[personal profile] jenett
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.

Date: 2013-07-03 02:34 pm (UTC)
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
From: [personal profile] redbird
At the moment, what I am keeping in my pockets is a wallet, keychain, handful of coins, and a few tissues. Bare minimum when I walk over to the building fitness room is the keychain, and I usually have a $5 bill in case I want to stop on the way back and buy a roll or a piece of fruit.

The daypack has an ever-shifting set of stuff, depending partly on time of year. What lives there at the moment includes a notebook, some pens, a small container of over-the-counter pain relievers, tampons and sanitary napkins, a couple of teabags, and a bit of chocolate. The last two are because I am somewhat particular: if I don't carry chocolate I like, sooner or later I will either be unhappily chocolate-less for several hours while in transit, or buy much-less-preferred stuff from a vending machine or snack bar, eat some of it, and still not be satisfied. Again, those places may have only decaf, or Lipton's, or Earl Grey (I don't like bergamot), and 2 or 3 teabags weigh next to nothing.

I usually put my iPod in there when heading out; not as a music device (I don't like earbuds) but as backup brain: appointment book, address book, transit directions, miscellaneous notes, shopping list, etc.

If I expect to be spending a lot of time on a train or airplane, or in a waiting room, there's at least one book. For this morning (I have a tedious medical thing scheduled at 10:00) I have the kindle and one paperback. Before I leave I will be adding an apple or other snack, and a thermos of black tea.

Date: 2013-07-03 02:37 pm (UTC)
untonuggan: 2 ppl at a table with a pot of tea. One says, "Would you like some tea?" The other, "No." Caption: "anarchy in the UK" (tea anarchy in the UK)
From: [personal profile] untonuggan
carrying TEA is the BEST IDEA ever.

why did i not think of that?

Date: 2013-07-03 06:17 pm (UTC)
From: [personal profile] houseboatonstyx
I carry tea bags in my nice purse but forgot to mention it. ;-)

Date: 2013-07-03 08:37 pm (UTC)
aamcnamara: (Default)
From: [personal profile] aamcnamara
I bring tea with me when I go out of town, but somehow have never thought of carrying some around just generally--hmmm...

Date: 2013-07-03 09:46 pm (UTC)
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
From: [personal profile] redbird
It's a combination of wanting it at random times, and it being easier to just leave a few foil-wrapped teabags in my backpack (and in my winter coat pockets), because they are small, light-weight, and don't spoil quickly.

This has the advantage that "I'd just like a cup of tea" isn't an imposition even for people who never drink the stuff and may not have any around; it's a rare household that can't boil water, maybe using a saucepan or the microwave.

Date: 2013-07-04 02:15 pm (UTC)
kakiphony: Chihuly exhibit at the KIA (Default)
From: [personal profile] kakiphony
I took to carrying it mainly because the selection at the breakfast joints I frequent is so truly terrible. But now that I have it, I find myself using it all the time. Definitely worth its (very light!) weight.
Page generated Jun. 6th, 2025 06:17 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios