This is going to be an abridged Christmas post because I didn't get any pictures of the food I made yesterday and because too many people got us too many things.
These are the pictures I do have...
Elise got me this robot.
And this blown glass lizard, made and sent from Russia with love.
Then she got me the one thing I truly wanted for Christmas, which is to show you how much of a geek I am. I believe my brother is the only person that is going to know what this is...
You see, you take these parts and wires...
...all of these resistors, transistors and electronic doodads go into the holes in the circuit board in the center of the "lab", then you connect wires into those holes and to the various springs all around the thing. You do all of this painstakingly, reading the tiny code on the transistors and doing math to make sure that it's the one you need and so on. You put like 40 things into place, following a schematic in the book and then you can make a buzzing sound come out of the speaker or something. That's it.
You don't understand how satisfying it is though! To spend hours making something do something stupid for a brief period of time until you pull all the parts back out and start again. The other day, I made a really horrible sounding organ out of the buttons on the bottom right. It was awesome. I made an AM radio that only picked up one Mexican radio station. This was also awesome.
Anyhow, I got Elise a lot of stuff that doesn't look particularly awesome in photographs or anything. Sugar-free Godiva, Jay Ryan's book, Andrew bird buttons, a Sims 2 expansion pack, Steel Magnolias on DVD so that she can play the movie and match it up to the quotes that are always coming out of her mouth.
But the big thing that I got her was this hand-made moonstone necklace and earring set from India.
The jewelry was made by this woman, Neeru Goel and I know that because Novica.com is the best site in the world. They're partnered with National Geographic and all they sell is hand-made things from artists and artisans in other countries. Each and every item shows the artist and their biography, right there and it's amazing.
The set shipped out of India where it was made, came in this beautiful case and came with a postcard written by Neeru and then translated by someone else. Novica and Neeru saved my Christmas for Elise, no doubt.
Finally, now I can post the pictures of these big paintings Elise painted for her parents.
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