#100 What Do I Do Until 5 AM?

I mentioned to some folks that I've lately turned my days inside out - that I've been having some trouble getting to sleep before 5,6,7 am, and then I sleep until 3,4,5 pm, and I was asked what on earth I do all night.  I really don't know.  It sure as hell doesn't involve any housework! 

Well, I was out with friends last evening.  I don't know what time I got home, didn't look at the clock, but I suspect it was 'round about 1 am.  I went into the bedroom and started to get undressed.  When I was putting the watch away, I found some rings that had been stored in the watch box because there wasn't enough room in the ring case.  But I had just bought a second ring case a few days ago, so I decided to put those rings in the new case.  That set me wandering through the ring cases, trying on, rearranging, sorting.

My rings are sorted by "real stuff", "nice costume",  "trash but I love it anyway", and "garbage but I'm too stingy to throw it away in case I need a replacement rhinestone someday".   I have one ring that keeps getting bounced between trash and garbage.  It's huge.  Looks like something a slinky someone named Lucretia would wear to secretly dump poison in the hero's martini in a '30s movie.  But I love it.  I'll just probably never wear it. 

(Daughter, this is the huge ring with the rectangular clear stone in a basket setting that you keep asking me to give to you but I won't let you have it because I know you want it so you can throw it away as soon as I'm not looking, probably because you're afraid I will wear it some day and embarrass you terribly.)

I was looking at it under the light, trying to figure out how to clean the underside of the stone, when I noticed some writing tucked up inside there.  "Trifari".  Sounded familiar.  Off to the internet to look up Trifari.  Trifari, it turns out, is the Cadillac of costume jewelry (well, maybe more accurately Oldsmobile), circa 1930s to 1960s, and highly collectable!  Said ring has now been promoted to "nice costume".

So now, of course, I had to look  at some Trifari to find out what this ring might be worth someday, maybe.  Which landed me in Ruby Lane, one of my favorite "slobber-over-the-pictures" sites. 

They currently have 1300 pieces of antique and "vintage" Trifari in stock.

I have a slow connection to the internet.

It is now 5:40 am.