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jenettWelcome 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.
Tags:
Shifting paradigms
Date: 2013-07-04 01:37 am (UTC)But now, going on job interviews and things, I don't feel like a slightly-ratty messenger bag is quite the thing. So I have been using different bags, trying different configurations. And switching to a different mode of carrying means asking myself, Do I really need to carry (x) around with me everywhere I go? Often the answer is no. Having a handful of pens and pencils and a highlighter was pretty useful when I was going to class every day, but if I'm just going to go buy groceries maybe I only need one pen.
The list of Necessary Items When Going Out For Several Hours/A Day goes more like: cell phone, inhaler, epi-pen, one working pen or pencil, one Thing to Write On (can be a tiny notebook), key to current living place, lip balm, a couple of tissues, wallet.
Also frustrating is the fact that that that smaller list is more things than fit even in guy-pants pockets (the epi-pen pushes it over the edge). And I am not ever likely to carry a capital-P purse. Messenger bags are nicely non-gendered in this society--so what is the equivalent, but for kind-of-formal job-type situations? I don't know! If anyone has suggestions, I would love to hear them.
Re: Shifting paradigms
Date: 2013-07-04 02:37 am (UTC)Which is not to say you need *that bag*, but rather that this kind of thing might do? The things that I think make it look more professional include:
- Smooth lines (not a lot of pockets and straps visible, the foldover flap helps a lot, etc.) Also smoothish fabric finish.
- Solid dark color (you could do black or gray or navy, but anything outside that is a little iffier.)
- I tend to think the vertical alignment (rather than horizontal) makes it look less like a messenger bag-for-computers and more like something else.
- The fact it's over the shoulder rather than hand-held (though it has a strap for easy picking up/etc.) helps too. (Maybe it's just me and my hatred of over-the-elbow purses.)
I've seen similar styles on Etsy in cloth, and in a couple of the leather bag places - which makes me wonder if you might also find a smallish leather satchel type thing (either in leather or in some other material) that might work.
Re: Shifting paradigms
Date: 2013-07-04 01:21 pm (UTC)Re: Shifting paradigms
Date: 2013-07-04 05:14 pm (UTC)Re: Shifting paradigms
Date: 2013-07-04 05:35 pm (UTC)They generally always have black, and usually the steel, and then a variety, depending on material and design. (And when I get the new backpack, I'll see about doing some photos of my collected items.)
They do put up announcements periodically on the site forums (checking in every month or two works there) and sometimes take suggestions. If you're particularly hunting for something, sometimes people will sell a used model in a color combo you can't get now too.
I will say that I really like the solar dyneema which they are putting back into use again as a liner and I have yarn bags in the ultraviolet and sort of want an iberian one. (Different colors make it easy to tell which bit of project is in which bag.)
I also, in case this is useful to anyone, have one of their Imago bags in storm and navy, which I almost never use, because navy does not in fact go with anything I own. (Since my default neutral is black.) If anyone's interested, they're discontinuing that design, and I'd be willing to consider selling mine cheap, since I use the cafe bag *way* more.
(I got the Imago when I was carrying a laptop occasionally, the ID when I started bringing it to work all the time, because the Imago basically only fit computer + wallet and not things like a water bottle and multiple books and other stuff. And then when I got here, shifted to the Synapse and the Cafe Bag depending on how much stuff I have and whether I'm walking or not, but usually the Synapse because it's easier to stick the water bottle in. Only that's not enough space now, so...)
Re: Shifting paradigms
Date: 2013-07-04 02:43 am (UTC)Re: Shifting paradigms
Date: 2013-07-04 01:23 pm (UTC)Re: Shifting paradigms
Date: 2013-07-04 02:50 pm (UTC)The one I bought, and which I still carry every day to work, is this one in red ballistic nylon with navy blue piping, zippers and interior. (Our uniform is navy and pale blue with red accents -- so it's super appropriate for my place of business, but it also just looks snappy. The red is sort of a darker, more subdued red. Very chic -- especially for nylon!)
I love the outside pockets on either end for an umbrella and water bottle and the zipper outside pockets for cell phone and wallet. The interior handily holds my laptop (in it's padded case) and zippers shut for added protection in the rain. I prefer this design to messenger bags because I don't like dealing with the flap when I need to get in and out of the bag quickly.
I also like that this can be carried cross-body with the long strap OR over my shoulders (wearing everything except my giant slippery down coat)/in my hands with the small straps. (Those hand straps are big enough that I really can carry it over my shoulder with them, tucked under my arm, so the bag is very secure and doesn't bump around when I need to actually RUN somewhere.)
What I don't like is that the strap is not padded, which makes airport use harder. But I bought an add-on padded strap from Travelon and am happy enough with that. I also wish it was just a tad bigger, so my shoes fit better in the winter. I'm planning to have her custom make me a wider bottomed one this year to fix that problem.
For less than $50, I think it's a great choice for anyone who needs a functional, presentable bag on a budget.