Robot Claw

…OVER!

I went out today and finished the shopping. With the exception of some stocking stufferish items, I think we’re done for the year. By the end of this week (or early next) most items will be wrapped and the Australian packages will have been mailed.

It’s good to have it done, and I think we’ve gotten some good swag this year 🙂

What we don’t yet have is easily the #1 item this Christmas – a Nintendo Wii. Although I’m not going out of my way to find one (I still expect they will become common in a month or so) I am asking at the stores when I am there. I was about an hour too late at Toys’R’Us this morning (they put 53 out at 10am), which is about the closest I have been to finding them in stock. Maybe I’ll get lucky and find one before Christmas…who knows.

I rarely post youtube links, but here’s one for the upcoming Sims game for the Wii. Notable because it is being made by EA Japan and looks *nothing* like previous Sims games. In fact it looks quite fabulous: Wii Sims

My FF12 save file is just shy of 100 hours…and I barely played it this past week. I have to spend some ‘quality time’ with it after this final week of school is over…

So I bought this for Bernard and sent it to him last week:

It’s a lego advent calendar, based on their city line, with 24 little sets to make up. The idea is you open one a day from December 1 through 24 to spread the fun throughout the Christmas season. We occasionally had such things (not Lego ones) when we were young and they were a lot of fun.

Anyway I got it in time, packed it up, and sent it priority to make sure it arrived before December 1.

And then he opened every single day immediately. He didn’t even wait until December.

In other words, he flushed the entire idea (and spirit of the gift) out the window 🙂

Our fridge is laden with food, almost to bursting. This is rare for us (who keep a fairly spartan pantry), and the celebration is Thanksgiving, which is this coming Thursday.

KLS’s parents will be staying with us, and the four of us will overeat for a few days in the spirit of the celebration. Highlights include the ubiquitous turkey and a spiral sliced ham.

The Australians reading this probably wonder about Thanksgiving, and what it all means. These days it means eating a big turkey dinner on the last thursday of November, but as with all modern celebrations the origin can be traced way back.

Many Americans incorrectly associate Thanksgiving with an old puritan celebration, or even with an American Indian feast dating even earlier. But the truth is that Thanksgiving can be traced all the way back to the time of Christ.

Some 1991 years ago, on the last Thursday of November, on a grassy hill near the town of Bethsaida, Jesus fed five thousand people with only a handful of loaves and fishes. This was the first Thanksgiving.

The name Thanksgiving is also taken directly from Jesus own words (Mark 6:30-34):
“As I am giving you this fish and this loaf, I bid you say thanks to me”

Since this is from memory, I may be a little off on the details…