Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Merry Christmas, y'all!

Don't worry, kids - the movie is NOT called "The Martians Conquer Santa Claus"!

I know quite a few people that can't imagine spending Christmas in Australia or Brazil because it would be warm and stuff. Hah! Pretty much all Christmas movies would have you believe that it snows in all 50 states in the US every Christmas - if it ain't cold, it ain't Christmas. But growing up in Nashville and spending most of my adult life in North Carolina, I remember many more Christmases going around in short sleeves than I do wearing heavy coats. This year is no exception - even the coldest-natured person was running around with at most a light jacket today and it may reach 70 this weekend. I do have a lot of sympathy for the folks that are stuck in O'Hare or otherwise victims of foul weather but that's rarely a problem here (we get it around the second week of January, when we almost inevitably get an ice storm).

Like most long-time Chapel Hillians, we headed off to University Mall and A Southern Season today. No one goes to UMall to do real shopping anymore - it's more a place to pick up some last minute knick-knack, run into folks from church or your neighborhood and pick up a few nummies from ASS. We only did the middle of those (having finished our knick-knacking and nummie-buying earlier in the week) plus we had a nice lunch at the Weathervane, before coming home and doing the last minute "OhGodthisplaceisapigsty" housecleaning. It was, of course, not a pigsty, but there's no question that it looks better now and we can relax and enjoy wrecking it again while I'm off work the next few days.


Here's hoping you all have a magical Christmas and a healthy and happy 2009!

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Sunday, December 21, 2008

Christmas Tunes

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, this has been a really music-oriented holiday season for us, with opportunities to hear the North Carolina Symphony's Holiday Pops concert, the NC Jazz Rep Orchestra's holiday show and club shows with Hege V, the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Southern Culture on the Skids. Between the concerts and a number of good Christmas episodes of television series we like (like Chuck, Monk and Psych), I've been unusually uninterested in catching holiday movies this year. But it's already been one of the best holiday periods I can remember and it's not even Christmas yet!

When I was working from home regularly, I usually had a playlist together for when I knocked off on Friday - something to blast out of the Klipsch speakers and knock the dust off the shelves. Since I'm planning on working up through Christmas Eve next week (but doing so from home), I've put together my playlist for Wednesday afternoon - if you hear a loud rumbling around 2:30 on Wednesday, it's probably my subwoofer...

1. T-Bone Burnett - God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen
2. Beck - The Little Drum Machine Boy
3. Timbuk 3 - All I Want For Christmas
4. The dB's - Home for the Holidays
5. Dave Edmunds - Run, Rudolph, Run
6. Fishbone - It's a Wonderful Life (Gonna Have a Good Time)
7. Southern Culture on the Skids - Merry Christmas, Baby
8. The Pogues with Kirsty MacColl - Fairytale of New York
9. The Musical Cast of Toys Featuring Wendy and Lisa - The Closing of the Year
10. Sun 60 - Mary Xmess

Happy Solstice, y'all!

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