Scribe

Come on, record, you son of a.

I think we have our title. Welcome to erasable podcast 72. I am your host, Dee, and tonight I'm joined by my co hosts, Lenore and Les. How's it going, everybody?

Not bad.

Tonight at the start of Camp nanowrimo, we are discussing making notebooks and the tools used in our everyday work lives. So let's start off with what we're consuming this evening. As far as beverages are concerned, I am drinking water because I am boring. And I'm currently reading ATAR's Conference of the Birds and it is not a pleasure read. It is for a class that I'm taking in school. It's a collection of Sufi poetry. So that's pretty cool and interesting.

Are you enjoying it?

Yeah, it's actually. It's a book about obviously a bunch of birds, but it's a book about one bird called Ahupu. It's a legitimate bird found in the Middle east and it takes other birds on this journey and they go through seven different valleys on their path to annihilation.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. Like this. Yeah. This class on Sufism is really interesting because you think of, you know, learning about religion is not annihilation, but this. You know, it's really cool. You know, like Rumi, for example, was a Sufi poet. So it's that kind of poetry, that really kind of poetry about love, intimacy, and your ultimate goal is to annihilate and lose your complete self because only then can you be enlightened. So, yeah, it's a cool read. I really like it.

Your job is very different from mine.

So I'm writing with a general's calendar. It is one of the, I think seven general pencils that I'm using throughout the week to review. The calendar is, I think, one of the few generals that does not have an eraser on it. It's a plain number two yellow pencil. And I'm writing in a Staples College rolled notebook because I'm basic and writing on pastel colored note cards because I have a giant cognitive psych exam coming up and I need those note cards. So that's it for me. What about you, Lenore?

I am also consuming water, but there's a Manhattan in my future.

Nice.

But I'm drinking water out of a purple pint ball jar. So I think that's pretty cool.

Nice. That is.

That's my glass in my office here. But I'm in my office. That's why I'm on, you know, water or tea.

Yes.

And what I've been Reading lately. I started a Fall of Marigolds which was. I don't even remember who recommended it to me now, but I took a detour off of that after I started watching the BBC adaptation of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which was really good for the first half and then really diverged widely from the book for the last couple episodes. So I had to get the book out and start in the middle of it and reread that. But I usually have five or six books going at any given time at work. You were talking about what you're reading for, not pleasure right now. And the book I'm reading at work right now is called Teaching Naked, which is not what it sounds like. It's actually about teaching without, without going through technology. So it's between you and the students. That's really just a, you know, eye catching title.

Yes.

And I'm. I was going to be writing with my glam wing, my530 with my344 ferrule on it today, but at the last moment I switched to the Tombow mono 4B and this is the blue one with the yellow cap on the end and the, the silver lettering on it. And it's just so completely gorgeous. It seduced me. And I'm writing on a landscape orientation roaring spring notepad.

Nice.

Yeah, that's great.

What about you, Les?

I have been, I've been unable to stop talking about these Sherry Priest books. Maplecroft and Chapelwood.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to those.

Oh my God, they're so good. It's a Lovecraftian, a reimagining of Lovecraft but instead of a male protagonist, she's reimagined Lizzie Borden as an axe wielding lesbian creature killer. So like in, in the story. And this is not too much of a spoiler, actually it's not a spoiler at all because she says it in the first chapter of Maplecroft. She, when she murders her parents. It's because they became Lovecraftian fish people. Well, of course, yeah. She gave them 40 wax but because they were turning it to fish people. And I just, it's just so well told and they're so fun and she's a badass. So it just, I, I'm loving it. So yeah, everyone should read them. And you know, Shreya Priest retweeted one of my tweets and I'm fangirling.

Oh my God, that's so cool.

It made me squeak.

That happened to me once with Sally Jessie Raphael. She retweeted me, oh My gosh.

So that's hilarious.

I told her I watched her every day after school when I was a kid or, you know, when I stayed home sick from school. So, yeah, that was the highlight of my life.

When was this?

Like, probably four or five years ago. Oh, okay.

That's still pretty cool.

That's cool.

That's really cool.

I was just trying to imagine you on Twitter as a kid, and I know you're not that much younger than I am.

No,

When I was your age, Twitter was called passing notes in class.

Yes.

Yeah. Actually all of our ages, really, it was all, you know.

Exactly.

Yes. So what are you writing with?

I. So, okay, so in writing, like, because I have the work writing and then I have writing at home. So at home writing, I'm really, really digging the story. Supply company number two pencil. I'm not usually a huge fan of round pencils, but there's just something really nice about how soft and dark and smooth these are on the UB composition books that I'm using. And I'll get into this a little bit in our later discussion, but for work, I'm using a platinum preppy fountain pen because I'm required to use black or blue ink.

Yeah. That's the one thing I'm dreading about getting into the field. Not being able to use pencil.

Yeah, it's.

But, you know, fountain pens are great too.

They are, they are. And you know, I. Because of the population that I work with, I don't feel comfortable using a fancier fountain pen.

Yeah.

As it is, the platinum preppy comes across as really fancy and a little uppity. So I don't, you know, even my twisty, which, you know, in fountain pen circles is not particularly uppity. Yeah. But like, the platinum preppy is like, I get like, are you using a fancy art pen? And, you know, like, sometimes, like, I'll let clients, you know, handle it and play with it a little bit, you know, art therapist. And. And they seem to like that, but it starts a conversation. So, you know, there are two sides to, like, using an uppity pen.

Yeah.

So anyway, but we could talk about that later. All right.

That's a really good point, though.

Well, yeah, I mean, it really matters too, to the different population. If I worked with a middle class or an upper middle class population, they wouldn't notice.

Yes.

It wouldn't be as noticeable. So it's just something as a therapist I have to think about.

Indeed.

So then in terms of media, I have been listening to the Amazon music and they Have a playlist called Dark Pop. And it's really heavy, emotional pop, pseudo music with a lot of female artists. And it's just really working well with the tones of my current writing. Cool.

Do you feel depressed afterward?

No. The music's kind of sexy, so. No, not depressed, Actually.

You know, it's funny that you say that because my husband is actually. Everybody in the family is learning to play piano right now, and we actually just bought a piano over the Christmas break. But he's been working through the Scott Joplin songbook and he's been playing this tune called Solace that they used in the Sting. And it's a gorgeous, gorgeous tune. But the recording of it that we have is kind of a little melancholy and a little. Kind of Spanish flamenco. And I was on YouTube this morning looking at something else, and I looked up another recording of Solace. And it was the sexiest thing I heard in a while. Like, that was. Yeah. It was really surprising how one piece of music could be so different, played by different people, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah. And really ostensibly the same piece of music. So I'm not talking about like Natalie Merchant covering something. I'm just talking about coupons or pianists at certain ways. So it's pretty cool.

There's a recent artist named Halsey and she did a cover of I Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash song. Oh, man. It's kind of hot.

