Calendars are a great Christmas gift, but unless you really know the person who you’re shopping for, all of the calendar options can be a bit overwhelming. For the past two years, I’ve completely avoided the confusion of which calendar I should buy for my son – and for myself – by creating custom calendars with the help of Microsoft Office Word’s Calendar Wizard.

Here are the directions to create your own customized calendar, according to the Microsoft Office Word Help menu:

  1. Open Microsoft Office Word.
  2. On the File menu, click New.
  3. In the New Document task pane, under Templates, click On my computer.
  4. Click the Other Documents tab.
  5. Double-click Calendar Wizard. (If you do not see this wizard in the Templates dialog box, you might need to install it.)
  6. Follow the steps in the wizard.

The great thing about creating your own calendar is that you can include all the important dates instead of having to pencil them in, such as birthdays, anniversaries, and other dates that have a personal significance to you. In addition, you can copy and paste in clip art or photographs, making the final creation as fancy or as plain as you like. With the Calendar Wizard, you really don’t need skills to customize your own calendar. However, you will need a little time.

For those of you who frequently read my blog, you may wonder what’s up with this vanilla posting. Better yet, what’s this topic have to do with IT news? Well, I thought I’d begin by sharing some information that might actually be useful before I totally go off the deep end with this News.com story that I came across right before the holidays. Yes, you can sort through various calendar themes at your local mall or create your own calendar through Microsoft Office Word… but some IT professional men may want to check out the Geek Gorgeous 2006 wall calendar, sold by http://www.geekgorgeous.com/.

According to this photo gallery, originally posted by News.com, the Geek Gorgeous 2006 wall calendar features 12 women who work in the high-tech industry. “March” is serving up a platter of iPods at a fast-food restaurant while “October” is wearing a halter-top made of computer cables. For all you fellow IT women out there, I apologize in advance. I’m not condoning the subjectification of women, but this is absolutely too funny not to share with the rest of the TR community!

The picture below shows Lilac Mohr, 26, of Denver, holding a Dreamcast video game gun. “All proceeds will go to a college scholarship fund she’s starting for young women interested in computer science careers.”