My Christmas & the Science of Wrapping

Happy Christmas Eve Day! I don’t know about you, but today and tomorrow don’t affect me much because we already celebrated Christmas over the weekend.

Before I go into the details of the festivities, here’s a little recap of today’s sweat session.

Workout

Ran 14 miles in 2:12:17 for a pace of 9:26. The temperature stayed around 27 degrees the whole time, so that was a bit FREEZING COLD, but it’s all good. I survived.

I’m trying to decide between hot chocolate or a spinach smoothie for recovery at the moment. Hot chocolate would make my body happier because I’m still quite cold, but a spinach smoothie will probably win because I’ve been eating like crap lately. Delicious holiday crap, but crap nonethless.

And now onto…

Christmas!

Friday night the sister and bro-in-law came to my dad’s house to do our Christmas before we started traveling to the grandparents’. Twas a good time sitting in front of the “fireplace” and opening gifts and chillaxing.

(Fireside Reflections for the win! I got it at Target for a dollar a few years ago, and it continues to add to the cozy feel of home every Christmas when I bust it out. / I find it amusing.)

Saturday morning we traveled to my dad’s parents’ house to eat good food and spend some quality time with each other.

Sunday was spent at my cousin’s house with my mom’s side of the family. It was beyond amazing to spend time with them all. FYI: I have the best family in the history of the world.

I enjoyed a festive-looking raspberry Italian soda, goat cheese two ways, and much, much more that isn’t pictured because I fail at taking an adequate number of pictures. (I also made the Cranberry Salsa for yet another festive snack.)

(Recipe for the bottom right goat cheese variation to come tomorrow.)

And now for the technical part of this post.

The Science of Wrapping

I like to wrap my gifts crappily and strangely. My motivation to do it this way was always laziness and the need to be different. Well, apparently I was doing myself a favor by keeping people’s expectations at an appropriately lower level.

According to a study by a professor at Yale University’s Center for Customer Insights, nicely wrapped gifts raise people’s expectations of the actual gift. When you don’t wrap gifts or don’t do it very well, people’s expectations aren’t as high, which lowers the chances of disappointment.

I really only wrap gifts poorly for my father and siblings because I don’t care about bad gift appearances. More effort is put into real people’s gifts. That’s right, my immediate family isn’t real to me. They’re my family and know the extent of my weirdness. Therefore, they get unicorns, and everyone else gets Christmas-themed wrapping.

Bring on future low expectations!

Now that we all have an excuse to spend no more than 10 seconds wrapping a gift, I will bid you adieu. I’m about to start making some sweets to give as a gift, and later, I plan to watch A Christmas Story from start to finish. Apparently it begins at 7pm tonight. Mwahahaha. So excited.

ALSO!!! You MUST check out this website: http://www.noradsanta.org/en/track.html. It’s a Santa tracking system. I think it’s AWESOME, and you should too. At this moment in time, he was last spotted in New Delhi, India and is headed for Kathmandu, Nepal in 1 minute. Best website EVER.

Did you use the weekend to celebrate Christmas? Or is the best yet to come?

Are you a wrapping perfectionist?

I try to do it well, but at a certain point, I just have to accept my lack of skill and hope the recipient can as well.

Do you make sure to watch A Christmas Story since every year it’s on for 24 hours?

My bro-in-law, John, hates it apparently, but it’s one of my favorites. Bring it on TBS!!