Advent Calendar - Day 4

I heard on the local news yesterday morning that two people had been robbed at gunpoint after arranging to meet someone to purchase iPhones that had been offered on Craigslist. Two things that made me think of -- my sister bought something from someone on Craigslist over the Thanksgiving weekend, and we were talking about it, and I asked her how she was going to get it. She said she was meeting the woman at a parking lot somewhere -- I can't remember where, but a public place, which I thought made sense. Now I'm wondering if even that's safe.

I occasionally sell stuff on eBay, usually yarn that I no longer need, and a couple of weeks ago I had someone ask if they could come pick an order up. This person won a $5.00 ball of yarn, wrote and said she lived fairly nearby, was retired and thus "flexible," and could she just pick up the yarn and have me remove the shipping charge from the order.

Well, in the first place, the shipping charge is not just for the shipping part, it's also supposed to cover "handling," i.e., the cost for the packaging and my time in preparing it. Not that it's a big deal, but that nickel-and-diming thing is always a little irritating. Also, the reason I love things like eBay is that I can be my normal antisocial self and don't actually have to interact with people, sad as it may be to say.

Anyway, I thought, well, no, I don't want to do that, but should I? I felt kind of bad, but I wrote back to her and said that I wasn't comfortable with that, and would prefer to mail her the package, and she sent me the money with no more conversation, which was a relief.

It didn't really occur to me until later that, while I'm sure everything would have been fine, it could have been a scam, or a ploy -- buy something cheap on eBay, then rob the person who shows up to deliver it, or, I guess more likely, rob the person when you show up at their house and they let you in. I'm glad I didn't agree to it, in any event, and will keep it in mind in the future. It's too bad, but that's the world we live in.

I was reading this the other day: Thoughts on Japan from a first-time visitor, and this comment struck me:

Perhaps what I liked the most is the very strong sense of security. You never feel threatened or insecure. You never worry about that sort of thing.

It would be nice if we could feel that way here.

Be sure to check out the Advent calendar.

Click the thumbnail above to go to the Advent Calendar page. Once there, click on the number corresponding to the day of the month. Some of the days will have details on little contests or drawings, so check each day for a special note.

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Advent Calendar - Day 3

Getting into the Christmas spirit doesn't have to be expensive. And I don't mean stuff like using last year's Christmas cards to decoupage an old tray or something, or stick cloves into oranges and hang them on your Christmas tree. I mean just doing the things that you normally do, but giving some thought to making them special, or just doing little things that help get you into the holiday mood.

I was thinking about that tonight as I was driving home listening to the all-Christmas music radio station Kansas City's Star 102). Radio is free, and you hear a lot of great Christmas music without having to buy it. And as I was getting that link, I see that you can actually listen to the station online through a browser. They play a good mix of old familiar songs and a few new ones; it seems like I always hear a couple of songs that I've never heard before.

We don't take the newspaper anymore, but you don't have to buy TV Guide to find out what's on television, you can access TV Guide online. I've been looking for Christmas movies, hoping to catch some old favorites that I don't have on DVD. I watched "Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer" tonight; I hadn't seen it in awhile, and now I'm really glad I didn't actually buy it -- it doesn't hold up very well.

Of course, if you have favorite Christmas movies, you can always rent them rather than buying them; I do buy my favorites, but DVDs aren't terribly expensive anymore. And you can even rent them from iTunes, usually for $2.99. And during the holidays, iTunes gives away a couple of holiday songs for free each week, you just have to remember to go get them.

Amazon also usually has a few free MP3s to download; right now they have a free 5 song holiday sampler that isn't bad at all. Another good thing about iTunes or Amazon MP3s is that you can buy just one song, if that's all you want from an album, rather than buying the entire album. They's usually just 99 cents, and that solves the problem of what to do when you really, really want just one song, but can't bring yourself to buy the whole album.

