I've been making Christmas mix tapes/cds/playlists for ages. Some of my first ones were in Junior High using my Wards Airline cassette recorder with the mic taped in front of the stereo speakers. Lo-fi at its very best.
I kept meaning to get one done this year, but lacked sufficient motivation to actually get it done. I'm not really sure why. I think I feel at least a little bit Christmas-y, but I'm not sure. I've already gotten perfect gifts for some folks and even presented the new version of the story of spud tossing. Decorating the house produced many fewer arguments and much less shouting this year and the kids and Haidee all seem to be getting along. I just don't get it. Maybe I don't need the higher levels of excitation.
I don't want to beat a dead horse or sound like a rerun(sorry Mark) but to be honest as I'm getting closer to my golden years I think back to the activities of a Christmas 17 years ago. It was my worst Christmas ever.
I won't go into all the boring details or the repetitive rambling. I'll just go with, "that was the year I had my holiday quadruple bypass." They dropped the knowledge nugget on me about noon on the 23rd after an ever so exciting heart cath(my first in a series of over a dozen these many years later.) I shan't soon forget the sighte of the four highly paid heart specialists pointing at a monitor as they huddled in a corner, shaking heads, looking over their glasses at me. Finally one of them comes over and tells me the news. Luckily one of them, Rez Khalafi, says let him have a Christmas, we can do it on Monday.
I wasn't that excited about having the surgery anyway. My dad only lasted not quite 3 days after his four years earlier and by gawd I didn't want to do it until we threw potatoes in Jacksboro. Now 17 years later we are sill at it. I've had seven stents since, 2 bouts of roto rooter, done all sorts of wild and crazy treatments.
(I even followed the Dick Cheney program of biting the heads off of live weasel babies one a day for 2 weeks. Actually when I heard him gloat about how he'd torture all over again and the senate report was just a bunch of hooey and full of cr&p, I thought loudly to myself, "Did we really waste a perfectly good 'human" heart on him when it could have gone to someone possibly a little nicer and more caring?")
So...I think about the heart stuff at Christmas time. That year was the both the worst but also the BEST Christmas ever just because of everything that followed.
I got on the youtubes and put together a playlist of the songs I listened to in '97 and that I still love today.
When I get more time I might ramble some about each of them. Enjoy, Merry Christmas, and sorry about the advertising on some of them.
Merry Christmas Baby - Charles Brown
I kept meaning to get one done this year, but lacked sufficient motivation to actually get it done. I'm not really sure why. I think I feel at least a little bit Christmas-y, but I'm not sure. I've already gotten perfect gifts for some folks and even presented the new version of the story of spud tossing. Decorating the house produced many fewer arguments and much less shouting this year and the kids and Haidee all seem to be getting along. I just don't get it. Maybe I don't need the higher levels of excitation.
I don't want to beat a dead horse or sound like a rerun(sorry Mark) but to be honest as I'm getting closer to my golden years I think back to the activities of a Christmas 17 years ago. It was my worst Christmas ever.
I won't go into all the boring details or the repetitive rambling. I'll just go with, "that was the year I had my holiday quadruple bypass." They dropped the knowledge nugget on me about noon on the 23rd after an ever so exciting heart cath(my first in a series of over a dozen these many years later.) I shan't soon forget the sighte of the four highly paid heart specialists pointing at a monitor as they huddled in a corner, shaking heads, looking over their glasses at me. Finally one of them comes over and tells me the news. Luckily one of them, Rez Khalafi, says let him have a Christmas, we can do it on Monday.
I wasn't that excited about having the surgery anyway. My dad only lasted not quite 3 days after his four years earlier and by gawd I didn't want to do it until we threw potatoes in Jacksboro. Now 17 years later we are sill at it. I've had seven stents since, 2 bouts of roto rooter, done all sorts of wild and crazy treatments.
(I even followed the Dick Cheney program of biting the heads off of live weasel babies one a day for 2 weeks. Actually when I heard him gloat about how he'd torture all over again and the senate report was just a bunch of hooey and full of cr&p, I thought loudly to myself, "Did we really waste a perfectly good 'human" heart on him when it could have gone to someone possibly a little nicer and more caring?")
So...I think about the heart stuff at Christmas time. That year was the both the worst but also the BEST Christmas ever just because of everything that followed.
I got on the youtubes and put together a playlist of the songs I listened to in '97 and that I still love today.
When I get more time I might ramble some about each of them. Enjoy, Merry Christmas, and sorry about the advertising on some of them.
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