I've been rereading Fellowship of the Ring. It really is quite tedious, a good story dragged back by ponderous language. The only thing that's keeping me from nodding off while reading is the mental exercise of comparing the book to the moviverse. I can see why PJ altered some bits for the movie - Gandalf's bare statement that 'They took me and they set me alone on the pinnacle of Orthanc...' isn't half as exciting as dueling wizards.

Random camping thoughts:
While I was slogging my way up the mountain my cubs were very encouraging, popping back to tell me I was doing great... even though I patently wasn't! <soppy g>
We had a t'riffic spot for our tents, too. The area was shaded by lovely big trees essentially from 10 a.m. onwards. We stayed nice and cool despite the heat.
The wildlife in the camp was abundant and fearless. For instance, the ducks saw nothing wrong with wandering around the edges of our campsite and even went so far as threatening one of the brats when he got too close. Cheeky sod. And there were finches and wattle-birds all over the place, as well as kangaroos. Soulsis and a big grey startled each other early one morning as Soulsis was tramping off to the loo. :)
The local (hah, 40 minutes away) supermarket bottle shop stocked bottles of CS Cowboys, which when you get them from a pub are heaven on a stick - Baileys and Butterscotch schnapps or liqueur. The ones we found had vodka as the alcohol base and were only flavoured with butterscotch and cream. Still nummy though with not quite the same toe-curling effect of the original recipe. Just as nice - 'cept in a fizzy way - were the tins of Red Bear: vodka, lemon/lime and soda. Mmmmm, refreshing...

Well, the house is clean and now we wait. The estate agent was due to appear at 9 a.m. this morning for the inspection but 2 hours later and she hasn't showed. Eh, I'll chase her up later, I'm not that fussed. The house is acceptable though I don't doubt we'll be roasted for the state of the garden. Meh - as long as the cockroaches stay out of sight...

Band 2 (the CCO 808 AU fanfic that Joules and I are working on jointly) is languishing a bit. It's almost finished but it looks like we the writers need our energy levels and enthusiasm to be synchronized before we can settle down to finishing. We're not going to force it, either, the bulk of the story is pretty good so it'll be obvious if we resort to hurriedly slapping the last part together. We both have too much respect for our craft for that.

Good gods, the cubs go back to school in a couple of weeks! Where the hell did the holidays go?!

Hee!
Sammi found this...


You are a black and white cat. Can't you make up
your mind about what color you are??? You are
very indecisive, and not too stable. You can't
sit in one place, you need to explore, see new
things, perhaps you even have ADD...


What color of cat are you?
brought to you by Quizilla