Jordon Cooper Outfitters
Jordon is launching a new project called Jordon Cooper Outfitters. When he started his Christmas Gift Ideas this Christmas season, his site traffic grew 20 fold for several days as people desperately sought out ideas for what to get their wife, husband, parents, and kids.
Each gift guide took Jordon a couple hours to do and he pointed out that a lot of great ideas didn’t make his lists. So instead of cluttering up his own site, he decided to create a new blog where he would talk about all of the cool gear that he was inspired by. If you want to follow the site, you can subscribe to the RSS feed or follow the site on Twitter.
Christmas Day
It was quite a Christmas Eve yesterday. It was overwhelmingly busy at work. When I worked at Cumberland Safeway and at Market Mall Safeway, it was really, really quiet by 2:00 p.m. It was busy at 33rd Street Safeway all day long. Good for the store, good for the Safeway stock price, not so good for tired cashiers and food clerks. Luckily Jordon braved the parking lot and came down to do some last minute shopping.
As for the rest of the days events, Jordon has a really good summary of our day. Today Lee is back at the house playing with the boys, I am preparing a turkey dinner (yes Jordon, we are having turnips although I can’t figure out how you choke them down) and relaxing.
As Jordon mentioned, him and the boys got me a Nintendo DS Lite.
Being in a family of gaming nerds (well Lee and Mark are), I realize that I might as well give in an join them. Jordon suggested this to me as an idea and I really liked it. Gloria has one that she likes while other friends had mentioned how much they enjoy their DS’s. As Jordon pointed out the other day, the opportunity to spend some time doing things with Mark is a nice part of this as well.
As Jordon mentioned, Lee gave us a new big screen television and a Nintendo Wii for Christmas He got us the Wii, Wii Play, Wii Sports Resort, Four controllers and nunchucks, and a charging station. He tossed in a couple of games as well. Mark has been swinging wildly at things all afternoon. Oliver is sitting with a Wii controller of himself imitating Mark and yelling at the television screen.
Jordon also gave me a copy of Heather Armstrong’s book, It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita while Mark and Ollie gave me a cute tennis bracelet.
It’s been a tough go of it but you have no idea how wonderful it was to sit down and hang out with my family for the last couple of days.
About
I redid my About page. It features some more photos of the family and one photo of me abusing the dog. Now you know.
What He Learned in 2009
Jordon has a 4000 word post on living with a person with depression. That person would be me and he wrote the post with my input and edits but it describes from his point of view what 2009 (and the last decade) has been like when my depression was at it’s worst. It went from times of being depressed to being totally consumed by depression. He also gets into how it impacted Mark, our relationship, and how we got through it.
Green is the color, football is the game
Lee gave me a gift card to the Rider Store for my birthday (thanks Lee!). I went over to The Centre Mall and did some shopping yesterday. Of course everytime I go in there, I invite mocking from Jordon and Mark. Jordon has convinced Mark that because I am from Manitoba, I secretly hate the Riders and love the Blue Bombers. I always hear about it every time there is a football game on in the house, they see something that is blue, driving to the lake (because we go east), or any other excuse to bug me.
I bought a really nice Rider shirt with a little bit of harassment and joking. It has the retro Rider logo on it and is really nice. As I was wandering around, I saw this bandana that had the Rider logo on it. I thought it was cool because it has the 13 on it and my birthday is on the 13th. Jordon and Mark took a different interpretation. Jordon goes, “You want it because it symbolizes the 13th man on the field that cost us the Grey Cup.” Mark goes, “You like Montreal too? Mom, I’m ashamed.” I realized that they now work well as a team. I can’t wait until Ollie is old enough to chime in. Well I didn’t care that they said and I bought it anyways. By the time that it is warm enough to wear it, the Riders will need the 13th man (I did have to ask Jordon what the 13 really meant) and the pain of the Grey Cup loss will be gone. We hope. Either way I have a cool new Rider bandana.
I’m 40
Well I turned 40 today. I don’t feel to much different although ironically I have a series of aches and bruises and that feel like old women aches and bruises. I have a desire now to wear thick nylons, clunky shoes, and wear one of those filmy gauzy head scarves. I don’t know if this means that I lose my libido but Jordon is hoping that isn’t the case.
I haven’t thought a lot about 40 but it is mid-work life and I am trying to figure out what I want to do for the next 25 years of my life. I had one of those “I want to quit work” kind of weekends. It wasn’t as bad today as it was earlier but I really wonder if I want to work in retail much longer.
My birthday party was planned for Friday night but I had to work. Well I didn’t have to work but I had to be there and that was a big issue as I had requested and assured I would get the night off. Then they cancelled that.
Last night I hunkered down in this cold weather. Yeah, that graphic is right, it was –42 last night.
