The Book of Carl - Chapter 1: Gifts are like onions

Everyone likes to receive gifts (yes, even you Dave). What makes it nice is that people think about you when they probably should be thinking about something else. Dave Roland recently went to Alaska on a vacation and sent Shayna and I a postcard. While he was off seeing the caribou and enjoying himself, he thought of us and sent us a postcard from the "Northern-most Mexican restaurant in North America". We loved the card. Truly, it really is the thought that matters.

When giving a gift to a guy, we see things as bigger = better or even more true, expensive = better. In economics this was called signaling. To show your love to a woman at proposal you would get the most expensive ring you could afford. This is partly for the woman(diamonds are, after all, a girls best friend), but it's more for the man. It represents what he is worth, as well as telling the world, and the girl, how much he loves her.

Girls, from my experience, however don't think this way. While the occasional big gift is great, they would prefer lots of smaller gifts. To them, the fact that you put thought into lots of things means more. The actual value of them doesn't mean as much.

The key to gift giving to Shayna is like an onion, layers (Shout out to Shrek for the metaphor!). The gift I give her is just the initial gift. She needs to pull back the layers to reveal other gifts.

The key to giving the multiple gifts is that you don't actually line up a bunch of gifts. You give her one and then it should unravel. If she doesn't find it, don't say anything. She eventually will, and when she does she will love it all the more.

Here are some examples: On Shayna and I's 1 month anniversarry (dating), I gave her a framed picture of us from a dance we had attended (ironically enough she had given me the exact same picture in a different frame). Inside the frame though, I put a second picture of just me behind the first picture. On the back of that picture, I wrote a poem to her. I never told her about the items in the frame.

A second example would be jewelry. If you were to give a necklace or errings, buy a jewelry box to hold them. Then just present the box. Even leave it in it's own casing so it looks like it's never been opened.

All of this leads into the second rule of gift giving. An unexpected gift at an unexpected time (Forget what movie this came from). If you set these "gift landmines", you essentially are giving gifts multiple times in the year, but only have to come up with it at one time.

The book of Carl

In the first year or so that Shayna and I dated, Shayna's male friends marveled at me. They were impressed with how happy I made Shayna and how should write a book to help other guys. I think they all had crushes on Shayna and were jealous of me because I never made the friend ladder.

Anyways, I thought I would share some Denver Nuggets with you in my coming posts, my 3 readers (validated by Site Meter). Ladies please feel free to voice an opinion on what I say..perhaps I'm completely off base.

Anyways, chapter 1 should be out later today..

Go Team Willis!

I started this post on Monday however work has been so hectic that it didn't get finished until now.

I guess about a year ago, Shayna was at a cross roads in her career. She didn't know which school she was going to be at, she didn't know if she would even be able to teach (because she had a provisional license), and overall just having a pretty tough time of things. As we stood in the kitchen, I told her everything was going to be alright. She asked how I knew, so I launched into a speech.

It's us against the world, I wouldn't let anything bad happen to her just believe in me, etc etc etc. I ended it with we're a team, go team Willis. And I forced her to do ready break type of thing.

It's kinda funny to look back upon now. But it really kind of stuck. The past couple weeks have been very hectic for me at work. Lots of stress, deadlines, etc. While we were at Pizza Hutt last night, the official Hutt of Team Willis, (most other teams opt for Jabba) Shayna asked what she could do to make things easier for me. Here's a person teaching full time, on her Master's degree full time, and she wants to do more to make my life easier. It's so good to be a part of a team.

Link Roll

Added a new feature to the blog. To the right you will see a section called Link Roll. As I progress through the web, and I find stuff I want to share, I can easily put it in the roll. The roll will show the last 5 links I've put up, but you can click on link roll to go see everything in there. There is even a RSS feed for those of you who don't even want to look at the site.

This means that I won't be having any more link postings (unless I'm going to specifically talk about a link).

Shout out to Jason for coming up with the idea.

Finish the Fight

This can't get here soon enough..Halo3 Trailer

Did somebody say quick hits?

I shouldn't be posting today. To much stuff to do, to little time. Sometimes though, you just have to make time. (Thank you Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd)

• My brother in law, Matt, has a blog (shoutout to Matt!). You can get to the main page..don't know if you can see the blog posts without a myspace account. At any rate, he's a pretty funny guy. He's only one of only 3 humans I know who can make Shayna fall out of a chair from laughing so hard.
• Flash Mob: A group of people organized by one person to perform a stunt/prant/hijinx. None of the people in the mob are familiar with others in the mob. After the event, everyone disavows any knowledge of their actions. This time, a flash mob goes to best buy. I wish we thought of this at the Essex House.
• E3 is coming up. Sony has announced information on thier console PS3. Most notably they will have 2 price SKUs (an idea from MS). Their controller will not vibrate but have gyroscopes (an idea from Nintendo via MS/Logitech). I hate to say it, but the real innovator really is MS.
• Some information re: the PS3. The core model will not have, HDMI output, wireless ethernet, SD card slots, and 40 GB less Hard drive space. The only thing of really note in all of this is the HDMI output. People will only get the base model if they want to play games on it. But if they have a HDTV and want to get the full value out of the Blu-Ray drive, they must purchase the upgraded model.
• base model - $499. Upgraded model $599.
• Points for anyone who can name a format Sony has had that has been successful. Beta doesn't count because that is used in professional industry. The BetaMax, aka consumer version, flopped.
• I doubt I will be purchasing a PS3. 360 and Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii are still on my radar though.
• My wife is home sick today (shout out to Shayna!). She's been feeling ill (definitely not illin' ) for a couple days now. We'd go to the doc, but they'd just say sleep and eat soup. So beef stew is on the menu for tonight. (my beef stew is probably more a vegetable beef stew. Tons of vitamin C)
• For those of you who have lasted this far: What is the interest in having a links only blog? I would probably set it up for the RSS folk. You'd see the title and description in the headers. Click on it and your off to the site.

The Legend of Carl: Link's Return

Tomb of Doom - Another escape the room type game. Claymation is a nice change of pace though.

Base Jump - Get your guy to the bottom before the other guys..and don't blow up.

C is for Cookie - V for Vendetta spoof..with muppets. I probably would think it's funnier if I'd seen the movie.

Colbert Roasting the Pres

Pres with Impersonater I think it's important for the pres to have a sense of humor. Next election, I'm going to vote for whoever would make funnier skits on SNL.

Four Second Fury - Who says kids these days don't have a long attention span.

It's time for a blog about me wife!

I know most of you don't really care for these kind of posts. If that's you, go ahead and look at the next post. It's about man in tights. That's hot.

One of the many reasons I love Shayna is because of her heart. She is always trying to make people/animals/flowers feel better. If someone looks sad, lonely, or upset she takes it upon herself to help them out. It takes a special kind of person to be like that. I'm not like that. I don't think about that sort of stuff. I don't percieve it. I guess it's good that we have each other.

Another thing I really love about my wife is that I now know how to irritate her just enough so that it's funny. She's not really mad, but just mad enough to start laughing.

I hope everyone at some point finds a person that they can do that with.

This rocks my face off

New Superman Trailer

This is gonna be good.

bad day

You know your day is going to go very badly, when you start it by locking yourself out of your apartment. The thought of calling off work and curling into bed while the day passes by seems to be the optimal solution. Optimal of course until you try to open up the door that is locked, which is of course how you got yourself into this predicament.

At least you aern't in your underwear and it's cold. That would just make things worse.