I want an iPod! Unfortunately, of the people who might buy me such an expensive thing, my mother's getting married, my father's building a house, and my brother... lives in San Francisco.

Not that that's any excuse for giving me a non-Buffy-related Vampire Watcher's Handbook. I mean, okay, it looks kind of amusing -- marginal notes and coffee stains and drawings and the like -- but I'm not really interested. Plus, there's the sort of depressing sense that all he really knows about me is that I liked Buffy and thus would appreciate "some vampire stuff".

Eh. Enough bitching. I have new Tan Dun! I have hair things! I have cat treats!

Ah, I remember the year I got the Star Trek: The Original Series alarm clock. Despite not being a Trekker, or even a Trekkie. On the basis that I like SF and weird cult shows, type of thing.

It was...spectacular. A 3-D Enterprise suspended over a plastic faux-planet surface, with a curving black starscape behind it. The buttons were hidden in the craters. When the alarm went off, light beamed down from the ship to the planet, and a generic bloke voice bellowed "Landing Party to Enterprise! Beam us up, Scotty!"

I laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. And laughed. It's the sort of gift I'd really have appreciated if I were a Trekkie. As it was, I just marvelled at it.

Dude, it would rock if you still had that.

It really would. But this was long before I discovered the sheer hilarity of the portmanteau terms for Kirk/Spock and Spock/Kirk.*

(*Kock and Spork, for anyone who missed me cracking up over this when it originally occured to me. And every five minutes ever since.)

I do actually have another present under the tree (one shudders to think what delights it might contain) but I'm not sure if it's supposed to be for my birthday.

Oh, heck, I always end up opening half my birthday presents on Christmas anyway.

Dude! Fay! How psychic! The present I just opened is a Supergirl alarm clock!

Also cool, Emily.

I hope my parents call me soon.

Timelies.

Christmas traditions, I was at my Holiday Bar last night, and today got my standard two gift certificates and a sweater. At least I was able to give a blunt hint a few weeks ago that Best Buy would be a good place for the gift cards, so they aren't from JC Penny this year.

Fay

...Especially the cleavagalicious wine-red blouse with the lace-up batwing sleeves

Damn it Fay, it's too early for me to go back to my bunk. Merry Happy, and Happy Merry!

Wishing I could be blessed in my family life as Fay, but not exactly related to Fay as that would make the occasional naughty thought less than appropriate. I once had a remote like a phaser. Because my stepfather was a big Trekkie and it made noise and stuff.