Coffee Break: Danby Loafer
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This “travel loafer” from Cole Haan is getting rave reviews — and some colors just went on sale.
I like that the shoes are lightweight but cushioned, and reviewers are singing the praises of them for comfort.
The shoe is $150 full price, with some colors marked down 33%. You can find them at Nordstrom, as well as Zappos (love that light green), and Cole Haan.
(Psst – I've noticed a trend with travel shoes — should we do a roundup? The Vionic Uptown collection and the Tory Burch ballet flat come to mind. We have of course rounded up foldable flats in the past.)
Sales of note for 5/15:
- Nordstrom – 3800+ items in “new markdowns” — I kind of wonder if they've started marking down stuff for their Half-Yearly sale that usually starts the week before Memorial Day. Good deals on Veronica Beard, Vince, Reiss (esp. coats), as well as Wit & Wisdom and NYDJ
- Alexis Bittar – Vault sale! 100s of re-issued archival styles up to 70% off, plus 25% off all full-price styles too
- Ann Taylor – Extra 40% off sale
- Boden – Up to 50% off with new styles added
- J.Crew – 40% off your purchase and 50% off dresses
- J.Crew Factory – Extra 50% off clearance + extra 20% off orders over $125
- Lands' End – Up to 60% off sitewide + extra 60% off sale and clearance
- Loft – 50% off your purchase, and 5/15 only: take 60% off the LOFT Versa collection
- Mango – Weekend exclusive, 30% off everything, and free shipping with $260+
- M.M.LaFleur – Try code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off
- Supergoop – 20% off sitewide + free Glow Stick (also, free shipping with $50+)
- Talbots – Extra 40% +15% off all markdowns, plus Summer Fridays One Day Sale (5/15), $19.50 pocket tees and $29.50 relaxed chino shorts.
- Theory – 25% off sitewide
- TOCCIN – 30% off select items with code! (You can't stack codes, but on full price items try code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off!)
- Vivrelle – Looking to own less stuff but still try trends? Use code CORPORETTE for a free month, and borrow high-end designer clothes and bags!
We’re planning on going to Japan in 2027, I’m estimating about $25k for the 4 of us for 2-3 weeks. We’re currently on Chase Preferred… should I sign up for Chase Reserve instead? We don’t travel a lot for business so it’s mostly just the Chase points to consider (to date about 240k).
What are you hoping to use points on? Airline tickets? Hotels? The time to book travel for early 2027 is now, so you don’t have a ton of time to accrue points. Generally I feel like the Reserve isn’t worth the annual fee unless you’re going to take advantage of a lot of the perks like the airline lounge access and the luxury hotel credits.
we’re thinking june 2027 (i know it’s going to be hot but kids are out of school then) – should i be looking now? yikes
If you’re wanting to travel on airline points, generally the best times to book are right when the flights go on sale or very last minute. The flights go on sale about 11 months out, so it’s not quite time to book for June 2027 yet but it’s coming soon. The very best deals are often last minute (like days before the flight) but that requires a lot of flexibility and has always been too stressful for me to do, especially with kids.
True, but also I have booked many flights (sometimes on chase points!) about 3 months out – you don’t get the very best deals but it can still work. Just about what you prioritize – I prefer not to be locked in a year out from my flights, but in turn I have to pay more.
An acquaintance of mine joined an AI company early and her equity is likely worth somewhere around $30-50 million. For some reason, this is making me feel really bad about myself. Does anyone have advice for not getting into the comparison trap?
If you’re in the ballpark of comparing yourself to her you’re doing awesome! That is so far from my own frame of reference I couldn’t even think to compare.
yeah I don’t know if this is good or bad but it wouldn’t even really occur to me to compare because my life is so different. Especially if that person was just an acquaintance. I could see struggling with jealousy if a close friend or sibling got that kind of wealth suddenly but for an acquaintance I truthfully don’t think I would even think twice about it.
