Musical Accompaniment

Call this the "highlight reel" of our day at Hubbard Glacier. It's 7 and a half minutes long, and may take a bit of time to buffer ... so while it's buffering you may want to check out the accompanying blog post below.

(hmm, so I originally uploaded this video to facebook, where there's an option to view it in HD. But it appears this option is NOT available when I embed it in the blog. So if you'd like the full HD experience, click on the "facebook" logo in the upper left of the video screen to go to the original video, where there is an HD option in the lower right, next to the full-screen option button. Or click HERE. You'll have to log in to see the HD version.)



We had a great time reliving this day through pictures and video as we put this reel together. I trimmed the clips and pieced them together with the pictures, and I had tasked Nick with the music. I think the music he chose was just perfect and Mark Knopfler must have written "Why Aye Man" just for this video (seriously - I promise we made the video in its entirety before even thinking about the music, but that song could not have fit the transitions and pacing better).

I hope the video helps to do justice to the changing range of weather we experienced out there - I just don't think glacier viewing would have been half as memorable if it had been sunny.

Hubba Hubba Hubbard Glacier

The second day of our Alaskan adventure was all about ice. Although an "at sea" kind of day (the sort of day that remind Nick and myself that we just aren't really cruise people), this day was totally and completely redeemed by our time spent in Yakutat Bay viewing Hubbard Glacier. And it was ALMOST totally and completely redeemed by the extra time on board we got to lounge around drinking tasty cocktails. ahem. Anyway, we started the day off with a leisurely breakfast:

from where we could already tell that it was going to be a very gray day. The seas had been rockin' and rollin' all night, and we heard countless stories of fellow passengers who were so seasick from the high seas that they had to go to the infirmary to get shots to combat the seasickness. Thankfully, neither Nick nor I had any problems (we were pretty sure Nick would be okay aboard a big ship, given his history of being okay aboard a big ship, but I just sort of assumed that I would be okay ... good thing I assumed correctly, otherwise it might have been a crappy way to start the cruise).

After breakfast, we headed up to the top deck to check out the weather. This little excursion of ours had the added benefit of shocking the shit out of our bodies - holy cold and windy, Batman.

Did I mention that it was windy? It had also started to rain. I didn't want to get all Debbie Downer at this point, but I was starting to have serious concerns about our luck with the weather this trip. I mean, the tracks flooding out our train travel, possible weather clouding out the glacier ... gah! When we headed inside, we saw that the winds were consistently 40 knots with gusts in the 55-60 knot range and, as luck would have it, the weather managed to deteriorate even further in the time it took us to prepare for our arrival into Yakutat Bay. However, I would not be deterred. No, sir. I was in Alaska, dammit. I was going to see a glacier, dammit. I would be the FIRST person out there in the rain and wind taking pictures of it, dammit!! So Nick and I returned to our stateroom and geared up for an afternoon of foul-weather-glacier-viewing-insanity. We donned our "functional jackets" and equipped ourselves with gloves, hats, and so many layers my mother would have given me a trophy. We arrived in the Observation Lounge an hour early and watched the ship approach land. Er, except that minor detail of being able to actually SEE the approach. You know, those sorts of trivial things. Thankfully, there was this cool monitor that showed our course and current location (red line with a circle at the end):

And, because I am stupid and twenty(cough)something and - most importantly - super crazy stubborn, the minute we spotted the faintest tracing of landmass, I was out there on deck like a fool, freezing my fingers off (did I mention that it was 45 degrees and minus-fucking-something-idiotic-degrees windchill?), sheltering my camera and HUGE ASS lens under my jacket in between bursts of whipping out this godly phallic thing with its ridiculously large windsail of a lens hood and firing off a few pictures (none of which turned out halfway decent, by the way), and trying to convince myself that this behavior is normal and that the rest of the cruising crowd sitting inside that nice warm lounge sipping their lovely complimentary alcoholic beverages WEREN'T pointing and laughing at me.

Sigh.

(But in my defense - it's the largest tidewater glacier in the Northern Hemisphere and perhaps the world)

As we got closer to the mouth of Yakutat Bay (also called the Bay of Disenchantment), I was, of course, joined by all sorts of other camera-sporting folk, but GUESS WHO WAS AT THE FRONT OF THE RAIL? That's right, bitches. This popsicle.

