Miscellaneous Outfits

There's no nice unifying theme to these outfits other than "Things Sally Wore Recently."

11/1 - Shell Top

New items:
**Aqua and navy shell design top from Nordstrom (in the same style as the bird shirt at the bottom of this post)
**Navy cardigan from Kohl's

11/3 - Summer Pieces, Fall Colors

I don't think any of these items are new, but this is the brown cardigan I mentioned in the previous post (with the purplish animal top).  And yes, it is the brother of the navy cardigan above.  I got this basic cardigan from Kohl's in navy, brown, olive, ... I can't remember if there's another color or not.  I really, really like this style of cardigan and think I purchased smart multiples rather than doing a "fear of missing out."  I wear cardigans most months of the year, and this simple open-front design feels current and adaptable (and works with pretty much anything underneath).

11/4 - Introducing the Lands End T-shirt, Long-Sleeved Version

These t-shirts are long...nice for tucking in, and a good length for jeans, but really too long to wear over a skirt.  I tucked it in for lack of better alternatives, but I felt that the thin waistband on the skirt didn't look quite right with the shirt tucked in -- I need to get a comfy, thick elastic belt in brown to wear in these situations.  I like how my black one works.

New item:
**Long-sleeved knit shirt from Lands End

Brown Pants Debut

As part of my big Kohl's purchase over Labor Day, I got these light brown business casual pants that I have worn two ways so far.  They are a "curvy fit" style, which means that I can get them to fit comfortably over the hips/butt/thighs without a couple inch gap at the waistband, always a bonus. 

10/30 - Bright and Cozy

New items:
**Brown pants by Apt 9 (Kohl's brand)
**Bright pink cardigan (thrifted, Gap)
**White gather-neck knit top (thrifted, ?)

11/6 - Animal

New item:
**Purplish brown/tan animal print drape-neck top by Anne Klein (this is the same style as the teal top from my suit post)

When it got cool in the evening, I added a long brown cardigan over it.

Suitable Interview Attire

It's been a while since I've posted any new clothes photos, but I've continued wearing new things and photographing my outfits.  To avoid overwhelming you with two weeks worth of stuff, I'm dividing up this set of photos into what I hope are semi-coherent groups to post in the coming days.

Because my mom asked about this just today (and because this is a Big Week on the job search front), I thought I'd start with my interview suits.  I have a jacket, pants, skirt, and dress all from the same suiting separates line (Tahari).  And amazingly, other than having the pants hemmed to my (low, about 2") heel height, I didn't need any alterations.

Here's the pant suit.  This is what I have worn most often.  (This specific photo is from yesterday.)

It looks kind of bizarrely grey and almost tweedy in this photo, but really, it's just a flat black material.  The shoes are (relatively) comfortable heels in the Cole Haan Nike Air line.

Here's a close-up of the top and necklace (both purchased with the suit).  I love this drape neck top (Anne Klein) and ended up purchasing it in two more colors later (on sale!).

Here's how it looks when I put my new (thifted) Gallery coat / Professor McGonagall from Harry Potter costume on over it.  See how excellently long it is!

When I was not at my interview, I wore the top in a business casual manner for the rest of the day.  (Everything's better with comfy and lovely leopard print smoking slippers.  Oh, and when I saw this post today, I was like, Wow, those look just like my shoes -- wait, they are the exact same ones.  Now if only I had her awesome scarf....)

And here is the skirt suit version (that I wore today) with a pair of Fitzwell heels (a little higher, a different shape, not patent -- for whatever reason, I liked the Cole Haan shoes with the pant suit and these with the skirt, so I got both).  Seriously, WTF is going on with the color on these things?  Do I need to clean my mirror??  Anyway, it looks quite normal in color and texture in person, but you're going to have to trust me on that.  But I like the fit (which of course is hard to tell with my goofy photo-in-the-mirror shot), and I think the little pleats on the skirt adds a bit of interest without being too flashy.

Here's how I wore the shirt and necklace (both also bought with the suit on my big Macy's trip using their personal shopping service) for the rest of the day.  I know, it's winter in Snow City, but when it's sunny, our apartment gets really warm.  It was 73 this afternoon in here and I had to open the patio door to cool it down.  (It also was legitimately just warmer today in general than it was yesterday, and we should be enjoying this warmer -- i.e., highs in the 40's to 50 -- for the next several days, so yay for that.)

And I think with this outfit I get to note two previously unworn items!
New items:
**Paisley drape neck top by Jones New York
**Black pleated skirt (thifted, Loft -- I bought this in April, people!)

