Christmas Shopping Drama

My Christmas shopping for this year has not gone the least bit smoothly. Not only have I routinely been stuck for ideas, and then not particularly pleased with the items I have settle for, but I have also had problems acquiring a few of the things that I have thought about.

For instance, a few days ago I finally had an idea for Kirsten. Unfortunately, though, the store I was then in which might have been expected to sell the product I was looking for did not seem to have a copy. I then started looking at other stores we visited with no success. Then, today, Christmas Eve, I made a last minute run to a street populated with many chain stores only to have a similar level of success. Fortunately, I was, eventually, able to find a store that contained a variation the theme of what I was originally going for.

After this moderate success I still had to head to another shopping centre/district get ideas/gifts for two more people. It was emotionally tiring.

The only aspect of this experience that I might frame as positive was my ability to enter stores and buy absolutely nothing if they didn't have what I was looking for. Thus I don't feel that I bought too many pieces of crap just for the sake of buying something.

Anyway, we now have about 12 hours until Christmas and I think that I have purchased (or it has been purchased on my behalf) everything that I will be buying for Christmas. And while I am frequently quite late when it comes to shopping, I don't know if I have ever before made Christmas Eve morning emergency runs to such a large number of stores.

Now I just have to wrap all of my purchases.

It's going to be amazing

A few days ago I received a notice that I would be invited to a friend's birthday party, which is to take place this evening. Almost as soon as I learned of the party I started to think about jokes and whatnot that I might bring to the party. After not too long I settled on the idea of bringing a joke present, one which would emphasize a character flaw of my that the celebrant and I have enjoyed laughing about.

I guess I should go back a bit, and explain this character flaw. It seems that for some number of years, at least going back to my high school days, I have been moderately interested in knowing what nicotine feels like (and I should be clear, not what smoking feels like). I think I am curious to know what it is that people like about smoking that makes it addictive, or at least something along these lines. As a result of this fascination with nicotine and the resulting feeling I have tired a number of smoking cessation products over the past number of years.

I started with a piece of nicotine gum that I acquired from a friend of mine who was trying to quite. Contrary to the instructions I received from my friend I chewed away like this was regular gum. Perhaps not surprisingly, I quickly felt quite ill and nothing else. Though this experiment ended with me feeling rather poorly, I have always felt that it was a success of sorts. If nothing else, I learned what a high dose of nicotine will do to me.

More recently I decided that my first experiment with the gum wasn't enough and that I should really try the patch. This summer I was able to get a patch from a friend. It turned out that he gave me the strongest level patch, which was supposed to be equivalent to smoking some relatively high proportion of a pack of cigarettes. Again, not surprisingly, it made me feel a little like death.

This past fall I mentioned this incidents to the birthday boy and he found them funny (meaning ridiculous). A few days afterwards suggested that I might try a nicotine inhaler that he had recently seen advertised. Since then a running conversation we have had is about my non-smoking use of nicotine and tobacco.

When I heard it was his birthday I thought that I could try and bring him in on the fun. As I know that he isn't interested in ingesting nicotine or tobacco, I thought that I could give him some of my dried stash that he could use as pesticide (nicotine can be dissolved in water by soaking tobacco leaves and then used as a pesticide). This should allow him to partake in the whole nicotine thing without having to worry about developing an addiction or bad breath.

Instead of just giving him dried home-grown tobacco leaves I decided to try to make the whole thing a bit more elaborate. I created a name for the product, and then matching packaging material. I then decided that I would go all out and make a 'gift basket' by also included disposable strainers (to remove the leaves from the water) and a spray bottle (for spraying the homemade pesticide). This was all wrapped together, as you can see below.



[Embedded Video]

For those of you who are interested in a more direct view of the product and its packaging, here you go:



Sorry if this is a little disorganized, I was writing this and getting ready to go (hopefully I won't miss the bus).

Xmas Check 7

Stocking examination seems to be winding down. I am looking forward
to testing out my new pressure cooker.

It seems likely that the next activity on the agenda will be a few
scratch off bingo games, and that might be followed by breakfast.

Xmas Check 3

It seems that instead of sitting in front fire place on Santa patrol I
decided to do some last minute wrapping.

One of the wrap jobs was rather complicated as it required the
construction of a box and the use of a fair bit of packing tape.

Now that I have finished with the wrapping I have moved back to Santa
watch, which has been uneventful so far.