RE-Cycle: Christmas Came Early This Year! Three Times Yesterday!

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Christmas Came Early This Year! Three Times Yesterday!

As I have proclaimed time and time again, "the difference a day makes!"
On Sunday, part of our leisure activities was to search for Angela's wedding ring, or in this particular case, a ring bought on our anniversary several years ago to update her original.
Short story; As is the standard custom in our lives, when Angi and I finally tied the knot (ten years and four kids after originally meeting) the wedding budget was minimal. But, with all due respect to her occasional assertions that it was less then the ideal setting, the small affair we planed, and executed, was perfect. She designed and a friend helpped her make her own wedding dress. With some tips from her mother we baked and decorated our own wedding cake(s) and flawlessly trimmed out our home in Katy, Texas. With a Justice of the Peace in attendance, we even DJ'D our own ceremony. The big issue was the rings. As I mentioned, the budget was slim, so we settled for simple silver bands bought in a small shop laid out on a simple piece of black velvet, with the caveat that once we could afford them, we would upgrade. Well, that took several years, but eventually I found a beautiful gold and diamond affair I presented to her a few anniversaries ago. Unfortunately, after a few years, one of the diamonds fell out of the setting, but as luck would have it, Angi recovered the lost diamond. She put it away, for future resetting, but it took some time to eventually get around to doing something about it. Oddly enough in the process of searching for her ring (in closet boxes still unpacked from the previous move) I ended up snagging and breaking MY wedding ring!! Fates way of telling me it was time to upgrade as well.
Yesterday, Angi brought me up lunch and as planned, brought her ring to a local jeweler, John at "Florida Gold and Loan" just up the street on Patricia. Surprisingly, it would not cost any where NEAR as much as I had anticipated! To set the diamond and clean the entire ring it was only $25.00!! A small price to pay to have the ring back on her finger and the beaming smile on her face!
Now, as is the case with both bad and glad tidings, everything comes in three's (perhaps cosmic reverence to the Holy Trinity? Or maybe the Fates of Greek Mythology?) or it may have been because Angela was here. When Angela is around, good things happen. Call it the luck of the Irish or just because it's her, but mere seconds after she left to retrieve her ring, I got a phone call from Vanessa, the agent (and all around sweet person) who is both handling our house and helping us. Thankfully, she had tentatively good news. Seems the gentleman who came to look at the house on Sunday (yes, this was a scheduled viewing) was representing an investor. The house passed initial muster and the home is now under contract and pending a final inspection, will be purchased as an investment with the intention of keeping us on as tenants!! Now, I live by a few rules, and the most prevailing is "Don't spend money you don't have yet!" Translation; don't ever get excited until you KNOW! But it was welcome news at least! At least now Angi can execute her holiday decorating ideas because we will be there at the very least through the end of January! As Angi returned, I told her the good news. As is always the case around here, on days I decide I am going to clean, condense and organize we always get a rush of new stuff or repairs in (I should clean more often!) As we were still discussing the good news , surprise number three pulled up. Claudia, with Deming Estate Sales had a van full of bicycle manna! I'd talked to her a week or so ago, as she had acquired a plethora of high end bike frames, a few mostly complete bikes and boxes and boxes of parts. Seems a gent, freshly retired had came to the conclusion that he would build bikes as a way of spending his retirement.
Here's one of the really fun parts of my job. Investigation, research, evaluation and discovery. It may seem a bit anthropomorphic, but every bike can take on a bit of personality through it's history. Part of the fun is to discover it's past. More often then not, the owner who sells it will fill me in, but times like this I only have tidbits of secondhand here say, and have to fill in the rest by looking at available evidence. Quickly, a pattern unfolded. Through looking at the available parts, frames ad tools I quickly surmised that this was an indulgence quickly abandoned. The majority of the specialty tools ordered remained in their original packaging. The three High end, FULL CARBON FIBER frames ordered, still remained swathed in packing material and in their boxes. The parts ordered to build them in their packages but unfortunately he ordered much of what he didn't need, and failed to order some he did! There was a lot of money invested in a fleeting fancy. I do hope it was not due to ailing health but am thankful it all ended up here! This will be an exciting new test for us. These three bikes will be our first foray into carbon not to mention high end bikes! These bikes initially retailed for between $1600 and $2200 fully assembled! There will be some lucky folks out there, as the bikes, once assembled will for all intents and purposes be new bikes but with greatly reduced prices! This was a prerequisite for excepting them on consignment! There's even a sweet looking Road bike that is going to be decked out completely with a full set of Campy Veloce when I'm done! SAH-WEEEET!
I did manage to get a couple things done, thankfully! A nice looking 24" dual shock MTB and a REALLY nice looking 26" Raleigh Mountain bike! So check them out below! Well, now I got to get moving as I have a plethora of stuff to inventory, find room for and start building!
See ya soon!