I really meant to do this sooner.

Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile."
• I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity
• Update your journal with the answers to the questions
• Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.

Here are the answers to the questions dreamflower asked me last week.

1. Why is Pippin your favorite hobbit?

Actually, when I first read the books, my favorite was Merry. I identified most with him. But the more I read and the more I thought about it, Pippin began to hold more and more appeal. He is the only hobbit, other than Frodo who has to deal with Sauron invading his mind, and he recovered so well from that, so it is clear that he is strong-willed. He has tremendous loyalty to both old and new friends, and he has a great sense of humor and fun. This last is something many other characters could learn from him. To me he is one of the most multi-layered characters in the whole trilogy. I could go on, but I'll move on to the next question.

2. What is the earliest book you can remember reading?

I remember my mom reading to me from "A Child's Garden of Verse" when I was about three years old. I also remember her reading "The Pokey Little Puppy" to me at about that same time. The first book I remember finishing all on my own was "Green Eggs and Ham" when I was about seven or eight. I was way behind grade-level in reading until I reached about fifth grade.

3. If you could meet Pippin in person, what would be the first question you would ask him?

Oh goodness, this is hard. I have so many. What was the date of your wedding, what was it like, how many children did Diamond and you have and what were their names, and what other important things happened to you after the war and when you went back to Gondor? Is that a Pippin-ish enough sounding question?:)

4. If you had a day in which you had to do something to please only yourself, what would you do?

I would probably talk my best friend, who I don't get to see much these days, into going out to the mall and lunch with me. I know that sound so small, but I don't usually thing large-scale.:)

5. What do you know now that you wish you had known in the past?

Probably that that lady was going to hit me on St. Patrick's Day in 1998. Then, maybe, I could have done something to prevent it. Well maybe not really. I guess that accident has made me the person I am, so I guess I'd just want to be able to deal with the aftermath better. This is a hard question. It kind of makes me think of "Flashforward".

Thanks for making me think.

Happy birthday to sue_denimme

Happy birthday pearltook1!

Sorry to disappoint anyone who thinks this might be about my beloved hobbit. No, this time it's about my beloved cat.

Since springtime our little Pip-cat has had a very bad case of wanderlust. Every time the door opened, she'd run out. Almost every time she came back within a few minute. There were a few times that we were heading out and would be gone for a while. At these times she'd just hang around and await our return.

Last evening, we were headed out to the state fair when the little rascal escaped. We couldn't stay around a wait for her to decide that inside was better, so we left, believing she would follow her usual routine and be waiting when we got home. That was 24 hours ago. We have not seen her. I am trying to believe that she will come home when she gets good and ready, but I'm beginning to give up hope. She's a resourceful cat. She was a stray for six months before we took her in at Thanksgiving in 2004. I just hope she hasn't been hit by a car or attacked by a dog. She has all her claws and she's been spayed, so I don't worry about her and most cats, but I'm still worried and sad. I feel guilty that I didn't do more to try to keep her inside. She was quick and clever and the only way I think I could have stopped her would have been to lock her up, and that would not have been right either.

Thanks for listening.


ETA. About 9:20 this evening I went out to through something in our large trash can and I heard a familiar meow. Pippin was standing right beside me. I think she's made some enemies while she was out. Another cat was outside our door and Pippin was hissing madly at it.

Big sigh of relief.

Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.

Here are my five from dreamflower02

Motherhood

The hardest job I'll ever love. As many times as I've cried and ranted, I wouldn't trade it for anything. For all the bad there are the great moments when your child does something amazing and you just have to smile and say, "Yeah, it's all gonna all right. The moments of laughter are priceless. Who ever thought that corndogs could be so funny as they were at lunch today.:)

Pippin

Of course my favorite character in Lord of the Rings.:) I know there are many of us who truly appreciate him, but for the longest time I thought I was the only one who saw him as more than an extra in the story. I remember the first time I read the scene at the Black Gate and feared he had died; I felt worse than when Shelob got Frodo.

