Broken Forum Secret Santa 2012 -- opening thread!

:-O

Man, I have to post in the whiskey thread.

So many presents that I was not allowed to open! I love the wrapping paper, by the way. And now people are posting opening things so this is me, pretending I'm in Ireland or something and OPENING THEM ALL



OMFG I LOVE THEM ALL! For those of you not cool enough to be In The Know, those are the Loki-centric Journey Into Mystery books and a cookbook for Whoopie pies (Bahimiron thanks you, he loves those things), and a bunch of Ritter Sport Praline, which happens to be my most recent BEST THING EVER! I think I only JUST posted that I liked those, so bravo on the stalking there!

Sadly two of those Ritter Sports did not survive long after this picture was taken. Sad for them, yum for me!

THANK YOU SO MUCH SANTA! I've already read two of the books before posting here, much to Bahimiron's disgust. I am totally in love with them. These are only the second comic books I've ever owned. I think I have one issue of a John Constantine somewhere that I bought when I was 15 and that's it and these are way cooler!

Holy shit! Quackers, your secret santa has AWESOME taste.

But who was it????

I'm trying to figure out his forum handle now. I know his RL name (omg!) and I once had hahahabonk kill him in a Mafia game where it turned out he was (for once) innocent, but other than that this is a...

JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY!

At least until Matt responds to my PM.

He's an asshole! He also typed up a Santa-ish letter, but forgot to put it in the box and didn't realize this until the pictures.

Hahahaha! I almost did that too. I always thought you seemed familiar!

THANK YOU! I absolutely love everything!

You're welcome, I'm glad you liked them! I thought about going in the Disney direction, but I imagine you're way more of a Disney connoisseur than I am and I'd make a bad choice.


Happy Holidays!

I'm going to ask Lum to change my forum handle to Macallan30 for next year.

Well, technically Loki is a Disney character these days so...

Disney villain.

He's fucking Ursula the Sea Witch now. True story.

YOU SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH!

I'm waiting til tomorrow because I'm honorable. Or maybe it's because it doesn't arrive until tomorrow.

GODDAMNIT I was gonna make that joke this morning but I got bogged down at the office.

So...Aaron and I decided to open ours tonight, because it's there and we needed a pick-me-up. Pictures coming once Aaron emails them to me.

Astromarine, Abilio Carvalho, you're ridiculously generous. Seriously. Not only am I speechless, Aaron is speechless. And that's a once-in-a-lifetime event. >.<

-Saveur: The New Comfort Food, Home Cooking From Around The World.
-Barber scissors. Raucous laughter ensued.
-The Dahlia Bakery Cookbook.
-David Leite's The New Portuguese Table.
-Portuguese Homestyle Cooking.
-The freaking BATTLESTAR GALACTICA BOARD GAME.

And there's a second package in the leasing office. Edit: this one contains Aaron's favorite board game of all time, Ghost Stories. Hot damn.

...this floors me. Seriously, this kind of generosity from a near-total stranger is robbing me of anything I was going to say. (And I'll take the opportunity this week to get Mom to teach me to cut hair. Pictures will be posted, though don't expect any hugely dramatic changes.)

Thank you so, so much. I know what we're doing this evening. :D

Awesome :)

Astrotrain, the Transformer that turns into a train and into a space shuttle.

(I very nearly wrote Astrotrain on the package Quackers sent out. That would have been so embarrassing.)

Once again, did not realize you were trolling. Nothing new there.

I actually answered your question, dumb dumb.

In two different ways!

I'm on drugs, cut me a little slack. :)

...on drugs and STILL scheming to start cooking ALL THE THINGS tonight. :D

Less "Speak With Bread is super easy to troll" and more "Abilio is the best ever".

Observe! The fruits of the first ever pictures taken with my new phone!



What's this? It appears to be a box! With a thing saying "don't read me until you see what the presents are"!



A very happy Speak With Bread who now has new kinds of bread recipes to speak with!



Raucous laughter! I wonder what's so funny!



I honesty don't think any present has ever made me laugh that much. Kudos, man.



Amanda spent pretty much the entire time with either this or the earlier blissed-out look on her face.

And for good reason!

I'm pretty much speechless. Astromarine, you fucking rock.

My pile o' Christmas joy.



And inside?



Hachi machi! What a bounty!

We've got a couple of fantastic sounding chocolate bars, a big bag of Woodland Park Zoo Special Reserve coffee which will make me super popular at work, a Charles M Stross novel, InFamous 2, a game I never got despite loving part 1, and the new Pratchett novel, Dodger. I've had someone tell me it's his best yet, so I've been wanting to dig into it. Thanks to my secret Santa, Jemjewel! The Goomba tchotchke will forever live on my desk, confounding all who see him.

