Here we go again! New Years Game 2017 anyone?

In reply to thatsnowinnebago :

I've been told that I "might not want to mix them"  But we will see what happens.

AngryCorvair said:

this year, i tried to balance the original intent of "grab random crap that you should've thrown out years ago and send it to a random stranger" with my desire to give things that might actually be useful and/or fun for the recipient.  looks like that's what most people did. the proliferation of Horrible Fright locations has made this pretty easy.   i mean, can you ever have too many microfiber cloths or zip ties?  ;-)

before you judge yourself to have underperformed, remember that there are people on this board of all ages, incomes, skill sets, and packrat factors.  if it made you smile tossing it into the box, it's a win.

i've already got my box to fill for 2018.  i just have to remember to fill it during the year.   

Pat, I think I errored too far on the side of  "grab random crap that you should've thrown out years ago and send it to a random stranger"  as AngryCorvair stated above. But I admit, I did have fun chucking that garbage into a box.  My kids kept asking me: "what are you laughing about Dad?" 

I hope the book is useful.

Three of the four mags were intentional based on knowledge of your car interests.  You decide with ones

Also, if Tom would've answered differently in the "Challenge Supreme Court" thread, you would have received an LS1 intake for Darth Nader.

Edit: the knock-off hub is from a '65 Triumph TR4. 

Patrick said:

finally got to sit down with my box and get my hands dirty.  i have an inkling to who it might be, whoever it is knows me too well based on the magazines with the Caprice and Lumina Z34 on them and the book.

 

 

a card made from banana bark, a single glove, 1 new/1 used spark plug, a block of wood, a grab handle, top of a driveway reflector, some toggle bolts and gate latches, a skeleton keychain, a couple feet of nicopp brake line, and some audi rings

 

 

some used looking speaker wire, part of a storm door spring chain, mantles for a coleman lamp, some plastic clip things, some zip ties, a knockoff for a 4 lug something, instructions for HF recip saw and a shop vac, intake boot clamp and a socket with bulb.

 

 

couple indiana license plates, a couple junky screwdrivers, craftsman wrench, pipe plugs, nipple, barb fitting, inflating needle for balls, paint can opener, used HF cutoff wheel

 

 

St Francis prayer card, saturn emblem, assortment of mostly unbroken t handle allen wrenches, a 3/8 wrench with socket end, some sort of bit with a bunch of splines on it.  I gave all the good allens to my son, who got his first toolbox for christmas.

 

 

4 magazines from 1991.  Sender is familiar with my vehicular history or just made some lucky guesses, but i had a Z34 when i joined in 2005 that was to be a challenge car but found bad structural crash damage when dismantling for 5 speed swap.  most everyone knows my history with B bodies.

 

Then this showed up separately from the rest yesterday in an amazon envelope.  

 

 

with the following note

 

It's made it as far as New York, though given the current weather who knows how long it'll take to get further.

Finished packing my box last night, and it'll go to the post office at lunch time! Sorry to someone Indiana for the delay, I hope you enjoy it!

I want to apologize again to my generous secret Santa for not getting my pictures up yet. I've had a lot of home and work craziness but I expect to be able to do it this evening for sure.

AWSX1686 said:

Finished packing my box last night, and it'll go to the post office at lunch time! Sorry to someone Indiana for the delay, I hope you enjoy it!

 

Shipped!! Due to arrive Tuesday! Sorry again for the delay. 

I am way behind as well - I have cool pics to post and a box yet to go *in* the post... President's Day Game consolation prize...?

In reply to KyAllroad (Jeremy) :

It arrived. I still owe pics. VERY Cool and much appreciated :)

daeman said:

In reply to Mezzanine:

Nice work on the re-gifting mate :), have you managed to get through the jar of vegimite from last year yet?

You and I both know that jar of Vegimite is a lifetime supply. I *actually* like the stuff and had a smear on my breakfast bread just this morning. The problem is that I use about the volume of a pencil eraser each serving.

Regifting stuff year over year is part of the fun for me. I love sending stuff on knowing it will see a few people before finding a home.

In reply to Mezzanine:

Yeah, it really is, luckily it doesn't really go off. If you haven't given it a go yet, try making some cheese and vegimite scrolls. Cheese and vegimite are great partners in crime, and making scrolls will put a bit of a dent in that jar.

 I'm stoked you re-gifting, I did too, it's definitely part of the fun

boaty mcfailface said:

minivan_racer said:

I finally sent mine!  If you live in VA and are still waiting it's on it's way!

I have to admit, I got a little excited when I read this. Minivans check, turbo dodges, check. Ive never owned a turbo dodge but had a fascination/appreciation for them since my early teens anyways. Something about E36 M3box sleepers that can blow the doors off things. I remember being on the SDAC mailing list (remember when mailing lists were things?)