And those Christmas-patterned paper towels and paper napkins? I buy that stuff anyway, and the holiday-themed ones don't cost any more, so why not get them? And the same thing for liquid hand soap, bubble bath, or any kind of personal care product like that -- as long as you're going to buy it anyway, buy a special holiday version. I know it always makes me feel better. I took a bath tonight in Bath & Body Works' Wickedly Hot Chocolate bubble bath, one of my favorite things in the world. Of course, they don't carry it anymore . . .

The same goes for the cranberry gingerale I bought over the weekend -- I buy it as a special treat, but I'd be getting soda anyway, so it makes sense (at least to me) to buy something a little different that only appears in stores over Christmas. Of course, that doesn't extend to those weird Jones Soda flavors like turkey and gravy. [Shudder.]

Be sure to check out the Advent calendar.

Click the thumbnail above to go to the Advent Calendar page. Once there, click on the number corresponding to the day of the month. Some of the days will have details on little contests or drawings, so check each day for a special note.

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Advent Calendar - Day 2

I'm having this struggle with what I carry back and forth to work. (Bob will laugh at this!) I've got a laptop for work now, which I carry home and back to work so I can work at home if I need to. It's really working out very well. Before, if I had a document that I thought I might need, I'd either email it to myself, put it on a thumbdrive, put it on my iDisk, etc. If I remembered. If I didn't, I was out of luck. So while I'd been avoiding it -- I liked my iMac at work with the big screen -- when Cello offered to buy me a laptop, I took the offer. Well, what he actually did was buy himself a new laptop and give me his old one, but that was fine. He's such an early adopter that his old stuff is never very old.

Before I had the laptop, I was carrying my big Franklin Planner -- big and heavy, but it wasn't any big deal until I started carrying the laptop, too. I carried them both for awhile, then decided to leave the planner at work since I hardly ever opened it up at home. But there are notes in there that I sometimes need, so it's been an ongoing dilemma.

This morning I had a meeting out of the office, but I was planning on going to the office first because I was riding with someone else. Then this morning, I had a voice mail that I needed to drive myself and meet there, which was fine -- I would just go directly to the meeting place, I had plenty of time. But then I realized that I'd left my planner in the office, so I had to go to the office first, go upstairs and grab it, then hurry over to the meeting place. I got there, and it was fine, but the traffic was bad, and I'd never driven there by myself and wasn't exactly sure where it was, so I was anxious.

And I still don't know what to do. Because after I stopped carrying the big work planner, I bought a small, compact size one for personal stuff, and I'd been carrying that. So now I feel like I should theoretically carry the laptop, the classic planner and the compact planner, so I'm even worse off now than I was before.

The struggles of the obsessive-compulsive personality . . .

Be sure to check out the Advent calendar.

Click the thumbnail above to go to the Advent Calendar page. Once there, click on the number corresponding to the day of the month. Some of the days will have details on little contests or drawings, so check each day for a special note.

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Advent Calendar - Day 1

More stuff I thought of to add to my list:

• The all-Christmas radio station
• Christmas lights
• Hershey's Candycane Kisses
• Christmas return address labels
• Candy Cane Tootsie Pops
• Canada Dry Cranberry Ginger Ale

I bought the gingerale tonight when I stopped at the store for a few groceries. I made Bob macaroni and cheese with ham and broccoli, something I used to make for him a long time ago. He doesn't get home until after 10:30 tonight, but he'll be happily surprised to get a hot meal.

I had this idea for an Advent calendar, and I've been struggling with it tonight, and finally decided that I wouldn't do the whole month for now, just the first week. I mean, who says an Advent calendar has to be done all at once? This will be Part I:

Click the thumbnail above to go to the Advent Calendar page. Once there, click on the number corresponding to the day of the month. Some of the days will have details on little contests or drawings, so check each day for a special note.

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Christmasy

It's been a rough year. It's been an especially rough month. It's been kind of difficult to get into any kind of holiday spirit.

