It will be our first Christmas. Well… in my mind it will be our first Christmas. I’m not actually allowed to say such things since we are, as it’s been explained to me, “not officially dating.” Did you know there is a number one must reach before dating can become official? I confess I am quite inexperienced and naive in this department, so I’m learning as I go along. In today’s day and age, I suspect two people are not “officially” dating until there is an update to the Facebook “Relationship Status” setting, but I could be wrong. Oh, and for the record, the number – for those of you wondering – is 7. Until then… I am happily unofficially dating perhaps the most wondrous young lady I’ve ever had the privilege of having my life.
Anywho, I’m a bit of an old fashioned, sentimental guy at heart. So I wanted to try and do something special to mark this Christmas. Something with meaning. It may be our last, though I hope not. But it will always be our first. Given that we’ve only been together – well… not together since I’m not allowed to say we’re together – given that we’ve only known each other a short time, I didn’t have a lot of history to draw from for a memorable first gift. Nevertheless, with my thinking cap securely in place… I came up with two ideas. Neither of them are of any great significance. But it is the thought that counts right? If nothing else… both ideas were born from periods of great thought.
The first gift was tucked away safely on my computer. I have to be careful what I say here, so as to not give any discernible clues. It was the one I was most excited about; I suspect because it was the corniest of the two. I’m a bit of a dweeb like that. Nevertheless, it was there, safe, secured, and ready for delivery when the time was right.
I sat down at my computer last week and went to access the gift on my external hard drive. I turned on the computer, pushed the big blue button on the hard drive, and then went to search for the file. There was a problem though. My hard drive wasn’t showing up. I clicked the button again. Still no hard drive appearing. Upon further investigation, and possibly a moment or two of complete and utter panic, I determined that what I feared was true. The hard drive was pooched. For as long as I’ve owned a computer I have NEVER experienced a hard drive failure. I did on this day. My heart sank a little. Years of my life, quite literally, were gone in that moment. So was the gift.
I tried several different things I had read and heard about to get the hard drive working again… including placing it in the freezer! I was a desperate man, and these desperate times called for extremely desperate measures no matter how ridiculous they may have seemed. I imagine that there is a pimple faced teenage boy sitting in his dimly lit bedroom on the second floor of his parents house, laughing himself into convulsions over all the poor suckers like me that he’s convinced to place their hard drives in the freezer – courtesy of a tip he posted on his blog. On this day, I did not care. On another day, well, I may have tracked him down and flogged him with a wet spaghetti noodle. But on this day, I was willing to try anything no matter how absurd. My efforts were in vain.
It took me a week of surfing the interweb in my spare time before I finally found what was to be the second gift; now the first… and only. It’s amazing what you can find online if you know where and how to look. It’s all about the right keywords and search phrases, or so I’ve come to learn. I was excited about this gift as well. Even more so after the tragic loss of the first. The satisfaction of finding it after looking so hard made me anticipate it’s Christmas delivery even more. It is far from spectacular. But it is the fruits of a sentimental soul. One can only hope that counts for something.
I watched Jingle All The Way with my captivating young lady, her adorable sister, and her sisters boyfriend – who seems to be a gentleman himself – this past Friday night. It really is a total cheeseball movie. I think that is part of the reason why I love it. I mean, lets be honest, Arnold drinking with a reindeer? Who writes this stuff? I learned an important lesson from that movie, though I didn’t realize it until this evening as I began to write this blog. That lesson goes something like this… if Sinbad is even the slightest bit representative of the United States Postal Service, I have suddenly lost all hope of the timely arrival of gift number 2.
Order by this date at this time and it will arrive for Christmas. Those words were in big bold red letters all over the site. When I read through all the shipping FAQ’s, I read those words again. I read the fine print people… the FINE PRINT! I wanted to make sure gift 2 made it, and on time! Ordering when I did… I had plenty of time to spare! Or so I thought.
633km. That’s how far the package must travel. Well… that’s assuming the package travels a direct route. Then again, what are the odds of it traveling a direct route? I agree… slim to none. Regardless… this is a journey that I could have made myself in a day. A long day mind you, but a day nevertheless. The United States Postal Service, however, can apparently not complete this journey in a week. Rain. Sleet. Snow. Hail. They’re supposed to be all over it. But not on this day. Not for this package.
As I write these very words, my Christmas Countdown timer tells me that it’s 3 days, 2 hours, 19 minutes and 33 seconds until Christmas. Not just any Christmas either. No. Our first Christmas. The Christmas of first impression. The Christmas of lasting impression. The Christmas filled with two of the most unlikely stories that will be unwrapped in an empty box. The Christmas I tried hard and failed harder! If you’re going to blow it… may as well do a good job of it! I wanted to make a memory and boy have I ever! :)
And this Christmas will be… a very special Christmas indeed!
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