Wear Your College Colors Day
Have I mentioned that the hero is 6′3″ and hairy?
According to his firm’s office cheerleading squad, tomorrow is “Wear Your College Colors Day”. Although college logo shirt is the basis of the local “after-dinner-grocery-shopping” uniform template, it is not part of his regular idiom. Nor mine. So when he fw’d the notice that wearing college colors to work on Friday September 2 was being encouraged, my mind raced quickly through the options: dd and I both attend schools sporting some version of vampire-wear for their school colors and the school the hero and I graduated from has the blues. No options worth $pending on.
But there was one other option: the local community college system, from which dd earned her AA. Although I can’t tell you what their official color scheme is, their mascot is BIGFOOT! This I discovered last spring, when I was a student at one of the schools. I even bought a shirt. Mine is a beautiful muted brown with the word “Bigfoot” written in ivory script; this “Sasquatch State” shirt is what the hero will be wearing to work tomorrow.
The best part? It was $9.99 less 20% AND I convinced them to give me the hanger. he hee.
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Celebrate Wendy Day
This coming Thursday, December 16th, would have been Wendy Buckner’s birthday. Unfortunately, her life was tragically cut short on June 19th by a heart attack. She left her last comment here on June 18th. Although we never met face-to-face, I considered Wendy a true friend. She openly shared with me what she had: opinion, encouragement, expertise, and her stunning photographs.
Wendy’s signature accessory was the brooch; she wore them regularly on her blazers. Won’t you join me in celebrating Wendy’s life of grace and style this December 16th by the simple wearing of a beautiful brooch on your blazer or coat?
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Thanks, Birds, and More Dressing Up
Does this look like something Seuss? I hope so! 
Recently our theater group did Seussical the Musical; to celebrate the occasion, I added feather boa to these fur-topped boots and wore them with my jeans tucked in. lol Allow me to point out that the performers got a kick out of the gesture. Not literally. *chuckle*
That’s all, folks! Happy Thanksgiving! We have much to be thankful for, do we not?
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Playing Dress Up
The hero and I, dressed up for a party we attended recently:
My outfit:
- My old Gunne Sax, from the ’70s.
- My boots, from the ’70s.
- Dd2’s wig, which she uses for theatre. (She was kinda creeped out seeing me in it, since we look a little bit alike.)
His outfit:
- Vest his dad made for his mom, in the ’70s, from a kit.
- T-shirt given to Dd1 by a relative a few years ago. Front is a record store logo, back is a slogan mentioning the ’70s.
- Wristband, authentically his from the 70s.
- His old jeans, which he split up the side seams in order to insert the calico bell-bottom effect. The fabric he used coordinated with the dress I was planning on wearing; planning on wearing, that is, until he zipped it up for me, which action was quickly followed by, “get it off! I can’t breathe”. lol
- Note also the leather thongs hanging down the sides, coordinating with the moccasins (not from the ’70s).
Playing dress up, in this case, was in honor of a friend’s birthday which we were celebrating with ’70s murder mystery. This was our first murder mystery; I would definitely do it again!
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C.S. Lewis on Fashion?
Jennifer sent me a link to this Femina post, in which Nancy Ann is responding to C.S. Lewis’s comments on the Middle English word “solempne” found in A Preface to Paradise Lost.
We moderns have trouble with solempne because we live in an egalitarian, slovenly culture where no one likes to “look up” to someone else. To really understand solempne, we need hierarchy. So the Christian has a better chance at understanding this because the most high God is our ultimate reference point.
“This means something different, but not quite different, from modern English solemn. Like solemn it implies the opposite of what is familiar, free and easy, or ordinary. But unlike solemn it does not suggest gloom, oppression, or austerity…The Solempne is the festal which is also the stately and the ceremonial, the proper occasion for pomp — and the very fact that pompous is now used only in a bad sense measures the degree to which we have lost the old idea of ‘solemnity’. To recover it you must think of a court ball, or a coronation, or a victory march, as these things appear to people who enjoy them; in an age when every one puts on his oldest clothes to be happy in, you must re-awake the simpler state of mind in which people put on gold and scarlet to be happy in. Above all, you must be rid of the hideous idea, fruit of a wide-spread inferiority complex, that pomp, on the proper occasions, has any connexion with vanity or self-conceit.”
I do think we are making strides toward recovering the idea that it is decent to wear decent clothes, although we who enjoy dressing still get a fair amount of heat for it.
Who knew that C.S. Lewis had anything to say about what we wear?
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Just a Quick Update
Oh dear! Where to start? Alot has happened since the last post.
Health
The biggest surprise: I started working out (actually taking two PE classes, more on that to come); my neck and shoulder instantly improved! I’m not completely back to how I was before I started blogging, but this is a big deal.
Feel free to comment on exercise. What keeps you from it? I honestly didn’t realize that I needed to be working my back and neck specifically. How about health care? Personally, I’d love to see docs be able to prescribe a gym, rather than just massage and physical therapy.
I haven’t figured out all the pieces yet, but I hope to never go back to where I was two months ago. 
School
Somewhere recently I heard that if a student has a parent in school, that student may be eligible for more financial aid. While that may be true in some cases, I have it on reliable authority - the Whitworth University financial aid department - that a parent in school doesn’t count on the child’s fafsa.
