What a slogan! Even better if you know someone with the same name as that guy.

In what has become an annual tradition around this time every year, you start to hear people talking about how early stores put up their Christmas displays. It's understandable when they take the time to put out the stuff for sale, but when their actual trimmings come out, then you know you're getting close. And on Saturday, I think I experienced the earliest instance of Christmas cheer when we stopped into a crafts store that, in addition to having its Christmas products on sale, was playing Christmas carols throughout the store. On November 13. That seemed just a tad early to me. Next weekend, I could see. But six weeks until Christmas?

From there we moved on over to Crate and Barrel to start up our wedding registry. The best thing about a registry is that you get to ask for things that you need but would never want to spend your own money on. Seriously, I think I could be happy eating off of Casey's grandparents' hand-me-down plates with Casey's grandparents' hand-me-down utensils, but instead we got to ask for 10 sets of place settings, and someone will buy them for us! And we could ask for fun stuff, too, like ceramic bowls that say "Popcorn" around the rim and a crepe pan.

I, of course, just followed Casey around and zapped the bar codes of whatever items she pointed at. It's an ingenious invention. How can a guy complain about going to set up a registry when he gets to play with a gadget like that. Hell, if we wanted to, I could've scanned in a bed upstairs and put the quantity at seven. Come to think of it, if we were gamblers, maybe we would, betting that no one would actually buy one for us.

Casey said that she felt bad, since none of the stuff was really anything I wanted, but I reassured her with that aforementioned logic that it's good to get stuff for free that you need but wouldn't want to pay for yourself. And I'll benefit from things like the crepe pan and creme brule dishes when they are used for their intended purposes and I eat the results.