Christmas(-tree-decorating) music

A few CDs my family listens to around Christmastime...

Christmas Country Rock is apparently obscure enough that I can't even find the cover image online. It is from 1990 (according to Amazon), but still, makes me wonder where my parents got it in the first place, haha. We've listened to this CD for years and years, as in, when my brothers and I were little, we'd run around our (then-much-smaller) living room and play on the plastic rocking horse or sit-n-spin to these songs. And we probably skipped most of the "slow songs" in the middle of the album. "Jingle Bell Rock" was definitely one of my favorites back then, and I was always excited when we finally made it to that song, cuz it was the last one on the album. (Did I not know about shuffle, or something?) Yet only yesterday did I find it slightly ironic that it's "Jingle Bell Rock" on a country album... When I was little I also loved "Blue Christmas" and hey, I still do. It was probably a number of years though before I began to appreciate the great jazz(?)-like piano playing on the song, though. The album may feel a little worn out - we've been listening to it for like 17 years - but it's kinda like a pair of slippers with a hole in them that you don't want to get rid of and actually still really like because they are familiar and comfy.


Vanessa Williams's Star Bright is just an awesome Christmas album. The three customer reviews on the Amazon page describe this feeling very well. The songs are based on traditional and well-known melodies, but are rearranged to be upbeat and new and just really fun to listen to (and musically well-done, in my opinion). And I agree with one reviewer who said the music is still reverent - to me, (some of) these songs sound like they are really celebrating the birth of Jesus. (I say "some of" because some are secular.) I love her voice as well; she can sing both powerfully and ponderingly (ok I made that word up), whichever a song calls for. I'm not sure how long my family has had this album (Amazon says it came out in 1996 which is earlier than I had thought), but it's definitely one I know I'm going to enjoy every year. :)


Hmm... trying to think of other Christmas albums that have become "classic" in my house. We have one of Kenny G's Christmas albums (I've discovered, thanks to Ruckus, that there are quite a few of them) and an acoustic guitar album, both of which are collections of relaxing renditions of well-known songs. Of course there's the Nutcracker, the brilliance of which I fully realized a few years ago - part of broadening musical taste, I'd like to say. And speaking of broader taste, while decorating the tree yesterday evening, our CD player shuffled to a Christmas album by Chicago, which someone gave to someone in our family as a gift. Nearly everyone else in my family proceeded to state how Chicago and Christmas songs just don't mix at all, blah blah... I didn't think it was quite that bad, but after a song and a half or so, I think we did put on something else.


I've just come back from Christmas Eve Mass, which included quite a lot of music. Most of it was very traditional songs, sung by the choir and accompanied by piano, sometimes with handbells. The readings were interspersed with song verses, and the priest sang all the prayers that precede Eucharist. This abundance of music made me notice a few things. One's that I was able to pay much better attention if I had the hymnal out in front of me and followed the words of the current song - i.e. this mitigated quite a lot of my focusing problem. And though I've heard these songs many times, by focusing I found myself trying to find new meaning in them. Or at least I tried to immerse myself in the scene of the night of the birth of Christ - the stable, the gentle mother Mary, the curiosity of the shepherds, the angels, and above all, the joy to be found in the love embodied in the gift of God's Son. (I also started imagining scenes I could draw, including one of Mary, well, rocking out, and baby Jesus raising an eyebrow. Then I thought maybe this wasn't the best idea, haha.)

Anyway, taking a step back, music seems to be an integral part of praise and worship. I noticed that I was missing playing clarinet with the choir and even imagined adding in some accompaniment parts to the songs - I wish I had the compositional ability to do so; though, I haven't tried, so maybe.... But when I start getting caught up in enjoying playing with the choir, something always nags me: I feel like I may be forgetting the point of the music and enjoying the music as its own entity. The music is supposed to be a gift of praise, maybe even considered "using our gifts" (talents) as we are often told to do in various places in the Bible. Technically/physically I don't think I'm doing anything wrong, but mentally, again I think my focus could be out of place. I would guess that enjoying the music is fine, and good, assuming that God wants us to enjoy our gift back to Him. But I think I should also have my mind on the thanking, praising, and sharing of God, as these are (some of) the purposes of the music. Maybe when I go back to Penn and start playing clarinet with the choir again, I can try to reflect on the message of the song (or the readings of that Mass, or whatever) while playing. That would be a start, I think.

