Suit Up!

You guys! Today you get a guest post from Matt! This is his first ever post on Everyday Adventures, and I'm thrilled that he wanted to share one of his own experiences. I hope you enjoy. :) 

When I graduated with my Ph.D. a few months back, I was humbled by how generous my friends and family were to me. Several people gave me financial gifts and encouraged me to “enjoy myself” or “have some fun.”

So, I spent some of the money framing my diploma. I spent a portion of the money on a pool-side graduation party with some friends. But I decided to spend the majority of the money on a clothing item I desperately needed: a black suit.

Prior to buying this suit, I only owned one suit. I purchased a gray suit off the rack at a men’s clothing store three years ago, and I only had the length of the pants altered. The suit fits me pretty well, and I have worn it to several events (conferences, weddings, inteviews, you name it).  I figure a black suit will be a little more formal and give me another option for fancy occasions.

Other than my one gray suit, I feel incredibly uncomfortable and unconfident in all of my dress clothes. I don’t have the “typical” male shape, and thus most dress clothes just don’t fit me properly. Whether it’s pants that don’t have the right seat/waist combination or shirts that would better fit a body-builder than an athletically-challenged engineer, typical dress clothes just don’t fit me correctly. Given this, I decided to go bold and get a custom suit.

The next question: where should I get my suit? I first learned about Black Lapel from two of my co-workers a few months back. They were both happy with the suits/tuxes that they had ordered online, so I decided to give this custom-suit startup a try. The prices seemed reasonable to me (slightly more than rack prices), and I was excited to get custom dress clothes that fit.

The Black Lapel website was very easy to use and lead me through the process step by step. I ended up ordering a black three-piece suit and two dress shirts. After I chose the design of my suit and shirts, it was time to input measurements. There were videos and instructions to take all of the different measurements, and Allie worked the cloth tape measure for me. The Black Lapel concierge and I exchanged a few emails to confirm my order and their tailors started working on my suit the next day.

My suit and shirts arrived in the mail four weeks later. While I was unpacking my suit, Allie said I smiled like it was Christmas morning. I promptly tried on all of the different components. The pants, vest, and jacket all fit perfectly. I am most impressed with the dress shirts. I have never had a dress shirt that fit me this well. The sleeves are not too big, the shoulders hit me in the right place, and there is just the right amount of material around the waist.

I got to try out my new suit at my seminar at Virginia Tech. I got several compliments regarding my attire. More importantly, I didn’t have to worry about how I looked or how comfortable I was in my dress clothes. That realization confirmed that the custom suit/shirts were worth it.

Do you or your better half have any experience with custom clothing?

Neither of us received any compensation from Black Lapel.

Better In Real Life Reading List

I'm over at Better In Real Life today! Lauren has created this awesome summer reading list, and is including her community in the discussions each month, so today I'm contributing to a discussion of Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride.

Spoiler alert, I wasn't crazy about this book. But it's led to an interesting discussion about human nature and feminism. You should come contribute to the discussion!

Have you read any of Atwood's books?

Holidays Past: New Year's Eve at the VFW (Guest Post)

I always enjoy reading Karisa's blog, Karisa Tells All, because she always has the best stories and such an awesome sense of humor. Her guest post is no different!

My husband (then boyfriend) and I went to Minneapolis for New Year's Eve two years ago to visit some friends from college. Because I go apeshit for holiday traditions I made sure we returned again last year, and we'll be headed that way again this year. But of course, as manufactured holiday traditions go, they never seem to live up to anyone's expectations, and the first year is always the best.

The first year we went to Minneapolis, our friends threw a party in their apartment and we got to meet a lot of cool people. There was also a table covered in an alcohol smorgasbord and a girl passing tortilla chips around on a frying pan. It was an all around good party.

 

And this sort of thing happened.

We moved the party to a local gay club later on in the night. There were two things I noticed right away about this club. One: you didn't even have to be 21 to get in which is a really bad sign. Two: there was a notice on the door asking patrons to please kindly refrain from bringing guns into the facility. It was an all-around shady place, teeming with drag queens, and it's where we counted down to midnight (with free champagne).

So naturally, I had high hopes for the next year.

We started the evening off right, by hitting up an asian-tapas-douchebag fusion place for dinner. Each small plate cost about as much as my outfit, and the drinks were served in coconuts and other alternative vessels. The people-watching was superb.

