My gifter, ItsBail, made me the coolest stuff...and weirded me out with some amazing stalking. ItsBail got in touch early on and wrote to ask me if I used a nickname, my full name, my title, and that sort of thing, because that would help in making my gift.

So, when your Santa writes to you, do you get a vision of him/her based on the note? I did: Santa was an older woman who was going to make me a needlepoint sampler. Of course, that was it. She had 14 cats, lived in a small house in the woods, and baked cookies to add to the sampler.

Oh, how wrong is it possible to be? snort My Secret Santa turned out to be a metal fabricator with a wicked cool vision for what I might dig: my Reddit name, a cool Reddit plate (complete with Snoo!), and my full name and title (and this actually looks like it was the hardest to create...at least, it would be if made out of wood).

Wow!

Now for the stalker story. Here's the tl;dr: got something I lost in a blizzard in February, and have no idea how ItsBail knew that.

The longer version: in January, I got my first smart phone (or, as we say in Boston, smahhhhht phone). Bought a cute case for it, which was a Dr. Who Tardis in plastic. I'm not a Dr. Who fan (having only seen 3 episodes) - but am a science fiction fan who does business in the UK a bunch, so the Tardis was perfect.

Then there was this blizzard in February. After the blizzard was over, couldn't find my phone. But had loaded Find My iPhone on the iPad...so fired that puppy up, and it told me that my phone was in the front lawn of a friend's house.

Under 27"+ of snow.

sigh Got a new iPhone, but was using a different case...until ItsBail somehow managed to figure out that my iPhone needed the Tardis case (or how on earth could I get back to my own time and space???).

Thank you, ItsBail! Wicked wonderful metal work and a very, very scary stalker gift. May the holidays bring you much awesomeness!