Know what's a great song?

"You can do magic" by America.

Anyone ever seen the movie Baron von Munchausen? (sp?)

Explanation of my grandmother's birthday:
It used to be considered very auspicious to have your birthday on New Year's Day because of the specialness associated with the day...would bring good fortune and all that jazz. So in older generations of Japanese there's a surprisingly large percentage of people with birthdays on 1/1 (thanks to their parents' creative documentation). We don't know when she was really born, but we think sometime in august.

Oshoogatsu is the japanese word for new year and Osechi ryori is the traditional japanese breakfast you eat on new year's day. At midnight the night before you eat noodles because they're long and help tie together and give a smooth transition to the two years. The breakfast itself has a billion different parts, and it's up to you and how much you're willing to cook how many of the dishes you'll eat. I'm too lazy to talk about all of them, but here are some of them:

Renkon (a root with holes in it) for "easy passage" (through the holes)
little shrimp for flexibility
little fish for the strength to swim with (against?) the current
beans for health
little bags of mochi for...prosperity? or is the mochi for...oh I forget.

Okay, I'm forgetting a lot of them, so instead I'll direct you here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osechi

and paste this blip from an article:
What, exactly, is osechi ryor? Osechi ryori is special food often cooked at home to celebrate New Year, one of the most important of Japanese festivals. New Year’s is a sort of Christmas and Thanksgiving wrapped into one, a time when family gather to celebrate. While osechi ryori differs by region and from family to family, the food has a lot in common. Some of this food is arranged in multi-layer lacquered boxes called jubako. The top box or tier often includes kamaboko (boiled fish-paste cakes), hiriame-no-kombujime (flounder with kelp) and kohada-no-sunomono (punctatus marinated in vinegar). The second box or tier might contain kabu-no-sunomono (turnip with vinegar), ebi (prawn), kuri (sweet chestnuts), and toriniku-no-terriyaki (grilled chicken basted with a sweet soy based sauce). A third box or tier might contain tai (sea bream), Ika (squid) and namabu (wheat glutton). The fourth or bottom tier might have nishime (boiled vegetables). Other of other foods may also be served in a variety of bowls along with osechi ryori. These include: kuromama (black beans in a boiled syrup) which symbolizes good health, kazunoko (herring roe, or eggs, most often seasoned with soy sauce) which is a symbol of procreativity, kurikinton (sweet chestnuts and mashed sweet potato boiled in a sweet sauce), nishime (an artistically arranged assortment of vegetables and burdock and lotus roots, taro and other ingredients), tazukur (a small sardine dish) that symbolizes a good harvest, and namasu (salad of shredded Japanese radish and carrot seasoned in vinegar). Other New Year’s dishes also include yakizakana (grilled fish), tosa (a special drink of spiced sake drunk in celebration and in prayer for the upcoming year, Kagamir-mochi (pounded rice cakes) offered to the gods, and zoni (a soup made of mochi along with vegetables, fish, chicken and other ingredients, seasoned with miso, a fermented soy paste).
(http://www.fightingarts.com/reading/article.php?id=404)

But we don't have ours in fancy lacquer boxes.

ps--check out the lyrics to "underwear" by the magnetic fields. cracks me up.

pps--tonight is daylight savings.