We followed that up with a Troll 2 viewing party before getting dolled up to go out. There was a 90s dance party at a local bar featuring the musical stylings of DJ Tanner (I wish I had thought of that first), so obviously that's where we decided to go.

As we waited on the street corner for a cab, the snow started falling fast and furious. It was a veritable blizzard. Two of our friends decided to call it a night on account of the weather; they were dropping like flies. Finally the cab showed up, and we made our precarious way to the 90s party, all the while nervously thinking, "We should have stayed home today!" The roads were slick.

 

Image via 331 Club

The bouncers checked our IDs and ushered us inside with a "good luck." I assumed it was some sort of New Years Eve mantra for people who were trying to get lucky or achieve the perfect drunken state. When we got inside, we realized he was wishing us luck in not having a panic attack, because the place was most likely over capacity. We struggled just to get inside, and there's no way we could have actually gotten drinks or danced or even stood next to each other. So we made the executive decision to leave, and it took another ten minutes of pushing and shoving to exit the bar. A girl tried to start a rumble with me on the way out because she thought I was cutting in line for the bathroom. Sadly, no. We were leaving.

 

We somehow didn't take any actual pictures of this night, but I ganked this one off the bar's website. Looks like it's just always over capacity there...

Image via 331 Club 

It was nearing midnight, and there we were standing on the sidewalk, freezing in the blizzard with nowhere to celebrate. You'd think at this point in the story we would discover the true meaning of New Year's Eve/friendship and just be thankful that we had each other. Maybe we'd all start swaying in unison and break out into an impromptu "Auld Lang Syne." That didn't happen.

Instead, we discussed our options. They threw out several bar ideas, but all were too far away, too expensive, or likely too crowded. Finally, my friend got a twinkle in her eye. "What if we went to the VFW?" she asked.

"Isn't that a townie bar for old men?" we asked. She told us that, yes, it usually was, but for some reason the one in Minneapolis had been taken over by hipsters and it was now, ironically, the cool place to be. At that point, anything with a roof and heat sounded good to me, and the fact that they sold alcohol was the icing on the cake, so we hailed a cab.

"Oh, by the way," she said, "there's karaoke too."

I did a spit take, despite not having a drink in my hand. "What?!" I turned to the cabbie. "Drive faster! We've got singing to do!"

Inside the VFW looks exactly as you would expect. There was wood paneling, a bar with stools, booths and tables, and kitschy bar wall art. The only difference was that the place was filled with young people singing karaoke. (There were old people too, don't worry. In fact, it was kind of poignant and magical how the old and the young were coexisting so harmoniously in this bar. I felt like writing a poem or something.)

 

Not from NYE 2011, but you get the gist of it.

Image via VFW Facebook

The drinks were cheap, the crowd was friendly, and the singing was mellifluous. My friend and I did a rousing rendition of "Somebody to Love," and halfway throught the song I realized I was nowhere near drunk enough to think we sounded good. Better luck next time.

 

Here's a photo of us doing karaoke, though not at the VFW and not on NYE. If you're curious, we were singing "Aaron's Party (Come Get it!)"

At midnight they passed around noisemakers and hats, we had another round of free champagne, and my man and I shared a good ol' New Year's Eve kiss. It was just like in the movies, where the noise fades away, time moves in slow motion, and you feel like it's just the two of you in the world. Except the spell was broken by two old men sitting nearby, complaining that it never took this long to get a beer refill back in 'Nam.

I'm hoping our New Years Eve in Minneapolis is just as ridiculous this year. But I know that if we end up in a lame bar, stranded on the sidewalk in a blizzard, or in an otherwise less-than-festive situation, we can still fall back on synchronized swaying and "Auld Lang Syne" singing.

Holidays Past: The Official Start of Christmas (Guest Post)

Hello Everyday Adventurers! I am Jess and I normally blog over at Express the Jess, but I am so happy to be sharing Christmas memories here today.

In general, my parents did a good job of not spoiling my brother and me. The only time they set aside this rule was Christmas. They always went all out with decorations, food, and especially gifts. Thus, as kids (and bigger kids), my brother and I anxiously awaited Christmas morning.

