The Hobbit continues....

Tonight - The world is alright.

Oh, shit. There she goes being optimistic again. How annoying.

No seriously, though. I have a cup of coffee (I've lost count.... my eighth since this time last night?), four warm fuzzy dogs curled up on the ground around me, and enough inspirational meanderings rattling around in my brain to effortlessly sidetrack me from what I very well could be dwelling on. I am thinking about stories and books and adventures and fireplaces. None of the heavy, real-world things trouble me tonight (this morning?).

But enough of all that - I am forever trying to get my writing to exhibit something of my world beyond my own brain. I find it very hard to get past my own mind and onto the material things. Makes for a horrible conversationalist....

APPLICATION OF MY REAL WORLD OBSERVANCES....

Um.
Um.

No. Kidding.

In just a few weeks time, it will be exactly eleven years since I was introduced to Tolkien (you know the one I mean.... dead toungues and shit). I remember the moment so perfectly clearly - I was given a copy of The Hobbit as a gift. It was bestowed upon me in an ice rink by the snack stand. Was it wrapped? Okay, I guess I don't remember the moment "perfectly". I don't know how it was wrapped or if it was wrapped at all. I just remember her saying as she handed it to me, "Do you know Tolkein?"
When I shook my head, she told me about the first time she had ever heard of Tolkien. They read it in her class in school. Very early - Second grade perhaps? She had never read anything like it, she said. Instead of the allotted time they were given to finish the book (a week? Two weeks? A school year?), she took it home and devoured it in one night. She hoped that I would be just as enthralled.

Well, I was in a way. I began the book. And then I began it again. And then again. And seriously, again. And so on and so forth until I knew every inch of the story up to a point. The arrival at Laketown, to be precise. For some reason, no matter how many times I read it, I never got past the dwarves soggy arrival and Warm Welcome. That's quite far into the story, mind you. Perhaps I just was so exhausted for them all, after having finally topped off all of their brutal misadventures with a two day ride down a river crammed into barrells with no air, that I just couldn't bear to make them go on (via my reading) to face Smaug.
But the moment has come! They are gone from Laketown. They have puzzled out the secret door. And they are about the enter the mountain!
Eleven years of fattening up and preparing and we have arrived. Wish them luck.

So that's what's happening here in the real world of the optimist. That and coffee. But that goes without saying....