2001-12-20 - 12:02 a.m.
A lightness of spirit ...

There are bad days, and there are good. Yesterday was one, and today was almost entirely the other. Hurrah for small victories.

The farewell party went better than I'd feared. Someone else is leaving, too, it seems, so I did not sit in the spotlight alone; I laughed and smiled and ate and shared good wishes, and all was well. I tied up several lingering projects at work, and found a story on the 'net to read during break that had me laughing until my ribs ached.

Ah, joy. And that was even before the movie.

The movie: Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. Part one of a truly epic trilogy. I knew there would be sections left out, and bits glossed over, and things changed entirely in the move from page to screen. After all, it would have taken 40 hours if they showed everything Tolkein wrote, and they condensed it to 2 hours and 50 minutes of film.

All the same ... the main story was there, portrayed with a strength and beauty I had not thought possible. The actors were the characters, and the scenes were Middle-Earth, and even as I noticed the omissions from the text, I still sat in awe. I'm impatient to see the next film already, and it's still twelve months away! *sigh*

Life was good today.