Christmas Shopping

I haven't broken down and started yet. The boys have a rather modest list this year. For Will:


*** A Wii (I've warned him, not much chance of finding one)
*** Contact lenses
*** Lava lamp
*** Afro pic


For John:


*** Stephen King book
*** One video game


Interesting to have kids who don't seem to regard Christmas as the end-all, be-all consumer orgy that most folks seem to do. I'm generally of a mind with Jeff Opdyke on this one:


Every year, I complain about the proliferation of gift giving among adults around the holidays. I earn a decent salary, and if there's something I really want, I can go buy it for myself. I see no need for others to buy stuff for me, or for me to buy stuff that others can purchase for themselves.

Kids are different. This is their time of year. I know from my own childhood just how much fun it is tearing into that wrapping paper on Christmas morning to find the cool toys you circled in the Sears catalog way back in November, or included on the list you dispatched to the North Pole.


Now, as a parent, I get that same thrill watching my kids' excitement


Looking forward to at least one Christmas movie, though. Glad to see someone made Charlie Wilson's War into a movie. Charlie was batshit, but he was my grandmother's favorite, and damn near only, congressman for years and years and years.


So, back to the kids and Christmas. Maybe I'll send them to Harvard. I just can't see that this is a bad thing at all -- although I've tried very hard to find the down side:


Harvard to Aid Students High in Middle Class
By SARA RIMER and ALAN FINDER
Published: December 11, 2007

BOSTON, Dec. 10 — Harvard University announced on Monday that it would significantly increase the financial aid it offered to middle-class and upper-middle-class students, seeking to allay concerns that elite colleges are becoming too expensive for even relatively well-off families.

The move, to go into effect in the next school year, appears to make Harvard’s aid to students with household incomes from $120,000 to $180,000 the most generous of any of the country’s prestigious private universities. Harvard will generally charge such students 10 percent of their family household income per year, substantially subsidizing the annual cost of more than $45,600.

Officials said the policy would cut costs by a third to 50 percent for many students and make the real costs of attending Harvard comparable to those at major state universities.

They said the initiative would increase financial aid spending by the university to $120 million annually from $98 million. A little more than half of Harvard undergraduates get some form of aid, including many from families earning $120,000 or more.


Of course, there would be the small issue of grades, etc. (although Will made the honor roll again, and has been toting around "War and Peace" while working on the school play and the local SADD chapter. So maybe there's hope there).


Caramba. Shoulder feels like it's been hit with a ball-peen hammer this morning. Wah. Poor me.