Birthdays and music!

Birthdays! Two very dear and special people are celebrating birthdays today!

Happy birthday to one of the kindest and most talented women I have the privilege of knowing, kambriel!

Happy birthday to Princess Lillian Tickybox, who is OH MY GOODNESS FIVE today! I am still kind of freaked out by her turning five, because she was a wee tiny infant just, like, yesterday. (That tiny baby I'm holding in my LJ icon? That would be Tickybox.) But five she is, and I'm very happy to be her Auntie Jilli.

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Music! Wow, I ask you folks for music recommendations and you just GO. Which is fantastic, thank you! I have a slew of new artists to track down (I'm going to give Last.fm a whirl later this week), and I'm listening to the Dark Cabaret playlist smu put together for me at this very moment.

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Hey, let's have an event reminder! This Thursday night, I'm reading at the Night Kitchen here in Seattle!

Um, whoops?

Sometimes eBay is a dangerous place. Because there you are, innocently toodling around with assorted keyword searches, and then next thing you know, you've purchased a collection of 21 paperback gothic novels.

What? Look, just file this under my same somewhat ridiculous weakness for bombastic metal bands and movies like the remake of The Phantom Of The Opera. Glorious, over-the-top, cheesetastic fun.

Besides, how could anyone resist a book called House Of Tombs with the teaser text of "Two beautiful women, a love-starved madman and a bizarre ritual murder ... Weregild Island's ghastly secret would soon be known only to history!"? C'mon! It'll be all sorts of delightful!