Suit Drive

Do you have unused men's dress clothing taking up space? You could donate it to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, but wouldn't it be better if you knew your donation would directly benefit people in need?

Men's Wearhouse has an annual suit drive for usable business-attire clothing that they donate to various organizations that help men get outfitted for job interviews. It's going on this month: you can drop off suits, dress shirts, dress shoes, and outerwear at Men's Wearhouse locations. I just donated three suits, three dress shirts, and a trench coat. You get a tax-deduction receipt and a coupon good for 50% off regular-price merchandise for one month.

I should have mentioned this a while ago, but there's still time for donations this year. And I suspect that if you missed it and went into a store in August, they would still accept your donations.

Dine Out Today to Help

In the aftermath of Monday's events, people are looking for ways to help. A number of area restaurants have joined together and agreed to donate a portion of today's sales to assist victims and their families through a local foundation.

By choosing to dine out today at one of these establishments, you can do your part to help those directly affected:

62 Restaurant & Wine Bar (62 Wharf Street, Salem, MA)
Bella Luna Restaurant & Milky Way Lounge (284 Amory Street, Jamaica Plain)
Blue on Highland (882 Highland Avenue, Needham)
Bondir (279A Broadway, Cambridge)
Cafeteria (279a Newbury Street, Boston)
China Blossom (946 Osgood Street, North Andover)
Davio’s Northern Italian Steakhouse (75 Arlington Street, Boston)
Grafton Street (1230 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge)
Harvest (44 Brattle Street, Cambridge)
Olé Mexican Grill (11 Springfield Street, Cambridge)
PARK Restaurant & Bar (59 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge)
Piattini Wine Café (226 Newbury Street, Boston)
Ristorante Olivio (201 Massachusetts Avenue, Arlington)
Russell House Tavern (14 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge)
Salvatore’s Restaurants (225 Northern Avenue, Boston; 545 Washington Street, Boston; 55 High Street, Medford)
Temple Bar (1688 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge)
Tryst Restaurant (689 Massachusetts Avenue, Arlington)
Tuscan Kitchen (67 Main Street, Salem, NH)

(This list may not be complete; I obtained the information from this post on Inside Medford.)

Gift Idea: Tickets to Something

I'm not presumptuous enough to try to put together a comprehensive holiday gift guide, but sometimes it's difficult to come up with the right gift for someone.

One suggestion is to consider getting tickets to a play or musical, a concert, the opera, the ballet, the circus—it can be any sort of event, as long as you know the recipient will enjoy going, and you will enjoy going with her/him. I know someone who reads this blog who once took his then-girlfriend to a monster truck event on Valentine's Day. (Your mileage may vary depending on your recipient's capacity for appreciation of irony.) Or, if your giftee loves Gregorian chants and you can't handle them, consider giving the tickets with the intention of having the recipient bring another friend or relative.

The cool thing about this gift choice is, the person receiving the gift has the excitement of opening it and seeing what it is, then a whole other round of anticipation leading up to the event itself. If it happens to be in another city and requires travel, like a Broadway show in New York, then that makes it even more exciting.

One thing to remember: for many one-time events like concerts, tickets can go on sale as far as six months ahead of the event date, so depending on your loved one's interests, you may need to be thinking about this gift and planning it well ahead of time. But it will be worth it, and it will show you've been paying attention.

Pie Day 2012

In years past I've mentioned local organization Community Servings and the great work they do bringing meals to ill people all over the Boston area (and now in Worcester as well). This is the time of year when CS has its big fall fundraiser, Pie in the Sky. The pies, which are baked by dozens of area restaurants and bakeries, are $25, and that amount provides a full week of meals for a client.

Tuesday, November 13th is Pie Day. Volunteers will be at several sites around Boston and Cambridge, offering pie samples and information about Pie in the Sky. In the morning visit Dewey Square from 8 am to 9:30ish (pie for breakfast is awesome, and they'll have coffee too), or come by the Prudential Center from 11 am to 2 pm (I'll be there). From 4:30 to 6:30 pm there will be folks in both Kendall Square (Marriott courtyard) and Central Square (Cambridge City Hall).

