So…our friend Y. who goes by many nicknames…none of which he would want posted online…gave me a pair of gloves for my birthday this year with a pack of M&M’s stuffed in them. In the flurry of activity (mostly me showing our guests the chickens) I failed to try them on while he was here for the birthday pork butt smoking event that Maya kindly orchestrated to celebrate my ever increasing age.

Low and behold…a week later I cut my finger chasing Morning Glory (bindweed) bare handed (like an idiot) through the raised bed with the Rhubard, Rosemary, Sage, Oregano, and horrificly tenacious Yarrow in it (don’t ask me why I capitalized the plant names). Well, after I stopped the bleeding and cleared the dirt from the wound, I said “Hey! This would be a great time to try on those snazzy gloves that Y. (with all those nicknames) gave me for my birthday.” Such a sneaky, sneaky man is Y. that deep inside the glove was a gift card for a very large home improvement store with orange signs and a kind of comical “green” campaign that is probably worthy of a post unto itself.

I almost never buy new stuff, so a gift card is one of those moments that give me a good excuse to troll the aisles and find something I either wouldn’t ordinarily buy (thinking it an extravagance) or for which I would spend 3 months searching craigslist and researching pricing throughout the northwest until I found the exactly correct one at exactly the correct price somewhere in the region. At which point I would drive 15 miles in traffic, get lost 3 times, and arrive only to find it is not really quite the correct one, or that it is defective in some manner, and still buy anyway feeling compelled to justify the drive (and the getting lost).

So, with this particular gift card that Y. (with all the nicknames) gave me, we went trundling to the large home improvement store with the orange signs so I could troll the aisles of the tool area at a pace that inevitably irritates Maya a little bit (I’m kind of a slow, and deliberate person when trolling aisles at any store since I don’t get out of the house much and see it all as a research opportunity).

I had a little something in mind when we arrived. Something I had been toying with buying for a couple of years, and in fact, almost bought last year at a liquidation store (but realized that it was there because of obvious inconsistencies in the specifications listed on the box and couldn’t be certain it would meet my wants, needs, and desires). It is the kind of tool you can do without for a long while (and I have), but every now and again when I’m doing something I think to myself, “Gee, that tool sure would be handy right now.” And, with a little help from Maya to cover the taxes and accessories, I am now the proud owner of:

 I have yet to use it, but there are already projects in the pipeline aching for the application of some super modern electrically driven brads. Sometimes (and this probably isn’t advisable) the tool drives the project, and in this case the tool has forced a complete re-imagining of the bird block for the shed (which has been waiting a year for bird block while I figure out just how I want to do it). Anyway, the primary purpose of this post is to extend a GIGANTIC THANK YOU to Y. (with all his many nicknames) and show him what the gift card added to our little arsenal of hand tools that get us through the day…