Merriment Monday: Christmas Music!

As far back as I can remember I have been a Christmas music junkie.  The apple did not fall far from the tree with me as my mother might be the only person I know who has more of this type of music than me.  She's just had more time to acquire it... I'm not joking here, if you look at the bottom the screenshot to the right you can see I have 1.9 days of music in my Christmas playlist... just the Christmas playlist.

Can you say "excessive"?  

So, how did this ridiculous playlist come about?  Well, I guess this is what happens when a) someone loves Christmas music, b) they love all types of musical genres and finally c) they adore creative reinventions of traditional music. 

Since I can't possibly do justice to all of the music I would like to share with you in just one blog post (or several for that matter) I'll give you some of my recent favorites.  Every year (since 2007 anyway) I have made an xMix of all my favorite songs from that year.  Now, we're only five days into December here, so I don't have a lot on my list for this year yet, but I can tell good things are coming. 

 So, here's some good tunes to get you going.  All of them can be downloaded on iTunes or Amazon for your listening pleasure (Amazon link provided):

God Rest You Merry Gentlemen - Annie Lennox - A Christmas Cornucopia 

Bells of Christmas - Orla Fallon - Winter, Fire and Snow

Winter Night - Little and Ashley (Free on Amazon! on 12/5/2011)

Born is the King - Hillsong - Born is the King

Now, if you want to get some more Christmas music for yourself, but don't really want to spend on yourself at this time of year, I have a solution for you.  One way to get music is through the iTunes single of the week, which in December is the Holiday Single of the week.  All you have to do, is go to the iTunes store and scroll down and you will see it there with a yellow corner and "free" on it.  Another great way to get free music is Amazon's 25 Days of Free, which allows you to download one free holiday related mp3 per day for the first 25 days of December.  I just love it.  Yes, every once and I while I don't particularly like a song, but really, 25 free songs.  Come on.... it's a no brainer!  

So with that, I leave you to enjoy some lovely and most likely free Christmas music.

Enjoy!

What's making me merry?

So I've been in the process of trying to write a blog post for the past week and a half without much success. Occasionally it's hard to find a good subject to write about or that I am sufficiently excited about to do it justice. This actually isn't the case for me with this blog post. The real problem this time was that I was TOO distracted by the very thing I wanted to write about (ok, I was sick too, but that usually doesn't stop me). For the past week or so this diversion has been entertaining me is a way that I must say hasn't happened in a while. One could even say it has filled my early sunset post-work evenings with a kind of merriment.

To honor this little bit of glee that I am experiencing, I am introducing a new blog theme. Finished Object Friday, Work In Progress Wednesday and the very (and I mean very) occasional Ten on Tuesday will now be joined by...

Merriment Monday!

Ok, now I can get on to the fun stuff... :-) My current source of merriment is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Yeah I know, I know, it's a video game, but honestly, I don't latch on to a whole lot of them. In my entire life there have probably only been ten or less video or computer games that I really have loved and Skyrim is definitely one of them. more than a few years ago I played The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and absolutely loved it as well, so I'm not shocked by how much I've gotten into Skyrim in just a short time.

At The College in Winterhold - outside my quarters

The game itself is just beautiful and the setting Nordic in feel and the music really fits in with the look as well. I've always been a real stickler for nice imagery and sound when I'm playing games and Skyrim does not disappoint. I would happily pick up the soundtrack and already have screenshots as my desktop background. The YouTube video below is the official trailer for Skyrim. You can really get an idea of what playing the game is like in terms of gameplay, visials and sound by checking it out.  

Although the look and sound of the game is important, perhaps one of the things I like most about the game, other than the gorgeous graphics and sound, is that you are allowed to do what you want when playing it. You want to follow the main plot? Go ahead, but you can also choose to do side quests and develop your character in interesting ways and go back to the plot later. The game itself levels with you, so you can do any quest open to you really at any time, which I find neat. Skyrim is also very rich in crafting for those that enjoy non-questing aspects of gaming.

Absorbing the soul of a dragon - they give me powers!

Well, I could wax poetic about Skyrim for awhile longer, but really, I kinda just want to dive back in to play :-) So, I'll leave you with some more screens from the game as eye candy. If you are interested in playing Skyrim, you can download it from Steam for your PC (like we did) or you can also get it for the PS3 or Xbox 360. Whatever your platform of choice, it is worth every penny!