The Tease of Things I Don't Need

And so this is Christmas...

Another hectic, pre-holiday week's kept me running, but there were fun spots along the way... not that I have the energy to get into all of that just yet. By Christmas night sometime I should be finally easing into the long-awaited leisure leg of my holiday and have a shot at recounting some of it.

While in most other respects it's shaping up to be a good Christmas, I am bothered that I didn't find the time, cash and/or energy to take care of some other people in time for Christmas, especially when I'd have had to get them in the mail in time. One or two people will simply be getting something from me a little later.

Faced with circumstances that are to shatter our sane and happy tradition of the past few years of staying home on Christmas day, we decided to have our Christmas this side of the long winter's nap. So, here it is not even midnight and all of the presents in the Norton household have been opened, initially enjoyed, and each is settling into something now.

A great deal of thought went into each of the gift selections this year, so everyone ended up with at least a couple happy surprises and everyone's efforts were appreciated. Nick and Travis are each now into new video games -- one in their bedroom and the other down in the den. The alternative, of getting up early to only then dig into the gifts, and then seemingly in no time to have to get ready to drive back for an early dinner with the in-laws... That's especially irritating to the kids as it's inevitably just when they're getting into the meat of one of the games. For me, it means that I don't really get to relax -- and unfortunately tomorrow will be no exception -- until after that's over and I'm back home again. On the bright side, once we get back home Sunday evening I don't definitely have to be anywhere until Wednesday, when I head back into work for what I'm aiming to be the only workday of that week. I have vacation time to burn and the furnace is ready.

Aside from some games he'd wanted (the latest Splinter Cell and a western-styled game called Gun), Nick was surprised when we not only got him the survival manual he wanted, but an authentic Swiss army knife, too. While hunting down that manual I spotted a related item I knew would be of interest considering all of the zombie movies Nick and I have watched: The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead.

Travis received a movie he'd wanted, a game called Far Cry and the one based on The Warriors, along with a very nice robe which he immediately put on and which I suspect will be his normal outwit during most of this vacation week, along with most weekends.

Between the boys and I, my wife received a couple CDs by a group she'd recently gotten into (HIM), a set of Sennheiser headphones, a full-body massage mat which allows local control of both the massage and whether or not one wants heat, and a the special edition of the Office Space DVD with Flair, and a couple other odds and ends.

They put their heads together and came up with an interesting mix of items for me.

They picked up two of the Marvel Figure Factory kits (one of Iron Man and one of Venom -- the latter because it was available while several of the others I'd have wanted much more were temporarily out) , a Quake 4 special edition, and a radio with not only special weather emergency presets and a built-in flashlight, but with its own built-in handcrank recharger so it's ready for any power outage or situation. I hadn't asked for any of these things - I don't tend to ask for anything, tending to simply be difficult to buy for - but all were appreciated surprises. Then there was the one that's simultaneously the biggest and the littlest of the surprises for me.

Split up into six, numbered, little packages, they bought me a DAH-1500i digital audio player cube, with a special, shock-absorbing gel frame, a headset, USB cable, and a radio rebroadcast attachment so I can pick it up on a radio tuned to the right station. As seen in the image, this MP3/WMA player is roughly the size of a quarter squared (it's 24mm on a side), and has a 1 GB memory capacity, and so should be able to store in the area of 250 songs in MP3 format or roughly twice that many in the WMA format (which I'm not immediately familiar with) and as a PC peripheral I can also use it as an information storage device should I want to quickly save data for transfer to another computer. It also has an fm receiver and a built-in microphone, so I can use it to make direct voice recordings. It appears to be very much the sort of thing I'd wanted (plus some) but hadn't begun looking into. The instructions are elaborate, so I'm not going to start digging into those before bed. I'll let you know how it works out.

For now, though, I'm going to check on where each of the kids are in the games they decided to play and then stretch out and get some sleep. Since we've gotten the present-opening out of the way I can sleep in.

I hope you all have a fine Christmas day, each according to your own lights and traditions.