Friday, December 21, 2007

Christmas Shopping

Man.... I just got home from some serious Christmas shopping. I always have a couple of things that I need to get right before Christmas, so inevitably I am running around close to the holiday. My trip after work today consisted of a few stores and then the dreaded final stop....Briarwood Mall. Just to give you a reference here is an aerial view of what getting into the mall was like today.


All of this was in the supposed crappy economy around here. I know that we have a higher unemployment rate here in MI then the rest of the country, but there are still 93% of us who want to work and have a job. And if the mall parking lot was any judge, its not like money is scarce around here. Let's just say that JD is glad to be done shopping.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

The Dilema of Christmas Cards

Christmas cards should not be this hard. Not only do you have to go out and purchase the cards, you also have to come up with a list of people to send them to and take time to fill them out. Then there is the postage and the mailing. Quite a process just to spread some holiday cheer.

Unfortunately for JD, the process of figuring out who to send cards to is a bit byzantine. JD and Wife sit down and go through the address book, then there are deletions, additions, maybes. The whole process kind of reminds me of when we were figuring out who to invite to our wedding. I imagine it is much the same as the way the Congress hashes out a budget. I am lobbying for a distant uncle and for someone we have not seen in 2.5 years, but who gave us the couch in out living room; and my wife is capitulating but making my promise to cut down the cards by at least 5 next year. Definitely some back-room dealings going on. Strange, but absolutely true.

The sad thing is that I imagine that we are completely normal in this regard. I think most people struggle with Christmas cards like we do. I wonder if there is a better way to do this? Maybe we can all exchange holiday E-cards....seems very 21st Century. Or maybe I could just post a card on Facebook and call it a day. Alas, there is still something special, at least to me, about putting that giant pile of cards in the mail , knowing they are going to people we care about from San Francisco to Boston. So I for one plan on to keep sending out piles of cards to people, I guess I am just like that.