Friday, August 23, 2024

All fall down.

Temperatures have been in the low 50s overnight this week, and you know what that means! 


I'm mostly past the age where my clothes have to be seasonal, beyond the point of survival. My last Hawaiian shirt went to the charity box as a gift to my wife. Now it's someone else's problem. Everything else is just layers. 

But then there's plaid. I have a short-sleeve plaid shirt, but a part of me will always think of plaid as being the color scheme for thick cotton shirts, thus the kind that you leave in the closet until the first day of autumn. And not crazy colorful plaid, either -- they don't wear that stuff in Quito or Honolulu, you know. I mean plaid based on black + one other color.

The sad thing is, that with the loss of my Hawaiian shirt, I only have one other really summery number, a very bright blue that's quite airy and good for the heat. But it also must be ironed after washing, or it looks like it was balled up under the car seat from September to May. That's an issue because 1) I'm lazy and 2) the dog is scared of the steam iron. That hissing really bothers him. Consequently I have worn that blue shirt once this summer, and at the rate things are going it may not come out of the closet again. 

There's another problem with happy colors, and that's you just look dumb wearing them if your countenance is very serious. I used to wear lighthearted ties to work sometimes for that very reason -- to remind me that if I went around grumpy with, say, my Looney Tunes tie, I would look like a fool. And then I got sacked. And then no one was wearing ties anymore. And then I was working from home. So now I just go around grumpy anyway, and wear dark colors. 

This is a lot more than I intended to say about clothes, and I apologize if I've wasted your time. If it made you grumpy, put on a Hawaiian shirt and smile. There's still almost a month of summer to go. 

7 comments:

  1. The other day it got really cool, the night time temperature suddenly fell from the upper 70s to mid 50s. So it felt like about 62 in the house when I went to bed.

    Over the many years, I have been gifted from time to time with flannel pajamas. Our little cool snap reminded me why I never wear them. None of the shirt buttons will stay closed. Different brands, different styles, different size buttons, all have the same problem. Why, why, why won't flannel pajama shirts stay buttoned?

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    1. Flannel pajamas sound miserably hot. Maybe they unbutton on purpose so you can stay cooler. :P

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  2. I love plaid. A good plaid flannel shirt even added a bit of Celtic mayhem to punk rock garb, especially tied around your waist. Back when I had a waist. ;>

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  3. When I was stationed in Misawa Japan in the late '70s-early '80s Pendleton flannel shirts were de rigueur for cool/cold weather off-duty wear. Most were toward the red end of the spectrum. Oh, wow, Pendleton is still there https://www.pendleton-usa.com/
    With regards to flannel pajamas maybe they won't stay buttoned 'cause they're lookin' for action.

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  4. Its getting cool here in coastal Maine - winter is coming! You like plaid, try a kilt. I wear mine every once in a while and while NO ONE ever notices me in pants, they ALL notice me in a kilt (especially women).

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  5. Just got my new LL Bean plaid short sleeve shirt. What the heck is with all these new fangled "untucked" style shirts. Sure,k if you've been laboring all day your shirt might come untucked, but you should retuck it when entering polite society. I want tuckable s.s. shirts with two pockets. Looks like this coming week is back to southern August weather.

    rbj13

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  6. I've gotten quite tired of the plaid shirt trend - give me a solid color any day. I do have a couple of plaid flannels for winter, but they don't get used all that often. Since I work from home I've found quarter-zip pullovers to be comfortable yet look nice enough for video calls. I have probably 12 of them that I rotate through.

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