I don’t want to leave on a down note (see the post just below), so an open thread. Put the favorite gift you gave and the favorite gift you received in the comments.
*** Update ***
Guess I am not out of here yet- I got tagged by Ezra:
Four jobs you’ve had in your life: Teacher, soldier, probation officer, waiter/busboy
Four movies you could watch over and over: Airplane, Harold and Maude, Breaking Away, Goodfellas
Four places you’ve lived: Bethany, WV; Morgantown, WV, Fulda, Germany; Millbrook, NY
Four TV shows you love to watch: Boston Legal, 24, BTVS, Monday Night Football.
Four places you’ve been on vacation: France, Austria, Spain, Bavaria.
Four websites you visit daily: Check my blogroll.
Four of your favorite foods: Mexican (any type- really), Pad Thai, sushi, a blood-red steak with fresh horseradish
Four places you’d rather be: I like where I am.
Four albums you can’t live without: Little Feat- Waiting For Columbus, Frank Zappa-Live at the Fillmore East ’71, DAG- Righteous, James Brown- Make it Funky.
I tag Bill, Hubris, and Dorkafork at INDC Journal, and Tim F.
Kirby
Favourite gift I gave – MegaBloks Ghost Pirate Ship and Megabloks Pirate Island Set. These were for my son and he has spent the whole day playing with them. Well, so have I.
Favourite Gift I received – Xbox 360 with the game, Gun. Played it for a little bit already and the graphics are fantastic. I’ll get into it a little deeper once the kid is in bed.
Alexandra
Favorite gift I gave: two tickets to a 12-hour-long reading of the Iliad to husband.
Favorite gift I received: charming, happy attitudes from my teen and pre-teen.
ppGaz
Favorite gift given: Digital movie cam to parents of new graddaughter Maci age 7 mo
Favorte gift received: Maci
demimondian
Favorite gift given: five twenty dollar bills towards a new electric guitar for the oldest of the demi-offspring. (FDDD and I had much fun packaging them up: one inside an absolutely hideous toy electronic guitar “with real guitar noises”, another with a ream of printer paper, a third inside a small pottery box, etc.)
Favorite gift received: one pair Sennheiser 150 headphones. Peace and quite at the office for demimondian once the new years starts!
Krista
Favorite gift given – A book of gross jokes for my 5-year-old nephew. My sister’s going to looooove me.
Favorite gift received – An autographed copy of Diana Gabaldon’s “A Breath of Snow and Ashes.” If you don’t hear from me much over the next little while, this is why.
mycat
Favorite given: books which were hits with all of the recepients
Favorite gift: membership in Best Friends, an animal rescue organization.
I love Christmas.
Ancient Purple
Favorite Gift Given – Sony 4.1 Megapixel digital cam to my better half.
Favorite Gift Received – A shopping spree to the Wild West Merchantile in the East Valley of metro Phoenix. As a native Arizonan, I have tons of replica clothing from the 1880s. It is comfortable, sharp, regal and just beautiful stuff. Click on the link and just look at the shirts, vests and frock coats. Ah, a more fashionable time.
Most Interesting Gift Under the Tree – A copy of Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon – a book on all the deaths that have happened by people toppling over the edge of the GC or dying on the trail, etc. It gets updated every two years. Truly morbid, but some of the deaths are prime candidates for a “Darwin Award.”
Douglas
I will Follow the Full List, I think that complete disclosure is a good thing.
Four jobs you’ve had in your life: (Chronological) Paperboy (4 routes) Dispatcher, Marine, “customer service engineer” (fixer)
Four movies you could watch over and over:
“The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” (not just cuz of the season, I just LOVE that flick) “Jesus Christ Superstar” (not cuz of religion, I’m an atheist, it is Rice’s greatest vocal work) “Die Hard” “South Park (Bigger, Longer and Uncut) (it is WRONG WRONG WRONG! and it takes nuts to be wrong.)
Four places you’ve lived: Hammond, IN, Cocoa Beach Fla. Okinawa Japan, 29 Palms California. All the homes of good American Men :)
Four websites you visit daily: Starkingdoms.com (a lame slow paced game) http://ace.mu.nu/ (Ace of Spades HQ) https://balloon-juice.com (This site, a good libertarian site) and http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/browse (free republic.com with my prefered search method)
Four of your favorite foods: I’m always a Bitch for chicken noodle soup, as long as it’s homemade. Lasagna, Spaghetti and country fried steak.
Four places you’d rather be: There is a phrase “the grass is always greener” I agree with that, but a friend of mine from the military gave me a variation of that which is more fitting “There are only ever good stations, where you been, and where you going” so that is two, I LOVE Chicago, but I can’t live here, and I can live in the desert of California, but I don’t love it.
