Santa Done Good!
Category: Kitchen Sink...
Posted Saturday, December 27, 2003 at 07:06 PM [GMT-6]

I know it's bad form to brag about your Christmas gifts, but I'm going to anyway, so if it bothers you, feel free to mill about aimlessly for a while. (But you'll want to get back here soon, because I'm going to post a brutally critical review of ROTK, just to prove that I'm no pushover just because it's Christmas.)

My favorite gift this year came, as usual, from MLB, in the form of a teeny cell phone to replace the brick-like device I've been carrying for the past couple of years. My new phone has a color display, which is pretty cool -- more so because of the increased contrast of the screen than for the color itself -- but the neatest feature is the voice-activated dialing. I've programmed MLB's cell and office numbers and our home number, using the ultra-imaginative keywords of, um, "cell," "office" and "home."

My second-favoritist (doesn't Christmas bring out the kid in you?) gift is a tie among all the others (in case any of my family is checking in), but near the top of the tie is the auto-darkening welder's helmet. Now this is cool! You know how you never can see where to put the electrode on the metal to start the weld if your helmet is down, because it's too dark? So you leave your hood up until the last second, and hope that your hand doesn't move when you jerk your head to bring the helmet down... but your hand always moves and so your weld always starts in the wrong place. The auto-darkening hood fixes that problem, as it goes from clear to dark in 1/20,000 of a second (although I'm admittedly having trouble verifying that time). No longer will I have to break out the halogen work lamp when my welding projects continue past dusk (and they ALWAYS continue past dusk). Kudos to my parents for taking a hint!

The second-best tie for second-favoritist gift didn't fit, but it was great anyway. My brother gave me a BSA Red Dot Sight for my Colt Python. The Red Dot Sight is a "rapid acquisition" gunsight which uses a tiny bright red dot (more creativity in naming; see...I'm not the only one) instead of crosshairs to zero in on the target. Unfortunately, the Python doesn't lend itself to the standard mounting system used by BSA, so my nephew now has a cool new sight for his Wal-Mart special .22 rifle.

Yep, Santa did pretty good this year: no socks or ties, plenty of tools (arrr! arrr!), some electronic gadgets that I may or may not ever figure out how to work, and even a new Texas Almanac which is guaranteed to spice up The Gazette's 2004 offerings (here's a sneak preview: there were 51 divorces in Comanche County in 2001).

Best of all, despite the presence of 10 humans and six dogs, there was still peace and goodwill, and the grins on the givers' faces were even bigger than those on the getters'. If you know what I mean.