Okay, I gotta look that up.

I'm googling that now.

Send me the link. Cause I'm afraid I'm gonna lose stuff here if I get on Google

and I'm drinking coffee and it's. I've been. So. I don't like to roast coffee during the winter because it makes the whole house smell like burn. So I'm actually drinking some organic crap from Shaw's. It's actually really not that bad. So it might be my go to winter coffee.

You know, I used to take my roaster on the back porch.

Yeah. Well, that's what I do during. During the spring and the summer. But my roaster can't handle the like super cold. You don't have an enclosed in porch.

Yeah.

So it just. It won't get it up to temperature enough.

Okay. Yeah, we never got winter this year.

So lucky.

Well, we didn't until just now.

Yeah. How lucky I am when I'm overrun with mosquitoes next month.

Oh, yeah.

We've got the black flies and mosquitoes here. So I feel your pain.

So up next are fresh points. I'll kick that off first thing I'M actually going to be doing a new feature on my blog. At the beginning of the year. I was kind of thinking what direction I was going to take my blog in, if I was going to continue to just do reviews, or if I was going to branch out and review more than just pencils. I had a couple of ideas, and some of them stuck and some of them didn't. But one that I really wanted to do was to feature different members of the erasable Facebook group, just because a lot of times I get questions from people like, non pencil. People like pencils. Like what? Like, how is that even a thing? You know? Like, it's just. People are just perplexed by it.

So what could you possibly talk about?

Exactly. So, you know, for our community to get to know people that are willing to talk about themselves, and for the general community or general readers of the blog, it'll be nice to have that kind of thing. And also, there's this little drive inside of me to show that, like, we're human beings. Like, we're not some weird creatures that love pencils. So it'll be. It'll be interesting to see how that goes. My first interview is with Andy, so that should be better.

That's gonna be fun.

Yeah, that should be ready probably by the end of this coming week. So I'm looking forward to doing that. And I'll just kind of randomly go through. Reach out to the group. You know, obviously, no one's pressured into doing it, and all questions are optional, but, you know, it'd be cool to see where we're all from and what we do and how we got into pencils and that kind of stuff. So the second fresh point I have is something that the erasable group did this week. It was actually the Norse idea. So I kind of stole her thunder on this, but, oh, no, go nuts. So it was suggested that we have a map of erasable member locations, because they do that in other Facebook groups for, like, field notes and other stuff. And we also have a map of stores that sell pencils and stationery. So it's only natural that we have a map of members. And it was really cool to see how quick this thing filled up. I mean, I was surprised. Within, like, an hour, there were so many entries.

That's awesome.

Yeah, no, it was.

That was really cool. No, so you're not stealing my thunder, because my kind of. My thing is to have an idea and then never actually do anything about it, you know, So I kind of brought that up on Facebook, and then I think it was. I think I said on there that it was nine minutes after I posted. Maybe there should be. And there were already two people had made maps and one of them had been deleted and nine people were on the other one.

Yeah, exactly. So it was really cool because I actually, I know about Les because we've met before, we live in the same state. But to see other erasable members in my state, there was one erasable member that actually is in the town next to the town I grew up in in New Jersey, which was cool. It's like such a small world. Like, I travel home to Jersey all the time and we're like one town over from each other and we had no idea. So I think this will be cool for the community going forward as far as maybe having some meetups or, you know, if you're on travel for work or vacation. So I really like the idea.

I just want to say that the original reason that I said that is because I'm going to be in Jackson, Mississippi for a week this summer and I still never found out if there's anybody in Mississippi.

Yeah, I didn't look at the map recently.

Well, there's not anybody like on the map in Mississippi, so there may not really be. But the point of the post was to find out if there was anybody in Jackson. And there was zero comments about that. Then it blew up on the map, which is awesome and everything.

So that's, that's all I have for, for my fresh points. So, Lenore, go ahead.

As I was getting ready for the. For the recording today, I realized I've been enjoying some novelty pencils and not, not foil pencils or, you know, hello Kitty or Spiderman, which is what my kid has around a lot of the time. But this thing where people are getting pencils printed with words. Right. For different things. And of course, a lot of them are probably Musgraves and some of them are actually pretty nice. So my newest acquisition is actually from Chronicle Books. A box of 642 things to draw. 10 graphite pencils. Have you guys seen this?

No, I've seen the book. I haven't seen the pencils.

So they have the pencils. So I saved it to open on here. Nice.

An unboxing, an unboxing, an audio unboxing.

So it's 642 things to draw and they're printed on the pencils. Oh, that's cool. But it's a little bit of a cheat because some of them, like there's an eight per person band and a 20 story house, 20 noodle shapes, seven lightning bolts, 15 blades of grass. So it looks like it's actually, it's gonna be pretty fun. And I'm gonna actually try to draw these things because I don't draw. And I'm gonna give it a try. But then have you just as a

going off of that. Have you ever checked out the book by Danny Gregory, Everyday Matters?

I haven't seen that one every day.

You don't want to check it out?

See, then I'm like, I'm overwhelmed by that because then I miss it. Here's the thing. So I. You know how you get this idea that if you have nice things, you have to use them to do nice things?

Yes.

Right?

Yes.

And you buy a nice journal and you feel like you have to write incomplete sentences in that journal and you have to have deep thoughts and then you don't have any deep thoughts one day and then you pick it up and you realize the last thing you wrote and it was three months ago. And then it's. So I've got, you know, probably five or six really nice journals with three pages consumed in the front of them in my house. Because of that.

I think that going off of that the Everyday Matters book will help you kind of battle that. Because his whole point in the book is to just Everyday matters. So it doesn't matter if you don't have deep thoughts. It doesn't matter if you're drawing your bagel or if you're doodling your toe. So it kind of helps you break free of that. I need to do something wonderful and great and do something simple.

But then if I miss a day, then I'm like, oh, crap, the day mattered and I lost it.

So much pressure that is.

That happened with me. I bought a hobonichi journal, like just to. I was going to journal every day. I made it to January 18th.

That's farther than I've ever gotten.

So I have this nice journal that's date sensitive that I'm not using.

Right. That's why I hardly ever buy anything. Date sensitive.

Yeah.

I'm just not responsible enough. I accept that about myself.

I'm trying to start in just a plain old field notes notebook like,

like

every day, write down three things that I'm grateful for.

Oh, that's nice. I should do that with my daughter. I'd be a better mother. I could do that and it would make me a better person.

And it'd be cool to like go back.

Yeah.

Like, you know, when I'm having a Rough time. Just like flipping back to all the things I'm grateful for and then I'll probably feel like a piece of crap because I'm ungrateful, so.

How dare I be ungrateful?

Yeah, so. But no, it's actually I had to do it for an assignment for two weeks. I'm taking a positive psychology course and I didn't believe it at first and I thought it was garbage and then it actually kind of worked. It was nice at the end of the day to write think of three things throughout the day that I was grateful for.

