More motes of light

[annathepiper]

+0: There is something inordinately cheering about wearing stripey socks. The socks I picked up as an afterthought to humor the sales lady at Eddie Bauer on Saturday are the socks I am wearing this very instant, and they have narrow stripes of various shades of green and purple, pink, and white. I look at my ankles, and I see stripes. Somehow, this is ridiculously cheering. When I go back to Eddie Bauer some time between the 1st and the 12th of December, so as to spend the holiday card my purchase there got me, I shall buy more stripey socks.



+1: After having my handheld sit on top of my warm monitor for the last several hours, it has stopped exuding little beads of water when I tap it with the stylus. And when I popped the battery in just now, it powered up without complaint and made no funny noises. The self test program worked, and every key functioned as expected. I have taken the battery right back out and have left it to sit for a while longer on the monitor to bask in the warmth, and am cautiously optimistic that this is a sign that I have not irretrievably screwed up the device. Moral of the story: if I want to amuse myself in the bath, do it with a BOOK. Or a rubber ducky. They're a lot less expensive to replace. And my instruments wouldn't like getting wet any more than my electronics do. Bouzoukis are supposed to go *twang*, not *gurgle*.



+2: Aside from the annoyance of the handheld taking an inadvertant bath, and the coolness of the Northern Lights, yesterday did also have the niceness of walking to Lake Forest Park along with solarbird. This involved the first official Wearing of the New Shoes, which caused Dara and me to observe that they clomped when I walk. Rhythmically enough that Dara started making up marching chants along with the beats of my footsteps. This is what I get for needing to break in brand new shoes.

Things accomplished at the Lake Forest Park Town Centre: depositing of paycheck and rent; purchasing of cat food, cat treats, diet Mountain Dew, and other essentials (yes, diet Mountain Dew is considered an essential in our household); obtaining of snacks at Starbuck's. The Starbuck's at the Town Centre has moved into a standalone building now, and I am not sure if I approve of the change; it was in a nicer space in its prior location. I suppose the point of the move is that the standalone building has a drive through--and there's just something about drive-through coffee that makes me roll my eyes. ;)

Observations were made on this trip, most of which were neat, one of which was annoying. The annoying one was that the Rite Aid has these new talking dolls which are supposed to be 'Mr. Right' and 'Ms. Right', and the gag is that they're supposed to say what the recipient, who is presumably of the opposite gender from the doll, 'wants to hear'. As one might expect, the set of phrases these things utter are sexist, stereotypical tripe. For example, the Ms. Right doll says something to the effect of "Gosh, honey, that girl over there is hot!" Ugh. Ugh. UGH.

The neat observations, however, were that 1) there is a bike locker at the bus stop right by the shopping center, which is nice to know if I feel like doing a bit of biking as part of my commutes; 2) in one of the random musical quirks of how my brain works, I slid from "keep a-movin', move along" (a snippet of lyric from Elvis Presley's "Follow That Dream") right into the chorus of "Something Beautiful", which is "move along, I believe there's something beautiful to see, move along..."; 3) there were several other folks out walking along the route between our house and the shopping center. We said hi to all of them. Most of them said hi back. Yay.

Also, on the way home, we were intercepted by no less than three dogs. Two of them were large, black, and friendly, and extremely interested in the bag of cat food I had stuffed under my arm. I informed the dogs that this was not food for their species. Dara informed me that as long as it was edible, doggies considered it food for their species.



+3: I have very few bad moods that cannot be improved by Séan McCann belting out "John Barbour". Plays a wicked bodhran AND has a voice like the clear ringing of silver trumpets. *sighs happily* "For if you can give her one gold piece / then I can give her three! / For I am bold John Barbour / And I plough the ragin' sea! / I plow the ragin' sea! / I PLOUGH THE RAGIN' SEA!"

I can almost sing this song now, too.

Comments

[kieri.livejournal.com]

Yay for stripey socks!


...would you be sad if I confessed that I had never heard a GBS song? :)

[annathepiper]

Indeed, a big yay for stripey socks!

And no, I would not be sad. I would tell you to go find one and listen to it. ;) GreatBigSea.com is a great place to start; they have a bunch of sample clips from various albums of theirs. And if you use iTunes at all, several of their albums are available for download and purchase through the iTunes music store. :)

[kieri.livejournal.com]

I love iTunes, but they won't let me download from Japan! Even though I have an American billing address. It is teh sad.

(sniffle)

Maybe I'll pick some up while I'm home over Christmas. :)

[annathepiper]

Awww, bummer. solarbird suspects this might have to do with licensing agreements, though we don't know for sure!

Let me heartily recommend looking for Rant and Roar, which is the first Great Big Sea album released in the U.S. and which has all the Very Best GBS songs on it. Road Rage is also Very Fine, as it is the live Great Big Sea record and does an excellent job capturing their live energy, which is one of the hugest things I love about the band. :)

Their current album, Something Beautiful*, has a more pop flavor to it than earlier work--so it's kind of a different beast than stuff from the era of Rant and Roar, which is more all about the Celtic/Newfoundland trad music. Still good stuff--and it's the current album that has the most excellent "John Barbour" about which I was raving in the original post on this thread. :) But look for the other two albums first!