White Elephant Bullseye

I went like a lamb to the slaughter.

Saturday Mark and Rachel hosted a Christmas party. I thoroughly enjoyed the party, food (Rachel is an accomplished practitioner of the culinary arts - the title of her blog, Kitchen Addiction, makes this perfectly clear), people, conversation and the white elephant gift exchange, even though I suspect it was all a setup to make sure I received this:

(A LoToJa water bottle, hanger [which I made fun of here], and window sticker.)


If you're new to this blog you may be unaware of my lampooning of LoToJa (a 200 mile road race/ride from Logan, Utah to Jackson Hole, Wyoming). Here's my LoToJa anthology: No Transfers For You, LoToJa Owns The Road, Transfer Clamp-Down, LoToJa Hangups. Because I dared criticize the hallowed LoToJa, I've been branded the anti-LoToJa-ite (or other such appellations). So there's the history, now back to the party.

Before the gift exchange Mark announced they do it a bit differently - when it's your turn you give a gift, an unopened one or steal an opened one from another guest, to the person of your choosing. Another guest had picked Mark's LoToJa goodie box and given it to Aaron, but when it was Mark's turn he re-gifted it to me.

It was a funny moment since many of the guests know of my thing with LoToJa. And I'm sure when Mark wrapped up those LoToJa items he knew exactly who he wanted to receive them. But how deep does this go? I suspect Mark setup (made up?) the re-gifting rules to enable his intended goal. And did he give himself a high number to assure I got the goods? Was the dinner just a rouse to legitimize the white elephant gifts? Were all the other invitees in on this? I know I was had, but how had was I? What, me paranoid?

Credit must be given and I say to Mark, well played my friend.

I did get a little payback as I targeted Mark with my gift of a 1980s home entertainment package consisting of a VHS player (broken, of course), Jiffy Pop, and an ugly basket loaded with a fine selection of VHS movies (some from our own dwindling collection, others from DI). One locally produced movie, The Buttercream Gang (really, it was at IMDB?), featured a girl Mark dated - how's that for Karma, fate or something?

dug got hit with some collateral damage of the unusual rules.

My wife scored this sweet bike pad. Check out that cavernous "cutout" and the beyond-generous amount of padding. I think we can call this a grandma pad.



Back to the LoToJa goodies - what to do with them? I won't ever be able to put the bottle on my bikes, I'll probably give it to one of the kids. The hanger, uh, I guess I'll use it - stuffed in a closet is fine with me. But the sticker is a puzzler. I certainly will not put it on my car unaltered. I could simply stick it upside-down. Perhaps I could modify it somehow. I'm open to ideas.