I like most of my fam­ily. I do not waste my time on those fam­ily mem­bers whom I do not like, their pathetic attempts to induce hol­i­day guilt notwith­stand­ing. Funny, I haven’t spo­ken to some of these peo­ple in over a dozen years and they still think they can guilt slash bribe me into call­ing them. Or vis­it­ing. Or even acknowl­edg­ing their exis­tence. They just don’t get it. I really like Christ­mas. I’m not going to spoil it by con­cern­ing myself with unpleas­ant peo­ple. On a marginally-​​​​related note, has any­one had any pleas­ant expe­ri­ences with any of the var­i­ous gift-​​​​card exchange ser­vices on the Inter­nets? Most [ . . . ]

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