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Steve passed out at 11 last night in a "pasta and beef-induced stupor" as he termed it It was sort of cute. I stayed up and watched episodes 31-33 of the original MSG, episodes I hadn't seen yet. sportgoddess, I'm going to IM you later with the observations I made about the way the WB crew reacts towards each other. I really am going to have to watch this series end-to-end. Well, not completely: episodes 1-11 I've seen over and over so I'll start at 12.

In addition to Galactic Heroes, which as of episode 64 is starting to make less and less sense. I know it tightens up again towards the end, which I've seen, and even LOGH at its worst is better than many shows at the top of their game, so I will live with it.

Finally, all in all a decent birthday. I think it was because in the past two years I've tried too hard to MAKE it good in the face of being in a new, unfriendly place. This time, I didn't try. I just did whatever. I even did some note-taking late last night and only put in a DVD when that made me tired.

Marine layer out there today, which is good because it means my plants on the roof won't scorch. I'm getting a lemon tree up there next. That should be interesting....

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I went to the UCSD library with Bean because they were having a toy piano concert. Yes, you read that right. I returned the books I was done with and made a few photocopies before going down.

Bean was a little disappointed because only a couple of pieces were originally written FOR toy piano. Most of it was adaptations for the instrument. However, it was quite neat that since UCSD has a large toy piano and toy piano music collection that they demanded (and received) a LOC call number specifically FOR toy piano!

There were three pieces of Jazz (Take the A Train, Blue Motel and something else) played on toy piano with an accompanying drummer. Sue Palmer was the pianist, and she was very good. Her drummer, Sarah, was terrific on this wee drum kit used by the Teeny Tiny Pit Orchestra, who accompany silent movies.

One of the original pieces was Philip Glass-esque minimalist, so it was painful.

After that, we drove over to the wine store to pick out bottles. Now I'm hanging out: Ryan's coming over for Hellsing with La Posta food in tow. Tomorrow Steve goes to work at the courthouse, so I'll be concentrating hard on the dissertation. Research is coming all pretty well, I think. I have developed the theory that the Franciscans replaced the shrine of St. Lawrence with Our Lady of Ocotlan because that hill had been devoted to Xochiquetzal, and a male saint wasn't giving worshippers the same warm fuzzies. Furthermore, Xochiquetal's legends sound a lot like Eve's, and Mary is the New Eve. So that might have been the theological justification.

Hellsing OWNS

We're onto the third DVD of "Hellsing". I cannot believe how cool this thing is. I still like the manga better because it explains more and has those funny comments from the author, but....

There is just something about seeing the story in motion and colour. When Walter does his Angel of Death routine, being able to see the piano wire actually flying makes it way more exhilirating. Steve expressed dubiousness at first, Ryan was totally into it.

Some of my friendslist will be most amused to read that as we watched, Steve went, "Hey, there's a job for you, Steph."

"What?"

"You should work for Section 13."

"Steve, you know the Vatican doesn't pay shit."

"Yeah, but you would be COOL."

"True," I said, "I could wear my Goth dress to work everyday." Course, I'd only have one dress cause, as I said, the Vatican doesn't pay shit. The Vatican lets all workers live on-site, because they can't afford to live in Rome or use non-Vatican stores. Kind of a bummer for living a sophisticated Roman lifestyle.