Window Shopper

[For any American readers, December 26 is 'Boxing Day' in Canada and is another holiday. It's also the biggest shopping day of the year, much like your US Thanksgiving weekend shopping experiences.... Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.]

I knew I had one shopping trip to make today. Yep, I "embraced my inner geek" and head for the comic shop.

Why? I've built up a store credit of $200 and he had absolutely no problem with me using it during his 50% off sale. So, it was more like $400 in credit.

Cash is always nice....

My comic collection is fairly big already (embracing the inner geek again), so adding to it is not always favorable to my wife. The thing is, is I'm finding things to sell on eBay, so it's not all bad.

Actually, I didn't pick up anything to be a 'keeper' comic in my collection. I don't think so anyway. Een the ones by my favorite artist have a good chance of ending up on eBay by Springtime. I already have copies :)

I looked in a few other shops today, but nothing really caught my eye. I could've picked up Ocean's Twelve for $5.99, but didn't like it as much as Ocean's Eleven, so I skipped it.

When I got home, however, I helped my father-in-law buy a computer online. It's a refurbished model, but better than the one I'm on right now --and we got it for $400. Automatically a sweet deal. We could've gotten a better one if he'd let me know earlier about it. Living on the West coast means we can buy Boxing Day sale items at 9pm our time/ midnight Eastern time.

The other major event today was "Christmas dinner" at the in-laws. Admittedly, always better than dinner with my family, this year we had 2 guests join us and they were right at home amongst the family. They're both ladies who go to our church and both ladies live alone. One of them is native and a recovering alcoholic. She occasionally takes care of her 5 year old daughter (an absolute sweetheart of a girl and this lady's ultimate reason to keep clean), but didn't have her this weekend. She was kicked out of her home at the age of 9 (she's now in her mid-40s or older) and has lived all over North America. As happens, sadly, far too often in native communities, drugs and alcohol take over lives and has killed off almost everyone she's related to. So, being in a house tonight with families not knowing what divorce is like, having siblings they talk to on a daily basis, and a family matriarch looking forward to her 100th birthday in a few months is all foreign territory to her. And boy, did she take it all in tonight. It's the great gift my in-laws have. When they welcome you to the family, you basically become part of the family. We heard many stories tonight about how my wife's grandfather refused to think of his children's spouses as anything other than his own sons and daughters. About how he'd cry if any had to move away (but he was the first one there to help pack and support their decision). Stories of the other grandmother and her ability to welcome anyone in the neighborhood into the home and make them welcome. We saw pictures of my father-in-law standing next to John F. Kennedy.

It was an interesting night. If only my parents could still host events like this.

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