Seasonal Thoughts

I make an effort to avoid repeating myself in here, but I'm still in the midst of a deadline week, so it seemed like a good idea to revisit a few semi-connected, seasonally relevant thoughts from years past:

Thanksgiving Comes First: credit to Jim Sullivan for starting this one. I offered my thoughts on it a few years back, and Lisa weighed in more recently. There are some houses in my neighborhood that even have Thanksgiving decorations in their yards, which I really appreciate. (I ought to go for a walk and take some pictures, huh?) And let's remember to give props to Nordstrom for their ongoing policy of waiting until after Thanksgiving to roll out the holiday decorations.

Black Friday Blackout: again, something I've shared my feelings about in the past. There's no justification for putting yourself at risk of bodily harm by venturing out to a mall or big-box store the day after Thanksgiving. I like a good deal as much as anyone, but shopping online is so much easier, and I bet you could accomplish at least 75% of your list that way.

I would also suggest you consider visiting a neighborhood shopping district near where you live: check out what's available right in your community, and help support a small, local business instead of contributing to the bottom line of a huge corporation that doesn't really need it.

Buy Some Pie: I neglected to mention Pie in the Sky last year. Community Servings is a Boston-based nonprofit that provides nutritious meals to hundreds of residents in the area who are ill and unable to take care of themselves. Each year they sell Thanksgiving pies to benefit their programs. I've been ordering pies from them for years, and volunteering for a few as well. You can order pies right here.

Dear Old Dad

So, Sunday is Father's Day, and it's always a challenge coming up with a suitable gift for my father, because, to not sugarcoat it, he's kind of a grumpy old guy who doesn't have likes or interests like an ordinary person. (And some of you have met him, so you know what I'm talking about.) He isn't into gadgets, he doesn't use a computer, has all the tools he needs (a few years ago I got him one of those laser levels, and he later admitted that he'd returned it), doesn't care about clothes (I know, I know!), isn't interested in movies or books, and generally makes any attempt at gift-giving extremely difficult.

But the man's gotta eat. For Christmas, I hit on the idea of getting him an assortment from Omaha Steaks, and he seemed to genuinely appreciate it. I was going to just do the same thing again for Father's Day, but it kind of crept up on me, so this evening we drove up to one of the stores. After looking over the various packaged items in the freezer cases, I decided to get him a gift card, since there is a store fairly close to where he lives. I'm hoping he will make the effort to go there and choose some stuff.

I also popped into L.L. Bean, which is in the same shopping center, hoping to get a look at some of the Signature line, but unfortunately they aren't carrying any of it (at least not yet). The store never seems to lack for customers, but after looking around I have to say that Bean's regular stuff is looking really boring, and bringing in some Signature merchandise would definitely perk things up.

After that, we had to drive to where the Mrs. works, because she'd left her cell phone in her office. We also needed to eat, and she mentioned that we were going to pass a Sonic, where I guess she's been going for slushy-fruit drinks on her way home from work, or something. I didn't realize that Sonic operates like an old-fashioned drive-in, with carhops on roller skates and everything. Of course, this being 2010, there are male carhops too. There's also a drive-through window, but no inside counter service.

I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich with bacon and ranch dressing. The first sandwich the carhop brought me was breaded chicken, with lettuce and mayonnaise. When I told her it wasn't what I'd ordered she was extremely polite and said she'd get me the correct sandwich. The second sandwich she brought me was grilled chicken, and there were a couple of tomato slices, but still no bacon. I didn't bother trying to get it fixed again, because I was hungry. But I have to say, the shake I had with it was excellent.

Gifted

I'm back. The streets in Manhattan are slushy and a bit tricky to navigate, but otherwise it's business as usual. The toughest part for me was dealing with the constant struggle between cold and heat: outside you have to be bundled up, but that means as soon as you step inside, you get overheated. Multiply that by 40 or 50 over the course of an average day.