So, yeah, yeah, it is helpful. It does help. I've had clients do it and they really enjoy it. I've done it myself too, in just a field notes and I never stick with it. That's the hard part for me is like all the speed journaling and gratitude journaling or. Sorry, there's an ambulance going by.

That's okay.

That was your ambulance list.

There's an ambulance depot down the street from my house and they aren't supposed to use their sirens on this street and they do constantly. Oh, well, it was part of the variants anyway, town politics aside. So, yeah, I have trouble sticking with those gratitude journaling things too. So.

Anything else, Wes? I mean, Lenore?

Well, I. So I did get out some of the other pencils with words on them that I have kind of along that line. And one of them is this actually came up in the group recently. The box of effing brilliant pencils.

Yes, I saw those.

Yeah. And they're actually surprisingly nice. I've been writing with the one that is labeled Almost Getting stuff done. And it is great. I mean, I've actually really enjoyed using it. And the stupid thing is, it's beautiful. It's got this gorgeous like black glossy lacquer and this really pretty gray scroll work on it. It's a very elegant looking pencil that says Getting sh. T Done. Really nice clean imprint. It's a good. It's a quality piece of work, I gotta say. And then I've got the box of the I Am Other pencils from ubi.

Okay.

Did you guys see these last fall?

I didn't see the pencils. I saw the notebooks.

Yeah, I only saw the notebooks. I did not see the pencils.

Yeah, I got the box of pencils. And so they say, like, there's an other in all of us. Be other. Inspire that which makes you different, makes you special. There's room under the sun for everyone. And so that's actually kind of cool, you know, and the UB pencils are. They're solid, right? They're fine. And then my friend Laura sent me a package of pencils with inspirational sayings on them, of which the two favorites are Smash the Patriarchy and Work Then Whiskey.

Nice. Excellent.

You know, this idea of just, you know, decent enough pencils with a phrase on them that makes you smile. And I haven't used these yet, but I'm really kind of excited about them. Did you guys see the High Tide pencils in the group a couple weeks ago?

Are those all white?

Yeah, they're white. They have kind of this whitewash finish effect. And here is the printing on them, delivering the words put down on paper. Magic of print. Print to whom you care.

That's great. Oh, God.

Which I just. I mean, it's probably somebody on purpose, like, trolling me with, you know, Google Translate style. Yeah. But I can't help it. I love it.

It's awesome.

It just makes me happy every time I look at it.

So, yeah, it's always nice when, like, you know, like, novelty pencils or pencils that aren't, you know, branded, so to speak, are good. Like, we went on vacation to Lake George last year, and my goal was to buy every souvenir pencil we came across.

Oh. And most of them suck.

Yeah.

Yeah, they're usually terrible.

I got this one hideous pencil. It's round, which I hate, and it says Lake George on it in Comic Sans.

And they ordered it from Oriental Trading Post.

Yeah.

So I. Exactly. So I sharp sharpened it up, and it's actually not bad at all. So I don't. I don't know. The racer is. So it must have been on the shelf for a long time because it's petrified. But.

Or is just for Musgrave.

Yeah. Yeah. Which they never emailed me.

It's good for like 15 minutes, right?

Yeah, they. They never emailed me back, by the way. I had emailed them before my. My review to kind of get feedback on their. Some of their stuff, and no one got back to me, so that doesn't surprise me.

Yeah.

So. But yeah. Anything else, Lenore?

No, that's my fresh points.

All right. Less.

All right, so Camp nanowrimo is this month. I'm super excited. So for those. Anyone who doesn't know, Camp nano is a virtual writer's retreat, and it's just designed to be really flexible instead of the typical NaNoWriMo where it's 50,000 words for your novel and that's it. Camp Nano, you can edit, you can set an hour or line or page goal, whatever works for you. They set you up in little cabins with other writers, so you enter in ahead of time before the cabin, sorting what type of novel you're working on or what if you're doing poetry or whatever you're working on. And then they sort you out into cabins if you want to be. And then you can interact with your cabin mates. Yeah, it's kind of. I've done it once and I. I failed miserably. I didn't meet my goal. But I've been on a writing spree over the last month and I just. I'm looking forward to doing it this, this year and hopefully Crushing the last 50,000 words of my novel and just, you know, getting to interact with some other authors. There are local NaNoWriMo groups for people who are. Who are interested in getting together and drinking coffee. Also, like, the group near me does bar hops. So you could do a group like a writing challenge with people and then go out bar hopping. So I don't know. I think it's kind of interesting. I. I haven't actually gotten together with my local group because I'm a little antisocial and my schedule doesn't usually match up with them. So maybe this, maybe this camp nanowrimo I will actually meet the group now.

Does I always worry about, like, stuff that's online that has people in groups? Like, you said you did it before. Did people actually participate? Because sometimes I do stuff like that and then like, no one does anything and it's just not even a thing anymore.

I think it varies. Like, I've been in, like, one of my cabins that I was in did nothing. There were two of us that actually participated and then like, I've done it actually more than once in and failed miserably. And then previous to that, I was in another cabin and the majority of the people were participating were really super supportive to one another and it was great. So I think it varies from year to year depending on your cabin. So then my.

Can you talk a little bit more about NaNoWriMo itself? Because that was November. Right. And so how are we now in that?

Yep. Well, because they. I think that they've sort of opened it up to do other things other than just in November. So this. They do editing challenges. They have a whole series of different things that go on throughout the year. And I think it just keeps the excitement alive for it.

Yeah, I just. I didn't know that there were different events. So when I saw that you were doing that, you had been Linking on your Instagram post, you'd been saying that it was for NaNoWriMo. I just thought I was out of the loop.

No, you're not. So my other big news is that I've introduced my. My new notebook line. No brand notebooks. And it's just, you know, just a simple, simple notebook thing. I've used to make books all the time and I haven't been able to do it thanks to arthritis and horrifyingly bad carpal tunnel. So, yeah, so I'm doing that now. The Erasable community has been super supportive and just amazing in helping me to purchase a Corner Rounder. And I've literally been rounding all of the things in my house. I took. I have like stacks of three by five cards and they're all round. Now.

One question I had for you, Les, about that Corner Rounder. So does it have. Is it adjustable? Meaning, like what you put in it? Is it like just. Okay, this is my idea around it. So I. I play board games and some of the board games I play are war games that use little cardboard markers. But what happens is when you punch them out of the cardboard, there's always like stray pieces and everything. So a lot of people in the community round the edges. So I was wondering if there's a way to adjust how deep the item goes into the Corner Rounder, if that makes sense.

