{"id":1287,"date":"2010-11-26T19:26:20","date_gmt":"2010-11-27T02:26:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/?p=1287"},"modified":"2010-11-26T19:26:20","modified_gmt":"2010-11-27T02:26:20","slug":"my-annual-thinking-about-presents-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/2010\/11\/my-annual-thinking-about-presents-post\/","title":{"rendered":"My annual thinking-about-presents post"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This would&#8217;ve been Schulz&#8217;s 88th birthday. I assume you were all out buying him presents early this morning?<\/p>\n<p>Me, I skipped the early morning madness. For one thing, there is little that I need in terms of the sort of thins which go on sale. We have computers that work, our GPS is fine, and while some day I&#8217;d like one of them big flatscreen TVs, it seems wisest to wait until the existing set ceases to work.<\/p>\n<p>Which is not to say that I&#8217;ve not bought anything over the past couple of days. Online, I picked up good deals on a Wii game and remote, and a refurbished Nook (yes, I collect books, but it will be nice to have this as well. Plus as a publisher, I&#8217;m working on downloadable books, so I really should experience it myself.) And I did go out to the stores this morning, just not so early. I have a local advantage; one of the big chains here is, due to some sort of zoning law, forbidden to open before 9 AM. So I could wake at a normal time, get dressed, break fast, hang out a bit, and still get the early-bird deal (in this case, a Roomba).<\/p>\n<p>With Christmas barreling around the corner and Hannukah already ready to run over our toes, I reckoned it was time for my annual gift-getting thoughts, not that they&#8217;ve changed much from the past.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The holiday need not be about gifts. Believing that doesn&#8217;t mean that you have to go stand on stage quoting the gospel to a roomful of people disappointed with the tree. It doesn&#8217;t even mean that you don&#8217;t give and get gifts, but pay more attention to the presence of your loved ones, rather than the presents for them.<\/li>\n<li>Give a gift to the community. Times are hard. The same economics that have driven up demand there have driven down donations.<\/li>\n<li>Give your time, even to your friends. Buying someone the perfect DVD box set may not mean as much to them as you taking them to even a lousy movie, or to a half-decent restaurant for a good evening of chatting. (And a great gift for a couple may be a night of babysitting for them.)<\/li>\n<li>If you have to battle in gift-giving, keep score in the right way. If you&#8217;re competing over who can get just-the-right-thing for the other, you both win. Competing over who can buy the most expensive gift will cost you both in the long term.<\/li>\n<li>If you&#8217;re buying something for someone far away, ordering online can be a great convenience. You can have the gift shipped right to them, avoiding a trip to the post office and the effort of packaging. Even if you&#8217;re flying out to see them for the holidays, in these days of security check-in limitations and checked bag fees, you may be wise to have your gifts shipped right to your destination.<\/li>\n<li>If you plan to order through Amazon, please get there by clicking on <a href=\"http:\/\/AAUGH.com\/to.htm?031608610X\">one of the various links in my messages.<\/a> It doesn&#8217;t cost you any more, and Amazon does kick some money back to me, even if you don&#8217;t order the thing I linked to. This income isn&#8217;t huge, but it helps me justify spending a lot of time on the AAUGH blog and related efforts.<\/li>\n<li>May you find love, hope, and opportunity this season. Those things rarely come wrapped with a bow.<\/li>\n<li>I don&#8217;t have an iPad yet. I&#8217;m just sayin&#8217;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This would&#8217;ve been Schulz&#8217;s 88th birthday. I assume you were all out buying him presents early this morning? Me, I skipped the early morning madness. For one thing, there is little that I need in terms of the sort of thins which go on sale. We have computers that work, &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","filesize_raw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrative","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}