After a most entertaining exchange I had last week at work, I feel the need to share these men's boots for anyone with a man in their life who might be interested... I have a co-worker who has been cracking me up with his extreme enthusiasm for a pair of boots that his girlfriend was going to get him for Christmas. He had picked them out and she said she would get them for him, but because they were quite expensive, he began setting aside $20 per month to help with the purchase. He stalked them online and found a local store that carried them, but because he is very cautious about big purchases, waited until after Christmas to go and try them on. Then he left the store without them.... still too cautious to commit. He had already told me about these boots before Christmas and had spent tons of time researching them, and last week he came into my office all excited and told me that he was definitely going to do it. I did a Google image search and then he got really excited and said "whoa, I don't know why I didn't think about that. This way I can see all the ways people have styled them!!" This co-worker has a really cool/quirky style - he is in his early 30's, is kind of tall and lanky with big, dark rimmed glasses and tatooed forearms. He likes to wear his pants rolled up to expose his shoes. A while after leaving my office, he came back in and said he had done an Instagram search on the boots. He clearly couldn't even concentrate on work for the excitement of these boots! One of the images showed that someone had actually tatooed a face on the side of one of the boots and the guy nearly fell over with the thrill of it all. His exact words were "my mind has been blown!" (He now wants to get his dog tatooed on the side of his new boots!) And now he is talking about setting aside money every month for a shoe/boot budget! His biggest dilemma was what color to get. His girlfriend liked the darker reddish/cognac color, but he preferred the lighter orange/tan color. He liked that it would change and darken as it aged. The proudest moment for me in this whole exchange was that he really wanted to know my opinion because "you are into style." It was just the sort of awkward compliment that I treasure most. I agreed with him on his color choice because I can picture it going well with his style and because they will age in a cool and interesting way. My second proudest moment was when I got a text from the guy yesterday with photos of his new boots. He found a third color in the store that was perfect and bought those. They are a more medium brown that are less orange than the others, and they will still age to a wonderful patina. He has promised to wear them to work tomorrow to show me.

So here they are: the Red Wing Iron Ranger (attached are the photos of the boots he bought).
http://www.redwingheritage.com.....pper-08115