There’s something sort of lonely about sitting in your house - that is usually filled with boisterous housemate and sassy cat - working in your room, listening to Christmas music on your stereo… Ya, I miss my cat and I want to be at Mom’s now. I’ve had my fun this week at work and at play and now I want to hang the decorations on the tree and hang out with the best mother in the world. Oh well, soon enough as I will be driving home for a few days tomorrow afternoon.

In the mean time, I suppose I could recount things that have passed. For instance, I have now see The Two Towers twice. The first time I saw it was on Friday in the company of Al, Carrie, and Tanya. The second time I saw it was tonight with Rick as an early Christmas present to him. It’s good. It’s really good, but it’s also –really- violent. Consider this your spoiler space, you have been forewarned. There aren’t enough Ents in the film. The Ents make up a significant portion of the book and they are pretty well universally liked (unlike Tom Bombadil from the first book). The Ents are humourous and make a nice distraction from the horrible darkness of the story yet, they got the short straw for screen time. They would have been a perfect balance to the often vicious bloodshed. A little less warg growling in our faces would have been nice – they really weren’t the most important part of the story. There were surprising and rather large creative departures from the book, as well, which don’t bother me over much; in fact, I would say that some of them were an improvement to the story. The Elves pretty well disavow the humans in the story, letting them fight it out themselves. In the film, they are given a little more conscience, joining the men at Helm’s Deep – something that really worked. Maybe I just love the Elves too much. Nah, impossible. Anyway, it was excellent, though all told, I do think I enjoyed the first film better than this. I’m by no means suggesting that I don’t like this one, as I surely do, but I like it less. What they lack in mounted nazgul, they make up with hundreds of men on horses, which is always a good thing. Right? Of course.

Last night, Rick took me out to Handel’s Messiah performed at Roy Thompson Hall by the Toronto Symphony and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. It was amazing. They’ve certainly improved the acoustics in there since my last visit. Wow, the music just swelled, and we weren’t even sitting in the good seats. Notes rolled over and around the ceiling and washed over us in a most gorgeous way. If there was one piece of music that could influence my spiritual beliefs, the Messiah could almost persuade me that I’m a Christian, it’s that glorious. Prior to that, Rick picked me up at the ROM (yes, I’m working site sales again) and we went for dinner down at Penelope. It’s the only place I know of that offers Retsina – resin wine – and grilled kalamari. I had the roast lamb special, which was awesome. Rick was a bit let down by the shrimp special, but something prevented him from ordering the lamb, too. *laugh* Oh well, I gave him bits of mine so he still got some. Dinner and music – a perfect date ! Thank you, Rick, it was a wonderful evening !!

Oh, and I finished A&C's invites. They're happy. I'm happy. Go me !