Christmas

Christmas In October

Yesterday while on our morning break walk, with me wearing my new V-neck T-shirt birthday present, I mentioned that I had an idea of what I wanted for Christmas. A new pair of hiking boots. My old faithful pair of Hi-Tec’s were starting to look a little ratty and the soles were getting kind of worn down. I figured new boots were the perfect gift, something that I didn’t really need, but wanted and are reasonably priced (unlike most things that make my usual Christmas list.)

This morning Donna asked if there was any place locally that I might be able to buy those hiking boots. I told her possibly Academy Sports over in Augusta. She then asked, “Do you want to go over and see?” It took a couple of seconds before I finally realized she was offering not to just look, but let me buy some.

My mom didn’t raise no fool (I left home too early), so I said,”You know, there is a place here in Aiken that sells Merrell shoes, they might have something.” Not too much later I was the proud new owner of a pair of size 11 Moab Mid GORE-TEX XCR in Dark Earth.

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Christmas In June

We went out for a drive to check on a geocache that someone DNF’d the other day. Ordinarily we wouldn’t worry about a single DNF, but this cacher had over a thousand finds and although the cache container is bison tube, it is hanging under one of the eyes of a Forest Face!

About 5 minutes into the drive with radio down low I could swear I heard Christmas music. Turning up the volume resulted in confirmation, Here Comes Santa Claus was playing. I’ve talked about the Emperor’s music delivery system here before, but for sake of my numerous new readers, music in the Miata comes from a 10 disc CD changer that plays MP3s and now that we were listening to Yuletide Tunes again it meant that it has taken over 5 months to listen to the other 9 CDs (or approximately 1700 songs.)

Maybe time to swap out for new CDs, or I could just leave them in there and the Christmas music might next roll around right on time for the season…

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Emperor’s Christmas Present

Agusta Commons Christmas DecorationsI headed over to the closest LTS this morning to get the tire plugged. I walked up to the unmanned desk and spun the tire to get the nail facing up. When I did this I noticed a tear in the sidewall of the tire right to the inside of where the nail was. Yikes. The nail was a long framing nail and after puncturing the tread area (the initial clicking that went away) it must have gotten bent and worked its way over and punctured the sidewall (the squirming and rapid deflation.)

When the desk guy came out and asked if he could help, I told him, “Maybe not any more.” I showed him the sidewall and told him I realized that eliminated the easy fix. I asked if he might have a used tire in my size to tide me over ’til after the holidays. He searched and couldn’t come up with anything, so I asked what he had in stock in 195/15 x 15. He had a Michelin Raptor for $75. I thanked him and said I’d let him know.

When I got home I checked the Michelin website and could find no mention of a tire called Raptor. Searching the web led me to a Riken Raptor made by Michelin, but it doesn’t come in 15″ sizes, so what was that guy thinking? Next up I started calling the other 5 tire stores in town and discovered that 195/50 x 15 is not a popular size in these parts. I guess if it doesn’t fit a pickup truck or an SUV… Two of the local tire stores had something in that size, first place had some Kuhmo AST tires for $65 a piece and the second had some BF Goodrich g-Force Sports for $82. A little research let me toss out the Kuhmos as the AST is an all-season tire. The BF Goodrich’s were listed as an Ultra High Performance Summer, much better.

Headed off to Miata.net for more in depth research. A few tires got the best reviews, my current, but holy, Toyo T1R, The General Exclaim UHP and the Bridgestone Potenza RE750. I widened my search area and started calling Augusta tire stores. Nobody had any of those top three or anything else in my size. I checked in at TireRack.com for some reviews of the g-Force and was pleasantly surprised, it ranked 7th of all the Ultra High Performance Summer tires they sell

Merry Christmas your Highness – four new BFGoodrich g-Force Sports.

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Merry Christmas

Santa, Me & DonnaPlease accept — with no obligation, implied or implicit — my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable tradition of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your preference. In addition, please enjoy a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2007.

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Happy Christmas

Or “Dude, I’m Getting A Dell, Part Deaux.”

We are off for a long holiday weekend and have decided to take a drive to a place that put us in more of a Christmas feeling than the sunny and sixty Aiken; sunny and mid-seventies of south Florida. I’ll be taking a pad and paper so I can analog blog for later transcription here. This will be the last time I have to do it that way because Santa is bringing me one of those $500 Dell laptops. I must have been a very good boy this year. 🙂 From now on, same day blogging no matter where I am.

I ordered it on Sunday and they even had a free upgrade to 2-day shipping. I was thinking that would mean it would be here by now, but if you watch this video you’ll see why it may be after Christmas before I get it:
Cops! (warning for dial-uppers – 2M file size)

See ya Monday.

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I Hate Christmas

It is easy to buy something for someone close to you, with personal interaction you get an idea of what they want by how they react to the world or even through blatant hints from them.

I speak to my mom on the phone once a month or so. I get to say a few words to my brother if he happens to answer the phone when I call mom (he lives with her.) A stray email passes between my sister and I. Approximately once a year Donna and I pop in for a visit ranging from a few hours to a few days. So buying gifts for my family back in Connecticut is difficult, they are practically strangers. In a the 30-odd years since I left the Nutmeg State behind when I joined the Navy, the gift giving process has morphed from traditional to meaningless in a pace slightly faster than geological.

At first we exchanged gifts based on our mutual knowledge, but as the years apart grew, our tastes changed and the gifts given and received no longer were relevant.

Next we graduated to swapping lists. For a short while the generic ones would suffice; v-neck sweater in large or jazz records, but we soon decided that there were still more misses than hits.

The next level was the detailed list. J.C Penny Fall/Winter Catalog, Page 436, Item A, Men’s Mock Turtleneck in Heather, Size Large, etc. We got just what we asked for, but colors, textures and sizes were not always what we expected.

In the never ending quest for the perfect gift, we next ushered in the Gift Card era; Best Buy, Old Navy or B.Dalton Books thank you very much. I really don’t like the idea of trading gift cards in the mail. Suppose my brother said send me a gift card to Lowes and I tell him that I would like a gift card to Lowes too. Shouldn’t we just skip mailing them to each other? Save the time and energy of mailing them to each other. For that matter why even buy the gift card at all. Sometime in December go to the store and buy something you like and thank him for it in his Christmas card, “Love than cordless drill you got me bro’, it was just what I needed!”

The end of the gift card era is coming and I’m not sure that the next step is any better. Last year I gave my sister a gift card for Amazon.com. I bought it online, they mailed me the plastic card, I mailed the card to her and she redeemed it online. Which leads to the 21st century digital gift giving era…online gift certificates. You just cut out that whole messy US Postal Service middleman. Deadline, schmedline, you can get up Christmas morning with mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap, log on to the net and email everyone an electronic gift card redeemable for merchandise available at an online store.

Well, I’m not going there, Donna and I are going down to Hilton Head Island this weekend and my mother, brother, sister and her husband are getting gifts with an HHI theme whether they want or like them.

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