League City newspaper, Part 2

Where's Woolsey?

Search hint:  Even without red and white stripes, publisher Leonard Woolsey does bear a bit of resemblance to Waldo, especially in the glasses.  

That's the large-format portion of the pile of "mail" that I excavated from my box late yesterday afternoon, viewed as it was tossed unceremoniously onto my home office conference table.  Knowing that the League City - Kemah Connection newspaper was supposed to have been launched yesterday (paywalled), I was initially disappointed - I thought my address had been passed over (not an uncommon occurrence given the young age of our subdivision section).  I almost threw the entire stack into the recycle bin, but then I spotted it.

It looks like this.  Don't throw it away without first looking at it.  

I was a bit disappointed at the mode of presentation.  I'm afraid that people really are going to have trouble distinguishing this from the constant onslaught of junk mail with which we all must deal, and I fear that a lot of folks are going to toss it without even realizing what it is (particularly true because its launch was not well advertised, so many local residents are not expecting it and did not know in advance what it was going to look like).

It may, in fact, be the case that GCDN arranged for delivery on days when typical advertising flyers were not scheduled to be avalanching.  But here's the issue with that:  Most of us no longer check our mailboxes every day.  What's the point??  Particularly for those of us who receive all of our important correspondence, bills, bank statements, etc. electronically, plus we have the security of a USPS-issued clusterbox, checking the mail is something we often do only on trash or recycling days, and only for disposal purposes.

This postal worker hit the nail on the head with this response.  If not for eBay and Amazon, I would not traipse to my mailbox at all.  I would attempt to close it and not accept hard-copy mail delivery, period (which would be the Final Solution for the junk mail that I haven't been able to control even though I paid for a service to have it stopped).  Perhaps when Google gets its delivery drones airborne, we'll be able to take that logical next step and be done with residential USPS delivery once and for all.

Screengrabbed from this "Ask a Mailman" site. 

But there's good news in all of this, too.  My initial fear that this newspaper would be a simple post-shelf-life content recycling mechanism was apparently unfounded.  The articles are largely original.  Furthermore, they are picking up on the types of issues I've been hoping to seed on this blog (good news given that I don't reach 30,000 homes).  Cover story?  Five Corners, for which I commenced a post category earlier this year.  Additional content?  Information on the fact that there's a $200 million TxDOT project to improve SH 146 in Kemah and Seabrook, which I also screamed bloody murder about.

Perspective such as this is intended to wake up our local politicians, who arguably are not doing their jobs in getting our practical issues resolved.  The Five Corners fiasco has been lingering for far too many years now.  Screengrabbed from this April 2014 post. 

So there's the potential for the transmission of issues and ideas with this thing.  Write to the editor and publisher of this new newspaper if you have local concerns (editor@lcconnection.com; publisher@lcconnection.com).  Write to me (centerpointe.blog -at- gmail) if you think that bellowing needs to be done on a particular issue.

And incidentally, for those of you who engage in only periodic USPS mailbox excavation mostly for disposal purposes, I found a really neat product that might be of assistance to you.

It's the Barnes and Noble felt tote.  It's a very heavy but small bag.  And oh, the style is divine.  Very modern, just the way I like it.  Comes in three colors.  I like the gray.  They are available at the Clear Lake (Baybrook) Barnes and Noble on Bay Area Blvd. (at least they were as of August 29, 2014).

I think it was designed to be a "book bag" of sorts, but the size almost exactly matches the size of my USPS mail clusterbox.  Typically when I do excavations, I'm struggling with an armload of miscellaneous paper and at least one of the pieces will need to be chased madly down the street as it escapes my control and gets blown by the wind.  With this thing, I just scoop all the junk mail into the bag, which stays open by virtue of the stiffness of the thick polyester felt.  Much easier than trying to use one of those floppy re-usable canvas grocery sacks for the same purpose.  And given that this bag stands upright of its own accord, it is an excellent small receptacle for in-house paper recycling, too.  Nice stylish convenience for ten bucks.

