Holiday Gifts

I’m so excited! I just found a link to the BEST website! But I’m not going to share it, because if I do - it might give away what I’m doing for Christmas gifts this year.

Your Christmas gift, when you were ten years old was a shotgun (a BB gun if you were a ‘townie’).

I also had the, ahem, pleasure the other week of sorting out my wedding gift list which involved going into the John Lewis store, and then zapping the barcodes of everything we wanted with a handy PDA. This would have been great fun had it not been for the fact that it was the start of the sales that day and it was a weekend. Grrrr. And what has all this to do with web stuff? Well the fact that we couldn’t do our list online was a bit annoying. In the last few years I have rarely ventured to the shops, instead preferring the comfort of being able to shop online, anywhere and anytime. That’s not to say that the web can ever replace being able to touch and feel and smell your potential wares (well not yet), and there’s certainly room for improvement with most sites. Here’s my wishlist for ecommerce sites:

bs mother gave me a necklace that i wore for a bit. i didnt like that way it felt so i got it sized and gave it to my two year old son, i thought she wouldnt mind concidering she gave it to me. i told her i gave it to him and went about my visit with b. when we can back from dinner, she pulled me and b aside and told me she was dissapointed in me for doing that. b just sat there while she bashed me and didnt say nething. well all in all bs mom wants the necklace back but i cant do that because i got it sized to fit the boy. what should i do?

Lastly I found some Rowan Kidsilk Haze with a coordin ating sparkle yarn to make the Knitty Tie one one caplet called Mellow Green, allthough I picked up a soft purpley-blue color. This will be for a Christmas gift for my grandmother and I'm sure that she'll love it. I also picked up some misc little gadgets there and the sweetest buttons for the baby sweater.

If anyone is interested in paying our Honeymoon Airfare (or half?) as your wedding gift, please let me know ASAP. I miscalculated what it would cost to fly to Mexico. Prices are at about $417 per person right now, but I am sure priceline.com can get it for cheaper.

It's not like his presents to me were ever that glamorous... there have been stuffed animals, the Jewel Cd (he burnt a copy of it for me and wrote my name on it... my cousin still owns it to this day), used VHS movies from blockbuster, mini body sprays (valued at $4.50/bottle), and Magic cards--that I never wanted, but he just kept for himself. It was all really immature of him, but now, for some reason, I still get him the nicest gifts for his birthday when he doesn't get me anything. I feel pressured to spend tons of money on him getting him the nicest present every year for Christmas or his birthday. For graduation, he bought me a stuffed animal (not like I expected any graduation presents anyway) but then, when my little cousin graduated, she got an iPod from my brother... WTF?!?!

I would also like to send an Internet-wide shout-out to our friend Erin, who was kind enough to send us three gorgeous paintings as a wedding gift. They are absolutely lovely, and I’m crazy about them. Thanks, Erin!

My brother and sister-in-law picked me up at about 11 p.m. Friday and took me with them back to their apartment in New Orleans, where I spent the night and woke up at 7 a.m. Saturday to help them move to the house they just bought in rural Covington. Along with the two of them, my sister-in-law's brother and parents helped us move stuff into the U-Haul and then all of us drove over the Causeway (formerly the longest bridge in the world) to the Northshore and their new home. After unloading stuff there, we went back to my parents' and my sister-in-law's parents' and sister's houses in Slidell to pick up yet more wedding gifts and furniture others had given to them. Last night there were 14 of at their house (including a 2 year old and 2 month old) helping them unpack. It was chaos, but glorious chaos nonetheless. It's beautiful and a perfect starter house for newlyweds.

He’s a big guy about 6′4″ tall, well-groomed, and very masculine. He had a birthday recently, and I decided to do something out of the ordinary for him. We usually go to dinner, a movie and have some friends over. But this time I redirected my thoughts. I thought of all the things he likes… Racing, sports, cologne, a good science fiction novel, and I gathered them into a masculine basket with his favorite color, green, and I created for him a birthday gift basket. I didn’t hear him whimper, no tears fell down his cheeks, I didn’t feel the rhythm of his heart skip a beat, but I saw the look in his eyes when he unwrapped the colorful birthday packaging, and it was amazing.

Dazzled by diamonds? The word diamond comes from a Greek word meaning “untameable,” because diamonds are so hard that only another diamond can scratch them. The first known reference to diamonds comes from India in 296 BCE, where diamonds were used as symbols of wealth and prestige. The first diamond wedding rings arose in France in the 15th century, despite an earlier declaration by King Louis IX that only the king could own diamonds. And believe it or not, despite their price tag, diamonds are not at all rare – over 100 carats worth of diamonds are mined every year for both jewelry and industrial use.

Last night, I decided to welcome myself to my new home by spending the evening with Proust, since I haven’t a lot of money for wine and such. The former is a good enough substitute for the latter, and no one who has read and loved Proust could call themselves poor otherwise than with an ironic smile, the sort of smile that says, poor, yes, if only I weren’t so rich.

Fed-ex stopped by to drop off four bottles of wine at my office today. Extremely nice of them. All I can say is that the delivery guy is my very best friend. (hic)

The weather was fantastic out there. Ninety degrees but with a cool breeze coming off the ocean so it never felt too hot except when we were in our black tuxedos. The food was pretty good all weekend, and it came nonstop. As soon as we arrived, I had lunch with J&A at a restaurant on the harbor. Between apps and entrees, we each had about a pound of seared ahi. A few hours later we went to dinner at a fantastic bistro called French 75. Live lounge music, which I totally dig, and awesome escargot, lamb chops, mussels, tuna tartare, carpaccio, of course seared foie gras (with a lovely poached white peach) and I don’t remember what else. Also had a bottle of Flowers pinot noir followed by a Cakebread cabernet. We were still full from lunch when we sat down, but the food was so good that we couldn’t resist stuffing ourselves silly. The following day we had brunch at the Ritz where the buffet featured the best Belgian waffles I’ve ever tasted. They were crispy on the surface yet ethereally light and airy inside. There were also a few different kinds of sausages that were terrific as well as some excellent smoked salmon. Brunch ran until 10:30 or so, and then we went to meet up with the girls for lunch at an Italian restaurant at noon. As full as we were, nothing jumped out at me, so I just had the crabmeat salad, a glass of mediocre house pinot grigio, and then some espresso and some black sambuca. I just asked for a shot of it to accompany my espresso, but apparently they only do one size- half a snifter full! So lunch ran until about 2p, then we had rehearsal at 3p, and then dinner at 6p! Dinner was quite good, where most of us ordered the rack of lamb, and it was indeed a full rack of perfectly cooked lamb for each of us. Still too full, I didn’t touch my potatoes, but I did finish the entire delicious rack. Had a sapphire and tonic along with a few glasses of the unspectacular house merlot with dinner. Then it turns out we were $200 short of the minimum for reserving the room, so we rounded out the bill by ordering 2 bottles of Cakebread cabernet! We drank that and enjoyed some mild cigars outside. Then we went back to the Marriot bar to have some drinks.