Pete buys more nifty things.

I blame Bookczuk. I was in Fort Worth for the 2005 BC convention, and a package arrived from a tiny woman with a big heart.

Inside was a selection of Levenger Circa journals, exactly and exquisitely perfect for the sorts of travel journals that I like to keep to record my adventures. I'd long been looking around for durable and flexible journals in which to paste things like ticket stubs and postcards, handwritten commentary and newspaper headlines. All the little details that bring a time gone past to life. Problem was that all of the nicest journals were, like Moleskines, relatively inflexible. Make a mistake or get something out of order, and you were stuck with it. Yet if I used a Day-Timer with its ring binder system, I was looking at a significant expense, and a relatively large size.

Dear Bookczuk had listened to my moaning and suggested Levenger. She'd then followed up on her email and sent me an example or two. Which I loved. A journal system that didn't rely on a ring binder, but yet allowed me to add or rearrange pages. With stout plastic covers. Better yet, if I bought a punch, I could slide items in without having to paste them onto the blank pages. So many times I'd be faced with an item such as a postcard where both sides were significant, and I hated having to choose.

So my first purchase to Levenger was for more journals and a few accessories, including a nifty little travel punch.

For years, I've used these journals to keep my trip records. Every now and then I drag one out and remember Paris. Or London, or Dunedin, or Toronto. ***SIGH***

But in Charleston my travel punch succumbed to travel. It fell apart - easily fixed - but in the process I lost one of the punching teeth, and when I put it back together back home in Canberra, I couldn't find the missing bit anywhere.

So I've finally reacted to one of Levenger's delightful emails and put in yet another order, this time for a solid desktop punch, because time is going past and I haven't assembled the bits of my last trip. And, of course, while I put in the order, I browsed through their online catalogue and resisted the temptation to buy one of everything. Instead I bought a punch and yet more journal bits.

But one day, I'll go berko and buy up big on their wonderful reading and writing tools. One day.

And for the moment, I've got that lovely anticipatory "parcel in the mail" feeling.

Just in case

My late-night German lessons continue albeit langsamer. I'm reasonably proficient at nummers and can pronounce them correctly siebenzehn out of dreizig attempts, which works out to roughly threeteen out of fourty goes. I look at numberplates and phone numbers as I drive around, saying them out loud. Now and then I count up to ein hundert, just to show that I can.

I'm listening to the example dialogues and texts and making some sense out of them, recognising words and looking forward to asking, like ResQgeek, for "Eine kleine Stuck Schokoladentorte, bitte".

But now things are harder begetting. Not only are Nouns bekommen in drei genderen: masculine, feminine and neuter, each mit their own articles, der, die, das, but they come in cases, mit die articlespellung different depending on whether they are subject or object. Not to mention plurals.

Ein Mann schläft mit einem Hund, aber ein Hund schläft mit einem Mann.

This is getting tricky. And tense.

I can see myself at der Frankfurterflughafen, "My bags are lost. Also my cases. Woe ist mich!"