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You didn’t miss much if you were going to be staying at McMurdo. Pole is pretty cool though. I got booted out of Palmer once. A few of us were whooping it up with a few of their guys and the base commander broke it up at 3am and ordered us back to our ship. There’s not exactly a great sense of joie de vivre amongst the NSF and military types that run the American bases

Well anyway, the point is that some of us have jobs that will allow the wearing of heels at work, and some of us do not. It has nothing to do with our professional qualifications or opportunities. It's more to do with circumstances. I doubt I would wear heels to work, even if I were in the "office." Though were I in the office, I would sure long to.

I pulled my name out of consideration for a 6-month scientific assignment for NASA in Antarctica in the late 70's.

Yes but your job doesn’t take you to Antarctica, Papua New Guinea, Chad or the Darien Gap - mine does and heels are not useful in those places, but otherwise I’m in heels at work, and since I’ve largely stopped travelling, in heels full time!

I'm more like @higherheels, I have a professional job so I can wear what I want at home and when I go in, and for me that's high heels.

I have the luxury of being self employed so when I am not travelling on assignment I am working from my kitchen table and can wear whatever I please. Theoretically I can wear whatever I please on assignments, but most of my assignments are in wild remote areas where hiking boots or engineering boots are the only sensible option. Even then, though, I do have some knee boots with the right soles

Ah, of course if you have to wear specific work shoes you don't have that much time left for heels. I have an office job so I can wear whatever I want at work, that's a plus when it comes to heels.

In the UK, as others have mentioned, you get plasterboard in sheets of 2400x 1200mm (8x4 metric feet) and plywood etc in 2440x1220 (8x4 proper feet). When you have that sort of thing, it's often convenient to refer to 300mm as a metric foot.

They are not. I purposefully diverted the off-topic conversation to here, where I don't care what we talk about. Do you know one of the meanest things you can do that is basically harmless if you don't count other people's wasted time and frustration? Throw a good sized handful of 12 mm bolts into a box of 1/2" bolts. I don't quite understand how the metric foot works--why not just use the SI unit? I do confess that when it comes to heel height, I think of 10 cm/100 mm as being four inch heels, and 150 mm as being six inch, even though it's not exact. So I suppose I get the rough approximation extrapolated to 300 mm/12 inch. What I don't understand is in what context is it used that way?

On a typical weekday, I spend anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, but averaging 45 minutes, walking in heels of 8 to 11 cm, depending upon the weather and my mood. I then effectively spend the next 12 hours in work boots, by the time you add in lunch and commuting each way. With my feet the way they are, I always bring a second pair of socks, which I change at lunch. If I do not do this, I am miserable all afternoon. If I had to go 16 hours in boots, I'd go through three pairs of socks a day. Unless I have somewhere to go after work, such as church choir rehearsal or the occasional special event, I have various slip-on sandals that I use as house slippers, but all are 7 cm or less. That is why I wonder what my life would be like if I could wear heels to work every day, such as the red patent Via Spiga shoes I wore Sunday.

I think that the posts from mlrose and at9 are responding in the wrong thread - see

I’m so looking forward to being able to say the same about 12cm heels!

Pretty much the same for me except I don't do kayaking. @Shyheels Yes that's the great thing about it. I never had a problem with 12 cm heels, but now they become even more comfortable. Now I'm even more confused about units in the UK, it probably can't get more complicated 😀

I often find myself doing sketches at a scale of 1mm represents 1". Just seems convenient for all sorts of things that I do. In the UK we also have metric feet (300mm).

@Puffer I'm a 16ths of an inch guy myself. Sometimes I catch some flack for it, because most guys round to 8ths of an inch. I think this is part of the reason why my stuff tends to look better than average. But see, if we just went to millimeters, that's even a little bit finer than 16ths, but doesn't give you a headache like looking at a rule that's marked in 32nds. Then everybody's work might look a little better.

UK anachronisms also include: milk bought in either pints or litres (according to the seller); beer on draught in pints but when in cans or bottles it is metric (330, 440 or 500 ml etc). Timber sold in length increments of 300mm (the 'metric foot') and plasterboard which was 8' x 4' now 'shrunk' to 2400 x 1200mm, but most other sheet material (e.g. MDF, plywood) still 2440 x 1220mm (equivalent to 8' x 4')! And model railways, for example, are commonly built to a scale of 4mm:1 foot (UK) or 3.5mm:1 foot (US and Europe), both using a track gauge of 16.5mm (which is therefore too narrow to represent standard gauge of 4' 8.5" in the UK but almost spot-on for US/Europe models). You need your wits about you when doing construction work or model-making, but we are used to the mixture. I still 'think better' in imperial when doing joinery or plumbing etc but will often use millimetres when dealing with small measurements, as working in, say, 64ths of an inch is rather tiresome.

One thing I have been so pleased about as a result of this high heel challenge is the ease with which I now get about in my 10cm stilettos. While I am slowly getting better in my 12cm ones, the improvement at the 10cm height is really gratifying and noticeable - so much so that I find myself tempted simply to wear my 10cm boots for the sheer joy of it, at the expense of practicing with my 12cm ones. The past two days I’ve been wearing them 12 hours a day - admittedly not walking much, just puttering about, making meals and coffee and writing at my desk, but being in 10cm stilettos is starting to feel natural and intuitive. I like it

I wear my heels 12 hours on most days and sometimes 16 hours. Only time I'm in flats is when I'm barefooted or working in my garden or kayaking or skiing. Today its my Nine West Samreno suede block heeled knee highs, 10 cm.

The only way I’d ever manage 20cm is if I added together the heels on my 10cm boots …

Haha, now that came quickly! No longer practicing in these low 12 cm boots, 20 cm is the new thing 😄

Nah, I’ve just gotten incredibly gifted at high heels! 😂 That’s what I like about heels! They are always fun, never boring and there are so many interesting styles and heights - even if you just wear boots like I do!

I somehow thought since you're walking so many miles in heels you usually wear them all day. As this is what I do most of the time, I can tell you: Like everything else it becomes standard. For me it would rather be exciting to spend a normal day in flats, but as I don't like them I won't try that 😉 And the good thing about heels is that I can still vary between so many styles, so it never gets boring. You mean 10 cm, right? 😉

I did the same, in my 19cm stiletto knee boots, but I wasn’t walking around much, just puttering around - writing, cleaning, making meals. It was really quite nice. I felt very much at ease in them

I did something yesterday that I haven't done in a long time--I spent the entire day in 10 cm heels. Stilettos, at that. I put them on for church, and never bothered to change out of my Sunday clothes until about 7 p.m., so I was in the heels for about 9 hours. I didn't do anything particularly impressive in them, but it's been a very long time since I've had the chance to wear heels all day. What if every day were like that?

Yes four inch heels does have a ring to it. Here in Britain we use both measurements regularly. Our speed limit signs are in mph, but we guy our food in grams and kilos. We measure our height in feet and inches and talk about our weight in pounds and stone. Screws and bolts are metric, as are most tools. We buy petrol in litres but talk of miles per gallon. It can be weird. a mile walk in 10cm heels - to continue our mixed use if measurements - is impressive. The weather was vile out today so I went nowhere but wore my 10cm heels indoors all day. I should have worn my 12cm but I was lazy and the 10cm are so easy to walk in. It felt really odd, deflating, to take them off at the end of the day.