(yes that's me in the red)

You can probably tell that the weather still sucked at this point, but I was so determined to enjoy every second of this glacier-viewing experience, I couldn't be forced to care. Finally, some tiny bit of goodwill must have come over me (or maybe it was the numb fingers screaming at my brain) and I relinquished my position as windbreak for the rest of the crowd, choosing to warm myself inside and check out the views from the Port side.

The ship cruised into the bay toward the face of the glacier and we eventually started to encounter some icebergs. The field of ice in the water didn't seem too bad, though, and most of the ice chunks, though hardly wee, weren't huge.

As the ship continued to dance its way through the ice field, some of the icebergs within range of my 100-400mm lens were not only large but stunning in their depth of color, awesome texture, and interesting shape, stratified with shades of blue you can’t imagine came from Mother Nature. Some contained large quantities of glacial silt and it was cool to watch the silt dissipating into the water as the chunk melted. Others were azure blue, semi-translucent and melted into shapes that only Gaudi and Picasso could have imagined.

It's almost incomprehensible how ice can be blue like this ... but it's because glacial ice is formed through time and pressure, creating a crystalline structure of H2O that is so perfectly compact that all air and other minerals are excluded. It's actually classified as a mineral because it's pure H2O in its most perfectly aligned form. This mineral is able to absorb most frequencies of light in the visible spectrum except for the highest energy: blue. And because the blue wavelengths aren't absorbed, the ice appears that color to the human eye. And this is the reason that the deepest layers of ice in the glacier or areas that are newly exposed to air or that have recently been revealed by melting or calving appear the most blue; as the ice is exposed to air, tiny cracks form in the surface and they allow air to penetrate into the crystalline structure, allowing for absorption of blue wavelengths and rendering plain ole colorless or white ice. Consider this your science lesson for today.

Pushing through the ice field, the ship moved slowly - slowly enough, it turned out, for the weather to start to clear. At first, it seemed like the clouds were going to lift just enough for us to get a good view of the glacier.

But then the fog settled back in just as the ship got within a half mile from the glacier face. It was eerie and calm and so quiet, and we could hear the glacier crackle as the ice split and shifted.

But then. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the fog thinned and the view became clearer and clearer ...

And then Terry Breen exclaimed that because the water was so calm and because of the condition of the ice field, the captain of the ship was pulling closer to the glacier. Closer, in fact, than they had been all season, and perhaps ever. (evvv-er!!) We ultimately ended up about a quarter of a mile from the glacier and even standing on the top deck of the ship, it was hard NOT to appreciate the enormity of this river of ice in front of us. It's one thing to hear that the face of the glacier was 360 feet tall, and it's one thing to appreciate that 360 feet is roughly equivalent to a 30-story building ... but it's something else entirely to realize that you're still well over 1,000 feet away from this thing that is looming over you.

Once the captain had gotten us as close as possible, he engaged the super duper fancy schmancy propulsion system that allowed the ship to pirouette so all sides could have this amazing view. For those of us sticking out the weather on the top deck, we were all wandering from one side to another, following the view around the circumference of the ship. During one of these strolls, I stopped in my tracks and commented to Nick that the view was SO CLEAR. Like, dude, when did that happen!? I think I made some sort of remark about someone turning on the HD. Click. Ridiculously awesome.

I had to keep reminding myself how crappy the weather had been just an hour before ... it was like I had singlehandedly shown Mother Nature how willing I was to brave her elements in order to get the most enjoyment out of her monuments of earth and ice ... and she rewarded me with this.

SHUT IT. LET ME HAVE THAT MOMENT.

While marveling at the intricate minarets and towers of ice was great, the real action was the CALVING. I mean, glaciers are cool, but TIDEWATER glaciers are the coolest because they are constantly moving. Sometimes they advance, sometimes they retreat. But when they advance, when they reach water they tend to weaken and break apart, crashing into the water below and creating a KICK-ASS spectacle that is capable of turning otherwise serious and very very grown-up adults into giggling, shrieking, bubbling people.

We'd been at the glacier for a while and had heard a lot of popping and banging sounds coming from the ice, and had even seen a few very small (football or medicine ball sized) chunks come raining down in sections. But there was one particular area I'd been eyeing through my zoom - during our time pirouetting, I'd watched more and more cracks form and I could see tiny (snowball-sized) bits of ice fall from this particular shelf. Just as Nick left my side to head toward the back of the ship (following the ship's rotation so he'd stay in sight of the glacier face), I saw this shelf start to go ...

