Every year on this day, the traditional beginning of the Yuletide season in the US, I remind my readers that the real spirit of the season involves giving to others rather than literally fighting to get more for yourself. Children and whores are St. Nick’s two favorite groups of people; you can help the latter by donating to a sex worker charity such as SWOP Behind Bars, or you can help both by booking a session with a sex worker you know has kids. If you don’t know any, you can help by participating in my annual toy drive! Regular readers know how it works: from today until Tuesday, December 12th, I’m collecting donations with which to buy toys, which I then donate to Toys for Tots. Send your donation via PayPal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net, and please put “Toys for Tots” in the subject line so I’ll know it’s not a regular blog donation; I can also accept donations via Zelle if you prefer not to use PayPal. If you’re not hurting economically yourself, please consider donating (either to my drive or to one near you); rising inflation is taking a bite out of many people’s income, so there will be less money for toys this year. And while we adults can understand that, it can be heartbreaking for very young children to think Santa Claus has forgotten them or bypassed them because they were naughty. Please help if you can!
Posts Tagged ‘Presents’
Yuletide 2023
Posted in Holidays, Miscellaneous, tagged activism, games, holidays, Presents, Toys for Tots on November 24, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Diary #697
Posted in Diary, tagged holidays, imaginative fiction, Presents on November 7, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Though I love all the presents y’all send me, some of them just make more striking illustrations than others, which is why I’m featuring the Cthulhu chia pet rather than the assorted Halloween-themed placemats & table runner, or the complete set of The Dick Van Dyke Show, or the CD of Jean-Michel Jarre’s Oxymore, or the DVD of Tales That Witness Madness (an early ’70s horror anthology I’ve wanted to see since I first read about it in Famous Monsters of Filmland when I was a kid), or Black Sabbath (a Boris Karloff horror anthology which somehow scaped my notice until recently), or a collection of lesser Hammer films. Because even though all those things are awesome and I thank everyone who sent me gifts or cash for my birthday, a Cthulhu chia pet is just so absurd it would have been wrong of me to fail to show it to y’all.
Still Ahead
Posted in Diary, tagged Oklahoma, pragmatism, Presents, Washington (state) on November 3, 2023| Leave a Comment »
In the autumn of 2014, I asked my readers for help in buying a new car; I was moving to Seattle and there was no way the old farm truck I’d driven for years could be depended upon to go so far. Altogether, y’all raised about $3000, and I found a 2003 Hyundai for only $3300 because an insurance company had totaled it due to body damage from a severe hailstorm. That car took me hither and yon for almost a year, until in October 2015 a careless person came shooting across several lanes of traffic during a rainstorm and directly into my path. Fortunately, my car’s book value was $5000, so that’s what the insurance company paid me; even after spending $3000 on another used car, that left me $1700 ahead from where I had started (not counting tag fees and the like, because I think of those as operating expenses).
That burgundy 2000 Honda Accord was one of the best cars I ever owned, and when in May 2019 I was told the transmission was shot and would cost about twice what the car was worth to replace, I sold it on Craigslist as a “mechanic’s special” for $400 and bought another escort’s unwanted 2002 Saturn for $1000, which still left me with $1100 of the money my readers had given me in 2014. The Saturn carried me around dependably until September 12th of this year, when it was rear-ended on the highway and completely totaled. It took the insurance company a month to pay me a little over $2400 for it, then we had to find a suitable replacement for a similar amount of money, no easy feat nowadays when even older used cars are getting snatched up practically as soon as they’re posted online for sums the equivalent could never have commanded even 8 years ago (especially since I no longer live in Seattle and can’t tell most owners “I’ll be there in an hour”).
But Grace’s mojo has never failed me, though this time it was accompanied by far more grumbling than usual; on Wednesday I brought home this 1994 Honda Accord, which despite its age was a good deal: it was really clean, obviously garage-kept and babied, fully loaded, with everything working and sold to me by its original owner, practically the stereotypical “little old lady from Pasadena”, whose father had given it to her as a gift brand-new. So nine years after that original request for help, I’m still $1000 ahead on my car fund; it’s kind of amazing that not only have my loyal and generous readers kept me in reliable transportation for nearly a decade, but also with a good head start on repairing or replacing this one when it, too, succumbs to entropy or Fate. 
Diary #695
Posted in Diary, tagged comics, holidays, imaginative fiction, Presents on October 24, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Last week, I received a package from Amazon containing several birthday presents from my wishlist; they were sent by one of my especially-generous gentlemen, who never misses the opportunity to send me gifts at holidays or just because he saw something on the list which tickled him. I’ve been wanting to see the pictured one for a while because it’s the movie which inspired the creation of Batman’s arch-nemesis, The Joker. It’s not really a horror movie per se, but the one of the other two gifts, the definitely-a-horror-movie Vampyr, had a less-than-striking box, and the other, Vince Guaraldi’s soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas, isn’t seasonal. So if you’ve sometimes wondered how I choose which gift to illustrate when there are several, now you know. And if you want one of your gifts to adorn next week’s diary column, there are still three good seasonal choices on my wishlist and almost a week for Amazon to get them here!
Since phase 6 of the annex project is mostly Jae’s responsibility, I’m allowing her to decide what to concentrate on next; right now, it’s the bar atop the utility room. She’s put in some shelves in the back (facing Chekhov’s cottage) and asked me to build a counter running along the west side; you can see it here a little while after I finished sanding it. The center is going to be a display centered around a statue of Aphrodite, but since the roof isn’t really strong enough for a marble statue Jae asked me to find a resin one I liked. I really liked this modern take by Carlo Bronti, and a generous gentleman sent her to me just a few days after I added her to my wishlist; even though the area isn’t ready for her yet, letting her stay boxed up didn’t really feel right, so here she is overseeing the construction. I really can’t quite picture what Jae has in mind for the area, but I trust her skill and I’ll find out soon enough. And once it gets a bit warmer again, I’ll get out there to finish the paneling in the vestibule; you’ll probably see a picture of that later this month.
