Decorating with Christmas lights is one of my favorite ways to get into the season. My choices for the Christmas tree are the colored lights with preprogrammed patterns. My family has been using them for years. Although I don’t have a Christmas tree yet, I did decorate our balcony with a garland and lights:

Some people really go crazy with the outdoor Christmas decorations, and I can only imagine how high their energy bill must be. Here is a cool Christmas Lights Map which maps out the most extensive Christmas light displays in the U.S. Zoom in to see more displays in any area. There are a few here in Austin, including the famous 37th street neighborhood, which is an entire street completely covered in Christmas lights and decorations.

Here is a video of my favorite Christmas lights display. The music was broadcast on a specific radio station so that people could drive by and listen to the music in their cars. This video is from a few years ago, but this particular display was also featured in a beer commercial.

FreeRice.com is a great site which allows you to play an online vocabulary game to donate rice to the hungry. For each correct answer, the site will donate rice through United Nations. This is how it works: as you play the game, each page load brings up a banner advertisement which goes to pay for the rice. Read more about it in their FAQ.

Not only do you get to help donate food to the hungry, you can also improve your vocabulary! Each question gets harder or easier, depending on whether or not you are getting the questions right. So it plays to your own skill level and helps you learn new words. Try it out!

A creative chef over at WoW Insider has posted a recipe based on the World of Warcraft game recipe, Murloc Fin Soup! The recipe includes the translation into real food (for example, murloc meat = boneless skinless chicken breasts). Personally, I always thought murlocs would taste more like tuna than chicken given that they are fish people, but the recipe sounds fun.

RlrlrlGLGLGLGLGLglglglgll!

Hark how the bells,
Sweet silver bells,
All seem to say,
Throw cares away

Christmas music is both loved and hated. For some it is a way to celebrate the excitement of the Christmas season, while for others it only emphasizes the over commercialization of the holiday. I still belong to the former group, though I struggle not to get sucked in to the commercial aspect of it.

When I was growing up, Christmas music was a very strong tradition in my family. My Dad would put on orchestral or choral Christmas music over our sound system at home when the holiday drew near, which is why I still prefer instrumental or choral Christmas music to the pop versions of traditional songs. The music was part of our family celebration, and listening to it now brings back memories of celebrating the holidays with my family.

My favorite Christmas melody is Carol of the Bells, both instrumental and choral versions. Unfortunately, this song has been used quite a bit in stores, TV ads, and even parodies, but I don’t tire of it around Christmas time. Other favorites include The Nutcracker Suite, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, The First Noel, and O Holy Night.

Although I prefer traditional Christmas music like that of The Morman Tabernacle Choir and the Vienna Boys Choir, I have also expanded my music collection to include newer stuff like Charlotte Church and The Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I especially like TSO’s take on Carol of the Bells and The Nutcracker Suite. Having different styles of the same songs helps break up the monotony of it, even if I do love the songs themselves.

This is hopefully just the first of a series of posts I’m going to make about Christmas. It is, after all, my favorite time of year, and music always helps me get in the right mood.

E Online and TV Guide are reporting that Fox has committed to an entire seven episodes of a new television series created by Joss Whedon and starring Eliza Dushku. The show is called “Dollhouse”, and according to TV Guide, it could start showing on Fox as early as next spring.

Echo (Eliza Dushku) [is] a young woman who is literally everybody’s fantasy. She is one of a group of men and women who can be imprinted with personality packages, including memories, skills, language—even muscle memory—for different assignments. The assignments can be romantic, adventurous, outlandish, uplifting, sexual and/or very illegal. When not imprinted with a personality package, Echo and the others are basically mind-wiped, living like children in a futuristic dorm/lab dubbed the Dollhouse, with no memory of their assignments—or of much else. The show revolves around the childlike Echo’s burgeoning self-awareness, and her desire to know who she was before, a desire that begins to seep into her various imprinted personalities and puts her in danger both in the field and in the closely monitored confines of the Dollhouse.

How did this get started? Joss Whedon came up with the idea literally over lunch with Eliza Dushku:

Can you tell me how this all came about?
Through a rather time-honored tradition called “lunch.” Eliza had her deal with Fox, and we went to lunch, as we sometimes do, to talk about her career and what her next step should be. Like, do I know writers, and what was the best way to protect herself, and what type of show. Eliza and I do this sometimes, because she’s a friend and a great talent, and that’s easily misused. She was trying to protect herself, and I was trying to get a free lunch. In the middle of lunch, I came up with the idea of this show and the title by accident.

