Knowledge and Flowers · 4:04pm Dec 25th, 2015
I know Christmas has already passed for some people to the west of the International Date Line, but I'd still like to wish everyone a merry one, past or present. Read on some fun tidbits of mine thus far.
This year, I confirmed that it is in fact better to give than receive, at least when you add a little showmanship to the giving. That's not to say that I didn't get some very nice presents.
This mug fills me with determination. And by "determination," I mean "coffee."
But getting to see the reaction to my carefully planned present was fantastic.
There needs to be a bit of background here. My mother hates surprises, and thus loves peeking at her Christmas presents. She has since she was a little girl, to the point where my grandmother had to encrypt the gift labels, writing numbers on them and keeping the decryption key better hidden than my mother could find them.
Mom still peeks now, and this was the first year I was giving gifts in earnest. I wanted this one to be special. So, to my delight, I found that I could nest her gift inside the one to my father. The look on her face when I managed to get one over on her...
Well, this is already looking to be a Christmas to remember. 
Also, El Niño is leading to some insane weather. Not only has my father been able to keep some flowers alive and blooming for eight months...
They may not be pretty, but they're alive.
... but there's at least one tree in the neighborhood that thinks it's spring.
Just to be clear, these pictures were taken today, and this is not normal weather for New Jersey in December. We're going to be barbecuing dinner.
geez @_@
Today was so springlike here, so mild and sunny and snowless, that I felt tempted to go for a jog. It was quite bizarre
Merry Christmas to you. I got pony cards and Cthulhu from my friends, so I'm very satisfied
MERRY CHRISTMAS
Nobody peeks in my house, but we've got three Christmas trees in three rooms, meaning three sets of presents spread throughout the house. And Mom is making us wait to open the ones in her room so that 'Christmas will last just a bit longer' this year
Yeah, it's like 50-60 degrees over here in Ohio, in the dead of Winter. Not normal either.
Still, got some MtG cards in addition to a watch and some clothes, so I can't complain too much.
I live on the opposite end of the country and am lucky to not have Chris Christie as my governor and I have the opposite problem. I woke up at 1 AM and started earnestly trying to go back to sleep at 4:40 AM and not succeeding until probably around 620, because of how "cold" it was last night. Of course, southern Californians have no true concept of cold.
Good old El Nino.
And its good buddy, global warming.
That tree is going to be terribly disappointed it isn't March.
Merry Christmas!
I hid gift cards in an actual magic deck, sleeved and boxed. It totally threw them off.
Speaking of, we've been getting some seriously weird weather here in California. Water. Falling from the sky. Since when was that a thing? I mean, I've seen that happen in MLP, but I'd just written that off as bird-horse magic.
On the subject of Undertale (epic mug, by the way), I got Undertale for my little brother for Christmas. He doesn't seem to spend much time in the nerdosphere like me, so he had no idea what it was. This should be interesting.
Merry Christmas! Glad yours has gone nicely. And sorry you live in New Jersey, where everyone makes jokes about your home state.
I finally managed to pull off the nested-box present trick I've been wanting to do. However, my neice's reaction was not what I expected. Each time she opened a box, she said, happily, "It's another present!" even though the boxes were the only thing in each box until you got to the gift (which was a Minecraft subscription card).
The weather here in Michigan has been excellent, as well. Not a snowflake to be seen since that flurry near Thanksgiving. Still cold, though.
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Merry Christmas, guys.
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Can you see your breath? Is water crystallizing outside? Or is it just no longer sandal weather?
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Imagine if they hadn't found them until you were playing a game.
"Wait, hold on, the Barnes & Noble card should be in my sideboard."
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You get used to the jokes. Also, yes, Lauren Faust did not actually invent rain. That, or Ditzy Doo planeswalked to Earth to complain about how I'm not doing much with her right now.
It should be very interesting to see how your brother handles Undertale.
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Silly Bardic. At a certain age, a box is a present.
Merry Christmas, FOME!
It's really unseasonably (and unreasonably) warm here in Finland, too, which means everything is pitch dark something like eighteen hours a day, and a gray twilight the rest of the time. But the candles, Christmas lights, and tons of food compensate for it somewhat!
3642341 I wore sandals on my hike to the beach yesterday, so some things never change. But it was 46° last night and is supposed to get down into the 30s tonight.
It's warm and muggy here and everyone has a respiratory infection, so our Christmas was kind of low-key, quick-and-done. But we were all together, and that's what matters.
Wow. Merry Christmas.
Did spring come early, or did fall just not actually stop?
Well it did snow right around Thanksgiving here...
Anyway, good job on the surprise!
Ahhh another New Jerseyite in these waters! With this Sunday being 70 degrees and all, we are two days away from getting the closest thing to the legendary Christmas in July!
That's a great Christmas hack. :D
And it strikes me that, off the top of my head, there's nothing specifically ruling out "determination" being literally coffee. I don't recall seeing any in the game.
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Oof. Hope everyone gets well soon.
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To paraphrase Monty Python, it seems that autumn gave winter a miss and went straight to spring.
And Mom is actually keeping the gift card packaging to remember this Christmas. I did good. And well.
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I'd say this is more July in Christmas.
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(Pacifist-route Undertale spoilers) Does that mean that Alphys was injecting dead monsters with caffeine?