I keep a little notebook, a small hardcover job. It looks just like the one in the picture except that I cut the silly elastic thingy off it with an exacto knife. There isn’t anything in it that anyone would much care about: shopping lists, a bunch of phone numbers, some names of books and songs and what have you that I’ve jotted down to reference later. There’s a few scrawled bits of ideas, measurements for projects around the house and so on. When I need to scratch something down, that’s where I do it. Many years ago, I used to keep more of an art notebook with bits of drawings and collage and that sort of business but this isn’t one of those. It’s too good a notebook for the junk I scrawl in it but I like it that way. I like a notebook of substance.
The notebook is gone. I’ve been retracing my steps and I think I left it on a bank machine. My phone number is in the front of the book along with the word thank you but nobody has called. The book itself isn’t such a big loss. Today I’ll get another one and be back in business. But I can’t help thinking that somebody is out there reading my shopping lists.
Buy:
yogourt
cereal for me and Tuffy P
bosc pears
cat litter
This is not exciting stuff, but it’s my not very exciting stuff and I’d like it back. If you find a little black notebook with my phone number in it, please call. We can have a coffee and talk about notebooks.
27th Street 
I keep a little one like that in my car and I take it with me to jot down notes, numbers, quick ideas. Sometimes the information gets transfered to my journals.
I write with fountain pens so Moleskins are out for me. I use Clairefontaine and Rhodia notebooks because the handle the ink from a fountain pen wonderfully. My wife usually uses a pencil with her little on the go notebooks and Moleskins are her standard note booklet.
I love fountain pens but cannot write with them. I’m left handed and attempts to write with a fountain pen have resulted in a lot of smudging.
I’ve mostly used mechanical pencil in the lost and found notebook, .5mm 2B refill preferred. I’m considering moving to an array of writing instruments in the future.
I’m not as sophisticated as you, but I do carry a sheaf of lists, written on scraps of paper and held together with a paper clip. ;D
I’m so glad you (or, to be precise, Tuffy) found it! We sell those in my bookstore and I was considering buying you one and mailing it to you.
God forbid this happens again, but just in case, is it leather or moleskin? (Moleskin is very ‘in’ right now, btw, because it is reportedly what Hemingway preferred!)
At any rate, you do have your backup book now, so even if the worst case scenerio occurs, you will not need another replacement.
Like Senor Steve, I was glad to hear it has been found and now you can pick up what you need at the grocery store without fear of missing anything.
moleskin, with squared pages…
I am much relieved to see your reply here, Mr. Anchovy. I do wish to assure you that in the brief interim between your original entry and your reply, I was keeping an eye peeled for your notebook.
I knew I could count on you Steve. I figured it might have made a quick escape down to Mexico and it’s good to have a special agent on hand in the region when you need him.
I confess I did feel silly when Tuffy P. found it. Meanwhile, anxious that I was walking around without a notebook, yesterday morning I went out and bought me a new one. Now I have a back-up waiting in the wings.
Moleskins are cool.
Well, it’s like this. It seems that I didn’t leave my notebook at the bank machine as I thought I did. It seems it fell down beneath the passenger seat of my car. Naturally Tuffy P found it.
Oh well, nevermind.