People join ICE, mercenary companies, and drug cartels for the money, too, but they don’t make me feel bad about myself.
+1
+1
I hate AI but I feel like this comparison is maybe sliiiightly unfair.
I like Lake Tahoe so disagree. AI is an environmental disaster for limited benefit.
Okay, some drug cartels actually do provide goods and services that benefit their community.
Some? Old-school ones? The mob used to at least keep order, sort of as a shadow government.
Now it’s just chaos. No impulse control.
Lol, we should go back to the good old days, when mobs were honest.
This.
That sort of thing at that scale seems more like luck to me. It’s like some real estate transactions – there was a guest who was a real estate market analyst on the podcast Odd Lots and he said that a lot of individuals are just in the right place at the right time and got lucky. I actually knew academics who worked in AI in the mid-80s and retired with quite a bit of money, but not in the millionaire level because it was too early. I wouldn’t feel bad about myself if a friend won the lottery or put $1000 as a throwaway investment in bitcoin when it first came out, even if I might feel a bit of envy about the resulting lifestyle upgrades, but that doesn’t seem what you are describing. So thinking about it like a stroke of luck?
Yup. I used to live in the Bay Area. Start-ups are essentially gambling. For every person who makes tens of millions in an acquisition, there are hundreds more whose startups failed and who now have to start over basically from scratch. It’s great for those who succeed but I don’t really view it differently than winning the lottery. It’s “good for them, not for me.” I’m way too risk averse.
Also I’m not sure where you live, but it if it’s anywhere at all techy there are probably literal billionaires in your orbit so at some point you’ve gotta just make peace with coming into contact absurd wealth. I left the Bay but enjoy the stories from my friends who still live there about the five figure birthday parties for 3 year olds.
Look closer at what is making up the “For Some Reason” and use that to move beyond the bad feelings.
Or, join an AI company early and see how it works out.
Those are basically the two choices for moving forward. Option 3 is to stay feeling bad, so that one is suboptimal.
i have a friend who worked for uber eats. i try to remember that most things in life aren’t scarce. like her walking into life changing amount of stock ops has nothing to do with how much i make or how successful i am. also think it’s helpful to remember that i would never think less of a friend who was less financially well off than me so….
I was so confused thinking you meant your friend drove around delivering food.
no i mean came into millions of dollars in stock ops
same! I think normally you’d describe someone who works in corporate as working at Uber since Uber Eats is under the Uber umbrella.
Eh, I think that has the same meaning for people who aren’t in the shadow of the corporate HQ. Sort of like saying “they work for Walmart” has a very different meaning in Bentonville than it does basically anywhere else in the country.
Many startups also fail so it means you have to be a personality type who deals well in high risk and maybe high reward scenarios. I don’t particularly like that much risk so probably wouldn’t weather those kinds of environments well.
I do my own really cool stuff that I get paid nothing for and wouldn’t be able to do if I worked for an evil company that owned my soul and all of my time.
I also remind myself that the money is not actually real until she sells the options. How many people sell at the right time?
Yeah; this can be a hard one. A former colleague is this person except from a prior tech wave. I think it’s time to own your own decisions. I am very risk averse and went with a different path. No major upside but no major downside and that is the best thing for me. Be happy for her that it worked out!
More than once in my life, I have felt envious of another person only to later learn that their apparent good fortune was precarious at best, or a result of illegal activity at worst.
The comparison trap is entirely human. It hits harder for acquaintances because you don’t see the daily grind that it took to get there and it comes out of the blue. Like, you are along for the ride of your closer friends writing a book, but when one of your university classmates ends up on the best seller list, it comes out of the blue. For me, my sister will always sit me down and list all the reasons why I am a bada$$ when I’m down on myself.
In high school, I dated someone whose parents were insanely rich–like, private plane rich (it was small). They were the least happy family I’ve ever been around, and his dad was a huge a**hole to the kids. So, I try to remind myself that money can solve a lot of problems, but it can’t make you a good person, and it can’t guarantee happiness.
