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Erica and I didn’t go crazy on gifts for each other this year, but we did get each other a few little things. My biggest present to her was a wad of cash that she could take to a shopping mall in hopes of exchanging it for articles of clothing. Preferably some she could wear at her new job. On the saturday after Christmas we did just that, heading over to the Providence Place Mall in Providence, Rhode Island for some good ole’ American consumerism.

Though I love doing just about anything with Erica, shopping can be a pretty boring endeavor. To pass the time I pulled out the iPhone and snapped a few pictures.

Here I am at Express…or was it Lucky…or was it Gap…or was it Limited…or was it Ann Taylor…or was it Ann Taylor Loft? You get the point. This was the beginning of the trip, so I was in decent spirits. In fact, right after this picture was taken I went looking for a Dunkin Donuts to grab an ice coffee.

Found the Dunkin! (Yeah, there’s always a line for a DD in New England). Judging from this picture I was shaking violently from caffeiene withdrawal.

$130 for a pair of Lucky Jeans? I don’t think so. I tried them on, but they looked awful. And for the record, they were on sale for half-price. $65 is a bit more respectable, but like I said, they looked ridiculous.

Now this was much better. Got me some black…yes, black…jeans at the GAP on sale for $18.99.I’m a sucker for the clearance rack. (Not sure what face that is I’m making…I was going for “happy” and wound up with “I’m fake-surprised!”)

Erica couldn’t walk past this hideous leopard number at the GUESS store without modeling it for me. Also, did you know that all GUESS employees must wear white leather high-heeled boots at all times? Even when they sleep. May or may not be true.

This is what I look like sitting patiently at the first shoe store we stopped at.

This is what I look like when I lose track of how many shoe stores we’ve been to.

And speaking of making angry faces…this was Erica at an almost all-time high level of annoyance at the end of our shopping trip. She wanted to try on some watches at Macy’s and we stood at the counter for over 15 minutes before we got any service. The lone sales rep was busy gabbing away with a customer, refusing to wait on us. When we finally had a woman come over to assist us, she gave us an attitude. So we just left. The End.

What are your thoughts on the mall? Love it? Hate it? I actually enjoy going, but once I’m ready to leave…get me out of there ASAP.

Hope your next trip to the mall is a successful one, however you define it.

Thoughts I had while watching “The Miracle of Christmas” at the Sight and Sound Theater last week…

…Do you think angels need their wings to fly or are they just ornamental? I’ve always thought they were just ornamental. In fact, I don’t even picture them moving when they fly. They just kind of sit there, not doing anything except ruining the aerodynamics of the sleek angel’s bodies. I think wings are like the angelic version of the appendix, only they don’t kill you if they rupture.

…How far is it from Bethlehem to Nazareth? Would it be wrong of me to pull out my iPhone and Google that right now? I don’t think so…I’d be enlightening myself, and wisdom is Godly…Hm, 80 miles, that’s a long walk…Do you think God picked that moment in history to send Jesus into the world because cars weren’t invented yet? Otherwise the 80-mile trek wouldn’t have been so impressive. Joseph and Mary could have done that in about an hour in a Honda Pilot if the traffic wasn’t too bad.

…then again, maybe the incarnation had to happen when it did, because the internet hadn’t been invented yet. If it had been, they wouldn’t have needed to travel to their home town to get the census done. Herod could have checked out the demographics of his country on Wikipedia between Google searches for “how to wipe out all the young males in your country” and “hot concubines”. I’m glad God thought of all that before deciding when to interrupt history with the virgin birth.

…Are frankincense and myrrh just spices? Do they even smell good? What if the combination of the two smells was awful, like combining the wonderful smell of cinnamon with the pleasant smell of honeydew melon. Great fragrances on their own, but together they smell like sadness. What if Mary and Joseph really liked the one smell and not the other, do you think they carried the frankincense home with them but re-gifted the myrrh to the innkeeper?

…And what did Mary and Joseph do with all that gold? Since the gifts were for Jesus, did they put it away for him when he turned 18 or did they spend it all on themselves? And if they did spend it all on themselves, did they do it with one big ticket item like a new carpenter’s shop or a couple cattle? Or did they just take out a few gold pieces here and there thinking they’d pay it all back at some point like Harry and Lloyd with their suitcase full of I.O.U.s in Dumb and Dumber?

…And if they did spend all of the gold, did they feel bad about it? Did they ask for forgiveness once he starting doing miracles? I’m thinking at one point if Joseph said to a 12-year old Jesus, “will you please pick up your room?”, Jesus might have said back, “How about I do it when you pay back the 500 pieces of gold the wise man brought me when i was born?” Then there would have been a long silence, and then Jesus would have said, I’m just kidding dad! I love you!” (you see kids, you CAN talk back to your parents without it being a sin! Bryan said so…)

…How about the star that the Shepherds saw in the East? Was that a real star that God turned up the volume on so it would burn brighter just so they would notice it? Or was it actually a holographic image of a star, and not an actual star? (I know holograms hadn’t been invented yet, but God could have traveled in time and grabbed the technology and brought it back with him for this one time). I mean, God could have done anything he wanted right? Maybe just for fun he created a giant light-bright peg and stuck it in the sky and made it glow like a huge star. Who didn’t love Light-Bright?

…I wonder how many other people saw the star (aka, Giant Light Bright Peg) and had no idea what it was. I bet there was a bunch of people who saw it and thought it was aliens from outer space. You’ve gotta think that even back then there were a few wackos who believed there was life on other planets. Nazareth was probably their version of Area 51. Remember that quote from the Bible about “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” I’m guessing that was a reference to aliens. You see, you’re not going to get that kind of biblical insight out a Matthew Henry Commentary, I’ll tell you that right now.

…What do you think would have happened if Joseph, between gags from the smell of the cow crap, had said to Mary while she was pushing baby Jesus out, “Isn’t this so cool, honey! I bet some day people all over the world put out little statues of us and the animals with fake straw to celebrate this fantastic moment! The only way this event could be better is if you weren’t feeling any pain, but that possibility won’t exist until epidurals are invented in about nineteen hundred and forty-two years!” She probably would have ripped his arm off and sunk her teeth into it to deal with the pain like they used to do with pieces of wood during civil war amputations. Mary was fierce like that.

What about you..do Christmas plays hold your attention or do they make you wish you had an iPhone to play with?

Our tree is up! We’ve gone with the fake tree for a few years now. Erica says she hates it, but deep down she knows she loves the lack of a mess and the easy take down and storage. Not to mention that we don’t have to spend $50-$100 a year on a tree.

What’s that? You want that authentic pine smell? That’s why they make Pine-sol. Put on a little in the morning instead of perfume or cologne and you’ll get that Christmas tree smell all day.

What about you? Real tree or Fake Tree? You can leave your reasons in the comments, but more importantly, I’ve got a poll going on in the sidebar over there. If you’re reading this in a feed reader, click over to the blog and vote. It’s wicked important.

Let your voice be heard! Let’s show em once and for all that fake trees are the only way to go!