We watched some more episodes of Planet Earth and Survivorman on DVD, drank some tea, played with my iPod Touch, and just tried to stay warm. Jordon threatened me earlier this week that he was going to get me a leopard print Snuggie. Luckily for him, he didn’t get me one as I would have had to retaliate (like wearing it out with him some day)
Jordon and Mark dropped Oliver and I off at Giant Tiger while Mark and him went shopping for stocking stuffers at Dollarama. CTV Newsnet was on the other day and Marcia MacMillan was talking about how much she loved Dollarama. If it’s good enough for her, it’s good enough for us. Mark is concerned that Jordon didn’t get me any “survival gear” for Christmas and quoted Les Stroud when he said, “you can’t choose when you will be in a survival situation”. Well I can avoid heli-hiking, trips through the jungle, African plains, or northern Ontario forests until I have a multi-tool
Today I woke up for it being even colder. We were going to go out for lunch with Lee but we decided to have him over and order in food. It’s good to get together with family and the extended family starts and ends with Lee.
Later today I am heading to Confederation Mall while five different churches pack up 400+ hampers for Christmas hampers. (Confederation Mall was awesome enough to donate warehouse space to the Salvation Army for Christmas Hampers). While Jordon hangs out with them, I will do a little shopping before we head to to the Parktown Hotel for the Salvation Army Community Centre’s Christmas Party. The Salvation Army Christmas party is the greatest Christmas party I have ever been to so it will be good.
In other news, we got our H1N1 shots. While we got H1N1, after talking to the doctor, we were recommended to get the shot in case it was just a strain that we got and to protect us if it comes back in the warmer weather. Instead of going to Prairieland Park and to the mega clinic, the Salvation Army brought a nurse into the Centre for staff, residents, and family. I sat around for about 2 minutes while Jordon and Jackie got their shot and then got mine. I didn’t even feel the needle going in, the nurse from Nightingale Nursing Group was amazing. Now a couple of hours later, my arm was a little sore, as was everyone else’s but that is to be expected. The best part is that she couldn’t get her head around Jordon’s name which is spelled G-e-o-r-d-o-n. She asked him several times how to say his name and when she gave him his immunization record, it was George Cooper.
2009 Christmas Gift Guide
Jordon has updated his list of 2009 Christmas Gift Guides on his site and has added a Christmas Gift Guide for Really Smart People to the mix.
Turning 40
Well I turn 40 in a week and since this summer, Jordon has been asking me what I wanted for the big 4 – 0. We talked about a DSLR, a netbook, and one night after a couple of hours playing with Jordon’s iPod Touch, I decided that this was what I wanted.
Today Jordon and I went over to Future Shop and he bought me my own iPod Touch. They didn’t have a lot left and so instead of taking a chance on not having one next weekend, he bought it for me today. I originally thought I would leave it in it’s packaging until next weekend but no, I am a weak, weak person and I opened it today.
I had some errands to take care of so I sent Jordon to the basement where he loaded up some apps for me.
- Globe and Mail
- New York Times
- The Rider App
- Twitterific
- Coleman Lantern app (which has served as an effective flashlight while at the cabin)
- Google Mobile and Google Earth
- Dopplr (so I know what days to book off work)
- ScoreMobile (how did that app get on there?)
- iPint
- LED Football (umm, thanks Jordon)
- MiniPiano
- Ms. Pac-Man
- FSS Air Hockey
- Flight Stunts Lite
- SGN Golf
- Flickr
- Scrolling LED Sign :: Jordon actually paid money for this and when I questioned how he could ever use it, he said he would would figure it out. I heard from his co-workers a couple of months later that they were sitting in a rather long meeting and Jordon pulled it out and send a scrolling LED sign around asking for someone to pass him a Diet Coke at the end of the table. If I was his boss, I would taser him from time to time.
40 (and 2008) has been a horrible, horrible year for me and by extension for Jordon as well and I am glad I have such a great family to be a part of. The iPod Touch is wonderful and I appreciate it but not as much as I appreciate Jordon, Mark, and Oliver being part of my life each and every day.
“Your husband is so lame”
with 5 comments
Over the last year or so this guy named Kevin has been leaving a plethora of comments on Jordon’s site. He only comments if Jordon writes anything that doesn’t jive with his idea of what evangelical theology should be. Jordon is tolerant of different viewpoints but Kevin progresses from labelling Jordon and then moves on to calling Jordon childish names, the kind that I expect to hear from a grade two or three classroom. Oddly enough, Mark’s school doesn’t tolerate this kind of stuff. It is really, really odd. He also made a classless comment about Jordon’s diabetes that bothered me a lot, even if it didn’t bother Jordon.
Some friends were over a while ago and likened it to some stranger coming into your living room and telling you how stupid you were. You probably would not invite them back and if repeatedly happened, you would just stop letting them come in. So for the first time since he started blogging, he decided to mark his comments as spam and not deal with them anymore.
Today I was checking my unmoderated comments and I saw this one. Kevin has now resorted to leaving the comments on my blog.
Well Kevin, I’ll pass along the message that you still think Jordon is lame and I’ll see if Akismet works just as well on my blog as it does Jordon’s.
This is one of the joys of publishing a blog folks.
Written by Wendy Cooper
December 20, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Posted in Blogging, Jordon Cooper
Tagged with Akismet, bozos, comments, Kevin Thiessen, spam