christmas challenge

bbans once accused me (read: teased me for an entire year) that i was a shopaholic. he got our entire sg to label me as a shopaholic. ok fine - i did happen to stock up on baby clothes at outlets when they were on sale, for the unborn children that would inevitably have baby showers. some call this an addiction. i call it good sense.

so i thought about it, and i guess in a way, i am. i took offense to it at the time because i don't feel that i'm irresponsible with my money, but as i think about it - i do genuinely enjoy shopping. or more specifically, bargain shopping. and hands down, my strongest love language is gifts.

for the last few years, my dad and i have had this system for christmas. he has a list of people (his accountant, lawyer, people he works with, pastors, etc.) that he needs to buy gifts for. he has no time or patience to think of or shop for meaning gifts. so he would just get them gift certs. one xmas, he sent me to macy's to get hudnreds upon hundreds of dollars of gift certs.

i hate gc's. with few exceptions (like a meaningful gc, for a massage or something), i find them cop-outs of actually putting in the thought of getting a gift. (poor rich found this out the hard way when he got me gc's for the first few bdays/xmases. he has since become quite a thoughtful gift-giver. his wife can thank me someday).

gc's also add up to a lot of money, since what you're getting is exactly the value of what you're paying.

so that year i volunteered to do all of my dad's xmas shopping, if he just gave me a list and a budget of the value of the items he wanted to purchase. somehow this has carried on year to year - though last year i was quite proud to have saved him roughly 50% (though i suffered a 12 hour escapade on black friday at woodbury for it)

somehow i've become his personal shopper - but honestly, i really don't mind. i see it as my christmas challenge, esp bc its usually got a time limit.

i know jesus is the reason for the season. but i really enjoy having an excuse to get presents for people without pretense. though i fully admit that it's for my own satisfaction of seeing their reactions when they open them. so i guess pheobe on friends was right...there isn't an unselfish good deed out there. oh, well.