Christmas memories...

I was thinking about Christmas today. It's funny the things that you remember from Christmas. I remember a lot of the presents I got or shared with my twin brother, Bill.

Our present stack represented a large pile of legos. Seeing as we were a family of five kids, things piled up quickly. Looking back on it now, I have to wonder how much my parents must have spent on those presents. It couldn't have been cheap. Well, I'm sure they cut a few corners by giving Bill and I shared gifts. We often got stacks of gifts with both of our names on it seeing as we would be the ones who would both play with them. I hold no grudge over that practice. It was smart economics on my parents part. Two for the price of 1.

As I think back to Christmas from an adult perspective, there are bits and pieces of Christmas that come back to me.

• I remember staying awake one night and falling asleep on the basement steps waiting for Santa to come. We never saw him, but presents showed up anyway. Speaking of which, I noticed we didn't have a chimney so I often wondered how in the hell did he get in our house anyway?
• I remember getting Tobor, the remote controlled robot. This was a big deal back then. He was a black robot with a long wire hanging out of him. The remote control also had a long wire hanging out of it. The range was limited and he could only turn right everytime you clicked the remote, but I enjoyed it anyway.
• I remember some friends of my parents visiting us on Christmas when I was around 4. Their son near my age got a Little People treehouse that I could have swore was supposed to go to us and I was rather upset when they left and it went with them. Obviously, it was the son's gift, but tell a four-year-old kid that.
• I remember asking and getting Stretch Armstrong, the doll whose only purpose was to stretch his arms and legs. We stretched and stretched and it wasn't long before we broke him and noticed that he was filled with jelly.
• I remember asking for and getting a rubber dartgun. My sole reason for getting it was because I wanted to shoot my brother, Bill in the head so that the dart would stick like in the movie, the Toy. I got it, shot my brother, who cried when it hit him in the eye and it was promptly taken away. And who says that we're not affected by the media?
• I remember getting underoos (sp?), the underwear that had your favorite superhero on it. Now these weren't your pansy underroos from later when they had the character designs all over it. These were the ones that actually looked like the costume! We had Superman and Batman. Bill and I ran around like happy little pixies that day.
• I remember finding a Spiderman race track in my parent's closet about a month before Christmas. I'd come into the closet periodically and checked it out. I really can't remember who it was for, but when it showed up on Christmas, it was still a nice surprise.
• I remember not seeing Star Wars, but still wanting Star Wars toys for Christmas. It was a hard sell because there were so many of them. We didn't have a lot of the cool toys like the Tie Fighter or the Land Speeder, but we did end up with the Deathstar! I've talked to so many people who were jealous that I had that thing. It was three stories tall. It had an elevator and a garbage compactor complete with foam and trash monster. Why in the hell did I get rid of that one?
• I remember getting our beloved family dog, Snoopy, on Christmas. He arrived as a puppy. Every year, we would celebrate his birth on Christmas day.

I don't really remember the presents that I wanted and didn't get, unless you count the Atart 2600 the family wanted. Our parents claimed that their friends had one for their family and they hardly ever touched it. I thought back then that there would be no way I wouldn't want to play those games. Although thinking back now, I do remember a reluctance from a lot of friends to play the game system. They were probably bored of it and the last thing they wanted to do when a friend came over was to play it.

As a parent now, I often feel guilty that we're getting too many presents for our child or that we're not getting the right ones or not enough of ones that she wants. Then I realized that it's not that we get everything, it's that we get enough to create lasting memories. We don't have to get Julia everything because there will always be more than she could want. What's important that a child gets at least something, because getting nothing would suck ass.

Computer Broke - In a limbo

My computer is broke thanks to something I did...

My wife bought me a new computer case for Christmas because the old case's power supply is old and the case doesn't have a lot of ventilation. As a result, the temperature inside often ran at a balmy 140 degrees. Also, the computer started to act weird. I spent 30 minutes the other night typing my analysis of the local U2 concert when suddenly the computer reset. I had lost everything because I hadn't saved yet.

So I asked for a new case because I thought the power supply was going wacky. I moved everything over to the new computer, plugged everything in and turned on the computer. The computer chugged, but nothing happened. No beeps. No monitor signal. Nothing.

So the computer is at the computer shop waiting to be fixed.

Thank God the Amazing Race - Family Edition is over... Karma wins again...

