Long Time No See

It's surprising how quickly time has passed. Busy with other things, I've had thoughts about a variety of posts, but no time to see them through by writing them up.

A few of the posts I haven't done are about:

1. An air travel survival kit. Substituting TSA-compliancy for a knife turns this into a small kit ideal for day-hiking.

2. A few states still legalizing marital rape. I thought the U.S. was a leader in women's rights but it turns out wives in those states are not much better off under the law than wives in certain Muslim countries.

3. The direction of my writing. I always thought to write novels in the thriller genre, but I've been reading Hemingway and find my desire turning to more literary prose.

If it's true that one doesn't die until one's life work is done, at the rate I'm going, I'll live forever.

Fortunately as a Christian, it's already guaranteed in writing.

Until next time.

My eShopping List

"Excuse me."

I looked up from scowling at my Kindle Keyboard.

"Oh, I'm sorry," the little old lady said.

I smiled at her. "It's okay. Am I blocking your way?"

"I'm interested in electronics," she said.

"Oh! This is a Kindle, an ereader. Maybe you've seen them advertised on TV. This is an older model. I bought a $0.99 Notepad app to keep my shopping list on it. I have it organized by the aisles, but I put the Chex Mix in the wrong aisle and was moving it because I was several aisles down and had to come back to this one."

She came closer to see my screen.

"See? This list is reusable because I put a couple of dots, periods, in front of the item I want when I think of it, then when I put it in my cart, I delete the dots. It's a lot easier than using paper because if the store's out of something, I don't have to rewrite the item onto my next shopping list."

"How interesting," she said. "Thank you so much for showing me."

"You're welcome. I just wanted to keep those pieces of paper under control."

Purses & Kits

As forecast in my last post, I've been busy shopping for purses. I like the Baggallini line because they're lightweight and come in several attractive colors as well as the basic neutrals. Unfortunately, they tend to be smaller than the measurements stated on the website and hang tags.

For example, the Currency Organizer is .5" shorter making it difficult to impossible to store dollar bills flat in it depending on which pocket.

For that reason, the Triple Zip Bagg I first bought had to be set aside since it's too small to easily fit my Kindle Keyboard in it because the actual measurements are .75" shorter than the advertised measurements.

Settling on the Large Wallet Bagg for running errands, I chose the Hobo Tote for when I want to carry more such as a water bottle, camera, and monocular or binoculars. Since it's only a larger purse and not really a tote bag, I also bought an inexpensive, non-descript tote bag as well as a waistpack to complete my scheme of layering bags and kits.

So, this is how it stacks up:

My Large Wallet Bagg contains my micro survival kit.

My Hobo bag can hold my Large Wallet Bagg and my mini survival kit.

My tote bag can hold my Hobo bag and my small survival kit in its own waistpack with a belt pouch for my FAK and Clif bars.

When I go on a day hike, I'll use the small survival kit waistpack with a second belt pouch holding my GPSr, other incidentals, and my compass if it's not hanging from my neck.

My medium survival kit remains in the sustainment pouch ready to grab & go as my mobile survival kit whenever a friend invites me to go on a day or road trip.

I had to reorganize a bit to make each larger kit an expansion of the previous smaller kit to limit redundancy.

I love feeling organized!

Layering

Since my last post, a few things happened.

The first was I started wondering why I'm carrying a mini survival kit in my purse while running errands when I have a complete kit in my car. If I can't get back out to my car from a one- or two-story building, I'll be coping with worse problems than a mini kit would be able to help me with, considering I'll still have my micro kit on me.

The second thing was that the purse I was using, that contained my mini kit until I went back to a micro kit, broke. It didn't upset me as much as it could have since I didn't really like it because it forced me to wear the strap on my right shoulder when I'm more comfortable hanging a cross-body bag on my left shoulder, but I used it to run errands only about once a week for less than six months and think it should have lasted longer.

The third thing is that I popped the weight of my air travel survival kit up to three pounds by adding a first aid kit and some Clif bars. After all, if there's a forced landing or a crash, the likelihood of needing a FAK and something to eat will be greater. I'm not concerned with forced landings or crashes near airfields or populated areas because emergency response will be within minutes, but for those large expanses of wilderness or ocean that airplanes habitually fly over that may not receive aid for several hours or even days.

As a result, I really put my back into the thinking process and came up with a layering system of component bags.

The first is to replace my broken purse with another only large enough for my micro survival kit and my Kindle, cell phone, and wallet items. This mini purse will serve for running errands.

The mini purse for errands will tuck into a larger purse for day trips or road trips. In friends' vehicles, I'll have my mini kit in the larger purse with my mobile survival kit along as well.

For air travel, I plan to use a large tote as my personal bag. Inside the tote will be a waist pack containing a small survival kit and my day trip purse with my errands purse inside.

I think having a mini purse for errands that fits into a larger purse will make changing purses a lot easier since all I'll have to do will be to transfer the errands purse to whichever larger bag I'll need.

