Friday Shuffle - Something Wicked This Way Comes Edition

B's cousin called us yesterday to wish him a happy birthday. We're close with B's cousin, who was born in Germany and who moved to Australia when he was about 10 or 12 years old, and we all call one another when our birthday's roll around. Cousin is going on a vacation with his family and will still be gone when it's B's birthday on May 9th so he wanted to call early to give his congratulations now.

Of course this caused B and I to look at one another with a bit of panic in our eyes. In Germany it's considered to be very bad luck to wish someone a happy birthday before their actual birthday rolls around. No early congratulations, no opening gifts or cards early, no parties before the actual day. Wishing someone an early happy birthday is courting disaster for that person - illness or accident or even death. You're just asking for the birthday boy or girl to have a misfortune occur before their birthday arrives.

Naturally this is all just rubbish. We're educated people. We're not prisoners of superstitions. We don't let old legends and customs micro-manage our lives and determine our futures. The future is determined by things we actually do now, not by the whims of fate. We will make our own luck! Our own futures! It us we who will determine whether our new life year will be one of happiness or one of disaster, not something as arbitrary as early birthday wishes!

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to run up to the market and buy some salt. We're very low on it and no good German household would ever be without salt. No salt in the house is a guaranteed way to lose all your money and to force you into a life of poverty.

Time to shuffle.

1. Bad Case Of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor) - Robert Palmer
2. Crazy Love - Van Morrison
3. Take A Bow - Madonna
4. Cliffs Of Dover - Eric Johnson
5. Love Of My Life - Queen
6. Zero - Smashing Pumpkins
7. Hell Raiser - Sweet
8. Devil's Dance Floor - Flogging Molly
9. Magical World - Blackmore's Night
10. D'Yer Maker - Led Zeppelin

Uh oh. The lone Madonna tune I have out of the thousands of songs in my iTunes and the one and only Madonna song I can even bear to listen to just shuffled up. Something is definitely up. I think we perhaps need to rethink this early-birthday-wishes-curse thing. And I need to not stand too close to my husband for the next three weeks.