Slo-mo holiday week

I like this week in between the holidays. Te roads are quieter during the commute. The phones aren't ringing to much. It's nice and quiet here at the office. I was able to recreate the prior week from all the notes I took while working from home. It was a big old hair ball to get all those scribbled notes in to the systems at work and make sure all the invoicing was done and other details where captured. It made for a crazy Monday but now I can sit back and relax pretty much.

We had a great Christmas. Janta brought me a new camera amongst other tresure. God love 'em. It's the same make I had before but one model up from it. I'm liking the bigger display screen. I'll bore you with pictures soon. We spent a quiet Christmas Eve dinner with my Mom and Christmas day with Jay's family. Somewhere in there one of the vertically challenged (and sticky) relatives passed on their germs and I'm incubating a cold right now. We did have a moment of worry Christmas day as a 25' limb off the doug fir on the corner of the house gave way under the snow and crashed down on the rockery. If it had been on the other side of the tree it would have taken out the power, phone and cable. - Whew! close one.



The week wasn't all joy and light, Lolli's nephew committed suicide a few days before Christmas and it certainly affected her holiday. There's more than a little strained family dynamics going on there and having to pull the whole family together for this is a challenge. The funeral is today, a few hours from now. Hopefully differences can be set aside for the poor grieving mother. Jay & I will check in on Lolli at the end of the day. Send her a prayer if you would.

One of my favorite gifts this year was a Russian samovar. It's kind of a long story. When Jay's Sister & BIL got posted to Russia years ago I told them I'd always wanted one and asked them to find one for me. I'd expected to pay for it myself. About 5 years ago the samovar was found and purchased but need export licenses as it's considered a piece of heritage. Long story short, it finally made it's way out of Russia this year. It's an interesting piece. I'm still trying to decide if it is indeed a 'heritage' piece or not. It doesn't matter if it is or it isn't I love it all the same. However it's got some interesting clues. There's no double eagle mark on it so it must have been made after the revolution. There are what appear to be tax stamps that have been pounded on to the sides but since I can't read Cyrillic I'm not quite sure yet. The fixture is brass, but it looks like it's brass plated over copper with some copper showing thru in places where you'd expect it had a lot of handling. I'll need to do a little research of production methods. Again I love it as it is but I can't resist trying to figure out if it's from the early Soviet period or a very well done fake. I love this kind of stuff.



Hope your having a great day!

B