Wishing everyone a safe and wondrous holiday! Merry Christmas to those who celebrate!
Myspace Christmas Graphics
Posts Tagged ‘holidays’
Merry Christmas
Thursday, December 24th, 2009Myspace Christmas Graphics
Christmas As It Never Was?
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009I’ve been listening to Christmas music the past couple of weeks. I prefer the classics sung by the classic artists–you know like Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, Dean Martin, Doris Day, etc–but there are a few newer performers, too. Josh Groban’s O Holy Night is awesome and I downloaded Darius Rucker’s Candy Cane Christmas when iTunes had it available for free and it’s totally wonderful. It’s a new song, but done with the heart and soul of the old classics.
The thing that I find interesting is what this music evokes in me. I picture a simpler time, a time when parents weren’t frenzied trying to make the holiday “perfect” and full of presents for their kids. A time when kids were satisfied with a few gifts and didn’t expect the kind of frenzied consumerism we see today. I see a time when Christmas was about family and friends and not about buying and decorating.
Maybe this never existed. (After all, wasn’t the Cabbage Patch madness in the 80s?) Maybe Christmas has always been prostituted by retailers in order to turn a profit. But I remember a time when holiday decorations weren’t put out before Halloween. And when I was a kid, the expectations for gifts were a lot fewer and a lot less expensive. At least that’s the way I remember it now. 
Maybe this ideal I envision is nothing but a fantasy of how a lot of people wished things were. The thing about this fantasy, though, is that while I can implement it to a degree in my life, I can’t do anything about anyone else and it’s their frenzy that wears me out. Traffic on the freeway near the Mall of America is horrendous and leaves me stressed. I can’t imagine what the atmosphere is like inside the mall. It’s all about consumerism and we’ve lost the holiday and the joy that we should be seeking rather than presents, presents, and more presents.
Or maybe I’m the only one who feels this way.
I used to love Christmas, but now I’m finding myself more and more often thinking, Bah, humbug because of what we’ve turned this holiday into. Of course, your mileage may vary.
Holiday Hangover
Monday, November 30th, 2009Not the drinking kind.
Four days off from the Evil Day Job (EDJ) meant too much time on the laptop for me. My eyes hurt, my neck and shoulders hurt, my back hurts, and even my butt hurts. I’m not excited to return to the EDJ, but on the other hand, at least there I can’t spend all my time in one position.
I know, it’s bad for me. I should be moving around more when I’m at home, but I start working on something and I don’t want to move. Which is where the shoulders, neck, back, and butt come in. The eyes hurt because I don’t blink enough while I’m on the computer. This is a problem at the EDJ, too, but there my job has me getting up to walk around and it doesn’t seem to be as bad.
Thanksgiving ended up being nice. I didn’t go out to any stores, but I did do a little shopping online. QVC was selling a pair of weather radios that were cranked for power as well as solar powered. Guess what my mom is getting for her birthday? LOL. My folks don’t have a weather radio and if she wanted something different, she shouldn’t have said “nothing.” My mom is so hard to buy for.
I also picked up an iPod speaker system on an Amazon gold box special deal. This is for me because I’ve had no luck getting a system for my living room, and because the unit in my bedroom is plugged in behind my dresser, moving that isn’t easy. Much simpler to move the iPod.
I’m also contemplating buying my laptop replacement now rather than in January. The plus side is that Best Buy has free shipping today and tomorrow (Monday). The down side is that I keep thinking, wow, what if something even better comes out in January? And something better always does come along in computers.
Happy New Year!
Thursday, January 1st, 2009Wishing everyone a healthy, happy, and prosperous New Year!
Happy Holidays!
Thursday, December 25th, 2008For those who celebrate, have a safe and joyous holiday!
Christmas Websites
Monday, December 22nd, 2008Since it’s the weekend before Christmas, I thought I’d go in search of some cool sites for the holiday. I found a few.
North Pole.com is broken into three sections: Kids, Parents, and Teachers. There’s a list of free things to do here, including sending a letter to Santa, a visit to Elf Pal Academy, puzzles and activities, and stories to read and color. There’s also a section for Christmas recipes and you do not want to miss the disco-dancing Santa Claus.
Next up is The Official Website of Santa Claus. Here you can send a letter to Santa, find out about traditions around the world, and read about the physics of Santa.
Santa’s Net also has a section of world traditions, song lyrics for some holiday favorites, and a naughty or nice list checker. Where do you fall? Also another opportunity to email Santa.
Find more recipes at Christmas-Cookies.com. The count is 540+ recipes and people can leave comments. Also has low carb cookies, country of origin listings, and baking tips. For those of us who um, nearly set fire to microwave popcorn, ahem, this last part might come in handy.
Merry-Christmas.com has games like elf tic-tac-toe, boxing with Santa, and a few trivia games. See how much you know about It’s a Wonderful Life. There’s also a section for kids where they can email Santa, find coloring pages–both for online and off, and download free MP3 music. This site also has a section on traditions and another for recipes. And if you’re looking for gift tags, you can print some out here for free.
