Don’t buy me a Christmas present

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I do hearby officially declare that I am releasing you from your Christmas buying obligations when it comes to me.

When I was a kid, Christmas was all about presents. Who had the most presents, who had the biggest presents, presents for the sake of presents. I’m not a kid anymore. If you ask me what I want, I might be able to come up with a thing or two, but honestly? What’s the point?

When it comes to gifts, there are three scenarios:

  1. In the best case scenario, we both buy each other absolutely amazing gifts that we love and adore forever but never would have thought of ourselves. Amazing. We’re awesome. This practically never happens, maybe once every couple of years at the absolute most.
  2. In a more typical scenario, we both buy each other gifts that we asked for very explicitly (like, we sent the hyperlink to the Amazon page and specified a size and a color), or gift certificates. These are offsetting gifts. We both could have purchased our own gifts, been out about the same amount of money, and saved a little hassle. We might as well wrap it up for ourselves too, since it’s not like you were going to surprise me with the gift that I forced you to buy in the first place. The only people who benefit in this case are probably multi-conglomerate corporations who take our cash and use it to pillage natural resources from Santa’s North Pole home.
  3. In the worst case scenario, one or both of us buys the other something they don’t want. In this case, the gift is a complete waste and the money would have been better spent burning on the hearth as a yule log. Waste of time and hassle, waste of money, and now it’s all awkward between us. Merry Christmas.

Scenario 1 is when the stars align. When you’re in scenario 1 mode, you absolutely know it. However, it’s not very realistic to expect the stars to align all that often. 99% of the time we live in scenario 2. Scenario 3 is what happens when you are forced to buy a gift for someone but you don’t want to fall into scenario 2, so you try to force scenario 1, but deep down you kind of know it’s probably not scenario 1 and you really would have been better off going with scenario 2 anyway.

I do not want to contribute to rampant consumerism. I do not want to contribute to the stress of people trying to rush around and buy presents for everybody. At this point in my life, I really don’t get all that much enjoyment from unwrapping presents anyway. Certainly not enough enjoyment to offset all the bad things that come along with it (the stress, the exploitation of peoples and the destruction of the Earth, the frozen smiles on our faces when we both swing and miss with our presents and realize we’re in scenario 3 territory).

I should mention that homemade gifts are somewhat of an exception, since they do not (usually) contribute to consumerism. In that case, what you primarily spent was time, not money, so that’s a little different. And anyway, those gifts probable already fell into scenario 1 in any case.

I cannot stop buying presents for people who I feel obligated to buy presents for, but I can at least release you from your obligation to buy for me. So please, only buy me something if you have something really, really good (we’re talking scenario 1 here). I’d rather have a great present every 5 years without all the mediocre-to-bad presents in between clouding the memories of the good ones.

Your Christmas present to me can be not participating in commercialism-for-commercialism’s-sake on my behalf. I thank you in advance.

Hot Doug’s

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Over the weekend, we checked out Chicago institution Hot Doug’s, the Sausage Superstore and Encased Meat Emporium. I have to say that I never really felt like I needed to go to a hot dog restaurant, famous or not, but Hot Doug’s totally exceeded my expectations.

For out of towners a “Chicago-style” hotdog typically consists of a hot dog (obviously) topped with mustard, onions, neon green relish, tomatoes, a full sized pickle spear, and celery salt on a poppy seed bun.

I’ve never actually partaken of a Chicago-style dog, and I’m always interested in trying the food-of-that-place, so knew I had to try that out. Additionally, we got a brat with sauerkraut, a specialty dog that was Smoked Crayfish and Pork Sausage with Cajun Remoulade and Goat Cheese, and some duck fat fries to top us off.

The hardest part about Hot Doug’s was the line to get in. It wasn’t as bad as we’ve heard it could be, but two hungry kids don’t want to stand around and wait when the food is just right there. If I had to do it over again, I would go earlier in the day, so the kids weren’t so hungry to begin with.

Usually going out to eat with Evie is a complete waste of time. She likes the idea of going out to eat, but it turns out she actually hates food so there’s pretty much no chance she’s going to like any of the options. However, you can’t get more up her alley than a hot dog and french fry restaurant, so there you go.

Ollie, as usual, is just happy to have food. Any food. Our waiter was extremely skeptical about Ollie’s “with everything”, and Ollie proved him wrong by eating the whole thing, followed by a quarter of the crayfish and goat cheese dog. He loved both.

I have to say, I was impressed with Chicago-style hot dogs. The dog itself was good, but all of the crazy toppings do combine into something new and delicious in my mouth. I thought the plain old “with everything” dog was the best of all the different kinds we tried. Although the other ones were good, I would probably just stick with that next time.

I would certainly go here again, especially to take someone from out of town (although it’s pretty far from our place to get there).

And hey, Evie said it was the best restaurant she’s ever been to, what other recommendation do you need?

Two Thumbs Up

Quote Monday has an appetite

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Sara: “What do you want for Christmas? You can ask Santa for anything you want.”
Ollie: “Cake.”

Sara: “What was the best part about going to the restaurant?”
Ollie: “Eating.”
Sara: “What was the best part about eating?”
Ollie: “The mustard.”

Sara: “[Nala] is like, I am old, I don’t care anymore. I am going to bite the people I don’t like, and steal the milk from the children.”

::Man panhandling with a McDonald’s cup::
Evie: “I guess that man didn’t even have enough money to buy cardboard to make a sign!”

Who needs robots?

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Here in the futuristic world known as the present, robots can be used to manufacture goods. But sometimes you long for simpler times. Here’s an invention that combines the simple, old-time pleasures of a rocking chair and a knitted hat. The rocking chair harnesses the power of your rocking and puts it to good use, answering the age old question: how can we use old people for fuel?

The chair looks so simple, that I’m completely flabbergasted that it can do something as complicated (to me at least) as knitting a hat. No robots or computer chips or even electricity required.

You know, now I feel kind of silly for all the time I’ve spent knitting…

Link via Sara.

This is when the Internet is awesome

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In Oregon, someone found an old picture in storage, and listed it on craigslist. On the back of the photo were a few notes indicating the name of the subject (Absalum Reeves), and the day he died (June 1885). Fortunately, they included these details in the listing.

My mother-in-law Barb has long been interested in genealogy, and has researched hers extensively, uploading her research to a genealogy website. Specifically, one of the notes on the back of the picture said, “My mothers father Absalum Reeves Leap died June 1885 William B Snyder”, and the names “Absalum Reeves Leap” and “William Snyder” both appear in Barb’s uploaded genealogy report. A stranger saw the listing and connected that to Barb’s genealogy. Putting two and two together, she emailed Barb to see if she would be interested in the picture.

It turns out that the photograph shows Barb’s great-grandfather, and she knows quite a bit about him through her research. His mother (my wife’s great-great-great-grandmother) was born in Illinois and died shortly after giving birth to her youngest child, Absalum. Afterwards, the family (including Absalum) moved to Iowa. He died following an accident in 1885, as the back of the picture indicates.

In fact, Barb’s aunt remembers this specific picture hanging on her great-grandmother’s wall!

Naturally, Barb was interested in the picture, and my father-in-law bought it for her for her birthday. How cool is it that something like this could find it’s way back to the family, specifically to someone interested in the history of the family?

A lot of times the internet is just Facebook, Farmville, pictures of cats, and videos of people getting hit in the nuts. There is something to all of that, but it’s also nice to have an example of something awesome that simply couldn’t have happened in an earlier age.