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Here it is, January 1, and I am faced with putting my Christmas CDs away for another year, I am thinking of keeping a few out that are just so good that I will actually miss them and want to play them in July, or maybe even March.
I am always on the look-out for new, different, interesting Christmas music, which is hard to do when I already have maybe 100 Christmas CDs and there are probably less than 100 standard Christmas songs. I prefer the usual songs with a lot of variations, but nothing too “out there.” Having said that, though, SheDaisy has a Christmas album called Brand New Year that is a little out there, and it’s one of my favorites. It’s tough to beat Santa’s Got a Brand New Bag ( listen here) for an all-out boogying Christmas song. This year, my newest favorite Christmas CD is Deana Carter’s Father Christmas. It’s not a new CD, actually released in 2001, but I just discovered it and it has received a LOT of playtime in my iTunes. I first heard a couple of the songs through Pandora and I tried to download the album from iTunes or Amazon’s MP3 music, but I could only get it on an actual CD. The entire album is Deana Carter singing by herself, accompanied only by her dad, Earl Carter, a Nashville session guitarist who has worked with a lot of big names. It’s just beautiful, so understated and also a little quirky at times. There is one part in Winter Wonderland where Earl changes the beat on her and Deana says, “Da-ad!” in that way that kids when they are being teased, and she finished the song without missing a beat. And, man, do I wish there was someone at my house who could play guitar like Earl Carter, even HALF as good! His opening of Silent Night makes me almost want to cry. I took the CD to a local coffee house the other night where we were meeting friends for some holiday cheer. They played the CD for us over their music system, and it sounded fabulous! A lot of people asked about the artist and title of the CD. I can’t believe it’s taken me seven years to come across it. While I’m thinking of it, The Gypsy Hombres have an excellent Christmas CD called Django Bells. Especially good versions of You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch and the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
I got a $40 Christmas present this year from the nice people who make rooSwitch! Well, they didn’t actually SEND me anything or GIVE me anything, nothing tangible, but they saved me $40 in upgrade fees, and that’s the same thing!
rooSwitch is a wonderful application which easily lets you create different profiles with the data from just about any application. I’m using it currently with iPhoto, where I have four different profiles, and iWeb, with multiple websites, and most recently with DEVONthink Personal 2. I have been anxiously awaiting the release of DEVONthink Personal 2 for several reasons, but mostly because the blog about the update referred to opening multiple databases, a feature that has only been available in DEVONthink Pro and above, and one which I wanted enough to seriously consider upgrading to Pro for $40. Since that is the ONLY additional feature that I am interested in, though, I haven’t yet justified the expense. I upgraded to and downloaded Version 2, and was disappointed to see that the multiple database feature is still only available in Pro and above. Nice new interface, yes, but still one database. Into the void stepped rooSwitch, my $14.95 application that I already own and use. I created a second profile for DEVONthink Personal 2 and voila! A second database! But, no, I didn’t actually get a second database, just a second profile that was still opening the original database. Hmmm ... so, I dashed off a quick message to the feedback email address on the rooSwitch website on December 19, and on December 20— yes, that fast AND during the holiday season, yet— I received a message from the developer with a quick fix so that rooSwitch would recognize DEVONthink’s application support folder and the notation that it will be included in the next update of rooSwitch. I am now merrily working away with my multiple DEVONthink Personal 2 databases. Thanks for my Christmas present, roobasoft.com!
Saw the latest James Bond movie the other night, Quantum of Solace. Yes, there was a lot of action, but I’m not sure it was that much more than in Casino Royale. I’ve read that people said there was TOO much action, and I don’t feel like that’s the case. What I do think there was too much of was that shaky camera thing that is popular now, that kind of hand-held look where it seems like someone is running along with the camera, zooming in on this and that and not letting you get a full picture of what is going on. In fact, after the first 10 or 15 minutes of the movie, I thought I might throw up! Way too much movement for me. I like to sit in the middle of the theater, but I couldn’t do it with the opening portion of the movie, and I had to get up and go to the back row. Of course, just playing a 3D video game on the Playstation makes me have to go and lie down, so it could just be me. The shaky business seemed to settle down as the movie went on. Daniel Craig is scary intense, very realistic as a guy wound tight, trying to keep from crossing the line—very often, anyway. He’s got that Steve McQueen kinda thing going on, and I sometimes wonder if he’s even acting or if he’s like that in real life. I looked up his birthday and he’s a Pisces. What does that tell me? I don’t know, nothing, I guess, but I’m a Pisces, too, so it makes me think he’s a very good actor.
