Month: October 2023

I genuinely don’t know when it happened that I stopped buying clothing in person. But my jeans have all come from LC King in Bristol, Tennessee for years now – eight years? Maybe? Everything that goes on the top half of my body comes from American Giant – T-shirts of all types, polos, work shirts, flannel. Outerwear has largely come in person – but not my M65, or my travel blazers. Socks from Bombas, drawers from Made Here (and how am I gonna replenish that) – at some point I stopped buying anything but shoes in person.

About that.

I’ve actually bought most of my shoes online lately. Not the Solovairs from Camden, obviously, but the Croc-like Kanes or the loafers and chukkas from Rancourt or the roper boots which are en route from Tecovas as we speak. I’ve replenished the plastic Birkenstocks online. Basically, since before the onset of the pandemic, my entire wardrobe has transitioned to what I can buy online rather than purchasing anything in person.

That’s a lot to think about. The idea that I would buy Western boots online seems like the last straw. The idea that I would buy Western boots at all seems a bit outlandish, but bear with me: if it’s socks season, I would like to have slip-on options, and that means either wearing out my Solovair Chelsea boots faster than I’d like or wearing the steel-toed Blundstones, and I need something in between. And I do have the old black cowboy boots I bought in 2001, but my original Nashville boots don’t fit any more (and were a gift from someone I’d just as soon be shut of) and I figured, why not – they’re good value for money and well reviewed, and they’re roper boots, the sort you muck around the ranch in rather than the kind that you preen around Broadway in Nashville wearing. I don’t have a hat to go with them, and won’t, because the gray derby hat is much closer to authentic western wear than some gigantic George Strait number.

At some point, I feel like I need the boots and the blazer to bolster my look. I feel different in the boots and the blazers. Closer to how I was in DC, when I had confidence in my ability and the respect of my peers and management. It’s been too long, but maybe I can still get back to that a little bit – or at least look a cut above while doing it. Ten years ago I was actually trying to have a more polished look for my 40s, and then it all went to hell with work being a misery and the world collapsing and by the time Covid arrived, I was happy enough to rock the “upscale vagrant/mildly alcoholic beachcomber” aesthetic.

Maybe this is just a case of “dress as the person you want to be, not the person you’ve let yourself become.” I don’t know. All I can tell you is that it’s finally (almost) outerwear season, and the quarter of the year in which i can reliably dress in my preferred manner. I’m hoping to really get into it and enjoy it before the highs in the 80s come back and bring another miserable year along with them.

* Not much to say about what’s going on in Israel, except to affirm that this genuinely is their 9/11: a complete intelligence failure occasioned by having the worst possible person in charge, who will now politicize the tragedy for political gain and self-preservation in a country that already doesn’t think very highly of him. As someone else said, if Bibi Netanyahu is going to be turfed out soon as the war’s over, how incentivized do you think he is to conclude the war?

* You can do the wrong thing for the right reason, but that doesn’t make it the right thing, and you’d better be prepared to live with the consequences. Too few people seem to grasp this.

* Looking back over 2022’s entries, and having just come from breakfast-for-lunch at the local spot I waited months for on, I am surprised at how much of the stuff I wanted I finally got. Sure, the ID4 was always going to arrive if you waited long enough, but the local spot did eventually open for lunch, dinner, brunch, and now has outdoor dining, breakfast for lunch and takeout/delivery options. It’s going to be the Sunday pint spot before long now that it’s dark at night, which is going to be absolutely delightful.

* I also did eventually get Stories in Signal, and a Mastodon instance or two, but none of those ever got any meaningful uptake. The one thing that has launched and worked for me is Bluesky, and who even knows how long or how well it will continue to work, but it’s the most gratifying social media experience in a decade. Then again, it came pre-populated with the EDSBS Commentariat, a whole group of similar cultural and chronological sensibilities, so the failure of more IRL friends to latch on has not been a dealbreaker. It’s embarrassing how much battery life it accounts for on my phone.

* Speaking of batteries, my watch remains devoutly attached to that 81% battery capacity, which has been the rated capacity for months now. I smell a rat, but I haven’t had time to press the issue, and I definitely won’t be able to do anything with it until mid-November at the earliest. Gonna be a lot of days in low power mode, feels like, but until I can get a phone plan that will allow for cellular, replacing it altogether is foolishness.

* I don’t do well with warm weather at the best of times, but having it touch 90 degrees in October is just insulting. I know October is the summer month of record in San Francisco, but there is no reason I should ever have to deal with a 9 in the temperature during college football season, and I am entitled to a refund on my mortgage – or at least my property tax – for putting up with Alabama temperatures at California rates. Maybe going away for a week to a place with actual cold will help reset things.

* Because I need a reset. I know that 2024 is going to be hard, to the point that I’m considering asking to go back on medication – as late as possible, obviously, because I’d like to think that the holiday season, cooler weather, shorter days and the tiny village I’ve constructed around myself are enough to hold me until January or February. But if you can’t see any realistic way for things to get any better, you may as well do what is necessary to keep functioning in the face of a reasonable expectation of catastrophe.

* Next year is twenty years since My Buddy Vince first Sez something. That’s a lot to cope with. Of which.