In reply to LonePaladin (msg # 1078):

I like the idea. Personally, I buy my gifts over the course of the year, to spread out the expense. Plus, since most of it comes from thrift stores, you've gotta buy it when you find it anyway! I keep a box to put all the gifts in, then in December, get out the box. Seldom have to do last-minute shopping that way.

I need to work on that wrapping in advance, too, though!

What if you wrapped the gifts shortly after you buy them, instead of saving it for one huge event?

We had a very low-key Christmas this year.  We had just gotten back from a vacation, so our gifts for our kids were mostly some books (and Heroclix and Pokémon cards).  Still, my wife and I were up until about 3 am wrapping presents, and the night was exhausting.  Doing most of the work beforehand seems a lot smarter.

Some good ideas. Just figured out that one advantage of opening presents Christmas eve is that the children are less apt to get up early.

In reply to OceanLake (msg # 1083):

Over here, opening the presents on Christmas Eve is the norm.

I wish I could let the kids open gifts on Christmas Eve, but then I'd just start being bombarded with what they want for -next- Christmas on Christmas Day. Which is more greed than I can handle, really.

A few years back, I instituted a 2-gift maximum from any one source to try to nip pre-teen greed in the bud (prompted by my at the time 12 year-old saying, most embarrassingly, 'is that all?' after opening gifts at a grandparents' house). It's helped them stop expecting a kazillion things (although the grandparents still cheat and try to cram multiple gifts in one box) all at once, but sadly, it hasn't helped the youngest from constantly wanting more.

Just 24 hours of appreciating what they've been given, without starting in on what else they want for the next gift-giving holiday. That's all I ask.

In reply to SunRuanEr (msg # 1085):

A few years ago, my instituted the "something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read" policy for Christmas. So within the family, only four major gifts each. You can still get some other smaller peripheral gifts and other family members are welcome to get whatever they want, but those four categories keep the presents focused on quality and thoughtfulness and keep the kids' expectations under control as far as amount.

As a result, we just had our second Christmas for which we did not have to purchase a single battery.

My wife decided we were going to Florida to visit relatives the first week of winter break, leaving right after picking up the kids from school on Friday, then leaving to come back the day before Christmas Eve.  I had some pressing matters to take care of the next Monday and Tuesday, so I flew down Wednesday.  So, before I left out, I took a couple of nights to wrap yhe gifts while consulting with my wife over the phone as to which went to whom.  It was much less stressful.  Plus, I got to prepare or cat for a few days without human companionship.
On another note, went to the Museum of Fine Arts St Petersburg to see the exhibition Star Wars and the Power of Costume.  It was a display of most of the costumes from the original trilogy, the prequels, and TFA.  Really cool.  I had no idea that Carrie Fisher was so short.

In reply to SunRuanEr (msg # 1085):

When I was a kid, my cousins (about 8 of us all together) and I would get a pile of presents on Christmas Day. I remember being 13 and receiving 39 boxes. My family curbed our gimmies by making receiving a gift almost like a ritual. Lots of rules.

If the present came with a card, it had to be held up and read aloud before opening the present. If there was no card, I'd have to read the to/from tag. After thanking the sender, I would write down their name and gift as a list. After everything was open and separated (cash, checks, gift cards, toys and clothes), then I'd have to model all the clothes excluding underwear and socks. Parents and grandparents would check fit and take pictures. Then we'd go to my grandmother and ask for the proper amount of thank you cards. She would always come with a basketload of them. We opened presents youngest to oldest. No kid could open a present at the same time as any other kid unless the gifts all came from the same relative and that person gave the OK. Sounds hectic with 8 kids, but my family was pretty harsh. Anyone jumping queue got a slap and was sent upstairs away from the party. They could finish opening gifts the next day. After all this (and kitchen cleanup) we could play with new toys.

Nowadays, I only have to wrangle about 6 kids at once at holidays. I have them open gifts one at a time, youngest to oldest and it goes pretty smoothly. No slapping. The kids especially like handing out the presents.

Had a really bad experience with a game I'm in, my mother, my only connection to my birth family is apparently back in the cult as deep as ever. A friend I had fell out of good graces with over a horrible PTSD episode to do with my family, I had invested great effort into "mending the fence" when I haven't done anything wrong, and he's all but ignored me since I went out of my way to help him.

I started to decline like a falling pebble into an avalanche.

My roommate is at work, so I called the suicide hotline to get support and they told me to call a warm line. I called my doctor and for the past 50 minutes have no reply. My only two options are calling 911 or getting through with it.

I feel bad enough I get sick when I try to drink. Every minute is painful, but all I have to do is just wait it out, that's the only thing I can do. Logically I know that, but I feel my OCD and Tourettes starting to become violent (very much not intentionally). And I don't know if I have choice but to fall again, harder than last time.

If it gets bad enough, I'll have to call 911, and I know they'll put me in the hospital for days, which I really hate. For years I fought to have a home, to not be in the same situation I was when I was young, no choice, or compulsory service.

MY last concern should be RPoL, but it slightly dulls the waiting. Maybe my doctor will call. I would much rather that than call 911. If I could take more medicine I would, but I have no idea how that would affect me.