Gifts for my family were all taken care of before I left, so I didn't have the opportunity to shop for them there. (Truth is, I spend a lot more time shopping for myself this time of year, regardless of whether I'm in New York or at the Burlington Mall.) Over the years, it's gotten to the point where we pretty much tell each other what we want, or my mother supplies the info about what to get my siblings. This eliminates a lot of fretting and guesswork, and avoids disappointment.

Since no one in my family reads this, I thought I'd run things down quickly, in case you happen to be stuck for an idea. My brother wants to get an Xbox, so I was told to get him a Best Buy gift card. That hardly even needs to be wrapped. My sister always wants gift certificates to her favorite salon/spa. That required just a phone call, because they don't sell them through their web site (yet, but I keep hoping).

My mother never used to give us any clues or ideas, but she started making a list a few years ago, and my siblings and I divide it up. A while back my sister got my mother one of these charm bracelets called Pandora: all the charms are threaded, so when you screw them all together they make a sort of bead bracelet. So a charm is always on the list for Christmas, her birthday, and Mother's Day. We have a few other things to give her, including a couple of books, ornaments, and two pounds of Dunkin' Donuts coffee (this started as sort of a joke because the Mrs. couldn't stand the Walmart store-brand coffee my mother is in the habit of buying, and now my mother kind of expects it every year).

My father is much more difficult to buy for. He's kind of grumpy all the time, and just isn't interested in things the way most people are. A while back we all kind of gave up and started getting him gift cards for either Home Depot of Walmart. He uses them, but it's not very interesting, and I don't want to give any of my money to Walmart anyway. For the past couple of years the Mrs. and I got him gift cards to Shaw's, but this year I thought I could do better.

I remembered that nine or ten years ago, I'd gotten him an Omaha Steaks gift assortment for a birthday present, and he really enjoyed it. One day last week there was an Omaha Steaks ad in the paper. One nice thing about OS is that they have a lot of variety, and I was able to get him an assortment with sirloin steaks, pork chops, chicken breasts, stuffed sole, burger patties, hot dogs, and even baked potatoes. My dad lives alone and doesn't do much cooking, so now his freezer is stocked and he has the basis for a couple of months' worth of meals. I paid a little extra for gift wrap, for that holiday touch.

Having a small family helps, obviously. If you're not sure what someone on your list wants, ask around among some other family members or friends.

With This Ring...

I made it through my deadline week, this time with a bit less angst than in the past couple of months because I was actually a little ahead of things this time. It was nice to be able to email the person whose work depends on me finishing my work and tell her everything was ready, a day or so earlier than when I usually do. And it made yesterday a pretty low-key day in the office, since quite a few people had already taken the day off for the Easter holiday.

Back in February when we went to California, the Mrs. stayed behind a few extra days to spend some time with her sister in Santa Cruz. While she was there, they happened to go to a jewelry store that was closing because the owners were retiring. As it happened, everything was 50% off, so she decided to buy us new wedding rings.

We got married almost ten years ago, and we paid for our wedding ourselves, so we did not spend a lot on the rings. We had them made by someone at the Cambridge Artists' Cooperative, and while they were a good value, I think it's accurate to say that neither of us was ever really that happy with them. The rings were white gold, or at least that's what we asked for, but they had a distinctly yellow cast to them. I don't do yellow gold; it just isn't me. No gold watches, no gold anything. I won't even wear a belt with a brass buckle.

But some things just end up not being that important in day-to-day life, so we wore the rings, and that was that. Of course, over time I put on some weight, and eventually I realized that I could not remove the ring. I had no reason to, but it had gotten kind of tight on my finger, and I figured that wasn't good. So I was quite excited when the Mrs. surprised me with a platinum wedding band. Platinum is what I'd always wanted, but we couldn't afford it back in '98.

Since I wasn't with her, she'd guessed on the size, and this one was too big, but better too big than too small. We managed to get the old ring off my finger with some liquid soap and about five minutes of manipulation. I left my finger bare for a couple of weeks to see if the indentation would go away; it's now been about five weeks and it's still there, though it is less pronounced than it was.

