One For Truth

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas... for Ninjanun!

I'm violating my blogging hiatus because I am a participant in a "Santa Blogger" circle (including Out of Fellowship, Not My Will, Outchurched, Steve from Stupid Church People, Charles Grasty, Sofyst, and Ninjanun) who have all received assignments to select a gift under $25 for their secret Santa blogger. The rules of the game are:

1. Read the blog of the person you're to choose a gift for
2. Select a gift $25 or under for that person that you think best suits them based upon what you've learned of them by reading their blog (you will not be buying and shipping the gift; you're just picking it out)
3. By Wednesday, December 14th, post a picture of the gift and write a post about why you chose that gift and send an email to your recipient with a link back to your blog
4. By Christmas Eve, December 24th, buy the gift that was chosen for you and write a post about it, and send a link via email back to the person who chose the gift. Ideally, include a picture of the gift. This post will be your thank-you note.

This morning, I wrote down the names of the participants on scraps of paper, folded them, and put them in a measuring cup. Mother Zeke, my mom, pulled out one name at a time, and that name was assigned one by one to the bloggers on the list.

I was pleased when she drew Ninjanun for my assignment, because she not only hosts one of my favorite blogs, but she and her husband the Pete are becoming fast online friends. It's not unusual these days for the Nun and I to have looping, hilarious, and occasionally profound IM conversations deep into the night, and I've added her and the Pete to those lists of people whom I must meet in person before I split this planet.

To be a faithful Santa Blogger you need to be thoroughly acquainted with your giftee's blog, so I took some downtime today to kick my feet up and dig into the Nun's site. She's been at it a year longer than I have, and it shows.

You never know quite what you're going to get from the Nun, but it will end up being a little bit of everything: family life, marriage, faith, humor, home & garden, travel, politics, music and more. She invests a lot more soul and character into blogging than most of us lazier louts, and the more I read the more I dug this woman. She is one of a kind. And I think it's killer how much she loves the Pete (welcome to the lucky men club, Pete; I'm a charter member courtesy of Mrs. Zeke).

So, what to get the Nun? There's her love of home renovation and gardening... but I've learned it's bad form to buy people things for their homes unless you know exactly what they want. I extended that to the Nun's garden; too risky to guess what kind of seedlings that she might want, and garden tools are too pedestrian for gifts.

Courtesy of her blog we know she has an affinity for the J. Crew catalog, but the $25 limit doesn't fit her wish list. In fact, a $25 limit doesn't leave room for many gifts these days. Books and music are obvious choices, but a bit too generic for the Nun, I think. Something more personal and thoughtful are more the Nun's speed.

Truthfully, settling on a gift idea for my blogging friend wasn't difficult. I did what all smart guys should do: go for the pet. And what a pet Nun and the Pete have in Flip-Flop the tabby cat. So my first choice was a personalized frame featuring Flip-Flop with his "F'in Metal" appellation and a Christmas 2005 commemoration (my rendering to the left). Two problems: the frame sells for almost $30, which breaks the budget, and I feel fairly confident that the Nun would never choose that bland frame. So back to the drawing board.

Still enamored with the Flip-Flop/personalized gift choice, Plan B became a t-shirt for the Nun to wear:


Assuming the nice folks at ArtApart can get that image centered and between the lines of text (that font is Earthquake, and we won't make any insensitive comments about how fitting that is for the Flipster), we have a winner at $24.11 for the jersey version (which felt more Nun-like to me).

So Merry Christmas, Ninjanun. I hope this one is your best ever.

posted by Zeke @ 7:56 PM