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.

[Overtaxed]

Maybe if I just make a good start of it, the wind will take 'em down the rest of the way. :)

[HairOfTheDog]

Good morning!

Slow start this morning for me, fed the horses, came back in, been clicking around but not able to communicate yet. [sip] Strangely enough, to first thing I said to anyone today was this: 30

[sip] I think I am having company over later.

[HairOfTheDog]

Good morning Corin!

[sip]

[ecurbh]

Morning all. Foggy day here. Nice day to stay home, but I have to go do some apartment hunting. The fog is pretty though, so I think I'll take my camera with me. And this afternoon, I'll be looking into moving the Hobbit Hole site to its own domain. I'll be back later...

2J: glad to hear that the repairs seem to be holding!

[HairOfTheDog]

It's own domain? - WOW! Hullo ecurbh!

My trip to Seattle keeps getting put off (and I do not go to Seattle by choice, only by force) so I haven't taken Frodo on any more picture outings. Wanted to get the Space Needle-Seattle skyline pic, but I may just skip it and get him on his way... Can send him to Lil Freeper who offered to take him next!

[2Jedismom]

Hey, the reason I wanted to make that graphic smaller was so I could replace my screamin' eagle on my profile. The one I was linked to quit working.

The Chaplain told me to take it down...apparently there is some rivalry going there! Ha ha! I told him I wouldn't because they were the first guys I sent care packages to. But I went ahead and put up the graphics that he sent me...maybe that will pacify him?

[Overtaxed]

Grrrrr!! I was going to take a picture of my hostas (before the deer find them) and the Hanging Tree of Damocles and found out that the battery to the light meter is dead. I have no clue if the f stop and shutter speed are right.

[HairOfTheDog]

Well, take a pic at what you think is right, and then perhaps one at each setting plus or minus one!

[HairOfTheDog]

nap time.... back later.

[JenB]

Well.... it has begun... I spent all morning running errands. With my grandmother. After a really bad night's sleep, I woke to an aching knee and was sent out to get the ham. It took an hour and a half, standing there with my grandmother. Then I went grocery shopping. I only just got back, and in less than two hours I have to leave again to take her for her haircut.

Argh.

[ecurbh]

Here is a way to estimate a starting point for the exposure. I would then bracket 2 stops on either side, like Hair suggested.

In bright sunlight, select a shutter speed as near as possible to the film speed in use [eg 1/125 second for 100 ISO], and set the lens aperture to f16 or any reciprocal combination of aperture and shutter speed.

[osagebowman]

Hair; great looking hayracks, have they been using them yet or just looking quizically-how did that hay get up there?

Still raining, radar shows continuing all day, it's been so long, forgot what it's like. Guess it's like an average day in WA.

OT: sounds like a plan but hasn't ever worked for me, good luck.

[Corin Stormhands]

Look for a dwarf family traveling your way today...

[Sam Cree]

Well, back from figure drawing class. Unfortunately, we had to draw a guy today. A little Indian looking guy, a Maya or something. With the hairiest butt I'v ever seen, he must be a werewolf or something.

[SuziQ]

Cool island. Now I understand why the VW has so few miles on it!!

[SuziQ]

"Thank you, God, for fairy tales" and it goes on to say that nothing has been imagined that you (God) have not already imagined.

I just love Madeleine L'Engle! We read her 'trilogy' to the kids several years ago. Clare has read them several times since. It is interesting to hear her compare L'Engle's trilogy with the one written by Philip Pullman. She says Pullman's is darker and anti-Christian. Nice to know that, at 15, she can see those distinctions clearly!

Has Jr. read L'Engle's stories? We liked "Many Waters", which has as its main characters, the twin sons who are only mentioned in the trilogy.

[Lil'freeper]

Well, I'm back!

I made my monthly, and in case of the outlet mall semi-annual, visit to the great shrines of capitalism: the mall and Walmart. Ugh. I always come home crabby or wondering how on earth I turned into such a snob (bite your tounges, dwarves..).

Whilst in the kitchen shop looking for a new rolling pin I had the pleasure (not) overhearing the clerk's very loud and very long phone conversation about how she discovered last night that she was pregnant. Not a couple weeks, mind, but seven months pregnant. She was so tragically overweight that the telltale signs just weren't there. The trip to the doctor was quite accidental (she thought the reason she was going to the bathroom all the time was 'another bladder infection') and was quite annoyed at how many vitamins and "stuff" she has to take now. Her live-in didn't even know what a sonogram was when she showed him the pictures. I'm still speechless.

Then there's chatty moms. ( Now to the parents here, I'm sure your kids aren't like this at all.) After the kitchen store I went to DressBarn to get a new pair of pants since my others no longer fit. There were a couple moms out for a day of shopping....with their children who ran screaming through the racks bumping into folks and thought the earring racks were merry-go-rounds. The children raised such a din and made such a mess that the other customers and the clerks just glared and stared slackjawed, but the twits were utterly oblivious to the fact that earrings and necklaces were being flung about or used as lassos by their children. AAAAARGH! Some people! There was a similar scene in Mikasa- talk about bulls in a china shop. You'd think people with enough spare change to wander around the mall all day could cough up $20 and get a sitter.

And all about is the ever-present Maryland dialect- not a true accent (most of which I find utterly charming), but a wholesale eubonics-style slaughter of the English language. It is completely independent of race, though it worsens as you get closer to Baltimore. It consists of a variety of grunts, snorts and nasal one or two-syllable sounds. The Maryland "yeah" is like nails on a chalkboard. Imagine John Lovitz' Mr. Annoying Man saying yyyyyyeeeeeeeee-uh. The tounge is not used in the formation of words, noun-verb agreement is thrown to the wind as is any sense of tense in verbs. (From our Denny's waitress the other day: "Whuh youse wannuh drink?") Henry Higgins would have had a field day in my local Walmart.

I could just yell. I hate shopping! Grrrr... I'm just so happy to be home- away from the locals, soccermoms, and stupid drivers.

Sorry about the rant. I think I'll go groom the cat.

[Lil'freeper]

Oh heck, I got so wound up being negative that I completely forgot to mention that DressBarn was offering a small discount to military and thier families as a way of saying "Thank You" to the troops. It may have been just that store, but I thought it was very classy.

[SuziQ]

It's April 18. Little late to be working on tax deductions. Isn't it?

Not for 2004, it's not! Woo Hoo!

SSQ and I are gonna try to get away for a weekend soon. Our #1 son is living at home until he can move into a sub-let for the summer, so he'll be here with the two younger ones!!

[SuziQ]

That probably stands for "Son Of a Bitch!"

LOL!! I don't know about 2J, but that's what I'd be sayin!!