Tonight Samantha and I exchanged gifts, as we are pretty sure the fabled fat man will skip our house tonight. Not among those gifts opened this evening but a gift nevertheless was a Kodak EasyShare C743, purchased from our recently-opened Costco. It was our joint gift to ourselves.
Seeing that I worked for a newspaper, one might think that I would not dare shell out any amount of cash for a consumer-line camera. One would be wrong. I have learned that while this camera will not be taking the next picture to land on the cover of Time, it will make for easy point-and-click pictures. It would be overkill for us to have anything more than a 7 mega pixel camera anyway, even if I wish the optical zoom were a bit higher. Even the camera at work, with all of its bells and whistles, died last month at a critical time. If this one bites the dust or gets dropped in the line of duty, it will not be that difficult to replace.
The Costco has barely been open a month, and already you can see that the local Sam's Club needed the competition. The most notable difference, from the shopper's perspective, is the makeup of the store's inventory. Every Sam's Club I have ever been in is typically geared more towards business shopping, with a few extra aisles of office supplies and low-end computer systems. The Costco has all of that, but the non-food merchandise seems geared more for the casual consumer looking to make their dollar go a bit further. As with all wholesale stores (I cannot think of another one), the food quantities are six to seven times the amount per unit you will find at a grocery store, but the unit price will be considerably lower. We learned about this time last year that bigger is not always better, when we bough a gallon of olive oil and ended up using only fraction of the bottle. A year to the wiser, we will probably be a bit more careful with what gets deemed a bargain.
The chief reason we end up at Costco is purely political (in the altruistic sense of the word). Costco pays their workers on average 42 percent higher than those at Sam's Club, much to the ire of the Wall Street bean counters. Our one-bedroom apartment will probably not see much from the store beyond holiday gifts or non-perishable household goods, but it at least adds a bit of variety to our shopping experience.
Today Samantha and I took a walk through Edwin Warner Park, only a few hundred yards from where we were married back in October. It may seem a bit odd to spend Christmas Eve in the park, but we wanted to catch up on a our 5K training, as well as test out the aforementioned digital camera. The park is a treasure for the city, with its sprawling expance protecting the wooded areas that West Nashville is known for. We will probably venture into the park more frequently soon, as we really need to make sure we don't fall apart somewhere between Broadway and the Capitol building in February.
Another oddity for Christmas Eve was our venture to a Chinese buffet in the local shopping center. We went mostly for the novelty of patronizing a place that has no real reason to recognize Christmas as a holiday. After all, how many folks in your inner circle celebrate the Chinese New Year? A Saturday Night Live animated short highlights this cultural difference, although I cannot seem to track down the link. Even with all that, we did feel a bit sorry for the poor folks at Walgreen's who will be keeping their store open all day tomorrow. I just hope they get a bit extra in their stocking for it.
The Christmas holiday has slowly become less and less of an occasion for me as I get older. I get frustrated with the stress it can cause some folks with all the hustle and bustle of shopping and traveling, leaving them weary and dreading the next time it rolls around. No matter the faith, I believe everyone can agree that no holiday should bring about that much suffering. Marketers will hock their wares to you bundled in a cozy jacket, scarf, hat and mittens with snow falling all around. By my count, the highs tomorrow will be in the mid-50's, and if we do see snow it will be just in time to turn the middle Tennessee interstate system into the world's largest game of Pinball Rush Hour Traffic.
Had this been Christmas Eve nine or ten years ago, I would be traveling all over West Tennessee with my parents, visiting relatives that I only had a passing memory of from the last Christmas. I would spend most of the drive looking out the window at the Christmas decorations and listening to the Christmas music on the radio. If the three of us were particularly awake at the end of the drive, a strange head cold would befall us, and we surely would be in need of medicine that might made us slightly (if not very) drowsy. At least Dimetapp tasted like slightly bitter Kool-Aid.
I am looking more forward to the new year, with the prospect of great things on the horizon. There is a fairly good chance we will not be living in an apartment this time next year, even if we do not have much of an idea of how that will change. At least one of cars will need replacing, but our savings is more than enough to put a down payment on a small, fuel efficient sedan. Samantha's recent attainment of her MBA likely will lead to exciting opportunities in the job hunt on her horizon. Our student loan rates are likely to be sliced in half, meaning that the debt hanging over our heads will be considerably less when projected over time. MacWorld is in January.
Still no sign of snow, though.