stoutfellow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stoutfellow) wrote2008-01-04 06:58 pm
stoutfellow) wrote2008-01-04 06:58 pm
Entry tags:
Now We Are Fifty
Fifty. Um. Half a century.
I had considered writing a reflective and rather somber post on Being Me and Being Fifty. I decided against it, finally, for two reasons. One was that it would have contained a certain amount of whingeing, and the news about Andrew Olmsted kind of puts my problems into the shade. For the other reason - well, look under the cut.
The other reason is that I decided that, before sitting down to write, I should open my birthday presents. There were several of them, and they lifted my spirits considerably.
Item: another pair of fuzzy slippers. In the past, my slippers have generally been dog-themed, bearing the face of a St. Bernard or similar critter. This time, my sister E. sent me... a pair of donkeys. Big, grinning donkeys. As the sole Democrat in the family, I love them, and I will assuredly be wearing them on Election Day. (For non-USAns: the donkey is the traditional symbol of the Democratic party, as the elephant is of the Republicans.)
Item: Tom Holland's Persian Fire. (I got his Rubicon for Christmas.)
Item: A nice and warm-looking long-sleeved shirt.
Item: A wall calendar. E. always gets me a wall calendar; for the last several years, it's usually been Buffy-themed, but I think that mine is pretty well played out. This year: Edward Gorey. Specifically, its pictures make up his The Other Statue: A Murder Mystery. I'm struggling to decide between flipping through the whole thing now and letting the calendar tell its story over the course of the year. I'm leaning towards the latter.
I feel much better.
For my part, I did most of my celebrating yesterday, with a visit to the new Borders. I dropped about $185 on books and CDs. Most of the books were f/sf, and most of those were continuations of series I'm following, but I also picked up Mary Stewart's The Gabriel Hounds and a couple of histories: Andrew Mango's Atatürk and de Villiers/Hirtle, Timbuktu. I bought four CDs. Two were old friends: Fleetwood Mac's eponymous album and a Smokey Robinson collection. I also got Nilsson's Everybody's Talking, purely for the sake of the coconut song. Jeph Jacques, of Questionable Content, has spoken highly and persuasively of the Flaming Lips, so I took a complete flyer on their Soft Bulletin album. We'll see about those last two.
Anyway, it was a good birthday.
I had considered writing a reflective and rather somber post on Being Me and Being Fifty. I decided against it, finally, for two reasons. One was that it would have contained a certain amount of whingeing, and the news about Andrew Olmsted kind of puts my problems into the shade. For the other reason - well, look under the cut.
The other reason is that I decided that, before sitting down to write, I should open my birthday presents. There were several of them, and they lifted my spirits considerably.
Item: another pair of fuzzy slippers. In the past, my slippers have generally been dog-themed, bearing the face of a St. Bernard or similar critter. This time, my sister E. sent me... a pair of donkeys. Big, grinning donkeys. As the sole Democrat in the family, I love them, and I will assuredly be wearing them on Election Day. (For non-USAns: the donkey is the traditional symbol of the Democratic party, as the elephant is of the Republicans.)
Item: Tom Holland's Persian Fire. (I got his Rubicon for Christmas.)
Item: A nice and warm-looking long-sleeved shirt.
Item: A wall calendar. E. always gets me a wall calendar; for the last several years, it's usually been Buffy-themed, but I think that mine is pretty well played out. This year: Edward Gorey. Specifically, its pictures make up his The Other Statue: A Murder Mystery. I'm struggling to decide between flipping through the whole thing now and letting the calendar tell its story over the course of the year. I'm leaning towards the latter.
I feel much better.
For my part, I did most of my celebrating yesterday, with a visit to the new Borders. I dropped about $185 on books and CDs. Most of the books were f/sf, and most of those were continuations of series I'm following, but I also picked up Mary Stewart's The Gabriel Hounds and a couple of histories: Andrew Mango's Atatürk and de Villiers/Hirtle, Timbuktu. I bought four CDs. Two were old friends: Fleetwood Mac's eponymous album and a Smokey Robinson collection. I also got Nilsson's Everybody's Talking, purely for the sake of the coconut song. Jeph Jacques, of Questionable Content, has spoken highly and persuasively of the Flaming Lips, so I took a complete flyer on their Soft Bulletin album. We'll see about those last two.
Anyway, it was a good birthday.
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I love The Gabriel Hounds. It's probably my second favorite Stewart (my favorite being Touch Not the Cat).
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The Gabriel Hounds is one that I haven't read. My mother had a bunch of Stewarts, which I devoured in my teen years, but they vanished somewhere and I never got around to getting my own. And So It Begins....
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:)