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Fifth Salon: Things we carry with us
Welcome to our fifth salon discussion thread. Wander in, invite a friend to come along, and chat! (Not sure what's going on? Here, have a brief FAQ.) The first three went wonderfully - you can find them in my salon tag. Please take a quick look at the reminders at the bottom of this post, too.
Topic of the day: What do you have in your pocketses? Or to be more useful, what stuff do you carry with you? I ask partly because I want to talk about what I have with me, but also because I'm contemplating being more systematic about some of it, and I suspect you all will have interesting ideas.
My usual bag is either a backpack (if I'm walking to work) or a small messenger bag. (My backpack is Tom Bihn'sSynapse 19, and my smaller messenger bag is their Medium Cafe bag. They wear amazingly well, come in nice colours, and have pockets and interior design that make me immensely happy. I own various others from them.)
What I usually have in my pockets at the moment is my keys (work key, house key, car key, car key fob) in the left, and my iPhone in the right. What I usually have in my bag is my asthma inhaler, a pen, and a few other minor things.
I'd like to do better. Things I'm currently contemplating include:
* Minor first aid kit (ibuprofen, several sizes of things to put on cuts or blisters, etc.)
* Whether I want to get some sort of pocket tool. In specific, the thing I need most and don't always have handy is stuff for opening computer cases/removing components. (And, y'know, in case of zombie apocalypse or getting stranded in back woods rural highway, a small knife blade and scissors and such wouldn't exactly be a *bad* idea)
* A small actually useful sewing kit (which probably means putting it together myself. because the pre-made ones never make sense to me.)
* Some combo of other useful self-care stuff. (Portable "I need food" object? I usually have a water bottle with me.) Lip balm. That kind of thing.
* A USB with useful stuff on it. (I have been creating one of these for work, with things I use all the time, but I could probably stand to have a personal one.)
Music in the background: I am very much about the comfort listening this week, which lead to my creating a playlist of Enya and Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach cello suites. (Look, I'm a person whose comfort reading has long included Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. I never claimed to be normal about these things. Whatever normal is.)
Other possible topics: (plus whatever you suggest!)
* The annoyances of weather. (Weather is my current most annoying migraine trigger: it threw me for a loop Monday. I am still cranky.)
* Ways you make things like waiting for laundry at the laundromat or waiting for car repairs more enjoyable. (Guess what I'm doing this week.) Both places are noisy enough that complicated reading is not generally viable. Neither place has wi-fi, so if I want Internet, I am limited to my phone, and neither has a table, so I can't type easily. And neither has somewhere near enough by I could go grab coffee and sit there instead.)
* Nifty things you have read/watched/listened to this week/month/year and why we ought to check them out.
Quick reminders
- If you want to post anonymously, please pick a name (any name you like) that we can call you - it makes it more conversational and helps if we have more than one anon post.
- Base rule remains "Leave the conversation better than you found it, or at least not worse". If you're nervous about that, I'd rather you say something and we maybe sort out confusion later than have you not say something. (People here have been excellently friendly and helpful so far.)
- I am still working on finding the balance on how much I talk vs. how much other people talk, so I am sometimes taking a bit before I reply to things. (An hour or two, usually.) Also, it is a slow brain week for me, please excuse.
- The FAQ still has useful stuff, but I have not added to it recently.
- Comments tend to trickle in over the course of a day or two: you might enjoy checking back later if you're not tracking the conversation.
Topic of the day: What do you have in your pocketses? Or to be more useful, what stuff do you carry with you? I ask partly because I want to talk about what I have with me, but also because I'm contemplating being more systematic about some of it, and I suspect you all will have interesting ideas.
My usual bag is either a backpack (if I'm walking to work) or a small messenger bag. (My backpack is Tom Bihn'sSynapse 19, and my smaller messenger bag is their Medium Cafe bag. They wear amazingly well, come in nice colours, and have pockets and interior design that make me immensely happy. I own various others from them.)
What I usually have in my pockets at the moment is my keys (work key, house key, car key, car key fob) in the left, and my iPhone in the right. What I usually have in my bag is my asthma inhaler, a pen, and a few other minor things.
I'd like to do better. Things I'm currently contemplating include:
* Minor first aid kit (ibuprofen, several sizes of things to put on cuts or blisters, etc.)
* Whether I want to get some sort of pocket tool. In specific, the thing I need most and don't always have handy is stuff for opening computer cases/removing components. (And, y'know, in case of zombie apocalypse or getting stranded in back woods rural highway, a small knife blade and scissors and such wouldn't exactly be a *bad* idea)
* A small actually useful sewing kit (which probably means putting it together myself. because the pre-made ones never make sense to me.)