There are two different hideous plates, right? Yeah. So you can buy a variety of different knives for it or blades. So at mine has. It literally takes two screws. You unscrew, unscrew two little. Two little screws and then you can put the other blade into it. I bought a 3, 8 blade and it came with a quarter inch. And so it just. You just. And then it's got little, little guides and I'm talking with my hands, even though no one can see, has these little guides that you adjust in and out to kind of like keep the. Well, in my case, the notebooks from going in too far because you could, you could actually take the guides off and you could cut a corner, the rounded shape in the middle of a piece of paper if you wanted to. And so, yeah, yeah, you can, you can buy all kinds of different, different blades for it. That's good. Blades are almost. They're like. The blades are about a quarter of the cost of the machine itself. So if you can find one with the right blade, then buy that because it's so much easier. One of the things, and this is me totally nerding out on the Corner Rounder that I found with the corner rounder is the larger your radius, the easier it is to hide errors. So when I first got it, I had the quarter inch blade. Yeah. Like, I was putting everything into it, and every time I'd screw up, you could see it with the quarter inch, but doing the same thing with the 38 blade, it's much less noticeable. So I assume that if you get like a half inch blade, that it would be much harder to notice errors.

But you're not talking about making notebooks or anything. You're talking about taking a small number of kind of pre cut pieces and cleaning them up, right, Dee?

Yes. Like, I punch them out of their, like, sprue. It's kind of. It's not sprues, but it's the same concept. Like, you punch these out of, like, this big sheet of cardboard and they have those little, like, nubs of, you know, where they're attached to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I have a. I have one I actually bought from Paper Source. And it's just a tiny little punch. It's like a hole punch that you stick the corner of the piece of paper in until it stops and you push the button down and it punches off the corner. So it's really low rent. Like, I think I bought it on clearance for three bucks or something. But it works. You know, it works plenty of well enough for making, you know, gift tags or note cards or something like that, because I'm not doing very much with it.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to, like, look into this because, like, one of my war games has over, like 250 little square pieces multiplied.

That probably just take them over to Les's house.

I know, right?

But yeah, like, when we get together, I'll bring. I'll bring the corner punch.

You know, we know somebody who owns one of these.

Yes. And she's only an hour and a half away, if that.

An hour and a half is farther than I was picturing.

Yes.

So in Massachusetts, an hour and a half is what, like 14 miles

kind of. Yeah, yeah.

So anything else, Les, with your fresh points or. All right, so let's head into the main topic of our podcast. We have two, actually. Our first one is with Les Notebooks. I'm really curious about the process that you use Les to create the notebooks. But before we get to that, how did you get started making notebooks?

I started making notebooks. Well, this goes back quite a few years. I started making books because I couldn't find a sketchbook with the paper or any paper that I liked, I would buy a sketchbook and it would not handle watercolors or it would handle watercolors or it would handle ink, or it wouldn't handle ink. And I knew what kind of paper I liked. I'm a fan of Fabriano paper for drawing as well as watercolor. And so I just started. I started buying paper in big sheets, tearing it down. And I took a couple of workshops when I was in my undergrad on making books. And I just started making books. And for a long time I made books and I sold them via ebay and then Etsy when it opened. And I did that for a really long time until, you know, my professional duties at my job. When I was back, when I was in hr, I just couldn't do it anymore. And then when I was in school, it just, I couldn't make books. And then I've had this sort of beginning stages of arthritis in my wrists as well as, you know, the carpal tunnel that's flared up and I had to set it aside because I literally can't pull a needle through the signatures to stitch up a book anymore. Yeah, hopefully, you know, with some, if I see the doctor, I might be able to like get back into it with, you know, in the future. But I bought a long reach stapler on clearance at Staples like probably five or six years ago, and it's been gathering dust and I wanted some dot grid paper and none of my field notes or word notebooks or Calipino, anything that I had had dot grid in it. I was like, well, I'm just gonna make some. And I found that it didn't bother my carpal tunnel, it didn't bother the arthritis. And so I just started making them. I put up a post on my blog about, I don't know, like a month ago, because I'm not. I'm blogging really infrequently lately about, you know, the cost effectiveness of making your own notebooks. And it really is. It's significantly cheaper than buying them and it's ridiculously easy. So. And my hope was to encourage other people to make their own, not just to buy them from me, but because it's so easy, you know, anyone can do it. All you need is a little bit of equipment. The long reach stapler, namely, and. And a quick knife and a straight edge.

I think a long reach stapler may be one of my next stationary infrastructure purposes.

They've come down in price. Like when I first bought mine, it was. I got mine on clearance for like 15 bucks. But back then they were over $20, and now you can buy them on Amazon for, for 12 to 15 dollars. Which.

Yeah, there's reasonable good reason why I don't own one of those now.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, they're so cheap. The only. The thing that I can recommend to anyone if you're deciding to make your own notebooks, the. You can buy a cheaper stapler. Buy. But buy the best one you can afford and then spend the money on good staples.

Oh, God, yes.

Because there's nothing worse than trying to staple through 12 sheets of paper and a piece of cardstock and having them bung up the stapler because bad staples will just jam in the stapler.

Yes.

Yeah. And they'll also mess up your book.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

You put a lot of book, a lot of effort into getting this thing ready and then you have holes and crush marks and rips in it and it's. It's frustrating.

Yeah, it is, it is. And you know, like, I throw away a lot of staples.

Yeah, I actually, this is kind of an embarrassing secret, but at school we have staplers all throughout the library. And sometimes, you know, if I have to print out a journal article, even double sided, it's 20 pages. So I bring my own staples. Because the staples that they have in their staplers, I mean, they have nice swing line staplers, but whatever's inside of them, it's like they're thinner or something. So like if you don't have the right size stack of papers, they just kind of crumble and sometimes one of the two sides of it just snap right off. So I like put my own staples in there. Staple, take my own staples back.

That's hilarious.

Like, come on, Mount Holyoke, you know, you're what, $68,000 a year college, you can't afford staples. So.

So yeah, they're made of wire. Yes. For crying out loud.

Yeah. So. So how long does it take you, Les, to make one complete notebook? Like if you were just. Because I know. I'm sure you probably have like an assembly line process.

I do. I have an assembly line process and I haven't broken it down to see how long it takes me to make one complete notebook. It takes me probably four hours to make, like. So I do it in bulk. So I do. I print off an entire ream of dot grid.

Okay.

And then I pair that up with covers and then I staple it all. And it probably takes me about four hours to, to like from the beginning of printing to assembling, to stapling and Then to cutting, it takes me about four hours to make 27 packs. 27? Three packs?

Yeah. Oh, wow.

Okay. And why, why is it 27?

Because that's how many three packs come out of a ream of 500 sheets of paper.

Oh, okay. Okay.

So. And you know, I found out. So this is. I had. So I was so frustrated last night, I printed off an entire ream of paper. And as I was assembling, I was doing some small pocket sized notebooks. But I also want. Had been wanting to put travelers notebooks, traveler size, you know, the tall narrow notebooks in my shop. And I noticed about halfway through the stack that the printer had been printing, it was misaligned.

Oh, wow.

It printed perfectly straight on one side and the other side was crooked. As I was like, I was so pissed off.

