Weekend Open Thread
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Something on your mind? Chat about it here.
I am impatiently waiting for fall so I can wear this sweater I got in the NAS! When I tried it on, my first thought was, this is the perfect thing to wear to parent/teacher events with jeans — it's buttoned up, it's chic, it's a little professional but not weirdly so — and yet every parent meeting we've had this year has been in full heat.
(Sure, yes, it doesn't help that I apparently forgot most of these events are in August and September — but I'm all set for the February ones!)
I really do think this is a great sweater jacket and can't wait to wear it more. I got it in the black, but this ivory looks like another great basic — and I'm seeing a ton of winter white blazers/lady jackets for fall so this will fit right in. I also like that it's 100% merino wool.
All three colors of the sweater are on sale, but ivory has the most sizes left — the sweater was $179, but is now marked down to $107. (The burgundy one (which we featured in our roundup of THE blazer shape for fall) is even lower at $89, but there are only smaller sizes left.)
Sales of note for 9/11:
- Nordstrom – End of season clearance, up to 50% off
- Ann Taylor – 30% off your purchase + extra 15% off when you spend $200
- Anthropologie – Extra 50% off sale! The reader favorite wide leg pants come down crazy low in some colors/fabrics, but they're down to lucky sizes
- Athleta – 30% off select styles (including my favorite sweatshirts as well as these reader favorite pants) + extra 30% off sale
- AYR – Archive sale, up to 60% off
- Boden – 15% off new styles – readers love these dresses, and their double-layer line of tees
- CVS – Epic beauty sale, $10 off when you spend $30
- Design Within Reach – the semiannual sale, 25% off everything! (readers love the Herman Miller Aeron and Sayl!)
- J.Crew – Up to 40% off select styles
- J.Crew Factory – 50% off all stores, plus an extra 10% off when you buy a pair of jeans
- Me & Em – Sale! Up to 60% off (new lines just added, exclusively online)
- M.M.LaFleur – Labor Day Sale Event, save sitewide! (Try code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off on other items)
- Nordstrom Rack – Extra 40% off select clearance
- Talbots – Buy one get 50% off everything
- Theory – End of season sale is on!
i didn’t see a 9/11 thread on the morning post – can we have a memory thread here? where were you, what did you see, what do you remember, what stories from that day have resonated with you?
This makes me uncomfortable.
Of course it does. But we’ve agreed to never forget, our comfort-level be damned.
It feels performative. Why can’t our memories and grief stay private?
Yours can. Reading here isn’t mandatory! Feel free to close the tab anytime.
I mean, we don’t need to know all the mundane things the commenters did. If you want to do a book club reading of “The Looming Tower” that would be a better contribution of honoring the memory of the day than this.
3:02 so those of us who lived through history should… go read a book instead of remembering together?
wtaf
Absolutely nobody wants to hear your thoughts on The Looming Tower. Nobody.
I was in DC, blocks from the White House, living in Arlington. I feel that younger people who just know this from the news years later often don’t appreciate how horrifying it was for us in addition to the events in NYC.
My college bff lived pretty close to the White House and she was one of the first calls I made that connected. I was so relieved she was OK – there were all sorts of reports flying around about stuff happening in DC.
i was also in DC. my autistic son woke me up at 6:30 this morning to talk about it – that was my first memory too, that it was just chaos. no one knew what was happening but it didn’t seem good. phone lines were down. in DC i swear to god it was unannounced martial law, i remember men in suits, wiht huge guns, on top of the supreme court building and library of congress.
a friend who worked near the WTC was outside the building when the first plane hit, he said the force was enough to throw everyone to the ground. i can’t imagine what that level of chaos must have been.
Same. My firm had an office in the south tower. Pure fear and chaos. I was happy to have had sneakers in my desk because we wore suits and hose and heels.
That morning the sky was so perfectly blue. NPR wondered if Michael Jordan would be playing again.
I was on the school bus on the West Coast and misinformation was flying back and forth. Our teacher was crying by the time we got to school. I’m still worried about the long-term health effects of the smoke and toxic chemical inhalation for all the immediate victims and first responders – it’s gotten some attention but not enough.
I was a senior in college and spent the entire morning frantically calling my NYC based family to try to locate them. The news shared the advice to have everyone in NY call out of town family members to say they were safe as the local landlines were overloaded and you couldn’t get through. We got in touch with relatives who lived in Philly and they spread the word that everyone was ok. My friends were all checking in via AIM. There was such horror on campus and then I recall feeling a bit like a zoo animal as native NY’ers (and I imagine native DC residents) were reacting entirely differently vs. everyone else. I was told to take any extra time I needed on assignments and was treated with kid gloves that entire semester. The flight went down in the Rockaways about two months later, which was almost as horrific since so many first responders lived there.
I (and every other woman I know) kept a pair of sneakers at my desk once I started working. Our companies all made sure we knew our rally points and where the stairs were. Nobody blew off fire drills in big office buildings, it was taken very seriously for a long time. That’s also why the 2003 blackout was so peaceful – people genuinely believed it was another terrorist attack and were practically giddy that it wasn’t.
My spouse was one of the out-of-town people who were deputized to call relatives that day, he said it was one of the weirdest, scariest things he’s every done (calling complete strangers to tell them a relative was alive).
