Today Represents the End to One Holiday but the Start of Another

Today in the US is Thanksgiving and the typical blog entry would expound upon it's readers what I'm thankful for but today I'm going to skip that. For those of you who know me, know what I'm thankful for. Anyway Thanksgiving is in the books (well sort of but that's another story) but Christmas officially reared it's ugly head today.

After spending much of the morning prepping, cooking, stressing, and eating the famous meal (minus the gravy that I forgot about) I sat down with 100,000 others trying to login to Amazon.com at 2 pm EST trying to land one of $100 Xbox 360's. That was going to be the key to the famous Xmas list, which I strongly dislike doing (more on that later). If I landed one I could ask for all of the accessories and games and everyone would be happy. As it turns out Amazon misunderstood the popularity of such a device. From 1:55 to 2:10 I, as well as thousands of others, was locked out of the site. Which meant 1 thing, I had to create a Xmas list for the family!

I can't tell you how much I dislike making a Xmas or birthday list as it takes out the surprise and thought of the gift. My family would disagree because without a list people would be buying me things I may or may not like. I will admit that I'm hard to buy for because I don't ask for much but when I want something I usually get it (a by-product of having my birthday and xmas relatively close together) leaving people wondering what to get me. As I've gotten older I've learned to appreciate the thought and effort much more than the actual product but people still insist on a list.

I dodge a bullet for my birthday but I've already started taking heat for xmas so I thought I better start today. After a couple hours going through websites I've come to realize that my tastes can be expensive and anything that is reasonable priced is either 1: something I really don't want or need or 2: I have be too specific and scare people off on finding the exact one. I will figure this thing out and make everyone else happier. So if you see someone wandering around the shops aimlessly saying "What am I going to do?" that person may be trying to figure out what to tell people not what to get people!