Mostly had our brand new Bose wave system radio and CD changer on. It's a quite pricey system, but Barbara and I decided that this would be our Christmas gift to each other this year. It replaced a huge Sony "bookshelf" system that consisted of four parts: main unit w/AM/FM tuner and a 3 CD changer and dual cassette decks, two speaker cabinets and a sub-woofer that we had to turn off because the "thump thump" bugged some of our neighbors (along with a few features we never used). It would have required one humongous bookshelf, but we had it on top of a fairly large, low chest of drawers. It took up about three-quarters of it. It was dying anyway. One of the speakers kept cutting in and out and the tuner was getting fuzzy and crackly and no amount of fiddling with the antenna would correct it.

We are astonished at the quality and quantity of sound that pours out of the Bose! The sound is crystal clear, and how they manage to get that much well-balanced bass out of two speakers that can't be more than three inches in diameter has me mystified. The main unit contains the AM/FM tuner and one CD slot. And if we got the optional 3 CD player with it, we got $100 off. The main unit sits on top of the CD player, the whole outfit stands about 7 or 8 inches tall, and it takes up about two square feet on top of the bureau!! Other than a digital readout (time, what station you're or what cut on which CD you're playing, and a few other bits of relevant informanton), no knobs or dials on it. All the controls are on the remote (and they sent us two remotes!).

And the remotes have a mute button! I can mute the commercial breaks!!

You can do all sorts of stuff, like set it as a clock radio, say, to turn on the news in the morning on KUOW, but if you go to sleep (sleep switch) listening to KING, it remembers and turns the radio on in the morning to KUOW. And you can load it with four CDs and play them straight through in sequence, set up a custom program for yourself, or have it to play selections from all four CDs at random. Connections on the back if you want to plug in "auxiliary" units, such as an turntable for vinyl, a cassette player, a television, whatever.

Anyway. We've had it on in the background, tuned to KING-FM, a local classical music station. They've been playing a lot of Christmas music with a classical bent. Lots of medieval and Renaissance choral music, plus a variety of instrumental music, including selections recorded by some classical pianist who starts out playing something familiar by Chopin or Beethoven, and then somehow it morphs into a Christmas carol, but still very much in the style of the composer he (or she) started with. Don't know who the pianist is.

I think I've about had my fill of Christmas music for this season. Frankly, if I hear one more arrangement of "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" or "White Christmas," I think I'll start running frantically in circles and bellowing "Bah! Humbug!!"

Hope you all had good, musically enjoyable Christmas.

Don Firth