Posts tagged with "presents"

Christmas Wish-List '08

Updated tastes for 2008. Many items from my 2006 and 2007 lists are crossed out, which is why cat­e­gories like “fur­ni­ture” aren’t small­er now.

I’ve been told that I’m noto­ri­ous­ly hard to shop for. Not only am I extreme­ly picky, I have eso­teric (and expen­sive) tastes, and I usu­al­ly buy — and so, have — the things that I want. This year, I real­ized that good gifts are things peo­ple want, but which they don’t buy for them­selves because they can’t jus­ti­fy the cost. It does­n’t have to be lav­ish, but maybe a lit­tle over­priced, some­thing you would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly buy for your­self.

Photography

  • Canon EOS 5D Mark II (about $2800) — Yep. This is the big one. I had the Mark I on my list back in 2006. This one is full frame, does dust clean­ing, and records video now. Even though I have a cam­corder already, I want this for low-light and low depth-of-field work that con­sumer cam­corders sim­ply can’t pro­vide.

Housewares

  • Tea Forté Morehouse glass ($25) — A dou­ble-walled glass that can be used to keep tea warm (or iced tea cold). Made with a cov­er for the leaf on Tea Forté pyra­mid bags to stick out. No con­den­sa­tion means no coast­er need­ed. Love the design and func­tion­al­i­ty.
  • Tea Forté tea trays (×2) ($7) — For hold­ing indi­vid­ual tea tags. Comes in sets of two with four colour choic­es, but I like bone white.
  • Bodum Assam 1.5L teapot ($50) — My pre­vi­ous, small­er Assam teapot broke (rather eas­i­ly) as I was clean­ing out the fil­ter. I can’t give up my love of Bodum prod­ucts though. I already have tea mak­ers for sin­gle serv­ings, but I don’t have a pot for when I have guests over.
  • Oxo Candela Flare (set of eight) ($130) — I’d put these on the ban­is­ter that sep­a­rates my hall­way from the stairs. It’s pret­ty bland right now.

Furniture

  • B2C Expandable Dining Table ($699) — To replace the cheap, scratched-up din­ing table I have in my kitchen now. Frosted glass? More like frost­ed sex­i­ness.

Gadgets

  • Tenori-On ($1200) — I’ve been wait­ing for this to be avail­able in Canada for more than a year, and it’s final­ly come. I’ve always want­ed to get into music as anoth­er medi­um of cre­ativ­i­ty. I come from a musi­cal back­ground (as opposed to visu­al arts), but the Tenori-On com­bines both, in a sim­ple, easy-to-use inter­face.
  • Aromatherapy Car Diffuser ($16) — For keep­ing the car fresh, with refill­able scent pads.
  • Apple Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard ($80) — I’m hop­ing the next MacWorld Expo will announce an update, not a dis­con­tin­u­a­tion, to the Mac Mini, which I’d get for a home the­atre sys­tem (my TV is soon to be dis­con­nect­ed because I don’t use it enough). If this holds to be true, I’d have to buy a key­board, which I could already use now.
  • MicroFly Tiny R/C Hovering UFO ($20) — Small and easy-to-fly. Something I’d use to play with Dolly.
  • Colibri Throttle Silver Plaid Lighter ($60) — Much to my dis­may, the elec­tro-quartz trig­ger on my old Colibri died. It was one Christie gave me for my birth­day, with my name engraved on it. I’ve been look­ing for a lighter ever since, and this is the first one I’ve ever real­ly con­sid­ered. I’m super-picky about lighter design.
  • Auto LED ($25) — Plugs into the cig­a­rette lighter of the car, and glows blue (which would match the meters of my car). Pull it out, and it becomes a handy-dandy flash­light.

Games

  • Rez ($20) — One of the most under­rat­ed and genre-bust­ing games of the PS2.
  • Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition ($20) — DMC has always been one of those series I hear about, but nev­er got a chance to try. The spe­cial edi­tion adds game­play and fix­es var­i­ous issues.
  • Metal Slug Anthology ($20) — I love the arcady feel of Metal Slug. Something you can turn on, and play with your brain off. The entire series in one game? Yes, please.

