I’ve no idea how it’s been that long since we said goodbye.
ADMIRE THE KITTEH
Are you there, collar?
Here’s a weird thing about me: In general, I hate collared shirts.
Now, this might seem slightly confusing since to anyone who pays attention, I clearly own a number of collared shirts. But I have some specific preferences thereof.
Growing up as a kid, I detested collared shirts and I never wore them unless I was specifically ordered to by my parents. I seem to recall that this occasionally vexed my father. In third or fourth grade there was a time when he thought he’d add flannel shirts to my wardrobe, and I resisted this with some vehemence. It wasn’t so much the flannel – although they were brand new shirts, very scratchy – but the stiff collars. I probably wore those shirts a total of twice, both times when I was under orders to do so, and that was that.
What’s my issue with collars? Well, I don’t think that collars generally work well with people who don’t have long or slender necks. My neck is neither of those things, so a collar is always this stiff, annoying thing that’s rubbing all over the sides of my neck and my chin hits it and so on. Plus, collared shirts tend to be made of stiff fabric that doesn’t give terribly well, and they’re mainly designed to be worn with ties, an article of clothing for which I have zero use.
(Seriously. I own, I think, a total of two neckties, and I haven’t worn either one in over thirteen years. In fact, at this point I’m not sure I’d remember how to tie one. I can’t stand the damn things. They’re a useless long triangle of cloth that dangles over your stomach, that always has to be adjusted and fidgeted with, and serves no purpose at all. Ties, in my opinion, can all go to hell, except for bow ties with tuxes. Those look good. Oh, and screw other bow ties too.)
And I hate polo shirts too, because their collars never ever ever look good on me. They’re either too stiff or they lay weird and yuck.
My general feeling is that regular collars and polo shirts don’t look on me so much like these guys…
…as much as these guys.
Not that there’s anything wrong with those fellows, but nobody’s purposely dressing like Archie Bunker or Jed Bartlet, is what I’m saying.
Now, I do make one exception to my hatred of collars: button-down collars don’t bother me. In fact, I’ve come to like them rather a lot! Collars that are buttoned down tend to be a little narrower anyway, so they do tend to stay in position and maintain a shape better, and they don’t tend to rise up and rub my chin. Here’s the outfit I wore the other day when The Wife and I were in Ithaca. I bought this shirt for a pittance at a thrift store, and I quite like the way this turned out.
And I have several other button-down collar shirts, either denim or twill. Denim tends to be a special case, and I am willing to wear non-buttoned-down collars in denim or in a nice twill. Regular shirt fabric, though? Not so much.
I have a green plaid-stripe twill shirt that I haven’t even photographed yet. I’ll be wearing more of this stuff as cooler temperatures arrive.
And that brings me to my newest thing: collarless shirts! Yup, that’s a thing, and I love it. I know, I know – you’ve all been aware of this kind of thing for years, but bear with me. With collarless shirts I can have the nice look of a button-up shirt without the annoying discomfort of a stupid wing collar, and I can look nice without the annoying necessity of a necktie. I’ve recently bought three collarless shirts on eBay, and I like them all. I have a red plaid one, a white one with pinstripes, and a pleasant yellow/peach one. These all make me happy and I look forward to wearing them more, moving forward!
(I’ll have a better photo of that one eventually…the lighting in the hotel room where I took the photo was ghastly for this purpose.)
And then there’s this flannel button-down, which I also got for just a couple bucks at the thrift place. I haven’t made up my mind on this one yet, but it was three bucks, so hey, why not?
So basically, I hate collars except for when I don’t.
I’m glad I took an entire blog post to say that….
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Thoughts on being 45
The Fair 2016
Photos from the Erie County Fair, 2016
And in new acquisitions, among a few other things (including a new coffee mug which I haven’t photographed yet), a new scarf and a new keychain!
There was actually some new stuff to see at the Fair this year that felt fresh and nifty, which was nice; sometimes the Fair can seem a little “Same old, same old”. We do miss certain things about the Fair — particularly the daily parade, which was always fun to watch — but we did have a great time.
Now, of course, with the Fair being over (for us, anyway), I am mentally shifting gears already into Fall Mode. This is usually helped along by August in Buffalo generally being cooler and less humid than July, but that certainly hasn’t turned out to be the case this year; instead it’s been just as hot and humid in August as in July, and our region is actually in the midst of a pretty severe drought. We’ve actually had measurable rainfall over the last few days, but earlier we went something like 80 days without a drop, so things are pretty parched ’round here. Hopefully it’ll rebound.
Anyway, that’s the Fair for this year. The next big things? Buffalo Comic-con, then our annual trek to Ithaca for the Apple Harvest Festival, and then…who knows! The sky’s the limit, folks!
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View from a Saturday Morning
The Terrible Dee-oh-gee
Cane is a terrible dog. I know he doesn’t look like a terrible dog, but he is.
Today when I got home from work, he was outside with The Wife as she was hanging laundry on the line. I came outside and he did the whole “Yay! You’re home!” thing, and then he ran a bit and did his business in the corner out by the fence and ran some more and pressed up against me for pets and ear-rubs and all that sort of jazz. Then he went back inside, and I came in with The Wife. We chatted a minute or two about our days, and then I noticed Cane standing near the refrigerator. See, when he comes back inside from doing something, often times he’ll get a dog biscuit. Not always, but probably most times. We keep the biscuits atop the fridge. So I noted him standing there grinning at me, and I fetched him a biscuit, which he happily took off to his bed and munched on.
Whereupon The Wife starts laughing and says, “He just totally played you.”
I asked, “What are you talking about?”
And she replies, “I gave him a biscuit two minutes before you did! He just had two biscuits in two minutes!”
I looked at Cane, shocked at his conniving behavior. He seemed unmoved by my outrage.
And that is why Cane is a terrible, terrible, terrible dog.
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Does whatever a spider can!
One of my important weekly tasks at The Store is running our generator load test. This is when I activate our store’s generator and let it run the store’s emergency systems for a half hour or so, just to make sure it’s doing its thing correctly. The generator is located in one of the two power houses, which is an enclosed machine room actually on the roof. The power houses are not sealed against the outside, and therefore during the summer months, the power houses can — and usually do — become home to a lot of spiders.
Now, I like spiders a lot. I think they’re nifty and they do important work by eating flies and whatnot. (My admiration and respect for spiders vanishes utterly if one actually manages to get on me, though. If that happens, it’s Squishing Time.) There was a particularly big spider in there this morning, and while sometimes when there get to be too many of them I’ll knock down their webs, this one I decided to let go for a while as he/she was spinning a web.
But of course I documented the activity photographically. Here is Phil*, in action!
*I always dub specific spiders “Phil”, in honor of this clip from Friends.
And yes, I’m aware that this might have actually been a Philippa. I have no idea how to tell, though.