Annex 101
Posted in Diary, tagged Presents, Sunset on March 24, 2023| 1 Comment »
Thanks to a very generous gentleman, we now have a wood-burning stove for the atrium! According to the specifications, it should be more than enough to heat the area, which will mean no more shivery runs from the hot tub into the lower bathroom after a nice, relaxing soak; it will also help keep the cottages and upper bathroom warm next winter, and protect the pipes during cold weather since the well is in the utility room, fairly close to the stove. It should also help me save on electricity, since Sunset is 11 acres and the majority of that is trees; even just picking up fallen branches should provide plenty of fuel. Since it arrived less than a week before the end of winter, it won’t be of much help this year, but that’s OK; at least I’ll have plenty of time to get the chimney installed and all the other prep long before it starts getting chilly again around the end of September. Since it weighs about 150 kg, I reinforced the deck the same way I did under the shower pan, then we put down four concrete pavers and a marble slab Jae scored several years ago. She and Grace figured out what we needed, and since I’ve never owned a wood stove before I trusted them; it certainly is a nice looking unit, and I’m looking forward to getting it ready to at least test as soon as I can budget the rest of the stovepipe, fittings, etc.
Dimensions of Support
Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, tagged activism, blogging, Presents, psychology on March 16, 2023| Leave a Comment »
It’s always been difficult for me to ask for what I need, even from close friends; exactly why this should be the case in a person who has absolutely no problem speaking her mind in any other way is a conundrum I’ve never been able to adequately explain even to myself, much less anyone else. But it’s something my friends have long noticed and lovingly chided me for, to very little avail. Now, I’ve never had a problem asking for payment for services; the issue only arises when there’s no direct quid pro quo. That’s why appeals for financial support from my readers are always difficult for me to write, and always seem awkward to my eyes when I read them. So when several of y’all responded to last month’s “Inner Circle” by subscribing at my new $10 per week and $25 per week levels, it was both satisfying and validating on several levels. The more obvious one is, of course, the economic dimension; things have been a bit tight since autumn, and with tax time coming up (much more painfully than usual thanks to a 50% increase in my property taxes) it was quite a relief for more to come in just in time, not to mention helping soothe my anxiety about the rest of the year. But there’s another dimension, too; such a positive, concrete response to my request helps to quiet that part of my brain which generates formless, unidentifiable anxieties about asking, and thereby makes it less scary to do it again in the future. So to my new subscribers, thank you for supporting me in two very important ways. And to those who haven’t joined yet: won’t you please consider adding your contributions to the team of generous folks who make my work possible and my life just a little bit easier?
Diary #652
Posted in Diary, tagged holidays, Presents, Sunset on December 28, 2022| Leave a Comment »
We’ve got a certain routine on holidays; some friends who don’t have local family come out for the feast, and we eat, drink, and generally make merry. This time it rained all day on Christmas, but we were snug in the house and the atrium roof was wonderful; despite the torrential downpour, people were able to come and go between the main house and the cottages completely dry, and though the new bathroom is still incomplete the toilet is functional, the door works, and there’s light and a heater. If only the damned gas company had come to connect my new heater as they were supposed to do weeks ago, we wouldn’t even have been affected by the two long power outages (22nd-23rd and the morning of Boxing Day) at all, because the only major appliance the generator can’t handle is the electric water heater. Ah, well, it still wasn’t remotely annoying enough to ruin an otherwise lovely Christmas, and next year we should have most of the bugs worked out of our backup systems.
Diary #651
Posted in Diary, tagged disease, holidays, Presents on December 20, 2022| Leave a Comment »
It’s been a long time since I was as sick as I was last week; on the day my previous diary appeared, I was just finally feeling up to doing all my regular chores again, and my appetite didn’t fully return until a few days ago. It had me worried because on the last day of my toy drive I got a surge in donations that brought me to $1200, more than ever before, yet I wasn’t in shape to go shopping! Fortunately there’s a Target not far from the Olympia collection center, and I felt well enough Wednesday morning to make one last trip; my trunk was already full, and I topped off the back seat at Target before delivering everything to the collection center and returning home before dark. Since then, I’ve done a few small tasks on the new bathroom, but it’s so cold outside I’ve used my convalescence as an excuse to mostly just putter around inside, getting things cleaned up before the holiday. And in the long evenings, I’ve actually had time to do some pleasure-reading for the first time in I’m-ashamed-to-admit-how-long. Anyway, I’m looking forward to the holiday, and once again I want to thank all of my readers for your generosity, both on behalf of the kids and for the nerdy, thoughtful things y’all sent to me personally!
Last Chance for 2022!
Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged activism, holidays, Presents, Toys for Tots on December 12, 2022| Leave a Comment »
If you’ve been putting off donating to my toy drive this year, this is your wake-up call! TODAY is the last day for donations; the collection center only accepts them through the 17th (one week before Christmas Eve), and I need at least a few days to buy them and get them to Olympia before then (especially because it’s been unusually snowy already this month). Please help me to make this a merry Christmas for children who might otherwise have nothing; every $100 buys five to ten toys (like most things, they’re far more expensive than they used to be), so a successful drive brings joy to dozens of children. But I can’t do it alone; please help top off my toy-buying account for this final shopping trip this season!
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