Baby, baby, baby, where did our blogwatch?

Hi there. I’m back, but only just getting back to speed. …It was somewhere in the 80s the day before I left California, whereas I got snow in my sandals as I hauled my luggage back to the apartment (Mom, if you’re reading this, I do have other shoes, I just didn’t bring them to CA), and I already miss The Rat. But when the plane dipped low enough so we could catch our first glimpse of the lights of DC, my immediate thought was, “Home sweet home.” I’m back where I belong.

Dappled Things: How to prepare for Mass. And the skull in Christian iconography.

Mark Shea: “Hey! My latest book is out!… It’s Tolkien on Film: Essays on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings from Mythopoeic Press, an anthology of critical essay by Tolkien fans and scholars (put me in the former category). The book includes my whimsical piece ‘The Lord of the Rings: A Source-Criticism Analysis’ as well as a bunch of other fun essays by a bunch of different writers.”

In thrall to ratdom. Via Arts & Letters Daily.

And last, but most emphatically not least, a real live blogchild–the daughter of the Old Oligarch and Zorak of E-Pression has been born! Mom and baby are flourishing.