The Hobbit Hole III - Journey to the Cross-roads!

[HairOfTheDog]

Welcome to The Hobbit Hole!

Journey to the Cross-roads
The Two Towers Edition

Come on! Come in! -if you would like to have some seedcakes and a pint and relax a while. (If it is a special occasion, we still have a few bottles of the old wineyards left!)

Our first thread ( New Zealander builds Hobbit hole ) reached 4,100 posts, and we thought that was big. Our second thread (The New Hobbit Hole ) held us for over 48,000 posts, and we loved it dearly. We talked about moving to a new thread for the last 38,000 posts, but we are really slow to muster! Finally, the time has come. Tomorrow (at 12:01 am, to be precise!) The Two Towers comes out, and we start a new chapter.

[My back yard]

Thanks for that information. I was wondering all that. I don't mind minimooting in the cheap theaters, if that is all there is. I think the Saturday 8th or the 15th I am free to go.

[My back yard]

And gosh, Mr Jones, an elementary school art teacher in Far North Austin, Texas was the winner!

[My back yard]

Absolutely fabulous poem.

[2Jedismom]

Learning this now...

Notation:

http://www.blackflute.com/music/tunes/other/mistcov.gif

Midi:

http://www.blackflute.com/music/tunes/other/mistcov.mid

And this:

Notation:

http://www.slowplayers.org/Music/gif/Haste_to_the_wedding.gif

Midi:

http://www.slowplayers.org/Music/midi/haste_to_the_wedding.mid

I have a program that I can drag and drop the midi onto it and it'll take out everything but the beat...so I'm playing with accompaniment! LOL

[2Jedismom]

Oops! See 11644

[My back yard]

Yes! We have done a lot of camping out that way. Usually in the fall or spring. I just love it there. One of our favorite places to go and use the special planetarium style tent we have. Gives us a 360 view at the stars all night.

We sleep in the basin, then hike to the window. Then spend an afternoon checking out Boquillas Canyon down the way, or some other strange place. In Boquillas you have to ride a donkey in and out. And they had amazing tables full of all sorts of minerals and fossils (like nautilus fossils) for sale, really cheap.

There in the basin you see a lot of Europeans, young people hitch-hiking-across-America types. The last time we went there was a group with 4 girls and 2 guys, french I think, who decided to remove their tops and bathe from a shower-bag hung in a tree. I looked quickly for my son, hoping he was still in his tent reading, but there he was standing next to me gawking and grinning like a jacka**.

Maybe you HHer's who have been there can appreciate that when I was first reading LOTR, back in the early 70's, I was also on my first trip to the Chisos Basin. As I read about the hobbits' journey to Mordor I was driving into the basin. And there, the place of long shadows of Nazgul-like geologic formations along the canyon wall, and the brooding 'Casa Grande' looming overhead, it was easy to get lost in the story but hard to sleep at night. If ever there was a place where the ringwraithes would get you in the dark, that would be it.

[JenB]

Good evening. Class was long and not that thrilling, though apparently I did well with my essay I turned in last week. This week is going to be very long, we have a project phase that's due to be completed at the end of the week and I have two meetings for my group in my religion class so we can get this stupid assignment over with. And midterms in two weeks and a major essay to write... ugh.

On the bright side I had a little fun over dinner tonight. Oh well!

[My back yard]

And then, there is the Cupachabra. And the one I always heard of while growing up in SA...the donkeylady. She supposedly lived out near Floresville somewhere.

[2Jedismom]

That's it, I've had it with the whole batch of them.

[SuziQ]

I've sent a note to kayak to add your son-in-law to the military prayer list she's compiled. What is his first name, so folks can pray for him 'by name'?

[Sam Cree]

Excellent cookies :-)

[Sam Cree]

Good night, everyone. Just got in, but am tired.

[300winmag]

He is so much fun to watch, and the show is really very informative. Our 13 yr old son loves that show! But I could see how someone who has been through Basic with someone like him could have flashbacks!

