Merry Christmas

Wishing you the best of whatever holiday you celebrate. If you celebrate with kindness and love then your activity should benefit the world around your celebration. Spread the joy.

Many unique ways to celebrate

Don't need a big tree but try for bigger than this

Hopefully family and friends will join you in creating warm fun memories. Here's a heart warming ad from the UK.

be merry and joyful

Source: Uploaded by user via lisleman on Pinterest

Wishing everyone a merry and joyful celebration.

May all your bulbs burn brightly and your peppermint be plenty.

Merry Christmas

Source: afcsoac.blogspot.com via lisleman on Pinterest

see Terry Border's Bent Objects blog for the first picture and more like it.

leaping, milking, dancing, piping, drumming

Enough already just finish the song.

Last year I discovered the PNC Christmas Price Index. The PNC bank totals up the cost of the gifts in the 12 days of Christmas song and they have been tracking this for 27 years now.

Their web site has an interesting fun interactive program to show you the cost and change in cost of each item in this drawn out gift giving event.

The biggest percentage increase from 2009 comes with the French Hens. A hen pecking 233% increase. The biggest dollar increase this year was for the Nine Ladies Dancing, up $820, a 15 percent boost. I always thought you could get ladies dancing for the cost of few drinks and some good music.

The total cost comes out to $23,439.38 so your true lover really need to be truly wealthy match this song.

Lately all I would want is a few plumbers piping in my house to fix a mystery leak.

Here’s PNC's Christmas index link ---> www.pncchristmaspriceindex.com

Shopping Games 2010

I don’t want to play or even watch these games. I’m talking about the world of competitive, aggressive shopping formerly known as the holiday season. Watch out, the start of the shopping season has opened. Warning signs should be posted at the malls.

These games can be expensive and stressful. Why do so many play them?

Just as hunters track down deer and elk, determined shoppers hunt down bargains on prized items. And just like the game hunters, you don’t want to get too close because you might get hurt.

Just look at some of the events:

• Doorbusters
• Midnight madness
• Black Friday
• Shop til you drop

These shopping contestants are proud of themselves for no reason whatsoever.

(Photo by Joshua Trujillo / PI)

Do they earn extra points on their credit scores?

Well now that I gave my PSA/warning announcement on the shopping season, let’s discuss something that should be very simple.

Shampoo

You know the stuff made by combining a surfactant, most often sodium lauryl sulfate and/or sodium laureth sulfate with a co-surfactant, most often cocamidopropyl betaine in water to form a thick, viscous liquid. Other essential ingredients include salt (sodium chloride), which is used to adjust the viscosity, a preservative and fragrance.

The very good wikipedia page on this stuff will tell you that daily shampoo use was not prevalent until the 1970’s.

I needed some for the dead tissues hanging off my head. Did you know your hair is dead tissue? So you don’t need to give it vitamins. There’s a great scene in the movie “Proof” on this topic.

So I travel over to that French sounding place, Target, and find the shampoo aisle.

This Target recently added the grocery store part to the store so that might explain why I felt like I was at a fruit stand as I tried to make a simple shampoo selection.

I’ve enjoyed eating pomegranates but I never had to desire to smear them in my hair. Of course, there was strawberry and I have even tried that one before. But deciding between, coconut, green apple, rosemary mint, almond, black raspberry, white tea, tangerine, and wild cherry, made me really hungry. Do the shampoo companies get kickbacks from fruit growers?

Clarifying - hmm this is a FAIL because it’s not clear to me what it means or what it is clarifying. It's not clarifying me.  Why the confusing descriptions?

Oh wondering what I selected to soak-up my hair? Green apple - want to smell?

It has the “crisp scent of orchard-grown apples”. I don’t know how they do it because I would think it would smell like old rotting fruit which given that your hair is dead might be a good choice.

What’s your opinion? Just don’t ask me about wasted money on conditioners.

Christmas songs free

Should I say holiday songs instead?  