After that I started wearing the new ring, but it wiggled around. I knew I could get an inexpensive ring guard to attach around the underside and make it fit better, but I wanted to have it sized. A couple of years ago the Mrs. bought a ring from Barmakian Jewelers in Framingham. Barmakian is kind of a fancy place, but they've been in business for almost 100 years, and they believe in the old-fashioned sort of service that's not so easy to come by these days. They also have a store downtown in the Jewelers' Building, on Washington Street across from H&M, so I decided to go there. I had called the store, and was told the resizing would cost around $50.

The store is open later on Thursdays, which was the most convenient time for me to stop by. They occupy two separate areas of the seventh floor of the Jewelers' Building, and of course I went into the wrong one first, but they got me turned around and sent me in the right direction. The wedding ring department was pretty dead; the clerk said he could have the ring resized for me in about ten minutes, so I sat and waited. He came out with it after it had been resized but before it was polished, to ensure I was happy with the fit.

When it was finished he came back and gave it to me. I put it on and looked at him, then looked around for a cash register. I looked back at him and said, "Uh, this didn't come from here." He thought about it for a moment, then kind of shrugged at me, as if to say, "I won't tell anyone if you won't." I thanked him and went on my way.

So, consider this a plug for Barmakian Jewelers. Not just because they gave me a freebie, but because they care about making their customers happy, even ones who haven't actually bought anything.

Holiday Tip

This is a follow-up to yesterday's piece that I forgot to include: if you have to participate in a Yankee swap this year, and you don't really like your coworkers (or friends, or family members) all that much, then Building 19 is probably an excellent place to find a swap gift that will have everyone scratching their heads.

Giving and Receiving

The holiday shopping isn't going too badly this year. I have a small family, and this year I was told exactly what to buy for two family members, which eliminates a good bit of the hassle and headache. But when I go shopping, I tend to end up looking for things for myself. I don't do it intentionally; I just think, while I'm here I should go look in the men's section. Sometimes I use it as research to give other people ideas for what to get me, but I often don't end up getting the things I ask for.

I'm not sure why this is. The Mrs. doesn't like to rely on lists for me because she feels that after more than a dozen years together, she should be able to come up with gifts I'll like without any help, but in recent years she has kind of given up this noble stance and asked for a list. One year she just took me shopping and had me pick out some things I liked, which was fine with me but disappointed her.

This year, I haven't even given her a list yet, and she doesn't seem much in the mood for shopping anyway. Yesterday we went back to the schmancy new mall in Natick that I wrote about a couple of months ago. She got herself some stuff at Bath and Body Works, and I ended up buying a couple of pairs of corduroy jeans, which I like to wear in colder weather. But neither of us bought anything for each other, or for anyone else for that matter. She said she won't be going near another mall until after the season is over. I get where she's coming from, and if I didn't go to a mall again for the next few weeks, I wouldn't be too troubled. But I was thinking of maybe heading out this afternoon, to check out the markdowns in a couple of places. And our friend Sandra wants to go to the Wrentham outlets tomorrow...

Gift Nag

Every year around this time, my mother asks for ideas for what to get us for Christmas. This isn't terribly surprising, since I've always been notoriously hard to buy gifts for. But the key word is "us." Ever since we got married, my family no longer thinks of us as separate people when Christmas rolls around.

There is some merit to this, but not always. Mostly that's because we've been together long enough now that we have pretty much everything we need, bit they keep buying us gifts that tend to fall into the category of "well-intentioned, but kind of useless," like most Yankee swap gifts. Things like an air ionizer, a stove-top grill that fits over the burners, and some sort of cheese set with a big wooden box with a drawer that had three tiny knives inside. When we moved last year, we got rid of all this stuff, either by giving it away or putting it on our moving-day trash pile.

Last year, we decided we needed to be proactive. I told my family we were planning to get a plasma TV, and they should forego gifts and just give us money, which we would put toward the purchase. It worked. I wanted to do the same thing again this year, except we don't have any major purchases planned. I thought about inventing one, just to keep the practice going and head off more unneeded gifts. It might be slightly deceptive, but isn't it better than getting something else we don't need and won't use?

