Dennis Sherman

You can find other people’s techniques for this via Google.  I recently took a combined business and vacation trip that lasted two weeks, and I took only a “rollaboard” carry on bag. The business trip included a need for dress and business casual clothes.

This trip had an advantage over some hectic vacation trips in that I stayed in the same hotel for most of the two weeks I was gone. This let me find a laundry down the street, and have laundry done at the midpoint of the trip instead of hand washing in the hotel bathroom sink. Or paying exorbitant hotel laundry rates.

The weather was also an advantage toward light packing, late summer on the Mediterranean is very temperate, and warm (and bulky) clothes weren’t necessary.

My packing list:

3-1-1 bag

I carry this in the top outside pocket of the rollaboard, where it is easy to pull out and put back for security inspection.

hand sanitizer
moisturizer cream
mouthwash
shampoo
sunscreen
toothpaste

Toiletries Bag in Carryon

bandaids
comb
dental floss
diarrhea treatment
earplugs
mirror
moist towelettes
razor (disposable, replace every few trips)
soap
2 sporks
surgical rubber braid clothesline
toothbrush

Carryon Contents

3-1-1 and toiletries bags, above

belt
daypack (large enough to hold a water bottle)
laundry bag
long sleeved t-shirt (turned out I never wore it)
pajamas
2 dress shirts
3 casual shirts
2 polo shirts
shoes – dress
shoes – sport sandals
socks (7pr)
swimsuit
trousers, Dress (1pr)
trousers, Business Casual (1pr)
trousers, Casual (1pr)
underwear (8pr)
undershirts (4) (turned out to be too many, could have managed with 2)

Briefcase

Wear or Carry on my person

cash (US Dollars, use ATM in airport on arrival for local currency)
Cell phone
charge & ATM card
driver’s license
hat
iPod Touch (preloaded, there’s another post coming)
passport
pen & small notebook
shoes – walking
casual sport coat

I overpacked a little bit, but not too badly.  And it all really did fit in the rollaboard and briefcase, even with souvenirs on the way home.  (Buying small things helps.)

This was the first time I’ve gone this long in a single small bag.  Now that I’ve done it this will always be my goal.

I recently purchased some new-to-me instruments, an alto and tenor Renaissance shawm, made by John Hanchet.  That leads to a need for a new instrument case, as what I’ve been carrying isn’t deep enough for the 5″ bell on the tenor.

I spent much too long looking at various options and cases from Pelican, SKB, Gator, and several other manufacturers.  I’ve got a Pelican case for my hurdy-gurdy, and I like it a lot. The Gator web site has the best search-by-size option available, by far. SKB cases come highly recommended by other musicians and photographers.  The choice was tough…

The biggest two considerations were enough depth to hold the instrument bells safely, but not too large a case to fit in the back of the car.  ATA certification is a strong bonus characteristic, so I can fly with instruments in the cargo hold and not worry about them too much.

I looked at rifle cases, shotgun cases, double bow and bow and rifle cases, keyboard cases, trombone cases, and some general purpose military shipping cases.

What I ended up ordering is a case made as a 61 note keyboard case by SKB. I expect to have to do some interior customization to hold my instruments, but that shouldn’t be much of a problem for me.  This case is a few inches shorter than my old instrument gun case, a couple inches wider, and the inch and a half deeper I need to hold the new instruments.  And it has wheels!

Now that the weather has turned better, I’m listening to audiobooks while walking the dog again.  The first one didn’t turn out so well…

Title: At the Mountains of Madness
Author: H.P. Lovecraft
Source: Uvula Audio
URL: http://www.uvulaaudio.com/books.html and scroll down the page

I remember reading a fair bit of Lovecraft when I was younger, and being captivated by it.  I can’t tell at the moment if this is a particularly non-sterling example of his writing, or if I’ve just moved on.  I abandoned listening to this halfway through the first chapter (of 6).  It was putting me to sleep while driving, which is a really bad thing.

The reader was doing quite a creditable job, but the prose style of endless descriptive sentences, with nary a dialog or character to be seen, was soporific.

If you’re currently a fan of Lovecraft, you might want to give these free downloads a try.  Otherwise, pass.

This post is a test. It is only a test. If it were real there would be content here that might be meaningful to someone.

Posted from my iPod Touch.

We’ve done this once before, and had a good time.  So we’ll try it again, and see if we can get a bigger audience than the first time!

Heather Dale is a Canadian recording artist who cheerfully side-steps the sterotypes for both folk singer-songwriters and Celtic balladeers. Heather fuses traditional stories with a healthy mix of Celtic folk, world music and rock influences, and she excels at finding modern themes within old material.  She performs with her partner Ben Deschamps, and together they explore a lively, diverse folksong repertoire… a mix of original songs with fresh twists on traditional Celtic & folk material. “Her music is powerful stuff, reminiscent of Loreena McKennitt and Sarah McLachlan but with a depth and resonance rooted in its mythic sources.” (Vancouver Sun)

Visit http://www.HeatherDale.com for sound clips and further details about Heather’s music.

As for our concert details:

• $10 suggested donation
• CDs will be available for purchase (and worthwhile!)
• we’re a non-smoking house
• we’ll have some soft drinks and snacks (and coffee) for intermission, feel free to bring some more and make it a pot-luck
• we have a large friendly dog who likes music too

Reservations required!  House concerts have limited seating, we need to be sure we don’t overflow the living room!

Contact me to make a reservation – name, number of seats, and a way to contact you.  You can use this contact link, or any other way you know of to contact me.  I’ll get back to you with time and directions.  (We’re in West Rogers Park, near the intersection of Western and Touhy, easy on-street parking.)

