Who said old people sit around doing nothing?

Gosh! Four days into my thirties and everything's gone chicken oriental - I've been such a busy little bee!! So let me tell you all about it - not just for your benefit, but because now I'm officially old I might start forgetting things so it'll probably help to write them down. Dementia - LOL!

Saturday
I woke up disgustingly early on Saturday morning despite only heaving myself into bed at half two in the morning after the events of my crazy-sexy good-times party. That being the case, I totally forced myself to stay in bed until at *least* 11 o'clock. Of course, the afternoon was all about the new Mini Clubman for me; Marcosy was fit to bursting yesterday and emailed me to ask all about it. Seeing as he's the only one I figure is massively interested in it and I've already told him about it, I won't harp on too much - suffice to say: IT'S AWESOME. I drove a hot chocolate (metallic brown, not sure how it tastes - didn't lick it) one with a silver roof, and loved it. The funny doors are super-cool, and it's got a cool fuel efficiency thing that cuts the engine out when you stop at traffic lights. The first time it happened I thought I'd stalled it and felt like a right doofus, but then the salesman told me to dip the clutch and it burst into life again. That made me feel less doofus-y. Hurrah!

To sum it up - I definitely want one more than ever, but I'm going to hold off for a few months because I don't want to get one of the first ones - you never know if something's going to drop off.

On a side note - best piece of marketing EVAH: to promote the quirky nature of the Clubman, Mini today sent me a ping-pong bat in the post. How very random!

In other matters, Saturday, for the fact that it was my actual birthday, was a lovely day.

Monday
Monday was, of course, the first day back at work after my week off, and it was OK. It was made easier, to be honest, by the fact that Yaz and I were off to a gig in the evening. Who were we seeing? The Cold War Kids! Now, I'll be honest - I didn't know too much about this band. I think I was familiar with a couple of their tracks, but that was about it. Yaz on the other hand is positively crazy-bonkers about them, and was clearly hoping that I would go nuts too.

Fortunately, they were very good. Particularly the drummer, whose arms twirl around at high-speed in a crazy, almost hypnotic fashion.

Unfortunately for them, I preferred their support act, a band called Patrick Watson, which is a bit of a funny name for a band. I mean, even Dave Matthews called his band The Dave Matthews Band. Anyway, I was well impressed by Patrick Watson. They're from Montreal in far away Canadinialand, and they reminded me a bit of Jeff Buckley (which is always a good thing). They play folky, piano-y, somewhat melancholy music using loops they record on the spot, and they bash cymbols with marracas until they break. You can download two of their tracks for free from their website just by entering your email address, and I recommend you do it.

Here's some pics:

This is Patrick Watson. Look at the pretty colours!

This is Cold War Kids. They were not cold, showed no evidence of being at war, and are not kids!

Tuesday
Tuesday evening was delightfully nerdish. My colleague in all things Star Trek and I had tickets to go see the one-night only event of the newly remastered version of the two-part Star Trek episode 'The Menagerie' at the Odeon in Covent Garden, a cinema that Odeon list on their website as not actually being in Covent Garden. Curious!

Anyway, this was my first exposure to the rejigged original series with spiffy new visual effects, and I was not disappointed. Probably the biggest compliment I can give it is that the picture quality is incredible, and while the new effects are gorgeous, I didn't find that they stood out too much, and instead fit unobtrusively into the episodes, serving their purpose without attracting undue attention to themselves - which is a good thing. And, of course, the story was just great.

All in all, then, a delightful evening which was worth the price of admission alone for the middle-aged woman in the row in front of us who gasped audibly when a brief clip of a topless Captain Kirk was shown.