What I Got for Christmas 2006

Merry Christmas to you all, and I don't care if you don't celebrate it. Just take it as me wishing you to have a particularly good December 25. I can wish you a good day, can't I? Why not let me wish you one specific day to be good? You don't see people getting their panties in a bunch over saying "Happy New Year" in Winter when some cultures celebrate it in Spring.

Wow. That went sour fast. Is the holiday spirit wearing off already?

Anyway, since for some reason I feel the need to tell people, here's what I got for Christmas.

• Socks and Underwear: I don't know if you've bought any recently, but this particular batch of underwear was really something. For one thing, they're tagless, like those shirts Hanes makes, with washing instructions printed on the material. Also, the elastic is now inside the clothe waistband. I can't actually tell the difference myself, but I felt it was worth noting. I just wish I hadn't noted it during dinner, because then people wanted to see them.
• The Three Stooges DVD: Possibly bought from a dollar store. Features six shorts featuring the slapstick comedy trio, as well as three "Our Gang" shorts.
• A Thermos: At least one of my aunts gave me something this year. I'm not even sure if I got gift certificates from them last year. Pretty sure I got money. Anyway, one of the dual-language selling points claims that this is the "Best vacuum insulated container you'll ever own" and shows a thermos half-frozen in a block of ice pouring out piping-hot coffee. Nice.
• A shirt: 100% polyester. Pretty nice. I think I can wash it normally. I'm never sure about polyester.
• The Far Side Gallery off-the-wall calender: The only problem is I think I may have read them all before. Gary Larsen is dead, you know. Or just retired. I forget which.
• A new watch: I could use a new one, too. I had replaced a watch that got increasingly fast with a watch that got increasingly slow. Or was it the other way around? This one's pretty slick, too. Tells me the day of the year and week, can be set for two different time zones, has alarm, stop watch, and count down. Also, it lights up.
• Nintendo DS Lite: I bought this for myself.
• Digimon World DS: Ditto. I bought it to test for Wi-Fi in my neighborhood and got two access points from my living room. One's password protected, but the other isn't. I want to ask for permission to use it as a courtesy, but I don't know how to figure out where its coming from with just the DS. I've got theories, though...
• Brain Age: Technically, I bought this for my Dad, but I plan to use it, too. And boy, do I need it. My brain age registered as 60. You shoot for a low score, the best being 20. Daya-, and might I add, -amn.
  
• Final Fantasy V Advance: This'd be cooler if I hadn't already been playing it. Literally. It's the exact same cartridge I've been playing on since my stepbrother moved back in. It feels a little bit like being regifted, but it is his game. Or was. It's officially mine now.
• The Legend of Zelda: The Complete Animated Series 3-Disc Set: The coolness was initially lost on me when I discovered it wasn't "Gannon's Evil Tower," which you can find on my Amazon wish-list (see profile), but I used to watch this every Friday when I was a kid. I don't particularly remember this event, but my brother said that once our family was out driving and weren't going to make it home in time to watch the show, so he told Dad to get us to a TV. We got to an appliance store and Dad convinced the guy there to change the channel on the TVs to the show. Pretty neat story if you ask me. My brother wants to watch this with me.

This is the first Christmas I remember without my brother. He moved in with my Grandmother after Grandpa died to make sure she was taking care of herself. My Mom had originally put herself in a position to do this, but she got a job and my brother didn't, so she didn't have the time and he did.

It's kinda weird not having him here, but not as weird as it could be. He slept all day and stayed up all night, and I tried to keep respectable hours. We watched anime on Cartoon Network on Saturday evenings together, although I taped the late-night stuff and went to bed during Saturday Night Live. I stay up for the Sunday late night stuff, though. And now I find that I'm just watching the Saturday late night stuff, too, mostly because there's something wrong with the tape and I can't trust it to record anything if no one's there to make sure it's working.

Still, it's weird to visit him at Grandma's and just leave him there. We used to joke something along those lines. We'd hug Grandma goodbye, then hug Grandpa goodbye, hug other relatives goodbye, then pretend to get caught up in the moment and hug Mom and Dad and each other goodbye also, even though the four of us were leaving together.

Soooo... I wish I had more to say. Feels kinda awkward leaving on that note... Have I mentioned yet that I got a job at GameStop? Oh, yeah. I did.

Oh! I've got this DVD of photos taken by my Make Up and Masks teacher of the students wearing their make up and masks. I tried to show it on a DVD player at my Grandma's house today, but the teacher didn't put in any sort of interface. Also, for some reason, the DVD player only showed half of the pictures. I had to put in my computer at home to see the other half. Kind of a bummer, as I didn't get to show the half I wanted. I'll have to upload them to the internet to show them off. Maybe I'll post them up here, too.