Nano nano naaaaaaano!

I've got a Nano! I've got a Nano!

Boyfriend bought me a 4G Nano for my birthday!! Woo-hoo! Now I feel guilty because he spent too much money. (Now, he says, I can no longer urge him to buy more clothes, because he has spent all his "pants money" on the Nano.) But I'm also excited to install iTunes and start filling it with music. I gotta start ripping more of my CDs to my computer, too, so I can be like all the cool kids in the blogosphere and do the Friday Random 10 thing (since I seem not to be inspired enough to do poetry Fridays -- I keep worrying I'll post something obvious -- and I don't have a cat). And then y'all can see just how much my music collection and Scrivener's overlap. (OK, we're not exactly alike in our taste, but there's a lot of similarity, and everytime he mentions something I don't know, I check it out and like it. Go figure.)

And speaking of music, Virgo Sis bought me two really interesting looking cultural studies books on rock: Simon Reynolds and Joy Press, The Sex Revolts: Gender Rebellion, and Rock 'n' Roll (Harvard UP), and Simon Reynolds, Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 (Penguin). (She also bought me a cute sweater, but it doesn't quite fit, so I have to exchange it. But I thought you all would be less interested in a sweater than books.)

And my friend The Empress, who always sends me a box full of little goodies, many humorous, did so again this year. It included, among other things, a CD by a band called Beowülf (what is with heavy metal bands and the abuse of the umlaut -- at least this one is on a vowel!), a nailpolish in a color called "Cabana Boy," and one of those ubiquitous plastic bracelets, only this one is dark purple and says "IRONY." I must wear it. Ironically, of course. Oh, and one of the oddest items was an animal-shaped lemon reamer in translucent yellow plastic that looked suspiciously like a sex toy -- for those with an addiction to food porn, I suppose. ;)

Meanwhile, as I said in my comment in the last post, The Boyfriend and I spent my birthday around the countryside in Neighboring State to look at the area where we're fantasizing we could buy some land. It's still a real possibility, but we discovered that some of the [Ethnic Immigrant] Hills area is seriously ticky-tacky -- plastic dinosaur parks, waterslides, fake Old West towns (huh?!), and cheesy references to the Ethnic Immigrants after which the area is named. If you've been to the Wisconsin Dells, it's a bit like that on a smaller scale (though there was a eerily familiar giant Paul Bunyan statue).

And while we were doing all this, I started to come down with the sore throat and cold Boyfriend's had for a week. Boo! I'm not supposed to get sick on my birthday! I'm not supposed to get sick at all -- I don't get sick! Boo!

But I discovered that a cocktail hour screwdriver made my throat feel good enough for a nice steak dinner that night. So now you know -- throat hurts too much to swallow? Have a screwdriver! You get the Vitamin C in the OJ, the antiseptic qualities of the vodka, and the numbing effects of the ice.

OK, gotta load iTunes and start playing with my Nano!!!!!