A very Amazon Christmas

Amazon is amazing.  I always knew it was amazing, but at Christmas it’s even more amazing if you’re buying their core products (rather than through partners) and you have their Amazon Prime free trial.  There’s something amazing about ordering 10 items, getting an e-mail an hour later saying they’re being dispatched, and then having them all arrive 9:30am the next day.

They deserve to make a killing.

I’m impressed by their packing system (yeh, I know).  Various sized items all purchased and then they seem to package similar sized items up and into a kind of wrap cardboard thing.  I wonder if it’s fully automated, partially automated or completely manual.

So this is Christmas

We’re ahead of the game this year, kind of.  Although we’re always late starters as far as Christmas is concerned, this year we’re better than normal, and as of today, it’s officially Christmas in this household.

  • We got an advent calendar (chocolate naturally) before the 1st of December and hung it up before the 1st of December, this is essentially a Christmas Miracle come True.
  • We bought presents for people the weekend just gone and some of the ones we have to post are already wrapped, and we’ll be posting them during this week.  Yes, we are posting parcels to people, as Christmas presents, instead of just you know, forgetting, or not bothering.
  • Grete has writers cramp from writing out our Christmas cards which will be posted before Christmas, not like the year we posted them after Christmas.
  • I have just retrieved our tree from the cupboard upstairs, and we’ll be putting it up in the next day or so.  We didn’t bother last year because we weren’t sure Fizz would cope with all the glittering things that hang off it without trashing the house, but she’s (slightly) more relaxed now (pictures of the tree as soon as it’s up, I promise).
  • We’ve already started buying the food for Christmas, so we don’t have to spend 19 hours queueing in Tesco two days before hand.

So there you have it, Christmas at last.  Nearly the end of 2008, near the start of 2009 and that means we’re uncomfortably close to 2010.

Of course, in some ways, it’s always Christmas in this house, since our Santa Clause stuffed toy sits on top of the book shelf in the lounge all year round, bringing us good cheer and joy.

Oh yes.

From Dawn till Dusk

We went Christmas shopping today.  From dawn till dusk.  Breakfast at Tesco (as opposed to Tiffany’s) then into Nottingham City Centre until 4:00pm, then Toys-R-Us and then back to Tesco (everything that has a beginning has an end) to get some food for today and tomorrow.

We got everything we planned to get, some stuff we didn’t plan to get and some very sore feet.

Woolworth’s was super-mad with a huge sale on and people queueing out of the door, I bet it’s their biggest trading day this year, but it’s too little too late no doubt to save people’s jobs 🙁

We couldn’t believe how empty Tesco was first thing and then the Broadmarsh carpark was pretty light as well, the walk up to Victoria Centre was empty as well (at about 10:00am) but by the time we were leaving Victoria Centre (1:00pm) it was knee-deep in people and town was fully packed.  The Christmas market is on again in Market Square and the smells were amazing.

By the time we got back to Tesco second time around there were 3 trollies left in the trolly bay inside and about a million people buying stuff.

Glad we got it done, glad it’s out of the way.  For everything else, there’s Amazon.co.uk …