I may be nine-and-thirty but my heart is seventeen

[annathepiper]

Monday afternoon, by way of taking advantage of a day off from work, solarbird and spazzkat and I went to go see Cloverfield.

(Which is, by the way, a quite tight and intense little movie--but for the love of god, be warned, if you're prone to any kind of motion sickness, sit way, way back in the theater. Also consider taking some Dramamine beforehand.)

(Also, we had the new teaser for the forthcoming Trek flick in front of the movie, which I have to admit really rather made my little fangirl heart go pitter-pat, particularly when the first few notes of the familiar theme song welled up over the pan shot across the under-construction saucer section of the Enterprise... and, well, gosh. <3 Man, I hope they don't screw this up. I'm really in an Original Trek mood after giving Dara the remastered DVDs of the first season, so yeah. Bring on the new kids, and here's hoping they do the old familiar characters justice.)

(But I digress.)

I mention the Cloverfield excursion mostly because both beforehand and afterward, we popped into Barnes and Noble. I had a couple of coupons I wanted to spend, and the first one went to me picking up another Waifs CD. I offered the other to Dara, but she couldn't think of anything she really wanted to get even though she waffled for a bit on the very first season box set for The Avengers. (ETA 10:08pm: Dara says I got the season wrong--it's second series Avengers she was interested in. My bad!) So I settled on spending the second coupon on the last box set for Remington Steele.

Which of course was very foolish of me to do two days before my birthday--because Monday night at dinner, I learned to my chagrin that risu was of the opinion that I Really Shouldn't Have Done That, to which I went "ah" and immediately resolved to not open up the package so that I could take it back to B&N and swap it for something else. *^_^*;;

I did that today, and settled on two CDs: In All Things by Leahy, since I do have quite the long string of good luck with Celtic-flavored Canadian bands, and also The Best of the Chieftains, because I keep saying I should damn well have some Chieftains, so now I do. I'm pretty sure that there is a law written down somewhere, probably in Ireland or Scotland, that all fans of modern Celtic music should own at least one Chieftains CD. And I am a law-abiding citizen!

Anyway, it turned out that the extra box for Steele was actually a get-well present rather than a birthday, but most welcome nonetheless. And between that and the gifts from Dara and Paul, it has been a very DVD-heavy birthday, with emphasis on the Swoonable and the Funny. In the Swoonable corner, we have Steele (the 4th and 5th season box set), the second season of MacGyver ("his mind is the ultimate weapon", says the tagline on the box, to which Paul added that this is scary given that it lives under the ultimate mullet), and, to crown off the lineup, 3:10 to Yuma, the Crowe/Bale edition. BOOYA. And over in the Funny corner, we have the 11th collection for Mystery Science Theater 3000 as well as Eddie Izzard's Definite Article.

technoshaman has come over to help Dara with a server swap, and he brought a card with him which was very cute. My boss even gave me a card today as well. All in all, as birthdays go, a pretty fine one indeed. <3

Comments

[poodlgrl.livejournal.com]

"I may be nine-and-thirty but my heart is seventeen"
ME! TOO!

Happy Birthday!

[annathepiper]

Hee! Thank you. :)

[annathepiper]

Thanks! So am I!

[ceallaighgirl.livejournal.com]

Oh, have you not had a Leahy album before? They are BRILLIANT! I've got Lakefield and love it. And their self-titled album is really good too. (Also other good Canadian Celtic-ish family band is the Rankin Family.)

[annathepiper]

I hadn't had one of their albums before, but I liked their track on the Fire in the Kitchen compilation I bought because of the GBS take of "Lukey" on it. (Which of course was also my first sort of backwards exposure to the Chieftains as well.)

I'm also aware of the Rankins, and have some of Jimmy Rankin's work on my To Buy list since I saw him open for GBS in Canada last time I saw them play there. But I suspect I'll have a harder time finding Rankin Family albums. :)

[ceallaighgirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Rankin Family albums aren't as easy to find as Jimmy Rankin, but worth it. I first heard them at some ungodly hour in the morning on the CBC2 (back when I lived closer to Canada) and it was just beautiful -- "Fare Thee Well Love" *swoon*.