New stuff I did

It seems like even though this year at Penn is just getting going, I've already done a bunch of new things that I've never done before. Therefore I'm going to start a record (in approximately chronological order lol) and update it as I go along.

• August - purchased a bunch of appliances for my room which I didn't have last year - toaster ($12), microwave ($35 I think?), coffee maker (like $20). They are all turning out to be useful so far. The toaster is surprisingly popular :)
• August - purchased a set of pots/pans, which came with a bonus collection of spices, with rack, which I'll probably never use...
• August something - really practiced bass clarinet. It's awesome, but hard to "get" the sound above the break; really hard to get good tone on that. And it needs SO much air!
• Again, towards the end of summer - I wanted some tea, and Dad drinks it all the time, so I asked him to make a cup for me. He gave me chai, and I ended up really liking it. (Ok, so it's not my first time ever drinking tea, but my first time trying chai.) I got a box of chai to bring to Penn.
  
• 8/31 - watched Anchorman with Rebecca, Becca, Eamonn, and Ben. Part of an initiative to see movies that apparently everybody except me has seen. Opinion: it's not my kind of humor, definitely. I guess some moments were funny, but it just often feels ridiculously overdone. (Obviously this is the point, though..)
• 9/3 - Saw Dan for the first time this year and was totally shocked by his new much shorter haircut (also not parted in the middle anymore) and switch from glasses to contacts (!!!!!)
• 9/3 - Purchased food from food carts/trucks. Last year John got me a sausage-egg-and-cheese from Bui's but this was the first time I ever bought anything myself. Dan and I went to Hemo's for lunch; I got a grilled chicken pita. For dinner Simone, Tatini and I tried to go to Magic Carpet but it was already gone, so we went to The Real Le Anh (Le Anh is across the street haha), and I got cashew chicken. Two discoveries: it's really good, and really cheap!!
• 9/3 - I guess a couple of FNAR courses I've taken have been cross-listed as grad courses, but CIS 460 (Computer Graphics) is definitely the first CSE/CIS course I've taken that's cross-listed. It was a bit intimidating, realizing all these quiet students were probably graduates... hence the invention of the DMD Undergraduate Row :D
• 9/4 - First class where I don't have cell phone service (I think). This is because it's CIS 262 down in the basement of Skirkanich (kinda like a dungeon hahaha). Probably all for the best - I should seriously pay attention in that class.
• 9/4 - First ever class I'm taking on databases. woooot
• 9/4 - First class in which I might be the only student who's not a music major. A little intimidating. =/
• 9/5 - Cooked a dinner dish by myself! It was meatloaf, and it was good! yayyy
• 9/5 - Attended Rodin bingo, and actually won a round! I got a gift card to Gap. Yay shopping!!
• 9/6(?) - FREE LAUNDRY!!!!! Most unfortunately I had to go up 2 floors to the 14th floor since the machines on my floor were all occupied.
• 9/7 - Discovered I did not make wind ensemble on bass clarinet... first year at Penn that I won't be in it, but that also means I can go to the music program's Third Thursdays now :)
• 9/7 - Played DDR (via Stepmania) with my own pad in my room at school. (I actually had the pad with me last year in Stouffer but never took time to play.)
• 9/8 - Taking a class in Linux :D
• 9/8 - Taking a class being taught entirely (as far as I can tell) by a computer science student in my own grade - the aforementioned Linux half-credit class. I feel like I should be feeling extremely inferior or something, but I don't. Zach's friendly and a good lecturer and definitely knows a LOT. Which is awesome :) . I think he was even in my 260 class haha...
• 9/8 - First job at Penn: mentor for CIS 110. We had our first meeting and it was a friendly gathering. We even talked about who had which lab shifts and office hours, as I was rushing out for band, lol.