As always, this is a noncommercial blog presenting personal opinions only.  I accept no compensation for recommending any particular product or service.  

How to manage a special diet on a long road trip

Conversely, this post could be titled "How to enjoy a week at the cottage without having to cook".

Answer:  Consider incorporating the following simple equation into your vacation food management strategy.

A diet that is largely freezer-based (see this humorous post and this other post) PLUS a Yeti Tundra cooler to keep items frozen over an unprecedentedly-long duration of time EQUALS a whole lot less hassle for the traveler, especially if the traveler happens to be their family's chief cook and bottle-washer.  

As we found out during a recent 3,000-mile (one way!!) car trip, the Yeti is a game-changer for consumers.

That is one loaded-down minivan, but stuff-dragging is inevitable if you're driving your family cross-country.  Retrospectively we realized that we should have put our Yeti 50 (at upper left) squarely above the rear axle, because it was very heavy.  In this photo we had it pushed too far toward the rear of the van.  

In our case, it wasn't a special diet per se that prompted me to try this food management approach, but rather the following two considerations:

1. We were rendezvousing with other family members for the proverbial cottage-by-the-sea vacation, and I wanted everyone to be able to sample some of the home-grown goodies that I harvest from my gardens here in Houston.
2. More importantly, I was looking for some relief from my aforementioned chief cook and bottle-washer status.  Does this ever happen to you?? -- You travel to some lovely cottage in an idyllic remote location only to spend half your "vacation" time mired in the logistics of how to feed everybody.  Typically, 'idyllic remote' means two things:  not many services to start with, and those few that are available are extremely expensive.  So it is with our annual cottage destination, which largely caters to the resort crowd rather than to middle-class travelers.  Your options in that scenario are as follows:

• Pay sky-high prices daily for nutritionally-unbalanced restaurant meals (unacceptable)
• Admit defeat and eat chicken nuggets and french fries most of the time (unacceptable)
• Take your own home-made food along for the ride (ideal if you can find a way to preserve it long enough)

We had heard about the Yeti's superior cold-retention capability but we'd had no previous experience with it, and Yeti itself hedges its bets where longevity guarantees are concerned.  Here is how we tackled our food transport challenge, and the results:

• A few days prior to our trip, we bumped our freezer temperature down to the lowest it would go, which was minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
• About 12 hours prior to the trip, we packed the Yeti with ice to "pre-cool" it because we had read somewhere that this would help with cold retention.
• On the morning of departure, we dumped out the pre-cooling ice (which had partially melted), quickly loaded the cooler with our food, and then carefully packed new ice (cooled to below freezing) into the void spaces.  

Here is an ice-free view.  Most coolers are elongated, but I chose the Yeti 50 because it is closer to being cube-shaped - maximum volume for minimum surface area.  As I described in this previous post, I only use Pyrex ware for food storage, and by this time we own approximately 120 Pyrex pieces of various sizes.  The Yeti 50 can hold about 12 to 16 one-quart Pyrex containers and perhaps 4 to 6 of the 2-cup size, depending on your desired ice-to-food ratio.  That's a whole lot of food!  

• We continued to monitor the ice throughout our long journey.  Here's the kicker - we weren't going directly to the cottage.  We spent 9 sight-seeing days on the road before we even got to our final destination.  By Day 7, some of the ice had begun to melt and the frozen food was beginning to thaw, but we re-packed any void spaces with new ice daily to keep the temperature as low as achievable (properly refrigerated frozen food generally has a shelf life of 7 to 10 days after initial thawing).  Then, as soon as we arrived at the cottage, I cranked down the refrigerator to its lowest possible temperature in order to maintain the thawed food as long as possible.

And the strategy worked very well, indeed.

Mexican pork and squash stew (recipe here) and Cuban black beans (recipe here) three thousand miles from the point of preparation and ten days after having been removed from our freezer.  Served with brown rice.  

