Have You Seen This Bag?

An APB (all purse bulletin) has been released.

Have you seen this bag?

This bag is wanted internationally.

Name: Adrienne Vittadini
Description: soft leather bag
Wanted for: being the perfect leather bag
Last seen: October 2003 issue of Real Simple magazine
Whereabouts: unknown

If you have seen this bag, please notify this blogger immediately.



This bag is to be considered soft and perfect. Care should be taken when approaching this bag as you will undoubtedly want it and must have it. Don't attempt to buy this bag if it is the only bag available because if you flaunt it in front of this blogger, she will hunt you down and become hysterical, wanting to touch it and just put it on her shoulder just once, really, I'll give it back to you after I try it on.

Knock offs of this bag are acceptable if the leather is buttery soft.

Please find this bag and make a bag-a-holic (or two, or 5,000) happy.

How my brain (doesn't) work

Ok, I'm sure you're all familiar with the keening and gnashing of teeth about the sling bag I ordered and instead got a fanny pack. You are probably aware of the whole snit about the front pocket not holding my iPhone (ok, I tried it without the cover, and it does fit, but its a pain in the butt to get it in and out). Some of you have even asked if I had sent it back yet... I was this close.

It wasn't just because of the whole iPhone pocket not fitting an iPhone (ok, they didn't specifically say iPhone pocket, but they INFERRED IT), I almost sent it back because it was a pain in the butt to deal with.

Ok, its great for carrying all of my crap and leaving my hands free of purse, bag, or other carrying device. It wasn't hanging there rubbing on my pants and getting in the way, it was actually comfy to wear and pretty dang perfect except what a huge pain to deal with. Take it off to get in the car, put it on when you get to the store, take it off to get wallet, put it on leaving store, take it off to get keys out of it, juggling stuff all over the place. HUGE inconvenience.

Now, for those of you who already know, you are probably already laughing at me. Go ahead, I'll just sit here until you're done.

Are you done yet?

Yes, while I can make a living writing complex technical documents about complex technical junk, it took me a full week to figure out that you don't take a sling bag off, you just sling it around to the front and unzip it to get your wallet and other things out of it. it just hangs there open, allowing you to grab whatever you need and put it back, then you SLING it around to the back. For those of you like me who have difficulty with simple concepts, here's a cartoon demonstrating the simplicity of a sling bag.

Wear it on the back, sling it to the side or front and grab your junk out of it. Duh!

You would have also laughed hysterically at the moment of my epiphany at the local Superfresh when the concept hit me in the head and I did the happy dance in the self check out line. I did refrain from demonstrating it to the woman behind me, as she seemed to be in a hurry to pay for her food and get on the road, plus she probably would have told me how big of an idiot I was to buy a bag and not know how to use it.

So now I really love the bag, now that I don't have to take it off all the time, that I can get to my iPhone easily (even if its not in the front pouch, which I use to carry my headphones at least), and I'm pretty damn happy with this bag... for ONCE. Now if I can only get it on right the first time without doing a sort of dork dance outside of the RAV.

I have a long way to go.

Confessions of a bag stalker

I'm a bagaholic. I admit it, really I do. I know I have a problem, but that problem isn't me, its the fact that bags look really great on ebags.com dummies, then I get them home and find out that they were either horribly misrepresented or the dummies are gargantuan, or I'm incredibly tiny compared to most people.

I don't like purses, never have. I think this harkens back to the bad old days of jr high school. Back then young girls only started carrying purses because they got their periods. They had to, as back then (the dark ages) we didn't have tiny little tampons that fit in your front pocket, or sanitary napkins that had their own adhesive, oh no, we only had the humungous hammock sized sanitary napkins that required a belt, so not only did you have to carry around this huge pad thing, but the stupid belt. So, that meant carrying a purse, and the first day you walked into school carrying a purse, you were teased unmercifully because everyone knew you had your period. I guess that's why I don't like purses.

Ok, that and I have no shoulders. I have absolutely no shoulders, therefore all of the stylish shoulder bags most people carry simply will not stay on my shoulder. I am forever hiking that stupid thing back up on my shoulder, or bashing into things with it, like the latte I knocked over with a stylish shoulder bag that made me give up stylish shoulder bags completely. Perfectly good latte wasted on fashion, screw that.

I prefer messenger bags because I can heave them over my head and have it hang down and not have to deal with it until I need something. Then, when I need my wallet, or whatever else I cram in there, I just reach a hand in. No fuss, no muss, it just hangs there. I've tried many messenger bags and I keep resorting to one that I got on cafe press back when they had this one black metro bag and that gawd-awful humungous yellow monstrosity. I like the black bag, it has a shoulder pad on it so it doesn't fall off my other weenie shoulder when I haul it around. Not very stylish, but certainly functional.

I'm always on the lookout for new bags though. I thought a back pack would be the coolest. Yeah, not so much. Its great, out of the way, and you forget you even have it on... until you go pay for something and then its impossible to easily get to your wallet, you're swinging it around, knocking over stuff, and most counters at stores have so much crap piled up trying to entice you to buy something that there's no room to sit the thing down and dig to the bottom of the stupid thing and get your money out.