I have observed that most people with a lot of money are a-holes. I don’t know which causes the other, but I suspect it’s a little of both. You can’t make zillions of dollars without being an a-hole, and having zillions of dollars tends to turn you into even more of one.
yea my husband had a close friend in high school whose parents were private plane rich. The kid was miserable and aimless. Despite being very smart, he never had any choice of career, it was pretty much pre-determined he would go to the family business. He’s mid-40s now and officially on his dad’s payroll, but in practice he’s doing nothing career-wise and they’re just paying him through the company because it’s a tax avoidance strategy. He hooks up with 20-something girls who are young enough to be impressed by his daddy’s money which I guess some guys might consider aspirational, but I think he feels pretty empty without a real career or a wife and kids (he’s the only one of their high school group who didn’t settle down). Not a life I envy at all. And while every family is different, I think this is a pretty common story with very high net worth families. My SiL also went to private school in NYC and her best friend was the daughter of a reasonably famous billionaire (not like Bezos or Bill Gates level of fame, but someone who’s in the news regularly) and that family was a million shades of f*cked up.
Would love to hear your experiences with using a low dose testosterone cream in perimenopause. Did you notice a change, and if so, what was the change? Positive? Bad side effects? My doc has offered to prescribe a low does cream through a compounded pharmacy. I’m 47, my symptoms are fatigue, zero libido, zero motivation, lots of anxiety. She says at a low dose her patients typically don’t see side effects like hair loss and acne, but of course it’s always possible. I’m already on progesterone, and tried estrogen but that made me feel so much worse so I’m holding off on adding it back for a bit (it may be that it was swinging so wildly in peri that I ended up with too high values by adding the patch).
Wouldn’t it be simpler to have a cup of coffee or a stiff drink, depending on the activity need? I feel that 50+ is where the polypharmacy risk begins.
Yes and 1000% better on fatigue and brain fog. The only way I can explain it to people is that I went back to feeling like my brain was working again. It hasn’t helped my libido though, and I take a higher dose than the starting dose for many women which is a tube of gel for 10 days. You typically have to have your hormones tested regularly for testosterone, and I’ve never been wildly out of range for normal for women so no side effects.
Those symptoms are so far from specific, I’m not sure why I’d even think they were perimenopause and not something else. I guess I’d want to try some other things first that I consider less risky, if not more work up.
I saw a person who posted on IG that she had Stacy London (from What Not to Wear) come over. She tried on everything (including shoes) from her closet and it seemed to work well as a honest second set of eyes and a way of rediscovering how to make outfits and shop your closet.
If I were rich, I’d want that also. I don’t have that candid friend with style and the ability to pair things like that. Has anyone found this sort of thing IRL?
40+ body flux just has me stumped and there is nothing good in stores anymore beyond just the of-necessity replacing basic work pants and jeans in current size/cuts.
One thing I also notice as 40+ is that I am old enough now that I wore most of the current styles when they were current before, so I want something that is fresh to me. But am having a hard time finding things i respond to.
All to say, i feel your pain.
You might like checking out Kim France’s blog, Girl of a Certain Age. https://kimfrance.substack.com/ She posts lots of shopping round ups, and she is i think in her late 50s? Some nice options there, even if there’s only a 15% crossover for my body type, i get ideas there for sure.
Another one I like for finding new brands is The Stripe, https://thestripe.com/ she does a great weekend roundup and I’ve found nice brands from there, even though again it is only a small crossover of stuff that would work for me directly.
Also, JoLynne Shane https://jolynneshane.com/ does try-ons, which is helpful. It is a fair amount of jeans + tops, but also some dressier pants and outfits. https://jolynneshane.com/
do you see Tamsen Fadal at all in your social media feeds? she just had a reel where she and a stylist went through her closet… i think this is a common service but maybe i’m wrong.
ok i just checked her instagram she also had stacy london come over in addition to her stylist https://www.instagram.com/tamsenfadal/reel/DYFSFvOycPt/
That must have been it. I lumped them together.
