Mark’s parents visited the first full weekend in March, and as they often do, they offered to babysit one of the nights they were with us. So, of course, we took them up on it. We hadn’t gone out since mid-January, and that was for a group event, so we were happy to go out on a real “date” again.

Mark has been a fan of Tolkein since childhood. He couldn’t wait for our children to be old enough to have even the slightest appreciation for Tolkein’s book (which now, our nearly 7-year-old, just loves). So he really wanted to see
LOTR The Two Towers. Better late than never, we took our big date opportunity to go to see the second LOTR movie. Now, I haven’t read all the Tolkein books. Mark and I read The Hobbit together out loud before we had children, but that was the extent of my background. Throughout the entire movie, Mark sat next to me and whispered why he didn’t like this or that about what the producers had changed from the book. He would also give his approval of things that he thought were ok changes. This kind of behavior would drive a lot of people crazy in a movie, but since I am used to doing at least two things at once, I didn’t get upset with him. Mark’s final assessment of the movie was that he didn’t really like it, and, at the very least, he didn’t like it nearly as much as the first movie. I found the second movie to be too violent. I also didn’t appreciate how gruesome looking many of the characters were. I want to read the books before we see the third movie, so I can perhaps appreciate it more. I still appreciated the plot of the movie, I just could have done without all the horrificly ugly monsters. At least when you read a book, you can imagine the monsters as ugly as you want them to be. The producers of the movie have much more active imaginations than me!

The night after our date, I rented My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Mark’s parents watched it with us, and we laughed out loud. It was just a riot; a great fun flick. However, I watched the new sitcom based on the movie this past Sunday evening, and, no big suprise, with all the laugh tracks and a poorly written script, the tv show falls flat. I suspect it will dry up and blow away before the end of the season.