OMG - I WENT ON VACATION TO A COTTAGE AND FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY HALF-CENTURY LIFE, I DID NOT HAVE TO COOK!!!  All I had to do for each day's main meal was to prepare fresh rice or pasta, warm up my home-made food, and set the various dishes on the table to be served.  In this way, I fed 5 adults wonderful meals for 7 consecutive days with almost no effort.

And here's the added bonus that I neglected to consider at the outset:  What would the corresponding price of 35 high-quality restaurant dinners have been in an expensive area?  Or conversely, cooking 35 person-meals from scratch by buying ingredients at substantially inflated local pricing (not to mention the incredible amount of time and energy that would have sucked out of my vacation time)?  Yeti coolers are not for the financially faint of heart - our Yeti 50 cost almost $400.  But if you do the math on this scenario, what you'll conclude is that the money saved by bringing food 3,000 miles substantially offset the purchase price of the cooler.  Effectively, the thing almost paid for itself in one trip.

Marvelous, I tell you.  I had no idea at the outset whether this scheme would work, but it was successful beyond all my expectations.  And I have never enjoyed my own cooking more than after a succession of absolutely grueling, miles-long mountain hikes.  It tasted twice as good as it normally does.
:-)

The additional possibilities are substantial:  Gluten allergy?  Medical condition?  Losing weight and don't want to experience the type of inevitable set-back experienced from being forced to eat whatever crappy food is typically available while traveling?  Try a Yeti - it might work for your situation.

As always, this is a noncommercial post expressing personal opinions only.  I receive no compensation from any referenced source.  In those cases where cited manufacturers have felt compelled to furnish me with products, I donate them to charity.

An average rating of 4.9 out of 5 on more than four hundred reviews?!  That kind of phenomenon almost never occurs in the consumer universe, but I can see why it did with this product.  Five stars, indeed.

Screengrabbed from this Academy website.    

Best jewelry box

Answer:  If you want to acquire a great jewelry box, then you need to think outside the (jewelry) box.  The Bisley 5-drawer cabinet is an unconventional choice and may not be appreciated by girly-girl types, but in terms of quality, functionality, versatility, value for the price, and modern style, it's head and shoulders above any other option that I've ever seen or tried.

Hello industrial chic!!  The Bisley 5-drawer cabinet, currently available at The Container Store for about a hundred bucks.  

Twelve colors and four different drawer inserts for organization.   

Go Bisley or go home.  Think about the possibilities - if you have a larger jewelry collection, you could buy several of different colors, stack them up, etc.

Image above screengrabbed from The Container Store.  

Where do I even begin in describing the problems and limitations with the conventional jewelry boxes that are on the market today??

It's the retail category that time forgot - a market segment that has not evolved in more than 50 years, not kept pace during the same period of time in which women's lives changed to the point of being unrecognizable compared to their Leave It To Beaver starting point (today, we are leaving it to a very different Beaver).

Screengrabbed from a Google image search.  

Most of the jewelry boxes on the market today are obsolete because they are:

1. Too small - the average professional woman would need six of those dinky things pictured above.
2. Too difficult to organize - stuff gets piled up, tangled, etc. 
3. Too inefficient - there's too much flipping of lids, lifting out of individual trays, etc. in many of them
4. Too unstylish - none of those that are shown in the Google screengrab above could be integrated into modern decor.
5. Too unsophisticated - they look like they're all made and marketed for little girls who still dress up in fairy costumes.
6. Too cheaply made - there really isn't a lot of durability represented above.
7. Or, too expensive - if you do the research on better boxes, their prices can easily reach many hundreds of dollars and for that you'll get about one quarter to one half of the storage capacity of a much less expensive Bisley.  

I acquired a modest but tasteful collection of jewelry as a means of justifying a meager professional wardrobe.  A woman can get away with a lot of "business casual" sins through the strategic use of better-quality costume jewelry.  Put on a nice necklace and folks tend not to notice that what you're wearing underneath it is not much better than a T-shirt.

