Happy birthday to me!

Every year is a practice in wishing, so here goes again:

• Weiss Schwarz KanteColle Starter deck, booster boxes and playmat
• Weiss Schwarz Attack on Titan Starter deck, booster boxes and playmat
• Netrunner:Android cards, especially the new Order and Chaos expansion
• Core rulebook for 13th Age, the new RPG from Jonathan Tweet

What I get will be far different from these, I know.

Actually, it will probably involve ducks.

Not real live waterfowl. But at some point in the past, I admitted that I liked ducks and thought those creatures were neat. Which, for various biological and behavioral reason, they totally are. But that's beside the point. For people near me that are contractually obligated to give me presents, ducks became the default answer.

Duck shirts. Duck figures. Duck pictures. Duck lint brushes.

And I know I'm not alone. I know other people trapped into always receiving butterflies or trains or bats because it's easy to remember and it makes the gift-giver feel good. (In many ways, the selection of gifts tells you more about the purchaser than about the recipient.) Maybe those other trapped people actually like getting that default category of gift. Maybe I'm the only one with this problem. I'm just trapped in a socially acceptable lie because one cannot speak bad about gifts. That action makes one an ungrateful wretch.

Why couldn't I have gotten tagged by LEGO bricks? "What should I get Tidwin this year?" "Oh, just get him something with LEGO bricks."

Trivia: one of the first toys manufactured by the LEGO company was a wooden duck. (Look it up if you don't believe me!)

Anyhow, here's to being another year older and another year wiser.

Good hunting!
~ Tidwin ~