Perspective

I don't care for baseball, but I do like going to weekday afternoon baseball games when the sun is shining.  Today was one of those days.   Every once in a while you just need to blow off work and hang out with friends. Hey, the French do it!  And if those masters of the 35-hour work week can take great pride in ditching out of work, why can't we? Here's to you!  Viva le France!  But here's also to that great American pastime for giving us a reason.

The beergarden - more about the sun & beer than the game!

Bless her heart

Like a vacation, "screwing off" lets you reconnect with who you really are.  It makes all the other crap make sense  tolerable.  It gives you perspective. "You are only what you are when no one is looking."

P-E-R-S-P-E-C-T-I-V-E

To my knowledge (and unlike Ferris) we weren't spotted in the crowd on ESPN highlights.  But if we were, so be it!  I'm the boss anyway.

The home team won... a walk-off win against the Halos. The other team lost the pop fly in the sun... in Seattle, if you can believe it.  Not a bad Cascadian afternoon.

"Ersatz" and other college words

–adjective

1. serving as a substitute; synthetic; artificial: an ersatz coffee made from grain.

–noun

2. an artificial substance or article used to replace something natural or genuine; a substitute.

The University of Washington in Spring

One can not overstate how important a good vocabulary is to one's success. Having a solid command of your homeland's primary language can only help port you into the upper echelons of business and society. For those of you who do not feel you possess any luck in lexicon, don't give up!  Like anything else, it can be improved with fastidiousness and practice. "A Word A Day" can be emailed to you; you can engage in crossword puzzles, and so on.  For those of you who do have a potent parlance, don't shy away from using it!  It would be disingenuous to do so and patronizing to play down to those around you.

The University of British Columbia

Here in Cascadia - home to two of the nation's smartest cities -Portland and Seattle - and home to #34 on Webometrics Top Universities in the World - Vancouver, BC - we don't take education lightly, but we do seem to conceal it. It almost feels like formal education is to be shamed, as being that of the bourgeois, as well as something to say sotto voce.  That's why I'm thankful for the Tech Boom and Bust. To all of those IT whiz kids who thought that by being able to string together a few lines of code, in jobs that paid $100K+, they could skimp on formal education, how is that working for you now?  It seems that being able to string together a few well-formed sentences wins, again.

There is no ersatz for an education at university and there is no ersatz for a robust vocabulary. (Now where's my Stevia?)

The Belts That Launched A Thousand Quips

This a men's fashion blog is not. However, from time to time, great insight into the progress of the cultivation of preppiness in Pugetropolis can be achieved by examining the reaction of those around a Cascadian prep in the (re)making. For example, the other day I wore, for the first time, my new brown hoof pick belt. I love this belt for its uniqueness and rough-hewn qualities. So when I happily strolled through the office like the cock of the walk and was met with sneers, jeers, and general derision, I was utterly crestfallen (NOT).  Now, I realize their expressions may have been for me (the person) and not me (the belt), but in this instance, I knew they were harshin' the belt.

The author's belt shot a la Maxminimus

Incident #2 occurred the following day. This time with my new custom Eliza B. D-Ring Motif Belt.  Again, laughs, smirks, and double-takes abounded. I mean, WTF?! How could you harsh this belt?

Lesson Learned: a Cascadian prep's work is never done.  If we are going to raise the bar in Cascadia (or anywhere for that matter), it's going to take fortitude and perseverance... and perhaps a whole lot of immigrants from CA, The South, The Midwest, The Southeast, The Mid-Atlantic, and New England.  Cheers!

"Really?"

Interrogative Sarcasm is not becoming of the Cascadian prepster.  It is annoying and unoriginal.  Its daily use in office parlance must end. Its daily use at home must never start. So when my 6 year old daughter (God love her) uses it on me, I know it has reached a total saturation point. And when I toss my dog outside in the cold rain so that she can go potty, she looks at me, head half-cocked, and barks, as if to say, "Really?"