On the drive back from my parents house along one stretch of the 401, near Chatham, Ontario I saw something I have never seen before.  In the span of may 3-4 miles I saw at least a dozen red-tailed hawks sitting in trees along the roadway.  I regularly see 1 hawk when I am driving to and from work.  This is the first time I have ever seen so many hawks in the wild in such a short span of time.  Pretty cool.

We went to visit my parents in Canada for a couple of days early this week.  Whenever we go there we take a trip into Toronto, so Jules can go shopping at Romni Wool on queen st.  This trip happened to come the day after a big shooting in front of the Eaton Centre on Yonge St.  But that is for a another discussion.  On the way into downtown TO we saw these banners on all the light posts that said coming February 2006, Lord of the Rings at the Princess of Wales Theatre. For some inexplicable reason they are making a musical out of the Lord of the rings trilogy.  If you have read the books and/or seen the Peter Jackson directed films, imagine trying to stage this tale on a live stage, with songs even!  It just doesn’t strike me as a good idea.  In fact it seems like a phenomenonaly bad idea.  Here is a news item about a recent preview shown to some media at a rehearsal hall.  Creativity is a good thing.  To me this seems like jsut trying to cash in on the success of the movies.  I can’t fathom how this production can possible succeed.  The scope of the story is just to vast and covers too much ground both literally and in terms of plot to compress into a 3 hour stage production.  I see a financial disaster in the making here.