Reddit Secret Santa – Disappointing Experience

This year, I decided to participate in the Reddit Secret Santa gift exchange. I know a few people who’ve done it in the past, and it seemed like a really neat idea, plus I’d be part of a Guinness World Record.

When you register, you have to option of being matched up with someone in your own country, or someone from a different part of the world. I chose the worldwide option, and I sent my match a cool Hunger Games pocket watch that I purchased off a really nice seller on Etsy. I was excited to see what kind of fun and interesting gift I would receive, and wondered what part of the world it would be coming from.

I came home today to find a note on my door that I missed a delivery. I rushed off to the post office, grabbed the yellow box and was a bit puzzled when I shook it and heard a bunch of stuff rattling around inside. It came all the way from Austria, so maybe whatever’s inside broke during shipping, I thought. When I opened it up, I thought I got pranked or something. Here’s what was inside:

A bunch of crumpled up paper with some Austrian chocolates inside? Weird. Then I saw this:

It’s a letter from the Canada Border Services Agency, telling me that they confiscated my Secret Santa gift. Apparently the box contained two bottles of Austrian beer, and it’s illegal to import beer into Canada.

It was only then I noticed the package had been opened and resealed:

My Secret Santa filled out the customs form in full detail (even listing the 5 pieces of paper he used to wrap the beer, lol). There were 2 Wiselburger beers and 36 Mozartkugeln chocolates listed as the contents of the package.

If you’ll notice, there are only 26 chocolates in the box… The CBSA agent must have taken 10 chocolates to go with the beer.

Needless to say, I was a bit sad with the way this all turned out. At least the crooks at the CBSA didn’t steal all of my chocolates. And I’ll still be part of the record-breaking 58,504 people that participated in this year’s Reddit Gift Exchange.

I’d like to thank the nice man from Austria that took the time to send me some fine chocolates and beer. I’ll enjoy the chocolate, but I’m upset I won’t get to drink the beer.

Lucky picture of lightning

I found this picture on my computer recently. I remember taking it a few years ago outside my parents house. I used a long exposure and pointed the camera to the sky, hoping to catch some lightning. It only took a few tries before I got this picture, which I thought was pretty cool.

Big dirty spider

A few days ago I was putting away the trampoline for the winter and I came across this big dirty spider. It had a big body and some interesting markings on it. I did a bit of Internet research, and I think it’s an orb-weaving spider. Perhaps a “shamrock orb weaver”. Either way, it was super gross, so I just had to take a couple of pictures…

It has a bit of web coming out of its butt.

Check out the weird markings on the body.

Halloween

I really like Halloween. I like when people take the time to put together a cool costume. And I really like Halloween parties. Here’s a couple of pictures from two weeks ago:

Maggots!

Around this time last year, Durham Region started up its green bin program. We put kitchen scraps into a green bin, which gets picked up and composted as part of a waste diversion program. I think it’s a good idea, but when we first started it last year, we had a little issue with maggots: