Insane Random Ramblings

Generally I only have about 3 people to buy gifts for during the holiday season. This year I have my niece and her daughter to add to the list. I also have to add one of my good friends from college to the list. Now she’ll be easy. We’re going on vacation next year and she wants a rfid blocking wallet to take with us. Basically no one can steal the frequency from your credit cards or passport as long as they’re in this wallet. Luckily I know just where to find this so I’ve already got her scratched off of the list.

My niece on the other hand wants a bunch of electronics. She wants a phone, a I-pod or mp3 player, cash and some other stuff. That doesn’t even include the clothes and toys that I’ll buy for her daughter. I also want to get the baby a savings bond or two. I already know that the rest of the family won’t think of them because they don’t think too heavily about the future.

All I know is this is gonna be one expensive Christmas.

I usually don’t have to buy a lot of gifts for Christmas. I send my mom and my brother some cash and call it a day. Sometimes I buy a few small token gifts for friends and coworkers but it’s nothing major. Well my niece had a baby this year and I have to find something for her.

Since I’ll put out way more money than I usually do, I’ve already started looking around. I don’t want to get clothes because that’s what everybody buys. I want to get her something cool and fun so I started looking at buy.com for gift ideas. I was looking at the weekly deals page to get a few gift ideas and I saw more stuff for me than for anyone else. I did see one of those flip camcorders for less than $100 bucks. I thought about getting that for my niece to record the baby’s first Christmas.

As for the baby herself, I’m still looking for her gift.

Unfortunately that’s not great as in wonderful. It’s great as in my niece has a baby which makes me a great Aunt. The only thing I thought when I heard that she had a baby was “please don’t let her name have any Q’s, Z’s or apostrophes”. Of course the baby has 2 out of 3. Her name is Zah’Miah which is a pretty name in spite of the unusualness <- (is that even a word?!?!?!?) of the name.

I can’t wait to go home and actually get to hold her.

My mom is sick but I’m not sure just how sick she is. I know that she’s lost a lot of weight recently but my mom is really small anyway. She weighs anywhere from 90-100 pounds normally. She got the shingles 2 years ago and went down to 80 pounds and she never gained the weight back. Now she’s lost even more weight and it’s getting kind of scary. I know the doctors want her to take the best weight gain supplement that they have to get her back into the normal range. Her stomach is small and she only eats small amounts of food so we can’t fatten her up with cakes, cookies and other junk foods.

I’ll probably go this weekend and see what’s going on and just make sure everything is ok.

But I am so not ready to really sign up yet. I have had to make a account to poke around the site but I’m not ready to add friends or create a full profile just yet. I did notice that quite a few of my family members are on there. My cousin who has one of those great healthcare it jobs is on there. He gets to update his page from work since he’s in IT. I mean who better to get around a firewall than the IT guy?

Anyway, I’ll probably spend a little time on the site this weekend seeing who’s who and what’s what. Who knows, maybe I’ll actually start posting myself.

I thought it was hilarious when my Mom texted me a message. I didn’t even know she knew how to text. She laughed and said that she just followed the directions on her phone and it was easy. My aunt and uncle sent her a new flip phone that’s much more techno savvy than the one she had been using. I asked her if she would be using any more of the features available to her and she said no.

She reminds me of those parents in the Verizon commercial. I just think it’s funny that she’s texting. Who know what she’ll come up with next.

I wasn’t trying to take her food but she just kept giving me stuff. First she gave me 2 purses, one of which I really like. I could totally see me carrying this purse on a daily basis. The other purse is more of a tote for me to lug all of my stuff around in. She also gave me a brand new set of pots which I needed desperately since mine are ready for the garbage pile.

Then there was the food. She gave me rice, spaghetti, mac and cheese (yummy), 2 bottles of salad dressing and 3 or 4 bottles of marinade for meat. She also gave me some orange juice (which I drank before I left her house) and some Snapple teas (which I drank on the ride home). I’m really rooting for her to win a LCD HDTV from one of the casinos that she goes to. She already has one so I could get her to give me the extra one. Hey if she wins one, I’ll take the old one. I’m really not picky.

I love going home to visit. I always end up coming back with a ton of extra stuff.

I haven’t decided yet. My regular week of vacation is the week of my birthday and I’m planning on going home for a couple of days. I want to visit with my family that I don’t get to see that often. My moms birthday is a week and a half before my vacation so I may go home that weekend as well.

I’ll probably drive for the longer vacation since I’ll have a chance to relax after the trip. I’m not too sure about taking my phone though. I don’t think there are a lot of cell towers  for my provider on my route. I don’t want to get out in the middle of nowhere and not have a signal. I’ve had a accident in the past and I’m paranoid about that. I may borrow one of my friends’ phones.

I guess I had better make my decision pretty soon. I want to still be able to get a reasonable ticket for my short weekend. That’s if I have enough money to do both. I guess I should balance the old checkbook before I start making too many plans.

I was really glad to talk to my car cousin the other night. She’s doing really well and I’m extremely happy for her. This is her final year of school so she’s busy with the prom and her senior trip among other things. She also told me that she wants to come and visit me before she leaves for college. I need to start looking for travel deals once she gives me the exact dates that she wants to come visit. I told her that I don’t want her thingo plan anything for at least a week before she leaves for college. I want to make sure she has enough time to get all of her last minute things for school.

I can’t wait until she visits though. It’s gonna be a blast.

Hmm, this should be interesting. One of my cousins who is leaving for college wants me to mentor her. She will be the second person in the family to go to college but her major is pre-med so it’s much more stressful and expensive than my major.

I just hope she hasn’t already gotten a bunch of bogus advice.