolerate the
shipping but if you can buy in bulk then it kind of shipping sort of dissolves and it's, it's not so bad.
But.
Yeah, but the other past that it's going to be, I'm hoping I have a sell trade page on the shop and once Google finds me and spreads the word on that, I'm hoping to find some people outside our little circles that maybe want to sell and trade as well. So that's one way. But I have also spent probably two months trying to stumble on this stuff in the wild and kind of give it up. Just not just not finding them, you know, at estate sales and garage sales.
And I feel like a lot of that stuff just gets thrown away when I have a friend of mine. Yeah, a friend of my mother's is a real estate agent. She also plans a lot of estate sales and I asked her to be on the lookout for old pencils but she says it's really hard because a lot of times people are cleaning up and they just throw that stuff out.
Yeah, exactly. And I have a friend who just had an auction and I didn't get there in time and she says, oh, we threw out boxes of old pencil.
No, that just makes me sad.
I just died a little inside.
The other trick though that I am going to do is new issues come in. I'm gonna hold back some copies.
Oh yeah.
And sit on them for a year or so.
That's a good idea.
Now I'm doing that. I did that with shelter, but I don't know if that's going to pay off or not because I think everybody has all the shelter word they need.
But I saw somebody trying to make a trade for shelter woods for night skies and I. Yeah, I don't know if right now that's a trade but I think eventually it could be.
Yeah.
And the same guy said or I'll take, you know, I'll buy one for X dollars.
Yeah.
He was a little low. Yeah, but it's. Yeah, you can't. You know, I. I track this and study it and the numbers are all over the place even when you follow it.
Yeah.
And there's always somebody on ebay that overpays, kind of messes the rest of us up.
Yeah.
Well, as a consummate, you know, stationary addict, how much of your own product are you consuming? I guess it's kind of an early question, but do you have like a sense first hits free?
Well, you know I just, I'm getting tomorrow, I think a stock of the word 2015 memorandum skinny planters.
I am pumped for those. Those are cool looking.
Yeah, I haven't actually had one before but I'm looking forward to it.
It's really small in person.
Yeah, that's cool.
I'm sure it's gonna be surprised but yeah, I'm gonna have some leather covers too and you know I. I've allotted for a sample in there so I can see what it's like. So a little bit of that. But you know, odd thing is in the. My time to write and do a lot of note taking and fiddling is almost zilch. So while I have access to this, you know, I haven't had any spare moments to go nomadic writing to coffee shops like I like to do.
But I'll get back to that.
Surely this will settle and life will become normal. Turn to that. But I've also got a backlog of these other between the Baron fig and the furrows and I scooped a bunch of oddball Japanese notebooks off of jet pens that I'm dying to try. So I probably have several years of backlog to get to plus the field note stuff.
So when does the store launch? Gary?
It's going to launch either tomorrow or Thursday.
Okay. So if you're listening, this episode will release on Wednesday. So it's either either has launched or will launch today or on Thursday.
Exactly. I'm down to the last nits of fixing stuff. And as Andy knows, when you deal with web based stuff, it's just one thing after another, a few details.
Yeah, and if you fix one thing, it usually leads to something breaking then too.
There's that too. I actually built an e comm site about eight years ago, maybe nine years ago when it was in the infancy of doing that sort of thing and it was a mess. Hard to do, hard to get Everything
hooked up and working right.
And then I stepped into this and I'm using WooCommerce on a WordPress platform and it's been slick. I mean it's just been. Not a lot of trouble at all. But I'm also a tweaker. So I'm in there fiddling with the CSS and doing a few PHP hacks and you know, because I wanted to do certain things, be certain ways. But yeah, it's, it's, it's a lot of work. But looking forward to opening it and taking orders the normal way instead of one by one like I've been doing.
Well, we're definitely really looking forward to the store opening and just it being a kind of. In a sense, I know for me and I'm speaking for Johnny. I don't know if I'm speaking for Johnny and Andy, but as kind of our insider story where it's going to be such. I feel like it's going to be such a central part of our really strong community, you know. So we're excited for you and hope, you know, wish the best for you and hope it well.
Thanks.
I wanted to add one more thing on and credit Mr. Andy for this suggestion because I talked to him early on when I was conceptualizing things and he gave me some good pointers and he suggested that I set up a page for. For field note collectors. I have done that. I have a resource page in which I've scooped up. There's been a lot of various spreadsheets and data lists out there, so I've got them all in one place. I have half a dozen links to people who have excellent photo collections, including our pen addict people. Both Mike and Brad have have nice parts of their blogs or sites where they shared images of their collections. So I've got that and I've got quite a few other reference things to anything you want to know. If you're a field notes collector, that's awesome. So hoping that will help because it's stuff I found scrounging around and again, couldn't find it in one place. So as part of get back I've
set that up and it's interesting how much data some of the Field Nuts collect. Like that guy who has a spreadsheet that tracks ebay auctions kind of across. All right. And yeah, just, just some place for people to get to that who may not otherwise be familiar with the Field Nuts is pretty, pretty cool. I know I'll be sending a lot of people there as they have questions to your page.
I have that very spreadsheet there and I asked the owner about it. He said, sure, that's cool. I tried to replicate what he did and I couldn't figure out how to scoop up that much info from ebay.
I can do maybe like 15% of what those spreadsheets can do, but it's magic in the right hands.
Yeah, exactly. So that'll be a nice source. But yeah, I hope to have it a place people can come and interact. Although because of my past blog experiences with commenting, I don't have that turned on. But I do have a lot of ways to connect and contact. Like on the resource page, I openly ask for. You got anything that would be good here, let me know. So hopefully we can build it as a one stop place people can go to to find out.
Cool, great.
Well, just to wrap things up, Gary, why don't you tell everybody where they can find you on the Internet?
Well, I'm@notegeist.com that will be the shop address and Twitter. I'm Ot Geist Instagram Notegeist. I just lucked out picking a name that was available everywhere.
That's a great name.
And those are the primary places. And of course on notegeist.com there's a contact form you can reach me directly. And I'm in Erasable's group and field nuts.
He's one of the first responders of things on there.
Sometimes I'm just on there way too much. Sometimes that's how you catch the good deals. I missed a butcher orange by about five minutes though.
Oh, I think. Oh, was that. Did Pauline Potts pick that up?
Yeah, yeah, she traded away and Robert got it.
Okay, gotcha.
And I tried to wiggle in there. He's been looking for it longer than I am. Yeah, hat tip to him.
But anyway,
Andy, where can people find you?
I am on Twitter W E L F L L E or oodclinched. And you can get to me on my website@woodclinched.com
Johnny.
I am pencilrevolution.com I'm on Twitter ensolution and on Instagramnygamber.
All one word. And I am timwassom on Twitter as well as Riting Arsenal. You can follow me on Instagram the writing arsenal and then I occasionally write@www.thewritingarcenal.com and you can see the notes from today's episode at erasable US18. And we definitely, as always, encourage you to join our awesome Facebook group that makes great things happen like web stores get influenced by it. And so that is@facebook.com groups erasable. You can also follow us on Twitter raceablepodcast. And also if you're posting pencil pictures on Instagram, we encourage you to use the hashtag erasablepodcast. Gary, thanks so much for joining us. It was really great talking to you.
Thank you, Gary.
Thank you, guys. Thank you, guys. I enjoyed it. See you, Johnny.