Retold

Have you heard of Pandora.com?  I hadn’t until about a month ago when Matt was looking for a good online music source.  A friend we play World of Warcraft with pointed us in the direction of Pandora Radio.  Pandora is a completely free, online music genome project.  I’ve used others like yahoo radio and last.fm but neither of them even compare with what Pandora Radio has to offer!  You input a song or author and Pandora chooses music for you based upon your preferences.   Each time Pandora plays a song, you can give it a thumbs up or down and it’ll save your preferences, using them to determine what you might and might not like.  It’s also not likely to play the song you gave a thumbs down again.

Lately, I’ve been using Pandora Radio to listen to some Christmas music.  Normally, I’m not in the mood for any type of Christmas music, I just simply don’t like it.  This year, however, I’ve been in the mood for Christmas music.  I have no idea why, nothing’s really changed, I just don’t know.  There are really no elaborate Christmas packages under our little tree, but I feel the holiday spirit none the less.  It happens to me once in a blue holiday moon, but it’s rare.  I’m trying to cling to it while it’s here, before my cynicism takes over and destroys it.  Pandora Radio has come in great help since I don’t own a single Christmas album CD… goodness, I’m old.  I remember when we were kids and we could listen to Christmas music on records, yes, records!  They may not have the best sound, but they’re fun.

They have something fun over there at Pandora Radio for the holiday.  It’s a page that allows you to preselect stations based upon holiday music genre.  You can chose from 10 different and distinct genres.  I chose “Classic Christmas” and ended up with chanting, when they say classical, they mean it.  I personally like the “Folk Holiday” genre and though the holiday listening guide is fun, I like to make my own station.

Go check it out if you’re looking for a really great way to listen to holiday music, or heck, just looking for something to listen to any time of the year.  Matt especially likes it because he can find music on Pandora that he can’t seem to find anywhere else.  He likes 1980′s wrap music, like the Ghetto Boys & Will Smith, and raggae like Chaka Deums & the Pliers, and finding them anywhere else is almost impossible.  So yeah, even the more obscure stuff can be found there.

I’m off to listen to some more Christmas carols!  Hope you enjoy Pandora Radio as much as we do!

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn

Pardon the lack of Christmas cheer in the following post.  I’m traumatized, I want to share that trauma with you.  Once this post is done, this blog will resume it’s Christmas spirit in the blink of an eye.  For now, I feel the need to lavish the neighborhood terror upon y’all.

So, yesterday, feeling very brave, I bundled up in jeans and a sweater and jacket and ventured out the check the mail.  I drove because the mail box is down the block and it was 25 degrees.  On the way to the box, I was completely impervious to the neighborhood around me, I was just trying to keep from freezing solid in the frigid December weather.  On the way back from the box, though, I took a moment to take in the neighborhood… that’s what it happened.  While driving past the house two down from mine, my eye was caught by a scene of gore in the carport.  To be more specific, the neighbors had a full grown deer, hanging upside down by one leg, slit the entire length of it’s core, in their carport.  It was bleeding out onto a white sheet laying in the carport.

WTF?!

Since when was it appropriate to hang dead animals in your carport?  I rushed inside the house, gaping.  I told Matt what I’d seen.  Do you know what he said?  He said, “So? They’re bleeding it out” and then he turned back to his computer and resumed whatever it was he was doing.  I asked him if he didn’t think it was strange, he said no.  NO?!  No, dear, it’s perfectly fine for the neighbors to go out, kill innocent animals, and leave them hanging in their carport for the whole neighborhood to be traumatized by, right.  Dammit!

In case you can’t tell, I have a serious aversion to hunting for sport.  I understand the need for some hunting, but for people, armed with riffles and shot guns, to go out and kill an animal for the sport of it, it’s cruel.  Don’t bother arguing with me, you’ll get nowhere, I hate it and that’s that.  As if that weren’t bad enough, the damn people have the fucking thing hanging, by one foot, upside down in the CARPORT!  Could they not hang the thing in the back of their house, where others don’t have to see it?  I seriously hate people sometimes.

Today, the dead body wasn’t there.  The bloody white sheet was.  There is still a bloody white sheet laying in their carport.  It looks absolutely disgusting.  I mean, I know this is a small town, there’re hicks here, but fuck!

Okay, that it.  I’m traumatized.  In the ten years I’ve lived in Texas, I’ve never seen such blatant disregard for the neighborhood and I used to live next door at TSTC to a girl who dealt drugs and had the campus cops in to her duplex for a little romp every few nights.  Hell, she had all the neighborhood guys into her duplex for a little romp now and then, who’re we kidding.  She never, though, hung dead animals on her patio!  For goodness sake, have some common decency!

Am I just way off here?  Would you want to see a dead animal hanging in your neighbors carports?

