One more hurray for santa!

Tonight is the eighth night of Chanuka, the night that we did our Secret Santa, and the night that I'm supposed to write a character-driven sketch/story. What does it mean that it's the eighth night of Chanuka? Well, despite last week's claims to the contrary, there are not twelve nights of Chanuka. There are in fact only eight. So, if there are only eight nights, and tonight is the eighth night, then it stands to reason that tonight is the last night. And that is a depressing thought. You know how many times I learned my all time favorite Chanuka maamar this year? Once. That's a sick thought. Sure, I was busy learning other things, but still, it would have been nice to go through it for a month straight, as I've done in the past. Oh well.

And now the moment you've been waiting for...Secret Santa! The ten dollar extravaganza! Woohoo! The guy whose name I picked out of the hat was my sister's brother in law. What the heck could I get him for ten dollars? Eventually I realized that the best thing would be a relatively classy bottle of wine. How classy can a ten dollar bottle of wine be? Classy enough that it, along with what I was given, was the classiest gift at the party. The way we did it was that we started with said sister's brother in law, the oldest guy in the room, and whoever he gave to would then give out his or her thingamajiggie. No one realized this at the time, but what if that person had him? Hmm? That would have ended it right there. Fortunately, no one picked their partner. Most of the presents were pretty cute, though some were a bit odd. I was tapped to find a gift for my brother in law's brother, though I didn't have to pay for it. This afternoon, after a reviving couple of slices of pizza at Pizza Time (best NY pizza, even if it is three bucks a slice), we went to the new Target by Brooklyn College. Man, that place is gorgeous. The other Target near CH is as ghetto as they come, but this place is clean, cool, conscientious, and there's actually a decent selection of merchandise to be had. At first I thought to get him an army or Elvis full size nutcracker, which looked really cool, but then I saw a binocular-shaped flask, and since he's been obsessively talking about wanting a flask for the whole week (he's 17) I figured that this would be perfect.
Anyway, back to the party. My sister's sister in law (the guy I was giving to's wife) evidently picked my name out of the hat, and she prefaced her giving by saying that she had no idea what to give me, because she doesn't know me too well. Anyway, I got a very nice silk tie in a cool tie-roller keeper-thingie. The tie isn't garish, so it's not quite my preferred style, but my mother will like it. She doesn't like my style ties.
Once I had done the appropriate oohing and ahhing over my tie it was time to give over my gift, which I did with aplomb. My brother in law had wrapped all the presents with ridiculous amounts of the same Chanuka-themed gift wrap and it took a good thirty seconds to reveal the splendor that was some dry Israeli wine. I actually like dry wine, and it appears, so does my relative's relative. So everyone was happy.

And now it's time for our character-driven plot-device laden etch-a-sketch! Or not.