{"id":34932,"date":"2026-02-23T07:14:05","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T13:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=34932"},"modified":"2026-02-22T17:56:27","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T23:56:27","slug":"good-birthday-receiving-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/23\/good-birthday-receiving-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Birthday Receiving 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My oldest son has started to be thoughtful and to give gifts that he selects on his own.  Well, <em>started<\/em> is not the right word&#8211;he&#8217;s been doing this for over a year.  But it&#8217;s nice that he&#8217;s starting to remember things like birthdays and Fathers Day on his own.<\/p>\n<p>Although how well he knows me is a little, well, wanting, perhaps based on what he got me.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/birthdaygiftsfromj1.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>He went to an antique mall and got me three books:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>The Runaway Jury<\/em> and <em>The Judge&#8217;s List<\/em> by John Grisham.  You know, I&#8217;m not really a big fan of the legal thriller; I think I read a Scott Turow thing in the 1990s.  I do read Erle Stanley Garner books from time to time, but Perry Mason mysteries are not the modern legal thriller.  Are they even a thing any more?<\/li>\n<li><em>Bastion of Darkness<\/em> by R.A. Salvatore, book 3 of the <em>The Chronicles of Ynia Aielle<\/em>.  I don&#8217;t have the first two, of course.  It reminds me of the lot of books I got from my brother that he&#8217;d picked up in the Corps but divested himself of by giving them to me for seven years&#8217; worth of Christmases (in one box).  He&#8217;d picked up the first or the first two books of trilogies but not the last, so I don&#8217;t know how so many things turned out.  I did, at one point, but the complete omnibus of Salvatore&#8217;s <em>Icewind Dale<\/em> trilogy for them when I was hoping to get them interested in reading adult books.  I just claimed it for my own <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/26\/the-noggle-library-2026-edition\/\" target=\"_new\">in January<\/a> when we culled my youngest son&#8217;s room.  So, who knows?  I might read this book independently.  The cover doesn&#8217;t have a drow on it, so it&#8217;s got that going for it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>He also got me a Marvel Heathcliff #3 comic (the lower shelf of the chairside table is full of the comic books culled from the youngest&#8217;s room, and a lot of them are of the older brands, and he (the gift giver) knows I have some Heathcliff paperbacks, so I can see what he was thinking here).  He also got me a gospel record, <em>Whispering Hope<\/em> by Jim Roberts and Norma Zimmer, because, as he said, I like church music on Sunday mornings.  Ah, gentle reader&#8211;I played <em>Take a Little Time to Sing<\/em> by the Swedish Gospel Singers every week for a long time, and I&#8217;ve been known to spin some Tennessee Ernie Ford or Nat King Cole gospel platters, but I&#8217;m not a big fan of the small-label, regional or local gospel acts&#8211;although I do have a lot which I got from my brother at one point, and several I&#8217;ve received from my mother-in-law or my sainted mother.  When I got the crates of records from my brother, I listened to them over a long period of time because, well, they&#8217;re not my favorites.  But the boy, I guess <em>man<\/em> now, saw them around, and so he got me one.<\/p>\n<p>So: It is the thought that counts, and I am surprised and pleased that my son thought to give me something.  <\/p>\n<p>However, it kind of matches my disappointment in myself and my own gift-giving these days.  I know I&#8217;m having more and more trouble buying gifts as the years go by.  When the boys were young, I bought them a lot of toys and novelties, too many, probably, but they seemed happy unwrapping.  Now, though, they&#8217;re hard to buy for.  The oldest, like me, buys what he wants to support his hobbies and interests.  The younger does not do much outside the glass screen.  And I&#8217;m not fond of just giving gift cards, but sometimes we do.<\/p>\n<p>I am not sure if I&#8217;m lamenting the trappings of our relative affluence&#8211;we have what we need and what we want&#8211;or the atomization and separation in even our family.  Maybe this is just a part of them growing up and me having to let go.  But that doesn&#8217;t mean I have to like it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My oldest son has started to be thoughtful and to give gifts that he selects on his own. Well, started is not the right word&#8211;he&#8217;s been doing this for over a year. But it&#8217;s nice that he&#8217;s starting to remember things like birthdays and Fathers Day on his own. Although how well he knows me [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,16,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-life","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34933,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34932\/revisions\/34933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}