I also plan on making a list of fine drinking establishments, as well as some historic sites that interest me.  At Niagara University I spent a lot of time studying Irish poetry, and a lot of them spent a fair portion of their lives in Dublin, so I am taking all that in mind with my research.  On an interesting side note I am highly amused how many sites that are considered historic because of the Irish writers just happen to be pubs.  What a culture.

To help keep tracked of all the interesting tidbits and location I discovered I picked up one of Moleskine’s city books for Dublin.  For those who don’t know, the city book is essentially a do-it-yourself travel guide.  Instead of coming filled with information, it is left up to you to write your own travel guide.  They provide several divided sections for notes, places of interest, and several blank pages for travel related journaling.  They also have street maps of Dublin and some random information as well.  This will be the first one I’ve used and from the day it arrived in the mail my excitement for the trip to Dublin doubled.  Its been fun making all these notes before I’ve even left, and it will be even more exciting to be able to use it to record my thoughts and experiences during our week long adventure.

I had been pondering getting a PDA again, though I never used it as much as I should have – for whatever reason I just felt uncomfortable carrying one around so it was never with me when I needed to keep track of something. A few people have recently suggested I try using a Moleskine notebook. I looked at them a couple of times and they are very nice, so I made a mental note (ie, a bookmark in my browser) so that I might come back to that idea at a later date. Well yesterday I was reading some article on Lifehacker during a particularly slow moment at work and lo and behold they had a link to an article about converting a small Moleskine notebook in to your own custom day planner. This person actually made the decision to go from a PDA to a more simple approach to things and it inspired me. So last night I made a trip to Borders and ended up picking myself up a couple of the notebooks. One of the smaller ones (grid paper because they were out of the lined notebooks in that size) and one of the larger lined ones for jotting done story ideas, random observations, anything at all that might help the good ole’ creativity start flowing again.

I broke out the ruler and a drafting pen last night and started dividing the notebook, one week over two pages. Right now it only goes up until the end of June 2008, but I’ll add several more months to it. Then the last 60ish or so sheets will be used for todo lists, notes, etc. I bought some post-it note reinforced tabs so that I can divide the sections in the back accordingly.

Now I’m armed with my new lo-tech PDA and feeling ready to get something done! Or maybe just refill my coffee cup, it’s still early.