Wear, Watch, Want #31: The Silver Russian Goose Edition
Wear: Gotham Parka from The North Face
I don't own this exact jacket, but I have one that is so, so similar. I bought mine about eight (?) years ago, and I think it was a Nordstrom exclusive, AND on sale, so it's no wonder there is no trace of it anywhere on the internet. But mine's a goose down coat from The North Face and it's just about the same color and it's a little shorter than this one but still long enough that it covers every bit of your butt. North Face jackets like these don't come cheap, but in the frozen wasteland that is Illinois in winter, they are a 100% worthwhile investment. Now that I've moved to LA, I wear this humdinger of a coat maybe 8 days a year, and even then it's only when I need to walk Hero at midnight. This year, I wore this coat not only at night for about two weeks, but during the day as well. It's been cold - and not just cold-for-Southern-California, but actually cold. We had a wind storm that (and this is soooo LA) kept knocking down the valet signs and scaring the crap out of everyone, until eventually the valets just threw down the signs in the grass and gave up. I was grateful that I never considered getting rid of my goose down coat, because it kept me nice and toasty during our chilly spell. Didn't protect me from rogue valet signs, though.
Watch: War & Peace
Last Sunday, when I finished watching War & Peace, I got so, so sad, because I realized that next Sunday's (so, tomorrow's) episode would be the last, and I just wasn't ready for it to end. That is how much I have loved this miniseries. I've been watching the BBC version, not the A&E/History/Lifetime version (thanks Hola!), which just means that it's split up in different ways, and the BBC edition has nudity and possibly swearing and violence that aren't allowed to be on American TV. (It's hard to tell what level of swearing and violence American TV will tolerate, but I know they won't let the nudity I've seen on the BBC get a pass.)
I am a fan of epic period pieces, so I'm already the prime audience for War & Peace. Even so, I think anyone will agree that everything about this series is gorgeous. The sets, the locations, the costumes, the cinematography, the music, James Norton: ALL STUNNING. Even if you don't care about what's happening in the story, you will be completely transfixed by the sheer beauty before you. Even the intense scenes during the Battle of Borodino are filmed so beautifully that you will be simultaneously mesmerized and panicked. I have spent a month anxiously awaiting every Sunday so that I can get another War & Peace fix, and I just don't know what I'm going to do after it's all over tomorrow. Probably buy the whole series and marathon all six hours straight through. Yeah, that'll do it.
War & Peace non-spoiler-y bonus content to get you interested: At one point Helene wears whatever the hell this is...
... And later on, Boris gets his ear fondled by Napoleon!
Aren't you just dying to watch?!? I am, and I've already seen it!
Want: Sterling Silver Ring(s)
My fingers got smaller, and my rings don't fit on their normal fingers anymore. This of course doesn't mean that I need new rings, but it does mean that a ring that has gone on, say, my ring finger for the past 10 years is now being worn on my middle finger. IT FEELS WEIRD. There's nothing like a weird feeling to remind you of a chore you gave yourself long, long ago, which in this case, was to buy new rings. I had too many cheap rings, and I made a vow to only purchase sterling silver rings from then on, and that was years and years ago. I meant to keep buying rings, just to buy decent ones. What did I do? I didn't buy rings at all. So now my love of jewelry has come to a bit of a standstill and I'm wearing the same things all the time, when I used to be mixing it up and keeping it fresh. Now I'm giving myself the "buy rings" homework assignment once again (maybe I'll buy this one from Etsy!), and hopefully my thin, skinny, dainty, elf-like fingers with their foreign feeling rings will help me remember to actually follow through this time.