• 9/9 - Met Danny's sister Laura - she's awesome! The three of us went to Cosi for dinner :)
• 9/9 - Salsa lesson at the Penn Latin and Ballroom Dance info session. It was sooo embarrassing but SO MUCH FUN!!! I decided I was definitely going to the lessons and began trying to convince friends to come...
• 9/9 - Tried iscribble for the first time, with John. I actually plugged in my mouse (finally) cuz there's no way I was gonna draw with the touchpad.
• 9/10 - First lab as a 110 mentor, with Ryan as the TA. I have to get there late, cuz it starts at 2:30 but I have 460 till 3. Luckily I made it in time for introductions and I even answered a bunch of questions which made me useful, yay!
• 9/11 - Played ping pong with Danny and Carlin in the lower level of Harrison - good times!!
• 9/12 (technically) - went to Allegro's around 1am with Carlin and Danny and had .. chicken and broccoli pizza? Or something like that. It was good, lol.
• 9/13 (or late night 9/12) - Installed Linux (Ubuntu) on a virtual machine on my computer!! Now I really want to install it "for real" (on a partition on my hard drive)
• 9/13 - Went out to dinner with Menghan and ate Thai food! I had drunken noodles hahah but it was really good AND I have leftovers!
• 9/13 - Went to Penn PM karaoke event with Erica, held on the Stouffer patio. Thanks to Erica I actually went up to sing; we did Beat It together. Michael Jackson's voice is way too high for my range (whatever limited range I might have), so next time I'll definitely be picking something else :P
• 9/13 - Uploaded pictures using Google's Picasa. It's got captions and some kind of tagging of people and reordering, and I was even able to include videos (though I had to actually download Picasa for that, rather than just using the web service). However, it seems that unless you upload through the Picasa client program, you can only upload 5 photos at a time..? This seems kinda ridiculous, especially considering how on Facebook you can upload a bunch all at once - I think it's a Java application actually.
• 9/14 - Played clarinet at church for the 10am Mass. This went pretty well, considering I got the music last minute. I had to skip a couple things, but overall it sounded good!! (And this is despite my clarinet not playing very easily, which is a fluctuating thing.)
• 9/14 - Right after Mass I went to the "hospitality" thing - like "Doughnut Sunday" at home, but on a much smaller scale.
• 9/14 - PLBD social lessons!!! Salsa and tango. SOOO MUCH FUN hahaha I cannot wait to go back :D (this really probably deserves a full post to itself)
• 9/14 - Lost my band pants (somehow by mixing them up with a pile of laundry on top of a machine) -> realized this, hours later -> panicked while trying to do my Graceland assignment for music 150 -> emailed Neil, who included my plea in his email to the floor -> received my pants from someone who found them mixed among his laundry by accident -> I've never been so glad to see those pants hahaha
• 9/15 - Ate a cookie and a brownie from Cosi (at cis 1xx grading system learning session); they were so good that I took another cookie for the way out haha.
• 9/15 - Used Dreamweaver in the Rodin computer lab - the version was old enough that it was still Macromedia... (2002 or 03-ish? I wonder why it's not updated.)
• probably September - Web design (9am-12 on Tues/Thurs) finished early enough for Grace and I to go to Wawa before 262. I got Wawa coffee for the first time and it is AMAZING. (Also much cheaper than Starbucks...I should keep this in mind and shift some of my coffee habits to Wawa...)
• 11/24 - arrived late to a clarinet social gathering which included watching Zoolander. I've never seen it before since it's not the type of movie I would typically like. (I usually don't find that kind of humor funny.) For some reason I was intrigued by it though, and although I didn't plan on staying long, I ended up interested enough in the movie that I stayed for the whole rest of it, to find out how it ended. I didn't love it and still thought it was pretty silly, but liked it enough to surprise myself.