Paper flood

Cathy's got her Christmas shopping done and I've made a reasonable dent into it so far. I know there are fanatics down south who brag about their Christmas shopping done by mid-October, but we're not quite that crazy. However, we do have to get a head start on it. Despite pleas to shop local, a fair amount of Christmas shopping is still done online. Although the Christmas craft fair is coming up the end of the month, so I suspect we'll grab something there.

The problem is, once your order from certain companies, they start selling you catalogues. Then they sell your mailing information and so a slow trickle of them start coming through. But after five years of living in Nunavut, we're now getting carpet bombed by catalogues. There is rarely a day that goes by without one showing up in our mailbox.

Which would be fine, for the most part. I don't mind the odd one. If for no other reason given the internet speeds we deal with up here it's faster to skim a National Geographic catalogue then trying to poke around their website. However, since September we've received at least three of them. They're not even close to be the worst offender though. LL Bean must have sent us at least 10 since September. And Hammacher Schlemmer has sent at least a half dozen over the same period of time.

There does come a point where you go, "dude, enough already." If we're getting this many, I can only imagine the sheer volume that must be flooding everyone at this point. I realize this is a common complaint, and it's not like we haven't been hit by them before, but wow, they're really coming on strong this year.

Although, curiously, the one catalogue we haven't received this year has been from IKEA. I wonder why that could be?

Last Five
1. The devil is in the details - Matthew Good*
2. It's catchin' on - Joel Plaskett Emergency
3. Everything I've got to - Amelia Curran
4. NARC - Interpol
5. Open arms - Hey Rosetta!