today my family and i visited my grandmother and grandaddy, and i found out that i should expect a rather generous gift from them – anne got their christmas card a few days ago and brought it to be opened during our visit there. her eyes practically bugged out when she opened it at their place today.
dad told anne to show me so i’d know what to expect since they said they mailed mine but i hadn’t yet received it in the mail, and i saw a very generous check in the christmas card with a small slip of paper printed out from the computer that said something to the effect of “this is more than a christmas gift, this is to help keep the thieves in the white house from stealing the family’s inheritance with an estate tax” (my grandfather is a hardcore republican, haha).
…but now i find out that the manos in hd restoration kickstarter is open. if i spent my inheritance on “manos: hands of fate”, i have a feeling that the master would not approve! i need to figure out what to do with it, though. there’s a lot that i’d like to pay off, or things that need repair (my car needs scheduled maintenance) or replacing (my laptop went kaput), but i also would like to have it set aside for savings. i just don’t know what i’ll do quite yet – this is going to take lots of consideration.
the rest of my christmas weekend was nice. i gave dad a criterion film he requested, mom a dvd of old sherlock holmes, anne some doctor who posters and vinyl wall-clings, and i need to mail feisty_fitz her present in january when she’ll be home to receive it. i received a few doctor who dvds, a few red dwarf dvds, some electronics hobbyist books, a book about the history of the vocoder, cold-weather running gear and a lightweight jacket for running or that i can wear while biking, a slow-cooker, and tickets to see mythbusters on tour in march.
mom had also offered a month or so ago to get me a toaster for about $40-50, and i suggested a toaster oven since most of the stuff i cook i don’t really need to use my whole oven. i had started to research toaster ovens, but eventually i gave up just because it was so overwhelming. we started to look again today but everything was still too confusing – too many models, and everything that was inexpensive seemed very poor quality. eventually we found a model for $180, so well above our original budget, but unlike the $40 ones that we saw (one had ~50 reviews, maybe three 5-star reviews and all the rest were 1-star reviews), this one had 200+ reviews and a total review of 4.5 out of 5 stars. that should arrive in a few days.
yesterday when we met up with my aunt and uncles and cousins for christmas we did our gift exchange – if you’re out of high-school you’re eligible to participate. there’s a $10 limit on the gifts, and i had planned to go to one of the breweries near my apartment (chocolate city brewing) and buy a few of their pint glasses and fill them up with candy. i showed up on saturday but they were all sold out of their glassware, and when they suggested giving a growler of beer i told them about the $10 limit, and that their growlers were $16 ($6 for the jug + $10 to fill it up with beer). they ended up cutting me a deal where i got one jug filled with beer + one empty jug for $16. this way i could choose to either gift the beer and keep the empty jug for myself to fill up whenever, or gift the empty jug and keep the beer for myself. since not everyone participating was 21, i bought some chocolate-covered espresso beans so if someone underage or who didn’t like beer got it then they could swap for the empty jug and the candy. i also threw in a burned cd of jug band music, bahahahaha.
when we do the exchange, we pull numbers out of a hat and go in order – you can either choose to unwrap a present, or steal someone’s gift that they already opened, and then they have to unwrap a new one. so, for this, you want to go last since then you can see everything that’s already been opened (except for one gift still wrapped) and choose if you want to steal something from someone else, or if you want to try your luck with the last gift. i was 12 out of 17 this year and i ended up with a handy 40-something piece tool kit which can come in handy around the apartment. my beer was originally picked by an underage cousin, but it ended up going to one of my of-age cousins and her boyfriend and they really wanted the beer, so that’s good, and i got the empty jug and the chocolate-covered espresso beans for myself.
today after i visited with grandmother and grandaddy for a bit i came back to my apartment and was met by gaiadea, and we went on an adventure for burgers and beer in dc for dinner and hanging-out since we hadn’t seen each other since i was in boston in july for my cousin’s wedding. good times! we took uber back home since i had a $5 voucher and a $15 coupon i had to use by the end of the year, so after getting burgers and a donut and walking over to churchkey for drinks we took the cab back to my place and the $23 ride turned into a $3 ride. not bad, i might use it again if i find a need for it, but it was nice to try once at least.
ugh, this weekend went by so fast. i’m glad i spent most of saturday cleaning up my apartment since i don’t know when i’d have been able to clean it up otherwise. i’m not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow; it’s going to be super-boring this week too, and after all this visiting i’d like to have a day to just relax and do nothing.