Christmas has snuck up on me again. As usual, I’ve got no big plans – working during the day, probably going to get some (hopefully good) Chinese food for dinner, watching a movie on my ‘puter if I’m not too tired, and sleeping. If I happen to find Nightmare Before Christmas on TV, I might go for that. I haven’t seen it in years, and I miss it. Ooooh, sleep! I’ve been looking forward to that for weeks as I play the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “What Is Christmas?” on a somewhat continuous loop in my head. Merry Christmas, Happy Yule, Blessed Solstice, and happy whatever else you might celebrate. Happy Hogswatch, even! It’s a time for holly, and being jolly, and other things ending in -olly. I’ve even been talking to Santa a bit. He’s a good guy, but I’m not expecting anything special - I usually see him when he’s on his way home from greeting kids all day at the mall, and I didn’t submit a formal letter or offer cookies or anything like that.
I’ve slowly been gathering more good and interesting music this season. I was looking around online last night (legal MP3 sites, I promise!), and I got hold of a track called “Ich bin Herr im Hause.” I had to listen to a bit to figure out exactly what it is, but it’s the German version of “Master of the House” from the musical Les Miserables. This is awesome for me because “MotH” is the song that got me interested in Les Miz, and doubly so because it sounds like the principal singer is Thomas Borchert. I recently came to appreciate him because he sang the title role in the German version of Frank Wildhorn’s “Dracula” that I got a month or two ago. Huzzah!
In other news, I finished Robert Heinlein’s “For Us the Living: A Comedy of Customs” today. This was Mr. Heinlein’s first book, and it is quite different from the others I’ve read so far. Spider Robinson’s introduction helped me appreciate at least one angle of what Mr. Heinlein had been trying to do with the book, aside from telling a story. “For Us the Living” offers an interesting alternate future, and preaching and socioeconomic diatribe aside I can’t help but wonder what it might be like to have grown up in that kind of society.
