Paperphilia

I love me some office supplies. Then again, who doesn't?

Okay, yeah, folks who jet ski over waterfalls or drool over a pair of $3,000 shoes probably don't get that same frisson when they see a new kind of Sharpie(tm) or Post-It(tm) but your Auntie isn't athletic nor do I care about fashion. You'd know that if you saw more of me than just my head on an avi.

Then again, if you know me IRL you're already snorting. Calm down. Mockery isn't nice.

Back to the good stuff.

I needed a new steno pad. It never occurred to me that a steno pad is obsolete in these digital days. Why should it? You millenials embraced music on vinyl and black and white film, why not archaic forms of paper?

But as I wandered through the cavernous labyrinth of pens and Scotch(tm) tape and envelopes oh my and goggled at the glorious abundance of goodies -- to the point where I actually exclaimed out loud "I want ALL the paper!" because it was true -- doubt crept in.

There was a smorgasbord of spiral pads. Some were covered in glitter, some had sports imagery, others in colors not found on the RGB color chart...

...but they all had the wire on the left.

The few which opened from the top were tiny. Useful, sure, but not what I wanted today.

Had the steno pad gone the way of your favorite treat at Trader Joe's?

(For those of you who don't have a Trader Joe's, they always stop making something once you realize how yummy it is. Every. Single. Time. Trust me, it's a thing.)

To cut the suspense, I finally found the steno pads. Well, I found one. The last one.

There's a bit in Hitchhiker's Guide which goes: "It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the leopard.'" (Douglas Adams, copyright 1979)

Well, that's about where I found the empty bit of shelf with a lonely surviving steno pad in the shadow of the back. Near the ground, at the farthest point of the enormous office supply store, under last year's day planners.

It's mine now, if you want to know what it looks like.