UPDATE 2011-06-21: We now have enough reservations to fill the living room!  I will be happy to add your name to a waiting list, and if we have any cancellations by Thursday night, I’ll contact you.

Title: The Not Quite Reverend Cletus J. Diggs & The Currently Accepted Habits of Nature
Author: David Niall Wilson
Source: SimplyAudioBooks
URL: http://www.simplyaudiobooks.com/audio-books/Not+Quite+Right+Reverend+Cletus+J.+Diggs+%26+The+Currently+Accepted+Habits+of+Nature/83588/

The title is quite a mouthful, but the book was entertaining.  Its classified as horror, which isn’t a genre I read much.  And it is current work, unlike much of the out-of-copyright material that I listen to.  It was (temporarily) available free at SimplyAudioBooks, and I’ll try just about anything for free.

I’m glad I downloaded it.  This story was full of entertaining characters and interesting plot, taking place in backwoods North Carolina.  The reader does very well with a variety of characters, voices and accents, and keeps it all moving along nicely.  There’s a surprise at the end, which reminded me a bit of some of Sharyn McCrumb’s “ballad” novels – and that’s almost enough of a hint to count as a spoiler, for those familiar with her work.

I’m likely to pull this one out again for a car trip.

Title: Short Science Fiction Collection 28
Author: varied
Source: Librivox
URL: http://librivox.org/short-science-fiction-collection-028/

This is a collection of ten short stories by various authors, and read by various readers.  This particular collection is of varying quality, centering right around mediocre.  There’s only one story, “The Servant Problem” by Robert J. Young, that is likely to stick in my memory for more than a week or so.  It was adequate listening for dog walking, but I might have switched to something else if I were driving cross country.

Title: A Double Barreled Detective Story
Author: Mark Twain
Source: Librivox
URL: http://librivox.org/a-double-barreled-detective-story-by-mark-twain/

I don’t think this is one of Twain’s best – but as much as he wrote, you have to expect some mediocrity.  This is really two detective story plots spliced together, sort of, with an appearance by Sherlock Holmes, who isn’t such hot stuff in Twain’s portrayal.  It adds up to a long short story which is OK, but not great.

The reader is good, and gets as much as possible out of the story.

If you’re a fan of Mark Twain and want to read/listen to all of his work, well, here it is.  If you’re lukewarm on Twain, don’t bother, there are much better choices.

It’s time again in the US for the annual ritual of Open Benefits Enrollment, where employees register, pick, and choose from the benefits offered to them by their employer.  What a stupid system.

My preparation complaint – why does each company choose their own schedule for this activity?  Few households with 2 employed adults have the employers schedule at the same time, so every year it is a guess which employer will have the better option in every category.  (I’m not even going to go off on whether funding health care through employers is a good idea or not.  Different post, some other time.)  Overall, I favor less government involvement in everything – but this is a case where I think a regulation requiring all companies to make their benefits packages known to their employees within a small time window would be A Good Thing.   Hold the enrollment whenever, but you have to tell your employees what the options are between October 15 and 30 every year, for example.

My real complaint is the FSA boondoggle.  That’s Flexible Spending Account, for those not keeping score at home.  This is a plan where you can set aside money directly from your paycheck before taxes are calculated on your pay, into a special account that can be used only for certain health care expenses.  The theory is that it “saves you money” by reducing your income tax liability by letting you pay for some health care expenses with pre-tax dollars.  (Yes, another overall stupid idea, administration of these things is entirely waste in the overall cost of health care.)  But OK, its the game we have to play, so we do it.

The rules say that whatever you put in that isn’t spent by the end of the calendar year will be lost.  Lost?  Not exactly – its really profit for the plan administrator.  But you can’t have it back or roll it to the next year.

The rules also say that you can only spend what you put in on expenses incurred in that calendar year.   There is a grace period for most employers/plans, where you can submit receipts for payment until the end of the first quarter of the following year.

Fine, what happens when you incur an expense in November, for example, that the health care provider doesn’t get around to billing for 5 months? (That kind of delay is quite common, as the provider and insurance companies negotiate back and forth about who is going to pay what.)  The health care recipient doesn’t know what amount to pay until the insurance companies are done.  So the health care recipient gets a bill in April for service rendered in November.  But wait, that’s past the first quarter deadline for submitting receipts!

So sad, too bad, pay it out of pocket.  The funds left in the FSA for that expense are profit for the plan administrator, and the health care recipient essentially paid double – once into the FSA, and again out of pocket because the FSA funds were not available.

So the behavior the brilliant legislators and regulators that came up with this marvel of a plan want to encourage must be: don’t use the health care system  in the last quarter of the year for anything that will have a delayed billing.  Better to not need any services in the second half of the year, because you don’t know how long the health care providers will take to bill, and you need to leave a good cushion so you can submit the receipts on time.

What a stupid system.  And among the many broken parts of the US health care system that Obama’s health care reform didn’t come close to fixing, and that the incoming Congress doesn’t see a need to fix.

I repeat – what a stupid system.

Title: Three Men and a Maid
Author: P. G. Wodehouse
Source: Librivox
URL: http://librivox.org/three-men-and-a-maid-by-p-g-wodehouse/

Typical silly Wodehouse romantic comedy.  All three men are engaged to the maid at one point or another, until she finally figures out which one she really wants.  Not deep or meaningful, but quite entertaining.

The reader has done a number of other audiobooks I’ve listened to, and is quite good.  Recommended if you like Wodehouse’s style.