Christmas present shopping for Ron Nagasawa has taken on new heights of extreme tests of patience. I can almost picture a special edition of the TV show Fear Factor ? the Christmas Shopping Challenge.

Contestants would have to endure hours of excruciating waiting while their spouses shopped for Christmas presents. They would have to up the winnings because $50,000 might not be worth going through what I do at this time of year.

I recently checked the verbiage of my wedding vows to see if I had a legal obligation to go Christmas shopping with my wife. I think, ?Until death do us part? pretty much covers it. My wife, over the years, has honed shopping into a combination of art form and guerrilla warfare.

This past weekend we were at Sears Ala Moana. Being that it?s so close to Christmas, the place was packed with shoppers. Sears now uses a central checkout system, four registers at the kiosk but with only one line feeding into them.

Before my wife even started to shop, she told me to go and wait in the long checkout line. She said that by the time I got up to the register, she would have the items to pay for. ?Yeah, right? I said under my breath as I took my place in line.

Slowly but surely I started to approach the front of the line. I called my wife on her cell phone to let her know that she needed to bring her items ASAP, but she didn?t answer. I then sent my kids on a search-and-rescue mission to locate their mother.

I was feeling a lot of pressure from the shoppers behind me who had merchandise and I was the only thing in their way. Finally my wife returned with an armload of gifts and took my place in line. As I walked away, another woman farther down the line grabbed my arm and asked if she could pay me to do the same thing for her.

Web Site of the Week

International recording artist from Hawaii, Scott Katsura, wrote in to me from the Big Apple where he?s recorded a new CD release, ?Aloha Miles Away.? Hear and see what it?s all about:

www.scottkatsura.com

Aloha and happy holidays. Send your favorite websites to me at:rnagasawa@midweek.com