I celebrate Christmas but I know others celebrate different events so the holiday phrase makes for a more general greeting but what's wrong with greeting people with the event that you celebrate?  I've greeted co-workers and friends I knew were Jewish with Happy Hanukkah (Dec 11 this year).  Anyway, that's not the point of this post.

I want to share a music discovery I came across today.  BTW, I'm NOT being paid or credited for this recommendation, however if some corporation feels like thanking for it - well let me know.

While shopping on Amazon.com (which over the years I like the best) I discovered their free Christmas Holiday music.  It's called "25 Days of Free".  I downloaded a few (MP3) today.

My favorite jazz singer, Diana Krall has her "Christmas Songs" up there for sale in their holiday music section.  This picture of her left me wondering if:

1. shopping overload
2. holiday cheer overload
3. 12th night of celebrating the 12 days of Christmas

There's no Krall song up for free yet but I'll be checking back.

The song for today is by the Boxmasters and I already had it.  Last December I discovered The Boxmasters. This song is NOT your typical holiday song.  It's a dysfunctional Christmas song that I found funny.

Also Itunes is offering some free holiday songs.  I think they offer a new one every week.  Amazon has them beat with giving one away each day.

In addition to enjoying some free songs I got a few free pictures in an email today.
Now tell me who's the favorite person on your list that you would give this to:

OR THIS ??

is eight or nine milking maids

Easy to get confused between dancing ladies and milking maids.  I mean they are different people right?  Do you realize there are 50 people performing in this drawn out gift event?  By the time the performers start showing up you are going to need a hall and plan on feeding them.

Those 12 days of Christmas!

Well the smart people over at PNC bank not only know those answers but have been tracking this gift for 26 years.
from the PNC press release:

Declines in the cost of birds in the index were a major factor in the moderate increase. The Partridge in a Pear Tree is down 27.3 percent to $159.99. The partridge came in 50 percent below last year at $10.00 and the pear tree is $149.99, off 25 percent. Also, the Six Geese-a-Laying are down a sizable 37.5 percent to $150.00.

The cost of the Four Calling Birds was even with last year at $599.96. The only birds to increase in price were the Two Turtle Doves, which rose a paltry 1.8 percent to $55.98, and the Three French Hens, flying up 50 percent to $45.00; the largest percentage increase in this year's index.

Enough gold rings already

http://www.flickr.com/photos/babasteve/ / CC BY 2.0

http://www.flickr.com/photos/babasteve/ / CC BY 2.0

I thought I caught a mistake in their PR when I spotted the total gift count at 364.  If you add 1 + 2 + .... + 12 you get 78.  But I misunderstood the lyrics!!  Her true love (very wealthy true love) repeats the previous gifts from the earlier days with each new day.  That adds up to 364 gifts.  Then I started wondering if a partridge in a pear tree counts as two (it doesn't but it would for me).  Can't buy me love - who are you kidding!  The grand total is coming in at $87,402.81.  Leaping lords indeed.

But don't go cyber shopping for these gifts!  Shipping cost will kill you.  Shipping live birds cost more than the birds. 

The most interesting item on the true love's Christmas list was those swans-a-swimming, $5250.  Very expensive but they cost even more back in the 80's and early 90's.  Swan prices plummeted in 1995 because of an increase in breeding (guess word got out).  Why so expensive?  It's not like you need to train swans to swim.  Had I known this high value of swans I might have tempted to grab the babies following their mom around in the office park pond where I worked once.  I could've paid for Christmas.

Now is the little drummer boy part of the 12 Drummers Drumming because if so at least you could get an extra song out of the deal.  Unless you're a dairy farmer what would you do with eight maids-a-milking?  Good thing the gift registry wasn't invented when this song was written.

Oh in addition to the wealth of cost info on leaping lords and turtle doves, the PNC site has a fun video to watch.
 

Also, over at Howstuffworks site they have a downloadable game about the song.
Bloomberg report on 12 days of Christmas index.