Circa 1989 

Every year, my brother and I pushed to have Christmas morning start earlier and earlier. It got to the point that my parents had to put an official start time for our Christmas celebrations to begin. My brother and I would wake up early in the morning, usually two or three, and watch tv, play games, and countdown to our official start of Christmas. As soon as the clock struck five o'clock, we would barrel up the stairs to my parent’s bedroom to wake them up.

Circa 1992

Once we were all awake, we headed to the living room together. We started with our stockings, opening each tiny wrapped package.

Left-Circa 1995/Right-Circa 1998

After stockings, we moved on to the regular Christmas gifts. First, we would sort all of the gifts under the tree. We would then take turns opening our gifts one by one, always in a predetermined order set by my mother. It was always a long process and even though we started when the sky was pitch black, the sun would be up and out by the time we finished.

Circa 2000

Our Christmas mornings started so early, I usually ended up needing a nap before lunch.

Circa 2002

Did anyone else have an official start time for Christmas morning? Happy Holidays everyone!

Holidays Past: Christmas Hunt That Keeps On Giving (Guest Post)

In today's guest post, Lauren shares her family's exciting gift-giving tradition — and the unexpected results of one surprising season. Check out her blog, Oh Lordy!

When Allie asked to for guest posters to share holiday pasts, I had a hard time thinking of one favorite memory. There have been canceled flights, Christmas eves spent in the airport, surprises spilled weeks in advance, taking a million self-timer pictures to get one shot of the dog looking straight ahead. But above all else, when I think back on my younger years, I’ll always remember our Christmas scavenger hunts.

Growing up my brother and I used to be notorious for getting up at the break of dawn Christmas morning, running down the stairs and ripping open our gifts. Looking back at it now, I feel bad for my parents who usually stayed up late putting together gifts and finishing up the last minute wrapping just to turn around and get up early to watch us tear into our presents. 

As my brother and I got older, my parents tried to add a little excitement by hiding some of our gifts in the form of a scavenger hunt. We used to love following the clues around the house to find the rest of our presents. As time passed, Mom started to run out of clues for the hunt, so she would just hide our gifts around the house and then tell us to find them. Only problem with this is that she wouldn’t always remember where exactly she hid the gifts. Let’s just say, one year as we were moving the living room couch in JULY to clean the carpet, I found some forgotten Christmas gifts from 7 months earlier. 

 I loved those scavenger hunts and can’t wait to continue the tradition with our future kids.

Holidays Past: Meet the Parents (Guest Post)

Meeting the parents has never been so painful! This guest post from Shayla recounts the Christmas she met her now-husband's family — and joined them on a precarious trip through northern Canada. Go check out her blog, Northern Exposure. 

I have always spent my Christmases with family, whether at huge multi-generational gatherings or small get-togethers with a handful of relatives (or that horrible year I spent flying and driving across Ontario, trying to visit every single person I knew).

So, it was with feelings of sadness and homesickness that Christmas 2009 approached. I had just moved to Sioux Lookout, a small town in Northwestern Ontario. Most Ontarians don’t know where Sioux is because they haven’t flipped over the provincial map to see that there is, in fact, life beyond the Muskokas -- but there I was, 2,000 kilometres away from the lights, laughter, and familiarity of Christmases past.

I moved up north at the end of October, so there was no way to pull off a trip home for the holidays. I didn’t have the money nor the vacation time accrued. A few weeks before Christmas, after the community’s Santa Claus Parade, I was explaining exactly this to my then-boyfriend of two weeks, Matt. That led to him awkwardly asking his parents, over the phone, if I could come to the family Christmas celebrations, while I listened to his side of the conversation. That was the first they had heard tell of this new girlfriend in his life.

You might be wondering why it would be awkward to ask such a thing — after all, lots of people bring their significant others, however new they may be, over to Christmas dinner, right? Well, to fully understand this situation, you have to know that Christmas 2009 was scheduled to be up at camp.

And now you might be wondering what, exactly, “camp” is, and how that has any effect on Christmas.

See, the family owns property, even further up north. As in, to get there, you have to drive three hours north of here, to what is literally the very end of the all-season highway system in Ontario. Then you have to pay a zillion dollars for gas... and keep going. Camp is about 400 kilometres north of us, and Christmas was to be an event spanning several days.

