Assignment: Prepping for a seminar I was teaching the next day in conjunction with Writer’s Digest.  

Location: My bed. I like to write there in the afternoons. 

Where my head went: 

• Luchino Visconti
• Moleskines v. Field Notes
• Cincinnati
• Chili over spaghetti
• Dessert Club, Chickalicious

Why? My wife was kind enough on Monday to buy my a really nice Visconti pen for our 1st (aka “paper”) anniversary. I was thinking about it and how I realized I’d never heard of this pen company and only remembered the word “Visconti” as the last name of an Italian filmmaker (no relation, apparently).

My wife purchased the pen at Flax in San Francisco where, that same night, I fondled a few Field Notes notebooks and wondered if I should buy a few (I did not). At which point I felt guilty for not working, refocused then remembered (lord knows why) that Writer’s Digest was based in Cincinnati. I’ve never been to Cincinnati and know it only as home to The Reds, Procter & Gamble, and “cincinnati-style chili” which is chili made with cinnamon and cloves instead of chili powder, beans instead of beef and served over spaghetti. 

This got me hungry which made me remember that my company’s intern had taken to photographing what she eats on her blog and linked to some place in New York called “Dessert Club, Chickalicious” which I will be visiting, eh, yesterday.