Personal Ramblings: My Christmas (Lots of Bruins stuff!) and Other Random Thoughts

14th Christmas with Cammi,
who will always be  the best
Christmas present
I have ever received!

My parents are extremely generous, loving, and amazing in ways I can't even describe! I am so lucky to have my family, and ridiculously lucky every year on Christmas when they shower me and my siblings and each other with tons of perfect gifts. This year was the first year it was just me and my parents without any other siblings or family in town. I made out pretty awesome.

I got just about everything I asked for (which consisted of "Bruins tickets" and "Peverley jersey") plus an iPhone which was a huge surprise and something I am so psyched to have!!!

I like to keep a list each year of what I got, for the sake of record keeping, and also to reflect on how wonderful Christmas is every year and how lucky I am to have the family I have. Feel free to use the comment boxes, by the way! You can answer questions such as: Did you get anything good for Christmas? What would you buy with an Amazon gift card? And how fucking weird is getting a misspelled player name on a jersey/what would you do about it? 

Looks perfect from the front. Sadly, not the back.

• Bruins Tickets
• Jan 10 v Jets
• Feb 14 v Rangers
• March 8 v Sabres



Calendar, book, sign.



Hoodie, gray long-sleeve shirt,
yellow "vintage" sweater,
2 pair PJs, tank top

• April 9 v Sabres (home closer)
• My dad knows me so well; he will pay the extra so my balcony seats are in the first few rows cause it's just as good as loge that way...and as usual, we got loge seats for "Shirts off our Backs" night!
• Rich Peverley jersey
• with Peverly spelled wrong...something that is kind of funny but also what the fuck? and also, investigating the circumstances that caused this, i hate e-bay and will probably rant about it later.
• Full 60+ To History
• Bruins 2012 Wall Calendar
• For once every player on the calendar is actually a Bruin still! They must have made some tough choices, as they put Kelly on but not Peverley, and Campbell but not Thornton...And no Tuukka.
• a sign that says "you are in the home of a loyal Bruin fan, cheer accordingly or shut up" (see pictures on right)
• Bruins PJs (2 pairs), tank top, gray long-sleeve shirt
• Bruins hoodie
• Bruins top/sweater kind of thing, "vintage" style
• Gray shirt that says "LOVE" where the O is a heart with spokes like the spoked B
• Several articles of goldish/yellow shirts and tank tops to match; Lots of bras and undergarments
• 2 really cute sweaters/blazers that may or may not need to be returned for being too small
• $25 to Target; $50 to Amazon
• Electric Toothbrush
• New specialized heating pads, cold packs, and eye pillowcase to sooth headaches
• Two history books from Mental Floss
• "History of the United States"
• "History of the World"
• Book, "Inception & Philosophy: because it's never just a dream"
• New winter jacket (finally!). It's black and kinda puffy, really comfy.
• A pair of PJ pants with dachshunds on them (tag said "from Cammi")
• Best surprise gift ever: a new iPhone!!!!!!! woohoo!!! Along with several accessories that go along with it...so psyched! 
• I guess this happened because: My mom has a cell phone but doesn't use it much , so when she became eligible for an upgrade this month, my dad worked out a deal with the provider to upgrade her phone to an iPhone and then switch it to my phone...so I'm glad that he didn't just drop like $900 on a new phone flat out. Fortune of good timing, sharing a family plan, and my moms technological illiteracy 
• Twizzlers and Tea (stocking items)
• (Later on when my sister came over) very comfortable blue moccasins from LL bean; a hand-me-down Bruins Santa hat!

And now I have thoughts...
Christmas is already come and gone and it doesn't really feel like it was here at all...so I must further think about the awesome presents I got! I am so excited for the Bruins games! My dad chose well. He is great about making sure that even if the seats are in the corner, at least I'm in the first few rows in the balcony. And for the season closer, "Shirts Off Our Backs" game (which I have attended about 10 times in 13 years), he got me loge seats, as usual, because they throw stuff into the audience after the game. They also select fans to receive the jerseys, and one of these years I am going to win something at that game.

The game in February is the closest home game to my birthday (February 16). They usually never play at home on my birthday for some reason, and don't play at all during my birthday in Olympic years. The games are spaced out really well - 1 game for the remaining 4 months of the season. The January game against the Jets will be great because I love to see Kiki and Stu, and I will be wearing a Peverley jersey in what is either funny cause of the trade or funny cause Peverley is spelled wrong.

The missing E :(

The misspelling of Peverley on the jersey was really shocking. I assumed my mom made an error in ordering it because it required special customization since they don't make jerseys for anyone who isn't Thomas, Bergeron, Lucic, Seguin, or Chara (actually they make a lot of Krejci, Thornton, Marchand, Horton, and Rask jerseys too...but anyway). I assumed she requested Peverley #49 and forgot the last e. But upon further investigation, the person responsible may or may not fix the problem accordingly - they haven't been contacted yet but based on my thorough research of them, I don't expect they will be too cooperative.