Pippin was always one of my favorite characters to speculate on for backstory. I pictured him as small and kind of fragile almost from the beginning. I always saw him a musically talented. I think that scene where Denethor asks for a song as a lot to do with that--this was back in 1977.:) From the time I read the family trees I always wondered why it took so long for Pippin and Diamond to have children. I know now that they probably had at least a daughter before their son, but back when I was younger I didn't realize the whole thing about girls names not always being recorded in short-version family trees. This led to a lot of speculation on my part and finally gave birth (pardon the pun) to the first of two stories about three years ago. I hope to someday finish the third story and have my own little Pippin trilogy.:)

Indiana

Indiana is home, in a word. It is not a glamorous state. It is often hot in the summer and cold in the winter and we don't deal with snow as well as most states that get a lot of it do. It's small and way too conservative, in my opinion, and it doesn't have a lot to recommend it, but it has things that I can't imagine not having around. Unlike many, I like most of sports stuff, and I like the way you can't quite tell where the cities end and the country begins. I love our state fair. I even like some of our weird words and accents. I've visited several other states, but Indiana will always be home--even if, by some strange twist of fate, I should ever end up living someplace else.

Music

I love music. I like traditional music and a lot of popular stuff, too. Where as many people have visual memories of events, many of my memories are tied to songs. I can hear a song and usually think of an event I associate with it. It's strange, I know.

I also love to sing. I'm not as good at it as many people I know, but I enjoy it. My daughter has been blessed with a very good voice and I'm overjoyed when she uses it. I was just thrilled to hear her singing loud and clear this morning in church.:) Our house is almost always filled, at least in one room, with music. Either she's playing it on the computer or I am playing it on mine, or one of us will have a radio on. It just makes our home a happier place.

Fanfic

I guess, like many of us, I started coming up with Mary Sue stories when I was very young. I think my first attempts were Star Trek,--the Enterprise crew is dropped in 20th. Century Earth and a group of kids, a character very much like me being the leader, has to help them hide and get back to where they belong. Sound familiar?

Then, when I became a Lord of the Rings fan, I started writing stories where the hobbits, especially Merry and Pippin, were somehow sent to our time or a future time. These were not Mary Sue stories. These were out and out Angst and Hurt/Comfort. I wrote stories of the this nature all through high school and college. Only part of one still survives and it is in a little notebook in a drawer of my desk.

I the late '90's, I went back to Star Trek fandom when I got hooked on Deep Space Nine. This lead to my first finished and printed fanfic. It was an Odo/Kira story called "Destined to Relive It" and was printed in a fanzine called "Love and Justice VI" in 2001.

I had vowed, after a bad internet experience with some Lord of the Rings fans, that I would not get involved in online LOTR fandom. I friend gave me link to a sight that had some of her LOTR fanfic on it, and I was re-hooked. I wrote my first completed LOTR fic for one of Marigold's challenges, and I never looked back. I have been writing and reviewing ever since. I don't get to do as much of either as I once did because of my work schedule and other real-life issues, but I still love fanfic and all the friends it has brought into my life.:)

Happy belated birthday to Dreamflower. Sorry I didn't post on the day.

Happy birthday Thedoingofit. Hope you had a wonderful day.

I'm still finding my way around the new computer, but I'm making slow progress. I think I need to get my friend the Mac guru to show me a few things.

I'm not going to get the e-mail up tonight I don't think. It's getting close to 9:00 and the cable company closes at that time. If I get off here and do it, I may still get it done.:)

I'm posting from work so this will be short.:)

The tax refund finally came in so a new computer is in the near future; possibly this weekend.

Work has been crazy. We're headed into a very busy stretch.

The Tween tried out for the high school color guard. She didn't make it. They didn't take any of the short girls. The Tween was really mad about it, too. She felt like not only were the short newcomers treated baddly, but one of the girls who had been doing this for years was rejected, and not treated with any sympathy at all. The Tween was ready to kick butt and take names on this girl's behalf. I have to say, while her language left a lot to be desired, the Tweens willingness to stand up for a person she hadn't known until three nights ago made me proud. I think both girls will land on their feet and do just fine.

The good new with the Tween is that her mid-term grades came out Wednesday and she had three A+'s, three A's and one C. Now all she has to did is hang in there for four weeks and two and a half days and middle school will be behind her. Yes!