For many years, most of my business jewelry sat in a predictable heap for lack of suitable storage mechanism.  But then I brought home a Bisley and liberated myself from all that mess.  My husband, normally accustomed to my unconventional thinking, was taken aback by this.  "Wait a minute - you're planning to use an office supply cabinet as jewelry box?!" he asked, perplexed.  "You betcha," I chirped, channeling Francis McDormand.  "And I'm a lot better off for it."

As always, this is a noncommercial post containing my personal opinions only.  I receive no benefit or compensation from any cited source.

More cool stuff at CLS Farmers Market

A few pics here to showcase some of our local micro-entrepreneur craftspeople who occasionally sell at the Clear Lake Shores Farmers Market, which unfortunately has a downed website as of this writing, but it's every Saturday morning in Clear Lake Shores... just drive down there and you can't miss it.  And/or you can find it pretty easily on Facebook.  Happily, most of what this market sells is actual home-grown and home-made food (rather than being a made-in-China trinket outlet posing as a farmers market, which some of them are), but there are also some wonderful local handicrafts among the offerings.  

In no particular order...

Kitchen cutting boards crafted by RELEAF using recycled wood.  This business has no website that I know of, but you can find the proprietor on Facebook by searching for 'RELEAF'.  

Superb artistry.  My cell phone pics don't do them justice.  Wonderful gift ideas here.  

Raised garden planters from TX Green Beds.  I myself garden in stock tanks and discarded highway culvert scraps, but this is another good option for folks who have limited spaces and/or limited mobility.  

Robin's Cedar Planters, also on Facebook.  These are ingeniously constructed so that they are collapsible for easy transport.  Most of them will fit into the back seat of a passenger car once folded up.  Prices are very reasonable.  

I like this pic because it shows how a Robin's planter can be incorporated into a standard existing suburban landscape as a focal point.  Screengrabbed from Facebook.  

This customer put the planter on casters so that it could be rolled around a patio as needed.  For gardeners with limited spaces, these things would be great.  They'd also be excellent for strawberry-growing.  Screengrabbed from Facebook.  

I took business cards for two of these proprietors but I don't have a card for RELEAF.  

Remember to check with the market's Facebook page before you go to see which vendors will be present on any given Saturday.  Not every vendor attends every market.

Best stainless steel mixing bowl set

Answer:  In my opinion, it's the "Bakers and Chefs" set of 3 + 1 at Sam's Club, of all places.

They are sold in a conventional set of three but then you can buy the fourth, which is the 13-quart, separately if you want that.  Obviously to look at them nested like this, all four were really intended to go together.  Less than $30, all-in.  

As with many consumer endeavors, what seems like it should be a very straightforward purchase often turns out not to be.  When I set out to search for these things, I assumed I had a very simple and reasonable wish list of characteristics:

1. It had to be a set of at least four bowls (many consumer sets only have three).
2. The largest one had to be at least 12 quarts (I'll reveal why below).
3. They had to be commercial grade or close to it (no flimsy steel).
4. They had to have an efficient aspect ratio.

Those sound like four easy criteria, but it took me months to find a set that met them.

By efficient aspect ratio, I mean that the bowls had to be deep relative to their width.  Many mixing bowl sets are very shallow.  

In terms of aspect ratio, I was also taking into account the need for a stable base.  This is IKEA's current stainless bowl (Blanda).  It's very hip and stylish, but look at that tiny flat bottom in the center!  I feared the bowls in this set would be too unstable, roly-poly like.    

Prior to buying this set, I owned a few mixing bowls that were too shallow, and one that was too flimsy, to the point where it would expand so much upon washing in hot water that it would later sit unattended in the drain board and go "SPROING!!!!" when the bottom of it cooled down and contracted enough to snap back into its original shape.  This would happen at entirely unpredictable times and would routinely scare the crap out of me.  And life is simply too short for mixing bowls that make random obnoxious noises and scare the crap out of you.

Happy mixin'.

This is why I need a lot of mixing bowls, and large deep ones at that.  During this time of year, there's a daily haul of fruits and vegetables from our back yard gardens, and that stuff tends to fill up every kitchen container in sight.  

