Green/Pants/Training Week Day 5

The End of Work...for a While--Friday, 7/10/15

It was clear to me that on my last day of this training, on the last day of work before our vacation, I had to wear jeans, and I wanted to get this summery tweed blazer into the outfit too.

Erin put these items together with a graphic T (with an appropriate Illinois theme for a Chicago resident) and a handsome dog.  Couldn't do anything about the dog, but I found my tan Eddie Bauer top with the lavender/pink/peach floral graphic that would be perfect!  I took it off the rack and remembered, Oh shit, this fucker faded badly on the back after only three wears.  While this is fine when worn underneath a blazer, I didn't really want to commit to leaving the blazer on all day if it got warm in the afternoon.  So I noted this combination to myself as an option for the fall and moved on to find something else.

From looplooks.net

I liked the idea of flowers, so I picked out this floral scarf with both the coral/pink color of the blazer and the navy of the dark jeans--I liked it as a bridge piece.  Then I chose a solid coral shell to match the blazer.  I normally would have gone with bright pink or blue flats, to match the scarf, or maybe a patterned shoe, like navy stripes or leopard print, but I decided to pick up the tan from the blazer with my new (impeccable) thrifted smoking slippers.  The final outfit was very different from Erin's look but it works for me.

*Bright pink/tan tweed blazer (thrifted, Chico's), $6.99/wear+
Coral shell (Nordstrom), $13.00/wear
Navy/pink floral scarf (Kohls), $5.59/wear
Bootcut jeans (thrifted, Bandolinoblu), $1.67/wear
*Taupe smoking slippers (thrifted, Gap), $9.99/wear

Man, you can tell it was winter (i.e., March) when I took this photo of my outfit staging area in my office.  Look at that line of tall boots!  This dressing rack is a critical component to my getting to work on-time and stress-free in the morning.  Every weekend I plan all my outfits for the week in advance, try them on, and then hang up the garments on the rack.  See the shoe boxes next to the rack?  I have a good selection of shoe boxes that I keep for putting the shoes, jewelry, etc., that accompany each outfit in.  I line up the shoe boxes full of goodies next to my sewing table, in order of the outfits they belong to, so I can pick up the shoe box, grab the clothes from the rack, and get dressed with little fuss or muss.  (The boxes in this photo are my stack of empties.)  You can really see my love of stripes here (plus some paisley, polka dots, leopard, and floral print for good measure).

And yes, that is a bunny on the bookshelf.  Of course it is.

In other news...Muahahahahahaha, I'm on vacation!

I went out in a triumph, too, having cracked a really tough nut during our training work session.   I consulted with our trainer, telling her what I wanted to do, and that I could think of two approaches to it.  It was a pretty great feeling when she was like, Yes, absolutely, those are the two ways I would approach the problem.  And then for the more difficult second part, she was like, Hmm, let me think about this one while you work out the first part.  She showed me the best she could come up with, which was unfortunately showing too much data in the view.  Then I thought for a minute and realized, hey, I don't have to figure out how to tell the tool to select this particular thing as the comparison year; I can let the user pick any comparison year they want and execute it just like I did in the first part.  It worked great!

I also learned a critical technique in our training that I started to use to bring in some other data into my view--I don't have this one fully working yet, but of course it seems that I'm always trying to do the hardest things, so I accept that this might take several attempts to get right.  I overheard the trainer today telling someone, Well, what you're trying to do is hard, and the person responded, You want hard, you should see what Sally is trying to do!  The fact that I've actually accomplished parts two and three of my Grand Fantasy Project today, starting from a blank file, makes me feel like a rock star.  (I had finished the first part prior to the training.)

Thing from around the web:

It is not my motherfucking job to teach you how to be nice to fat people.

I just did a load of laundry and man, I've been exercising a lot lately because there's a ton of exercise stuff in there.  Yay for me.  I forgot to check in this week on my LifeStyle Challenge--oops.  I guess I'll do a double summary this weekend (not there's much to report).