And, actually, it wasn't that bad.
I managed to get gifts for all the people who mattered, and what's more, the majority of them were bargains. Like the funky colour-changing lamp that looks like a plain white rectangle when it's off, but turns into a miniature disco-floor when you turn it on! That one was a gift for my sister and her man, and it was about 30% of the original price!
I also had to fetch some glassware from Target that my Ma and stepdad had suggested to me.
I had to go in three days before eXcemas, while Target were open until midnight. An unfortunate clash of schedules meant that I spent most of the week before eXcemas doing close shifts - and I was too sleepy and lazy to go during the day.
I made it to the store with about 10 minutes to spare, and went straight to the homewares section, frantically looking for the glasses they wanted. I found... something... that sorta looked like the one they named, and I took it to the counter. Luckily, it was really dead in the store that close to closing time, so I was pretty much in and out within minutes.
I got the box home, and opened it up to show it to my housemates - and OH NO! One of the glasses was busted!!!
So... the next day, I had to quickly pop back in to get them exchanged. This was reasonably early in the day, and I didn't have to wait too long that time either. We just grabbed another box and swapped over a glass, and I was ready to go!
The worst part of that procedure was, turned out I'd grabbed the wrong set of glasses. The one they wanted had a similar name, but was totally different! Oh well, they liked them anyway!
So... eXcemas itself rolled around.
At the stroke of midnight, my sister decided to give out her gifts to us immediately, because she couldn't be bothered with carting them all over to Ma's house the next day. I'd left all her gifts over at Ma's, so she unfortunately had to wait. Ha ha!
The next day, I woke up at about 9.30, and everyone else was awake. I went over to Ma's place, and everyone else was waiting for us to show up so we could get to the gift-unwrapping already!. Everyone was there, but... where was my sister?
She had just hopped into the shower! ARGH! We had to wait about 30 minutes before she was ready! It brought to mind the time Ma made us wait until we'd had breakfast before we could eat our eXcemas lollies - never mind the fact that we'd seldom had breakfast the rest of the damn year...!
Eventually, my sister came over, and PRESENTS!!! were shared out. I got to be Santa's helper again this year, probably because I'm one of the last with functional eyesight. Ha ha!I forgot my elf's hat this year, so I had to make do with Ma's angel halo instead... and I really do NOT want to show off the photos.
Oh, all right then. There's one to the right. Click to make it bigger and more humiliating.
Everyone liked their presents.
We even managed to include some gifts sent to us from Dad this year, and they were well appreciated. I liked the box of wooden puzzles they sent to me, though one of them had me struggling for about ten minutes - and that was trying to pull the damn thing apart!
Oh, and I got revenge on my Ma for wrapping my Abbey Road keyring in eleven layers of paper! I bought her another keyring, and wrapped that up in as much wrapping paper I could find lying around. Every layer was properly wrapped - no newspaper filler! - and I even put labels and ribbon on some of the layers! It took about an hour to do it all up.
I gave the gag gift to her first (before the proper present, which was jewellery) and... well, let's just say by the end of it, everyone was anxious to see what the end result was!
I lost count of how many layers I'd used, and it turned out there were about 40.
She preferred the jewellery, though she spotted straight away that one of the earrings was missing a stone - this from a woman who has to wear glasses to read! She really knows her bling!
As for my haul, I mostly got what I'd asked for:
- a memory card for the GameCube, because the 251 card I have is almost full to capacity, thanks to my sister's "Sims" space-hogging save file.
- some sleeves for my DS games, which is strange since I keep my games in the original hard cases.
- the usual puzzle books and games - real original, guys! Honestly, why is it that all of my friends and family think to get me these things every year?
- a little music box thing that plays Hey Jude. :)
- some CDs - a couple of Beatles discs, and the second part of the U2 Best Of that I needed.
- two video game discs - Intellivision: Greatest Hits, and Atari: Anniversary Edition. Haven't tried them yet. Kinda don't want to tell Ma I already have a bazillion vintage games on MAME...
- a big canvas print of the Beatles, which Ma found in a discount shop :P
- some T-shirts that had prints of MarioKart, Sonic the Hedgehog, the Beatles and Alfred E. Neuman on them. The surprising part was that they were handmade, that is, Ma found the pictures on the Internet, and used some DIY T-Shirt transferring kit to make them! They are AWESOME and I will wear them until they fall to bits!
- socks. No underwear, though.
We had a barbecue for lunch, and people had a good time checking out their gifts and playing games. The weather held up very well, as it was warm, but not really hot this year.
Unfortunately, the fun was short-lived, because... I had to go to work.
Dammit, even though I'd tried to wangle my way out of working on eXcemas this year, I still got snookered in to doing an eight hour shift.
I managed to eat a bit of lunch, and then I had to run in and relieve the people who had opened the shop. Sigh - well, I guess I wasn't the only one put out this year.
And it was pretty bad when I got there - we'd run out of BBQ gas bottles, we'd run out of ice bags, and it had been really busy for most of the morning, so hardly any of the jobs had been done. GROAN
...Yet, the rest of the day was pretty quiet. We had a reasonably constant supply of customers, but nowhere near as many as we'd had over bEaster shudder. I guess people were a lot better organised that I gave them credit!
Ma told me she was going to bring me some dinner, but I asked her if she could bring an extra meal, as the other person I was closing with couldn't get to their family for eXcemas this year. She brought two plates, but it turned out that they had made plans for after work, and didn't need the dinner after all!
So, I thought, "What the hell am I gonna do with this food?"
But then, one of our regular customers, a taxi driver, came in complaining that they had been so busy ferrying drunk people about that they had missed their eXcemas dinner, and I said, "Well, it just so happens..."
So that was my good deed for the day. :) Aside from actually showing up to work, that was.
Anyway, I finished work at 10pm, and returned to Ma's place - only to discover that it was all over bar the shouting. Everyone was ready to tuck up into bed! BUGGER!!!
So, I just came home, and played on the Wii until 4am.
And then... I had to go to work again...
(but not before I got to see my Nanna. She came over to Ma's place for the day, and we all got to have another catch-up on things... well, I did as much catching up as you can do in about 50 minutes, because... um, I'd been on the Wii until 4am the night before.)
So... that was Christmas! I mean, eXcemas.
And though it wasn't perfect, it wasn't at all bad. I'd give it four stars ˜˜˜˜.
I hope yours was good as well! Merry Christmas!
PS. Sorry for the long post - considered breaking it up, but can't be bothered. Will post again after NYE!
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