Day 25 of the 30 Days of Me challenge is one I’ve been looking forward to since I scanned the list. I don’t carry a purse, but when I bought the iPad and committed to carrying it with me everywhere, I had to get a container that made that easy. After much searching, I found a Brenthaven bag designed for netbooks (iPad bags weren’t widely available then) for a very reasonable price (so reasonable, they don’t make it anymore, and a comparable bag seems to be on the market for about four times as much money). It looks like this:

Here’s what the bag looks like fully loaded. In the picture to follow, I forgot to pull the dongle out of the bag for the picture, so I decided to include it in this picture for scale. (I’m a 60% disabled veteran, but my disabilities are generally helped by exercise, so I usually choose not to use handicapped spaces unless they are more plentiful than non-handicapped spaces.)

Here is the bag and contents on display:

In the upper left, we have the Christmas card my husband gave me. He manages to find simply incredible cards that are mushy enough to make me cry and feel bad that I’m not as good a wife as the words in the card say I am. To the right of this year’s simply awesome Christmas card is the empty bag.

In the next row on the desk pull out, you’ll find my portable reading glasses in their case, a set of earbuds, the charger for the MiFi, and the iPad2. At the foot of the reading glasses case, you’ll see the iPad Camera Kit (converting the iPad charger port to either a USB port or an SD card reader).

In the next row, is my iPod with earbuds, a cleaning cloth, three pens, two screen cleaning pads, and a Tide To Go pen. On the far side of the iPad2 is a small container of hand lotion.

In the bottom row we have an old-fashioned paper notebook. On top of it is a Motorola external battery. This battery is incredible. I can charge the cell phone, the Mi Fi, and even the iPad with it. To the right of that is a little flashlight that charges in a 12 volt outlet. Last but far from least is the MiFi, its little cloth case, another cleaning cloth, and the protective carrying case I keep the MiFi in when it isn’t being used. For those who don’t know what the MiFi is, it’s a wireless device that gives me instant WiFi access to the internet anywhere Verizon has service, which, so far, has been everywhere I’ve ever wanted it to be (unlike, ahem, the provider claiming the internet can’t hide from them — it did for me).

Of everything in this collection, the iPad gets used the most, followed by the MiFi, the Motorola battery, the pen, and the MiFi charger. Everything else pretty much gets lugged along “just in case.”