Well, well, well. The last two days were a bit chaotic.

Yesterday, we were invited (or rather: ordered) to the main bureau in Cologne for a combination of a meeting/Christmas celebration. The meeting ran late until 6 p.m. which meant that I couldn't buy a much-needed tube of toothpaste, and the subsequent celebration at the next restaurant (it's surprising how much alcohol certain people can ingest without showing it -- I stuck to juice) was long enough that I went home before the others and so couldn't borrow some toothpaste from a colleague. Gah. Hated that. Slept fitfully in the guest house.

The next morning, the meeting continued until 11 a.m. We rushed back home (or rather: the office) where we arrived with barely enough time to prepare for the next Christmas celebration, this time with our collegues from here. We went bowling. Suffice it to say that I got a prize -- all of us three finishing with the lowest points did. Blah. Haven't bowled in years.

I'd been on tenterhooks for the last half hour of it anyway because it was scheduled that we'd spend the rest of the evening in a restaurant eating a Christmas meal, talking, drinking, celebrating. The whole bonding-with-your-coworkers-thing. And I knew I'd have to hurry along in order to be in time for 'Lord of the Rings II - The two Towers'. Ever eaten a whole menue in less than half an hour? It's no fun, let me tell you. The others just stared, and I hurried to the car.

I would even have been on time for the movie hadn't I driven over a red stoplight. Which wouldn't have been that important (it just switched from yellow to red), hadn't a police cruiser been directly behind me. Lucky me. They stopped me, of course. Thank God they were also pretty much in the 'spirit of the season' and let me go with a verbal warning. Ooof.

To make it short, I only missed perhaps 30 seconds of the beginning, or so my friends reassured me.

But the day wasn't over yet. After the movie, we went to my car, and I got a screaming fit upon discovering that the whole sub level of the garage had been closed. Impossible to reach my car, even more so to drive it out of here. I had to call a number listed next to the entrance, pay 15 EUR to have someone unlock the gate and let me out. One small sign (which I, of course, hadn't read in my hurry) announced the whole fact. I'll never, ever park there again.

By the way, the movie -- sucked. Not totally, that's right. But I was disappointed. While LotR I was no 100% adaptation of the first book, I considered the chances unimportant; after all, they were meant mainly to enhance the main story.

No such luck in LotR II. Why, why, why did, for example, Faramir have to become a lunatic drooling for the ring? Eowyn a big-eyed dreamy girl in puppy love who only swings a sword once to show us that she knows where the sharp side is? Why was Haldir infected with the Star Trek Red-Shirt Syndrome ^TM? Why the wargs? Or where did Eomer's army come from? Did he clone them all by himself? From 50 riders to a whole army big enough to send Saruman's 10.000 men (or rather: orks) packing -- that's quite an achievement. Why is one weak shot with an arrow enough to scare away a Nazgûl, of all things?! Why the unnecessary dream sequences with Arwen? After all, in the books she didn't break up with Aragorn before he left. Otherwise, the authors on the A/B slash lists wouldn't have had to do contortions in order to explain and thus enable an A/B affair. Oh, yeah, and the Ents looked ridiculous.

Most especially, why all the pathos? Sure, the movie was slashy (Frodo/Sam was more than obvious -- Sam: "You only pay attention to the ring (not me)." *sob*; and even Aragorn/Legolas and Merry/Pippin couldn't be denied), but that doesn't fix everything. All in all, many of the dialogues and the whole underlying feeling reminded me uncomfortably much of 'Star Wars II' (Anakin: "I hate sand. It's so hard. Not like your skin which is so soft." Blech.). All surface, and less depths than LotR I. Sad.

And of course, I missed my Boromir... <sob>

As a final note, hopefully no one out there decides to slash Gollum. Then I may need a barf bag. And lots of soap to wash out my brain. ;-)