What’s in my bag

Here’s one from the “List of Stan­dard­ized Blog­ging Top­ics,” because, well, at least it isn’t “What did you have for lunch?”

We should start with the bag itself. I carry a purse, really, but in form it looks like a lit­tle mes­sen­ger bag. It’s from Timbuk2, and it appears to have been dis­con­tin­ued¹. The bag has four com­part­ments. It has an out­side pocket, which is just a flat pocket with no inner fea­tures. Under the main flap, a snap cover that can flip all the way over the back, there are three more sec­tions. The main pocket is a big empty bag thing. The zip­per pocket is in there, and is also a big empty pocket, but it has a key fob on a rib­bon, and, of course, the zip­per to secure your stuff need­ing secur­ing (secu­rity?). Finally, there is a gad­get pocket, with inner sleeves sized for cell phones, gad­gets, pens, etc.

Here’s what I carry inside:

Click to see it on Flickr.

The out­side pocket

• Sun­glasses. It is not the best place for sun­glasses, as it can get squished pretty eas­ily. But they are eas­ily acces­si­ble here, and if you just buy the $9.99 shades at Tar­get, not too much risk is involved.
• Car key. One of our cars does not require me to get my key out. But the other does, so I keep that key in this pocket. This is for a Volk­swa­gen Pas­sat sta­tion wagon, btw. I would not really rec­om­mend this car, long-term. (Sorry Denny!)
• Receipts. All my receipts get stuffed in here, which means they no longer get stuffed into my wal­let! Long live the Bag!
• Binder clip. Yeah. In the sum­mer, we go to the Farmer’s Mar­ket, where our son gets a honey stick. Invari­ably, he does not fin­ish it, hands it to me to “keep for later” and runs off. I use the binder clip to fas­ten the honey straw closed.
• Clock. Actu­ally, it’s a lit­tle clip-on time­piece, very cool, that I got for my birth­day. I don’t wear a watch.

The main pocket

• My wal­let. Also a Timbuk2 prod­uct, also dis­con­tin­ued. Damn. I really like this wal­let. It is a burnt orange, can­vas wal­let with a snap and a zip­pered change pocket, both things that are hard to find in men’s wallets.
• Baby wipes. Because I am a father to a dia­pered child. I pre­fer the Pam­pers Clean’n Go pack­age, as it can go straight from shelf to bag (via check­out, of course), and it is made of some­thing very durable (hor­ri­bly long-lasting plas­tic poly­mer, I am sure). It achieves the sweet spot in size about halfway through its con­tents. It’s a lit­tle bulky when full, and crum­ples too eas­ily in the bag when nearly empty. More than you wanted to know.
• A dia­per. ibid.
• Sundry. If I have col­lected it on my trip out to the Real World, I will prob­a­bly put it in this pocket. For exam­ple, right now there is a packet from my bank about the busi­ness account I just opened with them.

The zip­pered pocket

• Car key. This is the key for the other car, the car that does not require me to take my key out.
• Nov­elty flash­light. I got this from Dri­veSavers when I gave them two thou­sand dol­lars to recover my hard drive. I keep it for the mem­o­ries, and on the off chance I need a light.
• Microfiber clean­ing cloth. For my glasses, or my sun­glasses, or my cam­era lens. I wash it regularly.
• Cam­era bat­tery. Extra bat­tery, charged, for my dig­i­tal cam­era. If you don’t have two bat­ter­ies for your cam­era, get a sec­ond one now. Unless, of course, your cam­era takes AA bat­ter­ies, or some­thing. I hate you.
• Cam­era tri­pod. The lit­tle Joby Goril­la­Pod. This thing is amaz­ing. Light, capa­ble, per­fect. Much bulkier than my pre­vi­ous com­pact tri­pod, but so much more capable.
• Mea­sur­ing tape. Eight feet of cloth mea­sur­ing tape, in a spring release roll, from Oxo.
• Lubri­cant eye drops. You know, one of those half ounce, $10 bot­tles of tears. Because I wear contacts.
• Namits. This is a game you can play with your kids any­where. Plas­tic cards with cat­e­gories and exam­ples on them, such that you can flip it open and tell the kids in line at the DMV, “Name things that… tangle!”

The gad­get pocket

• Dig­i­tal cam­era. My Canon Pow­er­Shot SD-500. I love this cam­era, though I am jonesing for a new one. What I could do with the face-recognition focus­ing! And the image sta­bi­liza­tion. I actu­ally use this cam­era as a movie cam­era, too. It has proven much more ver­sa­tile than haul­ing along my DV camera.
• Cell phone. Yes, I have one. I am a Ver­i­zon slave, and I carry the Motorola E815. It is capa­ble, and I have gone online with it once or twice when I needed to (when doing a live web­cast off­site, I needed to visit our web pages back on cam­pus for some settings).
• BIC pen. Noth­ing beats the old crys­tal BIC ball­point pen. I favor the blue ink.
• Sharpie MINI. How do other peo­ple get along with­out a Sharpie at their disposal?
• Voice recorder. An Olym­pus dig­i­tal voice recorder, the DS-2, to be exact. I use it to record the price­less utter­ances of my chil­dren. It works well, and fits nicely in the bot­tom of the gad­get pocket.

In the end, the bag actu­ally weighs a lot. But I sling it over my shoul­der and all is well. I once car­ried the bag, the baby, the four-year-old, his coat, and his art­work, 500 feet to our car. Through a gate!

In all seri­ous­ness. I would be lost with­out the bag. I don’t know how I did it before. I will wel­come the day I can lighten my load (and bulk) by los­ing the baby items, but to be hon­est, they are not too cum­ber­some right now. Miss­ing, in my opin­ion, is a real source of light in an emer­gency, and some sort of cal­cu­la­tor. Yes, I know, but my phone doesn’t do cal­cu­la­tor. So I guess I am miss­ing an iPhone, too.

Okay. So. Dare I ask? What’s in your bag? Feel free to link to your own site, or Flickr photo, or whatnot.