I really feel...just like all this progress is undone. Like no matter how I try to exercise better habits it doesn't matter. The tics, and the compulsions, they just come when I get overly stressed, and I have no other outlet.

I can't type

Edit: Finally I'm doing better. That was the worst tic fit I've had in my life. My knuckles, forehead, neck and throat burn.
This message was last edited by the user at 00:11, Sat 30 Dec 2017.

Hello, little late, the wrapping thing is certainly a pain in the butt and can be totally avoided altogether, my lover has a lot of family, she has to buy something for everyone cos they all buy something for she and I, it's nice, and little overwhelming. We used to spend hours wrapping things the week leading up to Christmas up until 2015, when, in a panicked pinch we shot everything into Christmas gift bags of varying sizes from the Dollarstore with different colored tissue paper on top, the few things we wanted to wrap we still did, and that ended last year. The Dollarstore has lovely colorful Christmas boxes, again in varying sizes, that even come with labels already printed or glued on, put the gift inside with some colored tissue, label it, tape it closed, fire it into so-and-so's Christmas bag and that's that, no wrapping paper required at all.

If there isn't a Dollarstore or equivalent you can dash into Wal-Mart or it's equivalent, they certainly have holiday bags, so do some grocery stores, drug stores and Halmark stores, never spend more then two or three dollars on a bag though and, during the festivities, do your best to discreetly save the bags you can, reuse and recycle. This also obviously works for every other time you need to give someone a gift, the colorful Christmas boxes may be out but there are plain ones that do the same trick, never have to wrap anything ever again.

I am absolutely fruiting sick of so-called 'security features' on the Internet. 99 times out of a hundred, the only person who is denied access to the facilities is the fruiting user. They're just ransomware to extract personal data!!!

(Gmail has locked me out of my account yet again, and this time it looks like it's permanent.)

Frustrating how a falling out in a game's OOC can lead to what was otherwise just fine ending up collapsing.

Also really annoying how obscure game systems with house rules end up creating  difficult to translate characters so that it's almsot impossible to find new homes for them. :/

In reply to Flarelord (msg # 1092):

I had a couple of those when I first joined on the site. It was frustrating. I was a small disagreement and the woman who ran the game also had her boyfriend at the time marked as Co-GM and he took matters to his own hands and literally removed me and banned me because he believed i would harass her further. I wasn’t harassing though. I just didn’t agree with a certain decision and I was actually kind enough to take it to PMs as oppose to blasting it on the OOC thread and poof! There I went.

In reply to WhiteComic (msg # 1093):

I've been on all sides of that. I was in a game where the GM was doing strange things with the rules and I kept asking questions for clarification and they got super upset with me and kicked me out of the game for questioning them. I was just trying to figure out what the fruit was going on! When you're running a tactical combat RPG but play very fast and lose with the rules, expect tactical players to keep stopping and saying "wait what?"

I've also been running a game where a player decided that everyone else sucked and would constantly drop comments in the OOC saying "you suck" and "you're doing it wrong". I locked it down and eventually booted him but the damage was done...

Oh, hey, Prague ^^; Been a while :)

Someone in my office has ringworm. He is walking around, scratching and touching everything. I've confronted him and his supervisor. It's been 2 hours. He won't leave.

Right now, he's searching for his lost keys.

Now something is wrong with my computer, but it's the IT Help guy with the ringworm. So angry.
This message was last edited by the user at 16:52, Fri 16 Mar 2018.

Person walking around with a Highly Contagious condition, call CDC or Police about it. Them being in a public place with such a condition is a major health violation and they can be arrested for doing that.
 See Public Health Code Violations for more information.
(https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine...lawsregulations.html) Its long and has many subsets to it.
This message was last edited by the user at 00:42, Sun 18 Mar 2018.

I had to put down one of my dogs this morning. Undiagnosed heart and lung disease.I can't really describe how horrible it feels to lose one of the best parts of your life for the past 8 years.

I want to wretch every time I think about how he must have suffered. I don't think I was able to provide him with the good death he deserved. I'm so exhausted right now.

In reply to Dottie_V (msg # 1098):

Oh gods. I am so sorry to hear about that. You have my sympathy on your loss.

In reply to Dottie_V (msg # 1098):

I am so sorry for your loss.

We had a schedule change today so I had to get my younger daughter to school while my wife went to an appointment. I did that flawlessly, and then drove 30 miles to work, forgetting that I had to drive my older daughter to school too. She made it, but had to resort to calling her mom (my ex-wife) who I don't get along with well partly because I screw up things like this.

No real harm done, just that sick feeling of being an irresponsible moron.

Being the most enthusiastic person about trying something new. It's a relatively minor vent in the scheme of things, but man, it gets tiring dragging people kicking and screaming into trying something new. You'd think after they enjoy themselves the last dozen times they'd go willingly into the next brave new idea, but nope, every single time.

The latest thing is getting friends to play Sea of Thieves with me. I know it only has 8 hours of content, but those 8 hours look like a lot of fun!

Back to pulling teeth!

Is something wrong with the site? Why are posts I'm making showing up as new posts?

In reply to GammaBear (msg # 1103):

There's some talk about that in the General thread. I haven't had it happen to me, yet, so I can't really say either way.