Month: December 2009

Best Christmas Gift

Someone asked me “did I get a best/significant/special” gift this year.   I did!

Actually, three come to mind, but two are mistakes.

  1. Dominion, the board game. I put my “Amazon wish list” up and let people buy things off of it. Immediately both a friend and my parents bought me the board game Dominion, and got no message about the fact that t he item had already been purchased. I found out the next day since (providentially) I knew about it. We had to return one. It was very frustrating. (But still a great game!)
  2. Girl Genius volume #??? – I ordered Volume 6 a million years ago (read: May), and it didn’t come. In the meantime I thought I ordered it, and ended up with Volume 5 twice. Argh. Finally the local comic book store said it was in, do I still want it. Yes! I did. But it took me awhile to go get it. A friend sent me Volume #7! But I couldn’t read it without #6 so I finally went to go pick it up and it was gone… he said “You will probably see it in 7 days, because someone else picked it up, hint, hint.” (It was 7 days to Christmas). So finally on Christmas I opened the graphic-novel-shaped package from my folks – and it was accidentally another copy of VOLUME 5. So now I have ordered myself a copy of Volume 6 (edition 2 reprint, since 1 is sold out, hence the problems) via the actual Studio Foglio store.
  3. The special gift: 
    My senior pastor, of all people, saw USB “fairy light” Christmas lights and bought them for me for Christmas. It makes me almost teary because it’s so touching to have a pastor know you that well, to be able to pick out something special (and even geeky) that is exactly up my alley. In retrospect that was by far the most special, unexpectedly neat gift. To be understood and accepted as a geek by the pastor.

    Shiny!
    Shiny!
  4. The most special gift of all. 
    Well, of course the gift freely given and most perfectly suited to my needs – the needs of all mankind – is Jesus Christ, whose birth we celebrate at Christmas (whether that is the actual birth date or not). If you don’t know Him as your personal Savior, you are neglecting to open the best gift you could possibly receive!  Even I have a hard time remembering who this season is really all about. I’m sorry to have to admit that.

How about you? How was your Christmas?

Pre-Christmas!

I ought to have a Christmas post, as I sit at work, basking in the glow of the USB Christmas lights on my desktop tree. But I am busy having a full “very bad” cold, of the sort that makes me uncomfortable to be near anyone in public because I look so awful (red nose, that is. I keep putting hand cream on it, but it still looks frightening – do they make nose-cream?). I even put on my glasses instead of my contact lenses today, so I look strange to myself.  Back to drinking hot fluids and buying Kleenex brand facial tissues and watching the cat gleefully tear up paper for no apparent reason.

Oh yesterday I was excited because I found a 1.3mm lead pencil at Staples. I am easily amused. I also found a Christmas gift I have to hang onto until I can give it next year – we’ll see if I can keep track of it.

Thankfully the cold did not hit until after the Cantata, Teen Christmas party, Church Staff Party,  Women’s Missionary Fellowship party, AWANA party, and was just starting during Carolling but I sang anyway. Tomorrow is the office lunch party, I will be sure to wash my hands.

Utterly Sickening (ACTA Three Strikes, and WAR)

Part I:

I am not 100% an advocate of the EFF, don’t get me wrong. But the ACTA “Three Strikes” idea makes me sick. This proposal would steal our rights to internet content – I don’t mean our rights to illegal internet content, I just mean our rights at all. This proposal would cause an ISP to remove the internet from your house (your ip address) based on anyone merely saying three times that you did something illegal, whether there is any proof that it happened or not. Allowing anyone, let alone ISPs, dispense justice without any defense or trial is severely WRONG.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/11/leaked-acta-internet-provisions-three-strikes-and-

Part II:

http://www.warinternational.org/

So many women are abused, sold, and trafficked. We need to put a stop to this. It is a quiet fact that gets very little media attention though it is prevalent in so many parts of the world. WAR International (Women At Risk) aims to help these women. Please consider giving a donation.

 

I don’t know what we can do to stop either of these things, but we shouldn’t just ignore them.