And BAM. Dude. Done. Kick-ass. I'm pretty sure I screeched like a little girl being scared on Halloween. I hurried to the back of the ship where Nick was standing so that I could brag about my amazing picture-taking tenacity and prowess ... and then three HUGE towers of the farthest-forward section of the glacier came crashing down into the ocean. Oh. My. God. All I could do was watch it happen - no time to position the camera, no time to focus, nothing. I stared breathlessly, excited that I got to see it, bitter that I was all WALKING when it happened ... and then I saw my beautiful beautiful husband standing in perfect position at the rear of the ship, camera up and pointed in the direction of the glacier, clearly recording that amazing moment. When I shrieked (to, I'm sure, the amusement of my fellow passengers) "Did you get it?!?!?!" all he had to do was take one hand off of the (still rolling) camera and give me one big thumbs up, and oh my GOD, he had me at thumbs-up. Squee.

Incredibly, the view kept getting clearer and more defined:

We were warned from the bridge that we'd only have another few minutes at the glacier face before having to head out, and I was lamenting to Nick that there's no way the pictures would every do justice to the scale of this ice structure. I kept thinking that we needed to see people rappelling down the face or some sort of wildlife in close proximity to show just how AMAZINGLY huge this thing is. Which is right about the time I happened to notice this small vessel out to our Starboard side:

And look, that boat is not much bigger than that ice in the water. But wait. I'm gonna BLOW your MIND.

LITTLE BOAT, YOU NEED TO MOVE AWAY FROM THAT GENORMOUS

GLACIER BEFORE A CHUNK OF ICE BIGGER THAN YOU SPLASHES DOWN AND CAUSES A WAVE THAT CAPSIZES YOUUUU (gasping for air)

LIKE THIS ONE:

We joked that Regent must have hired that little boat to sit out there and provide photographic perspective and scale ... but in retrospect I wonder if that was some sort of official Park Ranger vessel policing the amount of time we were spending there or ensuring our ship maintained the minimum distance or something like that. Whatever.

As we started to pull away, we could see how far back the glacial icefield extended - you can see why tidewater glaciers are referred to as rivers of ice ...

And there was another arm of the glacier over to the Port side of the ship that was socked in most of the time we were in the bay. As we were pulling away, the view of the second arm and the mountains behind was striking:

Amazingly, during our retreat from the glacier, the weather once again turned foul and the fog started to settle back in onto the glacier ... and we realized just how thankful we should have been for the moments we were able to see the glacier with such high visibility and clarity. Thankful is an understatement.

It's hard to remember what else we even did that day on the ship - compared to our experience at Hubbard, it's pretty inconsequential. We just crossed our fingers that the rest of our vacation had this much luck in store for us!

Video Test

This is a short clip taken from the Horizon Lounge aboard the Mariner as we were leaving Seward. SEWARD. That's SEWARD, Erin, NOT Sitka. (with enough repetition, I can remember anything.) With enough repetition I can remember anything. With enough ... okay, enough.

The camera we used to shoot all of our video was Nick's point-and-shoot, the Canon SX200IS, which was capable of shooting HD video. Sounds awesome, right? Well, upon returning home we realized that none of our computers would play this fancy AVCHD format. Huh. So I started looking for freeware online with which we could view the AVCHD format ... you know, 'cause it had been OVER A YEAR since AVCHD hit the marketplace and we surely weren't the only ones out there who actually wanted to, uh, VIEW the videos on something other than the camera itself or the HDTV hooked up to the camera ...

Well, let's just say that this is one of those instances where the firmware outpaced the software. So we've been sitting here debating whether or not to drop a hundred bucks on some silly video editing software that could handle the AVCHD and allow us to edit the footage, converting it to something that normal computers could play without sacrificing that lovely HD quality. Thankfully, in the couple of months since we moved, software prices have dropped and there are some much more moderately priced options out there now. This video was converted (and title added) using Corel's VideoStudio, exported as an mpeg, uploaded to facebook, and embedded in this very blog for your viewing pleasure. If this works well, we can finally go ahead and start pasting together the highlights from the video clips Nick took and post them here.

Here goes nuthin' -

Our Alaskan Adventure, Part I

(drum roll, please)

Finally.

I'm a good portion of the way through the pictures from our trip to Alaska in July, and I just couldn't wait any longer to share them with you. For the sake of your eyeballs and my finger muscles, I am going to break our trip down to day-by-day digestible chunks, and today I am starting at the beginning with our arrival into Anchorage.

