“This is a good system,” The Yankee said.

We’ve been doing our mileage at the park near her childhood home. This is the park where, two years ago in nine feet of snow and a 17-degree atmosphere that we took our engagement pictures. It was the only day I’ve ever noticed that the wind chill was warmer than the actual temperature. Apparently strange things can happen in a nor’easter.

And it was too nine feet of snow.

There was a picture where we sat on a snow covered bench. We suffered for that particular piece of art. The photograph has never surfaced. I reminded her of all of this today.

Anyway, the system is the park and then down to the nearby Dunkin Donuts.

“On the other hand” I said, “we would go broke if we followed this system every day.”

How you know I don’t have a lot of Dunkin experience. I thought “Holiddays” cup was merely a typo. Apparently it is a code meant to entice a Pavlovian response to all the regular customers that they must run to the store for another coffee. I was unaware.

We spent much of last night working in Photoshop. Such is the chore for creating the modern gag gift. We have a friend who has a particularly morbid Facebook gimmick and we’re going to bring it to life. We printed the finished product today. I’m not saying it will win Present of the Year honors, but I will say I came up with this idea last Christmas.

The great thing is that we can recycle this gag every year.

We had prime rib and Kenny-Christmas tonight, since I won’t be here later this week. I got nice clothes, a cool book and a lot of fun stuff. The best gift was when my mother-in-law donated shoes to a nine-year-old boy for me. That’s the perfect age, really. Little boys are tough on sneakers.

I grew up in that time when sneaker prices were exploding to obscene levels. Simultaneously this was a period that your peers would judge you based on your footwear. Sure, they’d judge you for most everything, but shoes were important.

I never had good shoes. I had Walmart or Payless shoes. The imitations seldom fooled anyone, and they were less than durable. At the time, it mattered; maybe it still does. Perhaps that’s why I wear shoes today — the cheapest New Balance or reasonable loafers or boats I can find — until my feet finally reject them. Shoes, I feel, have to last. That’s probably the only way I can pay my mother back for all the shoes I ran through as a kid. (Once we bought shoes on a Friday and they were destroyed before school on Monday. I still feel pretty bad about that.)

So I hope that little boy gets a nice pair this Christmas. I hope they help make a great Christmas for him and that they mean something to him. I hope he takes care of them — as much as a nine-year-old can — because that’s a great gift.

My mother-in-law, in addition to her many other charms, is a wonderful shopper. She also buys me too many presents. I like this one most of all.