GregHowley.com

Another Christmas gone by, the last of the 2010s. And while I'm really writing to brag about a single gift I got, lets pad out this post by talking about a number of notable Christmas gifts in my household this year.

I'd bought my wife concert tickets to see Pomplamoose this year in Boston, but as it turns out, my older daughter's big violin recital is at literally the same time, so we're not going to be able to go to that one.

My younger daughter got an American Girl doll from Santa, but oddly her favorite gift was a set of three Minecraft stuffed animals that she was re-gifted from her older sister.

My older daughter got tickets to see Dear Evan Hansen in Hartford this coming Spring, but her favorite may be the new upgraded Ukelele we bought her. It's a nice one probably worth something like ten times the one we're replacing, and it will plug into an amplifier, which might be nice on very specific occasions.

We've been talking for years about getting a piano, but our tiny little house really has no space for one. This year, Santa brought us a really nice keyboard. Nearly as good as a real piano, and takes up a tiny fraction of the space. I'll be on that a lot, and so will everyone else in my family. Although I'm hoping the cats won't be on it much.

But the keyboard is really only my second favorite gift. My favorite has to be the custom mug my daughter made me.

I've got a wishlist on this site, and when I re-launched the site back in November, I rewrote the code for that wishlist along with everything else. One of the items on it was a coffee mug with the simple star logo from Steven Universe. I wrote an article last year about why you should be watching Steven Universe, so I won't go there because I'm getting a bit sidetracked. Bottom line, she saw that on my wishlist. If she'd ordered it for me online, I'd have been happy with it. But what she actually did is so much better.

She went to Clay Pen, one of those shops where you go in and make your own pottery, then they kiln bake it for you. She recreated the mug herself, and it's so much better than the one she might have ordered.

While I was first admiring it, she was with me, critiquing her own work. I had to let her know that the imperfection wasn't only the best thing about a handmade item, it also tied in beautifully with Steven Universe and its messages. I recall a quote from Rebecca Sugar, the show's creator, about the character she'd created. Although I don't remember her exact words, Rebecca said that Steven was a pudgy, big-hearted kid. That he wasn't perfect - he was great. And that's one of Steven Universe's themes: that people aren't perfect. That although you can strive for perfection, you shouldn't expect that actual perfection is achievable. As Steven and his father Greg like to say, If every pork chop was perfect, we wouldn't have hot dogs!

This will replace the coffee mug I had been using. My company gave out mugs years ago, when the company had been called Cornerstone. Over time, a couple letters wore off, so I helped and scratched out a couple more. Now, the mug reads "CORN TON". It's funny.

Of course, my brother had to go and point out that the Steven Universe mug made it look like I was showcasing support for The United Socialist Republic of Vietnam...