Legos, bricks, and Star Wars exhibits.

[mrissa]

My birthday is one week from today. In case you missed the signs and omens: one week. Exactly seven days. And then I will be thirty. I am doing a few of my crazy birthdayish things, like making sure we have the stuff in the house for my mom's and my baking projects, and checking my Amazon list with a magazine held up over half the screen so that I can see how many things have been bought off my list without seeing what. (I consider this the digital equivalent of shaking one's wrapped presents to see if they make a noise like Legos. Or, y'know, something else. But mostly it was the "is this a Lego pack or not" ritual, although if there was a pleasing slide and heavy thump, it might be a book wrapped in a shirt box to be sneaky, which was a good sign, especially as that usually meant it was either a big thick book or more than one paperback.)

(I remember for my mom's fortieth birthday my dad wrapped a brick with plane tickets to go see her favorite cousins taped to it. When we handed her the box and asked what she thought it was, she said, "Uff da, it feels like a brick!" And it was. There's no fooling us! We are experienced present-shakers.)

The last few days have featured pretty bad vertigo-related nausea off and on. Whee. I am not only bored of how bad it's been but bored of talking about how bored I am of it, so...yah. Other stuff, posthaste. markgritter and I are taking Robin and Lillian (and their dad!) to the Science Museum's special effects/Star Wars exhibit anyway. We will get me a wheelchair, and I will sit outside the OmniMax theater with a book while they watch the movie, since I am not able to watch regular movie theater screens, much less IMax shows that are intended to make people vertiginous. I am determined to have a good time, and I think the others are as well. porphyrin and timprov told us to have fun in their absence, and I'd hate to disappoint them.

Comments

Brick

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

A brick has an umistakable size and weight.

B

Re: Brick

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Apparently even when it's in a box with lots of packing materials.

Re: Brick

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

In case it matters in the future, I am unlikely to use a phrase like "there's no fooling us!" or "how very clever we are!" in complete seriousness.

[laurel]

I'd be interested in hearing how the procuring of and using of the wheelchair goes for the Star Wars exhibit 'cause we'd planned to go with my 'rents sometime and now it looks like that'd be tricky for my Dad unless we rent a chair. Sigh.

mrsmodew didn't at all like the movie accompanying the exhibit FWIW, so perhaps you won't be missing much on that score.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My great-aunt and -uncle liked the movie quite a bit. So it sounds as though opinion is mixed on that sort of thing.

[laurel]

I suspect it may have to do with expectations re what kind of movie it is, etc. And mileage varies, of course.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

Where would one find this alleged Amazon wish list, were one inclined to take a look at it? Purely to gather supplementary evidence on the tastes of Mrissas, you understand, and not for nefarious purposes. Well, probably not for nefarious purposes. Mwahaha.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It is under my legal name, which is a name one can deduce, if one does not know it, by examining the name of my lawfully wedded spousal unit, which he has sneakily used for a livejournal handle.

(Why it feels less tacky to say that than to just link to the damn thing, I couldn't say.)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

My famly has a standing tradition of bizarre wrapping schemes designed to foil experienced present-shakers. My brother has given me a t-shirt stuffed into a light-bulb box (I had to rip the box apart to get it out again) and a necklace slid open into a rolled-up tube of newspaper; I have given him a set of kitchen jars stacked vertically and taped together before wrapping; I once gave my mother three books set cross-wise atop each other and tied together with string (that was a pain to wrap). Plus we have a pyramind-shaped box that is pretty enough to not need wrapping (thank god) and useful for disguising any small object.

I don't remember the wrapping for the replica ancient Taiwanese bronze sword my father gave me, but I do remember picking it up and thinking it was really heavy and long and what the hell was it, a sword?

And now I'm thinking it's a very great pity that your family and mine will never go head-to-head in present-wrapping. <g>

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I saw a large-ish silver hinged box in the shape of a fortune cookie once. It was about the size of my palm. And I remember thinking it was a shame that I was the only one who usually got things that would fit in it, because it would be a fun thing to pass around with gifts in. Probably I should have bought it anyway, and contrived things that might go in it.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

oooo -- that could have been fun.

On the other hand, it feels like cheating every time I use the pyramid box. I'm using a ready-made disguise, instead of coming up with my own.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. This is one of the reasons I'm not keen on gift bags.

(And when I say I'm not keen on gift bags, what I mean is that I'm not keen on using gift bags; receiving gift bags is another matter.)

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

We have a friend who every so often at random (so that people aren't expecting it) wraps birthday gifts in the number of layers of paper of the age the person is turning.

This year for my wife: twenty-nine. Every one a distinctly different, lovely, and color-coordinated paper-- yes, we are the kind of people who remove wrapping paper without tearing it, so it was like thirty presents in one.

It could've been anything under all that. It shrank about a foot and a half upon opening.

We have told her very strictly that she is never ever to do this for any birthday over forty.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Wow. I am a rip-and-tear girl, when it comes to wrapping paper, so that would have been halfway wasted on me. Still, astonishing.

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

Gah. Fixing b0rked code.
Lego, huh?
How about this (http://community.livejournal.com/girlgenius_lab/137101.html)?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That has much nift.

[porphyrin.livejournal.com]

do not shake your present from us.!j you may shake your present from roo and lil.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Your present won't be sitting around the house, though. You will hand it to me and then I will open it. Right?

In any case, I will try to remember with the not shaking. And now I am (as you quite intended!) desperately curious.