I feel somewhat guilty when I don't spend Christmas gift certificates on something cool, like fancy new clothes or colorful hats, but I have been looking at that garbage can for months.

(I bought other things at Target too, but they're uniformly useful rather than fun.)

Whence the dough? At our cousins' gift exchange, which will be duplicated with the other side of the family this coming weekend, you can either take an item from the pool or steal an item that has already been opened. I was the first to open, and have never before shouted "I'm number one!" with such sorrow, but I rightly figured that no one would steal what was obviously a gift certificate. And that's just what I wanted.

The only problem with the exchange is that every year we get into an argument over whether or not you can steal from someone else after you've been stolen from, and every year the faction that supports continued stealing — despite the risk of an infinite three- or four-person loop — wins out over the faction that believes you should have to open a new present.

However, I think the former faction finally convinced me this year: their rules seem to lead to a better distribution of presents.

From my gramma on that side, I also ended up with How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food. When I was in Chicago, I used Amazon's "Search Inside This Book" function on that cookbook so many times that the site eventually locked me out. Having access to the entire text is strangely thrilling.