So I had a good Xmas with Susan and the boys. Mary was kind to me, and told me to take Friday off, giving me a four day weekend. Both Friday and Saturday ended up being mall days, doing last minute stuff. On Satuday, I ended up taking the boys to see the movie "Fun with Dick and Jane". A pretty funny movie, but also tremendously disturbing to anyone who has a job. Dick works for Globodyne, a gigantic multinational corporation, in mold of Enron. He's estatic to find that he's promoted to Senior VP of communications, only to find that he's slated to go on CNN that day to explain why the CEO has sold all of his holdings days before. Caught on the spot, there's little he can do but stammer like a deer caught in headlights on the air. The stock tanks, and everyone loses their job. Dick becomes an industry joke, and the guys at jib jab make an animation making fun of him. Having lost his job, Dick has all of his possessions slowly repossessed, including recently reseeded lawn. He tries to take a job at Walmart, but can't hack it and gets fired the first day. Then he turns to a life of crime and finds to his surprise that he's good at it. He finally give up the criminal life, but then realizes that the CEO is the biggest criminal of them all, having stripped all of the profits from the corporation for his own gain. Needless to say, he decides to get even, in a creative and unexpected way. The boys seemed to like the movie, and I did too, although it was still disturbing for me to watch.
Sunday was Christmas. Susan and I stayed up very late hiding the presents, and the boys woke us up promptly at 7:00. Both were estatic at what they got - playstation portables. Both were exceptionally surprised because they thought that the other one was going to get one, and not themselves. I figured out that with a wi-fi connection and a memory card, the PSP is a very powerful little gizmo, more akin to an apple video IPOD than a gameboy. In addition to playing games, you can browse the web, listen to buffered podcasts, download pictures, download and play video clips, and listen to an MP3 library. It feels like Sony really hasn't done a good job of marketing the psp, because most people are unaware of all of the capacities it has. All this on top of being able to play games anywhere online with millions of other people. It's pretty amazing, actually.
So it was a techie Xmas. I got Susan a 7 megapixel camera, which I think that she really needed. She got me a David Yurman bracelet, so for once our roles were reversed. Generally, I'm the one getting her the jewelry, and she gets me the techie gift. I really like the bracelet alot and will wear it all the time, as I never really owned any jewelry before meeting Susan, other than my watch. The website calls it a "Thoroughbred Braided Cable Cuff."
On a negative note, I just realized that along with my scarf and psp games the car thieves also took all my golf clubs and golf bag (about $700 in value). That was a very depressing thought.
On a second negative note, I bought myself a present for Xmas, a silly foam "Patriotshead", shaped like a silver face. I got the box three days before the 25th, only to open the box to find that instead it's a gigantic "Jetshead" shaped like an airplane. Now I gotta send the stupid thing back to them in a gigantic package. Let that be a lesson to you. Don't buy dumb bulky tacky things in the mail.
