Holiday Gift Giving Season

Christmas 2009 felt a little to me as if it were in the shadow of the end of the decade that was just around the corner. For my family this year it was low key littered with all of the cliche family events you would expect to see in your favorite holiday movie.

This was my nephews second christmas and he has definitely shown vast improvement in his present opening skills. Still needs to work on showing appreciation for the gifts, but getting paper off the boxes is one of his obvious natural talents.

As this post was mostly designed as a way to post up a little of my holiday loot, I am going to get right to it.

For starters, I scored some new threads to keep me from looking a bum as well as help me with my resolution to stay ‘sharp’ this decade. One high level button up, a couple of nice sweaters, and a hand full of plain T’s for undershirts. I asked for socks, I get no socks =/

A pair of Roland RH-200S headphones for the studio. These were not ones that I personally chose but have turned out to be excellent. They cancel outside noise, sounds great, and already have 10 feet of wire.

An Oster blender to replace my old Oster blender. The first one I had came with a plastic pitcher. I use my blender often, mostly for protein shakes, and within a matter of weeks the plastic pitcher had broken. The base also shook way more than it is supposed to making a very loud noise. The new blender is the same base, which seems to be working fine, and a glass pitcher, which is 200% better.

I highly recommend that you stay away from the plastic Oster blender, spend the extra $10 and get the glass one so that you do not have to waste a gift request…

For Thanksgiving I showed up to my parents house with my home made macaroni and cheese, in a brownie pan. There was surely a casserole dish here at one time, but when I needed one for the mac and cheese, no where to be found. So I lightly brought up the fact that I could use some casserole dishes for such causes.

Santa…aka my mother…took this to heart and now I am the proud owner of a nice set of 4 casserole dish with matching plastic lids. If I ever forget these at your house, make sure I get them back!

The last thing on my list for this post is something that has been tickling my fancy for some time, but never made its way into my possession. With my recent rekindling of creating electronic music, it was only becoming increasingly appealing.

The M-Audio Oxygen 25 midi controller. This plugs directly into my PC via USB cable, and all of the software that I use for anything audio recognizes it automatically. It allows me to program different nobs and slider to different settings in the software. Using VST instruments I can use the keyboard to make any sounds from an organ to crazy ambient synth to drum sounds.

For what it does, and how compact it is, I say its very much worth the money and I am glad to finally have a controller in my arsenal.

Hopefully all of these things will help me prosper in the new year and I look forward to breaking them all in.