* Some combo of other useful self-care stuff. (Portable "I need food" object? I usually have a water bottle with me.) Lip balm. That kind of thing.
* A USB with useful stuff on it. (I have been creating one of these for work, with things I use all the time, but I could probably stand to have a personal one.)
Music in the background: I am very much about the comfort listening this week, which lead to my creating a playlist of Enya and Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach cello suites. (Look, I'm a person whose comfort reading has long included Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. I never claimed to be normal about these things. Whatever normal is.)
Other possible topics: (plus whatever you suggest!)
* The annoyances of weather. (Weather is my current most annoying migraine trigger: it threw me for a loop Monday. I am still cranky.)
* Ways you make things like waiting for laundry at the laundromat or waiting for car repairs more enjoyable. (Guess what I'm doing this week.) Both places are noisy enough that complicated reading is not generally viable. Neither place has wi-fi, so if I want Internet, I am limited to my phone, and neither has a table, so I can't type easily. And neither has somewhere near enough by I could go grab coffee and sit there instead.)
* Nifty things you have read/watched/listened to this week/month/year and why we ought to check them out.
Quick reminders
- If you want to post anonymously, please pick a name (any name you like) that we can call you - it makes it more conversational and helps if we have more than one anon post.
- Base rule remains "Leave the conversation better than you found it, or at least not worse". If you're nervous about that, I'd rather you say something and we maybe sort out confusion later than have you not say something. (People here have been excellently friendly and helpful so far.)
- I am still working on finding the balance on how much I talk vs. how much other people talk, so I am sometimes taking a bit before I reply to things. (An hour or two, usually.) Also, it is a slow brain week for me, please excuse.
- The FAQ still has useful stuff, but I have not added to it recently.
- Comments tend to trickle in over the course of a day or two: you might enjoy checking back later if you're not tracking the conversation.
Re: About Bags and Everyday Carry
I do know what you mean about Tom Bihn. (And, um, after this discussion, I just bought a new backpack - the Brain Bag - because they still had one in indigo (which is a discontinued colour, but the one my Aeronaut and my Synapase and my Side Effect and my Id are all in. Blue is a Jenett colour).
I've been slowly acquiring them over about 8 years, on the principle that I would rather buy something awesome once, and then use it forever, than buy something less awesome and be grumpy about it, or have to replace it regularly. (I switched from the ID when I stopped carrying a laptop regularly, but it's still handy when I want something larger over the shoulder: it actually did really nicely for "going to Boston for the weekend" last time.)
Anyway, this conversation convinced me that no, I really do need a backpack that will hold something like a raincoat or poncho *and* an extra layer of warm (because hi, Maine weather and sudden thunderstorms), plus the other stuff I'd like to carry more often. And I want to start swimming again this fall, and something that would hold everything plus lunch would be handier than having two bags. (Work to home is half a mile: the fitness center with the pool is more or less halfway. So backpack, so I can walk, but it needs space.)
Also, I'm more regularly walking home via the small downtown market (they have the Excellent Local Milk. Also now Very Excellent Local Strawberries.) and it'd be nice to fit more than a quart of milk and my lunch container in my backpack, so I don't have to carry bags in my hands.
But yes. A lot of why I love them is the balance and they do not make my body hurt when I carry them. Which is excellent. (No guarantees for other bodies, but I'll say they are *much* better than most other bags I've tried for their respective types, especially on the messenger side. And the straps stay put, which means I didn't do the "jerk the shoulder up reflexively that causes all the tension problems everywhere else argh" routine.)
Thank you much for the tool links, too! Those look along the lines of what I think I particularly want. (Ok, that and a backup charger for phone and iPad.)
Re: About Bags and Everyday Carry
I am quite fond of the plum color (although I will probably get a rainbow of colors for future purchases, subdued for professional, other bright colors for travel), and am so excited that the solar-colored Dyneema is coming back. Solar and wasabi work best for me for actually seeing what's in the bag, but I also like the ultraviolet. ...and that next travel tray will still probably be in steel, because my Partner is not as, um, garish as I am.
And yes about different bodies loading differently (although mine obviously also generally does well with TB bags). I love the Absolute Shoulder Strap on my Aeronaut, but when I loaned it to Partner for his duffle bag because I was carrying mine as a backpack, we discovered that the semi-shock absorbant bounce in it throws off his stride and consequently makes him sore.
Okay, Cadenza, go to bed now. *waves at
Re: About Bags and Everyday Carry