So.

And there's really nothing I could do about it at that point. It's like, well, I ruined an entire half ream of paper. What am I gonna do with this? So I've got like, I just, I just went ahead and assembled the books and they go into my seconds pile and they'll be included as extras as people order. Cool.

We kind of talked about this briefly with the corner cutter rounder. But what other tools do you use to make your notebooks?

Okay, so I use a swing line, long reach stapler. I also use swing lines, colored staples. They flake a little bit as they go into the notebook. But I just like the fact that they're colored. They're not just plain silver.

Yeah.

So it is about aesthetics and not about performance.

No, no, no. So I've bought other colored staples in the past. They suck.

Okay. But I'm talking about the fact that they're colored is about aesthetics. Yeah, I'm with you on the swing line. I'm there.

Yeah, Yeah. I just, I enjoy the like having a little bit of like difference in the staple. And I've almost finished the blue, so I'm gonna switch over to red staples for my next, you know, however many hundreds of notebooks and then give the

completists a fit, you know.

Yeah, you're going to see your notebooks, you're going to see your notebooks on ebay,

maybe someday very rare, and then others. Well, because, you know, eventually I'm going to end up buying another package of 5,000 or what is it, 10,000 staples. And then it'll just, you know, I'll be going through like the colors again. The other thing that I use is a sort of semi professional 12 by 12 guillotine. And this is not one of those. Like, it's not a blade on a hinge. This is. It's got a clamp. And then you. There's like a giant lever that you pull down and the giant blade slices through the stack of paper or notebooks or whatever. And that is one of the best purchases I've ever made in my life.

Nice. Yeah, I always wanted to get one of those because I've cut things for personal use before and I just have. I just eyeball it and I'm horrible at that.

Well, for a long time, I used a Fiskares rotary cover cutter.

I have one of those.

Yeah, they're super nice. And I modified mine to have a guide on it. So I cut two slots in the plastic and then put a piece of wood with wing nuts.

Okay.

So that I had a sliding guard so that I could set it to three and a half or five and a half or however many inches I needed. And then the. The depth of the 45 millimeter blade is actually perfect to go through a 12 sheet or, you know, the, like a field note size notebook.

Nice. So I am not crafty like you, so I don't have those skills.

Well, you know, it's just a matter of, like, I don't know, you can make your own notebooks. It's really that simple.

Yeah, I'm gonna try.

Here's the thing about Les. Les thinks that a thing should exist in the world. And she causes it to exist.

Yes.

And she does a good job on it on her first try, and then she does it again because she knows she can do it better. And I think of a thing that could exist in the world, and I think that should exist, and then I go do something else.

Yeah.

She's just. She's a very effective human being. You know, she's an asset to the planet.

So. Oh, yeah, we're still on what tools you're using. Sorry, I don't mean to cut you off.

Oh, and just to say I meant no disrespect to D on that.

Oh, no.

She has a blog that has more than three entries in it, which to me is heroic.

Yes. I'm shocked. I'm shocked at myself.

Good.

Anya.

I will admit that sometimes posting is a task, but I feel at this point I have a duty.

So, you know, never made me do it.

It's really hard with school and work, so. Yeah. Like, it actually keeps me in check. So. But usually I'm just a sloth. So.

Go ahead.

Yeah. What other tools I'm sure there's others.

Let's see. We talked about the Corner Rounder already, which is like, I just am still in love with. I'm still cutting all the things I can.

Yeah.

You know, I'm still bummed I missed out on that because I was out of town when that whole fundraising thing was going on. And so I'm watching it from my phone, and I'm like, you know, I didn't go and dig out my computer that I carried to California and back without turning it on and get out my credit card and actually do it. And I'm kind of bummed I missed out on it.

Don't be that. You know what? I'll be making books for hopefully a long time at this point.

I mean, I know I can still get notebooks, but I could have been a part of it. I could have been like, yeah, I helped by that. I was part of something bigger than myself.

Well, now things are evolving. I added into the front of the notebooks, there's a place where you can enter your information. In the back, I've got a blurb. And this is one of the cool things about only doing 27 packs at a time. And I'm blanking on the guy's name. I want to say John. I got a. I got a message from someone saying, hey, you know, if you somewhere in the books, put the type of paper that you're using, it would be super helpful. And it's like, damn it, why didn't I think of that? So. So now, like, I've got this little blurb that's the same thing as that. What's on my belly bands. The blurb is in the back, but it says the size of the notebook, how many pages, and then it's got the type of paper I'm using, plus my website, so that people know where to go and find more notebooks.

Those belly bands look awesome, too, by the way.

Thank you. Thank you. You know what? Every designer out there is going to groan. I made it in Publisher, and I just, you know, I was trying to make it look kind of, like, homegrown and cheesy, but it fits my aesthetics, and Publisher does the job just fine. So all the designers that I know are gonna like, oh, God, Les, let me do it right for you. But you know what? I could print them off at home, and it works. So probably the, like, the last thing that I use to make the notebooks is we inherited from my wife's Boss an ancient HP LaserJet printer that will print off like a hundred pages in five minutes.

Oh, wow.

So it's super fast and it does a really, really good job. It's been really well maintained, so it's still chugging along. It did like. I can't use the duplexer on it because their new software, the. The.

I don't know what a blanket on it probably drivers. The new.

Yeah, thank you. The new driver for it doesn't include the duplexer. So I have to actually, like, it prints off the 500 sheets and then I have to take it out. Remember, do I flip it over? Is it. Flip it the long way? Is it. Flip it the short way. And then I have to print the test sheet and I always have it wrong. Then I have to take out the whole 500 sheets again and put them in. Right. I should.

You just know. You throw in one. You throw in one page in the drawer with a tiny X at the top corner and you see where the X comes out.

I'm pretty sure it changed on me.

These bastards.

I had it. I had it going and I figured it out. Like I knew which way to put everything in. And then, like, there was a thing that popped up on my computer and it said, how do you want to do this? I was like, I'm pretty sure I'm flipping it the short way, but let's see.

And I picked that.

And now all of a sudden it's different. So I think I screwed myself. But yeah, I think that a decent printer really helps printing with the dot grid.

Yeah. And like, it doesn't overheat or anything because I was thinking about that.

No, this thing just like churns out the prints like no one's business. Awesome.

Cool. And then I know you said that was the last of your tools, but how do you get such a sharp fold?

Like, you know, I use a what?

Tell me you're going to be using the bone folder.

I am. I use a bone folder.

That's awesome.

But my. The folder is actually. I use. And I almost ashamed to admit it, I use a Martha Stewart bone folder. And it's made at. I know.

It's a good thing.

It's a good thing. It's made out of melamine. So my. My. My notebooks are actually vegan, So. Yeah, so. So yeah, I use a melamine folder instead of a traditional bone folder. And I do that because it doesn't gloss up the cardstock as much as a traditional bone folder. So, like, if you use a traditional bone folder on some paper, it will leave a glossy Finish on it. And the Melamine does not do that quite as much.

