Yeah, it's a Sherlock Holmes / London / Hitchcock / Train / Chess theme.
Forget the vase, he should have taken all the money he spent on this and used it to pay off part of his $156k in credit card debt! He has 31 credit cards (19 are closed, the others he continually maxes out).
He had 33 until I paid off two of them for him, but once I realized that me paying off his bills was another excuse for him to charge more on other ones, I gave up. He's going to be in debt up to his eyeballs until the day he dies, and there's not a single thing I can do about it.
Have I mentioned he bought a brand new Toyota Rav4 last year, too, while his Ford Escape trade-in was worth $10k less than he owed on it? That's not included in the $156k (which is an accurate number).
And yes, I am going to have a blast redecorating.
I loved "Where's Waldo?" and "I Spy" as a kid, but I never intended for my apartment to be a guest feature.