Best camera and lenses for the semi-serious

Answer:  In my opinion, it's Nikon's prevailing entry-level D-series DSLRs (currently the D3300) with both an 18 - 55 mm Nikkor lens and a 55 - 200 mm Nikkor lens (B&H currently has a good deal on the 18 - 55 mm consumer bundle).  Have one camera body dedicated to each lens if you can afford to do that (it keeps you from missing important moments because you are fumbling with lens change-outs, and it also keeps dust and moisture out of the inside of the camera body because you never have to remove a lens).

Wikipedia hosts this spectacular summary of what's on the market and what's been on the market, Nikon-wise.  I'd be lost without it.  

I get this question a lot, both on and off blog - what camera are you using?!  I see a lot of people over-buying their camera equipment because they don't comprehend what they really need (it doesn't help that popular sites such as CNET sometimes mis-identify mid-range as entry-level).  I fall into that consumer category where my intention is to do better than what a cell phone can provide, and I want to capture special moments, but I don't want to dedicate my life to the pursuit of the perfect focus.  I'm not an aspiring professional - I just want to grab great photos with a minimum of fuss, without overstepping the point of diminishing returns.  And I'm very hard on my cameras, subjecting them to a great deal of outdoor punishment, which routinely leads to shortened lifespans.  If I were to buy up, photography would become financially unsustainable for me.

And I don't see a need to buy up.  The market has come a long way in just a few years, as technology continues to evolve at break-neck speed.  I was one of the Nikon D50 early adopters in 2005, and at that time, it was considered a mid-range camera.  Today's D3300 handily outstrips the capability of the original D50, but but the D3300 is instead considered entry-level.  You could buy a mid-range package, but would you notice a significant difference in the results for your extra $500 to $1,000 investment?  To me, the sweet spot of investment remains at the entry level simply because of the remarkable recent achievements in technology.

Most of the pics on this blog were taken with the 18 - 55 mm lens, which neatly brackets the range of normal consumer experience from de facto macro to wide angle.  Here is a series of recent photos illustrating the general capabilities of the 55 - 200 mm lens.  Note that these have been cropped and downsampled to a 1024 pixel size, so the originals are much higher resolution.

Bug-eyed on the Boardwalk Bullet: If you stand on Kipp Avenue a short distance south of the Starbucks, that's probably your best vantage point for shots like this.  I took this on Sunday afternoon as I was trying to catch my family in action, not knowing when their turn would come.   

The roller coaster moves so fast that there's no time to confirm which car your family members or friends might be in - it's better just to shoot first and ask questions later.  None of my family in this one either.  

Still no loved ones appearing, but I was really impressed that this young lady's ornate hijab remained in place for the duration of her ride.  

Kemah also boasts that new upside-down ride, reportedly the only one in Texas and the second tallest in the world.  One of the enchanting things about using a basic telephoto is that picture-viewing becomes a bit like Christmas - you won't really know what you've got until afterward when you load up the pics on your computer.  My child asked, "Mommy?  Why is that guy giving the finger?"  I replied, "I don't know sweetie - apparently he was engaged in a conversation with someone on the ground."
:-) 

Of course, you can also use the 55 - 200 mm telephoto lens as a de facto macro lens in certain contexts, as this anole picture shows.  Some of the effects of doing so can get a bit otherworldly, as the light collation is tighter (more polarized) here than it would have been if I'd used a regular macro.  

They are such fearsome beasts, aren't they??  I never get sick of photographing anoles.  

A dove that came a-drinking about a half an hour ago (I often keep the telephoto on the desk beside me so that I can get shots like this without getting out of my office chair!!).

Note that I took this through my office window which is perpetually covered in dog snot because my dog tries to sniff the birds through the window pane.  Any distortion you see here was not due to the telephoto lens - it's due to the cheap plate glass window I was shooting through. And the snot coating it.   

