My Favorite Things: Christmas Was Good to Me

The blog is still slow, I know. I've been taking this vacation thing seriously. In fact, I only switched from my pajamas to daytime pajamas: T-shirt and sweat pants. My one venture out was to deposit some checks that my very thoughtful parents sent to me for Christmas. Do I care they arrived today instead of last week? Hell no! One of my very favorite things is the unexpected gifts you might get after Christmas.

Today, I tried to gather some friends for one more post-holiday, pre-new year lunch. It's still going to happen, but as Sunday brunch, which is just as well, because i didn't really feel like getting dressed today. And, no, I wasn't the only person at the bank in sweat pants!

This year, as I stated before, was supposed to be a "hard candy" Christmas for us and most of our friends and family. While I did spend less than usual, really it just was a lot less work, and the whole thing was distilled down to the good stuff, minus the pomp and circumstance.  Here in no particular order are the things I was happy to receive this year (in addition to the cash, thanks Mom!).

Sony Blu-ray Player - We already have had a Blu-ray player, for a year or two. But I bought it when they were first at the outer rim of affordable (around $225 or so). It's a Magnasux, as I like to call it. It takes forever to respond to simple things like "powering on" or "opening the drawer." When you get past the three minutes it takes to pop in a disc, it then takes another three to boot up the movie. Add to this a badly designed remote control that The Other Half cannot read without glasses, and you've got a crappy player. But wait, there's more! When you finally get the movie going, it has little digital spaz attacks every 90 seconds or so, distorting the screen with random pixels. This is not the experience I bargained for.

The new Sony (thanks again, Mom!) is 3D-ready (updateable free?) and has wireless internet connectivity. What for? Well, initially, I thought it was just for "BD-Live," a feature on some discs. In addition to that, you can watch YouTube videos directly from the internet, along with various free videos--including TV Shows and movies--as well as an assortment of pay-per-view services like NetFlix.  I really think this is a bridge to the future of how we'll ultimately connect the internet, television, video libraries and who knows what other devices. The Sony is a little techno-geeky, and might be a notch or two too clunky for some people. But I'm a techno-geek myself, and having a ball with it. I even connected a standard USB keyboard to it, and am able to type searches into it, rather than use the remote control!

Best of all, it turns on quickly (if not quite as quickly as a standard DVD player), the drawer pops right open, and the bootup process is mercifully shorter than the Magnavox.  Incidentally, the model is SONY BDP-S570/BX57. Highly recommended!

Sonoma Hoodie - This one may not seem like much, but I've gone through a series of light-to-medium casual jackets, and I never like them. For one thing, one trip through the washer, and they just seem crappy. They pill up, lose their shapes. I've been on a quest for something for a couple of years. Here in Las Vegas, a heavy winter coat is rarely required, particularly if you're already wearing a sweatshirt or sweater. The Other Half ended my quest by getting me a fleece-lined hoodie at Kohls (I got the green one). Actually, the sizing was a little odd, so our quest wasn't quite over. We had to hit two Kohls stores to find me an XL, though I'm usually a L at most. But now that I have it? It's one of the most comfy, cozy things I've ever worn. It's a trifle too warm to wear around the house, possibly. But, it's also a couple of notches above the quality of your usual sweatshirt material, so I'm betting it survives its first trip through the washer better than my earlier jackets. It turns out that though this jacket only set us back $32 or so, they are currently selling it at Kohls.com for $80.00. So go to the store if you want one! Highly recommended.

Peerless Kitchen Faucet - I've already done a post on this one, so if you want to see why this was such an improvement, see our original faucet here.


Bloom County: The Complete Library - I actually bought Volume 1 of this collection for The Other Half. It was $40, which made the whole 5-volume set kind of over-the-top cost-wise. But thanks to a $50 gift certificate for Amazon.com, and the fact that on Amazon the books sell for $26, went ahead and ordered Volumes 2 and 3, which takes us from 1980 to 1986! I guess we'll hold volumes 4 and 5 for our birthdays or anniversary.

Anyway, we haven't had time to get very far into the books. But they collect--for the first time--every Bloom County comic strip ever published, in addition to other treats like some of the original Academia Waltz strip, remembrances from famous people like Ted Koppel and notations in the margins to explain the 80s to folks who weren't around (or don't remember).

We've already got The Complete Far Side two-volume library by Gary Larson. We've also got The Complete Calvin & Hobbes three-volume set by Bill Watterson. Now, finally, we are well on our way to completing our ownership of every comic strip that ever really mattered to either of us. Those three gone-too-soon strips are by far the best that comics can be. But for now, I'm getting set to plunge into the tales of Opus the Penguin, Bill the Cat, Hodge Podge, Portnoy, Milo, Oliver, Binkley, Steve Dallas, Lola Granola, Alf Mushpie, and Rosebud the Basselope in that wonderful dandelion patch, and relive it all again.
Highly recommended, of course.