But, before I heard that, I thought, “why not look into finishing my degree?”
Long story short, I am currently taking twelve credits, including the aforementioned two PE classes, English 102 (did you feel that groan?), and logic. And for the record, I am taking logic because I needed a humanities class, not to get out of taking math (I already have more than enough math). Writing for English, though, is keeping me from getting back to blogging.
Just for fun: my first paper - a rhetorical analysis of a Jimmy Choo magazine ad. (It earned me a 98.)
Adventures
During my absence, I have done two - I don’t really know what to call them collectively - video projects? Anyway, the first was a commercial in which I played a doctor (and the patient was actually played by the hero! lol) and the second was a training video in which I played a nurse manager, and actually had lines. See why this falls under the category adventure? It’s not all that exciting or glamorous, but if you happen to be in an area or occupation where you see one of those and think it looks like me …
My other notable adventure was being asked to present a workshop on making the most of your wardrobe at a ladies retreat with gratitude as its theme. My 45 minute talk was entitled A Closet Full of Enough. That was fun, and I am planning on saving my material, should the opportunity arise to give the talk again.
Painting
Yes, I’m still painting. Some days I take my stuff with me to school and just find a table somewhere to paint when I have a couple hours between classes. I love watercolor! It’s so clean.
Currently I am only doing portraits.
Future
Who knows? Definitely not blogging with the same regularity as in the past. But I still like it!
What’s new with you?
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What to Wear to a Casual Christmas Party
Well, I’ll tell you right off the top what not to wear: American traditional holiday knitwear. 24 comments and the most commonly repeated word was “hideous”. Tiffany suggests the following reasons people wear them:
- love of that cutesy, “country” Americana,
- love of crafts and decoration (I’ve run out of things to make and decorate for the holiday, so I’ll decorate myself!), and
- “thriftiness”/pack rat tendencies (it only gets worn once a year, so it’s too nice to toss).
Do you see yourself in any of those?
I’ll be honest; if I were ever tempted to wear that kind of thing, it would be because that’s what my host(ess) was wearing and I wasn’t sure how to translate “casual” + “festive” into my own idiom. But I’m thinking, this year, that my new dark brown trouser-style cords will come in handy.
What’s your Christmas casual formula?
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Topol in Fiddler on the Roof, the Farewell Tour
Topol in Fiddler on the Roof, the Farewell Tour, in a sense an opportunity of a lifetime, is in Spokane this week! And, yes, I’m going.
(Many thanks to the offspring who insisted, for Father’s Day, that it just wouldn’t be right for the hero to miss this opportunity. And many thanks to the hero for choosing me to share his blessing!)
What am I wearing? Something fun - no LBD for me! (Actually, I’m wearing the M of the B ensemble, but with swingy light red silk skirt instead of white/black print pencil, possibly more jewelry. I’m encouraging the hero to wear the collarless dress shirt we had made for the wedding and a VEST.) What would you be wearing?
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Wedding or Bridal Party Gowns Long and Short
Monthly at David’s Bridal, a bride is blessed with her choice of wedding dress or 5 bridal party gowns. Click here to enter the drawing.
When I was in High School, my friends and I wore previously-worn-as-a-bridesmaid dresses to high school dances. Nowadays, with people marrying later in life, many bridesmaids are far beyond the season of high school, or even college, dances. The dressiest place they have to go to is the theatre or a “cocktail” type party.
Recently the trend has been toward short bridesmaid dresses, however, once upon a time, short bridal gowns were all the rage. Do you see them coming back ever? I do like this one.
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Friday Fashion Lab: Black vs White
Two summers ago, after Creationfest, I proved scientifically that a black shirt is up to 11 degrees hotter in the sun than a white shirt. Read on …
Why Superchick
I am so sorry I couldn’t get more pictures of well-dressed music festival goers. As the event wore on, the outfits seemed to get worse. Since when is ordinary beige bra + spaghetti strap top acceptable to wear in public?
Almost without exception, they violated my sense of propriety on one or more of three points:
- Visible lingerie straps.
- Pants with no (arms and no) legs.
- Dark colors.
Yes, one of these offenses is not like the others.
However, when dressing to be outdoors all day in 100 degree temperatures, it would be useful to know exactly how much difference the heat absorbancy properties of the color black makes. So I tested it for you.
First I bought two identical thermometers. I then put them side by side in the shade of my front yard to make sure they read the same. They did (86). But when I moved them into my south-facing side yard (”the hot-spot of the universe”), they varied a little. One went up to 106.5, the other to 104.2.
Using shirts which I bought at around the same time, Gap Short-sleeved favorite T - white and black, I set the white one over the thermometer which read higher and the black one over the other and went away for 15 or 20 minutes.
The results: the temperature of the thermometer covered by the white tee actually dropped a degree, to 105.4. The black? That thermometer read 109.2!
Today I repeated the experiment. My hero suggested that I try angling the thermometers toward the sun to get them to read more similarly, an idea which worked. Today, at around noon, when the temperature started out at 96, the results were even more dramatic: 103.8 vs 114.3! (BTW, msn weather says it’s 91 here today.)
How about you? I am totally convinced! And just in time, too, it’s great white hunting out there right now.
Behind me is the bathroom.