Hopefully, my next update will be from home on my brand new iMac.:)

Sad to say, my computer took another hit. I cannot get onto the internet at all. I may be able to check things at work, but that is all. I will be looking to buy a new computer as soon as i have the money--and it won't be a P.C., I can tell the world that.

Catch y'all when I can.

I haven't finished anything in quite a while, so I feel a special sense of accmplishment in this.

I also almost wrote a true drabble. Each of these three scenes is less than 200 words, and the last one is only 106.

They're not as good as I had hoped they'd be, but they're what finally made it to the page after I posted my speculation question the other day. I may post more questions since they seem to get my muse enspired.

Without further comment I present "What if"

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I don't know what made me think of this, but I've been contimplating about who would have become the Ringbearer if Frodo would have either died on the way to Rivendell or at some other point on the Quest, or if he had not accepted the charge to carry the Ring.

Anyone have any ideas, oppinions or theories? I'm not going to share any of my ideas just yet. I want to see what other people think.

I don't see any fic being born of this; it's just a question that has run through my mind several times over the last 32 years.:)

Happy belated birthday to skully01

Happy birthday today to your_darkness. Hope you enjoyed your day and watching hope return to our nation.

Happy birthday tomorrow to slightlytookish. Hope you have a wonderful day.

Oops! I almost forgot. Happy birthday lindelea1.

I seem to know a LOT of people born in January.:)

It's been almost a month since I posted anything, and on that occausiion I put my foot squarely in my mouth, and now I don't know what to say.

Thanksgiving was just weird. My daughter enjoyed herself, and that was good. She ended up going to Kentucky the next day to visit her great-grandmother on her father's side of the family who had just got out of the hospital--the woman is 94 and we kind of figure this was their last time to see each other.

Work's been slow but it allowed us to get all our Christmas orders filled quickly. Our department Christmas party was fun and the company party was okay. I wasn't thrilled with the food, but that's all right.

I had the last of my teeth pulled last Monday and I've been miserable ever since. I couldn't take the pain meds and nothing really helped anyway. They took the stitches out today and that helped a lot. They also adjusted the temporary denture on the bottom, but I'm still very uncomfortable. I did manage to eat about half my dinner this evening and that's an improvement. Hopefully I'll be able to enjoy Christmas dinner without my table mannors disgusting everyone else.

Hopefully I'll be more chatty online soon.

Oh, thank you to KnittedMerry for the lovely Yule card.:)

Yesterday in my Thanksgiving post I made an error in judgement. I mentioned the fact that our plans for the holiday had to be changed, but I did not explain why.

A frined of mine, who is the Best Friend of another lj friend, was hospitalized on Wednesday. we had all been going to spend Thanksgiving together, but because of hospitalizatiion the plans were postponed.

What I should have said was that I was thankful that my daughter, who was distressed by what had happened, would be able to have a day with a friend who could destract her from things. In fact, I almost just sent her to her friend's house. Yes, I wanted some sort of Thanksgiving on the day, but it was not absolutely necesary. I still don't even know exactly why I went.

Unfortunately, I don't always react the most wisely when sudden medical disasters strike, and this was the second this month. My father almost died of an emphysema attack back at the beginning of the month. Apperantly I didn't use good judgement once again by posting what I did yesterday.

Please consider this a public apology, to go along with the private ones I've tried to make, for my callus and thoughtless behavior.

I hope everyone else had a pleasant holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone celebrating it.

I have so much to be thankful this year. I sometimes forget to focus on how blessed I really am.

I have a fairly well-paying job--something I haven't had in years.
I have a teenager who, while having angsty issues and boy-crazed moments, is still a well-behaved and respectful, under most cercumstances, kid. And she's smart, too.:)
I have a home and food to eat that I can actually pay for.
I have relatively good health.
I have hobbies I love, even though I can't devote the time to them that I once did.
I have hope for the future.

All the negitive things will work out eventually.:)

Oh, I'm also thankful that my daughter was able to accept an invitation from her friend's family for us to share dinner with them after our plans had to be dropped.

I know I haven't posted in forever. I've been swamped with real life stuff and haven't had the motivation to do more than comment here and there.

