A few weeks ago, with Winter Semester fast approaching, I realized I needed to buy more notebooks. For the last four years, I have exclusively used Moleskine's Extra Large Cahiers to keep all my notes. They're relatively inexpensive, so I could easily have one notebook for each course, and they're durable, with acid-free paper, stitch binding and a durable cardboard cover.

But, to my horror, when I popped online to place an order for more notebooks, my supplier didn't have them in stock.

Some sleuthing revealed the ugly truth. From what I learned, a giant paper products conglomerate had acquired the Moleskine company. In a bid to streamline the company — something I wholeheartedly support in most cases — the new corporate overlords had discontinued the less popular products, including my beloved Extra Large Cahier.

Initially, I thought it might be possible to find some dealer with lots of overstock product, swoop in and buy up all of the remaining Extra Large Cahiers. As it turned out, however, most dealers with leftover inventory were praying on desperate devotees, such as myself, by selling them with insane markup. (Even I'm not crazy enough to pay $70 for 3 composition books!)

Thus, I set about finding a replacement. My first thought was the French paper products company, Clairefontaine, more or less the official provider of paper products to French students. I like their products quite a bit — I've recently switched to their top-bound notepads from the comparable Moleskine products — but they only offer notebooks with spiral binding, which I find cumbersome compared to the Moleskine-style stitch binding.

Then I stumbled upon Minneapolis-based russel+hazel. They offer a wide assortment of paper products that appear to have been designed with neurotic people like me in mind. The pages of their signature SmartRule paper have line numbers, just like Xcode. The notebooks also come in a variety of colors, unlike the all black, all the time Moleskines, which would make finding the right notebook that much easier, especially when it's one of 50.

Unfortunately, ecru, a fantastic Portland-area stationary store, only had one russel+hazel composition book in stock. I bought it, though, and I'm impressed with the product. I suspect they will become my new note taking medium of choice. Not to mention, I will probably spend a small fortune on their line of binders, notepads and filler paper designed for type-A personalities like me.