I read this every year on 9/11. Happy birthday Don:
https://tomatonation.com/stories-true-and-otherwise/for-thou-art-with-us/
I was a freshman in college and my college was near an air force base so fighter jets were flying over campus all morning long. I saw the news as I was getting ready to leave my house for class. Our teachers were very compassionate and let everyone talk about how scared they were (a bunch of 18-year-olds away from home for the first time!). A little later in the day the university canceled classes.
I remember sitting on the floor of my first solo apartment, frantically emailing friends who lived in NYC because the phones weren’t working. My dad was actually based at the Pentagon at the time, but I knew he was in CA on a work trip so I wasn’t worried about him in particular. It was so quiet in LA, and so sad.
Mine is inconsequential, but it really reminds me of how shocking it felt.
I was in college and had a late start. I would usually put on headline news while I ate breakfast, but for some reason, put on the Mary Tyler Moore show on TV Land (it was a particularly funny one, with Rhoda’s mother). My husband’s aunt called, and said “are you watching TV?”, I said yes, assuming she just meant she could hear it, and she said something about how she guesses we won’t be flying for a while. I sort of “mmhmmed,” having no idea what she was talking about. She’d just been traveling a lot for work, so I thought maybe she was calling to let us know she was done with the travel and hung up, thinking it was a weird call, but maybe she was just jet lagged. MTM ended; I flipped on the news and left the room, catching a glance at smoke and thinking it was another forest fire story. As I came back in, I heard the announcer say smoke was still billowing over Manhattan, and that’s when I stopped.
I remember worrying about my parents, who worked in downtown Chicago. At the time, we didn’t know what was a target. It felt like anything could be next.
I am/was in greater Boston. 11th grade social justice class when the principal came over the loudspeaker to tell us – it must have been after the second plane at that point, that it warranted an announcement and it no longer presented as a tragic accident. I vividly remember sitting in my history class later that day with the lights off and the radio on, just listening. It was surreal.
We also watched one of the towers fall live. I went to an all-girls catholic school and the attached convent had a TV connected to the news stations. We were otherwise never allowed over there but a science teacher brought us in to catch a glimpse of some of the live feed. As it fell, we froze, but then I think the adults maybe questioned whether or not they should have shown us a TV and hurried us away.
I also remember my dad, who worked in Boston and on a top floor of the Hancock tower, came to pick us up from school and drive home because, first, they evacuated the towers in Boston for fear of additional attacks, and second, there was a fear of just total chaos erupting so parents came and escorted their otherwise independent/self-driving kids home. I think it wasn’t until I saw my dad ~2:30 on a Tuesday picking me up from school (when I drove myself!) that I was like… ok, what exactly is happening here…
I lived in Crystal City. I was getting ready for work and heard it on the radio, turned on the tv and watched in horror for a bit as I got ready but eventually thought “this is horrible but I have to get to work” so drove to my job in Maryland. Heard all kinds of rumors and chaos on the radio as I drove (bombs in the Capitol! The USA Today building is on fire!) and when I got to work everyone was just crowded around one tv we could find, and emailing some friends, and trying to call a few…eventually everyone left work but we weren’t sure we could get home so holed up at a friend’s place in NW DC for most of the day, with my friends trying to contact their friends and family in NY. Drove home through empty streets at night spooked seeing police cards and guards everywhere, and could smell the smoke from the pentagon in our apartment. It was freaky.
Am I off base here? I just called a the main number of law firm with me re than a dozen attorneys to settle a case and the person who picked up answered with “hello?” Like I cold called her personal phone. I thought I called the wrong number.
Are we not longer answering with the firm name, or even here in NY, the very curt and grouchy “law firm”? Maybe literally no one calls? I rarely call but it would be really nice to not have this conversation in writing. I feel like a dinosaur but I’ll get with it if this is what we’re doing now.
Haha, I’m sorry, I hate when this happens, too. Giving grace, it might have come through as a wierd internal number thing. Sometimes my phone will come through as Internal Cube 5534 or some nonsense like that and it catches people off guard.
Sounds like the call got forwarded to someone who wasn’t expecting external calls. If it happens multiple times with the same firm and you have a good relationship with the lawyer you’re trying to reach, I’d mention it to them. There’s probably some IT glitch someone can easily fix. I wouldn’t mention a one-off though.
Found the cookbook, but it doesn’t have a Thai salad in it. Not sure how close it is, but if all else fails maybe have a look at PureWow website Thai Veggie Salad.
Looking for a fall transitional jacket that is also relatively lightweight for travel. I’d like to wear a layer under and not too cropped (everything I like seems short). Not denim, not a puffer. Under $150 ideally approx. Any recs?
Networking flake-outs…is it me? Am I the problem?
In the past year, I have gotten a couple of networking requests that I’ve accepted (recent alums from my law school, young alums at my alma mater, friend-of-a-friend’s college-age daughter), then the other person has flaked out. Last minute rescheduling with a vague excuse, being stood up at a coffee shop after waiting for an hour, answering availability messages then no follow-up, etc.
Being myself, I wonder if it’s just par for the course or if it has something to do with my profile/job/age. My job is steady and pretty well-paid, but it’s not the most glamorous or prestigious position. I’m a late GenX who is rarely part of hiring entry-level people, so I don’t have (and don’t give) super-current advice on how to succeed in the current job market. I’d like to think I’m a nice person who has some wisdom, but then again, I don’t have a successful self-help podcast. Even the young people who live in my house don’t take my advice! ;)
I’m sure I made networking blunders as a young person, probably mostly being overeager, but I also remember being read the riot act by the career services people about being considerate when using the alum network.
Should I just lower my expectations?