If you are torn between cameras and lenses, look at sample pics such as those above and ask yourself:  What is it that I would have wanted to achieve in those same situations that was not achieved by those pics??  If you find yourself citing a specific answer, then maybe you've got a justification to buy up.

I have always told myself that I'll go ahead and purchase the next upper level of camera at the very point where I feel I have exhausted the possibilities of the entry level models that I already own.  I myself have yet to reach that threshold.  Good luck with your own camera shopping.

Best cross-body bag

Answer:  In my opinion, the best one on the American market to date is the Navigator Bagg by baggallini, which is available at The Container Store.

It may even be exclusive to The Container Store because I can't find it listed for sale anywhere else.

Image courtesy of The Container Store.

I will explain in detail why this is my choice, showing all the problems I had with numerous other brands.

They are not unknown in the American consumer market, but they are not as popular here as they are in Europe, which boasts a larger collection of pedestrian societies.  This makes finding a good one surprisingly difficult.

Quote screengrabbed from ebags.   

Unfortunately, my photo-documentation series is incomplete, because I've already given away more failed cross-body bags than I can count.  But here are a few shots of those that still linger unused and undonated in my closets.  If you are a cross-body bag aficionado, maybe these pics will convince you that you need to choose wisely if you want to avoid wasting your hard-earned money.

While not explicitly promoted as a cross-body bag, the "Healthy Back Bag" was one of the first on the market to claim an ergonomic-type advantage.  

I had two of them over the years and I had the same complaints with each.  The sateen fabric on this black model showed dirt really badly.  And the fabric was not robust enough for the punishment that I typically dole out to handbags.  It tended to look worn very quickly.  

Furthermore, they weren't well-designed from a compartmentalization standpoint.  Basically all my junk would end up in a heap at the bottom of the bag.  I didn't find the interior compartments to be very useful.  

Durability and design are equally non-negotiable where cross-body bags are concerned.  These types of handbags are not carried by the type of average women who may drive back and forth among their suburban homes, the grocery store, and an office job.  If you are searching for a cross-body bag, you are probably professionally-oriented, but you're no fashionista.  You're a woman who moves around a lot and who needs to keep her hands free and her purse contents within quick, efficient reach.  No rummaging around like a guinea pig in a fresh pile of wood shavings while the rest of the world waits for you to get your stuff together.

Having had poor luck with fabric bags, I moved on to leather, which proved to have its own faults.

I thought I was onto something good when I found this Fossil bag.  The leather quality was better than average and the bag was reasonably well-designed.  

A properly designed cross-body bag will have an integrated wallet compartment on the exterior of the bag - that's what makes them maximally efficient.  No digging through the purse for a wallet, prying open the wallet, rifling through the contents... you should just pop open a convenient flap and immediately access your cash and plastic.  This particular Fossil did not have a large enough number of integrated credit card slots, but I could live with that much (you can see one line of them down the center of this flap pocket).  

However, I could not live with this atrocity.  While the bag itself was a good quality leather, the straps that hold the handle onto the bag were a crummy grade of leather or vinyl wrapped around something that looked like cardboard to bulk it up.  Almost immediately, the edges frayed, revealing the cardboard-like material inside, a flaw that was basically impossible to fix without incurring more labor cost than the bag was worth.  Whenever I'd look at this, I'd recall that famous soul-crushing line from "Silence of the Lambs":  "You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes?"  Well, with this mess, I felt like I had good shoes and a cheap bag.  *Fail*.  

Mmmmkay, so what did I do next??  Bought yet another leather bag.  I realize I was being a sucker for punishment but I have a very specific lifestyle and I simply need a good cross-body bag, so I had to keep trying different models.  

Unfortunately the leather on this one was not as good as the Fossil had been, and it showed wear very quickly.  I don't know what brand it is, because I bought it at DSW in the Baybrook shopping center of Clear Lake Texas, and it seemed to be no-name.  

