I wish I had unlimited prizes so that everyone could be a winner. I don’t. Is it too corny to say I think you’re all winners?
(It is? Well, too late. I just said it.)
Here’s how the first-anniversary giveaway turned out:
celebration
Holiday countdown: You’re probably already running late.
The retail industry treats Christmas as one big countdown. This year has been the worst yet: Black Friday seems to have lasted the entire month of November.
But right after Thanksgiving the real fun began: “Only 26 more shopping days until Christmas.”
I think it’s because as a nation, we love to be nagged. The phone company reminds us to call home on Mother’s Day. Florists fuss at you to buy flowers for Secretary’s Day. Jewelers warn men to buy bigger and better diamonds for each year’s anniversary.
Nagging works, too: The phone system is overwhelmed on the second Sunday in May. Administrative assistants smile as they load up the vases (even if they’re inwardly wishing they’d gotten gift cards, or raises). And wives all over America decide to hang in there for another year because the big lug actually remembered.
But this is not a cynical post about the commercialization of sentiment. Not this time, anyway. It’s about why “(however many) more days until Christmas” is too vague to be of any use.
That’s because it’s not a warning — it’s a snooze alarm.
Christmas stress: Wrap up guilt and simplify.
One harried late-October evening, I rushed through a store’s costume section in a frenzy of last-minute preparations. To my horror, the reds and greens of Christmas cards and wrapping paper beckoned from a nearby aisle.
“Oh, spare me,” I said aloud. “I haven’t finished feeling guilty about Halloween yet.”
The wedding gift as price of admission.
I want to get married. That is, I want to get married after I’ve finagled an introduction to J. Money of the Budgets Are Sexy personal finance blog. Once he and I are best buds I want to get married a whole bunch of times, because J. Money’s wedding gift of choice is a hundred-dollar bill.
I have given birth to nerd-dom.
Today is my daughter’s second wedding anniversary, and the blog post she wrote confirms what I already knew: She’s as big a geek as her mom, and she found herself a geek to marry, too.
Fabulous freebies for Friday. (Also, always achieve alliteration.)
To celebrate this site’s first week of existence, I’m staging a giveaway of logo items donated by the friendly folks at FatWallet.com. First prize consists of an “I am the revolution” T-shirt plus a FatWallet.com baseball cap, pen, water bottle (stainless steel, BPA-free, made by Klean Kanteen) and, believe it or not, FatWallet chocolates and … Read more
Happy graduation! Here’s a toilet brush.
Know a college senior who’s moving into his own place post-diploma? Want to give a gift even though you’re on a budget? Forget the $20 bill or the iTunes card. Instead, buy some dishtowels, a laundry basket or a johnny mop.
Your preparing-to-launch student may have saved up the first and last month’s security on an apartment. But does he have a can opener?