Having waited for the Earth to form and cool into an environment that would support life and for the first UPS delivery organism to learn to breathe air and crawl about on land, I instantly waited another hour until my entire family was available for the great over-the-phone present opening.

My first three presents were MORE FOOD! If you've been tormenting yourself by reading my site for any length of time, you may've seen those first two boxes before. I got those for my birthday, too. The third, well, they're special. They're krimpets. Yay.

Yes, I actually wanted this. Yes, I'm a filthy cheater. I've been known to use walkthroughs, too. Sometimes, it just makes the game more fun. Not that I have very many games I need to cheat on yet. Are there even codes for Big Brain Academy? I know there are codes for Animal Crossing, and that's kinda lame and upsetting. Here I've been, carefully growing all manner of different fruit and building up my bank account, paying off my mortgage all honest and proper, and I could've gotten that house in a week....

Not that I would've. That would've made the game boring.

Mom's little joke: the double-wrap. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you'll get a series of wrapped boxes. If you're really lucky, the gift is a piece of paper taped to a brick inside nested boxes. If you're the luckiest person in the world, there's actually a refrigerator box involved....

Also, they're laminated in tape.

Yay! I'd been almost half-expecting this, because I'd asked for it, and there was a discussion involving the return of one for certain reasons. I bought that CF card a few weeks ago so I'd have something I could use with it.

The ever-elusive black silicone utensils. No, really, I haven't been able to find any. I guess I didn't look properly at Sam's Club.

I needed these. Or we. Or Gremlin, since he's the cook in this house -- unless you want burgers, something with 'Helper' in the name, or something that came out of the microwave. He's not exactly nice to the weaker, less heat-resistant nylon type things we already have, and those melty bits never, ever get clean....

This stuff never comes in black. That's okay, though. It comes with one of those baking sheets, which I've been wanting for quite a while. And I guess now there's no excuse to not make cupcake, pie, and bread-loaf-shaped things anymore, because nonstick goodness is here!

The box was taped shut. This, of course, would be why. The gifts-within-a-gift ploy. Sneaky. I should go see if there's been anything hidden in my chips....

So, here's four more....

And then my phone died while I was opening them, and I forgot to take pictures so I could bog down dialups and annoy people everywhere. Bad, bad me.

The last four gifts were: two black silicone trivets/potholders, a black silicone spoonrest, and Brain Age for my DS [which I will probably go on about at length later].

So, this year was a good balance of useful and fun, depending on how you look at things. I tend to look at things as being both, myself. A silicone cupcake tray is useful, and then you can hit someone with it, so it's fun!

I'll probably go into more detail about the Max Media Player/Dock thing and Brain Age later, after I've gotten the one working the way I want it to work, and have had more time to enjoy both.