69 Shopping Days Left

We have already done a lot of our Christmas shopping for the kids. It is nice to get it out of the way but sometimes the holidays seem uneventful if you don't have to jam into the malls like cattle with the rest of the shoppers.

My wife is hard to shop for because she mostly likes to receive clothes. When I buy the clothes myself I am usually met with a response like, "I like it... or I can see what you were going for here... but NOT FOR ME." I can also never forget how my wife ripped into her mother one Christmas morning, "DARK chocolate? WHO buys DARK chocolate? Why did you buy DARK chocolate?" Then her mother had to apologize and feel bad about candy on Christmas morning. It makes me laugh.

I know that it is not fun to buy presents for me either. I ask for weird stuff like instructional DVD's on playing guitar in DADDGD or a block of ISBN numbers for books I haven't written. One year I asked for stock in "The Gap" when it was $11 per share. I didn't get it but it would have been a good investment. There is ONE THING I have been asking my wife for over the past couple of years. It probably isn't what you're thinking. I have asked her for the past two years to write and perform stand-up comedy for me. Just because I know she has the potential.

She never has, but when we were driving through a slum earlier in the summer looking for a house to buy, my wife saw a guy on the sidewalk and said, "That guy looks like he's worried about being kidnapped. He's thinking, 'Is someone going to pull up in their car and kidnap me? Wait a minute... I'm 40 years old.'" She said maybe she would put that in the comedy act I wanted her to write. So maybe someday.

My sister met me halfway one year. I went on the internet and found the exact page she needed to buy me a Direct Injection box for my guitar and sent it to her, then she bought it for me. It was nice.

Or, on the other extreme, sometimes I cause trouble by being too simple. One year all I asked for was a flashlight. I got yelled at a lot for that. Because apparently it is no fun for people to buy and give flashlights. But I got a flashlight that year and I was happy. Another year I couldn't think of anything I wanted so I just asked for DVD's. I got about 10 DVD's that year. It was kind of strange but I think gift-givers like it when you ask for gifts like that as long as you don't specify a DVD like Robotech or The Razor's Edge.

I do think that I am a good person to ask for a gift that is harder to find. I have an idea of how to use the internet and I'm not too lazy to run around town to find something that is going out of stock.

Good luck on your shopping.