A Week for Tolkien

Yesterday was a Megan and Daddy day, one of the last before Ian is born. The weather has finally come out of its wintery throes so we spent over two hours outside at the local parks. Megan was really well behaved for me for most of the day, except for lunch when I had to force a bowl of prunes down her throat to help with her bowel movements. I'd convinced her they were "chocolate prunes" due to their dark brown color, and Megan loves chocolate, but the first bite convinced her otherwise. Once Melissa got home from work we headed down the street for the birthday party of Megan's little friend, Katie, who turned 4 last weekend. We ended up staying after the party to help Katie's parents with the clean-up and, with the great weather, sat on their back patio talking for an hour afterwards.

I ran out to a local EBs today to pre-order The Shadows of Angmar, the online Lord of the Rings game that comes out this next week. Naturally, I paid an extra $10 for the collector's edition of the game. And of course I'll have to grab the strategy guide from Amazon for $14. With The Children of Hurin's release I guess it's a Tolkien-fest this week. I just hope the game makes good use of Middle-earth's lore and history and doesn't turn out to be yet another stale online RPG that holds my interest for less than a half-year. But with the pre-order I'm a 'Founder' and will only pay $10/month for the online subscription; either that or $200 upfront for a lifetime membership to the game. Anyways, it was the most recent PC Gamer magazine issue that got me hooked into pre-ordering Shadows, and looking over its listing of the game's various character classes I think I'm going to go with a hobbit hunter. I want to start adventuring in the Shire mainly to see what the artists at Turbine did with Tolkien's text since this is one of the most well-described locales in Middle-earth.

I'd written earlier that I thought Shield of Thunder to be Gemmell's last novel, but I was wrong, at least concerning the North American market. Dark Prince, the sequel to Lion of Macedon, came out this past week in paperback format (was published in the mid-90s in trade), so this might be my last Gemmell book. Either way, I'll definitely miss the way Gemmell always drew me in emotionally and made me care about his characters despite his storyline repetitions.

I've been fiddling with this page's appearance somewhat, changing the repeating background image for the solid black since I think it contrasts nicely with the center parchment. I also added a picture of my mother's three children, which was taken this past February at a local steakhouse. It was the first time the three of us have been together since, I believe, 1994. My brother flew up from Florida to see his father and spent a very cold, snowy weekend here in Ohio, though he claims to have really enjoyed the weather after having lived in FL for the past 20+ years. And if my sister and I are smiling perhaps a wee-bit too much, it's probably because we each had perhaps a wee-bit too much alcohol. Hers via mixed drinks and mine thanks to two very large mugs of draft beer.