Be Still My Morning

But I still had my share of the duties and I was completely on my own when it came to Nik herself since she was incapable of offering advice or strategies. In the end I think I did pretty well on her and for once she didn’t seem to think I was suffering from a severe fever or some kind of brain trauma with my choices. Also, online wishlists are a beautiful thing.

Anyway, I think that by doing better and having a better attitude about the giving portion of gift exchanges I was able to enjoy the receiving element even more. Odd how that works. And this year I got a lot of really cool stuff:

• New Sharks Jersey. I have an old jersey, the original style with the lighter teal before they switched to the new style that also includes the all black third jersey. I opted for the home colors though, and it’s excessively cool. Nikki apparently had a hard time pulling this one together, enlisting the help of some friends and going through a series of tribulations that I can only hope my gratitude made worthwhile. It will be beyond sweet to wear this to the game I’m going to on the 5th of January (versus the Blue Jackets) for my birthday. It will be my first live Sharks game since a playoff game back in I think ’98.
• Shadowrun, 4th Edition. I started a Second Edition campaign a couple months back just as they announced this new update to the game. Third edition never really caught my eye but this one (which I’ve had a pseudo-legal PDF of for several weeks) looks very well done. So I put the campaign on hiatus until I can get everything updated for the new rules. It should get started probably around DunDraCon in February. Maybe even there at the con. Wouldn’t that just be fitting?
• Settlers of Catan. I played this game a bit online when MSN’s Gaming Zone had a free beta tryout. I finally got to play with Lister and Whimsy a week or so ago and it was as fun and addictive as I hoped. I was only a little bummed to find out that it takes at least three players which means Nik and I need to find some suckers friends before we can give it a shot.
• A Bluetooth Headset. Bluetooth is rapidly becoming my favorite feature of the new RAZR phone I talked about earlier. These bluetooth headsets look incredibly dorky (Doza is fond of calling them Star Trek communicators) but if it’s a choice between looking dorky and dying in a car crash… well, I don’t think too many people make the mistake upon seeing me that I’m anything but an utter nerd, so it’s not really an issue.
• New Cordless Phones. I’ve elucidated my ongoing offensive versus landlines many times. But this is the gauntlet being thrown. These phones (there is the primary one in the base station and then a secondary handset) are top-quality and probably cost more money than I would ever spend on something that plugs into a wall jack. This is the landline’s last chance, and I mean it. If these phones don’t work out, I’m ripping them out of the wall, I’m calling SBC and canceling my accounts and I’m setting up Skype and using cell phones from here on out.
• DVDs. I got a plethora of sweet movies to watch, including a very classy-looking boxed set of 16 Alfred Hitchcock movies from my folks, Shaun of the Dead, Underworld, Serenity plus the Firefly boxed set and the Looney Tunes Golden Collection. I also got a few duplicates that will have to be exchanged, but they were all movies I really wanted, it just turned out more than one person was on the right page.
• CDs. It was a big year for rounding out my Beatles collection: I nabbed Sgt. Pepper’s, Abbey Road and Rubber Soul this year. I also got the latest two System of a Down discs, Green Day’s American Idiot and Johnny Cash Live at San Quentin. Plus there was a $15 iTunes Gift Card in my stocking and an eMusic 100 free downloads card as well. Thus enabled, I scored Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois, the newest New Pornographers album, Deerhoof’s latest, I finished getting the rest of Spoon’s Gimme Fiction, Pavement’s Brighten the Corners, Bad Religion’s No Control, The Casket Lottery’s Survival Is For Cowards and most of the latest from The Walkmen. Throw in a few assorted single tracks from Underworld, Bolt Thrower, The Killers, The Future Sounds of London and Gorillaz and whew! That’s a lot of music to get through and I think it has all but filled my 20 GB iPod.
• Of course there were loads of other assorted items: I got a Blood Bowl team from Nik (who braved the Geek Brigade at the Games Workshop store to get it); Alton Brown’s “I’m Just Here for the Food” from Gin (who drew my name in the family gift exchange); a Beatles T-shirt (told you it was a big year for the Beatles); Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”; a nice shirt for work and a Napoleonic wargame, among others that I can’t think of right now. That in no way suggests anything about the quality of those gifts, only the quality of my memory.
• Interestingly, what I didn’t get any of this year was video games. Granted I didn’t have many of them on my wishlist and they weren’t forthcoming when people asked around about ideas for me, but I think this may be the first Christmas in about 17 years that there were no video games involved. That’s not meant as a complaint, more of a curious notation.

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