The Studio 2 Cutter Arrived

I was in town most of yesterday. When I got home, I found a large box labelled “heavy” on the kitchen floor. I was glad the husband was home when the UPS truck showed up so he could bring it in for me. I managed to unbox the cutter and get it upstairs:

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It is currently sitting on that 2’ x 4’ Costco folding table in the spare bedroom. I need to think about where I want it to live on a more permanent basis. (It does fold up for storage.) When I want to use the smaller Go! cutter, I take the steam press off the top of the dresser in DD#1’s old bedroom and put the cutter there. (That dresser holds part of my Kona collection.) That space is not big enough for the Studio cutter, however.

The husband and I each have plans for rearranging our respective tool collections—he asked me yesterday if I noticed that there was more room in the old garage—but not all of it can happen right now. Some of my plans are dependent on weather, some of them are dependent on moving out some old pieces of furniture that are no longer being used, and some of them are subject to a longer time horizon based on when our renters might move out. They are looking for a place to buy; we are happy to have them there as long as they want to stay, but when they move out, we probably won’t rent that property again. Good renters are hard to find; bad renters are a headache of epic proportions.

I didn’t have the energy to play with the new cutter last night. Thursdays are the husband’s fire training night. I typically put on my yoga pants and a comfy sweatshirt and curl up under a quilt to read. Perhaps I’ll have some time this afternoon.

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The third Thursday of the month is our “Sisters” lunch—it used to be referred to as the “Senior Sisters” lunch but we removed the word “senior” because I am the youngest one and I don’t yet qualify for a senior citizen discount, LOL. It is the same group that quilts on the first Thursday of each month. We had lunch at a Chinese restaurant in downtown Kalispell.

I also met with our banker. The husband and I are pretty proud of the fact that we were able to put up that new shop without taking out a loan. I hate debt. We made sure that the girls were able to graduate from college without any student loan debt, although they did their part by getting top grades in high school which earned them some hefty merit scholarships. Right now, the only loan we have is for the husband’s newer work truck, and that’s going to be paid off in a couple of months.

One of the big planned purchases for the new shop is a hydraulic lift. The husband works on all our vehicles, and even though he has a system for doing it safely in the old garage, having a lift will be a game changer. After much research and consideration, he decided on a more expensive lift with extra safety features for working on heavy equipment vehicles like his work trucks. We are at the low point in cash flow for the year—with an upcoming wedding this fall—so I suggested that we do a short-term equipment loan for the lift. The lift has to be paid for up front and will take 6-8 weeks from when the order is placed for the company in New York to build it and freight it out here.

Our banker is one of those old-fashioned guys—he calls each of his customers every couple of months just to check in and see if they need anything. He was more than willing to get the paperwork through, so the husband should be able to order the lift next week.

I also put the deposit on the venue for DD#1’s wedding, which will be in October. I’m glad to have that nailed down.

Susan let me piggyback on her Fedco order, so I have a Bob Gordon elderberry on the way and she got Seek No Further scion wood to graft an apple tree for me. I need to sit down and put together my Baker Creek and Victory Seeds order soon. For all that January feels like it is 90 days long, March really isn’t that far away.