Nick and I flew into Anchorage the day prior to embarkation, on a Tuesday – the flight was longer than I expected (I’m not sure exactly what I expected … Alaska is HUGE and, like, really far North, duh, but after the 3 hours from San Diego to Seattle, another 3 hour flight made for a long travel day). My first impressions of Anchorage: wow, it’s gorgeous! and wow, it’s small! It being the largest city in Alaska by A LOT immediately puts the population density of this state into perspective. Anchorage is bordered on 2 sides by the Cook Inlet and on the other two by mountains. And oh, those mountains. When we flew in, they were difficult to see. Everyone we talked to told us how gorgeous the weather has been this summer – sunny and warm, clear, dry … until the day before we showed up. I think they got several inches of rain in the 24 hours before we arrived, and it was still very overcast that evening. At one point just before sunset the clouds lifted over the mountains long enough for us to get a glimpse of the peaks from our hotel room window. Nick, of course, loved watching all of the small bush planes in their take-off and landing cycles. It was hard to figure out where they were actually landing, as there were numerous small air strips in the area and we could see at least two small water runways with docks for floatplanes. I pulled out the monster lens that I rented for the vacation - my abandoned (returned) lover, Canon's 100-400 IS L-series lens - and took some pictures of the mountains. It was my first test of the lens in Alaska! These shots were taken at full zoom (400mm, which is ~660mm equivalent on my camera), so the image stabilization definitely did its job well.





I've recently become a little obsessed with layering textures over pictures in Photoshop. Thanks to the internet and Flickr, I'm able to access thousands of textures created by generous artists with the intent that strangers like me use them to enhance our own pictures. My favorites are from SkeletalMess, Boccacino, and BorealNZ. After pasting the layer onto my image, I can adjust the blending mode and opacity to give a range of effects. Anyway, I'm absolutely geeking out trying a bajillion combinations. For example ...



We were on our own for dinner, so we decided to get the vacation started with some good beer and some fresh Halibut at the Glacier Brewhouse.

We woke up Wednesday morning knowing that we had little on the agenda until departure for the Grandview train in the early afternoon. The Grandview train is a scenic railway that runs from Anchorage to Seward, following Turnagain Arm and passing through some of the most beautiful scenic valleys that probably exist on Earth. So yes, we were super excited to ride this train, despite the gloomy, rainy weather.

Just before breakfast, we headed over to the Regent check-in desk to get our seat assignment for the train … and found out that the train tracks had flooded and there would be no train ride after all. I guess having two weeks of 80+ degree temps had caused massive snowmelt in Seward; the rivers flooded and burst their banks, and in the process also flooded the tracks. I had so been looking forward to the train ride – I didn’t want to let it get me down, but I’ll admit I was a little bit of a grump about it for a few hours.

To shake off the 'tude, We decided to head out for a walk around town, and followed a little spit of the coastal trail that runs along the inlet. The trail quickly became decidedly less urban and soon we saw water - and ships! There was a small dock with some commercial vessels across the way, but what made it an iconic Alaska moment in my mind was the color of the grasses growing on the piece of floodplain between the trail and the ships. In the middle of summer, there was an orgy of yellows, oranges, greens, and reds that was so unexpected we had to stop and take some pictures.



Plus texture:


We were a little surprised to see two F-15 fighters land, but then Nick remembered that there’s an Air Force Base up here in Anchorage. He also remembered that there is a squadron of F-22 Raptors up here, too. Sure enough, we saw a few Raptors come in and bounce repeatedly (coincidentally, this was also the day that Congress voted to terminate the F-22 program …). Also a couple of C-130s and perhaps a C-5.

We saw several of these planes land while down at Ship Creek, a stream that runs through the industrial area of downtown Anchorage. The salmon had just started running, and the season had just opened the day prior. (On our flight into Anchorage, a gentleman sitting next to me described last year’s fishing season and how he and his friends caught their subsistence quota of salmon within 3-4 hours. Which is remarkable, considering that subsistence quotas are 30 (?) fish for each head of household and another 10 for each dependent. They just dipped their nets into the water and came away with hundreds of fish in one afternoon.)

There were several locals out fishing in Ship Creek, and we spent an hour or so just watching them fish:





This particular fish was, unfortunately, hooked in the gullet ...





Looking downstream, there was a line of men and women in waders trying their hand, although we didn't see too many fish in that part of the creek. For each one of these guys in waders, there were three or four fishing from shore.



