Make 2019 a Year of Self-Improvement. . .

A final vintage greeting card for the end of the festive season. This time, an old New Year's card featuring a couple of gnomes in a snowy January landscape.

Happy New Year from all of us at Classic Style! Hard to believe that it is already 2019. As I have no doubt remarked elsewhere, it seems like we were just worrying about what all of the coffee makers and toasters might do at midnight on January 1st, 2000! Terminator in the kitchen, or something like it.

I recall waking up to a quiet, gray, cold, and snowy morning in Trondheim, Norway that day, somewhat amused at all of the angst and worry about Y2K that had occupied people everywhere in the months before the end of the century. As the old Doors' tune goes, people are strange. And it is indeed odd what we get ourselves all worked up about.

But onward into 2019 everyone!

Let's make this year one for self-improvement. Keep that aspiration small and modest to make achieving your aim more likely though. It might be something like increasing your knowledge about subjects that interest you by reading one new book a month. It might be reducing that waistline by careful diet and exercise. Say, losing two or three pounds a month. It might be becoming more informed about the world through reading the daily news in a traditional newspaper, magazines, or online. Your resolution might, on the other hand, be to polish your table manners a bit.

Improving yourself might include finally signing off of the perpetual stubble and messy hair look at 35 and making the choice to don creased dress pants, leather loafers, and a sports jacket two or three days a week even if your workplace is t-shirt casual. Start dressing for the job you want rather than the one you have now in other words. Double-breasted suits, neckties, and starched white shirts aren't always necessary, but looking more like a capable adult who can make things happen and get things done rather than a drifting 20-something who cannot quite make the leap from part-time college barista to grown-up life -- 'adulting' seems to be the currently popular term -- won't hurt you either, men.

Whatever form your self-improvement might take in the next twelve months, recognize what about yourself might need changing, and have the steely resolve to achieve that change. While we may not be able to change the world around us, we can certainly change things about ourselves. Anything is possible, but it all starts with the individual, how that person wants to shape his or her life, and the resulting choices made.

Happy New Year!

-- 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

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