Birthday Surprises

My friends know I don’t cel­e­brate my birth­day, because I don’t believe in rit­u­als1. I went through most of Thursday with­out any­one men­tion­ing any­thing, aside from Louise call­ing me from the road, remind­ing me that we were going out for lunch the next day — which the three of us do on our birth­days at work.

So when I got home around 9:30 that night — tired and hun­gry after Tai Chi — I was sur­prised to find a let­ter taped to my front door. This let­ter lead to my birth­day game:

Then, before I went to bed, I real­ized I had two phone mes­sages:

Hearing Dan and his fam­i­ly singing was awe­some, but hear­ing my dad’s voice was some­thing else. He had nev­er called to wish me hap­py birth­day him­self; it was a day only my mom would remem­ber, and she would always pass the phone to him.

It seems like every year I expect noth­ing to hap­pen, but I end up being sur­prised in one way or anoth­er.

  1. And this was before I dis­cov­ered Taoism []

Christmas Observer '07

Another Christmas with Shirley and her fam­i­ly, although this time Bill’s fam­i­ly came down as well. I spent Christmas Eve night and Christmas day at their house, par­tak­ing in the Christmas expe­ri­ence with those who believe in the impor­tance of such a rit­u­al.

Presents under the tree

We were wrap­ping presents (from “Santa”) until mid­night on Christmas Eve. The tree must have been raised the two feet off the ground to fit every­thing under­neath. Negotiations went on through the night as to what time to wake up, but the kids woke us up at 6:30 any­way. Looking back on the pic­tures of 2005, you can tell how much they’ve grown in just two years.

Loads more pic­tures behind the cut.

Continue read­ing “Christmas Observer ‘07”…

Christmas Wish-List '07

A look into my cur­rent tastes, updat­ed for 2007. This list is some­what short­er than last years because the ones I haven’t checked off still apply, and I’ve been guilty of some spend­ing this month; The first two sea­sons of Robson Arms on DVD (which I des­per­ate­ly wait­ed two years for), sea­son six of Trailer Park Boys, my mit­tens, a RAZR 2 (the cell phone I’ve had for five years died), an elec­tric tooth­brush, and var­i­ous gifts.

Photography

  • Bogen / Manfrotto Background Support System 314 ($280) — To quick­ly set up dif­fer­ent coloured back­grounds in my pho­tog­ra­phy room.

    Bought it on sale, which was still $260.

  • Arca-Swiss Monoball Z1 Ballhead ($475) — My cur­rent tri­pod isn’t strong enough to hold most of my lens­es in place, and the lock­ing mech­a­nism is extreme­ly chintzy. Very frus­trat­ing when work­ing with dark shots. A ball­head would give me tremen­dous flex­i­bil­i­ty.
  • Gitzo GT3530LSV Mountaineer 6x Carbon Fiber Tripod Legs ($625) — Carbon fiber tub­ing makes for an extreme­ly light and portable set of tri­pod legs. Packed with all the impor­tant lit­tle fea­tures like an anti-leg rota­tion sys­tem, the Gitzo leg lock­ing sys­tem, and remov­able rub­ber feet.

Furniture

  • Rubix Cube Ottoman ($129) — A black, two-toned square ottoman to go with my leather couch.

Housewares

  • Bodum Assam 2‑Cup Tea Press ($25) — I have one of these at home, but it would be great to have one at work too, so I can make more than one cup of tea at a time.

    Julie bought me a Stokes gourmet Formosa tea infuser for Christmas 2008. A lit­tle cham­ber for loose leaves dan­gles from the top, as opposed to a press, which can cre­ate bit­ter­ness in tea.

  • Braun Impression WK 600 Kettle ($90) — A large ket­tle for my tea. Right now, I have to boil water in two cup inter­vals, which takes a while when guests are over.

    Andrew and Alex bought me a sim­i­lar mod­el for my birth­day, and it’s SWEET.