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn

I think I may have said at some point that I’m not a fan of Christmas movies and music.  There is some Christmas music that I like, but the movies make me want to craft a noose from Christmas garland.  The lifetime network, who in my opinion are famous for their horrible low budget films, are doing something called “Falalala Lifetime” for Christmas.  They’re playing a whole bunch of low budget Christmas films and believe me, there’re a ton!  I got sucked into one of them yesterday.  When it was over, my feelings toward Christmas movies actually deepened, I not dislike them more than I did when I woke up yesterday morning.

The movie was “Together Again for the First Time” and was about a dysfunctional family who get together for Christmas after not having been together for years.  Okay, sounds good, but then the movie plays.  There were loopholes in the plot that were never addressed, hooks that go nowhere, and as if the family’s not dysfunctional enough they toss in a kid on coke near the end to tie it all together.  It was the worst Christmas movie I have ever seen, hands down.  The biggest problem with it, nothing was solved by the end.  They’re all smiling, after a terrible Christmas eve, but that’s it.  No more Lifetime Christmas movies for me!

Why can’t all Christmas movies be more like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” with Burl Ives.  That’s a Christmas movie I can appreciate.  I love it, it’s old but I still love it.  I think it’s honestly the only Christmas movie I can say I truly like… unless you consider “Christmas with the Cranks” and “Love Actually” Christmas movies.  If so, I love them too.  I think what I love most about the Burl Ives Rudolph is the songs, “Silver and Gold” and “Holly Jolly Christmas.”

Enjoy the video clips!  I’m going to go try and find Rudolph on the tv sometime in the near future.  I actually have “Love Actually” on DvD, so I’m gonna pop it in and have some hot cocoa because it’s freezing here!!  I hope y’all are having a happy holiday season.  Mine’s been pretty good so far, espeically when I found out my GPA for the fall semester was 3.33 because they didn’t count the Biology class as GPA hours because it was a retake.  Yay for good GPA, Merry Chrismas to me!  Oh and do yourselves a favor and DO NOT watch the Falalala Lifetime Christmas movies and if you do, don’t blame me, I warned you!

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn

Time to share some holiday spirit, because I’m feeling a bit in the holiday mood tonight!  I was snooping around on my pal Mayren’s blog, saw her Christmas meme, and promptly stole it!  Well, I stole a slightly altered version of it, actually, but the point remains the same.  So here goes…

