Smauged in After Cousin Lunch

The ride into work yesterday was fraught with a little peril as I gained a whole new level of appreciation for my wife’s Highlander after negotiating the snowy roads with my Camry.  I’ll only say that the sounds anti-lock brakes make when they’re trying to save your life can get nerve wracking after repeated episodes as I made my way down from the hills of Worcester.

I was on a short leash yesterday because my weekly meeting, where I locked people out of for being late last time, was scheduled first thing.  I could not be tardy!  The traffic backed up at several choke points, usually when I was heading downhill (hence the anti-lock adventures).  I made it to my office with two whole minutes to spare and found my staff assembled around my door praying I would be late.  Life’s all about the small victories.

Son and I

My weekly Wednesday sanity check returned with lunch with my son.  We were joined this week by the son of my cousin (my second cousin?) who’s a very senior engineer in the firm my son works for.  He fit right in (remember – cousins are special) and it was a lot of fun catching up with him.  His son is learning about the problems of driving a couple miles on a flat tire when he’s not terrifying his mother on the BMX race circuit.

Cousin and I

There’s never enough time to spend with family and having the cousin around felt right.  He’s been a mentor for my son at work and it was entertaining sitting back to watch the interaction between the two.  My son is certainly light years ahead of where I was at his age and that’s more than a parent can hope for.  Lunch ended too soon for me.

I extracted my wife from her cookie baking frenzy for a delayed date night movie.  We went to see The Hobbit, The Desolation of Smaug.  We saw it in the new, high speed 3d version which was kind of astounding.  Peter Jackson does some amazing things with his films and this flick had more than a few jaw dropping scenes.   The clarity of the action is astonishing, especially given that a lot of it was CGI.  

He can’t really figure out what to do with the dwarf king which is problematic at times but he does elves really well.  Legolas from LOTR returns and is more than ably assisted by Lost’s Evangelline Lily as an elvish warrior.  The movie is really long but you almost don’t notice it as the pace is relentless.  The final battle scenes with the dragon Smaug are breathtaking.  This is a movie geeks (guilty as charged) will love.  I did.