Of the bridges over Ship Creek, the nicest was the one atop the dam - it had the additional photographic advantage of beautiful lightposts along the length and the most amazing old industrial building at the end.

(Nick caught me taking the above picture of the line of fisherpeoples)

And my shot, original and with a texture:





Reinvigorated after our trek around town and a stop at the Ulu Factory, maker of the famous Ulu knives (yes, we made sure we acquired one), we rendezvous-ed back at the hotel with the bus for our transfer to Seward. The rain had started up again at this point, and it looked like it was going to be a very gloomy ride to the ship. Given the fact that Regent had to scramble to get all sorts of extra buses to transport the passengers who had been scheduled to take the train, the transfer was pretty smooth. Would there have been more room on the train? Yup. Would it have been more comfortable? Yup. Would the scenery have been better? Hard to say … for the ride along Turnagain Arm the tracks followed the road, so it’s safe to say they would have had the same view we did for that portion, although the bus windows were grimy and interfered with the picture taking and the train windows would have been less so. The train would have also traveled at a much slower pace, enabling better picture-taking. However, once past Turnagain Arm, the weather rolled in and it started raining, which makes me think that the train windows would have quickly gotten just as splattered as the bus’s. The ride along the mud flats of Turnagain Arm was beautiful despite the low clouds and limited visibility of the mountains. The tide comes into the Arm quickly and violently and, I’m sure, rolls out just as fast. But in the areas that don’t flood at high tide, there are rivulets in the mud, almost tiny canyons. There were a few that looked like the Grand Canyon in miniature, and it made me wonder how long it took to create these little majestic mud channels.





The rest of the ride was also beautiful, although I wish our coach driver had either given us a little narration or stopped at a few scenic points to let us really view it all. Next time we’re here, we’ll be traveling at our own pace, Erin-and-Nick-style, Nick driving patiently while I holler at him to “pull off!!” or “stop here!” or “mwuuaaaah!” (which roughly translates to either of the previous phrases). Frustratingly, there was construction on this highway, shutting it down to one lane, which meant that only one direction of traffic could go at a time. We sat at a full stop for half an hour waiting for our turn.

I think normally we wouldn’t have cared, but we were comparing it in our minds to what the train would have been like (no traffic!) and the dead stop was the final nail in the coach’s coffin. When we arrived in Seward, the town was totally fogged/clouded in, and what I’m sure is a stunning port town surrounded by mountains was instead a wall of white with some gray water stretching out in front of us. After we had boarded the ship and got settled in our stateroom, the weather lifted just enough to see a bit of the town across the water:

Even though we were starting to think that our trip was off to an iffy start with the weather-induced inconveniences, once we were on board were so excited for the days ahead. See? Excited!





Apparently, Nick was SO excited that he decided to impersonate ... someone ...



(disclaimer: that picture was the result of us saying, one too many times, "I'm on a BOAT!" and other ridiculous lyrics from this SNL digital short. Before you click on it, beware that there are several f-bombs and other curse words. If you are inclined to be offended by such language or you have small children around, please don't watch it. You're warned.)



The onboard naturalist Terry Breen came on over the ship's speakers (or piped through the ship's channel on our stateroom TV) to narrate our departure from Seward. She remarked about the incredible flooding around Seward and how a huge proportion of the floodwater was glacial runoff, which has a milky green color due to the glacial silt. As she was describing it, Nick and I went out onto the balcony and noticed not only the color, but how there was a distinct line in the bay where the glacial runoff met the rest of the oceanic water.

And as the ship's engines started up, the silty green water began combining with the darker ocean water, swirling together beautifully. (Look closely for the seagulls.)



We went up to the Observation Lounge to enjoy a cocktail before dinner and continue to watch the departure from Seward:

As the rain picked up again, the view out of the Observation Lounge windows was so obscured, it was hard to see much of anything:

So we headed down to the Horizon Lounge, which has the advantage of a) being covered and b) being on a lower deck. We caught the last glimpses of land before heading out to open ocean for our transit South:

And I got my Bon Voyage shot of the ship's path through the water:

We shook off the day's misadventures, kept our fingers crossed for better weather, and hit the sack, preparing mentally for the next day's adventure, cruising Hubbard Glacier, the longest tidewater glacier in the Northern hemisphere. But you'll have to wait for those pictures ... (not too long, I promise).