A nice note, haha

Dodge demon tee and Minivan tee, bag and coozie, zipties, a stack of stickers, bottle opener/screwdriver set, beltclip marker/sharpie, exhaust hanger, spark plug gap tool, some rtv, a 900lb coilover spring if the box is correct. 

I will be sure to place that I <3 METH sticker in a prominent location on the cabinet at the outside edge of the garage for all the neighbors to see.  

Thanks for the goodies!

It took a minute to click that the name was familiar from IG.  That minivan tee was my favorite until it shrunk (or more appropriately my gut grew).  The stickers, bag, and Demon tee are from PRI.  I may or may not have appropriated the zipties out of my work truck.  The exhaust hanger, gap tool, and used tube of RTV are out of the stuff that was left after the garage got cleaned out by thieves earlier this year.  The screwdriver and marker are clearance isle trinkets, and the spring is a regift from last year (pretty sure the guy told me it was a rear bike spring).

It's like the GRM version of the old wedding day superstition. 

Something old, something new, something regifted, something that screws, and a bag of zipties.

I found a rather damp box from Wisconsin on my porch when I arrived home a few minutes ago. I have to head out again in a bit, so I'll probably wait until tomorrow to open it & post photos. Thanks to "RMP"!

In reply to secretariata :

You're welcome, and I'm sorry for the delay in getting it out. 

Mazdax605 said:

My package went out this afternoon. Not flat rate box and won't be there for 7 days. Going to Flossmorr, IL. I think that's a suburb of Chicago.

I live in Flossmoor, but I have not received anything yet... I was traveling for work this week and thought it might be waiting for me at home.

Does the tracking say it is stuck in package purgatory somewhere?

I lost the receipt and have no idea where it is. 

OK, once again I apologize for the delay, but here's mine! I'd explained the GRM Holiday Game to the family while packing my own box, so when this arrived, my kids were super excited to tear into it!

And here's the awesomeness inside! I wish I had step-by-step pics of the great pouring forth of goodies, but I had several sets of grabby hands in the way:

I'll break this down in a list. We have:

1. Two Ohio license plates. These will add to the ambiance in my garage, taking their place amongst many other plates on my license plate wall.

2. A fancy Ovation rasberry-chocolate holiday treat. I took this one to my work and let people in the break-room attack it.

3. A fancier Ferrero-Rocher chocolate treat. This one was claimed by the wife and children. They gobbled it up, but let me have a little broken off piece that fell on the table.

4. A cable tether for anchoring tall furniture to a wall. This is much appreciated because we have a toddler who thinks he's Sir Edmund Hillary, and to my shame there are a couple tall bookcases which still need to be properly secured.

5. A four-way screwdriver. You can never have too many of these. I'm going to give this to my 5-year old who has been building up his own tool-bag. He's building his own house in the back yard.

6. A kit to hook up a washing machine to the water supply. I hope I can find this again when I will need it, inevitably.

7. A very nice lookin' Hard Rock Cafe: Niagra Falls shirt.

8. Several sets of tie-down straps. I'm stoked for these because I didn't have any, but I seem to have a frequent need for them.

9. A Sylvania headlight bulb. There's a good chance this fits something I own, and after all, headlights generally go out one at a time.

10. An American Red Cross magnet

11. A plug wire set for, I believe, some sort of GM V8. I don't currently own a GM V8, but it's possible I may in the future. My wife's grandfather has a derelict GMC truck I've been eyeing. She keeps hinting that we need a pick-up truck.

12. Escutcheon plate draft-arresting gasket thingies. I'm actually quite excited about these. Our house was built in 1949 and could definitely use some help in the realm of energy efficiency.

13. My favorite thing in the box: A large HELLA magnet. This is awesome, and appropriate for me because 3 of my 4 Mazda 626s have original dealer-option HELLA foglight grills. So this one is super cool!

Thanks so much GRM Secret Santa! This was a very generous gift and a lot of fun! 

James

OK, examined my loot and took photos! Let's see if I can get them to show up so everyone can envy the awesome stuff RealMiniParker sent me!

Unopened box with relatively normal opening implement...

Box appears to be well packed and protected and it seems no worse for the trip and rain yesterday.

