Ho, Ho, Ho.....Frugal Xmas 2023

In a previous life I worked retail management at Fred Meyer and I was (unfortunately) in charge of my store's Seasonal Department. From just before Thanksgiving until New Year's Day my 45 hour work-week turned into 65+ hours a week. The holiday bullshit, especially dealing with Christmas Trees (both fresh cut and artificial) really took it's toll on me and these days I'm largely "Eff Christmas". I'm not so much Ebenezer Scrooge or Grinch, but maybe more like Margo Chester....

......and now you're looking up who that is. It's ok, this can wait.....

Thing is, I do like gift-giving. Receiving not as much, but I am a single guy in my 5th decade of life.....one could argue that everyday is Christmas for me. I wouldn't, but some could....

What I normally do is buy stuff throughout the year and save said stuff to give on Christmas. That's more for close friends and family at best. I do make gifts for most of my friends and co-workers and at my workplace I'm pretty much the only one who gives gifts....which is internally humorous to me since I'm not a fan of Christmas.....yes, I'm cognizant that so much of my life is oxymoronic.

See, I love tinkering and usually have a large handful of projects that I'm ignoring in order to watch TV or play video games.....but I do have fun with the projects when I get around to them. Being as I am a single guy there's only so much my cats and I need, so a lot of projects produce a surplus.....which means if I play my cards right I can have fun with the tinkering and then I have stuff to give away as needed.

Seeing as Christmas is now just over a week away I have a few projects/gifts to finish up. I did, however, get on top of my Gaming gifts this year and I can share what I did this year since my local group has already gotten everything and the two...ok three people I missed in the initial mailing have their packages enroute....

This year I picked up a few mystery dice bags from the Mystery Dice Goblins and I had some custom notepads made up with my version of the OSE PC Sheet. I do wish I had upgraded the backing, but overall I'm happy with the notepads. For the record, this was an edited copy of an "Official" OSE sheet that I had made just for my use, but I was given permission to share/distribute as long as I actually attached my name to it (which I thought was weird, but ok). The notepad is 5x7 inches with 25 front & back printed PC sheets. While it is small, there's more than enough room to handwrite a new PC, unless you like to use a fat sharpie or china pen.

Now my group plays B/X, so these sheets work well, and now I have more than enough left over (bought enough in bulk to get enough of a price break to justify the expense) that the cats and I will not need to print a new sheet off for a while...