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While I’m certainly appreciative that I grew up in a time of Transformers, Voltron, Robotech, etc … I’ve started looking at the toys that are available to my son. You know what, we were gipped.

Exhibit A, the Dinosaur Easter Basket pictured above. I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up all we ever got was the gender neutral ones made out of twigs and straw.

Exhibit B, Lego Star Wars Death Star, Imperial Star Destroyer, and Millenium Falcon. Girl Plankton doesn’t buy my excuse that purchasing them would be an investment. I’ve tried convincing her that they would be an investment in our children’s geek credentials. That didn’t go over as well as I had hoped. Subsequently, I tried convincing her that they would be collectors items which could be exchanged for large sums of money upon acceptance of our children into Ivy League institutions. To her credit she pointed out that I wouldn’t be allowed to remove them from the packaging if that was the case.

Exhibit C, Toys R Us has a Robots Category on their website. Completely glossing over the fact that when I was young the only two options for shopping at Toys R Us were waiting for the catalog to come with the Sunday paper, or go to the store with the folks. Nowadays all you have to do is bookmark the Robots Category on their website. How effing cool is that?

I think it’s painfully clear to everybody how badly we were screwed. We had Easter Baskets, but not fuzzy dinosaur ones. We had Legos, but the most you could hope to create was a tower or a bridge. Sometimes you had most of the necessary pieces to put together a helicopter or an airplane. Nobody had gone to the trouble of putting together a kit to build a Death Star with them. We had plenty of robot toys, but we didn’t have such convenient methods of shopping for them. Our only option was to beg our parents to drive us to the store. Even then we were at the mercy of the clerks who stocked the shelves. Maybe they had Roy Focker’s VF-1 that you saved for months to buy. Chances were that you were going to have to settle for that Zentraedia Battle Pod because it was the last one on the shelf. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

Of course, it could have been worse. All our father’s had had to play with when they were kids was fire and the wheel.

Our daughter’s birthday counter incremented this weekend. Celebrations started with an early soccer game on Saturday. If AYSO was in the score keeping business, then this would have been recorded as a victory for the Purple Butterflies. Following the game I had to rush her to the Treehouse Museum where Girl Plankton was already busy setting up the Pirate Party. Note the absence of Ninjas.

The family stuff started this morning. We had a really good breakfast and waited until 11:13 A.M. to let her begin opening presents. She got a new bike from us, and horseback riding lessons from her grandparents. Afterwards we took a drive to the local farm where the lessons will take place this summer. Then we went to her favorite restaurant and they sang that obnoxious birthday cadence they do there and she got this huge ice cream dessert.

Now we’re just sitting around at home wishing that the wind would blow a little bit so that we could go fly her new kite.

Another good Christmas this year. My parents and brother made it out here safely. Santa’s gift made it here in time. The dreadful flu that devastated my house a week before Christmas appears to have been vanquished. Nothing serious came up from work while I’ve been on call. So, I claim success!

It was an item that my daughter saw at her school’s book fair. Since the fair was over a long time before we knew about this my wife was forced to go to the company that puts on the book fair. They told her that she had to come back last Saturday to get the set, and they promised her that they had plenty, would continue to have plenty, and she would have no problem getting one on Saturday morning.

She got there 15 minutes after they opened on Saturday. They were out. Turned out that their huge stock of the item was nearly depleted by ongoing school book fairs during the week, and that there was a line of parents waiting for them to open an hour before they did on Saturday.

Saturday night we turned to E-Bay. I’ve never used E-Bay before. The whole idea basically freaks me out for the same reason that I hate automobile dealers. I like to walk into a situation and know exactly what I’m going to pay. We found one person on E-Bay who was selling two sets of the toys/books. I clicked “Buy It Now” and when I realized that the only shipping options were regular mail and priority mail, I hit the back button and tried searching Amazon again for it. After failing with Amazon I returned to E-Bay and clicked “Buy It Now” again. Shortly thereafter I realized that I had mistakenly bought both sets that were being offered. I didn’t really care though, one of them could get dropped into a Toys for Tots collection bin, Santa was going to be bringing my daughter exactly what she asked for.

Yesterday afternoon I started to wonder if the package was going to make it on time. The seller had emailed me a link to the USPS site for tracking it. I clicked it, and was promptly informed that they couldn’t track it. This is about the time when I really started to freak. I assumed that the reason I couldn’t track it was that the seller hadn’t shipped it yet. Turns out that wasn’t the case at all. While I was calling my wife in my generally freaked out state, I was re-reading the email from the seller. Turns out that they were sending it to the wrong address too.

This goes back to me using my wife’s E-Bay account to make the purchase. Apparently, she incorrectly entered our address when she made the account. She’s never been able to change it. When she wins an auction she always just requests that the seller’s send it to the right address. This is a crucial piece of information that she failed to convey to me on Saturday night. She assures me that it’s not a real address, so the postal service will take the time to look up her name and deliver it to our house. I was convinced that this meant the postman was going to slap “Return to Sender” on the package and it wouldn’t even make it back to Washington before Christmas, nevermind the return trip to Utah.

So, she contacts the seller again who has another two to sell. She agrees to buy another one and have it shipped next day delivery to us.

Some simple math to determine how much has been spent up to this point on Santa’s surprise. First two items due to my stupidity, $20 + $20 + $10 (S&H) = $50. Next item to make up for the potential of not getting the first two here in time, $20 + $30 (S&H) = $50. $100 – $20 = $80 more than the thing should have cost.

This afternoon I got a call from my wife who was heading home. The first two did indeed get delivered to the wrong address. However, a good Samaritan who lived there took the time to look us up and contact my wife regarding the package. She headed there and got them. Now we’re just waiting on the final one to arrive.

I guess, if there’s a moral to this story it’s that you should never give up hope. However, this story probably performs a much better service as an example as to why people really hate this time of year. It’s easy to be a Grinch when nothing appears to be going your way.

My son started making these really odd noises today.  You have to watch the video to understand, but it’s like something out of the Excorcist.  You half expect his head to rotate a full 360 degrees halfway through this.  It’s that creepy.