I’ve only browsed through these sites briefly, so as always, use caution on the net, but they looked okay in the time I spent there. Enjoy!
Straight No Chaser
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008The other night I was watching the national news and they did a story about a group of college friends who had a CD released with Christmas music. Two years ago, one of the guys had uploaded them singing a quirky version of the 12 Days of Christmas and it took off on YouTube. They’ve had more than 8 million views and one of them was a record executive who signed them. Of course, I was curious and immediately headed over to watch. I thought it was quirky and fun, too, so I’m sharing it here. I hope y’all enjoy it as much as I did.
BTW, no endorsement is implied. I just thought it was a fun video and these guys looked as if they were having a good time.
Mistletoe and Holly
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008I talked about The Terminator and kick-butt characters over on my agent’s blog today. This is a direct link that I didn’t have when I first posted this morning. If you have a chance, come over and visit and maybe comment so I don’t feel so alone. You see, Live Journal–where the blog is–was down for like 5 hours today and I’m guessing no one read the post. Considering I spent all day Sunday writing it, someone needs to read it. Yes, I am begging.
Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, on to the blog post for today. I just downloaded Frank Sinatra’s Mistletoe and Holly and well, I’ve been playing Christmas songs for nearly 2 weeks now. It’s early, I know it, but it’s been so darn cold in MN that it feels like December!
I’ve also had a co-conspirator in this–my cable company has music channels and the traditional holiday music kicked off I think at the beginning of November. I downloaded my first holiday song shortly after that–Santa Baby by Eartha Kitt.
You might have guessed that I love Christmas music. It’s the only thing about winter I like. And I’ve been known to play Dean Martin’s Baby, It’s Cold Outside at any time of year because 1) I heart Dean Martin and 2) I love that song.
There’s one pattern in all the songs I’ve mentioned–every single one is a traditional song and each one is performed by a classic artist. I love Garth Brooks, but I don’t want to listen to him sing Mistletoe and Holly. Christmas means Andy Williams, Burl Ives, and Gene Autry, not any modern artist. Not for me at least.
I think it was last year (or maybe the year before), I spent weeks and weeks tracking down Christmas songs that my parents had played every year. It was no easy feat, either! I ended up buying complete CDs to find one song. I wanted Robert Goulet’s I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas, Doris Day’s Silver Bells and Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme singing Let It Snow among others. MP3s of the classics were hard to come by (hmm, maybe it was more than 2 years ago then? It doesn’t seem that long ago) and even tracking down copies of the CDs were hard. I persevered.
That doesn’t mean I’m still not adding to the holiday collection as I hear another great song that I forgot I loved. I love iTunes and Amazon–it’s making my Christmas song collection so much easier to grow
Happy Valentine’s Day
Friday, February 15th, 2008
Family Matters
Thursday, December 27th, 2007The only Christmas gift I asked for–well, aside from socks–was a cordless phone with two handsets, so I could have one in the spare bedroom and one in the great room. I got what I asked for and Wednesday’s task was to try to hook them up. I attempted it on Christmas night, but it seemed like an awful darn lot to do beyond charging the batteries and plugging them in. So my dad came over and helped. The man can’t operate a computer, but he’s Rain Man with the telephone. 
I’d left the phones to charge overnight, so the batteries were all ready to go. We plugged things in and set them up and all looked right–except the caller ID wasn’t working on one of the handsets. It would work when it was resting in its own cradle, but not when it was out, which pretty much defeated why I wanted it to begin with. After much testing, however, we were able to get it running. Yea! And it has a few choices for customizable rings, so I’ve got the theme from the movie The Sting on my new phones.
I tried valiantly to order more bulbs on Wednesday, too, but the website wouldn’t accept my coupon–I don’t know why–and I was not leaving my coupon unused, darn it. I guess I saved myself some money and some labor since I don’t have those bulbs coming in the spring.
And in writing news, I’m still going through the galley for In Twilight’s Shadow. I’m really nervous because I’m not finding much to correct and that has to mean I’m missing things. I hate any kind of mistakes in my books, but I’m not going to have time to run through it a third time. Eek!
Finally, Logan and I have been talking for the last week or so. I like him. Last night he introduced me to his mother and his oldest sister. He and his twin are first borns, then came his three sisters. I knew one of them was a troubleshooter and it turns out she’s the oldest of the three. His next sister wasn’t at his parents’ house for the barbecue. She’s in college and was studying for finals. (The story opens in May, I think.) His youngest sister is about to graduate from high school.
Then, of course, there’s Kel, Logan’s brother. I’ve been getting stuff on Kel for months off and on, but I found his sister (who’s name I don’t know yet) very interesting. She’s only 24, but she’s got this calm, assertive energy. Logan’s closest to Kel, but he’s also very close with this sister–maybe because they’re the most alike of the siblings as far as temperament goes (probably). Anyway, it’s been interesting and I’m getting excited to start writing the new book. I just need to finish this galley.