You want flashbacks? I bought on eBay a 1970 Basic Training Yearbook that was done for Ft Campbell, KY. The same company that does high school yearbooks apparently does the same thing for the Army.

Looking through the pages, I found the cadre for Echo-Seven-Two, and had a ton of flashbacks looking at those faces. The yearbook was put together for the training cycle after mine, but all the Drill Sergeants were still there.

All of a sudden, I remembered a ton of things I thought I had blessedly forgotten. None of it good, but none of it really bad, either. More like something from a galaxy a long time ago, and far, far away.

Don't whine how old you all are, I think I have everybody beat. But then again, Aragorn didn't really get up to speed until he was in his 80's.

Also, I'm a big fan of R. Lee Ermey, too. But some of his "experts" are real boneheads. I remember hearing the "expert" say that the hamon on a Samurai sword is strictly for decoration, and I almost threw something at the TV. The hamon is the very heart of the sword, and is the tempering line made by the clay coating that protects the hard edge while the rest of the blade is being tempered to produce flexibility. As fine as the steel was, without that differential temper, the sword would be either a butter knife, or shards.

[300winmag]

Before I forget, I found this on another thread here on FR, and feel it needs to be passed around here. There are words of wisdom here, especially when we've all gotten emotionally knocked around in the last few days.

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1/30/03

Parachutes

Charles Plumb was a US Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience.

One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, "You're Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!" "How in the world did you know that?" asked Plumb. "I packed your parachute," the man replied. Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man pumped his hand and said, "I guess it worked!" Plumb assured him, "It sure did. If your chute hadn't worked, I wouldn't be here today."

Plumb couldn't sleep that night, thinking about that man. Plumb says, "I kept wondering what he had looked like in a Navy uniform: a white hat, a bib in the back, and bell-bottom trousers. I wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even said 'Good morning, how are you?' or anything because, you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor." Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent at a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute, holding in his hands each time the fate of someone he didn't know.

Now, Plumb asks his audience, "Who's packing your parachute?" Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day. He also points out that he needed many kinds of parachutes when his plane was shot down over enemy territory -- he needed his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional parachute, and his spiritual parachute.

He called on all these supports before reaching safety. Sometimes in the daily challenges that life gives us, we miss what is really important. We may fail to say hello, please, or thank you, congratulate someone on something wonderful that has happened to them, give a compliment, or just do something nice for no reason. As you go through this week, this month, this year, recognize people who pack your parachutes.

I am sending you this as my way of thanking you for your part in packing my parachute! And I hope you will send it on to those who have helped pack yours! Sometimes, we wonder why friends keep forwarding jokes to us without writing a word, maybe this could explain it: When you are very busy, but still want to keep in touch, guess what you do -- you forward jokes. And to let you know that you are still remembered, you are still important, you are still loved, you are still cared for, guess what you get? A forwarded joke. So my friend, next time when you get a joke, don't think that you've been sent just another forwarded joke, but that you've been thought of today and your friend on the other end of your computer wanted to send you a smile, just helping you pack your parachute.

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Folks, I just realized you've been packing my parachute for all these months now. I'd be honored to know that I've been helping you with yours, too.

[SuziQ]

Love that parachute story! The folks here sure help pack my mental parachute for facing the cold cruel world!

[Scott from the Left Coast]

Great Story! Lot of packin' goin' around here every day (and not just in Hair's truck).

[ksen]

Ksen, are you registered at the Freerepublic2 Yahoo! site? I just uploaded the MaximusDVD zip file there at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freerepublic2/files/.

Downloading now, thanks....

[HairOfTheDog]

Great Story! Lot of packin' goin' around here every day (and not just in Hair's truck).

Yes, thank you for helping me pack too!

Good night everyone!

[Overtaxed]

Thanks for the parachute story

Speaking of parachutes, they've got the guys who sabotaged the chutes a while back.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/833287/posts

[Overtaxed]

Good Morning, everyone!