Anticipation

Far be it from me to give Carly Simon any more airtime, but she seems to have cornered the meme-o-sphere on this word, and sadly, the word is apt.

Gift giving is tough in our family. Not because we don't want things, more because we don't want things that fall within the gift giving budget. My mental wish list has several sub $20 things - that new nail polish color, 12" circular knitting needles - and expensive things - furniture, electronics, trips to Thailand. In the middle there's not much.

So we've gotten in the habit of pooling financial gifts to come up with the thing we wanted - even when that means, like this year, my brother and I will be exchanging envelopes with the exact same amount of cash in them. And, in the spirit of making sure the thing I wanted wasn't sold out, I pre-ordered it and picked it up last night.

And now, like the adult I am, will stare at it in its packaging, until we open gifts on Christmas (the day we'll also be celebrating a very late Chanukah). Which will be very very difficult to do and draw on the reserve of willpower I am currently using to not eat.

Because the gift is a colornook.

That I want to open and play with and customize and mess with like the gearnerd I am.

But I will not, for I has adulthood. And I will spend the next (oh my god) month thinking about how much fun I will have with it in January. But if you have spent any time in a Barnes & Noble recently playing with the nook, you will know how much fun it is RIGHT NOW. My salesperson, Erika, helped me a great deal by refusing to open the packaging to put my anti-glare plastic thingy on the screen, saying that once the box was open, temptation would prove to great, but then she put the whole kit and kaboodle in a bag with photographs of the colornook in action on the outside.

So now I have a very compelling bagvertisement in my house that contains the very item the bag is bagvertising.

Fine. I'm going back to thinking about food and how much I'd like to eat some that isn't composed of finn crsips and chicken breast.