journal for 2002-12-13

christmas approaches

Christmas time is here, by golly, but something like half of the presents we ordered haven’t even shipped yet. I’ve been bitching about Amazon for a long time now, but lately everyone I know has been joining in. It’s been ridiculous. We’ve received items before shipping notifications, and many 1-3 day items have been taking at least seven days to ship. It blows. If I don’t have everything by Christmas, it’s going to be ugly.

Of course, I still think that’s highly unlikely.

Unfortunately, what isn’t so unlikely is that I might not have my Game Boy back by Christmas. Portablemonopoly.NET’s FAQ says that turnaround time is week from their receipt of the GBA. Ha!

Despite a lot of previous research, I have only now begun to find information on other customers getting screwed. Maybe I have, in fact, thrown away a hundred dollars. Boy, that makes me mad!

christmas party

Gloria’s Christmas party was last night. It was pretty darn good. We went over to the Brew Works at about 1800, and there were drinks, nachoes, dinner, and a lot of conversation. Everyone at Gloria’s office seems friendly, and I talked with a couple of them for a while.

I had the Belgian Dubbel, which is good and which I’d had before. I also tried the trippel, which had something like 9.5% ABV and wasn’t as tasty as the dubbel. I would’ve tried the Christmas batch, too, but I was absolutely stuffed. We had chocolate stout ice cream (made by Barbara at the Hedgehog), which I only ate through force of will—and because it was tasty.

Today we’re going to run errands and do some final Christmas shopping, so I’m going to head off.

Written on December 13, 2002