This was going to be my first time meeting the parents — and one of the brothers, and the dog. Our arrival date was exactly one month after Matt and I started dating. If things didn’t go well, we’d be trapped together in remote, isolated Northwestern Ontario, with no way out — and no internet, TV, or anything of the sort to distract from the situation.

It was with anxiety, then, that I helped pack my Saturn station wagon — with countless kilometres logged and no plug-in block heater — full of presents and groceries and four fully-grown adults, during the first blizzard of the year. We started heading north, as the skies and road filled with snow. I was nervous.

 

That nervousness increased as we passed through Pickle Lake. When you get onto the road to camp, which also leads to the starting points for the winter road system that services northern First Nations communities during ice-up, there is a huge sign on the highway that reads, essentially, THIS ROAD IS NOT SERVICED — THERE IS NO GAS OR LODGING; TRAVEL AT YOUR OWN RISK. Reassuring, right?

Still, we pushed north, as Matt regaled us with stories of “this is where Dad and I slid off the road” and “this is where we pulled that guy out of a ditch ... this is where we saw him in the ditch again ten minutes later.” The last half hour consisted of him slowing down and saying, “Here’s the entrance ... oh, wait. No, here it is. Nope. Okay ... this is it up here.”

 

We, eventually, found the driveway. Luckily for me, we all got along. There was karaoke, there was limbo, there was a whole lot of food, and there was tree decorating.

 

There was Nerf-gunning, there was ice fishing, there was present opening, there was fun. And on the very last day of our holiday, right before we left to go home, there was one last snowmobile ride.

We had been snowmobiling a bit, earlier in the holiday, and while it wasn’t my favourite thing to do, I still had fun. Brother Jesse hopped on one machine. Brother Andrew started up another, with Jesse’s girlfriend Ashley on the back. I climbed on to the back of the third, holding on tight to my brand-new boyfriend.

I don’t know if it was because this was the last chance to snowmobile for a long time, or what it was, but the guys were trying to maximize their fun. We had a private lake on which to enjoy to ourselves, and they were hitting jumps, cracking the throttle, and whooping it up. My helmet was starting to fog up and I couldn’t see very well -- and I wasn’t really enjoying the jumps, but I didn’t know what to do. No need to ruin the fun, right?

We landed on the ice after another small jump, and my visor became totally opaque with fog. I had just relaxed my death grip on Matt when I heard a very loud, very panicked, “OH SHIT!” come flying out of his mouth.

And then, I was flying. All I could think was “... WHAT?”

What goes up must come down, and down I came, face-first onto the ice. Inside my head I was screaming, “OW OW OW OW” but outwardly I could barely breathe, let alone talk. I was still trying to process the fact that I went from machine to ice in a matter of seconds when Matt broke most conventional First Aid standards and flipped me right over onto my back. There were four very worried faces looming over me, all tripping over themselves asking if I was okay.

Finally, finally I made my mouth move and eked out a few words.

“... get ... out ... of ... my face ... PLEASE.”

As I got up off the ice, I reassured Matt that I didn’t think anything was broken, that I just had the wind knocked out of me, that it really sucked but I was okay and just shaken up. Then I reassured him, all of that, again, because he didn’t believe me. He gingerly loaded me up onto the back of the machine and slowwwwwly drove back to camp, where he, equally gingerly, told his parents what happened.

As Jesse tells the story, he was driving on a straight stretch and looked off to the side to see Andrew and Ashley’s machine, and our machine, on a collision course. Right as he was wondering why the hell we were all driving toward each other, we crashed. The tracks on the ice, apparently, made a perfect X over a fault line. I have no idea what it looked like because I stayed inside drinking whiskey from that point onward. The next day, we were all back at work and I could barely move. I took muscle relaxants for at least a week, and I know Ashley was in some pain, too.

Matt is now my husband. We got married in September and my mother-in-law, during her speech at the wedding, referred to it as “the best Christmas ever.” I laughed pretty hard. But, even though it’s the only Christmas where I incurred actual bodily harm, it was pretty damn good. And really, what better introduction to your boyfriend’s family than getting thrown off a snowmobile in front of them? It’s one of our favourite tales to recount, now.

I will say, however, that last year was also a camp Christmas, and I made Matt drive so slowly on the snowmobile that we kept getting stuck. I think I’m an indoor wife, now.