Fairies Dancing on the Windowpanes

I promise promise promise this is NOT going to be a post about how cold it is. I will NOT count myself among the rank of "OH MY GOD, IT'S COLD! SO COLD! YOU CAN'T BELIEVE THAT IT'S THIS COLD EVENTHOUGHIT'SDECEMBERANDWESHOULDHAVEEXPECTEDIT."

It seems that even those of you in paradise (otherwise known as San Diego) have experienced bad weather and a sudden drop in the mercury this past week, and if no climate is immune to the arctic chill, then we're all more or less in the same boat.

And seriously, am I supposed to complain about having to see all of that WEATHER out my front window? Even Nick's commute is relatively short and painless. Well, short and highway-less, anyway. He has to feel the pain of driving through a part of the city full of old stately Victorian-style homes that have become derelict and are in various stages of crackification. I know he feels the same sort of sadness that I do when thinking about how far gone these tarnished silver ladies are. But anyway.

The cold snap to us has been pretty awesome. The weather was so mild through most of November, it was hard to believe that the holidays were closing in. Having a chilly Thanksgiving certainly shocked us into remembering that we're not in Kansas (er, San Diego?) anymore, and the snow that blew by our windows these last few days sent us full-on headlong into the holiday spirit. We acquired and decorated our Christmas tree, hung lights around our front windows, and have been playing our favorite Christmas albums* on repeat. I had my own personal victory just last night when I installed a home-brewed (ghetto) self-watering apparatus for the tree, involving a 3-gallon reservoir, 3/4" vinyl tubing, and zip ties to create a siphoning system for keeping that tree fresh and healthy, even if we aren't around for a few days. I even found a big box that I wrapped like a present in which to hide the reservoir. Yea, me! (much patting of self on back)

And as I was finishing the self-congratulations last night, I happened to notice crystals of ice creeping their way up the outer panes of our front windows. As the temperature continued to drop, the crystals crept farther up the window, and I became absolutely entranced by the play of the lights outside on 3rd street, the reflection of the colored lights on the Christmas tree, and the illumination of the creeping crystals by the white lights rimming the windows. I grabbed my camera and my 50mm/1.8 lens and started shooting.



It was interesting to watch the colors picked up by the ice as the stoplights changed (to red, below) or as trucks with blinking lights drove by (blue, above).



As I tried to get closer in on the crystals, I found the photographic limitations of the situation and the lens - I couldn't get quite as close as I wanted (the minimum focal distance is still 1.5 feet), and even at ISO 400, the shutter speeds weren't quite fast enough to get really crisp images. But this was more for fun and illustrative purposes anyway, right? =)



Sitting so much closer to the windows than I ever normally would, except of course for all those times I press my face to the windows to make piggyfaces at the passing cars (ahem. I lie. I totally never do that. Except that once. Or twice.) I happened to notice the faintest outline of letters on the exterior pane. I called Nick over and we sat there, bobbing our heads from side to side to try and get the right angle to discern the letters, trying to figure out what they might have spelled, and most certainly looking like a couple of bobble-headed boobies (the scientific term: bobooblius krakificus).





(I like that first one in particular because of the reflection of the lights on the Christmas tree)

We ended up being able to decipher "GEROBROCKM" - the letters on either edge of the pane were too hard to see with all of the frost. Thus far, Google hasn't been helpful in figuring out what that might have said, but I'm guessing that at some point this unit may have been a law office or some sort of other business that would have had their nameplate on the front windows (facing the corner of 3rd and Wayne, those two windows facing you in this picture that I found on the interwebs).


Given that this building was converted to apartment lofts about 5 years ago and it was hovering between nearly and utterly vacant in the years before that, who knows how long ago those letters were there? And moreover ... has it really been that long since the exteriors of these windows were cleaned? Yikes.

*our favorite Christmas albums, a non-comprehensive list in no particular order:

UltraLounge Christmas Cocktails (Capitol Records, 1996)
UltraLounge Christmas Cocktails Part 3 (Capitol, 2004)
Maybe This Christmas (Network America, 2002)
Maybe This Christmas Too? (Network America, 2003)
Louis Armstrong and Friends, The Christmas Collection (Universal, 1997 and 2003)
Vince Guaraldi A Charlie Brown Christmas (Fantasy Records, 1998)
Blue Note / Yule Be Boppin' (Capitol, 1997)
(and winner for cheesiest entry) The Choirs of Lyons Township High School Christmas album (1997, I think)