1) My kneeling chair. Between the pandemic and a new job started a few months before, I am at my desk more than ever. I wondered about the ~acute angle between legs and torso in a regular chair, so I borrowed a kneeling chair from a friend. I figured I'd go easy on it/me and use it for just 15 minutes at a time at first. After a quarter hour or so, I switched back to my chair and was immediately all NOPE NOPE NOPE! Bought my own, adjustable one, later that day. Amazing. Best $100 ever spent.
2) My Delonghi bean-to-cup coffee maker. Had been looking for one after falling in love with the really high quality ones at European hotels, but didn't have a spare €7000. Found this Magnifica on sale at CostCo 5 years ago. Its nits and nuisances are so minor, I accept them happily: Great coffee, every time, exactly as I like it (grind and water volume are adjustable). Best $1000 ever spent. So good, it was one of only two possessions I wrote into my separation agreement. The other was....
3) My Jeep. In 2009 I replaced my car with a old-style CRV and loved the extra height and clearance. I started to venture a little further afield. I had friends who off-loaded, and it intrigued me. Knowing nothing and knowing I wanted to try more serious off-roading, in 2014 I made myself the gift of a JKU Rubicon. Drove it through a swamp the first night and was hooked. It has literally changed my life. I did not know I was handy, or could be handy, now I wrench on it myself and like a lot of members of my club, I'm learning to weld (though more slowly than I would like), and I've gotten pretty good at trail repairs, macgyvering things well enough to get someone off the trail, whether that means just out of the way, or as far as a trailer, or maybe even home.
I also did not expect to be really, really good at it. I've been a trail leader with my club for years, am club secretary, and am one of the guys who figures out new trails in our area, some of them, well, insane (really technical off camber climbs, high damage probabilities, etc.).
And the people! Literally all walks of life and all views, and all amazing.
King of the Hammers just ended; yesterday was my high holy day. My Jeep introduced me to KotH. My Jeep introduced me to some of my best friends, people who would drop everything at a moment's notice and help (my moving crew was all off-road buddies). My Jeep introduced me to going nowhere slowly, to rock crawling, and to discovering views otherwise accessible only by strenuous multi-day hikes. My Jeep is the reason my post-divorce house has an oversized garage stocked with tools. My Jeep is the reason I do so much of my own hands-on around the house.
Between the relaxation that comes from really technical rock crawling and the confidence that comes from both doing that and from cutting holes in to and cutting things off of a very expense piece of machinery, and from the camaraderie and friendship and love within my off-road family, my Jeep has literally changed my life.
Best never ending expenditure ever. Just Empty Every Pocket.
(The fourth? Anti-climactic, but a set of Bose noise cancelling headphones. They were my daughter's welcome gift when she started a new job, but she already had a set, so she passed them on to me. I would never have believed they were anywhere worth the price, it all seemed such hype. I was wrong. They are very cool, very comfortable, and work very well. Best hand-me-down ever. :->)
