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.

[Wneighbor]

Weirdest thing. I have a student here who says she likes higher taxes because of all the services she gets in return for them. I just don't get it. It's called brainwashing isn't it? I keep bringing up instances of what these taxes are really paying for and I keep hearing about these wonderful services?????????

I'll be sure and let ya'll know when I find out what they are. I haven't determined that yet.

[Bear_in_RoseBear]

Oh, yes, Alex Jones... I haven't watched him in years, but he still has his cable access show every week.

A "brush with fame", so to speak... Rose and I were browsing in a magazine store once several years back, and we saw Alex Jones there looking at the news magazines! He's so intense on TV, it was odd seeing him standing there looking normal... ;)

[HairOfTheDog]

I was most impressed with the hand-making of everything, so that no implement or decoration would be recognized, and in the case of the Shire... building everything twice at different scales....

The CG stuff was good, I still don't know why the forced perspective works! - Amazing! But the old-fashioned hand-craftsmanship is the most impressive part for me!

[HairOfTheDog]

Off for a bit.... gonna play some of them violent video games!

[Bear_in_RoseBear]

she likes higher taxes because of all the services she gets in return for them

Ugh... so many things I could say, but so many of them impolite...

[Overtaxed]

she likes higher taxes because of all the services she gets in return for them.

Tell her if she likes them so much, she cand send in extra.

[SuziQ]

1000 Pardons please!!!! I should have said SOUTHERN.

LOL! That's all right. When folks up here try to guess where I'm from, they always guess Texas first. I tell them I don't have a TWANG I have a DRAWL! Of course the difference is lost on them.

[Bear_in_RoseBear]

Heh, it probably doesn't help that there are 3 or 4 distinct Texas accents!

[SuziQ]

Here is a really pro-life guy, and she completely turned him off with her attitude.

I have a friend like that. I am as pro-life as she is, but she just gets annoying about it sometimes. She can get so caustic, that it can turn people off, even those who might be coming around to her side. It's too bad, really. They do care SO very much, but just are not good at getting the message across.

[SuziQ]

Heh, it probably doesn't help that there are 3 or 4 distinct Texas accents!

Hah! Yeah, it's the West Texans who have the Twang, right?

[Bear_in_RoseBear]

Rose says the Texas Twang occurs in the Panhandle and northwest Texas. East Texas has more of a drawl, and west-central Texas has a drawl, but a different kind of drawl.

I should probably do some Google searches on regional accent research... I find it fascinating, because I tend to "take on" the accent of the people around me. The Texas accent I developed since I moved here cancelled out the Upper Michigan Yooper accent I grew up with, so my natural speaking voice has no noticeable accent... but I can "do" either one fairly convincingly when I put my mind to it.

[Sam Cree]

Rib eyes are one of my favorites, I usually call them "delmonicos." Weirdly, they are the "kosher" cut.

When one of the Jewish guys in our fishing club was in charge of getting the steaks, that's what he always got.

[Sam Cree]

"they worked to get even the LITTLE stuff right"

They really did didn't they? It's thrilling, really.

[Sam Cree]

"we'll have to have a company come in and locate the leak, then excavate under our house"

Sounds like a job for dwarves. I'll be the burglar.

[300winmag]

But the old-fashioned hand-craftsmanship is the most impressive part for me!

They had "live" weapons for closeups, and lighter-weight ones for distance shots, for the main characters. Orc extras got more mass-produced weapons and armor, a lot of it plastic.

The "star armor" was genuine handmade ring mail. They invented a hydraulic-powered device to feed plastic tubing, slit it, and cut it into rings. This was used to make plastic ring mail for the orcs.

Costuming was done on a grand scale, too. There were "star costumes", stand-in costumes, and mini-costumes for the "scale" stand-ins. Plus at least one backup for everyone.

[ecurbh]

Usually the link colors would be set in the body tag like Overtaxed said, but we don't have access to that on the profile page. One way to do it for individual links is to put a font tag inside the link tag, thus:

<a link="URL"><font color="#000000">Link text</font></a>

Not sure if this would work in all browsers, though, and you cannot set a different color for the visited link. You can get the 6-digit code for the color you want here.

[2Jedismom]

It's going to be a mess, I can already tell. Steve tore up a big piece of the bottom of the cabinet in the kitchen and although it's very wet on the slab, the pipes are bone dry (dusty even). (They are about an inch and half off the slab, running along the length of the cabinets. It's gotta be coming from underneath.

When the plumber told me to contact my homeowner insurance, I knew it was bad. I felt sick.

[HairOfTheDog]

It will be a mess, but that is what homeowner's insurance is for. Good luck... I hope you get a good contractor to do the work! Take the bidder you feel confident in, not the lowest!

[ecurbh]

My bad. That should be:

<a href="URL"><font color="#000000">Link text</font></a>

I think that's a sign I should head to bed. Good night.

[2Jedismom]

The plumber gave me a name...said he was good and works with him a lot. The guy seemed like an honest guy...took one look at the situation and said "I could dig around and look and you could pay me then hire the people that can fix it, or you can dig around and look and then pay the people can fix it." He said if we found a leaking pipe, call him back and he would be able to fix it. But since we can't find the leak, we have to call in the "hidden leak" pros.