[annathepiper]

I've got an amazon.ca account, so I can order directly out of Canada if I need to, though I also have my share of spies north of the border. ;) I'll see if I get a chance to find something of theirs to listen to!

[ceallaighgirl.livejournal.com]

They DO have one CD on iTunes.

[annathepiper]

Excellent! Thanks for the update. :)

[ceallaighgirl.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, and happy birthday, of course! :-)

[annathepiper]

Thank you! :)

[snarlingbadger.livejournal.com]

Happy Day!

And yay on the Chieftains cd. I think my dad has nearly all of them. Some of my friends are a bit concerned about the large collections of Celtic music he & I have. Yeah, we lean more toward the Irish side of the heritage than the German. (:

Are you familiar with the Fuchsia Band? I love their track "10 Minutes Too Late" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDngdBjw1LE

Of course, I'm a huge Gaelic Storm fan as well. Rar.

Yay for January birthdays!

[annathepiper]

I am not familiar with the Fuschia Band! I'll check out the link.

And I keep waffling about Gaelic Storm. Dara has one of their discs, and I do rather like their instrumentals, but their vocals don't quite click for me. Trying to decide if I want to check out another of their albums.

January birthdays are pretty awesome. ^_^

[snarlingbadger.livejournal.com]

Imho, their recorded stuff is good, but their live performances are phenomenal. I've been to 3 of their concerts so far, and am planning to attend 2 this spring.

My current favorite track is the last on their latest album "Bring Your Wellies," - "Kiss Me I'm Irish."

[annathepiper]

Heh, duly noted! Maybe I'll see if I can find sample tracks for it next time I have "buy downloads off of iTunes" spare moneys. :)

[snarlingbadger.livejournal.com]

Last year they had a YouTube video contest for the song, here's one of the entries, fwiw: http://youtube.com/watch?v=2_mbPIa754c

[annathepiper]

Cool. I'll have to look at this tonight, too. (A bit tricky to watch videos at work!)

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday!!!!!

[annathepiper]

Thanks! :)

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

I rather suspect that you might also like Todd Butler, our local improvement upon Wierd Al Yankovic, who's for some years served as one-man house band on the CBC morning show out of Victoria -- let me see what sort of miracles I can accomplish in that department.... better late than never, ne?

[annathepiper]

I do like me some Weird Al, and I do also like Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie, so it's certainly probable that I'd like Mr. Butler. ^_^

[kitchengrrl.livejournal.com]

As for good Chieftains albums, I highly recommend "An Irish Evening," which is a live performance with appearances from Nancy Griffith and Roger Daltry. There's an AWESOME version of "Behind Blue Eyes" on there.

[annathepiper]

Cool, thank you very much!

[lickingtoad.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday! w00t!

[annathepiper]

Thank you! :)

[brombear.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday! Hope your days are great! I also agree with you on the Chieftains. I've got at least 8 of their albums, and their DVD. Some interesting stories there! I still think that Ritchie Blackmore needs to do an Album with them!

[annathepiper]

Thank you! And heh, I've now listened to most of the album; I got in most of it on the way into work this morning. Very much an "stand aside, younguns, and let the experts show you how it's done" listening experience. ;)

[howlinhobbit.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday, youngster!

(My next is a tad over 4 months off and it's the five and zero.)

[annathepiper]

Thank you very much. :)

[ravyngyngvar.livejournal.com]

Belatedly: Happy happy birthday. :D

I remember a somewhat confusing crossing of presents one Christmas. I had one particular book that I was sure that father would want. I think I checked with Jorun to make sure that she didn't give him the same book, but if I'd been better at reading faces I should have noticed something peculiar anywway. No, she wasn't giving the same book to father. She was giving it to *me*! :)

[annathepiper]

Thank you very much!

And hee, yeah, that's quite the present mixup. ;)