Christmas came and went. I found the actual day to be rather anti-climactic. It seems that as I get older, the actual day is not nearly as exciting as the events, gigs and get-togethers that build up to it. Maybe I’ve been emotionally numbed by the rotten December I’ve had. I really don’t know.
Christmas Day and its surrounding times weren’t all bad. I have plenty of happier things to dwell upon:
- Christmas Eve service at Union Avenue; singing “O Holy Night”
- The party at Scott & Anthony’s place
- Giving Snuggies™ to the niece & nephew and getting one from my sister
- Taking Mom to see Up in the Air; enjoying the film more for all the St. Louis landmarks than for the actual plot
- Splurging on an iPod (more on that later)
- Going to see NINE at the Tivoli (worth seeing for Marion Cotillard and Fergie alone!!!)
- Returning an age-inappropriate book to exchange it for the Kathy Griffin memoir on audiobook
- Cookies...nummy cookies...
- Calling my Uncle in DC and discovering that I’m not the only schmuck having a rotten December
Yes, folks, as you read earlier, I splurged and got myself an iPod to replace the one stolen earlier this month. It’s the black iPod nano 5th generation. I’m very satisfied to have all the portable music I want in ONE place rather than lugging a CD wallet around with me. Aside from the obvious daily uses, this new iPod has all kinds of new bells-n-whistles. I dig the FM tuner…it lets me enjoy 99.1 more often. Love the cover-flow feature. The video feature looks pretty cool, but I don’t know if I’ll use it much though.
The funniest new feature on this iPod hands down is the VoiceOver technology—chiefly designed for the iPod shuffle, but available on all new incarnations. Basically, you can prompt the iPod to speak the song title and artist of whatever you’re currently listening to. The default synthesized voice is a woman speaking English. However, if you have a song in a foreign language, the VoiceOver technology attempts (emphasis on attempts) to detect the language and assign the appropriate synthesized voice. My album of Salome (an opera in German) prompts a deep-voiced male German-speaker—but for only the first two tracks!!! For some odd reason, all following tracks go back to the default English-speaker…and she has some AWFUL German diction ;) I’ve also noticed that for another unexplainable reason, one of the titles on my Porgy & Bess highlights album (“My Man’s Gone Now”) is read by the iPod’s Italian synthesized voice!! Very random. Very funny.
Ok, that’s all I got for now. Will definitely post a year-end retrospective on Thursday. Can’t believe we’re about to exit the Aughts!
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