I really like Olga Kurylenko, recently of Hitman and Max Payne. She was more of a kick-ass Bond girl, which I like better than the helpless “Oh, James!” types. The best and toughest Bond girl ever, though, was Izabella Scorupco, who played Natalya Simonova in Goldeneye. Goldeneye is my favorite Bond movie to date. Too bad they can’t bring Famke Janssen back as Xenia Onatopp in the next Bond movie. She would sure give Daniel Craig a run for his money in the intensity department! I did see a Bond Blooper in Quantum of Solace: there is a scene where he disables a bad guy and takes his ear piece and other accoutrements so he can look at and listen in on the rest of the bad guys. He takes all this stuff and goes into the restroom and drops it into the sink while he puts in his ear piece, etc. The sink is one of those ones operated by a motion sensor and it should have turned on instantly and soaked all his stuff as soon as he put it in the sink, but nary a drop of water appeared. All in all, another good Bond flick, one which I will most definitely be adding to my DVD collection.
We’ve gone granola in this family and I have been researching and replacing everything we use with green products, no chemicals. It’s hard work, let me tell you, and there are some things that just don’t lend themselves to being green, hair spray being one of them. If you grew up using your mother’s Aqua Net, like I did, and think of hair spray has a staple item, like I definitely do, then going granola (back to nature, being earth-friendly, more health conscious) can be the source of some seriously bad hair days. I tried not using hair spray at all and my husband thought my hair looked “fine.” Of course, I knew that meant that it looked like crap. So, I went to the Skin Deep: Cosmetic Safety Database and searched through all the hair sprays, trying to find some that were rated 2 or less — there weren’t that many — and I picked three non-aerosol products: Beauty Without Cruelty Natural Hold Hair Spray, Jason Natural Cosmetics Thin-to-Thick Hair Thickening Hair Spray, and Magick Botanicals Fragrance Free Hair Spray. There wasn’t an aerosol hairspray that was rated 2 or less — so much for my mom’s Aqua Net. I ordered all three sprays from iHerb.com (love that place almost as much as I love amazon.com) and have spent the last month trying them all under varying conditions. BWC and Magick Botanicals were $6.85 for 6 oz bottles -- but when my order arrived, my BWC was an 8.5 oz bottle -- and the Jason spray was $4.80 for an 8 oz bottle. The Jason spray was rated 0, and I really wanted to like it, especially since it smells so good, but it’s pretty much worthless as a hair spray. The only thing hair spray-ish about it is that, yes, you do spray it on your hair. It doesn’t hold anything in place and even wetting your fingers and running through you already-sprayed hair doesn’t give it any oomph. Maybe it really isn’t meant to be that kind of a hair spray. But, hey, it smells really good, so I left it in my bathroom to use as an air freshener. The Magick Botanicals spray is rated 1, so I tried hard to like it best, now that I’d ruled out the Jason spray, and I must say that it is a very close second to the BWC spray. It’s unscented and definitely offers more holding power than the Jason spray, but it just didn’t quite measure up to the BWC spray. It seemed like it left my hair a little bit wetter and kind of separated it more. It’s hard to explain exactly what I mean, but in the end, I just preferred the Beauty Without Cruelty spray. But, having said that, if I couldn’t get BWC hair spray, I would definitely be happy with the Magick Botanicals spray, and you can buy it in gallon containers from their website, so you can refill the spray bottles — a lot less waste. Beauty Without Cruelty Natural Hold Hair Spray is rated at 2, and I’m not sure they should call it “natural hold,” because that implies to me that it’s probably not going to act much like a hair spray at all. Anyone who uses hair spray routinely knows you need “extra hold” or “ultra hold” in order for it to be good at its job! Having said that, though, BWC is very good at its job, but it doesn’t give you such a strong hold that you can’t get your fingers into your hair after you’ve sprayed it. It’s unscented, but the smell is still familiar to me, like maybe I’ve used a similar product before. I spray it on and have time to rearrange things before it dries, and it holds my style very well. I’m very happy with this product, but I don’t think you could go wrong with either the BWC or the Magick Botanicals spray. There you have it, another pressing decision made and another item crossed of my huge list.
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