Especially like on a toothy sketch paper. Right. It really compresses the fiber.

Yeah. One of the things that I hope to purchase sometime in the, well, future is a Teflon folder. Those just have my book. My bookbinder lust is like, ooh, Teflon. But I can't justify the cost because they're wicked expensive. So eventually I'll buy a Teflon folder. But Melamine is working for now.

So there's actually, there's actually a historical reason for this. Les may remember this the first time I saw one of her videos ages ago. I'd never heard her voice before. I kept replaying the video just so that I could hear her say the word bone folder. Because the way she said was so funny. It just cracked me up. And you know, because I. What? I don't know if you guys can tell from my accent, but I grew up in Jupiter, North Carolina and I've lived in the South a lot of my life. And so, you know, you guys have kind of an exotic accent to me.

Yeah. Plus, yeah. You talk slower. I'm from Jersey, so I talk really fast.

Oh my God. You know, I make videos for my online course and whenever I'm. I don't normally think of myself as talking really that slowly, but whenever I'm playing my videos back to myself for editing, I always have to play them at like speed and a half because I can't listen to myself in real time. I sound like I'm drunk or something. Something. So I guess that's just what I

sound like to people all the time.

Yeah, I guess I'm just slow. Yeah.

So finally, Les, do you have, you know, you don't have to divulge any secrets, but do you have anything new on the horizon?

Well, I have. So I printed off and I did a bunch of lined notebooks. So that's going to be the next thing that I, that I load up. I want to do some traveler sized notebooks because I recently adopted the traveler's notebook size and I'm just digging that size. It's super cool. So those, those are the two, two new things. And I'm doing some one offs. So.

Yeah, I saw that.

I'm doing one off Pat.

Yeah.

I'm having some fun with some of this paper that I bought ages ago for art journaling.

Yeah, that was never.

So there's some glitter. Yeah, glitter and gloss.

Craft herpes.

Oh my God, really? Yeah. Like there's glitter all over My paper cutter. Now, there's glitter in my corner rounder, but it's pretty well stuck to the books. Now everything that's loose has fallen off and is either on me, on my dogs, or in my equipment. So.

Nice.

Yeah.

One thing I would like for you to do is ledger style.

Ledger style. So here's the thing with like, top opening or do you mean like ledger printing?

Ledger print inside. Because, like, I use my field note size notebooks for school assignments. And I know it's like, not necessary, but I just like how there's that little tiny, like, column for me to like make a check or, you know.

Yeah, that is nice.

So you're like. You like the right notepads? Ledger with the two.

Yes, with the.

I hadn't actually thought of doing that. So you want like.

Sorry, go ahead.

You want like two squares, then a long square and then two more squares?

Yeah. Kind of like exact. Exactly. Because I. Like I said, I use it for assignments and it just. I don't know, it's a nice little feature.

Was there a ledger in the field notes? Ambition.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't think I ever used that one. I should dig it out and send it to you. Dee.

I traded on mine Away. Okay, I'm gonna. You know what?

I still have to buy those notebooks from you. The rainbow and the neon.

Yeah, yeah, I've got them. I've got them here.

You never told me the price. We'll talk offline about that. But I'll send you monies.

Okay. Well, do you want to. Well, anyway, we'll talk about it later, so.

All right. Well, thanks, Les, for that informative little piece on your notebook making.

No problem.

Next up, Lenore. Lenore is a chemistry professor, so that's my day job. Yeah, I'm sure that you use all kinds of fun stationery tools daily. So what kind of stuff do you use?

Well, I'm a little. I guess I'm a little bit of an outlier in the group because I don't really do any long form writing by hand. I go through a lot of copier paper a lot. I use the copy machine in our department probably more than anybody else in our department. Part of that is because I have pretty large classes. My job at the university is teaching only. So I've got like. This is a little bit of a light semester for me in terms of the number of students. I've got fewer than 300 students total in all my classes this semester. But, you know, I've frequently had. Usually had between 4 and 500 students in any given semester.

Holy crap.

Yeah. In several different classes. And, you know, part of the. What compromised for trying to actually effectively work with large classrooms and have their basic interactivity is that I do worksheets in class. You know, so we introduce a topic, talk about it for as short a time as I can get myself to talk about it, and then have them actually do some problems and let that introduce. Did you get it? Do you know what you're. You know, can you apply what you just wrote down, or are you completely baffled still by this question? Because, you know, you listen to a lecture and everything sounds really good because you're hearing it for somebody who knows what they're talking about, and it's satisfying, but it's a really crappy way to learn anything.

Yeah, I.

Somebody asks you the most basic question about what you've just heard, and you're like, wait, what?

Yeah. Yeah. No, my cognitive psych class is a lecture, and it's not a big lecture. There's like 30 of us, but there's no interactivity with papers or anything, so I don't remember anything. I have to go.

Yeah.

You know, get lecture notes off Moodle and then have to extrapolate what I was half listening to. So. Yeah.

So how do you. How do you get the lecture notes? Does your professor post lecture notes or does. Is there a course recording that you.

No, it's just. It's just posted notes in like, a Word document and then posts the notes the professor. And they're very bare bones because she has slides, too, so.

Yeah. And I don't. I actually use chalk because I. Well, I'll get to that in a second. Anyway, go ahead, finish your story.

No, no, no. So, yeah, so it's. I would. I wish that that paper was a thing in our class, but I get it. Our campus is all about, you know, we're a liberal arts college. They're all about the earth and saving the planet, and no one should print anything ever. But there's a need sometimes, you know, when you're teaching to have that component.

There really is. There really is. And, you know, I am conscious of that. But, you know, like, in chemistry, I mean, I'm going to spend eternity atoning for my sins and just the amount of paper towels and gloves I've gone through. Right. So. Yeah, you know, but, you know, it's important, and it's actually been a lot more effective for just kind of taking care of my students. So we do a lot of that. And you were Talking about having slides in class, and I used to use PowerPoint in class, and it never really worked for the way that I like to teach and the material that I do and the students that I work with. For one thing, writing with chalk on a chalkboard or, you know, on a whiteboard, if I'm stuck with that.

I hate those.

I do, too. I hate them. Okay. So I'm a chemist. I've been exposed to some pretty nasty things over the course of my career. But I just walk out of a whiteboard lecture with that powder on me.

Yes.

Just feeling gross. Like, I don't want this stuff on my skin. Yeah. And in my lungs, the chalk is probably a lot more innocuous for that. But when you're writing with chalk or when you're writing on the board with what you want your students to be getting, you're modeling a process for them that is, you know, cognitively important. You're modeling the process of thinking through something and distilling it there to some things that you write down that hopefully trigger the memory later.

Right. Yeah.

You're not writing down everything. You're writing down enough to remind yourself.