Moving Right Along

I had an in-person interview this afternoon at a non-profit; it went fine, and I should hear back late next week to find out whether I will be advancing to the second round of interviews.

I have an in-person interview tomorrow morning at an education company.

I have an in-person "second round" (as they called it in the email; the first was by phone) interview at a for-profit university.

I have an HR screening on Monday at another non-profit.

So things are moving along with the job search.  Who knows what will happen with any of these specific positions, but it's just good to have things in the pipeline.

The Interview Coat

We had our first snow last week, which made me think about needing an interview coat.  I have two in-person interviews scheduled for this coming week and one more that I'm waiting to hear on the time.

Tuesday - First interview with a non-profit organization.  I had a phone HR screen but haven't spoken to the hiring manager yet.

Wednesday - First interview with an education scoring company.  I applied to this one a month ago and didn't hear back.  Because it's a pretty stat-heavy job (of a psychometric variety), I wasn't surprised not to get a call.  But I got a call from HR out of the blue to schedule an in-person interview without an HR screen.  This is the first time I've gotten an interview invite without one that was not a state job.  (And only for one of the state jobs have I not had an HR screen before the interview.)  I can see that state hiring is more old-school overall, and because they publish the salary range with the job opening, they do not need to screen people for salary expectations.  I am still surprised that a private company would not try to get salary expectations from me before the interview.

Thursday or Friday - We haven't finalized the timing, but I have been invited for what the HR person described as a "second interview" with a for-profit university.  I had a phone interview with the hiring manager, and I guess they are counting that as a first interview.

This is going to be my most interview-filled week yet, and I'm feeling more encouraged (cautiously) about the job search at the moment (of course).

Anyway, I realized that although I have a lot of different coats, I do not have one that is job interview compatible, and it's only going to get colder as my job search continues.  The coats are too casual, too "made for serious cold weather" (e.g., down puffer), too colorful, and/or otherwise just not what I'm looking for in an interview coat.  My only wool coat -- which to me seems like the appropriate style/fabrication -- is a great bright red coat that to me is both too colorful and perhaps a bit too casual for the situation.  So I decided I wanted to get a boring but high quality black (or dark grey -- Robert has a lovely dark grey wool coat for work) wool coat that would not have the interviewers referring to me as "the woman with the [insert distinctive coat description here] coat."

I did some looking online, but don't have enough time to order something and have it come in, so I was facing having to go to stores this weekend to shop.  I thought I might try Goodwill first (they always have a bunch of coats, basically all year round) and Robert suggested that we try the two Goodwill "boutique" stores in the area.  The Goodwill people are smart -- they take the nicest, priciest, etc., clothes and put them in these smaller boutique stores where they charge more like consignment store prices than thrift store prices.  So you can get a good deal on a higher-end item but you're not going to find anything cheap (in price or quality).

We went to the closest one first by driving down University this morning...one hour before the football game started.  So we hit the game traffic and it took us a while to get past it.  I had not seen the stadium before, and it was a complete mob scene in the blocks around it.

When we got to the store, at first I thought it was super-tiny, but because it was built into what used to be a garage or something, it was roomier than it first appeared because it had multiple rooms.  Robert found the coats right away and within about 10-15 minutes, I had found two good coats.  The first is a lighter-weight coat with a zip-in liner that is black, in a classic shape, and (something I like) very long.  I was not familiar with the Gallery brand but it appears to be a mid-priced brand.  The coat was in such good condition that it basically looks new.  The second coat is a classic, very long black 100% wool coat -- vintage from Alorna, also in immaculate condition.  I wasn't sure which one to get, so I got both.  I don't own a long wool coat of any kind (my red one is butt-length) nor a lighter-weight coat that does not read outdoorsy or sporty.  At the checkout, I picked up a necklace that I could not resist (and that I look forward to showing you in a later post). 

The total for the two coats and the necklace was under $200.  Now, I could have gotten two coats new from Macy's or Kohl's for about that price (or more, depending on how good the sale is), but the quality would not have been as high and it would have taken a lot longer to pick them out.  (The time thing was a particular issue because Robert's getting sick with a cold and I wanted to get him home as soon as possible.)

I wore a blazer to the store so that I could try coats on over it, and I'm glad I did.  I tried on an absolutely stunning Brook Brothers coat that quite surprisingly fit perfectly in the waist/hips but was too narrow in the shoulders with the blazer on (I usually find the hips/ass the place that's sometimes too small), so I had to let it go.  (Oh, it occurs to me suddenly that the previous owner might have had the coat tailored to fit narrow shoulders, which would explain why it seemed so atypically pear shaped.)

