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miko2Tuesday I woke up with a plan. My plan was to leave early and swing by Silver Platters and/or Suncoast on my way to work. You know, I have these gift certificate type things, from Kristin & David & Keith & Juli, and they were begging to be used. And then I thought, hey, Tuesday is bonus certificate day at Silver Platters, and I have a ton of silver certificates to spend. Great idea!
And then of course, I didn't really leave that early, and as I was thinking about whether I still had time to stop at Silver Platters, I remembered something.
THAT PLACE IS NEAR A MALL!!!
I can't believe, a day after getting trapped at Southcenter Mall and then writing about it in my livejournal, and I almost made the same mistake again.
So anyway, Christmas was fun. I got several things, including the Two Towers boxed set. Yay! Also my mom got me an anime tee shirt. Mom knows nothing about anime except that I like it, so I was quite surprised that she got a pretty cool shirt. It's for Ruroni Kenshin, not my favorite series but not a series that I dislike either, and it looks cool.
My mom got an HP Printer for my dad just like the one I got him. Actually, as it turns out, she got the 7260v while I got the 7260. As far as we could tell, the difference between the two was that the 7260v comes with some paper inside, and is sold by Walmart. Otherwise it's identical.
Mine came with a 2 year warranty thingy from CompUSA, so dad decided to keep mine and take the other one back.
It's kind of funny too, because dad asked for a printer, but I realized that while he was setting it up in his room that he has three other printers in there... he has a dot matrix printer that he uses for address labels, he has a normal printer that is not good for photo printing which is what the new printer is for... and he has a second computer set up in his office for my niece Blair to use, and it has its own printer.
Plus my mom's computer in the room next door has its own printer.
You know, most of the time you see multiple computers networked to just one printer. My dad has multiple printers networked to one PC. Weird.
So I got a stuffed kitten for my niece Ella, and she got another stuffed kitten from her mom. The other one mews and purs and kneads you with its paws... very very cute. But Ella liked both of them and liked having two stuffed kittens so that's cool.
I got my other niece Blair a "My Scene" Barbie with a scooter. This was something she asked for. In retrospect maybe I should have got the swan lake princess barbie or whatever it was... she had several different barbie things on her list you know. Because my sister got Blair another "My Scene" Barbie with a scooter. And beyond that, Blair also got another doll with a scooter, which could be driven by remote control, sort of like a remote control car, only the control was designed to look like another small scooter, with the seat as the control device.
Luckily my "My Scene" barbie was dark skinned with black hair, and Becky's "My Scene" barbie was blonde and fair-skinned, and their scooters were different colors, so Blair wanted to keep both of them. You know, they can drive around together, and crash into the other girl in the remote control scooter, or something.
Actually the whole "My Scene" barbie thing kind of made me laugh, because they look nothing like barbie dolls, but instead superficially resemble a line of dolls called "Bratz" which have become quite popular recently. My sister (Blair's mom) doesn't like the "Bratz" dolls, I assume because they look kind of trashy -- you know, dressed like Britney Spears, J-Lo, whatever. But Mattel did an end-around on her by putting out "barbie" dolls that are essentially the same thing, only maybe not quite as cartoonish or trashy.
My nephew Austin got a bunch of Bionical "Rhakashi" figures... there are at least four different types, but he got four or five of them and so got at least a couple of duplicates. I'd thought about getting him one of these, or two of them since they're only about $10, but I wasn't sure which one of the four he wanted (as it turns out, having all four is cool with him). So instead I got him a Zoids "Commander Wolf". This turned out to be exactly the right choice, nobody else got him anything like it.
So everything went well. Driving back was much easier than driving down (2 hours as opposed to 4 hours on Christmas eve). But it was icy cold and my car was all iced up before I left.
I worked today. Traffic was nonexistant, and work only lasted four hours. ^_^
One thing my parents had picked up was a dog puppet that barked three different Christmas jingles. It barks when you move its mouth, so while it will carry a tune you have to provide the right rhythm, which is hard if you don't immediately recognize the song. It's very cute. They got it at Fred Meyers and my mom said it was only $3.99, so I said that I wanted to get one, only of course I didn't really expect to get up at 7 am this morning which is when Fred Meyers stores were opening for their after-Christmas sales.
