Tuesday Shoe Review is a new recurring feature here at My Brilliant Mistakes. I spend an inordinate amount of time trying, buying, comparing, and of course wearing shoes. In itself that might not be reason enough to blog about them, but I suspect I’m not alone in this obsession. In Tuesday Shoe Review we discuss shoes you should buy, shoes you shouldn’t buy, and shoes you might wish you could buy but you can’t because they are mine, mine, mine.

I’ve heard it said that there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. I’ve been leaving the car home and walking to work more lately, so I needed some snow-worthy footwear to keep my toes warm and dry and my feet slip-proof.

My KEEN Winthrop Boots in action

My KEEN Winthrop Boots in action

These are the boots I bought a few months back: KEEN Winthrop Boots. I chose a red-brown color that the company calls “Madder Brown,” which coordinates well with browns, blues, greens, everything. I like them equally well with pants and with skirts. The upper is leather and boiled wool — the wool is in back — and the sole has a hearty tread that holds steady on ice. I’ve trudged through two-foot-deep snow and trotted across pools of icy water, and throughout my feet stayed as toasty-roasty and dry as if I were wearing socks and sitting by a fireplace.

And comfortable! Wearing them is like wearing cushy slippers all day. I have a strict rule not to wear the same pair of shoes two days in a row: Shoes need at least 24 hours to dry out after you’ve worn them to discourage the growth of bacteria (smelly and destructive to the shoe), plus I find my feet hurt less at the end of the day if I vary heel heights and footbed shapes through the week. These boots are so terrifically comfortable that I have broken my no-repeats rule twice in the past two months — one week I wore the boots four days in a row! I tell you, this time it’s love.

The boots are so warm they are suited only to cold weather. Once the temperature rises above 60F I’ll have to pack these away, so I’m already scouting KEEN’s shoes for a warm-weather substitute.

I would like to think that Spring is right around the corner, but in case it is not, you would do well to try out a pair of these boots. Winter will have no power over you again.

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Early on a Sunday, after first Mass in Clonegal, my father, instead of taking me home, drives deep into Wexford toward the coast, where my mother’s people came from. It is a hot August day, bright, with patches of shade and greenish sudden light along the road. We pass through the village of Shillelagh, where my father lost our red shorthorn in a game of forty-five, and on past the mart in Carnew, where the man who won her sold her not long afterward. My father throws his hat on the passenger seat, winds down the window, and smokes. I shake the plaits out of my hair and lie flat on the back seat, looking up through the rear window. I wonder what it will be like, this place belonging to the Kinsellas. I see a tall woman standing over me, making me drink milk still hot from the cow. I see another, less likely version of her, in an apron, pouring pancake batter into a frying pan, asking would I like another, the way my mother sometimes does when she is in good humor. The man will be her size. He will take me to town on the tractor and buy me red lemonade and crisps. Or he’ll make me clean out sheds and pick stones and pull ragweed and docks out of the fields. I wonder if they live in an old farmhouse or a new bungalow, whether they will have an outhouse or an indoor bathroom, with a toilet and running water.

Read the full short story online: “Foster” by Claire Keegan – http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/02/15/100215fi_fiction_keegan#ixzz0ggBWhCu8

I read this story the other night and it’s haunting me. I want there to be more of it — the story is perfect as it is of course, but I want to spend more time with the characters.

Photo credit: “Ballinesker Beach, Co. Wexford” by Michal Osmenda on Flickr.

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Extra great on a snowy Friday afternoon.

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Gothic

Feb 22, 2010 0 comments

QI XL, Series G: Episode 13 – Gothic Part 1/5 (YouTube video)
Is this my favorite episode of QI yet? Most probably.
If David Mitchell had been one of the guests, I might well have died happy after watching this. I still could.

Lucky pants / unlucky pants

Feb 21, 2010 0 comments

How many pairs of lucky pants does Kessler own?
None.
How many pairs of unlucky pants does Kessler own?
Nine.
Is this bad?
Most definitely. There are days when a certain something extra is required of us and on those certain something extra days we are accustomed to [...]

Feed me

Feb 12, 2010 0 comments

Feed the Firefoxes, originally uploaded by Glutnix.

Some changes here at My Brilliant Mistakes: I’ve started using my Tumblr account more often to share interesting items I encounter on the web. My Tumblr is we might need this later, named as such because I use it for saving items of undetermined value.
Since I’ve been using that [...]

That’s some catch, that Catch-22

Feb 11, 2010 1 comment

Woman’s Last Stand: Dodge Charger Commercial Spoof (via mackenziefegan, which I learned of via ScareHouseScott)
The sad thing is that the more we keep talking about the original ad, the more effective it will have been. But not talking about how unoriginal and hackneyed its theme is comes across as accepting it as correct.
There was only [...]

Breaking the fourth wall

Feb 8, 2010 0 comments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl461mVrMFo

Ringo remembers Goldfinger

Feb 8, 2010 0 comments

Boing Boing has long ago interviewed Peter Serafinowicz, so this might not be the freshest video to share with you. But there’s so much material in Peter’s back catalog that you might have missed this gem.
Context: On Peter’s BBC comedy series (excerpts of which are easily available on YouTube), he frequently imitates Ringo Starr’s “lugubrious” [...]

The future of the book

Feb 4, 2010 1 comment

UPDATE: Another casualty of Snowpocalypse 2010, the “Future of the Book” discussion has been postponed. With luck it will be rescheduled soon.
Next Thursday, the Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series at Pitt’s Creative Writing program will hold an event of primo interest to me: a discussion titled “The Future of the Book,” featuring Sven Birkerts and Maud [...]

Fresh (on PSO Outside)

Feb 1, 2010 0 comments

FOLHA FRESCA (Fresh leaf), originally uploaded by jonycunha.
I posted on the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra blog today, “Fresh.”
I wrote about the lovely performance I attended Friday, the PSO performing Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 2 and Haydn’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with soloist Gil Shaham. In classic blogging form, I spent much of the post talking about [...]