Now is the chance to take some pics of your Xmas/holiday gifts and share them with us.
This was the year of keeping it simple for me - both in getting and giving.
Getting
From Dad: A Wal-Mart gift card. Yes, it oppresses Main Street independent shops and their employees, but for certain useful staples, they're always a good option. And I'm unconvinced the Big K and Targét are really that much better - the latter is like Wal-Mart with a touch more class and add 15% to every price. A useful gift, even if not the most inspired (and my father is usually terrible at creative gift giving).
From John: I have a clock fetish. I have not less than 20 clocks around here of all different kinds, but mechanical (and noisy) ones are my favorites. One of my distant aunts left me her grandfather clock which took just over a year to rehabilitate and it finally got here just a week or two before Xmas, so now I have another along with the two mantel clocks, one spartan brass chime wall clock, and the cuckoo in the kitchen. Every 15 minutes is craziness around here. John built me a clock using hand blown glass tubes from the old Soviet Union or Russia that have tiny filaments inside that light up and are effectively the very first lit digit "LCD-style" clock. Each filament can be lit and there are enough there to support every digit. This is early 1940s technology and looks it. He built the small desk-style clock for me, which is cool.
From Others Who Bear Cash/Giftcards: The bulk of the rest of the gifts are the useful pair of new gloves, cash, gift certificates, and from John's mom - a Swiss-style handy multi-tool keychain thing that can break auto glass, slice through seatbelts, or whatever else I need to survive my next big car accident. Jolly joker.
Giving
For Dad & John: New cellphones - the Verizon contract was up. A simple one for my father who doesn't need a lot of glitz (I have him on my cell account so he gets the service for free), and a Chocolate phone for John and I. John has learned more about the thing than I've had a chance to. They look like reasonably nice phones, although the buttons are a bit small for my fat fingers.
For John's parents: A new basic Dell computer system. The old one has to be more than five years old now. Dell has some amazing pricing on perfectly decent desktop and notebook computers. We have to install it over there.
For My Sister: A nice gift card for Macy's. What's not to like about that.
For My Cousin: He loves my
Fantazein clock and China has managed to ripoff their design and sell their own for a lower price. So now he's getting one. The digits appear to be floating in air.