So my parents and sisters made a deal with me... they were expecting to go shopping today and would be able to buy another of the puppets, and I was allowed to take the one they had, on the condition that if they failed to get another I had to send it back to them. ^_^
Anyway since I got out of work at 8 pm, I stopped by Fred Meyers. I've been planning to pick up a few things, because my mom always has wrapping paper, ribbons, bows, name tags, and all that kind of thing handy but all I've managed over the years is to have some wrapping paper on hand -- and I just used up a lot of that. So I bought 2 new rolls of paper, and a bag of bows, and some ribbon, and some name tags, and a big plastic tub thing to put it all in (well, not the rolls of paper of course).
And I picked up the "Tales of Earthsea" book by Ursula K. Le Guin that came out recently, which I'd put on my Christmas list but which my mother failed to find, even though I explained exactly where to find it and what it looked like. She said she went back the day after I wrote my list after Thanksgiving, but they didn't have it. That kind of surprises me, but anyway, I bought it for myself tonight.
And lastly... the Christmas jingle puppet dogs. They had several, including one that was a differet color from the rest. These were actually $7.99 but with the half-off Christmas sale they were the price my mother had quoted me, $3.99. I bought two. One is for Gene and Michael I think, because they need it. One is for me if I have to ship the first one back to my family... or it's for someone else as a gift. I know that Laura and Nestor at work both loved the puppet (I took it in to show people, what else is a singing puppet for?) and each wanted one. So I'm sure I'll find a home for him somewhere. ^_^
The only other thing I have to say is that Porcupine Tree's song Trains is a really cool song. I've had a copy of their cd In Absentia for many months, but hadn't listened to it in a while. When I first got it, it was really cool, so I went and bought another cd of theirs, Signify. Then Sky passed on to me copies of nearly every other cd they've ever done (there are tons). But I really haven't listened to most of them yet. But recently I bought a used copy of In Absentia, which I'd always planned to do (if I like a cd that I have a burned copy of, then I always want to purchase a real copy for my collection). So I listened to it on my ride down to Longview two days ago, and was reminded of how cool the song "Trains" is.
I should listen to their other cds now.
And then of course, I didn't really leave that early, and as I was thinking about whether I still had time to stop at Silver Platters, I remembered something.
THAT PLACE IS NEAR A MALL!!!
I can't believe, a day after getting trapped at Southcenter Mall and then writing about it in my livejournal, and I almost made the same mistake again.
So anyway, Christmas was fun. I got several things, including the Two Towers boxed set. Yay! Also my mom got me an anime tee shirt. Mom knows nothing about anime except that I like it, so I was quite surprised that she got a pretty cool shirt. It's for Ruroni Kenshin, not my favorite series but not a series that I dislike either, and it looks cool.
My mom got an HP Printer for my dad just like the one I got him. Actually, as it turns out, she got the 7260v while I got the 7260. As far as we could tell, the difference between the two was that the 7260v comes with some paper inside, and is sold by Walmart. Otherwise it's identical.
Mine came with a 2 year warranty thingy from CompUSA, so dad decided to keep mine and take the other one back.
It's kind of funny too, because dad asked for a printer, but I realized that while he was setting it up in his room that he has three other printers in there... he has a dot matrix printer that he uses for address labels, he has a normal printer that is not good for photo printing which is what the new printer is for... and he has a second computer set up in his office for my niece Blair to use, and it has its own printer.
Plus my mom's computer in the room next door has its own printer.
You know, most of the time you see multiple computers networked to just one printer. My dad has multiple printers networked to one PC. Weird.
So I got a stuffed kitten for my niece Ella, and she got another stuffed kitten from her mom. The other one mews and purs and kneads you with its paws... very very cute. But Ella liked both of them and liked having two stuffed kittens so that's cool.
I got my other niece Blair a "My Scene" Barbie with a scooter. This was something she asked for. In retrospect maybe I should have got the swan lake princess barbie or whatever it was... she had several different barbie things on her list you know. Because my sister got Blair another "My Scene" Barbie with a scooter. And beyond that, Blair also got another doll with a scooter, which could be driven by remote control, sort of like a remote control car, only the control was designed to look like another small scooter, with the seat as the control device.
