Time for a new day planner

Hi neighbors.

What's in your planner? With the new year comes a need for a new calendar for the wall, another one for the refrigerator door and one for the desktop.

Don't forget the ever popular "clutch purse" of the modern man and woman; the calendar/planner/datebook/addressbook/ notebook/businesscard holder with calculator and ink pen included.

Long after Dick Tracy's watch phone and shortly before Captain Kirk's voice-activated computer journal came the portable, sometimes zippered, day planner.

They come in all sizes. They don't require batteries. You can often "refill" parts of them and retain other sections for years.

The main reason I favor this "relic" is it's only functional if pen or pencil is applied manually to paper pages.

I don't have to turn it on. I don't need a magnifying glass to see some tiny keyboard. I don't have to memorize 20 digit codes or required passwords to access it.

It's like that other relic you may remember. The book. You open it, you write in it, you read it. It doesn't take photos, dial phone numbers at your verbal command, nor connect you to the Internet to read your e-mail. Mostly it just stays where you put it, quietly waiting untill you open it again.

It has large numbers and letters. There are well defined lines on which to write whatever I take a notion to write.

I can use various colored pencils or pens in my own private code to remind me of what reason I marked a certain time on a certain day. I like it.

More importantly, I am not afraid of it. It doesn't suddenly start ringing, playing music, or vibrating. I trust it to do what it's supposed to do. What more could anyone want from a calendar? I like the extra pages. You know, the ones that tell you what day of the week every holiday in the world will fall on for the next five years. Or what time it is in London. There's also a page with metric conversion tables. I never look at them. Metric just seems anti-American to me. I'll take my milk in cups and quarts thank you.

There is only one reason they put all those extra pages of seldom used knowledge in these day planners. So you'll have something to make you look busy in waiting rooms.

People in business are always waiting somewhere for someone they need to meet with. It could be someone they scheduled a meeting with weeks ago only to find them running behind once they get there.

Even those of us who are not officially "business" people can use these pages to look busy and maybe even more intelligent while we wait in various offices. We don't have to look as though waiting is keeping us from being task orientated.

Over time I have memorized the postal rates for six countries; how to say "hello, just coffee, check please and I'll get back to you" in four languages. I've learned important holidays in countries that no longer have the same name they had when the calendar was printed, and the rate of monetary exchange of every country I might some day visit.

Of course, there's always playing with the calculator to pass the time. Or drawing pictures with the little ruler. There's the trick from childhood of drawing little stick figures or cars in the corner of each page then flipping the pages to make them move.

Maybe, they should incorporate one of those card playing games in one of the pockets. Most of them are smaller than the calculators are. Of course, to look businesslike, you'd have to remember to turn the volume off.

That might be too much though. Just the calculator is pushing the limit of the pristine book-ish-ness of the day planner. Anything more complicated would just be silly and seem a betrayal of the whole notion of pen to paper.

There is only one real problem with keeping all your information (useful and otherwise) in one book. You can and at least some of us, often do lose the book.

Until the next time friends remember, if you write things down to get the clutter out of your mind, be certain to fill in your name and phone number on page one so you don't have to panic when you lose your day planner. While waiting for it to show up, you can take comfort in knowing that, unlike it's electronic counterparts, no one will bother to pawn it.