This holiday season, you’ve likely bought all of your gifts, and you’re likely excited to give them to people. But what if those gifts you got stink? What if you are terrible at gifts, and will offend your loved ones? Or maybe I just want to write a list of stuff that I bought in the last year or so that made my life better? How about that, PUNK!
Anyway, if you’re struggling for something to get someone this holiday season and they’re exceedingly patient, as most likely all of this stuff won’t arrive in time anyway, then I’ve got a list of “the stuff I bought this year that made my life better.”
The Chiliblanket
I don’t know about you, but regardless of what the weather is like, I constantly burn. I am on fire. I want the AC on all year, and I cannot have it on all the time because my wife would not be pleased, as she is always cold. So, I decided to invest in one of these things - a weighted blanket that connects to a series of tubes and a box under my bed that makes everything under the blanket cold. The reason I am so specific about this is most of these bed-cooling solutions cool under you, which means that you’re cold under your blanket, versus cooled, as in you get cold with absolutely no way to get cool again. Not good.
This thing has been incredible for me. I love it. It takes a few tries to get it to fully circulate the water from the chiliPad box, but once it does it’s genuinely wonderful. I sleep better, I don’t wake up as dehydrated, and I get to sleep quicker. I know this thing can also heat up, but I am never trying that, and you cannot make me.
Mighty Mug, The Mug You Will Have Trouble Knocking Over
Even though my commute is literally walking to another room, I do like to grab a travel mug full of coffee that I can drink throughout the day. I also love to gesticulate and knock coffee cups over, which is why I really like this thing. It sort of suction-cups onto the surface it’s on (which means if it’s on a softer surface it won’t adhere), which means if you knock it, it just sort of bounces back. It isn’t hard to move (you twist it) and it also is thermal, which is nice.
Coffee That is 40 Times As Powerful As Regular Coffee And Tastes Good
Talking of coffee, I really recommend you buy a bottle of my dearest friend Phil Broughton’s Black Blood of the Earth. It tastes awesome, and one shot is plenty for you to get a powerful coffee buzz. It’s 20-40 times as powerful as regular coffee. I drink it from the bottle because I’m a twisted little freak. But you can also take a shot and put it in hot water, and it will taste better than any other coffee you’ve had.
In fact, a core thing with BBOTE is that it’s cold water extraction of the oils and essence of ground coffee, which means all of the actual flavor of coffee, with only two calories. It’s great. Buy some. Definitely won’t arrive for Christmas, though.
A Sleep Mask To Block Out The World
Every night I am living in a world of darkness after realizing that not being able to see any light meant that I would sleep through to my alarm every night. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried an eyemask before, but for me, this thing is the only one that actually works, that doesn’t get too hot, that actually stays on my face, and actually blocks out the light. It’s really cool. I love it. I better love it at 25 god damn dollars.
A Screen That Has All My Family’s Calendar Stuff On It
I constantly am confused about my wife - where is she? What is she doing? What am I doing? Why did father leave? Where are my pills? The Dakboard fixes this by connecting to all of our respective Google Calendars and spitting out a constantly-updated screen that has the time, the weather, and what time everything is happening in that day. It’s really just a linux computer connected to Dakboard’s software, but that doesn’t matter to me. It’s all controlled via a simple web interface, and you can customize it to have the news, notes, to-do lists - it’s something that I hesitated to buy that has genuinely reduced the entire house’s anxiety. We have two aged grandparents living with us, and it’s a boon for them to be able to see when their doctors’ appointments are, a question they ask at least 8 times a day. Which I get! You’re old, you wanna know when you’re going to the doctors.
You can also run Dakboard on any web browser, meaning that I have a second monitor that I set up that I can look at - which is great, because I also need to know when I have to do stuff.
Anyway…
I appreciate you reading as usual. I’m extremely exhausted because, realistically, there are only 5 working days left of the year, and everybody wants to chat, which is good, and is my job, but man, do I have a lot of calls.