christmas wishes

the other day, i told john paul that all i wanted for christmas was another harry potter book. it looks like jk rowling was listening, because the publication date for harry potter and the half-blood prince has been announced as july 16! just a month after my birthday, too. she has a mildly amusing website, but don't expect too many secrets to be revealed.

fantastic.

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Originally uploaded by clairevoyant paranoia.

the magnetic fields were amazing. stephin merritt was a bit intimidating, seeing as how he walked into the audience after the first song and yelled at some girls who had been talking. he said he would gladly pay the refund of their tickets. yikes. from then on, i kept thinking that at any minute he would get fed up with the bar noise and just walk out. but, he didn't, and he was great. they played many of my favorites, and some new/unfamiliar songs as well. i like it when claudia sings, but there wasn't quite enough of that going on. it was interesting to see that she is the public voice of the group - the person telling most of the stories and engaging in banter with the audience.

the most surprising part of the evening was actually the guy who opened for the them. he is an australian, darren hanlon. he blew me away. he was funny and clever, and had a lovely voice. it was just him and his guitar (and a banjo for one song - that is when he made the joke that he was going to start a banjo band called banjovi that will play only bonjovi songs on banjo.) he sings about bicycle kick-stands, and hiccups, and his love reading the phone book to him, from a-z. he reminded me a bit of the mountain goats, but happier. i encouraged him to go over to new zealand, because i think doug would particularly like him. he said he's never been, and thought that was a bit silly. so, maybe.

paths to happiness

the mfah is having a christmas ornament making evening tonight. i was thinking about going. if you want to come, give me a call.

oh, i forgot to mention that the magnetic fields, one of my absolute all-time favorites, are playing at numbers this saturday!! i am so excited. there are two shows, at 6pm and 9:30. tickets are on sale @ sound ex. i am going to the 9:30 show, so maybe i'll see you there.

mirah, another one of my other all-time favorites, is also playing saturday night. her show is at the axiom, doors @ 10/show @ 11. i don't know about you, but i am going to try to make it her show after the magnetic fields. it might have been easier to go to the early magnetic fields show, but who likes easy?

in the news of fun elsewhere, the snow and ice festival in harbin, china looks like such a good time!

neglected loves

so, like many bloggers, i am not very good at posting regularly. it has been almost an entire month of silence. in my defense, i will say that we were out of town for much of the time since my previous post, and then our cable modem system imploded. but really, is this forum for personal introspection really supposed to be one more thing i feel guilty about neglecting? it goes right into my long list of neglected loves: the dishes, my friends who live far away, my friends who live close, the laundry, the floors, the crafts, the gre, and on and on.

speaking of our being out of town, we had a great time in brenham. it was nice to get away from the guilt of daily living (see the list above) for no real reason, to a place that felt far away, but was really only an hour and a half drive. we had the most luxurious room at the ant street inn - and it was glorious! the coolest thing about the room was the old wooden barn door (in order to open it, you had to unlatch and swing down an old metal pole) that led out into the wonderful little garden, which we basically had to ourselves. and they offered as much bluebell ice cream as you could eat! we went easy on the ice cream, actually; john paul had three little cartons, but i just had one, which i used to make a coke float.



we had a wonderful thanksgiving in miami.



as you can see, there are many stories to tell. you can see more teasers here. the details will have to wait though, as i am getting sleepy.

on a totally unrelated note, tonight at work, i was very excited to see that louis de bernières has a new book out! birds without wings is the title. there are definite perks to working in a library. de bernières is one of my favorite authors. if you haven't already, i strongly encourage you to read his trilogy which begins with
the war of don emmanuel's nether parts. and while i love this book - and the trilogy - i did point out to de bernières that it was a bit of a euro-centric stereotype of latin america, and he did sign a personal apology to me in my copy of the book. (nothing quite like being an anthropology undergraduate, eh?)

until next time.