Yeah. No, I agree. Again, another anecdote. I'm a current student, so this is all up in my face. The one professor I have that uses, thankfully, at my school, besides the science stuff, we don't have whiteboards, but the science building does. But whatever. So she uses chalk. And it's not only about, like, writing. It's the concept where she'll write something and then just. It's almost like a mind map. She'll start with the topic and then actually legitimately draw lines to branch off to other topics.

Oh, yeah.

You know, and it's so helpful and just. I don't know, there's something to me, like, charming about writing in chalk on a board. Maybe the younger students don't get it, but that's just how I learned as a kid.

So it's very basic. You know, it literally. It goes back to drawing on the cave wall with a first stick.

Right.

And it's similar to pencil that you're really. You're having to move your body to make marks that represent thought.

Yes.

And I think there's something pretty powerful about that. And I think we've got a long enough history with it as humans that it's probably, you know, there's probably something kind of evolutionary about it that it's more natural for us. The studies that have come out showing that people remember much more if they write with a Pencil than if they type notes during a lecture. Some really interesting research about that. But the other thing about it, too, is that you're moving at the same time pace as your students. You know, if I have to write something while they're writing it, I can't get that far ahead of them.

True.

And there's a tendency when you've got everything on your slides to go through them so fast that nobody could write anything if they wanted to.

Well, that's what I have to do with the psychology class. I actually take notes from the slides before class because they're just zoomed right through, you know? Right.

And do you know why you do that? Because you're a grown up and you're a good student.

Yes.

And so for all the people who aren't doing that, because it doesn't occur to them that that's a thing that they should be doing.

Right.

Yes, I have to.

And they're not getting anything out of it. Of course you have to. And so do they. But they're not. Right.

Yeah.

So. Yeah. So the chalk thing has actually been pretty big. And, you know, we have another chalk. We have an erasable sister group on Facebook about chalk, and it doesn't get nearly as much action because sadly, there aren't as many options. But the chalk that I'd been using for years had gotten discontinued. And the group helped me find some new brands of chalk. And they're all Japanese and Korean.

Yeah, I actually wondered about that. I know Japanese make phenomenal school supplies and writing stationery products. I don't know.

You can tell they care. Yeah. So I've got in here right now a box of 72 each of one brand is Uma Jirushi and one brand is Hagoromo. And the Hagoromo actually had a big thing. It was discontinued a few years ago and apparently physics professors around the world reverted to. And then they brought it back and it's now made in Korea instead of in Japan. Opinions differ on the Internet as to whether it's as good, but it is excellent. It is really, really good. And I never had any of the old stuff, so I can't speak to whether it's as good. I didn't discover it until after it was. Was discontinued. And then the Uma Jirushi is also very, very nice. And there's a lot to it, as you observed, about the Japanese making quality stationery. The chalk sticks are each sort of dipped in a very, very thin enamel or plastic coating so that when you're holding it, it doesn't get on your fingers. But you don't notice it at all when you're writing. It's thin enough that it just wears right off as you're writing on the board. And it's dense and silky and it doesn't create a huge cloud of dust the way that the newest formulation of alpha chalk does by quartet. That stuff is, it's just awful. It's dust held together with the tears of the damned. It's terrible and it's just sad, you know.

And the chalk used to, the Japanese chalk you use, it's dark enough because like I'm picturing you in a lecture hall. So giant lecture hall in the back can see it just as well.

Yes. And they, there are different sizes. So I haven't, because of the rooms that I've been in for the last year or so, I've been able to get away with the normal size chalk, which is maybe a. I'm going to check here, but I think it's about a 3,8 inch diameter. But they also make a 3 quarter inch diameter chalk that I haven't had to resort to. But in a large classroom. Yeah, it's three, eight. In a large classroom I could do that. And I have, you know, I have a box of it. I just haven't had to use it. I like the smaller chalk better.

Nice.

You know, I wear black a lot because they haven't come anything darker yet. I don't, I don't walk out of the classroom all of kinds covered in chalk dust than I used to.

Nice.

So that's also really nice. So when I hear people complaining, oh, I've got chalkboards this semester. You know there's no plastic, right? This is. Yeah, the whiteboards. You hold them in your hand and don't put the cap on them for 30 seconds while you're talking. And you go to write again and they're dead.

Yeah.

And there's so much plastic. And you walk into a classroom and there's 40 whiteboard marks, markers at the bottom of a whiteboard and 23 of them are dry. And nobody's freaking thrown them away because like Jesus of the whiteboard is gonna come by and bless them and make them whole again or something. I'm like, if it's dried out, throw it away. Don't put the cap on it and put it back.

Yeah.

Like my biggest gripe is I'm a front row sitter. I have to because I get distracted easily. And I can smell those markers from the front row.

I hate them. They're Awful.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I've got one classroom this semester. I got two classes. Two of my three courses on campus are in this one classroom. And it's an awful classroom and I hate it. And I'm in it for seven hours a week and it's got me bored. And. Yeah, so I just have to suck it up. But I think I'm going to have to. I saw that I'm assigned to it again for fall, so I'm going to have to order some of those refillable whiteboard markers because I just can't. I can't cope.

Yeah, that's. That's horrible. So we did paper or copier paper and using a lot of copies. I was gonna say dittos. Remember that word?

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

Yes. And chalk. So any, any like what, what pencils do you use?

So I have nice pencils for myself, of course. I have the pencil jars on my desk, which you guys have seen. And I have nice stuff that I can select whatever is the longest and the sharpest and the sexiest at any given moment and write with it. And then on the table in my office that I swivel my chair around to to sit with students and work on things. And in the bags I carry for exams and stuff, I have Ticonderogas and Ubis usually for students to use. And also a bunch of, you know, sad, pathetic click pencils and click erasers and stuff that people have abandoned. They just all go over there. And then I grade in green and I started doing it because I just didn't. Because red is sort of

threatening.

Well, yeah, like I was gonna ask you about the psychology of that because I edit papers, that's my part time job. And students sometimes kind of visibly like, you know, cringe when I'm marking up their paper in red. Right?

Yeah. So I don't know if there's any actual, you know, science behind that or anything, but I read about it a few years ago and thought, okay, I'm start grading in green. And so for years I was using the Pilot V5s. I'm left handed, so I gotta have something that dries fast. And the ink in those just has this fabulous punch on the paper. You know, it really stands out on the paper, that color. And actually part of how I got into pencils was a few years ago I was looking for something because I was on my last two or three from the last dozen of those I bought and they were drying out and I was looking for something else and I was like Trying to get away from the plastic. And so I was looking for any green colored pencil that I could use for grading and there's just nothing. Apparently the green pigments must just be tough. You know, as a chemistry person, there must be something about the green pigments that's difficult because there's nothing that has the punch on the paper of a carmine editing pencil, you know, of the red and still has point retention because you basically are down to something with the consistency of an oil pastel if you want to get a lot of pigment on the paper and have it show up.