1. Egg Nog or hot chocolate? Yes, please!  I love them both so much, but Egg Nog really makes me feel the season, where as Mayan hot chocolate is my favorite “I’m freezing and need to warm up from the inside” drink.
2. Does Santa wrap presents or set them under the tree? Santa’s always wrapped the gifts under the tree, with the exception of those big ol’ tins of popcorn.  Some people actually hate to see those tins of yummy popcorn goodness, but I love them!  I’m going to get one next time I’m at Wal-Mart, I love the caramel and cheese popcorn!  Maybe I should get one for Matt, too.
3. Colored lights on tree or white? White.  I love the white Christmas tree lights.  When we were growing up, though, the lights our tree were always colored… well, almost always.  The tree’s we had as kids were wonderfully eclectic!
4. When do you put your decorations up? When I was growing up, we put up the tree stuff the day after thanksgiving.  It was one of my absolute favorite holiday traditions.  I simply couldn’t wait to get the tree up and start putting out all the little decorations like the nativity and the ceramic snowman that was light from inside.  My mom always made the nativity look so beautiful, she put it on top of Angel’s Hair, which is very finely spun glass, which she laid on top of a glass mirror.  The effect was beautiful.
5. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)? Excluding dessert, really?  Well what fun is that?  Do you think Chocolate Sundae cookies count as desert?  My mom makes these cookies that are to die for.  They’re a chocolate cherry cookie with a marshmallow on top.  Once they’re cooled, she covers the marshmallow with chocolate frosting!  I love them!  Otherwise, I would have to say the ham, I love ham, and I love the different fruit type salads my mom always makes… as long as they don’t have carrots or celery in them.
6. Favorite Holiday memory as a child? Putting up the Christmas tree was ALWAYS fun!!  I loved it, I still love it.  So, my favorite holiday memories as a child have carried over into my adult life.  Oh, and the year that it was 85 degrees in Southern California on Christmas day, we had gotten new bikes for Christmas and were able to go out in shorts and ride them!
7. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I think I was probably 10 years old, my dad just blurted it out.  I was like, “wait, what?”  I didn’t believe him at first, but as time goes on, it’s something children learn to accept.  I think finding out there wasn’t some magical fat man with a reindeer sleigh just dropping off all those gifts made me appreciate them more.  Knowing my parents had put time and effort and money into getting me those things made me enjoy them more.
8. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Not usually.  There were a few times that we were allowed to open one.  Since I’ve been married, Matt and I sometimes exchange a gift on Christmas Eve.  Otherwise, the only time we did it was when we were getting together with friends or extended family and there was a gift exchange.
9. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? Well, like I said, my tree growing up was always wonderfully eclectic.  We decorated it with all of the ornaments we collected over the years, including those my parents had collected and the one’s we’d made, strings of red and white beads, colored lights.  So, there was no color theme, but it was always a beautiful tree.  Mary lou, my dad’s step-mother, always did her tree in themes, usually white with Dodgers ornaments (insert eyeroll here).  My aunt Sue always did themes too, one year all the decorations on her tree were creme and mauve… MAUVE at Christmas!  So, we were exposed to themed trees, but I always thought the eclectic one at home was better.
10. Snow! Love it or Dread it? I LOVE SNOW!!  I grew up in a place where, in the winter, there was a good chance of snow.  It never snowed on Christmas that I can recall, but sometime in the winter we had a good shot at it.  Some years it was worse than others, some years it was 85 degrees in December, but snow was something we could potentially look forward to.  Yes, it snows in the Southern California desert.  On the other hand, I now live in a place where if it snows it’s a complete shock.  I’ve lived in Central Texas nearly 10 years and seen snow three times, one of those times I didn’t actually see it because I was in California, where it actually snowed like two days after we left.  The snow was evading us!
11. Can you ice skate? Oh, hell no!  I can roller skate and I used to could roller blade, does that count?  The truth is, I’ve never been ice skating, but I know if I ever went all I’d do is fall down.  I have weak ankles, okay!
12. Do you remember your favorite gift? This question is really tough because I’m the type of person who appreciates every gift I’ve ever gotten.  If I had to pick, though, I’d say that I have two favorite gifts.  The first is a tiffany lamp that my parents bought me when I was 16 years old.  I still have it, it’s actually sitting on my desk this very second.  The second is a candle house my husband bought me, it’s crafted by hand of lithuranian mud and has a really great story behind it.  I’ll share it some other time, maybe.
13. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you? For me, I think, since growing up it’s counting my blessings for another year.  Being able to spend Christmas with my husband is really important to me.  Also, seeing my mom and dad, which I don’t always get to do (like this year).  So, counting my blessings and family!!  Oh, and food, I love holiday food!  You think I got this curvy body by eating soy and carrots?!
14. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? Pumpkin Pie, no contest.  I love it.  I love it with whipped cream…  lots and lots of whipped cream!  I also love mom’s sundae cookies, dad’s brandied fruit bread (which I still have never attempted myself because I don’t understand the recipe), home made fudge, persimmon cookies, and those delicious fruit salads mom makes.  But, mostly it’s the pumpkin pie!
15. Which do you prefer, Giving or Receiving? I love to give!!  I love to see people open a gift and be happy with what you’ve spent time choosing for them.  I’m a pretty good shopper, I’ve been told so on many occasions, I pick good gifts appropriate to the receiver.  So, I love to see people open gifts, it fills me with unspeakable joy!  I like to get, too, of course.
16. What is your favorite Christmas Song? This is tricky because, believe it or not, I’m not fond of Christmas media.  I don’t really enjoy most Christmas music or movies, etc.  But, in answer to this question, I’d say “All I want for Christmas is you,” “Silver Bells,” “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” and “Sleigh Ride.”  Hmm… sounds like I do like them after all.  Sadly, I don’t have any christmas music.
17. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum? YES!!  I love them.  I’m also allergic to them.  We hang them on our Christmas tree, a tradition from home.  Mom actually has, or had as she may have gotten rid of them now, the same candy canes for like my entire childhood.  We weren’t allowed to eat them, they were decoration!  Now a days, I put them into a cup of hot chocolate, but seldom just eat them for the fun of eating them because they give me a terrible headache.  I do like flavored candy canes, though, like the Jelly Belly ones.  The only thing I don’t like about them is that when they get small, they sorta get gooey in the wrapper and make a mess.
18. Ever recycled a Christmas present? No, no way!  I love Christmas presents, I’d never recycle one.  That said, there was a special case of the gift exchange game we did at my Aunt Sue’s a few times.  We pick a number, number one goes first,  they pick a gift and unwrap it.  Person #2 can chose to take person #1′s present or pick a new one, and so on.  There was a bit of “gift recycling” going on there, but that’s probably not what’s meant by the question.

So there you have it!!  I know it’s long, but I wanted to share a little bit of my holiday tradition with y’all.  I’m trying to feel the holiday season this year, hence the tree, but all the stress from school and life and such is making it difficult.  Still, I’m trying, which is more optomistic than I usually am about anything!  Oh, the tree in the picture up there is my christmas tree!

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn