Bah Humbug

Wordle 534 5/6

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Yesterday we had the usual Sunday brunch of eggs and home fries. Then the kid had to practice her guitar, and she actually got into and enjoyed some song lyrics found online. Later in the morning we walked to Politics and Prose, for Christmas shopping and to take advantage of a sale. I think T. and I annoyed each other with her trying to shop for unnecessary presents just to be fair or something. My parents said they didn't want anything, and when pressed, my dad suggested a book. We got him it, and also a book for my mother to be fair, and a Christmas ornament for both of them. but T. got roughly 5 presents for each of her parents so she was worried about my parents feeling left out.

After that, home for laundry. 

At 3 the kid had a cub scouts meeting. It went well enough. She didn't speak up, but participated in the activities, mainly a sign language lesson. We walked there, and walked home with her friend from across the street. (So I got my steps in yesterday. Woo hoo.)

After that, we drove across town for a friend's Christmas party. It was crowded, partly because the party usually spills onto the balcony but it was too cold for that to be comfortable. There were lots of desserts. The kid had fun as soon as we found someone her age she could play with. I spent a lot of my time supervising them and catching up with an old friend-of-a-friend I probably hadn't seen with covid.

Bah Humbug

The title is not in reference to the party, but to the admittedly minor annoyance while shopping. Also, something happened this day that I didn't mention at the time, but seems like a good example of why I don't enjoy this season.

In the evening, T. asked me offhandedly what I wanted for Christmas. I don't remember exactly when, but I had little free time between her question and the next part. This will be important later. I said something like, "Maybe an e-book reader, but I don't know, I want to make sure I can still read the books on my old e-book reader on the new one... I don't like how proprietary everything in the Amazon environment is... and I might want to read comic books on it too... give me a little time to do some research and I'll get back to you."

Later, shortly before the kid's bedtime, we were all sitting on the couch and relaxing, playing our various games or watching our various shows. She asked me what I thought a certain model of reader or two. What do I think? I don't know, I haven't done that research yet! I probably literally hadn't had the chance to do so even if I had wanted to! She didn't seem to want to accept that answer, though, I assume because it was on sale, so I told her I'd do that research that night, while she was putting the kid to bed.

That research involved looking for ways to read my existing books on my computer or other devices. One attempt resulted in my Web browser getting stuck opening tabs infinitely more than once. I had to restart the whole computer to fix that. I dug out my last reader and charged it enough to check it out, and confirmed my vague memories that DRM was a problem for them - I had some books on them with the DRM cracked, which left the text readable but screwed up images and footnotes. I'm not sure if there's any way to fix that at all or access pre-cracked versions. Also, if comic books are a priority, I found that the best option probably isn't an e-reader at all, it's an iPad or something like that, and I don't want one of those, but that shows that a computer should be an option except for the eyestrain... back to books, I figured out how to get an e-book from the library on my computer faster than I resolved my issues with e-books, so I said an e-book reader wasn't worth the effort and took it off my Christmas list. 

That sort of thing seems to be the rule rather than the exception. It's not that she's bad at gift-giving; just the opposite. She's organized and hard-working about it and knows everyone around her well. She puts more time and thought into gift-giving than I want to put into gift-receiving. At best this leaves me feeling inadequate when I give half-assed gifts. Worse, sometimes it results in her getting me something like what I need, but useless because of some basic flaw I didn't warn her about, and then we both feel bad about that.

Now multiply that kind of angst for every gift she thinks about getting me, and every gift I get for someone else, yeah, of course I empathize with Scrooge.