Post Christmas Wrap-Up

After three days of great time with friends and family, I can't say that I wanted to go back to work this morning (but who ever really wants to go to work?). I got to spend time with all sorts of family and friends and ate far too much food. A great time was indeed had by all. It was great seeing friends and family who I hadn't seen for quite a while (some for years). And as usual, we were all spoiled rotten. The haul (not 100% inclusive, but interesting things that were giving to anybody in our family that readers here my find interesting -- I'm at work, so I can't remember the list 100%):

First, my haul from my Reddit Secret Santa
- Homocidal Jungle Cat, a Calvin and Hobbes book.
- 99% Perspiration, a Frazz Collection.
- Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson. I haven't read a novel for years, and this one is 1100+ pages, so it might be time to start.
- Starter Pack for Arduino. I've heard about Arduino stuff, but never looked into them much. This will force me to play.
The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus Mega Set.
A 2TB External Hard Drive
Onkyo TX-SR508 Receiver. This was a gift to myself, primarily, using some money from ads on this site I've been saving up. I wouldn't have even pulled the trigger on a receiver, but I found it refurbished at more than 50% off, and I was sick of all the zillions of RCA cables I had behind my make-shift entertainment center. I couldn't pass it up.
An H20 Mop. My wife must not have thought I was doing a good enough job mopping the floor, as she loves this thing.
Seidio Innocase for my phone.
My kids got a Wii from the grandparents, along with a couple extra controllers. They also gave us Wii Sports Resort, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Wii Party, and Zumba Wii (that's for my wife as she's into Zumba -- my body doesn't move like that).
Board(ish) games were big this year, with Creationary, Balderdash, Scrabble Flash, Mad Gab, Perplexus and Apples to Apples making their way under our tree (we like playing games in our household).
No Christmas should be complete without an Alton Brown book (especially when you don't have cable): Good Eats 2: The Middle Years.
Several DVDs and Gift Cards (including extensions on both our Netflix and High Desert Museum memberships), and some clothes (which you don't appreciate as a kid, but really appreciate as you get older).
And some other stuff I can't remember as I'm work posting this on my lunch break...

Seriously, though, it's a large haul, and I'm not including all the stuff my wife and kids received (there was a FoodSaver, a bunch of American Girl-sized stuff -- some brand-name, some generic -- as well as some other toys and things that I have forgotten at the moment). We always clean out the kids toys and closets after Christmas and donate their gently-used stuff to charity, and we'll be doing that again this year. I'm always extremely blessed and grateful to have such caring wonderful people in my life, and I hope that I've been able to do what I can for them, even if I can't always do so financially and spoil them like I'd really like to (if I had the money, I'd be buying a ton of gifts for people).

I hope everybody had a Merry Christmas!

(Note: Yes, I do have Amazon affiliate tags in some of these links so if you purchase any of the stuff listed above or anything from Amazon via these links, I'll get a few pennies. If you object to the affiliate tags, I'm sorry, and you're welcome to just search the Web for these items or block the cookies.)

Posted by Jake on 12/27/10 @ 11:57 AM
Posted in Jake | 4 Comments | Permalink

4 Comments

Robert K. said on 12/27/10 @ 02:49 PM:
Re: Cryptonomicon - score! Neal Stephenson is one of the best new American writers around (imho). His Baroque Cycle is awesomely good, especially for nerds like us.

And, yah, you did get quite a haul. xmas here was pretty sparse. But I expect that'll change starting next year, when Dash will be old enough to really "get" the gift thing.

Joshua Kelley said on 12/27/10 @ 03:20 PM:
All great table games. Love to play, but don't often enough. Got Creationay for my birthday last year, and what grown man doesn't like playing with Legos?!

Jake said on 12/27/10 @ 03:23 PM:
Robert: I've heard that re: Cryptonomicon from a few people. Just don't know when I'm going to be able to find time to tackle it.

Josh: I loved Legos growing up, and still have a big tub of them that the kids love playing with -- even though I play with them as much as they do (if not more).

Nathan said on 12/27/10 @ 08:09 PM:
I agree with Robert K. Neal Stephenson should be a requirement in the 100 level Lit classes in college. Cryptonomicon is in my top 5 of books.

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