What's Your Road Traveled to Creating a Story

     What do you do to start a new story or to get a new idea?  Go out for a night on the town?  Read a book?  Try something new?  New ideas are what push someone into creating something wonderful.  When I get an idea for a new story in my head, I have the "one week" rule.  If after one week, the idea is still stuck, then it has the potential to become an actual story, not just a daydream.  Where do I store these ideas?  Everywhere I go, I have my notebook with me.  It's not the normal school notebook, but one that's smaller so it can fit into my purse.  I've scribbled all kinds of ideas, pictures, and notes.  Do you have a notebook or something of the like?  Certainly you don't write all your notes on your arms?  You'd become a walking book!  And as awesome as that mental picture is, I'm going to guess that it's not very practical.  Lol.  So what I'd like to know is what your method of brainstorming, note taking, and/or story searching is.  Since none of us travel the same path to enlightenment, our experiences and thoughts must be quite interesting.
     What do I do?  Besides my trusty "one week" rule?  Well I scribble notes in my handy dandy notebook, talk to myself (more often than I'll admit), read books, re-read my own work, find pictures of things that could be relevant to my work, go out and spend time with friends or family, fishing, and, more often than not, finding ways to distract myself.  Nothing too spectacular.  No sky-diving or underwater basket weaving.  Just distractions mostly.  I find that when I'm not thinking about what I need to think about, everything lines up in time.  Time.  More time given, more time lost, more frustration when nothing adds up!  Kinda a catch-22 huh?  Give yourself time to come up with an idea, but sometimes time doesn't hold the answer.  Tricky, tricky.