My dad has the right idea though. He just gets us gift cards for stores like Target, because he knows we'll always use them.

Gift, Interrupted

I love receiving gift cards, but it seems like the ones I get tend to be for stores where I don't find much I like these days. It's a terrible feeling to go into a store with a gift card to spend, look around for 20 minutes (making a second circuit to make sure you didn't miss anything), and not find a single thing you want to get.

I received a Banana Republic gift card from my brother, but I haven't bought anything from BR in probably a year or more. This is pretty much my fault, because he asks my mother what to get me, and my mother thinks I still like to shop there because I have not told her otherwise. Clearly I will need to do that before Christmas rolls around.

I saw a couple of things I did like, but I felt they were overpriced by at least 25%. I saw a couple of other things that I could have gotten but don't need, and I can't see the point of getting something that's just going to hang in the closet and get dusty. I could wait a couple months for some different merchandise to rotate in, but I'm not known for being a terribly patient person in general, and with gift cards, the thing might as well be leaking plutonium. (It's sad, I know.)

I know about the various sites where you can sell and trade gift cards, but they typically charge a fee, and you typically have to sell the card for at least 10% off its face value to get anyone to buy.

So I'm going to try a different approach. At work we have an intranet, and on it there is a craigslist-type bulletin board. Today I posted under Barter looking for someone who wants to swap gift cards, and we'll see if anyone is interested.

Strategic Shopping

Sorry for my absence--I had a couple of days off and spent much of it shopping. The Northshore Mall was busy on Tuesday afternoon, but not unbearable. It got me thinking about how I approach holiday shopping. I genuinely enjoy the holiday season, but the pressures of gift giving (and the infernal music in the stores) have a way of taking a toll on even the most enthused shopper. That energy is better spent on other things; you need to keep your head about you and face the task with tactical efficiency. And so I'm offering my unsolicited advice on how to be a ruthless guerilla shopper:

• It goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway) that the biggest stress-saver is to shop online. If you plan ahead even a little, you can probably cross off at least half the items on your list.
• If your goal is a specific item, use a web site like PriceGrabber to search for the best price. Even if you plan to buy it in person, it can guide you to the local store with the best price.
• Solicit ideas from your family members and friends: if you aren't sure what someone likes or needs or wants, ask. Try to get several ideas so there's still some element of surprise. If you don't want to ask directly, talk to another person close to the recipient; chances are they've already heard some wishes. (I always quiz my mother about my brother and sister.)
• Look for inspiration: ignore the displays of junky "gifts" in the stores. Flip through magazines and newspapers. Read web sites and gift guides. Check out what other people are buying.
• Avoid the places that are most likely to give you agita, like toy stores. If you need a gift from such a place, it can almost certainly be found online easily enough, and probably for less money.
• Go to malls or big stores at odd hours. Early or late is best, and most stores have extended hours to accommodate strategic shoppers like yourself. Maybe you can squeeze in a stop at the mall before going to work, or do a late-night run.
• Set a time limit so you don't exhaust yourself. Wear good walking shoes and drink water.
• Divide and conquer: two can shop more efficiently than one.
• Shop smaller, local stores: you are more likely to be inspired by the less-common items you'll find there.
• Buy something for yourself. Yes, that's right. No one ever gets everything they want, so choose something and treat yourself. You deserve it. We all do.

Enjoy Dessert, Help Others

It's time for a holiday-related public-service announcement. During the Thanksgiving season I like to support the organization Community Servings. From their web site: "Community Servings is Greater Boston’s free, home-delivered meals program for individuals and families ill with HIV/AIDS or other acute life-threatening illnesses."

Each year at this time, Community Servings sponsors a fundraising event called Pie in the Sky. Pies are baked by local chefs and sold at various locations around the city. The $25 contribution provides a week's worth of meals to one client. In case you need any further persuading, the pies are delicious.

You can order a pie online until November 16th, and select the location where you want to pick it up. I just ordered mine. I encourage everyone to support this very worthy cause, and get your Thanksgiving dessert at the same time.