Spring semester grades are in!

Yours truly hanging 'round the office at home today after tallying and submitting final grades with some classic jazz numbers playing on the ol' computer.  Ain't YouTube a great thing?

Final grades for the spring semester are in, and I'm enjoying that delightful lazy feeling that arrives shortly afterwards at the close of yet another university term.  Being able to do all of this online (instead of with the old-fashioned paper final grade forms) certainly helps.  

The attire in today's photograph is pretty typical around here between the end of April and the end of August.  The weather needs to be warmer before I break out the Madras shirts though.  The Land's End cotton knit shirt dates from the spring of 1998 when I was still attending grad school in Madison, Wisconsin.  It has actually made a few different visits to Norway with me through the intervening years now that I think about it.  The shorts and dock-siders are more recent vintage though.  

These are the kinds of items that the men in my extended family have worn during the evenings, weekends, and vacations each late spring and summer for many decades, and, to some extent, they still do. . .  unless mowing the grass or working in the vegetable garden.  Even my Welsh professor stepfather has climbed aboard and lives in these sorts of clothes at my parents' home in the Yucatan (Mexico) whenever they are there.  It's simply too warm and humid much of the year for anything else unless you happen to be in the swimming pool, in an air-conditioned bedroom, or an El Norte blows in cooler, dryer air.

While clothes like these, strangely, have their detractors, they are nevertheless relaxed, comfortable gear that looks equally presentable at home, for a quick trip to the nearby corner convenience store for that forgotten container of milk, or for strolling along the beach on the Outer Banks of North Carolina during a breezy summer's evening.  If you are looking to take your casual warm weather style to another level, I urge you to give this kind of attire a try.

-- Heinz-Ulrich