A blogger I follow uses someone for this service in Dallas, so they exist! (The blog is Lag Liv. I think she tags the person in Instagram posts.)
I think it’s time you looked for a different mix of stores. If you post your shape people can give you some good ideas on where to shop. I also check Veronica Beard every season. Those pieces don’t fit me, but the styling gives me great ideas.
I have an IRL friend who’s an online stylist who does some of that – just helping you update, refreshing what you have and deciding what pieces don’t serve you anymore. She’s a normal person who buys Old Navy for her kids and Nordstrom brands for herself and everywhere in between. WhereLifeMeetsStyle.co is her IG.
Isn’t this what a personal stylist does?
I’ve actually had Angie from You Look Fab come and do that for/with me, and it was as amazing as you’d expect.
Wow!
To continue the eldercare/aging conversations from this morning and yesterday: We are currently going through an eldercare situation in my family, and toxic positivity is costing our elderly person a lot in terms of quality of life. Our person is 91 and has recently been in and out of the hospital with various issues. Their mobility has precipitously declined, and it’s obvious that they are entering a new chapter. Our person, their spouse, and some of their children seem to be delusionally positive. After each hospitalization, the crisis has miraculously passed and everything has returned to normal! Let’s just bring our person home and let them pretend that they can safely live in their home with very little assistance, almost no PT, zero OT, no grab bars, no mobility aids, etc. Then everyone is surprised and dismayed when two weeks later they fall and end up in the hospital again.
No one will listen to me when I say that we need to confront our person with the reality that life is changing, ask them what their priorities and desires are, and then put in place services and modifications so they can live the best life possible given the circumstances. (Our person has plenty of money and insurance to pay for these things.) I suppose one could argue that our person is getting exactly what they want, which is denial. But I suspect that the denial is born from a true desire for dignity, and the denial is working directly against dignity.
When I hit that point I sure hope that my family will have the courage not to go along with denial, and will strive to help me continue to live the best life possible.
That sounds rough. Is there an adult or elder care social worker you could pull in to help navigate this?
We are trying with the hospital case worker on discharge planning this time around. The point of my post was really to warn against toxic positivity and denial when it comes to eldercare planning.
You don’t say where you fit in here. Are you a grandchild? An in-law? If you believe this denial is borne out of a misguided desire for dignity, I think you can say something privately to the person and their spouse once about how things could be different with additional supports. After that one time, don’t say anything else – you’ve said your peace.
We are going through the same thing with my family. With the fact that it is very much a know your family situation, two things worked for us. First, taking each grandparent out and talking to them separately. Key is whoever does this needs to be direct on the questions. In our case, grandma was completely clear on what was going on with grandpa, and was willing to answer the tough questions (e.g., I know I don’t have long with him, I don’t want to fight with him over a walker). Second, encourage the delusional ones to really spend time with the grandparents – preferably, as a sleep over at their house. Turns out actually seeing the condition of the shower really helped move the needle.
Does she have any friends she likes and respects who rely on mobility aids, etc.? Can she get recommendations for the best PT or OT from people she knows? I realize at that age she may literally not have friends who can support her. I don’t know if any of the health issues she’s facing are the kind that come with support groups.
In any circumstances, it can be really hard to feel like you’re entering the category of people who have special needs and who often get looked down on for it. It is almost ludicrous the lengths many young people will go to just to avoid using mobility aids, and then when they finally come around and are forced to try them, they realize how much sooner they could have been benefiting. I’m sure there’s only more denial when it’s an end of life decline.
That is tough. My parents were like this. They were living in a place too small for a caregiver, and after a medical incident I implored them to make a plan. They went away and thought about it, and the plan they came up with was “We plan to be carried out of here feet first.” Only problem was, when they were carried out feet first, they were still alive. And I had to scramble to find assisted living for them because it was clear they could no longer live on their own. Ugh.
