How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons

I think I've been reading too much of The Lord of the Rings.

I feel a little embarrassed to be re-reading it (I'm on page 150 or so of the last book). I started just because I kept making plans to go see the movie but we could never get tickets.

I read all three books once back when I was 14 or so - well, more or less. I got bogged down when Frodo and Sam were stuck in those dreary marshes and skipped the second half of The Two Towers.

Last night the husband brought home barbecued spareribs. Which are not my favorite, but I used to like them well enough. However, as my teeth ripped into the stringy flesh on the bones, I kept thinking of various fictional critters from those books ripping into the flesh of various other fictional critters and I found I could barely eat it. It felt so primitive, and not in any free-your-mind back-to-nature kind of way. And here I always thought those books were kind of, well, adolescent. But they sure have some kind of power over me.

It was almost enough to make me a vegetarian.

Almost.

- by Francis S.