joe cool

Today felt like a sort of dress down day; business casual is what I think is the formal name. At a university we don't have dress down days because if you are a faculty member any day can be a dress down day. Since I have been an administrator for the past six years, I tend to dress more like a regular business person than I did when I was on the faculty.

But, as I wrote above, today I felt like I could eschew the suit, wear a pair of decent dress pants, and a sweater. So, that is what I yanked from my walk-in closet.

A word here about walk in closets. When we did our home renovation in 2011 I agreed to including a walk in closet. I thought it was a good idea, but did not feel as strongly about it as, say, the bay window we had installed or the open feel of what would be the new living room/dining room area.  But I agreed.  Now with the renovation completed the walk in closet has proved to be wonderful.  The house in its earliest incarnation was a basic Cape with only a few closets, a couple of which (as a result of a subsequent iteration, before we bought the home) were built into the eaves of the second floor.  So there was limited closet space, but it all seemed fine to me. However, now I have places for everything and it is terrific.  Of things that I could not do without, the closet pales in comparison to a dishwasher--which is as important to me as a front door, but if I was looking to downsize to an apartment, having a walk in closet would be something I'd lobby for with energy.

Back to the point. I pulled a sweater out to go with my pants (what my mother would have called "slacks" in the 50s and 60s).  I put everything on, thought I looked (as my mother would have said), "presentable" and took off on the mass pike on what turned out to be an unusually bad commute day.  I cannot figure out why Boston, for such a relatively small city, has such traffic.  When I lived in New York and there was a jam you would eventually come to the accident or police presence or construction that explained the congestion. In Boston you can drive bumper to bumper in rush hour and then all of a sudden, there is no traffic--usually about the time you want to get off the highway.

Well, I got to work and went to work at work.  I had several meetings back to back, and then went for a walk to take care of some business on what would be called a lunch hour if there were such lunch hours at universities. There really aren't. You typically work through lunch and if there is a meeting during what is traditionally called the lunch time, there are sandwiches provided.  When I came back from the walk, after having interacted with many people during the course of the day and on the walk, I glanced at a mirror and thought the sweater looked especially good on me.  And I wondered why I had not worn this sweater previously and why it looked relatively new.  Then I noticed something like a design toward the back of my shoulders.  The design looked familiar.

It looked familiar because what was the back of the sweater as I had been wearing it is actually the front of the sweater. I had been wearing it backwards all day.  Business very casual.  I went to the rest room, switched it around and, you know,  it did not look as good with the design in front as it did when I was wearing it backwards.

So, I switched it back.

It looks cool.  No?