Sometimes it’s for the love of the story….right.

I don’t have an official desk at my new job yet.  I have a place where I sit every day and it is shaped like a desk and it has cubicle walls around it, but it’s not my desk.  There is no computer on this “desk” and I know that in a couple of weeks I will have to move to a different desk not far away.  Because of all the transition I know is coming, I don’t want to bring all my desk stuff and just have to move it again.  So the only thing on “my” desk is my personal pen.  I have a trunk full of stuff like my desk calendar, my leather pen holder, my note pad/mouse pad, pictures of the family, etc.  So I realized today that I haven’t looked at my daily desk calendar in over two weeks so I went out to the trunk and pulled off the pages I’d missed.

There was some good stuff there.  This one in particular I’d like to share because it’s outstanding.

To date, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy has sold more than one hundred million copies worldwide.  It is the best-selling work of fiction of all time and the third best-selling book, behind the Bible and the quotations of Mao Zedung.  As a child, Tolkiens’s mother taught him Latin, French, and German.  On his own initiative, he picked up Greek, Middle English, Old English, Old Norse, Gothic, modern and medieval Welsh, Finnish, Spanish, and Italian.  He could also get by in Russian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, andLombardic (whatever that is).  When he got bored with existing languages, Tolkien simply invented new ones – fourteen to be precise, with complete alphabets for each.  He even took to writing his one diary using made-up letters.

Holy Moly.  I love the “On his own initiative” part.  I’m there to tell you that my “initiative” and Tolkien’s shouldn’t even be spelled with the same letters.  I’ve not even managed to complete all my Spanish requirements and I live a little more than an hour from the Mexican border.

I love the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  I’ve read them all multiple times

Really - can you blame me?

 including The Hobbit.  I’ve seen the movies 98,647,285 and not just because of Aragorn.  My Honey is starting to get a complex about how many times I’ve seen them (and that is totally because of Aragorn!).  I just can’t help myself.  I really, really love a sweeping story and Tolkien’s are masterful.   Peter Jackson did such a spectacular job bringing the fantasy world to life.

Anyway, the point of this blog was Tolkien’s genius and I’ve devolved into the genius of Peter Jackson’s imagination and the glory that is Aragorn.