I hate gift cards. I hate office parties. Can I just go home and be with my family now, please?
My mother is like that. She’ll give me something nice like a woodworking plane and then a bunch of crap she picked up at the church rummage sale (often used). I’ll gush over the nice gift and then she acts all hurt “Didn’t you like the 1965 travel guide to Guatemala? I know you like Mexico”.
Do you have a Dollar Tree store nearby? They have bunches of the 3-pack refills for $1/pack here in Tallahassee. I know it won’t help this year, but if you want to email me your address I’d be happy to send you a few.
Come here, Ponder.
No. Closer.
A little bit closer.
::SLAP::
Okay, I see what you mean. 
Classic. 
Thanks.
Score! I picked up a dozen 3-packs last night from Dollar Tree. That’ll cover me for the next few seasons. Thanks much, Susie!
So how you doing 
'nuther thing, “Oh come all ye faithful”
All well and good but what about the adulterous buggers.
Merry Christmas anyway
A song I’ve long felt more appropriate to Beltane.
Yes, I did volunteer to direct the Christmas Program this year. Please make sure that when your kids beg for a role (and we made sure all children who wanted roles got them) that they are actually going to be there for the performance! Don’t send your kid to rehearsal and weeks later have them say to me, “by the way, I won’t be here for the performance.” Ok, I lost Joseph, a prophet reader and a Shepherd that way. Come on! Also, a little help for your kids learning their reading roles would be appreciated. No one has to memorize or learn shakespeare, just a few lines. At this point if they could just remember to bring their script, that would be great. Right now I am handing out 12 new scripts at each rehearsal for those who lost theirs. Some kids lost theirsagain during rehearsal. Sigh.
Also, to the stage mom - this is a small Christmas pageant, not your kid’s breakthrough role of a lifetime. He is in 5th grade, I think you can leave him alone for 45 minutes and drop him off for the rehearsal like every other parent. You don’t need to stay and give helpful suggestions the whole time, really. Yes, I am aware your child is allergic to wool, peanuts, eggs and dairy. Yes, I am aware he has already memorized his one line, isn’t he a little genius? Yes, his microphone is fine. Yes, he knows where to stand. ARGH.
Bless the children.
Update: My coworker just informed me that he went shopping with his wife last night, and bought her a few gifts.
Merry Xmas to all and to all a good night.
Unless you study neurology.
Christmas day I will turn 51.
I am still pissed off about all the “Christmas plus your birthday present in one” gifts I have received oh these many years. Christmas present + Birthday present > Christmas and Birthday present. So screw all of y’all for psychologically damaging me and causing me to hate the holidays with the heat of a thousand suns. But I still want a birthday cake, with lots of frosting.
My dad was born on Christmas, we always do a cake for him. I usually buy him a seperate gift, but I confess to doing the “combination” gift a time or two. In my defense, it is always a much bigger gift than what others get just for Christmas though, like a digital camera vs. a tie. So hopefully that’s ok.
He never got Birthday presents growing up anyway, being the 7th child of a not-well-off family, so he seems content with whatever we get him. Half the time he says not to get him anything, and I believe he is sincere. He just likes having all “his girls” at home. But we always get him something anyway.
I used to date a woman whose daughter was born on Christmas day and she did a half-year celebration. I always thought that was neat.
Anyway, although it is a tad early: Wishing you a good day, a good year and a great life.
Well, thank you. To come off my crazy-old-guy podium for a while, I did have an aunt with a birthday on July 5th. So every year she and I went out and celebrated both our birthdays. She was the crazy elder aunt of the family, so it was always a lot of fun. Now I’ll get angry and bitter again. Carrot cake would be good. Lots of cream cheese frosting, please.
My company apparently sent out a memo to all managers that went something like this:
"We have decided not to close the week after Christmas like we have for the past ten years. Any employee unable to work that week must supply a substitute or they are fired :eek: "
Quite a wonderful xmas gift- many of my coworkers, including myself, had planned a vacation that week (because we thought we’d have it OFF) then had to scramble to find replacements. Of course, few people are willing to cover for us because (surprise surprise!) they want to spend Christmas break with their families.
Fortunately I got the week covered, but I don’t know if some of my other coworkers were so lucky.
Susie Derkins and Dollar Tree, turning Christmas frowns upside down since 2006…
So glad you found them!
Dear Stoopid Fuck-Fuck-Fuckity-Fuckers who stand there at the front of the queue, as I check your items out, yapping mindlessly to some other also-moron on your cell phone which I’d love to see rammed completely up your ass preferably by ME:
Cut that shit out already! Not only have you given me no reason to greet you, but then I cannot even ask if you’ve found everything you needed (which you probably haven’t as you have blathered on your cell phone for every second you’ve been in the place), and whether you want the receipt in your package or in your purse/wallet, in which case I hope to do the wrong thing and you lose it and cannot ever record it in your checkbook and end up paying exorbitant overdraft fees. Oh, and thanks TWO fucking million for hanging up just in time to tell me (not ask me) to now wrap your items which I have already bagged carefully for you. Thanks for holding up your fellow shoppers and my line in particular with your utter disdain for anyone else in the universe besides your insufferable self and the other waste of perfectly good oxygen you were talking to on your cell.
And thanks so much for allowing me to serve your inconsiderate ass, it makes MY holiday so much merrier!
I WAS going to gripe about my office Christmas drunken-bash and the fact that as a 3-year employee and STILL the “newbie”, which I will never overcome, I always get the leanest Christmas bonus of anyone ($200 for me, $1500 for the next “newest” employee) and the least consideration when it comes to time off (none for me, all of next week for everyone else). But then I read Count Blucher’s account, and Incubus’s tale, and I don’t feel so bad. I will say that I ALONE had to clean up after our office bash, as the “newbie”; 5 loads of luncheon serving bowls, silverware and drink glasses, and 6 crockpot inserts later, I finally got it accomplished Next “newest” employee is a Jehovah’s Witness and cannot be caught in the act of helping at a forbidden Christmas function as they do not celebrate—altho she stuffed her face most righteously during the luncheon, but did not “mingle” with the guests as I was expected to, and did.
But if I didn’t want dishpan hands and fits of unresolved anger at ignorant cell phone users, I shouldn’t have elected to work for a small-town, all-local, good-ol-boys company as well as pull a part-time gig in retail this season, right?
Fuck-Fuckity-Fuck to Christmas anyway!
–Beck
Fuck toy stores. Fuck them with a white-hot poker.
My niece is 5. Everything she owns is goddamn pink with fucking ribbons and iridescent sparkles and lavender trim and hearts and flowers and says “princess” on it. You know what? She not a fucking princess. She’s a human being. It would be nice if I could find her a toy that is not completely stereotyped. But no, I have to choose between DINO-DESTRUCTOR toys and “fairy princess barbie rip-off (now with enlarged breasts!)”
I cannot wait until she can read a proper book.