The gifts I got this year were generally practical ones. Normally this would mean my gifts were all uncool or not very fun, but a lot of the practical gifts I received this year weren't clothes (though I didn't escape unscathed -_-). Instead, they were practical gifts whose givers didn't intend them to be as "COOL! AWESOME!"-accepted by me as they were. These included, ranked in descending order (so coolest first):
- an emergency flashlight that uses hand-twisty action for 30 seconds and three bright LEDs to give it 5 minutes' worth of stored energy as opposed to relying on batteries or incandescents. Fucking awesome. I devour stuff like this -- "it's like magic!" I told my befuddled Dad as I eagerly explained to the family the workings of dynamos and electric generators in general.
- an escape hammer for my car. It has a specially-designed hammer head for smashing the car doors' windows when your car is submerged in a river (since it applies the force transversely throughout the plane of the glass, rather than perpendicularly to the glass as would normally occur if you struck it with a hammer, crowbar, elbow, etc). It also has a razor-sharp blade which is 100% inaccesible to a human finger but easily accessible to a seatbelt -- so you can cut your seatbelt off of you and your passengers instead of fumbling around for the locks. Pretty cool!
- a pot big enough to cook some of my favorite meals for 4 people, supplanting my old pot which was big enough for 1-2 people and all I needed at college. (At med school, I really don't have time to cook every other night, so I need to make 3-4 meals' worth.)
- a calendar. Normally I dislike calendars or don't use them, but I've actually wanted one (for the first time ever) for a couple of weeks now. Didn't tell anybody. Got this one by semi-surprise for Christmas. But was genuinely surprised by how awesome it is. Each month is a new picture of scenic America, and each one is friggin' computer wallpaper material. So gorgeous, each and every last one of them. (Rare! Normally I hate calendars precisely because they've got like 1 or 2 great pictures and then 10 mehs or uglies.) My family was shocked that I even liked this gift at all. I get a calendar every year and almost never open it. I think my mom thought I was joking at first and was then really happy -- because I think she's the one who bought it this year. (Previous years it's been who knows -- a parent one time, a godparent another, a neighbor a third, a distant family relation a fourth.)
I really love the flashlight. Pretty color (rich Atlantic cerulean blue, not red as featured here), but more importantly how it works is just so damn cool! :) Converting mechanical energy into electrical energy never ceases to amaze me. Such magic! Particularly how we create an alternating current (which you would think would have a net sum of 0 joules parsed) and yet we harness one direction of that AC current but not the other and somehow get away with it in our DC world ... it's just really damn clever. :) Really damn clever. Maybe it's a ways off yet, but I look forward to living in a world where with a quick 30-second twist of the wrist I can power up my house for a day. :)
P.S. No games, no game systems, and none requested anyway. Not a big fan of the Animal Crossing concept, not interested in a PS3 with no backwards compatibility, but most importantly I have a huge-ass backlog of great games, great movies, and great books to get through. I really don't need to be buying anything for the next 1 to 2 years. Lucky me? Or bad me 'cause I'm not doing my part to help the economy? You decide.
No comments:
Post a Comment