Furthermore, it had another design flaw that quickly made it look ridiculous.  There was a decorative buckle on the front, but the buckle prong pointed up instead of down (thanks, China!).  What that meant was that, when I'd lift the bag upward from the floor or wherever, the prong tended to hook on whatever the bag brushed up against (e.g., the side of the car seat, the cushion of the couch, the person standing next to me, etc.)  So I then had to take wire cutters and snip the buckle prong off.  But between that move and the leather that wore thin quickly, I was right back into cheap-looking territory.  *Fail*.  

The other limitation that you should realize with respect to leather is the weight.  If you're a cross-body woman, you're probably on the go, zooming around on foot, physically active, and perhaps in addition to your bag you are carrying other equipment and/or small children.  Realize that you're going to be hauling around 1.5 to 2 pounds of unnecessary CG-destroying weight if you choose a leather bag.  I ended up concluding that the high-end look afforded by leather simply wasn't worth it.

My very next bag boondoggle was a nylon Travelon model.  They are advertised as offering security features because they have clips that allow you to secure the zipper pockets.  There's also a wire running through the main strap so it can't be easily cut by a purse-snatcher.   

This one offered the advantage of a light-colored interior which allowed me to see the contents more easily.  And mercifully, there were more credit card slots than the Fossil had.  

However, there were two fatal flaws.  Number one, the zippers kept letting go on me - they were (in my opinion) too flimsy to stand up to the abuse I dish out.  Number two, the thing didn't really have a good convenient pocket for a smart phone, which is the Kiss of Death where purses are concerned.  Both side pockets were too small, but I tended to cram my phone in there anyway, which made the zipper splitting problem even worse.  

Incidentally, even with all these photos, all these different brands, and all these complaints, there were still more purses that I bought and later gave away because they just didn't work.  For instance, REI has produced some wonderful cross-body bags over the years - assuming the wearer never exceeds 21 years of age, that is.  REI's handbag products tend to be durable and excellently designed, but they lack sophistication.  I'm taking my bag to corporate meeting rooms in sky scrapers on Smith Street - I'm not taking them camping.

Sigh.  Enter, finally, the baggallini.

I have yet to find a bad flaw - and obviously I'm a flaw-finder.  The nylon fabric is very durable and repels dirt. I don't just visit Smith Street skyscrapers - I have dragged this bag through some of Houston's grittiest industrial plants, perhaps as many as thirty times so far.  You'd never know it by looking at this pic.  

The front pocket is big enough even for oversized smart phones.  It closes with a magnet for one-handed opening.  

The front flap with the cell phone in it lifts up to reveal the zippered wallet feature.  There's a photo ID slot on the outside, which is really convenient for me because I often need to surrender my TDL as I enter high-security facilities.  

Here's the feature that separates the men from the boys, metaphorically speaking.  When you open the wallet, the credit card slots are on the side farthest away from you, such that you're automatically looking straight at them rather than having to lift the bag to horizontal in trying to peer at the inside wall of this pocket.  THAT took real headwork on the part of the designer.  Somebody took the time to think this thing through.   

Another stroke of genius - like I said, women who carry cross-body bags tend to be on the move and they don't fool around with life.  If they use cosmetics at all, it's often limited to the basics.  The main compartment of this bag contains elasticized holders for just the two barest essentials - mascara and lipstick.

Some of REI's early cross-body bags had lipstick loops as well.  Just lipstick - nothing else.  Because outdoorsy women will often use lipstick as their token effort at social conformism, and to heck with everything else.  

Close-up of the corner, where the wear tends to show the worst (it's about six months old in this photo, six months of heavy use).  So far, so good.  

So after untold hundreds of dollars spent over the years on other products, the baggallini Navigator Bagg is my favorite because it is:

1. Sophisticated enough for the skyscrapers
2. Durable enough for the industrial dungeons
3. Light enough so that it doesn't throw me off balance on long treks, and 
4. Efficient enough so that it doesn't leave me cursing and fumbling at the check-out counter.  

Should I later discover hidden flaws, I will update this post, but for now, this is my hard-won winner.