The Perfect Cool Weather Casual Shirt. . .

One of the current crop of rugby shirts on offer from Land's End for Fall 2018. The photo has been "borrowed" from the LE website.

When the weather turns chilly, there is nothing like a rugby shirt to dress up those more casual moments once you come home and change out of the day's creased dress pants, blazer or sports jacket, oxford cloth button down or similar, and remove the ol' necktie and (hopefully) leather dress shoes or loafers. Best if all, rugby jerseys seem tailor-made for lazy weekends. . . Assuming anyone stills allows themselves to have lazy weekends in 2018. Heck, rugby tops might even work in certain business casual environments, and certainly for those occasional Saturday mornings when when drop by the office for a few hours to catch up on the week's work.

In any case, I've worn and enjoyed casual shirts similar to the Land's End number pictured above, from roughly September each year through to the following April, for close to 40 years now. But why rugby shirts exactly?

In short, they are comfortable, warmer than a long-sleeved t-shirt, but less bulky than many sweaters. They also have an actual collar making them a bit dressier than, say, a gray sweatshirt, which makes all of us look more pulled together. What's more, they are tough and last a long time. And rugby tops just look good. Certainly better than the now ubiquitous pilled fleece.

It's also worth keeping in mind that rugby tops coordinate well with jeans, khaki chinos, tan corduroy pants, and even shorts for those cooler summer, late spring, or early fall days. In those more private moments at home with the door closed, they even manage to elevate grey sweatpants a few notches if that happens to be your go-to (albeit inescapably frumpy) choice for the lower half.

All of which is to say you needn't be embarrassed to answer the front door if someone knocks, and you actually choose to answer. Likewise, you'll look more pulled together if you step outside to get the mail, walk your dog to and from the park, or make a quick run around the corner to pick up that half-gallon of milk that you might have forgotten on the way home. It's hard to miss with rugby shirts, in other words, when it comes to cool (-er) weather casual gear.

-- Heinz-Ulrich

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Up North Style. . .

Bad Dad makes a friend. YMP and Bad Dad on the shores of Lake Michigan. Or was that Crystal Lake? The Grand Duchess takes a selfie in her kayak. How NOT to impress the girls sunning themselves along the river. YMP and Bad Dad kayaking on the Platte River headed toward Loon Lake. J ust back from a week in Northern Michigan in a charming and spacious house on the banks of the Betsie River outside of Thompsonville. A largely pleasant seven days despite some challenging episodes with the Young Master, who has picked up some very questionable habits and language from his friends in the 8th Grade during the school year just ended. But otherwise, we enjoyed ourselves and contemplated remaining for a few days longer since the house was available. In the end, we decided to return home as planned originally since neither my wife, nor I wanted to spend the remaining days chained to our computers in Zoom meetings from our vacation destination. I actually managed to leave the laptop and ip

Mid-June Thursday Style. . .

A nother pretty typical variation on the theme for late spring, summer, and very early fall. I'm a huge fan of Madras and have several such shirts in the seasonal rotation. Lightweight, exceedingly comfortable, and even dressy when pressed and tucked in, which is the usual way of things here at Totleigh in the Wold. Now, if I had my druthers, I'd still rather be skiing the trails in the upper half of "The Mitten" (of Michigan), in the Upper Peninsula, or Ontario. But summers ain't so bad either, and I'd look pretty funny walking around in cross-country ski attire during June. -- Heinz-Ulrich

A Lazy Saturday at the End of June. . .

A sleepy first half of the weekend here at Totleigh. Warmer and quite humid ahead of an approaching cool front here in Mid-Michigan. Perfect for yet another pair of chino shorts an a seersucker shirt -- tucked in of course -- with the usual leather deck shoes and ribbon belt. Otherwise, not much accomplished beyond a page or so of writing and monkeying around with audio settings for an upcoming podcast episode. However, I was not completely useless yesterday! I made a huge fruit salad for dinner, which the Grand Duchess and I enjoyed a short while later at the table on the back porch. The Young Master, as is his wont on Saturday evenings, took his dinner on a tray in the TV room upstairs where he whiled away a couple of hours on Flight Simulator, flying some sort of commercial airliner to some destination across the Atlantic or Pacific. I would have loved that sort of technology at about nine or 10 way back during the late 1970s, aka The Stone Age. As it is, my sister and

Classic Style

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