My advice, if you are willing and a close enough relative for this to be realistic, is to quietly look into options that you can present when the inevitable happens. Whether that’s a pipeline for in-home help, or knowing who to hire to make modifications to the home, or finding alternative living arrangements. (Turns out a surprisingly large number of people in assisted living and similar places end up there as a result of a crisis, and nobody does their best decision-making in a crisis.)
I don’t think you need to confront the person with the reality. They know the reality. You can possibly find a gerontologist in the community who can give you some ideas for how to have these conversations. It might be better to frame the mobility tools, at least around grab bars and things, around helping both older adults age in place ahead of needing them. I can also share that what helped with my elder who was mostly mobile but had balance issues was using hiking poles versus say a walker. Seniors have vanity too so try to find accessibility modifications that allow them to seem “normal” whether you feel it’s the appropriate option or not.
Can you ask for a hospital social worker? It’s standard practice to have a home health order when an elderly person (fall risk) goes home after hospitalization. My mom had home health ordered for her, and a nurse, PT, OT and social worker came by and assessed her housing situation and ability to live at home. Just after 1 hospitalization (Kaiser). They had her get in the shower, asked to see the toilet, see how she got in and out of bed, looked at the steps getting into the house, asked about how she made food for herself, grocery shopping, etc. and overall noted every grab bar and accommodation we’d made at her house. For a 91-year old with multiple hospitalizations, this should also be standard with Medicare. Something isn’t happening at their end. At minimum a social worker could recommend accommodations at home, or lead a discussion about assisted living.
This trajectory was pretty similar to my MIL’s decline. I was clear about the issues with my spouse and other family members. I was also clear – and I think this is key for women in my family dynamic – that I was *not* going to swoop in and fix all of the issues on my own and take over the situation. It was tough to watch, but they got what they wanted and didn’t want.
Let’s say your grandmother co-signed your student loans because your parents refused. You are current on the loan. When happens if she dies? Do I just keep paying and the lender loses another person to go after if I stop paying? Or do I have to refi or pay it off?
I would just keep paying. How would they even know she died? Easier to keep it a secret
Yes, they just lose a second person to attempt to recover from.
You just keep paying. And it’s your primary debt, not hers.
What exactly makes a loafer a “travel loafer”?
i think it’s bc it’s lightweight and squooshable
Do I need to know anything about having an interview recorded with BrightHire? I think I’m fine with it – just recording it so they can review it later – but the email from BrightHire says it’s good for DEI (“promotes equitable hiring”) and that made me think it’s more than just recording software.
Why would an interview be recorded if a human were actually going to watch it?
We record interviews that we do live for a number of reasons: so others can watch parts of it, so we can refresh our memories on certain answers, recently to prevent fraud, etc
More than once in my life, I have felt envious of another person only to later learn that their apparent good fortune was precarious at best, or a result of illegal activity at worst.
Parents of older kids: if you live in an area where graduation parties and open houses are a thing, where did you host it? Your own home? A party room? Many people in my part of the Midwest host at their houses, though the party room option is becoming more popular. There aren’t many of them, though.
I’m about 1 year out from making this decision. We have a great backyard that would be perfect for a graduation party, but the weather is always an unpredictable wild card. Also, the idea of having people coming in and out of my house does not fill me with great joy. (We host family get-togethers pretty frequently but a graduation party feels more daunting.) Party rooms are hit or miss — in my observation, the atmosphere isn’t conducive to people staying very long, which is both good and bad.
I don’t think we’re going to be the family who invites the entire neighborhood, tbh.
We had a huge joint graduation party for our daughter and her good friend because our two families’ guest lists were almost completely overlapping. We had it in our subdivision’s clubhouse party room because our home is not nice enough or large enough. It was fine, and people stayed long enough. In my observation people don’t tend to stay any longer at parties held in homes and backyards, except for one particular party that was held under a tent at a large, welcoming home that was perfect for entertaining on a day with perfect weather, with guests who all knew one another well and a host dad who had a lot of cool DIY projects to show off.
