"It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year"

It's that time of year already. Can you believe it? Two thousand six is just around the corner!

As you can see, I took Thevy to get her picture taken with Santa Claus, although I have no intentions of teaching her about him since I'm not a big fan of lies, superstition, and bull crap. :-P I just thought it would be fun while she's too young to understand what an icon of materialism this mythical man has manifested into. (Aw, shucks! Check out my alliteration! :-P) I hope to teach her the true meaning, if anything.

The pictures were definitely not worth their price. A huge rip-off, that I was about to go back to the mall and demand a partial/full refund. Maybe I'll still inquire about it after the holidays. Well, it was possible to just take your own pix, and I did snap a single shot with my digital camera, albeit, from an angle. And I wish I woulda done something to try to make Thevy laugh. But anyway... if you wanna get the mall's pics, at least at this particular mall, the minimum you had to pay was something like $10.99 for a 5x7 (not to mention blasted sales tax). And then a photo CD was $5.99. I ended get the top picture as a 5x7 and the bottom one on disc. I figured, though she's not looking at the camera in the first pic, it looks sorta-kinda-but-not-really touching how she's sharing a moment with Santa. And then with the 2nd shot, I thought I could just print out my own images.

Well, as you can see from the first pic, although it is a scanned image and so, won't be as clear as an original, it is very close to the print I received from the mall. Notice the color is lacking considerably compared to the other shot - the foreground is a bit washed-out, the background is rather dark. And the 2nd photo, you may not really be able to see it, but the image quality itself kind of sucks. You'd figure, a JPEG placed on a CD should be of fairly superior quality and that I should be able to produce some pretty awesome prints, provided I have a good printer. Now, my printer is not the best, but it's decent. And when I printed this last picture, the pixels were not that great!! For the amount of money I spent, it was SO not worth it! My friend Robert e-mailed the CD image of his nephew and Santa and the image file was way bigger, at the image itself was way clearer. I've been gypped!

So, looks like I just fed the pockets of those fat-cat capitalists and allowed Santa's fat azz to eat. :-P So...

MERRY CHRISTMAS, y'all!!!