If you’re trying to lose a few pounds, here’s a sensible suggestion from one of our ABP/1 fans:
“Perfect if you are tracking diet or exercise… you can write your food & activity in the large portion, and appointments in the smaller column. I’m all for all-in-one!”
I was just reading an article about building an emergency cash fund—written for freelancers, but relevant to almost everyone in these economic times.
The first tip: keep track of all your expenses so you can see exactly where your money’s going, then eliminate the things you don’t need.
I keep a detailed log of all my business expenses in an Excel spreadsheet, but I’ll admit I find the prospect of tracking my personal outlays rather daunting. Do any of you do this, or have you tried it in the past? How do you categorize things? Do you use a computer spreadsheet, or a paper planner?
2009 will mark the 400th anniversary of French explorer Samuel de Champlain’s travels to the beautiful lake he named for himself. The state of Vermont has a whole host of events planned to commerate the anniversary next summer.
Growing up, I spent summers in Vermont, and we often visited and swam in Lake Champlain. I tried to imagine how Champlain felt when he first saw it: a huge wilderness full of unknowns–danger and beauty.
Little did I know that I would find out less than 20 years later, when I lived in Alaska and had plenty of opportunities to canoe in areas a day’s journey from the nearest fishing camp or village. I felt a tremendous sense of freedom and awe, but also a little fear.
Champlain’s Dream by David Hackett Fischer was released this week. This 834-page book covers Champlain’s life and travels in detail, including the speculation that he was the natural son of King Henry IV of France.
Mr. Fischer depicts Champlain as a wise gleaner of facts who listened to everyone: Basque and Breton fishermen and whalers, Algonquin and Iroquois tribespeople, African slaves–anyone who could impart information. He was a meticulous cartographer as well as a visionary who imagined “a new world where people of different cultures could live together in amity and concord.”
He was also an imaginative nomenclator, and many of his names, French and Algonquin, still grace the lands he traveled. They include Lake Rossignol and Port Mouton, both in Nova Scotia–the later named for a luckless sheep that fell overboard his ship.
But it was at beautiful Lake Champlain, the explorer made a crucial mistake. He got into a skirmish with a band of Iroquis, the mighty confederacy of fierce warriors whose lands held control of the trade routes running through the northeast.
Champlain won the battle (he illustrated this self-portrait) but lost the war: he made an enemy of the Iroquis. They halted his expansion southwards, and harried his settlements in New France (Quebec) for the next 150 years.
I just opened a new bank account at Chase (fortunately, one of the banks that seems to have survived the current crisis). Thus far, I have no complaints about their service, but the checkbook cover they sent me was atrocious: cheap, grainy plastic that looked like it would crumble if I ever bent it back to write a check.
Then I looked at my lovely Club cover and had an idea. Some of our vertical planners are around the size of a checkbook, and luckily, Karen happened to have an extra Space 17 lying around. Voila! My checkbook sits comfortably—if not perfectly—inside, and what’s more, it looks and feels great.
A number of Quo Vadis blog readers volunteered to review our Habana notebooks. I would like to share their comments with all our readers, so links to their reviews are posted below.
I am still waiting to hear from a few people for both Habana and Memoriae. Their reviews will be posted together at a future date.
My thanks to all the reviewers - the comments were thoughtful, gracious, and precise. We loved hearing what you liked about the Habana; valued learning about your preferences in notebook features and qualities, and where you thought our product could be improved. It was also instructive to know the type of writing instruments you use, your inks, and how they interact with the paper.
Thank you all so much again - it was a great experience for us, and I hope it was for all of you, too.
Spiritual Evolution of the Bean - large and small notebooks; Amateur Economist; The Pen Hunter, Black Cover, Orange Crate Art, and ZQuilts.
Here’s the other decoupage project I did over the weekend: I took my plain ceramic toothbrush holder and spruced it up with some fish paper. It seemed thematically appropriate, and it definitely livened up my bathroom…
I’m not a crafty person. I can’t draw, knit, cross-stitch, or make pottery, and the crown jewel of my sewing experience was the apron I made in 7th grade Home Economics (a subject they still teach in the Midwest, at least when I was a kid).
Nonetheless, even I was impressed by how easy decoupage is. After I suggested the technique as a way to customize date- and notebook covers, I figured I might as well figure out how to do it myself, so Karen kindly sent me some Decopatch paper, glue, and a paintbrush.
I started with a notebook, and without much of a plan. But decoupage is perfectly suited to that—if you add a piece of paper that you think is going to look good, and it doesn’t, you can always cover it up with another piece, or balance it out somewhere else. Not that my final design (pictured above) is going to win any prizes. Still, it’s nice and colorful, and it felt good to do something with my hands other than write or feed myself.
Do you decoupage?
We can all learn from H. L. Menken (1880-1956) the journalist and essayist on how to manage mail. In our case, email. 
Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, the author of Mencken: The American Iconoclast included some details of her subject’s letter-writing habits.
In his correspondence, Mencken adhered to the most basic social principle: reciprocity. If someone wrote to him, he wrote back. He believed writing back was “only decent politeness.”
He reasoned that if it were he who had initiated correspondence, he would expect the same courtesy. “If I write to a man on any proper business and he fails to answer me at once, I set him down as a boor and an ass.”
Whether the mailman brought 10 or 80 letters, Mencken read and answered them all on the same day. He said, “My mail is so large that if I let it accumulate for even a few days, it would swamp me.”
The postal service used to pick up and deliver mail twice a day. It was frequent enough to allow Mencken to arrange to meet a friend on the same day, but not so frequent as to interrupt his work.
Today’s advice from time management specialists to limit email checks to twice a day echoes the cadence of Mencken’s postal deliveries.
Ms. Rodgers said that Mencken was acutely disturbed by interruptions that broke his concentration.
The sound of a telephone ringing was associated in his mind, he once wrote, with “wishing heartily that Alexander Graham Bell had been run over by an ice wagon at the age of four.”
This year marks the 150th anniversary of Clairefontaine, the French company that makes the paper for Quo Vadis planners and notebooks. (If that sounds like a long time, consider the fact that a nearby monastery in the town of Étival-Clairefontaine made vellum and paper before that, in the middle ages.)
The photograph above, taken at a recent event in France, is of Christine Nusse, the great-granddaughter of Clairefontaine founder Jean-Baptiste Bichelberger. Here’s to 150 more years!
Blogger Stephanie “Biffybeans” from Spiritual Evolution of the Bean is here this morning with a guest post about Drum Talk, an upcoming festival in Pittsburgh with concerts and workshops about international percussion traditions.
Quo Vadis? Where to go?
How about Drum Talk 2008 in Pittsburgh, PA?
When: October 16th-19th 2008
Where: CAPA High School, 111 Ninth Street, Pittsburgh PA 15222
Cost: Concerts $10, $15 Individual Classes $35, or $99 Day Pass, $219 Weekend Pass (includes all concerts and classes.)
What is DrumTalk?
Drum Talk brings internationally acclaimed master drummers/educators to Pittsburgh, PA for a four day weekend of exciting concerts, informative workshops and energizing drum circles. It will be a celebration of percussion traditions from around the world.
The event will begin on Thursday, October 16 at 7 pm with a performance by UMOJA, Pittsburgh’s own African Arts dance troupe.
DrumTalk 08 Faculty Artists will lead workshops and present concerts throughout the weekend with each performance focusing on different genres of world percussion. See the Africa Yetu site for a complete schedule of workshops and classes.
Click through to check out highlights from the schedule… Read the rest of this entry »
