Merry Christmas everyone! Nothing else to report today.

It's not specific to Bend or Central Oregon, but on Christmas Eve we enjoy NORAD Tracks Santa—the "official" site for finding out where Santa is right now. The dynamic map is updated every few minutes with Santa's current location, and every so often a video goes "live" showing Santa flying around near a famous landmark.

If you have kids, they'll be glued to it. Heck, even I'm glued to it at times.

I don't know if Bend will show up on the locations; you never know!

More snow; I heard on the radio driving home from work today that there's another winter storm advisory from 6am tomorrow morning until 6pm Thursday (Christmas), with 3-5 inches expected for Bend.

Now, I know better than to implicitly trust the weather report for Central Oregon, so I have my doubts. But as it is, we already have snow on the ground, and driving is dangerous enough right now—so even though there's last minute shopping to do (we've all been there), please take it easy when driving. Be patient! Remember that the person in front of you might not be used to this type of weather and road conditions, and nothing is important enough to get into an accident over.

Incidentally, you keep an eye on weather alerts here.

Hard to believe we're only three days away from Christmas already. Nothing substantive to point to tonight, other than a few pictures I took while shopping in the Old Mill District the other day. Christmas shopping, naturally.

Well, I suppose you can't tell it's Christmas time from the smokestacks picture... they're cool when they're lit up, though. (Lights on the mesh at the very top.)

A gift from the Bulletin: this year's edition of their Near/Far music coverage, which includes 36 free and legal songs to download. A snip of the blurb on their page:

[Y]ou can click "Lists and Reviews" to check out my favorite albums and concerts of the year, plus the faves of folks connected to Central Oregon's music scene. Below, the good stuff: Stream or download 36 songs by local and national acts, for free. (Each half of this double-length compilation will fit on one CD, so click the links right below this text to download a .ZIP file of all the songs in MP3 format, plus CD artwork with tracklists.)

I covered this last year, and was very impressed that the Bulletin was able to pull this off. Of course, Ben Salmon (the Bulletin's music writer (editor?)) was the driving force behind this and it represents a ton of hard work he's put into it.

The downloads this year are nearly twice as big as last year's: two zip files (local music and national music), 112 megabytes and 102 megabytes each. So be patient when you go to download them. (Of course, you can stream the music directly from the page, too.)

It's Christmas lights season for sure! The Bulletin today published their annual guide to the best regional light displays, and it's certainly more extensive than in past years.

Of course now I need to re-run Christmas lights pictures from this post back in 2006.

We went out this evening to look at lights for a little bit, and I'm bummed to report that the house in the second picture there—on Harmon Boulevard on the north side of Mirror Pond—is no longer decorated. It wasn't last year, either. This was my favorite display in town, so it feels like the end of an era.

McMenamins Old St. Francis School is hosting their annual "Breakfast with Santa" tomorrow, Saturday the 20th. Details:

9 a.m., 10:30 a.m. & 12 noon | $13 adults, $10 kids; reservations required | All ages welcome

This is way, way more fun than standing in line at the mall to see Santa. Enjoy a hearty, kid-friendly buffet while you wait for St. Nick to make an appearance. After your breakfast, have a chat with Santa and we'll snap a picture for you to take home.

They've also posted the menu on their detail page.

I don't know about you, but that sounds like a pretty good way to start the day.

This weekend the High Desert Museum is having a "Frontier Yuletide Celebration" that looks pretty interesting:

Celebrate the yuletide season frontier-style with a visit to Father Christmas, the Victorian version of Santa. Join the homesteaders (Living History performers) preparing for the winter holidays at their 1880 ranch cabin, and make garlands, ornaments and cook.

There will also be live music from the Thorn Hollow String Band.

It takes place Saturday from 11am until 3pm, and the cost is the normal museum admission fee. If you're into history—particularly Oregon frontier history—and the weather doesn't keep you away, go check it out.

Gift and shopping guides: the previous two years I ran a Holiday Shopping Guide and Holiday Gift Guide and surprisingly, they're still mostly relevant. And since there's now only one shopping week before Christmas left, it's a good time to revisit them.

Also, for anyone looking for locally-authored and topical books, Costco has the run of the "Thunder Over the Ochoco" series authored by the late Gale Ontko. These are reprints for $12.49 apiece; the first editions (which appeared about a decade ago) are almost impossible to find at a reasonable price, so this is a really good deal. Five volumes in all.

(Remember, even though the "Nth day" is going up, this is really a countdown until Christmas Day.)

Pictures of the Bend Christmas Parade!

...Yes, I know I'm late posting some of these, considering the parade was back on the 6th. But it all works out anyway. Enjoy!

Click through to view all of the photos

The Tower Theatre is presenting "A Christmas Carol" for five days, starting on Thursday, the 18th. The first day's play is performed by a youth cast, and tickets are $16 adults, $10 kids. Subsequent days are the community cast and are $24/$12.

Join the Tower Theatre Foundation for a world premiere adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic "A Christmas Carol." Follow Ebeneezer Scrooge through his journey with the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future as he discovers that in life, you truly reap what you sow. Adapted by local writers Howard Schor and Brad Thompson, this traditional telling features a number of surprise interpretations, along with music and choreography that will definitely fill the audience with the holiday spirit.

In addition, the Tower is encouraging a little Christmas spirit:

In the spirit of the play, we wish to make it possible for less fortunate families to attend free of charge. We know this is a direct way to live out the message of the play by giving to others. Actors, volunteers and skilled craftspeople are volunteering their time and talent, and so can you! For the public performances, performed by our Community “adult” Cast, our goal is to have at least 100 financially challenged families (400 people) attend at no charge. Generous local businesses and individuals have already contributed in order to allow us to meet 30% of this goal. Please help us meet the goal!

We ask that you donate $74.00 to send one family of four to a show. Just donate through our secure website.

Overall it's very reasonably priced and I'll bet it's going to be a great series of performances.

You can read about "A Christmas Carol" here.

I thought it would be fun to count down the days until Christmas on the blog, with a post daily highlighting some sort of holiday theme. Starting today (the 14th, and yes, I know I've gotten off to a late start), and going right up until the 25th, that's 12 days—just like the song you now have stuck in your head.

(No, it's not accurate as far as the actual "12 days of Christmas" go—which run from the 25th until January 5th—but it's more fun in a countdown kind of way.)

So on this First Day of Christmas, Bend is finally getting snow (and cold weather!). Snow in the mountains for the much-needed snowpack (from which we get our water) and the ever-so-popular winter sports and tourism (interesting story here about the snow-makers at Mt. Bachelor; the whole "making snow" thing seems odd to me); and snow down here out of the mountains which may even stick around long enough to give us a White Christmas.

In fact, as I write this, it's currently something like 8 degrees, and with the 10-day weather forecast it doesn't look like the snow is going anywhere—so that White Christmas seems pretty likely to me.