Ok… where was I…
Ah yes. A good book. So I started on Illusions, by Richard Bach, and finished 90% of it that night, with just a few more pages to read the next morning. Fabulous book. It kind of reminded me of what I used to believe… the basic idea is that it’s a novel about a philosophy, almost. If you’ve studied philosophy, you’re probably familiar with Plato’s philosophy of the cave. The book is based on that idea, with a twist – rather than the cave being the creation of some outside force, we create our own “cave”. The book follows a pair of characters, one is the next Messiah, who has discovered that the idea of mortal reality is only what you want it to be. The other is a ‘potential Messiah’, a guy who could learn the truth, and have the power to tell others that God merely wants us to be happy, in whatever way we can be.
At any rate, its a good book. I’m going to reread it fairly soon, I think. After finishing that book the morning after starting it, I had the most fantabulous day. It was just like everything was going great, and the day was beautiful. I finished my Christmas shopping, drove to Lakeside to drop some stuff off, and on the way there every song on the radio was just awesome. I dunno, it sounds dumb, but it made me happy.
Speaking of Christmas shopping that day… I bought Lance a couple Gameboy Advance games for his Nintendo DS (since the DS’ launch titles aren’t much to write home about). I picked up Advance Wars, used and Fire Emblem, new. Well… at least I thought I did. Turns out, christmas morning when Lance opened up Fire Emblem, it was just the box – no game. Apparently the guy behind the counter at Gamestop sold me the display box. And since Bri and Kyle were feeling slightly cleaning-nazi-esque, there was no chance in finding the reciept which was still sitting in the original bag. Thankfully, when I did go into Gamestop the day after Christmas, the guy behind the counter was pretty forgiving. He checked the shelf and saw that the display box was missing, checked the computer and saw that they had sold one copy on Thursday, then checked behind the counter and saw that they had one more copy than they should. Not bad.
Speaking of Christmas presents, though. I couldn’t decide what to get Melanie, so I got her a $40 to Kohl’s. Now, that seemed a little too bland, so to liven things up, I took another plastic card out of my wallet (a PetCo card) and cut it up into tiny slithers, then wadded it up with some tape, and put it at the bottom of a gift bag with some confetti stuff. Then I taped the actual gift card to the bottom of the bag, on the underside. The result was pretty amusing. Bri got me a cool Altoids tin, which was very thoughtful of her, and appreciated… except that the three flavors of altoids it came with were Ginger (gag), Cinnamon (choke), and Spearmint (insta-migraine). :o/ I was just glad she got me something, really. I ended up giving Eireann the tin, maybe she’ll like it.
And what did I get for Christmas, you ask? Oh… Not much. Just a most excellent Ruby Red Acoustic/Electric Ovation Celebrity, with preamp and cool guy builtin digital tuner. Complete with gig bag, stand, music books (DMB and Lynyrd Skynyrd), and spiffy guitar strap that they chose because it ‘matched my tatoo’. Heh. Yeah. It was awesome. I didn’t really get much besides this stuff (which is perfectly ok with me), and so as I was opening presents, I kept opening guitar stuff, but no guitar. Til finally all the presents were unwrapped, and I was beginning to think that perhaps my dad had the guitar at his house, and my Mills family had just gotten me all the accessories. Then Bri started pushing me to unwrap the coffee table. See, the night before they had gotten a bit on the loopy side with Christmas present wrapping… and decided to wrap the coffee table. Apparently this had some significance with a certain holiday commercial – I didn’t get it, as I don’t watch TV. Well, I was feeling lazy, so I didn’t want to go unwrap the coffee table and besides there was no where to put it but where it already was, but Bri kept insisting. At that point I realized where my guitar was. They had taped the box it came in to the underside of the coffee table. So upon unwrapping it, I found my new guitar. Pretty funny. The rest of the day was rather uneventful… we went to my step-grandma’s house, and hung out there for a while. I had Chevy with me, whom everyone adored and she adored in return… but she wasn’t terribly impressed with my aunt’s poodle-type dogs.
From there, Chevy and I went to visit Tom and family, but Tom ended up leaving so I got to spend time with Angela, whom I hadn’t seen in a forever. So that was good.
Alright, its totally 2:30 in the morning, and I think my psuedo-insomnia is going away now, so I’ll finish this off for tonight, and add more tomorrow