I am happy to keep the misspelled jersey, and will accept the jersey foul that inevitably will be bestowed upon me whenever I wear the jersey. I was just really, really, really happy and excited and surprised when I opened the box and inside was a Peverley jersey (because she forgot to order it in time from the NHL shop, which is why we went to e-bay...). I was really happy, and sharing that with my parents is most important. Second most important is that, missing 'e' or not (heh tumblr add-on reference), I am proud to rock my newest collection to Bruins jerseys and express my appreciation and support of Peverley! (Maybe now on I'll just call him Peverly and see if it catches on?)

I love adding to my jersey collection because it is part of the bigger scheme - my sickness and obsession with collecting all Bruins things possible. Although a former Bruins jersey I owned for several years - Sergei Samsonov jersey in the "Pooh bear" alternate jerseys - was bartered in exchange for tickets to a playoff game two years ago with excellent seats (and an awesome 2-1 win over Buffalo!), I have my Bergeron home jersey, Thomas 3rd jersey (signed), Savard home jersey (signed), and an array of plain, generic jerseys or practice jerseys. (Also missing from my large-scale jersey collecting is the Brian Rolston Team USA jersey I got for my birthday about 10 years ago when he was named to the US Olympic Team and was kicking ass as a Bruin. The cause for the disappearance of that jersey is a crime that has yet to be solved, and likely never will be solved.)

If I hadn't spent so much time collecting shitty jerseys of random teams when I was younger, I might have a more extensive Bruins jersey collection today. Instead, I have a Red Wings Fedorov jersey, and plain jerseys from old logos of the Penguins, Sharks, and Avalanche. But I digress...

Listed at $44.95

Listed at $17.95

What would you buy with an Amazon gift card?
One thing I mentioned to my mom before Christmas was the new Bruins monopoly. Since I didn't get it for Christmas, I was considering spending most of my Amazon gift card on it. I'm not sure though, because with Amazon gift cards, I am never sure. There is too much available to make a concrete decision when I already have trouble making simple decisions as it is!

I have a very old version of NHL monopoly that I have gotten lots of use out of in the 10-15 years that I have had it. I also see Bruins Yahtzee and it looks so pretty and Bruins colored...but I don't see how it could really tie hockey into it aside from the images the way the monopoly game does, or even the NHL scrabble game I have!

Otherwise I don't have any good leads on ideas for Amazon gift card spending. Last year I bought a pair of cheap yellow sunglasses that I like, so that was okay, but I got yellow tights that I have not once worn, and some other cheap accessory that ended up being pretty useless. I can never decide if I should buy lots of little things or one generally big thing. I think about getting DVDs or TV shows on DVD and can't even begin to think about deciding...

Well, I think that's enough Christmas talk and further digression from original topic for tonight/today. Later today I get to activate my iPhone, so I am very excited about playing with that. Bruin don't play till Wednesday, which feels like an eternity. Sometimes it baffles me how they are always at least one or two games behind the majority of the league and their schedule never seems to make up for it. I hope it. Otherwise, life is pretty boring except for New Years Eve, in which I'm going to Long Island to see the Edmonton Oilers at the New York Islanders. Then I start classes on the 9th, and a Bruins game on the 10th!! I can hardly wait until then. As for classes, I definitely think I need to downgrade one of the two upper level courses I am taking granted how much I had trouble adapting to the stress of just one class last semester...I put in so much time, energy, research, thought, and stress only to end up with papers and results I feel aren't even half as adequate as they should be after the time I put in them. The 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' literary analysis I did for a friend and worked really hard on last week did get like a 96 total on it, which made me happy!

I JUST thought to check to see if my final grade was posted from US History II yet, and it was! And I got a 100 on the final paper, and a 90% in the class!! Way better than I thought (I did awful on the quizzes and tests). My teacher was pretty lenient, and I hope I don't go from 'easy' teacher in this past class to difficult ones coming up in January. I am taking 'Ancient History of Rome and Greece' (which requires reading thoroughly things like Homer's writings that I normally just understand as concepts learned from secondary sources...) and high expectations for writing, which will also be present in my other class, English Comp II. It's a requirement, but I did well in English Comp I way back when in 2007 when I started my first year at the community college. However, I always hate the reading and analyzing of that class because the papers require so much work and time, I hate having my attention pulled in every which way. This class will include traditional English class topics, and the writing portion will focus on very thoroughly developed research and writing for argumentative papers. I have already decided I'll probably write about something hockey-related since I did that the first time I took English Comp and it was easy and fun, and I got a great grade (my teacher actually kept it to use as examples for future classes).

To downgrade a class would mean I'd probably drop the History one. I want to get my requirements out of the way so I can shape my classes in the last year of my studies around solely history classes to finish my degree. Although, right now, finishing the next 8-week course will be a lesson in keeping my sanity...or learning how to deal with stress. Who knows...