Snowy Mid-December Style. . .

Yours truly earlier this morning on the way to our local quick & greasy breakfast haunt with the Grand Duchess. Eggs, ham, and hashed brown potatoes that are to die for along with a bottomless cup of coffee. And now I will ski some of that off just around the corner and up the road from our house.

A more casual approach to everyday style here recently since the end of classes last week. Just some final grading to finish in the next couple of days, and then posting course grades to the requisite site by the deadline early next week. And then let the peevish, whiny emails from disgruntled students begin! Tiny violins as my wife says.

In the meantime, various corduroy jeans, comfy old Norwegian sweaters (two of early 90s vintage from L.L. Bean and one from Dale of Norway that I've had since Christmas of 2000), ski socks, and the ol' trusty L.L. bean duck shoes have been getting a lot of wear here at home. The scarf in the photograph is an old J. Peterman item given to me for Christmas by Mom and Stepdad about 20 years ago. I wear end enjoy it every year from about the end of October to early April.

The long red stocking cap (actually made in Norway too), on the other hand, is something that I purchased man years ago at an annual winter festival held each February in Røros, Norway not far from the Swedish border. Never, ever have I been so cold in my life as I was on that day. It really was a can't feel your toes and fingertips kind of cold (yeeees, we were bundled up with heavy coats, hats, and gloves). More like Scott of the Antarctic than a fun day out with friends.

Somewhere, there is a photograph of yours truly and a friend with our sock-feet perched on the hearth of a large fireplace, with a lovely warm fire inside, in a bookstore on one of the main walking streets of Røros. We ducked inside to have something to drink and warm up. Well below 0 degrees Fahrenheit on that particular day. And now I am off to dress for some cross-country (Nordic) skiing.

-- Heinz-Ulrich

Comments

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

Search This Blog