A WEEK OF BEING SICK

It's been a fairly wasted week as I spent much of it in bed feeling miserable.  A spider bit me just below my right eye and I developed a massive headache and rash over most of my face.  We visited a total of three local Thai clinics without any success (the most any of them gave me was a little bag of aspirin; question:  why are doctors' offices in this country NOT open during the daytime and then only a limited number of hours in the evening?).  One said we had to suck out the spider poison ourselves.  I found some paracetamol (Adult's Tylenol 500) in the Tesco-Lotus pharmacy but it didn't alleviate my headaches — even my hair hurt when barely touched, making it very difficult to sleep).  I started feeling better yesterday but still have some swelling around the spider bite and a few remaining spots of the rash (which I tried to shave around this morning but soon gave up).

I think it it wasn't for my iPod I would have gone completely crazy.  With it hooked up to the television in our master bedroom I was able to watch a lot of downloaded TV shows, listen to music, and watch a few photo slideshows in between the waves of more-pain-than-usual.  (BTW, I LOVE how I can load the iPod with converted videos — i.e., ones downloaded from YouTube and iFilm — and watch on the big screen; and I've only just discovered free video podcasts...)

Well, today will be one of playing catch up.  Perhaps even a blog entry or two...

TOO MUCH CHRISTMAS MUSIC?

For many years now, I've collected Christmas music (and movies) at this time of the year.  Back in my storage unit in New Mexico, I have dozens of Christmas LP's, 45's, CD's, and DVD's.  Unfortunately, I didn't bring any of them with me (save for the wonderful "A Christmas Story" movie).

But I began preparing a few weeks ago by downloading several collections of Christmas songs.  The results were fairly mixed as I found mostly "traditional" fare in this manner (along the lines of Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas" or selections from Phil Spectors' Christmas Album).  I did find a few of my old favorites such as Bruce Springsteen's versions of "Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town" and "Merry Christmas Baby".

It wasn't until this past week when I uncovered a treasure trove of interesting Xmas tunes via several wonderful blogs such as I AM FUEL, YOU ARE FRIENDS and Some Velvet Blog.  More fuel was added to the fire by the arrival of an audio Christmas card created by my good friend Stian in Norway.  Not to mention the always-greatly-anticipated Marillion fan club single (this year's offering, titled The Jingle Book, includes thir interpretation of "That's What Friends Are For" — originally from The Jungle Book — recorded at Steve Hogarth's house in October 2006, as well as a recording of their only full-band performance in 2006 — recorded on June 24th in Krakow).


Anyway, as a result, I now have 284 Christmas songs on my iPod — that's 16 hours of play time!  Yet, the shuffle only seems to play the "boring" ones (I mean how many times must we be subjected to Paul McCartney's truly dreadful "Wonderful Christmastime"?