Ok, fine, backpacks suck, but what about a sling? I've seen some pretty cool, small ones that I liked, but tonight... ooooh tonight I saw the perfect one on someone at Borders. Yep, there I was tonight, stalking some poor woman at Borders who had on a really cool sling. It looked as though it even had a pouch on the strap that was in the front that would fit my iPhone. It was simple, had two zips in the back, and it was stylish and chic and really cool.

I spent a good 10 minutes following this poor woman around trying to act as though I wasn't trying to follow this poor woman around so I could figure out what kind of bag it was. I saw the little red cross thing that meant it was a swiss army thing. OOOH, then she turned around rather abruptly (I totally expected her to confront me and ask what my problem was) and headed for the sale section of the book bin. I saw the front that had the name: Victorinox!

Sweet, so for those of you who don't think an iPhone is cool, let me tell you, I was able to type that into my notes, then go online to ebags and yes, there it was. Ok, they didn't have the cool green color that she had, but they had a cool blue one. I waited until I got home before I ordered, I'm not THAT obsessive. So here it is:
except in blue. I should have spent the 10 bucks more and got quicker shipping as my new cool bag isn't going to arrive until next week. I shall pine every day until it is mine and my life will be great and easy and fun and stylish and... I'll probably hate it for some reason, like I do all bags I buy and yet can't bring myself to return.

I am a bagaholic.

Happy Day In Merryland

Hubby and I drove to Wally World (aka: Walmart) for the elusive shoe strings. Rumor had it that the megalomaniacal all purpose chain might just have some brown shoe laces, so we girded our loins and headed to the magical land of mark downs.

Frankly, I ONLY go to Walmart when there is absolutely, positively NO other place on this earth that carries the thing that I need. Frankly, after today I'm thinking that nothing short of an actual functioning organ would be so important to ever go there... EVER AGAIN.

First of all, the circus is in town. Well, a mini strip mall version circus that is, and its parked in part of the vacant lot near the discount mall that really isn't a discount mall (no discount mall could possibly include Sachs 5th Ave and call themselves "discount", but I digress). How did we know the circus was in town? Well, there are the mini "big" tops, and the sideshow trailers and the elephants grazing in a pen. Of course, we didn't notice these things until we nearly plowed into the back of a mini van that had stopped IN THE MIDDLE OF THE HIGHWAY to look at the elephants.

You see, that's one of the quaint traditions of Maryland. People just randomly, and sometimes for no reason, stop on a highway. Sometimes they stop to read a map. Sometimes they stop, then back up on the fast lane because they missed their exit. If backing up wasn't enough, they generally then shoot across three lanes of traffic to get to the exit. This idiot saw elephants, and instead of saying "hey, why don't I pull off into the vacant lot, where I won't be endangering the lives of those drivers behind me" oh no, that probably didn't even occur to the moron. He just slams on the brakes and looks at the elephants.

That being said, you can imagine that when we finally did get to Wally World... we were in a wonderful mood. The mood got even better when we discovered that a new law must have been passed that said "It is now legal for anyone driving a car with handicapped plates to run over pedestrians". Had we known this, we foolishly wouldn't have been walking in the cross walk toward the store when the chucklehead in the minivan came careening around the corner, and even though he saw us walking (my face was only about 2 inches from his), he continued turning, causing us to leap for our lives. I hurled some rather biting sarcasm at the moron, knowing that even if he challenged me to a fight, I could probably tip his chair over and run if it got too out of hand.

Once inside the store, our mood only got better when we were assailed by the smell of what could only be vomit. I'm not sure why all Walmarts smell like someone just hurled in them, but they do, at least to me. You would think with all the discount air fresheners they sell, they could get rid of that smell of sweat, urine, and vomit that permeates their stores. Why does it smell like that? Has anyone else noticed that or is it just stores in Maryland?

Anyway, we actually DID find shoelaces... black ones. AAAAH oh wait, over on the other side, here is the brown shoe laces. Fine, grabbed two of them and ran for the card department, grabbed a box of "thank you" cards and kept running, made it to checkout.

For some reason I find the carousel of bags very disturbing. Does it actually speed up the process to have the carousel of plastic bags? How many items do people lose in an average day because they didn't realize that a bag had been trapped on the wheel of bags? I'm also glad to see that Walmart doesn't require you to actually show ID when you use a credit card, but I did have to put my zip code in. Yeah, there's security for you. That should be implemented at banks to keep our money safe, cuz nobody gonna know my zip code after stealing my wallet with my FREAKING DRIVERS LICENSE IN IT! Sigh...

We ran about of Wally World.

The only thing I'll say about Circuit City (other than "gee, what a shock they're going out of business") is: TURN THE FREAKIN MUSIC IN THE STORE DOWN SO I CAN HEAR MYSELF THINK ABOUT WHAT A CRAPPY STORE THIS IS!

And then we went home.