First layer was some old magazines.  Haven't seen Mad Magazine in decades,it is the 1982 last episode of MASH edition (has it really been that long?)!  Popular Mechanics (the magazine of choice amongst weirdos, survivalists, mad bombers, and general wackjobs - no personal attack upon your character RMP, just an observation I've read somewhere on the interwebs so it must be true ), Cycle World with a BMW 4 cyl review, and Road & Track's Used Exotic Buyers Guide (will be reading this right after MAD  )

The third layer (2nd layer to be shown out of order due to coolness factor) included some zip ties, a pair of needle nose pliers, small level, HF led light (shown face down because I'm a goober ), a pair of HF mechanics gloves (just like the pair I put in the box I sent ), sunglasses, a dragon sticker, some venison jerky (Nom Nom Nom), a wrist band/socket holder with 5 (holy crap) brand new looking 10 mm sockets, a small RC car and controller, some O'reilly sweepstakes tickets (I need to check into them as they expire on the 18th), and an unidentified machined aluminum cylinder...

On the bottom was a Haynes Manual for the 3rd & 4th generation Honda Civic (not sure if this means I need to add one of these to the fleet?).

Back to the AWESOME 2nd layer...this super cool clock!  Not sure if this is going to go in the grosh or get put up in my office at work?

In summary, RealMiniParker sent me an excellent box of gifts and I want to say "Whoop! Whoop! Thanks a bunch!"

Got a call last night from the post office the package was supposed to go to, and they're sending a note to the hub that it was last seen at to try and track it down... but they won't be in over the weekend so I won't hear anything until Monday or Tuesday at the earliest. 

Ashyukun (Robert) said:

Got a call last night from the post office the package was supposed to go to, and they're sending a note to the hub that it was last seen at to try and track it down... but they won't be in over the weekend so I won't hear anything until Monday or Tuesday at the earliest. 

A few years ago my Mom sent me a Christmas gift that never got delivered.  After about a month she called and asked about it as I didn't make any effort to thank her (because I didn't receive it) and then filed a claim with the Post Office because she insured it.  It took about 6 weeks, but they found the package.  During some phase of automated handling, the brown wrapping paper got snagged and the portion with both the delivery and return addresses was torn off.  The Post Office just sent it to some sort of "dead letter" facility in Hotlanta until the claim was filed.  Not sure how they found the right package...

Robbie said:

Mazdax605 said:

My package went out this afternoon. Not flat rate box and won't be there for 7 days. Going to Flossmorr, IL. I think that's a suburb of Chicago.

I live in Flossmoor, but I have not received anything yet... I was traveling for work this week and thought it might be waiting for me at home.

Does the tracking say it is stuck in package purgatory somewhere?

Never mind! I spoke too soon! Unboxing tomorrow.

Dang!

We're nearing the end of the game so I went back over the thread and my list (of course I did the obligatory, second check): 

Right now we have about 10 people still waiting for their gifts.  If you're one of them, I have good news!  For 100% of the people waiting, I have shipping confirmations from your senders that there is, in fact, a package in the mail with your name on it

One package mistakenly got shipped to the wrong address (being worked out now), of course there is the geographical distance between a couple of the addresses, and we're still waiting to hear back from the post office on one...  BUT this means we're on track for 100% participation again!!!!  (and that make me far happier than I can express with any combination of our current emoji selection)

You guys are awesome and I really cant wait to see what the last leg of this haul bring in

Cheers guys!

And a big thank you, Hungary Bill, for arranging all of the fun!

glueguy said:

And a big thank you, Hungary Bill, for arranging all of the fun!

Yes, a big "thank you" to our matchmaker Hungary Bill!

Robbie said:

Robbie said:

Mazdax605 said:

My package went out this afternoon. Not flat rate box and won't be there for 7 days. Going to Flossmorr, IL. I think that's a suburb of Chicago.

I live in Flossmoor, but I have not received anything yet... I was traveling for work this week and thought it might be waiting for me at home.

Does the tracking say it is stuck in package purgatory somewhere?

Never mind! I spoke too soon! Unboxing tomorrow.

I'm glad to hear that you received the package. I'm certain it isn't up to the standard set by the others that have been shown so far on the board. 

Finally got my pictures online, so here they are.

Some fine reading material. Bonus points for Group B cover story.

The requisite Hot Wheels - a pair of VWs and my very first Porsche. 

Multi-tester, LED flashlight and ice scraper. Perfect stuff to keep in the truck.

Remember Lance Armstrong, the cheater? 

Toys! LEGO Empire State Building, vintage looking Hohner harmonica (someone might get annoyed with me later) and a luchador bottle opener.

A cool Bad Obsession Motorsport keyfob, that was in the Altoids tin, a handy pocket knife, and a rubber cap?

GRM swag. I started wearing the knit hat right away. This bald guy appreciates it in the cold Wisconsin weather!

And finally, a cache of stickers, including a fat stack of GRM bumpers and a few GRM windows.

Awesome stuff, "Raleigh, in Raleigh, NC". Thank you!