I Suck At Donating

friday night, karen and i hung out with our friends (cass, ellen, marc, kelley, garv, and leeann). we gathered at cass and ellen's to finish exchanging birthday presents as some of the presents to be exchanged did not arrive before our dinner outing at vinny t's in dedham. (for anyone curious, i got veronica mars season 3... yay!)

in addition to exchanging the birthday presents, the eight of us were to choose a worthy cause to donate to this year. this actually was the first year that all of us were going to make a donation as a group.

i am not sure about when we started doing this... but in the past, rather than getting a present for each and every person in our circle of friends, we decided to have a secret santa. that way, each of us would only have to get one present for one other person. the present would generally be a nicer present as well because the secret santa would only have to focus on getting presents for that one person rather than getting presents for multiple people. the secret santa proved to be more cost-efffective way of exchanging presents among my circle of friends... and i think people generally enjoyed it.

over the years, some other friends participated in the secret santa (some other friends didn't). the core, however, always remained the same. the secret santa was a good tool that allowed karen and i to hang out with our friends and watch as they enjoy the holiday season.

this year... for 2008... we decided to mix things up a little. i think marc proposed the original idea of donating to a worthy cause because he already had too much stuff and didn't need any more... stuff. naturally, all of us figured we'd give it a try.

for me, i was somewhat glad that marc proposed the idea to forgo the secret santa in favor of making a donation this year. having lost my son (braden) a little over four months ago, i really was not in the holiday spirit to receive gifts. don't get me wrong. i am thankful to have received presents from all my friends and family. i was just a little lackluster this holiday season (and if i appeared so, i do apologize). i will use the common phrase used after getting dumped: "it's not you, it's me."

needless to say, everyone was on board for donating. unfortunately, i suck at donating. technically, all of us suck at donating because we forgot to make the donation on friday. cass and ellen were looking into having their employers make a matching contribution with our donation. so, we never really chose a specific cause to donate to. but, it's still in the works.

plus, we were somewhat distracted by the game "apples to apples"... takeout from "the schoolhouse pizza" in quincy... and perhaps a few shots made by my drinking buddy (kelley). for anyone curious, the schoolhouse was good. (i had what was called a "bully" which was a steak sandwich. if they had it, i would have preferred a guidance counselor... hold the nuts... just kidding.)

anyway, it was a good to hang out with everyone again.