Also, for museums, galleries, and some stores that prohibit large purses, making you check them or leave them with the store's cashier, being able to pull out a smaller purse containing ID, cash, credit/debit cards, and other valuables such as a cell phone and Kindle would give me more peace of mind than leaving them with a stranger.

Besides, this way, I get to shop for two purses to replace the one that broke. With our being on the threshold of spring, it translates to my shopping for four purses: two sizes in a dark color for the rest of winter plus two sizes in a light color for summer.

Whee!

Work in Progress

I'm still working on my air travel survival kit having pared it down to the minimum essentials, which now weigh 1 lb. and fit in half of a gallon zip bag which fits in the bottom of my travel purse, to further reduce the bulk and weight of what I would carry on in my personal bag.

I'm considering putting them and my energy bars in a waist pack, so if things look dicey during a flight, such as a storm since lightning has knocked planes out of the sky, I could take the waist pack out of my travel purse and put it on, ready to evacuate should I survive the crash. If it's an unanticipated event, hopefully I can grab and strap it on before exiting the plane.

Either way, wearing a waist pack would leave my arms and hands free to help me work my way out and won't block other passengers like a purse or carry-on bag I probably won't be allowed to carry out with me, anyway. ID and In Case of Emergency cards should probably go in the waist pack, too, in case something happens to me outside. And cell phone since a text message may be able to get through when a voice call can't. I'm planning for the rest of my survival kit to go in my carry-on and checked bags while enroute.

Right now, while at my destination, I want to leave almost everything in my room while sightseeing or shopping taking along only a lighter, Swiss Army knife, key ring LED, and luminous key ring compass, but have to think about it more because I might not be able to get back to my room to get the rest of my survival kit if an unforeseen disaster or act of terrorism hits. It would be best to keep the minimal essentials in my travel purse like on the plane or to wear the waist pack since getting to them won't be like having them as close as the parking lot as when I'm on a road trip.

Happy 4th Blogversary!

Thank you to all who have visited my blog! It's gratifying to know that I've provoked your thinking and provided information along with a bit of entertainment for four years.

Again, I've managed to average a fraction over a post per week. The past two months, however, have shown me how difficult it is to maintain that regularity when I'm focused on other goals.

As a result, I'm freeing myself from the regimen and guilt from not meeting my self-imposed deadline of providing something new for you to read each weekend.

This doesn't mean I'll stop posting because I have a lot more I want to write about. It only means that my posts may continue to be as irregular as they have recently become.

Shopping for an Air Travel Survival Kit

Motivated by a cousin's wife who wants to travel to foreign lands, I've been working on an air travel survival kit since I would like to go to Morocco and Europe at some point in the future.

Since she already has a car survival kit, she can draw from that while I can borrow items from my mobile survival kit. The challenges are to have what we'll need while not taking up more space than absolutely necessary or weighing ourselves down since we'll be schlepping our bags ourselves and to have quality gear inexpensive enough for affordable replacement should an item accidentally get left out after an inspection.

As a result, I've spent hours searching for and deciding on the best Swiss Army knives for us. Uncomfortable about not having a fixed blade knife, I also searched for a small, skeletal knife so the hinge on the SAK wouldn't get damaged by whatever rough use a survival situation may demand.

Since my travel purse is already full, a larger bag is also warranted.

Preparing to travel is half the fun.

Back to Shopping for Sugar-Free Salt

Prematurely elated at finding the sugar-free salt of my last post, I researched one of the ingredients only to be dismayed that it contains aluminum. It is inconclusive whether or not aluminum causes Altzheimer's Disease although it is undeniable that Altzheimer's victims have significantly higher levels of aluminum in their brains than other people.

If the aluminum didn't get there by ingesting salt containing aluminum as a free-flowing agent, leaching from aluminum cookware, absorption from antiperspirants, how did it get into the body? It is not a mineral needed by any biological form so had to be introduced artificially.

I say, "Better safe than sorry," which currently leaves me to decide - aluminum or sugar? I'll keep searching for sugar-free iodized table salt, but if worse comes to worse, I'll pick sugar over aluminum.

Score! (Sugar-free Salt)

Last night, stopping by Dollar General for a plastic storage box they no longer carry, I thought to look for sugar-free salt.

There were only three boxes of salt on the shelf, one of which contained dextrose.

I bought the other two boxes.

Score!

Discouraging

I've been discouraged from blogging because my posts are being corrupted upon publication and I don't like spending the time it takes to fix them. I thought it just started happening this year with my last post about my mobile survival kit and the other survival kit lists I recently updated only to find it's been going on since last November when I updated my car survival kit :(.

When I fixed it a few minutes ago, instead of omitting chunks as before, all the spaces were changed to plus signs ("+"). Fortunately, as a result of the corruption, I had started saving my posts as html so all I had to do was paste my copy back in and republish, hoping it wouldn't get corrupted again.

Yay! It worked.

Now, let's see what happens to this post.