Blue on Blue

Autumn has finally hit Southern California with a vengeance. I'm getting quite a bit of use of my wool suits now. I only have one wool suit and one wool-blend jacket, which doesn't quite do the trick...will have to look for more.

On cold days when I have to suit up, but not need to be quite as formal, I turn to my trusty Diane von Furstenburg blue wool-blend shift dress. After wearing it so many times, I can say that it is a very worthy investment piece (though luckily I didn't have to spent too much money on it). You've seen it before in a more casual form. Now I'm wearing it for work as intended, but definitely not in a typical way that one would envision as a work outfit:



[DvF shift dress, Mike & Chris fleece blazer, Capezio boots (many years old, still going strong).]

I've remixed this dress before (though not captured on "film") with black blazers for court and various cardigans for the office. This time, I needed something warmer for a deposition in a cold hotel conference room and strong, cold winds on the way there and back. In fact, the winds have been strong enough to knock out power in various places, including (lucky me) my neighborhood. Since the blazers that would have looked good with the dress were not all that warm, I reached for the fleece blazer that I got roughly a year or two ago for $10 at a sample sale. To my surprise, it worked surprisingly well as a tone-on-tone match. The peplum shape of the jacket also couples well with the slim profile of the dress. I think I can actually wear this to court next time if I wore a pair of pumps instead of boots.

Speaking of powerful winds that knock out power, the night before the deposition was a rather surreal experience. I came home late from work, which was bad enough, only to be further frustrated by the fact that a) I couldn't get into the garage because it was power-operated; b) there was no hot water, and the cold water was even colder than usual; c) I had to get up at the crack of dawn the next day to move my car before the towing patrol came around; d) there was no microwave to heat up my dinner on an already-late night; e) since the pilot on the stove was electrically-dependent, I had to light the stove the old-fashion way; f) [insert gripe here about the lack of modern conveniences]. Since all the lights were out and I left my brightly-lit cell phone at home that day (yup, lucky me again), I literally had to feel my way up the stairs and then back to my apartment unit.

It was frustrating to come home to something like this when I had a lot more work to do before the next day, but it was also quite nice to spend the night in candlelight. The entire apartment complex was eerily quiet--no TVs, no radios, no whirling noise from various equipment...and no human voices, as people presumably found other places to stay for the night. Although I didn't sleep much that night, I slept very soundly. It's a reminder to me that in an electronics-laden world, slowing down once in a while is a good thing.