So I am now covered for cold weather interviewing and I have checked out a cool store that I want to look at more closely at a time I don't have a sick companion along.

The Job Market, Continued

Mom sent me this post about the stupid processes used by HR departments to find the perfect applicant for jobs.  I also liked this interview with the author of Why Good People Can't Find Jobs.

I have requested Why Good People Can't Find Jobs from my public library.  I liked the list of books with titles that came up on my search.

Liked it so much that I spent a few minutes going backward several pages to look at more of these Why books.

There was a lot of competition for best title, but I think I have to go with this one:  Why Fum'th into Fight.  It's a musical recording of a 16th century hymn apparently.

Runner-up (and I suppose #1 in the Book category) was Why Forums?, published in 1937 by the American Association for Adult Education.  It sounds like a 2013 marketing book about the importance of brand ambassadors engaging in rich social media interactions with customers.

Meanwhile, I continue applying for jobs and getting nibbles.  Today I arranged an in-person interview for next week and applied for a few jobs.  I have a couple more I'd like to apply to this evening.

BBC Mini Series

By a quirk of my Netflix queue, I started watching two BBC mini series last week.

First, Robert and I are watching "I, Claudius," a 1970's production based on the book by Robert Graves.  (I didn't remember that there was a book of this title until we saw the intro to the series; I read the book about 10 years ago and don't remember anything about it.  A couple days ago, I had the thought that I did remember something that was going to happen later in the story, but then realized I was confusing a scene from a book about Cicero I read about 5 years ago.)  The series stars Derek Jacobi (who will always be the monk from the Cafael mystery series) as Claudius.  There were a few other familiar-looking faces, but I'm not really up on British actors of that period.  However, one guy kept reminding me of someone, and after a bit, I realized he was reminiscent in manner, if not in appearance, of Brian Blessed, who played the king in "Black Adder."  I mentioned this to Robert and let it go, but then a day or so later, I thought, If there are only 50 British actors at a given time, and this actor reminds me of someone and is of the right time period, it probably is that person.  And indeed it was.  Looking up the cast list on Wikipedia informed me that another Extremely Well-Known British Actor will be appearing later in the series.  I will keep mum for now about this individual's identity so Robert can be appropriately surprised when he or she makes the first appearance.

UPDATE:  In  my 50 British Actor mode, I forgot to mention that when Robert and I first started watching it, we were somewhat unsure about it.  I was unhappy about the lack of subtitles for a British show, and there was something about the feel of the show that seemed weird.  But luckily, the show stars a bunch of classically-trained actors speaking Queen's English with the excellent enunciation and projection you would expect of stage actors, so after we turned off the nearby air filter and turned up the TV volume, we were able to understand 99% of what they were saying.  As for the weird feel, after a bit I realized that it seemed weird to me in exactly the way certain British and Australian programs I saw in childhood seemed weird to me -- that particular look and feel that comes with programs that are staged, lit, shot, and edited as though they are simply filming a stage play, not making a TV program/movie.  Once I thought of it as a film of a play, the weird feeling abated.

As a bonus, it is fun for me to continue my Roman history-lesson-through-television that started with the HBO show "Rome" -- the events of "I, Claudius" take place after, but not terribly long after, the events of "Rome."

Second, I am watching the recent mini series "The Hour," about an investigative news program at the BBC -- love triangles, murder, spies, intrigue, absolutely gorgeous dresses (I basically want to own every single thing the news producer Bel wears).  It stars Dominic West (who was so totally believable playing an American police detective in the best TV show of all time, "The Wire"), Ben Whishaw (whom I remember from the film "Perfume"), and a female actor who did not seem familiar to me, Romola Garai (though I have seen a few things she's been in).  In 50 British Actor news, I was happy to see the actor who played the pathologist George on many seasons of "Midsomer Murders" in a bit role.

Speaking of "Midsomer Murders," I think the police drama "Waking the Dead" (about a cold case unit) is joining that program as a heavily target-rich environment for 50 British Actor sightings.  Last week, I saw the pathologist Frankie from the first seasons of "Waking the Dead" and the balding Mr. Mosley from "Downton Abbey" as a married couple who owned a bar on "Midsomer Murders."  I also saw previously-discussed 50 British Actor Ronan Vibert, who I had already seen on "Midsomer Murders," playing the friend of a murder suspect on "Waking the Dead."