And Now I Are Smart

[miko2]

I tend to do the same thing every year. I tell myself that I need to stop spending money on myself, because it's the holiday season and I need to shop for the people on my Christmas list. But the very nature of shopping brings me into contact with things that I want for myself. Sometimes I buy things on the pretext that they would make good gifts for certain people, but that they're also something I want... and then, if I find a better gift for that person, I get to keep the other thing I bought. Lame. Just as often though, I rationalize that if I manage to buy several gifts for people on my Christmas list, I can then buy something for myself as well.

Anyway. I've spent much more on myself in the last month than I intended to.

But it's worse than that, because I'm also buying Christmas gifts, and at some point I start to lose track of what I've already bought.

Case in point: many of the gifts I ordered online have been arriving in the mail within the last week. I got two packages today. And I decided to visit Ebay and to give feedback to the people that had shipped things to me so quickly.

One item was a book on cd. This was something I was considering as a gift, or maybe just a gift to myself, depending. Another item was a cd I bought outright for myself -- The War Within by Shadows Fall. It was cheap, which is another rationalization I use -- "it's okay to get something for myself it it's cheap".

Anyway, having done that I decided I should visit Amazon.com and see about doing the same thing there, giving feedback for people that had shipped things promptly. And while I'm doing this, I come across a very familiar book title on cd. Now wait a second, I say to myself, isn't that the one I bought from Ebay?

Why yes. Yes, it is. I bought it twice, once from Ebay and once from Amazon.com, within a couple days of each other. It's possible I did this with the specific intention of keeping one for myself and using the other as a gift, but it's also possible that I just forgot I'd already ordered it.

Ah well. I look further down the page. Hrm. There's The War Within by Shadows Fall. Didn't I order that from Ebay as well? Why yes. Yes, I did. And this time I know I didn't have any plans to give the second copy away as a gift. I was just stupid. Well, it was cheap both times, but still -- I ordered the same cd for myself twice in the span of just a couple of days.

The dumb part is the Ebay people have both been told that their packages arrived quickly, but I have no idea which packages have actually arrived yet. I only have one of each gift, so far.

The good news is that Shadows Fall is a modern rock band that my nephew will almost certainly will like. Which is good, because it turns out he's getting that for Christmas. ^_^ (On top of the main gift I'd already bought him, mind you.)

Still... how dumb can you get?

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I drove up to South Center today to do some Christmas shopping. Saturday is coming fast, and I still had some people I hadn't bought anything for yet. So I spent a great deal of time wandering around a store, trying to find the absolute perfect gift for several of my friends. This is one of those traps that I often fall into -- the desire to buy the absolute perfect gift (something they'll love that they've always wanted or, even better, didn't even know they wanted) combined with the knowledge that some of my friends I don't really know well enough to pick out such a gift. I mean, I consider zorkfox and chuck_melville friends, but have I ever done anything with just them? I don't think so, unless you count giving Chuck a ride to Writer's Night. ^_^ I see them often, I've known them for years, but how well do I really know them? (How well do they really know me?)

Some of my friends that I know really well I can think of a dozen good gifts for. But when it gets down to the last few people I tend to really agonize and over-analyze things. Will he really like this? Is this something she would actually be interested in? That's why gift certificates are so popular, you know. ^_^

Mind you, the search for the "perfect" gift is not a vain pursuit. Once in a while you can pull it off. (Most of my examples are music related, of course, but...) Two years ago I got kehf a cd by Abigail Washburn that I know she loved -- she's bought most of Abigail's other stuff since then, and returned the favor by giving me one of her newer cds last year. (I did have a clue that Kristin liked her music beforehand though). When I bought a Yat-Kha cd for eddvick's wife Amy I hit a home run too. I kind of suspected that I would, but it absolutely wasn't a band she'd heard of before she opened the present. And, of course, typographer still thanks me for introducing him to The Scissor Sisters, and frankly in that case I really had no clue how much he'd like it. In fact, I got two cds for him that time, and I'm not even sure I remember what the other one was. It might have been a soundtrack like Wicked or Avenue Q, or something Rocky Horror related.

Anyway, after much agonizing on my part I bought a few more presents, and now I think I lack only presents for Lady K and Valentine... I think. There are a couple of things I'm still waiting for to arrive in the mail, and only a few days left for them to show. We'll see. And, of course, since I bought several presents on my list, I allowed myself to pick up something for myself. There are several Christmas cds that I'd like, and I usually like to pick up at least one new one each year, so this year it's Winter's Night by Sarah MacLaughlin.

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In other news... I didn't exercise today, I haven't written much of anything this whole week, etc. etc. Don't know if I'll have anything to read for Saturday.