Travel Essentials

I love getting ready for a trip and making lists for all the things I need to take. My husband has a different philosophy; he waits until the last possible minute and throws everything in a bag and then assumes I will bring whatever he forgets. Or maybe he doesn't assume. Maybe I just feel better thinking that he assumes I will take care of everything.

Where was I?

Anyways, I must have been living under a rock for the last 6 months or something because even my mom knew about the new TSA luggage locks. I am assuming most of you have heard of these, but in case you haven't, they are little locks to put on your zippers that the official TSA people have master keys for (or anyone else that has the same kind of lock as you do).
They are simply meant to be little anti-theft devices for those times when someone can't resist a quick peek into your bag. And I seriously have needed these for 15 years. My luggage has been opened and things stolen 3 times! And they are obviously people in a hurry that are doing the stealing because inexpensive (but sentimental) items have been grabbed when more expensive items were sitting right next to them.

Can you tell I like bright colors? I bought these luggage tags to match as well. My luggage seems to have an aversion to keep tags on because those keep coming up missing as well. Gorillas really must be throwing our luggage around.
One more item on my to-do list today was to find a new carry-on bag. Normally you get one carry on and one item like a purse. But on increasingly packed flights some people are being asked to check one. (This just happened to my mom and she was pretty peeved about it.) So I thought I will get a large enough bag to fit a small purse into it so that I will only have one bag and not worry. And when I saw this blue shopper, I had to have it. Sure that color is cute, but, more importantly, it has a zipper so things won't fall out easily. Most big shoppers just have a magnetic closure. I am a fairly light carry on person as it is and usually it is books that make up the bulk of my needed supplies. We are traveling 22 hours total, including a 6 hour lay over in Amsterdam, so I will be flying through the literature. But with the advent of the Kindle, I am now going to be even lighter. Although my husband did point out to me I need to bring paper reading material for lift off and landing as Kindles are electronic and can't be used then. Sheesh.