If you read this site through an RSS reader you’ve probably noticed that I’ve merged the feed from my Flickr account with the site feed. Now up to five of my recent photo uploads will show along with my regular posts. What do you think of this? Good, bad, neutral?

I wish it would show recent uploads as one single post instead of five individual posts. A mosaic of thumbnails of recent uploads would be cool. I know I could do that myself and make a new post with it, which in a way would be better because then I would have the added benefit of the post showing on the actual site, but this is automated and therefore easier.

Thoughts?

Check out these Christmas photo essays from TIME.

Crazy Christmas Traditions – Photo Essays – TIME.

It Happened on Christmas Day – Photo Essays – TIME.

Ah Christmas music, some love it and would listen to it all year long, some can’t stand it, some are indifferent.

I like Christmas music but only around Christmas time. When the radio stations and stores start playing it before Thanksgiving I find it a bit annoying.

That being said, I do have 16.7 hours of Christmas music in my iTunes library and wanted to share just a few of my favorites with you. (please note there is audio embedded in this post, if you are reading this in a RSS reader you may need to click over).

1.

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Sufjan Stevens – The Friendly Beasts : This song is just cute and sweet and I love it. Johnny Cash’s version (titled “The Gifts They Gave”) is also worth a listen.

2.
I don’t think I ever watched a full episode of The O.C. but I know it had some good music and the Christmas album is great with tracks such as:

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Ravonettes – The Christmas Song and

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3.
This album has its good and bad but it’s the best of the “Happy Christmas” series if only for this track alone.

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Copeland – Do You Hear What I Hear?

4.
While I like Conor Oberst, there are only two Bright Eyes albums I can tolerate, Digital Ash in a Digital Urn and “A Christmas Album.”

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Bright Eyes – Little Drummer Boy

5.
Christmas classics to most people bring up thoughts of Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby, but for me it’s Dolly. This is the Christmas music I grew up with.

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Dolly Parton – Hard Candy Christmas

6.

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John Lennon – Happy Xmas (war is over) I don’t know what it is about this song, but I love it.

7.
I just realized there are several volumes of Christmas with the Rat Pack, the one I have is mostly Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. I just got it last year, but it’s already a staple.

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Christmas with the Rat Pack – A Marshmallow World

Bonus:

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What are some of your favorite Christmas songs? Or does Christmas music make your ears bleed? Let me know in the comments.

For a full list of the Christmas music in my iTunes library read on [...]

Check out Asthmatic Kitty’s Christmas page.

It has Christmas goodies from Sufjan and others including an e-card, games, ornaments to color, videos, and 8-bit (Nintendoesque) Sufjan Christmas ring tones.

This year has not been great to say the least. I remember this time last year hoping that 2008 would be better; I was shown it could be worse. The last four months have been some of the worst/hardest of my life but I know some events have been harder for the others involved, like the recent death of my cousin. I’m glad for the time we got to spend getting to know him over last year since his accident, but I wish it would have been more.

I haven’t posted often in the past four months, it’s not that nothing has happened, that’s for sure, just nothing I want to talk about here. I try to make this site positive, focusing on the things that “keep me from sinking,” so I try not to dwell on negative things or complain too much, but sometimes it seems like that’s all there is and that’s when my posting slacks off.

I’m going to try to get back into the swing of things and pray that an upswing will evolve.