  • Tingler Head Massager ($15) — On Jason’s rec­om­men­da­tion on my recent post about man­u­al stim­u­la­tion. The reviews say that it helps put you to sleep, and that can nev­er be a bad thing.

    Found a cheep one at Zone for five dol­lars! Doesn’t vibrate or any­thing but still pret­ty good. Next is find­ing some­one to use it on me.

Games

  • Orange Box ($50) — A nos­tal­gic trip back to the days of my favourite game ever: Team Fortress Classic for Half-Life. I hear the game­play has changed a lot, but I don’t care. We’ll prob­a­bly be play­ing this at the next LAN.
  • Odin Sphere ($40) — A side-scrolling fan­ta­sy RPG for the PS2 that I don’t want to miss.

Movies/Shows

  • JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure OVA ($52) — My favourite ani­me of all time: a com­bi­na­tion of fas­ci­nat­ing uni­verse, and very intel­li­gent action. I cur­rent­ly have a copy in Japanese with French sub­ti­tles. While this helps me learn more French, I also don’t under­stand much the phras­es.

    Found a copy of this for down­load.

  • Reno 911 sea­sons 2–5 ($90) — An hilar­i­ous, orig­i­nal look at law enforce­ment. Trailer Park Boys from the oth­er side of the law. I have the first sea­son (thank you Music World for going out of busi­ness and giv­ing me 20% off), but I’d love to get the rest, along with the movie.

    Bought all of these on a lark. Did not regret the deci­sion.

Present for the 27th

Eric, who used to work with me, intro­duced me to Brant Bjork, and ston­er rock in gen­er­al, about two years ago. It’s a genre that explores delight­ful rep­e­ti­tion, where vari­a­tions are sub­tle, but pow­er­ful­ly psy­che­del­ic.

[I]t is cer­tain­ly accept­ed that the effects of mar­i­jua­na and the often low or psy­che­del­ic riffs of ston­er rock com­ple­ment each oth­er.

—Wikipedia, Stoner rock

I liken the idea to Plastikman’s debut album, Sheet One. Though of a dif­fer­ent genre — trance — it fea­tures a per­fo­rat­ed album cov­er, an homage to acid tab art, for which the LSD enhances the details of every sin­gle min­i­mal­is­tic beat (so I’m told).

While I’ve enjoyed Queens of the Stone Age, who are con­sid­ered to be influ­enced by the ston­er rock move­ment (indeed, Josh Homme and Brant Bjork formed pio­neer­ing band Kyuss while in high school), the sound is a lit­tle more com­mer­cial, less dron­ing.

After I heard a few songs by Brant Bjork, I was hooked. I nev­er asso­ci­at­ed it with a mem­o­ry, which is what I do with almost all my songs, but it was good enough that I did­n’t have to.

At Thanksgiving, dur­ing one of my trips through the mall with Andrew and Alex, I resumed my search for Brant Bjork’s solo album by the name of Jalamanta. It was a big­ger city, a big­ger place…maybe I’d have a bet­ter luck. Unfortunately, every music store gave me the same answer; it was an album they did­n’t keep reg­u­lar­ly in stock.

Alex asked me what I was look­ing for, the name of the album and artist, and I did­n’t think any­thing of it.

Thumbnail: Brant Bjork

Yesterday, I found a pack­age in the mail. Fragile — CD, it said. Inside was the Brant Bjork CD I’ve been look­ing for, which they found at an inde­pen­dent music store. Along with the CD was a card made from my Pollen Junkie pho­to (which was tak­en in their gar­den), with a mes­sage writ­ten on the back.

And as great as it is to final­ly hear the songs I’ve been miss­ing, as nice as it is to have an orig­i­nal release, it’s noth­ing com­pared to the thought­ful­ness, the effort they made to find me exact­ly what I was look­ing for.

Update: Julie bought me a lucky bam­boo plant, along with a vase filled with dec­o­ra­tive rocks and a cute hand-drawn card. Very, very nice! Definitely an effort spent acquir­ing all these things, and much appre­ci­at­ed.