the front of the card that i filled out in store...
noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!
well, damn. andy was almost as disappointed as i was, then proceeded to buy egg nog. yak. i asked my mom to buy me some boiled custard from the kroger in georgia and save it for me when i'm there on january 5th. i don't know when the stores stop carrying it, but i think she's gonna be awesome and ask the dairy manager when the last batch comes in. hallelujah. and mom, if you're reading this: i will need ginger cookies to go with the boiled custard.
and another holiday-related disappointment/rant:
my apartment complex participated in an adopt-a-family type gift giving thingy a few weeks ago. they posted a few flyers around the complex telling people to stop by the leasing office or the business center to get a list of items to purchase. i got the list and purchased item X, and planned to buy items Y and Z. i notified the people in the office that andy & i would take care of items X, Y, and Z so that they could cross those items off the list. the very next day we got a note in our door (as did every resident) reminding us of the holiday party and the adopt-a-family wish list. and of course, the items we purchased had not been removed from the list. the next day i had to retrieve a fedex package from the office, so since i was already down there i expressed my concern to the assistant manager that the family was going to get duplicate gifts, rather than have everything on their wish list covered (which is the entire purpose of having a list, right?) see? you like what i did there? rather than accuse him of having crappy logistics i played the demure, worried, humanitarian who wanted the family to get everything on the list (which, i do want that). his response was something like this: "oh, well, i mean, the way we look at it, if the kid gets three pairs of shoes, then that's great, because that's more than they ever had before." what?! no way.
so, a few days later when we got around to buying the remaining two items, i sent another email to the leasing staff confirming that we had purchased items X, Y, Z, and would wrap them and drop them off at the party. we showed up at the party with the gifts, and one of the staff members asked us to write down our names and what we had purchased. seriously? i sent two emails with this exact information. anyway, at the end of the night i checked the list and - yep - richard would be getting three black coats, and lisa would get two pairs of slipper boots. good thing we included the gift receipts with ours.
so yes, the family got things that they wanted, but my point is that the people who manage this place are a bunch of ass clowns (and i'm a control freak). had this been better organized, the family would have gotten more of what they wanted. it's really quite simple. just assign items to participants depending on how much they choose to spend. the way my church used to do this is they had a small christmas tree adorned with notecards. each notecard had two items written on it. this is nice because you can see all the items and pick which two fit your budget or shopping habits, then take the card from the tree so no one else will buy the same stuff. genius!