Four albums you can’t live without: This is an impossible question. In my family, other than houses, and various retirement funds, the most valuable posessions of my family,(Father, brother and myself) the most precious “things” we own are My Comic Collection, My fathers 78 Collection, My brothers Baseball Card Collection, and after that, it is a toss up of the thousands of CD’s, vinyl records, and unique recordings we all own. A world without music is preferable to a world with only enough music to remind you how empty the world is. I could live with NO records more easily than with 4, were I completely celibate from music, i could give up on life, with only 4 records, I would remember all of the wonder and beauty that I am missing out on.
Okies, I notice “books” is missing, as is the concept of “one person to keep you company.” THANKS for skipping the “desert Isle” silliness of “one person” to talk with. THANK GOD!
Rest well,
Douglas
DOH!
Favorite Gift Given? ” a . . . 29″ I think flat screen monitor.
Favorite Gift Recieved?
I was Meritoriously promoted Corporal. and I was kinda connected to a woman in Australia, and She, sent me the CPL Chevrons, and I recieved them on the day that I was to be promoted.
Al Maviva
“He was as normal as pumpkin pie… now look at him.”
Sine.Qua.Non
Favorite Gift Given: It’s between a gorgeous handblown one of a kind bowl or a custom, tooled leather artist’s sketch book with handmade & bound recycled paper inserts.
Favorite Gift Received: $10 Starbucks giftcard from my 5 & 7 year old nephews.
ubernerd83
Favorite gift given: A copy of American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, to my younger brother. Maybe he’ll actually read it.
Favorite gift received: Both seasons of Michael Moore’s The Awful Truth on DVD. Yeah yeah…he’s full of shit sometimes, but Crackers the Corporate Crime Fighting Chicken really amuses me.
Louise
Favorite gift given (my mother and I went in together on it): The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, to my father.
(Though I have to give thanks to Heifer, Int’l for having $20 flocks of chicks this year. I gave several as gifts.
Favorite gift received: gift cards, from friends and family. When you’re forty-something and back in school, you’re poor, and shopping for stuff is rare. Gift cards are a triple gift: the joy of browsing, the fun of buying, and the relief of having something you really need.
JWeidner
Favorite Gift given: A handpainted ornament of my 11 month old, given to his Grandma (my mom)
Favorite gift received: First Christmas with my son. He may not have understood much about what was going on, but he loved playing with the wrappers and boxes.
abc
Don’t always agree with you, but Waiting For Columbus by Little Feat is exactly right. Best live rock album of all time.
skip
Four jobs you’ve had in your life: Car and motorcycle test driver, teacher, intel, editor.
Four movies you could watch over and over: The Children of Paradise (F), Casablanca, Queen Christina, 8 1/2.
Four places you’ve lived: Oconomowoc, WI, NYC. Berlin, DC.
Four TV shows you love to watch: Daily Show, Reliable Source, Gilmore Girls, Lehrer Report.
Four places you’ve been on vacation: France, Lanzarote, Corfu, Munich.
Four websites you visit daily: Memeorandum, What Really Happened, Balloon Juice, Wayne Madsen Report.
Four of your favorite foods: Basil Thai beef, Indian Murgh Tikka, Wienerschnitzel, Schaumtorte.
Four places you’d rather be: Munich, Capetown, Nice, Patagonia.
Four albums you can’t live without: Eva Cassidy, Paul Robeson, The Ring, Sinatra.
chef
Gift given: A fine guitar to my musician godson and nephew
Gift received: A bronze bust of Nietzsche.
Best Christmas: Lac Ouimet, Laurentians, Quebec. Second best: Salzburg, Mozarteum concert, Austria. Third best: East Berlin (a long story).
Worst Christmas: Bethlehem. Go and find out for yourself.
ape
Favorite received? Not sure yet.. Biography of Stalin looks good. but too miserable. so i’ll go with the Godfather Trilogy.
Favorite given? Tickets for my parents to see ‘Marriage of Figaro’. I always get them something expensive and disposable. they’ve collected enough objects.
but the best one is that one of my brother’s mates bought him poker chips and we played for about 6 hours; 7 card hi-lo.
SeesThroughIt
The episodes where Janeane Garafolo leads the storming of Greenwich Beach and where Rusty Cundieff goes to Mississippi and buys a bunch of (white) slaves a few days before the state finally got around to actually, ya know, abolishing slavery are both freaking great. I also really enjoyed the CEO Challenge.
Mike
Favorite gift given: $500 to my nephew who just graduated from IU with a 3.7 GPA and deserved it for the work he did. A kid who never liked school before!
Favorite gift: a one of a kind black art glass bowl I saw at a gallery in the Canadian Rockies last summer that I fell in love with but decided not to buy. My friends saw how much I loved it and surprised me!
BUT most important was the friendship and love we all shared for the weekend. We have been friends for 35+ years and are closer than family.
dorkafork
I got mine up.
dorkafork
And that Live at the Fillmore East album is fantastic.
Tony Alva
I guess you’ve seen this for yourself by now, but Hubris has called it quits. A blogger worth mourning. Whenever the hyperbole on this blog and others was at a crescendo, I could always count on Hubris to make me laugh.
His sudden departure is proof that there is no God.