I heard a good deal about a ring, and a dark lord, and the end of the world...

Well, this has been quite a week. The stress level at work has been quite high, and being me, I absorb the stress of others and make it my own. So I've had to find an effective stress reliever.

And I found it! Chad borrowed the three extended edition Lord of the Rings movies from some friends of ours, and so the dream I have carried around in my heart for 4 1/2 long years now was realised last weekend: We watched all three movies in a 24-hour period. Actually my dream was to watch them all in one go, but I really wanted to start watching Friday night, after getting home from work. So we watched FOTR Friday night, and as strong as my love for the books and movies is, I didn't think I could stay awake long enough to finish the job. So we continued with TTT and ROTK on Saturday. It was brilliant-- to the point that I was almost completely useless at work on Monday and Tuesday. But since our stress showed no sign of relenting, I decided to do a modified marathon LOTR viewing, and watch it over a few evenings. On Tuesday I got home, turned it on, and watched until I fell asleep (sometime in the first half of TTT, right after Frodo and Sam reached the Black Gate). More of the same on Wednesday and Thursday, for a grand total of 12 very happy LOTR hours. And now we're going to have to give the movies back, before I start going around muttering about "my precious" and how it was a birthday present. There's a scene in TTT in which Frodo is sitting off in a corner, rocking back and forth, which apparently is cut short from a longer scene in which he essentially turns into Gollom, and Faramir sees what the ring would do to Frodo eventually... anyway, all that is in the movie is a glimpse or two of Frodo rocking back and forth while Sam has a brilliant scene with Faramir. The point is, I don't actually want that to happen to me.

In other news, I was chased by ducks this week. Not kidding. These ducks live in Maxey Park, and apparently harass everyone they can, looking for food. I never have food with me in Maxey Park, which I suppose is why they chase me; they are trying to get rid of me so better prospects can come along. Anyway, on Tuesday I really thought I was going to get bitten (or whatever you call it, since ducks don't have teeth). It would have been kind of embarassing to have to go back to work and request wound care after getting bitten by a duck. Or two. And if they had attacked me and I'd had to fight them off, no-one would have ever believed that the ducks started it. What is really amazing here is that their legs are not one-tenth the length of mine, and I'm not exactly a slow walker, and these ducks were keeping up with me. Scary, now that I think about it.