Rants

My wife and I have been married for 26 years and for the first 24 years it has been just us for Christmas. Because we don’t have kids we developed our own little tradition for Christmas, every year we would set aside a certain amount of money and the last Saturday before Christmas we would go to the mall and shop, for ourselves. We would wander the stores together and buy stuff. There would not be anything to “open up” on Christmas morning, but that was just fine by us.

But for the last 2 Christmases since Donna’s mom has been living with us we have had to go shopping for stuff to wrap for each other. We now go to the mall with lists and enter in the middle and then go our separate ways meeting back up at a predetermined time and place.

I think next year we will go back to a modified Plan A, we shop together for ourselves and then when we get home wrap them up to put under the tree….

The latest Rolling Stone came in the mail today. It was all shrink wrapped in plastic. Probably to protect the shiny silver bordered cover of this “Special Double Issue.” I don’t know what makes it special, except for perhaps that photo of Bill Wyman without his shirt on. I don’t know what makes it a double issue, because in thickness it is about the same or maybe even thinner than the last issue. Oh, I see why now, Ozzy is on the cover twice! Once by himself and another with his TV family….

Most Nissans. Most. The commercial then shows plenty of pictures of ugly Frontier pick-ups, lame duck Maximas and not-so-trendy-anymore Xterras. Missing from the list I’m sure is the new 350Z and the hot Altima. How many knuckleheads will go down to their Nissan dealer thinking he’ll get that deal on a Z and end up seduced and buying something he really doesn’t want? Sadly, probably enough that makes it worth their effort to concoct the campaign. Sigh.

Every night I get all set to post to this little blog, but before I do I usually click on a couple of random Blogs from the recently updated column on the left of the Blogger home page. Sometimes I wander for hours reading stuff others have written. Tonight I stumbled on 4 or 5 that were cool which led me to this one – Ho Ho Holy Shit – absolutely great! On the right hand side there are links to the blogs of contributors and one of them happens to be Gretchen Pirillo, wife of Mr. Lockergnome Chris, whose embroidered head adorns the sweatshirt I happen to have on. Small F*cking Internet.

Tomorrow is the half day off I’ve been working extra every day this week for and me and the Mrs. are driving down to Hilton Head for the weekend. Sounds like a big deal, but actually we are staying a friend’s condo and we are bringing our DVD player and three movies to watch. We usually just hang around the condo like we hang around the house, the big difference being we can see the ocean from the window on HHI, while at home we see the neighbor’s decrepit boat that is filled with leaves.

Just got through watching “An Evening With The Dixie Chicks” on NBC. While I’m not a big county music fan, I liked this enough to stay for the whole show (which is either a testament to a good program or a statement on the amount of crap available on the other 60-odd channels.) It was actually good stuff. Put me in mind of the Eagles’s Hell Freezes Over concert of a while back. Nice harmonizing with the extra kick of a string section. You can tell it was filmed in Hollywood though, you had to be an aspiring actor/actress to get in the audience – nothing but good looking people to be seen in the whole theater, I’d have never gotten in.

Tomorrow starts the nearly daily trips at lunch to the Post Office to mail Christmas boxes to relatives in far flung lands. It is always a pleasure to stand around and wait and then have to go through the little verbal song and dance about how fast would you like it to get there, do you need insurance, or delivery confirmation. Now they have got an exit spiel too, about that did you know the Postal Service now accepts credit and debit cards as well as checks. I guess I could go to one of those mailing places, but they are hit and miss and charge more. I will just suffer and use the experience as my penance for actually not visiting family over the holidays.