Turns out I’m having a boy!

This will be my second boy, as Little Kae (whom I may begin referring to as Thing One) is three now, and down for a nap so I can still sneak in some gaming this afternoon. Hope everyone else is having a great day.

I’ve been a Tolkien fan since I read the Hobbit at 8 years old. He’s shaped my reading life more than any other author I’ve read. This year should be especially good with the first Hobbit movie coming out on December.

Cheers!

Update: Thanks for all the well wishes from Twitter today, was a great surprise for me when I checked Twitter this morning.

Happy Birthday to Professor Tolkien!

The man who shaped my reading life from childhood on.

I mentioned last year that I’ve never really felt like an adult, despite having been supporting myself for more than a decade. I always expected to feel more mature (somehow) after college or after marriage.  I thought becoming a parent would finally be the change that did it, and I do feel more adult now, in some ways, but I’ve also come to appreciate my childishness more. Being a father has given me more responsibility, but it has also given me a chance to re-experience the world from a fresh perspective.

Now I’m off to enjoy my vacation day and play video games. Yup, I’m totally an adult.

Tolkien has been the largest influence on my reading habits every since I was 8 years old. I bought the Hobbit when I was in elementary school via a class book fair. The teacher passed out a small pamphlet that had all of the books being offered with a small summary and a picture of the cover. I don’t remember why I picked that one, but I can remember counting out dimes and quarters to pay for it and I’m sure the librarian was thrilled when I came in with my bag of coins. I still have the book and the slip which I used as a bookmark.

If I remember right, it was that summer that I checked out the Lord of the Rings trilogy from the public library. It took me the entire school break to finish them and I don’t know how much I really understood (certainly not as much as when I read them now), but from then on fantasy was about the only genre I would read (until I found Heinlein and got into sci-fi).

Since then, I’ve reread the books multiple times (including the Silmarillion), enjoyed Peter Jackson’s movie adaptation, and now I spend a little bit of time almost daily in Turbine’s interpretation.

Happy birthday, Professor!

Every year in January as my birthday approaches I think about being older.  More specifically I wonder when I’ll start to feel like an adult.  I used to think that once I got out of college and got a job I would start to feel different.  I actually asked my first boss about it (coincidentally he was 35 at the time) and he said that it wasn’t until you had kids.  Marriage didn’t seem to make a difference either.  Last October I celebrated the birth of my first child, so this year I can finally put that advice to the test.

Nope, I still feel the same.  Not really a bad thing, I guess.