Tell me this isn’t that easy for you…that it just came to you in between bites.
I went to the bathroom and came back and said, “I figured it out.” So, there it is. It took longer than between bites. It came so organically through our conversation, and what I know she is capable of, and what she was talking about and what people were expecting of her. It just kinda happened, and when it happens like that and it has a title, that’s a big deal—if it has a title, you can’t just turn your back on it. So, I told her, and she freaked out, and I told her I was busy with these films I am trying to set up, but Fox is interested, and Fox said let’s do seven episodes instead of a pilot, and here I am.

Read more interview Q&As with both Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku at E Online and TV Guide.

Last week I received a package in the mail with some HINT Water to review on my blog. The water was free to me, so I’m writing this review for a little free publicity for HINT. However, I’m going to be honest about what I think.

First of all, I’m not really a fan of flavored water. Generally it ends up tasting like watered down juice. However, the tag line for HINT flavored water is “Drink Water, Not Sugar” - there is no sugar and no preservatives, just natural flavor. It is a healthy, zero calorie drink, which definitely appeals to me. So, I decided to try it out without thinking about other flavored waters I’ve had before.

Since I received one of each flavor, I got to try them all: Mango Grapefruit, Pomegranate Tangerine, Lime, Raspberry Lime, Peppermint, Pear, Tropical Punch, Strawberry Kiwi, and Cucumber. It’s quite a range of flavors. However, some of the flavors, like Cucumber and Peppermint, just tasted too strange for me to enjoy. It’s not that they tasted bad. In fact, all the flavors taste exactly like their names. The Cucumber tasted like water that had been soaking cucumbers, and the Peppermint tasted like slightly minty water. They were not flavors I expected to drink in water form, so I didn’t like them.

However, the fruity flavors were much better. My favorites were Strawberry Kiwi, Tropical Punch, and Lime. Each of these had just enough sweetness (or tartness) in the flavors to make them taste more like flavored water than watered down juice. They were actually kind of tasty. While I don’t think I will purchase HINT Water by the case ($44 for a case of 24), if I see my favorite flavors in the store, I might be tempted to pick a couple up.

For anyone wanting a free and healthy food sample, Nabisco is offering free samples in the mail of their new Garden Harvest Toasted Chips. They are whole grain baked chips with fruit and/or veggie bits in them. Sounds kinda tasty, and if not, well, the sample is free!

Get your free sample of Garden Harvest Toasted Chips.

Firefly was cut short before its time (only one season shown completely out of order), and Serenity didn’t do as well in the theaters as fans hoped. A bigger success in the theater could have meant sequels, but news on that front has been lacking. However, according to MovieHole.net, Alan Tudyk, aka “Wash”, says that there is talk about doing another Serenity movie since the first one did so well on DVD.

“They had to put [the new DVD] out because they’ve been selling out of the other one and so Universal’s like ‘So, let’s do another one’. And now… there’s now a chance there’s going to be another movie”.

(Read more…)

If there is a sequel, it could be a direct to DVD movie rather than a theater release. Anything at all would be awesome though! I’ll take whatever I can get. Can’t stop the signal!

Lately I have been cross stitching quite a bit, and I just updated my Cross Stitch Photo Gallery. In July I finished a large wolves piece, titled ‘White Magic‘ (Dimensions kit). All that is needed now is my signature and a frame:

Next I started and finished a nice dragon piece, called ‘Above the Clouds‘ by Teresa Wentzler. Again, all that is needed for the piece is a signature and frame:

Finally, I started up again on a Christmas project, The Twelve Days of Christmas, also by Teresa Wentzler. I am going to be making each into a Christmas ornament. I completed the stitching on day 1 (except for the beading), and started day 2:

For Harry Potter fans, my sister has put together a great Remus Lupin music fanmix. Spoiler Alert: don’t click the link if you haven’t finished Harry Potter book seven (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). The fanmix is titled Got a Suitcase, Got Regrets. Follow the link to view the track list and download the music! It’s quite a fitting tribute to a very lovable character.