That's not to say that there haven't been bright spots, and things to be thankful for, because of course there have. We had a nice dinner with Bob's family on Saturday night -- turkey and dressing and mashed potatoes (that I peeled and boiled, but neglected to start early enough, so they were a little lumpy) and gravy (that Bob made). We had a dinner on Thanksgiving day at my brother's house -- my brother and sister-in-law and niece and nephew, me, our parents, my sister and her boyfriend and my niece and her boyfriend. Bob had to work -- he worked 1-7:30 on Thanksgiving day, and 5:00 a.m. to 3 on Friday, and he just left for work. Today he works 2 - 10:30. But, of course, we're thankful that we both have jobs!

My sister-in-law goes all out as far as decorating for Christmas; she had a lot of things already out, but she said she hadn't yet taken the pictures off the walls and wrapped them up like presents and put them back up. I don't intend to do that, but I decided that this year I'm going to go all out, too. I'm going to do my best to make this a really special Christmas. The last couple of years I've kind of slacked off on it, not made any particular effort, but this year I'm going to.

I'm going to send out Christmas cards early, not make it into a last-minute chore like I have the past few years. I'm going to make an effort to watch my favorite Christmas movies, and the ones I don't have on DVD, I'm going to find out when they're on television so I don't miss them (and I'm going to buy a TV Guide). I put up a wreath outside the front door this morning, and one on the downstairs bathroom door, and as soon as Bob goes to work I'm going to go to the basement and bring up more Christmas decorations. I might put the stockings up on the fireplace, too.

I cooked a big breakfast this morning--bacon and eggs and fried potatoes--and while I'm not sure if I'll be able to sustain this one, I'm going to try to cook more. I might even bake cookies if I get really ambitious. I'm making a list of things that I'd like to do this month, and "bake cookies" will be on it.

I've been looking through iTunes to see if there's any Christmas music that I don't have (Los Lonely Boys has a new Christmas CD out, I see), and I'm always on the lookout for Christmas movies. I bought "Die Hard" yesterday at WalMart for $5.00; I'd been wanting a copy of it for awhile, but it's one of those that I find a little hard to justify, but not for $5.00. I had lunch at Panera Bread yesterday and had a wonderful chai tea latte, which felt kind of festive, a little bit extravagant, and Bob and I met for dinner at On the Border for a belated birthday dinner for me.

Some of my favorite things during the Christmas season:

• Christmas music in the stores
• Special Christmas flavors of ordinary things, like peppermint McDonald's shakes
• Christmas-patterned paper goods, like paper towels, napkins, and paper plates (I got Christmas-patterned insulated coffee cups for Bob to take his coffee to work in the morning in)
• Christmas-patterned plastic ware--plastic storage bags and storage ware
• Cheap Christmas-themed notepads and pens
• Special Christmasy scented bath products like peppermint, chocolate and vanilla
• Spending a long time browsing the Christmas ornament aisles of stores like Hobby Lobby and Target
• Pine-scented candles (Yankee Candles' "Mistletoe" is the best)
• Christmas stickers to decorate my planner pages and stick on Christmas card envelopes
• Christmas movies, and Christmas episodes of television shows (I watched the holiday "Monk" and "Psych" episodes last night)
• Christmas mugs. I bought a new one from Stash Tea this year, it was on clearance. It's red and has a reindeer on it. I'll take a picture of it when I get back to work on Monday.
• Buying expensive wrapping paper, cards, and tags for a fraction of their regular price after Christmas and discovering them a year later (like today!)
• Putting a bowl of Christmas Hershey's kisses on the coffee table
• Painting my toenails Christmas colors (red and green!)
• Christmas wallpaper for my laptop and iPhone

I suppose it sounds counter-intuitive, but I'm going to make a big effort to enjoy this holiday season. I've got an idea of something special to do here during the month of December: stay tuned.

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