Those of you who have been reading the AAUGH Blog for a while can probably sit back and scan or skip this one. For those of you who are new… well, I generally do this once a year.<\/p>\n
The holidays impend. Hannukah is just a couple weeks away, Christmas about a month, and the official stuff-buying season is just about to start. And that’s all well and good – I like stuff, I like getting stuff and I like giving stuff, particularly when I can find the right<\/em> stuff for a given recipient. But don’t let stuff take over the holidays. Gifts, decorations, whatever; they do not trump happiness, and do not replace love. In all this give and take, the important thing is to take time and give attention.<\/p>\n And for gifts, don’t forget that a charitable contribution is a perfectly good gift. Give to a cause your recipient cares about. Support the public television station they watch. Give to the food pantry in their area, and it will have a positive fallout in their neighborhood.<\/p>\n If you are going to buy stuff, ordering through Amazon is a very handy thing. While its selection and cost make it a reasonable option for people in your household, it’s a great deal if you’re buying things for people who live far away. We use it for buying gifts for relatives who live in other states… and even for buying gifts for our kids, because we end up celebrating Christmas at the inlaws thousands of miles away. By having the gifts sent right there, we don’t have to pack them and get them on the plane out, just on the plane back. Amazon has free shipping options, both one where you need a couple weeks lead time and the Prime program, where you pay a chunk of money each year and get most things shipped to you in two days, or for another few bucks, overnight. (We’re in that program, and it works out quite well… we don’t need to save up orders until you have the $25 needed to qualify for free shipping.)<\/p>\n And if you’re going to order from Amazon, please stop by http:\/\/AAUGH.com and click on any of the product links there to get into Amazon. It won’t cost you an extra cent, but Amazon will pay me a small cut for just about anything you order… these don’t add up to huge dollars, but they really do help justify the time and money I spend on this odd little specialty site. So even if you want something like this cool little affordable inside remote control helicopter<\/a> (we certainly have had fun with ours!) you can click through on a link for a Peanuts book<\/a> and then shop away.<\/p>\n Now for those of you who are enturkeying yourself tomorrow (I certainly have a nice big drumstick waiting for me), enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Those of you who have been reading the AAUGH Blog for a while can probably sit back and scan or skip this one. For those of you who are new… well, I generally do this once a year. The holidays impend. Hannukah is just a couple weeks away, Christmas about … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2236","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaugh.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}