Yeah, I. Getting back to the reasoning behind the color, I agree. Like as a student I have a presser that grades in purple and I don't know. Yeah, if you get a bad grade it sucks, but it feels less horrible somehow.

Yeah, I did purple for a while and the problem with purple is that I never found one that I liked that I could write with that was enough contrast with what the student had written that if I photocopied or scanned it, it would show up as different.

Makes sense.

And I so like for the free response portions of, well, free response and multiple choice portions of my exams, I scan them all into the and email the file to myself as a PDF before I return them after they're scored. And so I need to be able to see what the students wrote and what the graders wrote. And then the other good thing about green is that the TAs, when I use TAs for grading, they usually write in red and then I write in green and I can tell who graded things. So that's nice too. So I got into the fountain pen thing because I was looking for green ink. And so I've been, in addition to the Pilot V5s, you know, I've actually used just the straight up bit crystal in green, which is pretty good. The paper mate flare light green. The dark green one doesn't have enough contrast. It blends in with the students work. But the light green is pretty nice. And then I've been using my apple green lamy safari. Right now I've got it loaded up with some J Herbin Reseda green and it's really nice. I've been enjoying grading with that one this past week.

Nice.

Now I thought of this when you were talking about your pencils. Do students ever notice the copious amounts of unique pencils in your office?

Rarely. No. So you know, I'm a chemistry professor and that's a terrifying thing for students. Yes. So when they like when they come up to their into My office. They have screwed their courage to the sticking point just to get here.

True, true.

They are not paying attention to my

stationary choice because I'm always, when I'm in a professor's office, I'm always looking around like, what kind of package pencils are they using, what's on the wall, what's on their desk.

Yeah, me too. Right. But you know, we like. So we like school so much, we're still here.

Yes.

Right.

Yeah.

What are you in 23rd grade or something? Yeah.

I never want to leave. I want to be a student forever.

See, I do too. But that's how I ended up being a professor. Yeah.

As long as I don't have to pay for it. That's. That's the key.

Yes, there's that.

So any, anything else that's important to you that you use on a daily basis that helps you in your job?

Well, you know, Les was talking about getting the nice equipment and my husband, bless him, a few years back. So, you know, I said I was the person who used the copier more than anybody else. I was probably also the person who used the three hole punch more than anybody else and the paper cutter more than anybody else and all of that. So a few years ago, I was getting ready for the semester to start. I'm trying to get all my syllabi printed, you know, which is, you know, 300 copies of a 10 page document in the fall semester. And I go, I went to the secretary and said, where's the three hole punch? And she said, oh, it broke. We throw it out. And I said, are we gonna get a new one? Like, you know, like this? She just didn't even think it was a big deal. So they threw it out and they weren't getting a new one. And I just, you know, I have this, that little tiny one that does like, you know, three and a half sheets at a time. And so my husband bought me a back to school present. He got me the three hole punch with like the big lever that comes down and does 40 sheets at a time. Yeah, it's awesome. And then the next fall for back to school, he bought me a good paper cutter. And this year he bought me the, the one touch stapler. You know, like big lever on the top of it. Stapler.

Those are awesome, right?

So, yeah, I mean, having good equipment and I mean we all, everybody in this group has probably had the experience of somebody saying, it's a pencil, what difference could it make? Right?

Yeah, makes a lot of difference.

It's like that for Everything. Right. The sharpeners. And it's not about how expensive they are, but it's about whether they're well made, well designed, well executed or not. And that's. That's what we spend our time talking about in the group.

Right. Yeah.

Does it accomplish the thing that it's supposed to accomplish? And I really like having decent tools, you know? And that being said, I don't have an El Casco and I don't feel a need for one.

No.

Because I love my deli and my doll. But it's really nice having decent tools. You know, just things that operate well at a fundamental level is so important.

Yeah.

Like, I care about what I use, and I like to purchase good things. I want it to be so good that I don't have to think about it.

Right, right.

You know, design is invisible.

Absolutely.

If it's well made, you don't notice it. Right.

Yeah. So. And that's what I try to explain to people, like why this form pencil is important to me and superior, but.

And yet there's the casemates. Right.

Oh, my God. I know. I don't know how.

You don't have to spend $4 for a pencil to be good. You just have to pay attention.

Yes. I'm actually thinking of buying a third gross because I'm obsessed with them.

I think you should, because I don't think those are going to be there forever. I really don't.

It's $12 gross. Not even. It's like $11 and change.

Yeah. I mean, I don't think it would be a bad idea simply because of the way Walmart does their purchasing.

Right. You know, yeah.

I'm still.

I would love to find out if this is correct, but it. I really suspected that they made some kind of a deal with the Hindustan pencil company to buy their seconds.

Yeah.

And we're getting the benefit of that, but, you know, when that deal goes away, we're not going to get the benefit of that anymore.

This is true.

Yeah.

So maybe I'll just stock up until they change. I'll have like 10 gross.

Yeah. There you go. I mean, you're gonna use them, though, right? And this is the other thing is I don't go through pencils fast because I don't do that much writing.

Yeah.

So, you know, I have to. I have to just realize that this is a more or less harmless eccentricity of a collection for me. And I could pretend to be a user, but I know I'm not. I know I'm actually collecting. And then Les is like, showing her nubbin jar, and I'm like, yeah, I'm still. Like, I've never worn. I've got one pearl that's down to the Steinbeck stage. Like, I never even get to Steinbeck without anything because I have so many pencils.

Yeah, no, I don't use. I use pencils a lot, but if I were to think about it, I probably use 20 pencils a year to completion, even with writing. But with those casemates, because they're like, my thing. I just sent out two packages today to people, and I just throw a pack in there because they're 97 cents for. For 12.

So isn't that nice? Good gift currency.

Yeah.

Yeah. So. All right, well, did you have anything else you wanted to mention, or is that kind of it for your.

I think I've gone long enough.

All right, so where can we find you online, Les, we'll start with you.

You can find me. Let me open. Damn it. You find me@comfortableshoestudio.com and I am on Twitter and Instagram as Original lcharper, and my Etsy shop is Comfortable Shoes.

Nice. And what about you, Lenore?

I'm basically only on Facebook. You know, I have a life journal someplace

that's probably interesting. Maybe a MySpace account.

You know, I think I did set up a MySpace account, but I never really used it. And I have a character wandering around in second life, if that's still.

There you go.

Yeah, but none of them are like, you know, basically, I live life through Facebook and offline.

All right. And you can find me, Dee, either on theweeklypencil.com that is my blog, all about pencil stuff, or on Instagram, and it's heweeklypencil. So thanks for joining us this evening, and good night.

Good night.

So that's a wrap.

The intro music for the Erasable podcast is graciously provided by this Mountain, a

collaborative folk rock band from Johnson City, Tennessee.

You can check out their music@www.thismountainband.com. If I could just count the time this has happened before.