Cough Sniffle Hack

I. Am. So. Sick.

Blech.

At school, celebrating the fact that we only have two instructional weeks left, and this week is "wrapping it up" week. Next week will be all about reviewing for the final, and then week after that IS finals... and I think I may be looking forward to it more than the kids. LOL. Who says teachers don't earn their summer breaks? If anyone tries to take it away from me, I'll kill 'em. :)

In other news: re-watching and re-reading The Lord of the Rings. I'm on book one right now, but on the second movie (what can I say, the movies go faster and Viggo is HOT). I'm watching them in bits--a little bit here, and little bit there. Much like I read the books. The amazing thing about the Lord of the Rings is that it never gets old. Ever. I could watch the movies over and over again and still be fascinated. When I read the books I'm still on the edge of my seat, wondering how Frodo is EVER going get to Mordor, and how the Fellowship will survive, and, I do confess, I skip the scene where the men of Gondor frighten Smegol and turn him back into Gollum because in my heart of hearts, I always secretely wish that Gollum would have been redeemed. Even though I know, as Samwise Gamgee says "You can't save him." Still... Smegol/Gollum was almost lovable at times. And I believe for one brief moment, his loyalty to Frodo trumped his passion for the Ring. For one brief moment...

I read somewhere that Tolkien never intended his LOTR books to be so popular. In fact, he supposedly created them on a whim, to prove that an epic myth could still be written. But then again, you have a guy who created a whole world, with distict races and working languages (yes, his Elvish is considered a real language--it's got grammatical structure, spelling, and it can be spoken) and you've got to wonder: you did this for FUN? Geez man, what do you call work?

But I'm glad he did it. Because if he hadn't, I wouldn't have these amazing books to read or movies to watch. And thank you, Peter Jackson, for not making the Lord of the Rings movies suck. And thank you, thank you, thank you, for casting Craig Parker as Haldir because he is the hottest elf on the planet. :)

See? The cold meds are making me loopy. I just wrote a whole post about Tolkien and all I could end it with was "Craig Parker is an amazing kiwi elf."