Katie & Scott & Simon & Cecily.

Tag: holiday (Page 1 of 2)

Day 298: christmas bound!

Today, Katie and I had our second annual Christmas tree cutting. Last year, we went down to Los Gatos to cut one down. This year, we went up to Petaluma.

Also, another incidental tradition that’s started is getting rained on on the day we get the tree. Last year, it was lightly raining the entire time, and today, it started pouring right before we got home.

Regardless, we got the tree into our tree holder quickly and it is now sitting in the corner of our living room. Christmas is coming, and we’ve started our celebration!

I even got up onto the roof last weekend and put up our LED icicle lights!

Day 293: overnight

So I signed up to be a Zappos VIP today, even though I’ve never bought anything on Zappos before.  Why?  Because it was free and it means that I get free overnight shipping for life (or, as they put it, until the cows come home).

It also means I get to shop at http://vip.zappos.com instead of the pedestrian and oh-so-2008 regular website.

But free overnight shipping?  Having been on the paying end of overnight shipping (last holiday season, when we had to mail out some gift cards at the last minute to some of Katie’s relatives), I can tell you that the actual fee for such an extravagance is absurd.

Especially considering how much 2-day shipping costs.  Guaranteeing something anywhere in the country (even within the same state!) tomorrow is 5 times as expensive as guaranteeing it in two days because urgency is expensive.

Letting the postal service do its thing and take however long is necessary for a first-class smallish package?  I can usually get something from San Francisco to New York in about 3 days anyway, for less than the cost of a Big Mac.

So, the moral of the story is: if you’re planning on mailing something to someone for the holidays, don’t procrastinate!  If you actually leave it until the very last minute, those $20 gift cards you’re sending to Aunt Myrtle overnight will actually cost you $40 to get them there by Christmas morning.

Day 287: there’s a turkey in our fridge

It’s in a bucket of flavor, waiting to be cooked.

There’s going to be a lot of food tomorrow, but one thing we won’t be eating is giblets.

I’m excited.  It’s like the night before Christmas, except that you know all the gifts you’re going to be getting, and all of them are edible.

Day 273: veterans

It’s veteran’s day today, which I know because my German phrase-a-day calendar informed me of such and because we didn’t have any mail when we got home.

Regardless of anyone’s attitudes towards particular wars or foreign policy, it’s impossible to be against veterans.  These are people who have fought wars so that the rest of us didn’t have to, people who have given their time, their lives, their general well-being to a greater good.

It’s funny, because I don’t know that many veterans.  Sure, I had a few high school friends who joined the air force or navy, but I don’t really know where they ended up, if they got deployed, if they’re out of the armed forces now.

And I can’t think of older veterans offhand.  Maybe that’s just because I don’t get to know enough of the older generation – parents of friends and such.  Maybe it’s because of the timing of conflicts during my generation.  Iraq war vets are still too young for me to know and older war vets are too old for me to have formed a relationship with so far in life.

So it’s a bit odd.  These veterans are out there, and I appreciate their sacrifices and efforts, but I can’t put a personal face to it.

Is that true of other people my age?  Or is it just that I didn’t get to know the veterans that are inevitably in my life?

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