I posted about the Weaver family from the Amazing Race - Family Edition last week here. They were the family that lost their Dad to a racetrack accident and then proceeded to go all crazy with their faith. In this season of the Amazing Race, they made sure to ask God for guidance for everything from finding a road sign to finding a red coffee bean in a large pile of other coffee beans.

It's not just the religious thing that bothers me, it's their moral superiority. It'd be one thing if they were nice to everybody in the race and then everybody hated them, but it wasn't that by a long shot. They were the team that didn't speak to any other team, which alienated them from everybody else.

Well, Tuesday night, they crowned a team champions of the Amazing Race and thank heaven it wasn't the Weavers. I feel for their loss, but again, their attitudes were horrible.

You see, the Amazing Race is a game where karma plays a big role in who wins. In all of their seasons (I think they're up to 10), the team that is ultra competitive, but are major pricks to everyone end up not winning the game.

There are always teams that I love to hate during the Amazing Race and they have never one the game. It's a fact. Don't dispute it. Look it up. I'm not wrong.

Last year, they had Rob and Amber from Survivor in the game. From the start, they were the team that messed with everyone. Rob bribed security guards not to give information in airports. Rob bribed cab drivers to not wait for teams. He messed with people's heads at airports. During one leg, one team's car overturned in a desert stretch, seriously injuring that team's cameraman. Every team stopped to either help or ask if they were OK except for Rob and Amber. They just drove on by. So it was of no surprise to me that on the final leg, when he and Amber got a flight ahead of everyone else to the final destination, another team got on the plane even when the jetway was taken away. They ended up losing. Karma.

The previous season to that, there was a former Miss Texas and her asshole boyfriend, who were again ultra competitive and nice to nobody. The boyfriend sneered at locals at every turn and almost got himself arrested when he refused to pay a cab driver in one country. The night before the final flight, the team that ended up winning came in way later to the airport than the other two teams. They found out that the flight that Miss Texas and boyfriend were on was delayed, which made a later flight the early flight. When the boyfriend found this out at the last minute, he attempted to get on the flight, but since he had already checked his bags at the counter on the original flight (on a different airline), they were not allowed to change flights. End result: the team that won gets to the final destination 20 minutes earlier and wins handily. I'm telling you, Karma.

Fast forward to Tuesday night, I just knew the Weavers were in for a date with Karma. They started the first hour way ahead of everyone else until they get to a challenge that involved them driving a golf cart into a stadium by way of the only entrance. They took forever finding the entrance and then fail to find the clue tacked to the back of one of the 55,000 indoor seats until hours later, which allowed the other teams to catch up. Rebecca, the 19-year-old put it very eliquently when she described her frustration.

"This is stupid..." (think of a bored teenager)

"I don't need to find this stupid clue. I've done more important things in my life. This is just stupid..." (think bored with a sneer)

They eventually find the clue, but it's for the last charter flight, which gives the other two teams a little lead. Karma finally caught up and the team that I was rooting for, the Linz family, finally won. You see, they were mostly positive. They never complained about what they were doing, where they were, or how they were doing it. I'm telling you, it's karma. That why I love the Amazing Race (except for this disappointing season of North America travel instead of world-wide, multi-continent travel). It's the team's that remain positive and are at least friendly to other teams or locals that win.

A new direction...

I've lost the heart to do this blog the way I've been doing it. It takes a lot of time and effort to try to think of funny stories to tell. If you've ever stumbled across this board, I apologize if you come back looking for stories and finding nothing. I've been a little lethargic in my updates for several reasons.

1. We moved into a small apartment while we're having our house built. It's nice and all, but very cramped compared to our last house. The closeness also breeds the lethargy.

2. It's winter. I find that I lack the energy to write when it's so dismal outside.

3. My daughter is spending time on the computer. I showed her how to use the mouse for some kids sites and now I have a hard time getting her off the damned thing.

4. I had a sibling yell at me in front of everybody at Thanksgiving because they didn't appreciate being written about for the whole world to see. This person especially didn't appreciate some comments I made to our mother about our childhood, which this person assumed that I was writing on here. I wasn't, but it didn't matter to this person. I have sworn to remove the site, but I think I'm just going to remove any stories people find offensive.

So, I'm just going to concentrate on me, but without the long stories.