I do have a quetion though. Has anybody else had their default userpic tampered with? I logged on just now and found that my default pic had been replaced with a picture of two babies with the caption,"friend". It was an okay picture, but not mine. I deleted it because I didn't have a clue why it was there or what had happened to my real default pic. I'm going to go without a default for the time-being and see what happens. Fortunately, I have another copy of my default pic and will probably re-upload it at some point.

I make a longer, and more interesting post sometime in the near future.:)

I saved the best for last.:)

The first weekend in August we had Indy Moot, a first-time get-together of LOTR fans in Indianapolis. We were a small group, but it was a good time.

Friday night we had dinner at Olive Garden. A great many stuffed mushrooms were consumed.:) We had a really nice time talking and getting to know each other. We called it an early night, by moot standards, because several of us had been up Very Early that morning.

Saturday we talked all through breakfast, then I spent a little while in Pearl Took's and Pippinfan's room talking about all kinds of things. Then we all ended up back in the Suite talking some more. Your Darkness' husband showed up baring gifts for his wife and The Tween, the new Twilight book. The Tween hardly took her nose out of it for the rest of the weekend.:)

I should note that the Wee One is now The Tween. Everyone agreed that she was no longer wee, but was very much a hobbit nearing adulthood.

Saturday evening we went to the store and bought way too much food for a picnic. We grilled hamburgers and hot dogs at Southeastway Park. Pearl played her fiddle for us, and we talked some more.

We had planned to either play trivia or watch the trilogy that night, but The Tween forgot the cables for the DVD. So we finally got to talking Tolkien and fic and all kinds of stuff. We talked till about 2:30 in the morning.

Sunday we had a brunch at a place called Blueberry Hill. The food was good and so was the company. We finally all headed for home at about 1:30 in the afternoon.

We do plan to do this again, hopefully next year. We learned a lot from this one. The biggest thing is make it four days instead of three. We learned a few things about reserving the suite and buying picnic food, too. So, hopefully, next time will go even better. And I'll double-check that The Tween has all the DVD cables.:)

The 8th.-10th. The Tween went to a church teen retreat. She was really afraid she wouldn't like it, but she really did. On top of that, she got back with her old boyfriend--the one from a year ago that I Really Like.:) Hopefully they'll stay together for a while. She's not always the best about communicating with any boy she likes. I hope she doesn't ignore him till he goes elsewhere.

This past weekend was my company picnic. It wasn't the most exciting one I'v been to, but it was okay. The Tween did get to meet a few other kids her age that she seemed to hit it off with.

Last Thursday was "Back to School" night and I got to meet all her new teachers. I'm hoping this is a good year. She seems to be doing okay, but she did get an "F" on her science quiz last week. In her defense, she was sick last Thursday. Now she has a bladder infection that we had to go to the doctor for today.

Also Thursday, and again on Sunday, our critter escaped. It took four hours each time to get him back. Both times it was my fault. Now I'm working to overcome my fear that I'm going to let him get away and he'll either never come back, get hurt or get killed. I'd be beside myself if something happened.

I haven't updated in so long that I figured I should.

I tried late last week, I think, to update but lj didn't like the length of my post so I deleted it. Then I ran out of time to post.

This post will focus on the weekend before last, that would be Aug. 15-17.

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The 16th. we went shopping for school clothes. It took us forever to get to the mall. That's a story I won't get into now. Once we were there, we had a great time. It was really fun to have some Mom and Tween time.

The 17th. we went to the State Fair. It was fun, but not as fun as when she was little. She took a friend with her and they were all about the rides and such. We did aquire something that I will discuss in a friends-only post. I don't want someone who does know a little about us pontificating about what we should or should not be doing.

Morre on my busy life soon.

slightlytookish picked me as a person who made her day.:)

Now I'm picking 10 people.

If you're picked, and you haven't already been picked by someone, you should pick 10 people and post their names in your journal.

Her are my 10, in no particular order. (some of these I wish we could hear from more)

dreamflower02
grey_wonderer
pearltook1
pippinfan1
slightlytookish
sue_denimme
your_darkness
surgicalsteel
blueniverse
danae_b

Thanks y'all for being special people.