Luckily my "My Scene" barbie was dark skinned with black hair, and Becky's "My Scene" barbie was blonde and fair-skinned, and their scooters were different colors, so Blair wanted to keep both of them. You know, they can drive around together, and crash into the other girl in the remote control scooter, or something.
Actually the whole "My Scene" barbie thing kind of made me laugh, because they look nothing like barbie dolls, but instead superficially resemble a line of dolls called "Bratz" which have become quite popular recently. My sister (Blair's mom) doesn't like the "Bratz" dolls, I assume because they look kind of trashy -- you know, dressed like Britney Spears, J-Lo, whatever. But Mattel did an end-around on her by putting out "barbie" dolls that are essentially the same thing, only maybe not quite as cartoonish or trashy.
My nephew Austin got a bunch of Bionical "Rhakashi" figures... there are at least four different types, but he got four or five of them and so got at least a couple of duplicates. I'd thought about getting him one of these, or two of them since they're only about $10, but I wasn't sure which one of the four he wanted (as it turns out, having all four is cool with him). So instead I got him a Zoids "Commander Wolf". This turned out to be exactly the right choice, nobody else got him anything like it.
So everything went well. Driving back was much easier than driving down (2 hours as opposed to 4 hours on Christmas eve). But it was icy cold and my car was all iced up before I left.
I worked today. Traffic was nonexistant, and work only lasted four hours. ^_^
One thing my parents had picked up was a dog puppet that barked three different Christmas jingles. It barks when you move its mouth, so while it will carry a tune you have to provide the right rhythm, which is hard if you don't immediately recognize the song. It's very cute. They got it at Fred Meyers and my mom said it was only $3.99, so I said that I wanted to get one, only of course I didn't really expect to get up at 7 am this morning which is when Fred Meyers stores were opening for their after-Christmas sales.
So my parents and sisters made a deal with me... they were expecting to go shopping today and would be able to buy another of the puppets, and I was allowed to take the one they had, on the condition that if they failed to get another I had to send it back to them. ^_^
Anyway since I got out of work at 8 pm, I stopped by Fred Meyers. I've been planning to pick up a few things, because my mom always has wrapping paper, ribbons, bows, name tags, and all that kind of thing handy but all I've managed over the years is to have some wrapping paper on hand -- and I just used up a lot of that. So I bought 2 new rolls of paper, and a bag of bows, and some ribbon, and some name tags, and a big plastic tub thing to put it all in (well, not the rolls of paper of course).
And I picked up the "Tales of Earthsea" book by Ursula K. Le Guin that came out recently, which I'd put on my Christmas list but which my mother failed to find, even though I explained exactly where to find it and what it looked like. She said she went back the day after I wrote my list after Thanksgiving, but they didn't have it. That kind of surprises me, but anyway, I bought it for myself tonight.
And lastly... the Christmas jingle puppet dogs. They had several, including one that was a differet color from the rest. These were actually $7.99 but with the half-off Christmas sale they were the price my mother had quoted me, $3.99. I bought two. One is for Gene and Michael I think, because they need it. One is for me if I have to ship the first one back to my family... or it's for someone else as a gift. I know that Laura and Nestor at work both loved the puppet (I took it in to show people, what else is a singing puppet for?) and each wanted one. So I'm sure I'll find a home for him somewhere. ^_^
The only other thing I have to say is that Porcupine Tree's song Trains is a really cool song. I've had a copy of their cd In Absentia for many months, but hadn't listened to it in a while. When I first got it, it was really cool, so I went and bought another cd of theirs, Signify. Then Sky passed on to me copies of nearly every other cd they've ever done (there are tons). But I really haven't listened to most of them yet. But recently I bought a used copy of In Absentia, which I'd always planned to do (if I like a cd that I have a burned copy of, then I always want to purchase a real copy for my collection). So I listened to it on my ride down to Longview two days ago, and was reminded of how cool the song "Trains" is.
I should listen to their other cds now.
