Peeping Round the Door to See What Parcels Are for Free in Curiosity

A brief summary of the materialistic side of my Christmas (er, in the "gimme stuff" sense, rather than the philosophical sense, of course).

What I Gave:

A set of Firefly DVDs and a copy of Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head to my sister and brother-in-law.

A toy mouse to their cat.

Two big tubs of Legos to my nephew.

A couple of packages of blank CDs and an assortment of downloaded country songs to my mother. (Yes, I have now introduced Mom to the joys of Napster.)

A Lord of the Rings calendar (artwork, not movie stills) and a gift subscription to New Mexico Magazine to my Dad and his wife. Also a decorative Santa plate which I got as a free gift from somewhere and which seemed much more like something they'd like than I would.

A selection of fudge to my grandmother.

What I Got:

A telephone. Which I badly needed, as my current one is dying painfully.

A light sweater blouse.

Candy.

Lavender bath salts.

A couple of old Pink Floyd CDs: A Saucerful of Secrets and Meddle, which puts me a step closer to my completist desire to have all of Floyd to put on the mp3 player.

Chocolate covered pretzels. Mmmm, my favorite!

A soft bathrobe with kitties on it.

A Lord of the Rings calendar (movie stills, not artwork).

All in all, not too bad, I'd say!

Also, in addition to various prezzies and random items of food -- oh, and a coffee mug she got from some promotional thing and apparently didn't have room for in her cabinet -- I also came back from Mom's with a couple of Michael Crichton novels. Timeline she finished, closed with a snap, handed to me, and said, "Here, I'm done with this. You can have it." And State of Fear she apparently bought twice by mistake. Oh, yeah. Apples and trees, folks. Apples and trees...