Notebooks, Galore!

As my work schedule slowly eased up as we got closer to the official start of last spring, I utilized some of my extra time to tackle my two huge ongoing notebooks collections: observation notes from the various schools and districts I work in, and the collection of printed recipes that seems to grow ever larger. The work-related observation notebooks include every observation I've done since I started doing this work as a consultant, and in some school districts that became a years-long process or involved a large number of schools. Knowing how small I write anyway, coupled with the dependence on narrow-lined notepad sheets, you might correctly assume that I've really done a ridiculous number of observations over the last 20 years. It takes a 6-inch binder to contain the work I've done through the High Point University Leadership Academy or in Guilford County; Virginia Beach City observation notes require two notebooks to contain them all.

The other notebook project related to my collection of (mostly) printed (mostly web-sourced) recipes. Originally converted into notebooks in 2017 to organize what had once been tucked into folders in a milk crate, and next reworked and expanded in 2022, I had been finding some of them overstuffed and also realized some organizational and categorical shifting was called for. As long as I was on a notebook kick as February rolled over into March, I refreshed my inventory especially of the extra large binders and set to work on once more improving the management of all those many, many recipes. It took a while to finally file away the stack of backlogged recipe printouts, and that dragged on through the rest of the year: Sunday December 7th was when I finally finished! I figured you'd want to know.