{"id":25959,"date":"2022-12-19T10:52:18","date_gmt":"2022-12-19T15:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=25959"},"modified":"2022-12-19T10:52:19","modified_gmt":"2022-12-19T15:52:19","slug":"a-quirky-eclectic-christmas-mix-2022-ed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/a-quirky-eclectic-christmas-mix-2022-ed\/","title":{"rendered":"A\u00a0<strike>Quirky<\/strike>\u00a0Eclectic Christmas Mix (2022 Ed.)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"intrinsic-container intrinsic-container-16x9\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/S6rZtIipew8\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Video: the ubiquitous &#8220;Last Christmas,&#8221; originally by Wham! but here performed by Crazy Frog &#8212; <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Crazy_Frog\" target=\"_blank\">per Wikipedia<\/a>, the &#8220;Swedish CGI-animated character and Eurodance musician created in 2003 by actor and playwright Erik Wernquist.&#8221; Careful observers of <\/em>Running After My Hat<em> will note that no versions of the song &#8212; original or covers &#8212; actually appear in the playlist.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">Another twelvemonth gone by, another ahead. In the meantime &#8212; as The Missus and I stagger towards something resembling residential stasis &#8212; here&#8217;s the exact same 130-song Christmas-music playlist I&#8217;ve offered for the last couple years: still about seven hours or so total. As in the past, you can just play it through in the order I added the songs (10 per year), or you can hit that little &#8220;Popout&#8221; button at the top left: this will open up the playlist in a separate window, automatically playing, in random order. (If you choose the random option, you can at any time close down <em>this<\/em> browser window and the music will continue.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Below the playlist, in this post I&#8217;ll give you some idea where we are now and where (approximately) we hope to be in 2023&#8230; and beyond!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">So, anyhow, this December we&#8217;re in Durham, North Carolina. We arrived in October, are renting a furnished house, and hope to be moving to another house &#8212; almost certainly another and more permanent rental &#8212; somewhere within about a half-hour&#8217;s driving radius of this one. Why this area in general? Some main reasons: (1) about halfway between The Missus&#8217;s and my families (Florida and New Jersey, respectively); (2) access to plentiful and varied healthcare options (not unimportant to a couple in their 70s); (3) actual <em>seasons<\/em> (more a priority for me than for her, heh).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As for the cross-country road trip on which we embarked starting in June 2021, it officially wrapped up in August, with a nice leisurely (five-day) visit with friends in northwestern Georgia. Thereafter, we jogged (<em>not<\/em> literally!) south, to Jacksonville Beach, Florida, and stayed there with one of The Missus&#8217;s sisters until coming here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What&#8217;s next for us? Well, for people our age, the phrase &#8220;permanent housing&#8221; carries certain implications that you&#8217;ve just gotta ignore &#8212; banish from your head &#8212; if you want to enjoy life. So let&#8217;s just leave it at, as I said, &#8220;more permanent&#8221;: suitable for us to move all of our own furnishings and possessions from storage in North Florida. (We haven&#8217;t seen a lot of that stuff for three years, so we&#8217;ll probably be surprised we even decided to keep it at the time.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m not going to promise to blog more often, but that is one prospect I look forward to once the dust settles. In the meantime, I hope you are having the best possible end-of-one-year-start-of-the-next. Thank you so much for stopping by!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Video: the ubiquitous &#8220;Last Christmas,&#8221; originally by Wham! but here performed by Crazy Frog &#8212; per Wikipedia, the &#8220;Swedish CGI-animated character and Eurodance musician created in 2003 by actor and playwright Erik Wernquist.&#8221; Careful observers of Running After My Hat will note that no versions of the song &#8212; original or covers &#8212; actually appear [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25969,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[183,4949,3694,74],"tags":[27,845,846,2131,5632],"class_list":{"0":"post-25959","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-everyday-life","8":"category-retirement","9":"category-quirky-eclectic-christmas-mix","10":"category-music","11":"tag-christmas","12":"tag-christmas-music","13":"tag-playlists","14":"tag-eclectic-christmas-music","15":"tag-crazy-frog","16":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Screenshot-2022-12-19-10.50.55-AM.png?fit=1642%2C970&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-6KH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25959"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25968,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25959\/revisions\/25968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}