Saturday Sanity Check

It's school holidays. It's a Saturday. Therefore I must be doing something tremendously stupid, right?

Oh, well done. Now, read on.

Today is the day of the long-awaited Lord Of The Rings Marathon. The older half the ju-jitsu class (plus or minus a few), my kids, the Viking Neighbour kids, me, various parents... and all three LOTR movies.

The first one is the extra-length extended Director's "Fuck You" cut. The next two are open to discussion, depending on how we're going.

We kick off in about an hour. There's popcorn. Drinks. Beer. Snacks. Blankets. Mattresses. Inflatable mattresses. Cloaks. Swords. Staffs. Beards. A fire for the fire-pit. A full bottle for the gas barbecue. Plenty of charcoal for the Weber. Sausages. Chicken. Bread rolls. Pork khofta. Bacon. Salads. Ice. Potatoes. Sweet potatoes. Mushrooms. Pumpkin. Also, there are plenty of eggs, and milk, and cream, and self-raising flour and sugar and syrup for a big Fluffy Pancake Sunday Breakfast.

Personally, I'm stoked. I used to do this kind of shit with my housemates and boon companions back in the college years, and I'm delighted to have an excuse to revisit the exercise. I'm sure Mr Barnes will recall the jollity of it all... Of course, since a large percentage of the participants are below legal boozing age, it will be a relatively sober event, but really, who gives a toss? This is going to be fun.

We rather expect it to finish at about 0100 or later, so there will be some overnighters. Therefore, as an added bonus, I propose to show the 1977 Ralph Bakshi animated version of "The Hobbit" as a waker-upper in the morning, for any survivors. Because more than too much is never quite enough.

Poor Natalie. Not only is she on-call this weekend, but she's caught the killer lung-death lurgi bronchitis from hell which has been scouring Scottsdale. I'm going to do my best to keep the action outside, and up in the moviezone, but oooh. I really wouldn't want to be in her shoes right about now...