Pleather ... ahh, pleather. Makes me think of mom and kind of get misty.

Birthdays! Children are heriditary too. If your parents didn’t have any, chances are, you won’t have any either.

1.  happy birthday, dan’s dad!
2.  dan:  did you love tolkien when you were a kid.  your descriptive writing brings him to my mind a lot.

Wow, Stacey, that’s powerful positivity for such a rambling mass of brainjumble as this post.  I read Tolkein about three years ago and kind of liked it, but there were all these section where they’d be describing someplace in excruciating detail and I’d go and look at the map to figure out where they were and none of the places they’d mention were on it.  I kept skipping pages of this “descriptive matter”, knowing that the movie would make it all make sense.  But if it’s working for you, then it’s working for me.  Thanks for thinking of me and a titan of fantasy lit in the same train of thought!  (as a kid I read narnia like 5 times and the ascent of man like 10 times.  I was a twisted and unpopular little nerd.)

i hear ya, dan.  i was a nerd, too; unfortunately, my ‘rents had only crap in the house.  i read crap like rich man poor man, the betsy, jacklynn (sp?—who cares?) suzanne, the “giants” as spock would say. 

Oh Dan, what a lovely description not only of your Dad’s birthday but of that area, at night, once you get past Gilroy “...into oak-studded mountains, steep and rugged...” I have some wonderful memories of making that drive at night in my 20’s.

OH...and I LOVE the Narnia books, didn’t read Tolkien until college or maybe even after.  I have much respect for Mr. Tolkien but also for Mr. Lewis.