Hilary Booth... of course!

That makes now two people I know on Livejournal who have seen the "Lord of the Rings" musical in Toronto. No, we don't hate the preciouses, we just envy the heck out of them. ohiblather saw it back in February and posted a review on her blog. She drew the "Waiting for Frodo" webcomic and plays in the filk group Urban Tapestry. Now my dear old fiend annef just saw a matinee performance.

And I totally missed the fandom notification for last night's "Bones". I was half watching when I found myself staring at the guest actor and went "JAYNE?" Why yes, it was Adam Baldwin. A little predictable storyline for me though or maybe I'm just gotten cynical.

The official LoTR movie site has a list of theaters where they'll be showing the trilogy back-to-back on December 16th. It looks like I'd have to go over to the Uptown for my fix, because otherwise it'd be down in Richmond.

Okay, my review of "The Two Towers" which I will kindly put behind lj-cut for those souls who won't be able to see it until later.

( Must see Two Towers again - Spoilers )

Okay, I *should* be working on my Nano novel since I'm so close to finishing or packing for the Thanksgiving holiday. So what am I doing? Playing with the silly Harry Potter DVD. And I agree with my friends who suggested there should a regular version of the DVD geared towards adults who just want to see the interviews and extra scenes such as they were. Some of the scenes were tiny little bits, others helped explain later things better. Unless you have a guide, which I borrowed from online, you wouldn't know which place to go or which order or anything. Very badly done DVD for the extras perspective. But then, my vision is considerably colored by the joys that are the Fellowship of the Rings DVDs, both regular and extended. Can we say "Wow"? Not just wow, but "oh my god wow"!

My parents came back from a three day stay in Annapolis where they were in town at the same time as a major boat show. Everyone thought they were there for that event.

While my father stayed in my apartment watching football and eating sushi, we did one of the local indoor malls to do some shopping. Less said about the actual shopping the better. How is it that I always find something I *like* that goes out of style? How do I always find the shoe that fits perfectly only to have them change it just a little? (With me, that's a big deal. I have very narrow feet and suddenly a shoe that fit before may not anymore. Nordstroms was a having "hard to fit" sale for sizes 4 and sizes 9 plus. Length isn't the problem -- width is the problem! Find me shoes that aren't gunboats or don't cost a fortune! I could find shoes but they'd be expensive Italian numbers and usually highly impractical for being on my feet.)

Downstairs in the ground floor, a large display was set up of gaming venues. (My mother looked at the greenery and asked where do you set up the trains. They looked like something you'd wind up train tracks around.) At first I thought the local game store was having a tournament until I saw a "Lord of the Rings" banner. Games Workshop puts together a tabletop wargaming based on the LOTR universe, a game for each book/movie. They had set up the main battle sequence from the prologue of the "Fellowship of the Ring", showing Sauron's forces against the elves and humans. Other smaller battles were set up as well, including previews of the Two Towers game. The guy I talked to was quite nice and knowledgable and didn't seem at all fazed by a woman asking about the games. He continually tried to make the comparison with chess, but I saw it as a more freeform version of say the old Stratego game, except there weren't any squares. Apparently each little figure had different skill levels, so a Elven archer could shoot a certain range and a soldier move a certain distance. I thought the whole game looked quite well done. Although as I pointed out, you could wind up rewriting the book if you weren't a good enough gamer... or a skilled general could switch the outcome. Looks fun as hell, but not a lot of fun alone.