Have you talked to your future grad about it? What do they think? (Also there are always tents and heaters for iffy weather.)
I expect they will have a lot of thoughts after attending a few parties over the next few weekends!
In my area, 2-3 kids usually have a joint one and host it at whoever’s home is the largest. That’s also what I did for mine, 20+ years ago now. :)
I much prefer the in-home ones, I think it’s cozier and more conducive to people lingering, as you said.
No kids but I went to a billion of these when I was in high school and some as an adult. Every single one was at home, and the vast majority of them inside, as the weather is too unpredictable in my area of the Midwest at that time of year- it could be snowing, a thunderstorm, or 100 degrees and disgustingly humid. A tent only does so much for that (the weekend of mine, there was a huge storm with flooding and trees down all over the city). If the weather’s nice, some people might end up outside, but there’s usually still some inside component. If you really hate people inside your house, though, you can could get a tent and hope the weather cooperates.
In our Midwest grad circle, the most common locations are local parks (and if really tight on funds or willing to gamble on the weather, they don’t rent the building or pavilion but just grab a few picnic tables and wing it), community center rec rooms, the library meeting space, or perhaps the backyard pole barn if someone has the space.
Our own HS grad didn’t want a big party so we just hosted a pizza party and bonfire for the close friend circle. We have no family within easy visiting distance so we did not have to consider how to accommodate elderly grandparents.
Investigate tent rentals. Unless your weather involves tornadoes, a tent will take rain out of the equation. And if it’s cold people can wear sweaters and you can rent heaters and serve cocoa.
Midwest involves tornadoes and heavy thunderstorms
OP here, and yeah … literally had tornadoes in the area over the weekend, lol.
My step daughter is graduating from high school next month and a graduation party that’s more like an open house is being hosted at her home. We also have iffy weather. I assume the plan is for it to be inside and out, but the house is large enough to be inside only.
I live in the Midwest as well. We have hosted two at home – mostly inside – and are hosting our last HS grad party in a couple weeks at home – mostly outside. This kid really wanted an outside party! We are renting a tent and some tables and chairs and hoping the weather cooperates, but if it doesn’t then we’ll just move indoors. I would say most people here host at home, but some do host at another location, such as a neighborhood clubhouse or the local (not particularly fancy!) golf club. Those at a rented location often involve 2 or 3 kids having a joint party. I do think they feel a little more relaxed at home generally. I don’t mind hosting this sort of thing, because people come and go and the time goes quickly. I find something like Thanksgiving, where everyone arrives at the same time and is eating at the same time, more stressful! We would have had this one at our golf club, but my daughter didn’t make up her mind early enough and the dates were full by the time she decided so our house it is.
Thought I’d shade a small update since sometimes people ask for them.
Last year, I posted a few times about my daughter’s tiny wedding. The biggest issue was how to limit the guest list. Groom’s family thought an uncle from their side would be highly offended if not invited.
At the end of the day the bride and groom decided to keep it to parents and siblings only. Adding aunts, uncles, and first cousins would have brought it to 47 people when they wanted something like 10. It was a backyard wedding in our (humblebrag – very pretty) garden.
No hard feelings from family, as it turns out, and everyone was extremely gracious about the young couple doing exactly what they wanted.
The only non family members were two of my daughter’s friends since childhood, who threw her “bachelorette” sleepover & who helped set up for the wedding. Groom’s bestie was supposed to come but bailed last minute.
Last minute, one of the two best friends started asking whether she could invite her “partner,” which was a surprise to daughter because friend had not been dating this person for long at all. Since neither the bride nor groom had ever met this person, much less heard their name, they decided since aunts, uncles, and cousins didn’t make the cut, inviting someone they didn’t know was off the table.
Thank god they held firm because this person would have been in all the photos from the day. And as “partner” used the wedding weekend to cheat on friend, then a few weeks later move across the country (which was obviously planned well ahead) friend would never, ever want to see pics of them again!