This year I feel like I got fewer presents overall than previous years, though I do think the presents i got were bigger in scope which more than makes up for it. Actually, I would rather have a single big present than a bunch of little presents so I think this worked out rather well.
Probably the weakest present this year sadly came from my brother, he usually does better so I was a bit disappointed by this. He gave us a package of Christmas themed table decorations which included a table runner, a platter, towels and some paper plates and napkins. This isn’t really us, though I appreciated the attempt. Reminded me of a similar attempt at this my sister made several years ago. Trying to get me decorations I think may be awfully difficult unless you are pretty freaking sure I’m going to like it. Heck, most decorations tend to take me over 6 months to decide alone, I wouldn’t expect someone else to take that type of thought into getting me stuff.
My mom got me a Badgers watch. She likes to do themes where she gets everyone the same type of thing. She was going to get me a crock pot but I opted out of that earlier because we don’t really have room for appliances in our kitchen so she tacked me into the grandkid’s theme of watches. This also didn’t work for me, and she took the watch back nearly right away. I felt bad, but I don’t like to wear watches, they bother my arms and then I always know what time it is which is disturbing. It makes time go slower which I don’t like. She also got me a couple of books on the Lombardi Legacy, both of which were signed by the author, one was also signed by a dozen of the Lombardi Packers. Pretty cool
In addition, my mom got my roommate and I some kitchen stuff that I asked for. A cookie pan, 8×8 pan, 13×5 pan, and a spatula. The 8×8 and 13×5 are weird, they are ridged which I’m not entirely sure if I like or not, we’ll see.
My sister actually did better than I can remember her doing in recent memory. She got me a pasta machine after a brief discussion about how I’ve always wanted to make my own pasta the week before. She also gave me some pasta flour and homemade tomato sauce to go with it. Outside of the aforementioned appliance build-up, this was great. I can’t wait to try making my own pasta!
My roommate continued her streak of great presents as well. She got me a Nook Touch. In getting this present, she did ask me to make sure what I wanted and I did some looking into the Nook vs. Kindle debate. I decided that Nook had a couple of features that I liked (in-store support, better pdf support, better library support, more memory and expandable memory) that I tended to lean that way. On top of that, at the end of the day I decided that I wanted to give my support to the only physical bookstore left, given that even B&N has been having hard times of late due to Amazon. And not to mention that I really don’t care for Amazon either. Well it made it a fairly easy choice.
She also got me the Blu-ray edition of Firefly which I was super excited by and have already begun re-watching the series. And she bought me a recipe book called From Asparagus to Zucchini. It is a book that is meant to help CSA subscribers make meals with the food they get from their CSAs, and it is a book that was written locally. I was really excited about this because I had looked for this book everywhere and had a hard time finding it. She didn’t even realize I knew about it and thought she was finding a new book for me. She was a little disappointed that i already heard about it, but to me it makes it better that she found it without even being remotely guided by me!
This year was unique in that I traded gifts with a couple of friends at work. I’ve never done this before but was fairly happy to do. From one side, I got an Ultimate Matrix Blu-Ray set which is great because I was considering buying it when it was on sale for Black Friday week, but didn’t. The other side i got a book that outlines the history of computer RPGs. Another great gift as I love RPGs and really do appreciate the history in them. I look forward to getting time to reading this book.
Overall this was a really good year for presents I think. There weren’t a lot of duds which is really the most I can ask for. I hope others enjoyed the presents that I got them as much as the ones they got me.