Cheers!

Happy news - Lee got a new job. Believe it or not he is now working with a buddy who just bought an embroidery business. It’s not in town, so Lee has to travel a bit. But he gets the chance to work with a buddy and GET OUT OF THE HOUSE. He’s been a stay-at-home-dad for a while now, and I know he was going stir crazy. So he’s been learning a new trade. I’ve enjoyed some of our weird talks at the dinner table. We talk about thread and needles and the super awesome embroidery machines. I’ve also been brainstorming creative uses for embroidery. Maybe something I could incorporate into a craft in an non-traditional way. This is the first time, ever, I’ve had the opportunity to try embroidery items in a craft and it’s for free! I only need to provide the materials!

One of the major draw backs for Lee and his buddy to enter into this new business was that they took over just before the holidays.

That means that they were immediately thrown into the frying pan. Poor guys. Their learning curve needed to be short and quickly straighten if they were going to make it pass Christmas. They both pulled extremely long hours, even though Lee was going to be part time help only. After a couple weeks, Abby and I were able to visit the shop and see the big embroidery machines for ourselves. I saw Lee’s buddy too and was pretty surprised to see how tired the poor guy looked. All the stress of a new business and all the running around for the Christmas rush was obviously taking a toll on him.

In celebration, and to say thanks to me (I created a website for his new business), he invited me and Lee out to dinner with his wife at Ruth’s Chris Steak House. The food was awesome. It was also a great double date. They are a great couple to hang with and we had a lot of laughter coming from our table. The waitress dubbed us the rowdy table, which we encouraged more by making constant “that’s what she said” comments. Oh, it was horrible in a totally fun way. After dinner, Lee’s friend decided to truly splurge and buy one ounce of Louis XIII de Remy Martin for the whopping grand total of $100!!

Here’s what the bottle looks like in good lighting. The other shots are from my phone in the restaurant and the lighting is not so good.

According to Wikipedia, the glass decanter itself is expensive. Each bottle is hand crafted and numbered. There’s a solid gold ring at the top of each bottle. The stopper on each decanter fits its own bottle bottom and cannot be swapped with other bottle bases. Cool, eh?

So, Lee’s friend bought one ounce for a hundred bucks. Yikes. So, a special little man came out to make a little production of pouring the drink before us. It was really quite a show.

Here’s how much an ounce is in the glass.

He shared a sip with all of us. I snapped a shot of Lee sampling the expensive drink. It was really very good. It was NOT a hundred dollars good, but it was really good.

So, Lee got an awesome December check for working so hard and putting in such long hours. And what did he spend his first big check on?

Buying a new car for me!

My old car’s clutch went out. It left me stranded without a car. Now, I’ve had POS (piece of sh--!) cars for a long time now. I like driving them into the ground until they can’t run anymore. I don’t know what it was about this time, but I finally had enough. I was done with junk cars. I wanted something that would require the most basic amount of maintenance and would run smoothly for several years. I wanted a new car. So Lee bought me a new Jetta – with his money for the down payment! Poor guy!

Happy Christmas to me!