Your "Psychotic Christmas Shopping Extravaganza of Doom" Quizo Update

It's Christmas week! And let me just say that it is about goddamn time. For, in addition to the holidays, Christmas week brings with it Christmas Quizo tonight, featuring an entire evening of holiday-themed questions and me giving out presents (I'm sure we all know by now what "presents" means).

I am a big fan of Christmas (check the website entry for last December 25 for more details on that) and the people around me are also big fans of Christmas because it is the time of year in which I act the most human. There are precious few times one can basically be guaranteed I will be in a good mood and so many of them are conditional - requiring a Chelsea win or a really good episode of Doctor Who or top set aces against two pair - that the people who have somewhat stupidly chosen to be friends with me enjoy it when the more insane aspects of my personality take a back seat and I act like a normal, sane, happy person for a week or two.

However, the "normal, sane, happy" part doesn't happen until one freakishly abnormal thing takes place: my annual Christmas shopping trip. The whole thing started out as a sort of quirky Christmas tradition, but as I got older and my obsessive-compulsive tendencies became, well, full-blown obsessions and compulsions, it became something much more insane.

The first year back in high school when I had a car at Christmas, I went to Willow Grove Mall the Sunday beforehand to do my Christmas shopping. Since even back then my gift-giving practices were a little overzealous I did this weird thing where I went around to different stores in the mall not buying anything, just making notes on my Christmas list about what might be good for the various people on my list. Once I had good lists for everyone I sat down in the food court and make final determinations on who was getting what, then went around getting everything. Yay for shopping.

The next year, by some weird calendar hoodoo, I ended up going shopping at Willow Grove once again on the Sunday before Christmas. In a VERY weird coincidence, and one that basically would turn my Christmas shopping into an OCD ordeal for the rest of my life, I actually ended up parking in the same space in the parking lot I had the year before. And, once again, I went around to various stores in the mall marking down possible gifts for people, even adding a couple stores this time, before buying anything.

The year after that I was sitting around on the Sunday before Christmas, just minding my own business, and I had the sudden thought that MY BRAIN WILL EXPLODE IF I DON'T GO TO WILLOW GROVE RIGHT FUCKING NOW! I zoomed the hell over there, and when I arrived saw that the space I had used the last two years was open and knew that I HAD to park there. Once I got inside I HAD to go to an even-larger number of stores than the previous year and not buy anything.

This, my friends, is how compulsions are born: your brain tells you that something completely irrational is absolutely necessary, and you agree.

Over the years this entire process has turned into a regimented set of rules for Christmas shopping, which cannot be deviated from lest a nervous breakdown ensue:

- It happens at Willow Grove Mall on the Sunday before Christmas Eve (thus obviating the need to shop on the 24th should Christmas fall on a Monday).
- The same parking spot must be utilized, way off to the side in the lot behind the Ross.
- A complete circuit of EVERY store in the mall will be undertaken while buying nothing, only making notes. This circuit will begin at the Limited (or whatever it is now) across from TGI Friday's, continue through the entire first floor, including department stores, and then move up to the next floor, where this circuit is repeated until the third floor has been covered in its entirety.
- The key to the "looking" part is so that every single gift possibility for every single person on the list is exhaustively researched, insuring that the eventual choice is the "perfect" gift. You cannot possibly have missed something if you look at every single shelf in the entire mall.
- After the note-taking circuit is complete, lunch is taken at the food court.
- When lunch is complete, the "buying" circuit begins, once again on the first floor, and then moving up to the third floor.
- If the buying circuit takes more than three hours - it often does - dinner is taken at TGI Fridays (an unfortunate if necessary choice). Oreo Madness will be ordered.
- Once the buying circuit is complete, the presents will be taken to the Fox Chase Cancer Center charity wrapping station to be professionally wrapped. The charity wrapping people will receive a donation equal to double the quoted price rounded up to the next multiple of ten dollars because it's charity, for fuck's sake.

This is how I have done my Christmas shopping for the last 14 years. On average it takes six to seven hours to complete. At its worst, the year I was working at the water company and making scads of money and buying presents for everyone I had ever met in my entire life, it took thirteen hours. I am not making this up. If you don't believe me you can ask Reg and Nick tonight. Over the years I have, in my generosity, decided to inflict my Christmas shopping insanity on various friends and they have been victims the last couple years (though no one has ever made it through the entire process). I actually do this shit.

At least I DID do it, until yesterday. This year was different because of my acquisition of the delicious service known as "Amazon Prime." If you aren't aware, this is a thing you can get from Amazon that gives you free two-day shipping on pretty much everything. I call it the "you'll never shop in a store again" deal, and I am an unabashed endorser of it. When you combine free two-day shipping with Amazon's price difference from retail (usually the 30-40% range) and throw in sales tax as the cherry on top, we're talking about a difference of a couple hundred dollars. That's too much money to do my shopping the old way.

"All right, brain," I said. "I don't like you and you sure as hell don't like me. But we need to think of some way to work this out."

"MUST DO SHOPPING AT WILLOW GROVE! MUST USE PARKING SPACE! MUST MAKE NOTE-TAKING LAP!" my brain said.

Lousy compulsive brain.

Eventually I hit on what I thought could be an important loophole: the key underpinning of this entire process is the buying of Christmas presents at Willow Grove Mall (and the parking space, but that's easy enough). As long as THAT necessity is fulfilled, I thought the rest of it might sort itself out. So, I thought, if all I have to do is actually spend the money at Willow Grove, then I...

This is why, if you happened to be at the food court at Willow Grove Mall around noon yesterday, you might have noticed a distressed-looking man sitting at a table in the food court, chugging can after can of Mountain Dew while pecking away at a laptop.

Yes. I brought my laptop to the mall and did my shopping on Amazon there. And it worked! My shopping got done and I didn't have a nervous breakdown.

As Dexter would say: the code is fulfilled.

See you tonight for Christmas Quizo, which should be a lot of fun. If I don't see you, enjoy your holidays.

JLK