Woo, glad you liked it. I saw a post from you either here or on facebook saying you were watching BSG and liking it a lot, so I went for that game so you both could have a go. That and it's an awesome game. Sorry the shipping got split in two, the other package isn't as big ;)

Sorry I'm lame and don't get the reference. Care to elaborate? Thanks! :)

You're apologizing for blowing my mind? Oooooookay. :)

We're playing the game now, and it's definitely an Aaron sort of game. Lots of thumbs up. :D

Aaron has rather straggly past-his-shoulders hair, and it's been a running joke on two forums that he's in desperate need of a follicular intervention. With the new barber scissors, I'll be able to help with that, at least a bit. :)

A box arrived. From the Amazon Fulfillment Center. Finally, I was going to be fulfilled!


Inside?


A fabulous comic I've been wanting to read and two games I cannot wait to play!



Thanks, VegasRobb !

So, I posted a "head stuck in mailbox" in the other thread last night, and my Santa took note.

I can't really post a photo of me opening emails, but there was a set of emails in my inbox this morning, with some Kindle books attached:



Three books off of my rather eclectic wishlist, thanks Santa! :D

Edit: I forgot to mention that there still is something on its way to me, the messages in the Kindle deliveries were indicative of that!

Hey, you should get Tim Elhajj to sign your... Kindle.

YAY! It's the 17th! Presents time! But first, who was my Santa?




Thanks, seventimessix !

I was half-scared someone was going to pick up Matt's abandoned idea of getting me an actual live Chukar partridge with tie and a cleaver. There's two packages in here and none are making that hideous noise, so...




THE GIFTWRAP IS TAPED TO THE GIFT OMG




This book is ADORABLE, just flipping through I can see multiple monsters that are going to end up hanging out around my house.

Now for the last package...




TEA

OMG

REALLY NICE TEA IN A PRETTY CHEST



I am having the Earl Grey right now and it's really delicious. Thanks so much!

Wow. First, a short list of things that, while they may not suck, could be better. Warning! Include sports references.

Up until ca 2006, being a New Orleans Saints fan kinda sucked. The only thing we had going for us through the years were our totally cool uniforms and for a short brief period in time, also the best linebacking corps in the history of the universe. Also, living in Sweden, getting any kind of gear was a hassle and also involved expensive shipping. Then Sean Payton and Drew Brees happened. And a Super Bowl victory! Then Bounty-gate happened and kept on happening (and is still happening) and then we started the season 0-4, AHA! but then we went to 5-5 ... only to fall to 5-8. Then, yesterday, we shut out the Bucs. And today I opened my Secret Santa package!



"Contains Glass" "We are the game" and "Open package first!" Curiouser and curiouser!



YES! This is awesome! And Tiny Tim is saved as well!




First a shutout of the Bucs, now this! Thank you Nellie and a very Christmasy Woof! goes out to you and your glorious avatar. This was much, much appreciated!

I LOVE SECRET SANTA GIFT OPENING TIME!!!!!!!!

I say again, I love each and every one of you. This is the best time of the year.

And it's good advertising/gift suggestions... Closet Monsters? Purchased! My wife is going to love it and the stupid sock creatures book by the same guy.

My gift from Talisker came in two parts... the first is a box that I haven't opened yet, and the second came after a Steam friend request:



One of the greatest games I still haven't played, now sitting in my Steam library. And hey, I have next week off! WOOOO!

Now to open the box...

You're gonna need a bigger week.

Inside the box... another wrapped box!



With a card...



Instructions fulfilled! And under the wrapping...



Awesome! Starks vs. Lannisters! Over 130 pieces! WOOOOOOO!

Thanks, Talisker!

Yup, that shot to my wishlist too... now I just have to convince my mother to make them. For the kids, I mean.

My boxes: let me show you them.



Two from Amazon fulfillment, with a warning that says that they are from my Broken Forum Secret Santa, and not to open them. It actually doesn't list a date when I can open them, so perhaps my Secret Santa intended them to remain sealed forever. Sort of a Schrodinger's Gift. I'm bad at following instructions, though, so I went ahead and opened them.



Drawing supplies are always useful! I go through a lot of them. And there's a note...



Whoops. While he didn't include his forum handle, I'm going to guess that this is Demon G Sides, the only user that I can recall getting banned over an argument with me. In an Xbox vs. Playstation thread, of all things. Bahimiron got banned in that thread, too, IIRC. Sorry! For what it's worth, I thought it was really stupid for Tom to ban you over that. Anyway, on with the presents...



Very nice! Sorry if I'm hard to shop for, but this was a good choice. Juliette Aristides is a contemporary realist that runs an atelier in Seattle, and I really like her work and her writing. I own a couple of her books (not this one, though). Thanks, DGS! :)

I wasn't even arguing with you! I just "made things worse by taking a shot at a sad sap like Brian Rubin".

Of my five bannings, that is not the one I consider just!