I have places to go and people to see, or at least I get to spend an evening tuning out the troubling world and focusing on my so cool family. \u00a0In addition to a couple nice gifts (including an old video game Sonic<\/i>, that I used to play all those years ago when we was fab), a homemade card, and a specially wrapped pencil\u00a0courtesy\u00a0of my youngest, my boys also pulled\u00a0together\u00a0and got me a small, leather bound pocket copy of The Hobbit<\/i>. \u00a0Including artwork by Tolkien himself. \u00a0How cool was that? \u00a0After homemade cherry pie by request, my 8th grader suggested we read The Hobbit<\/i> together as a\u00a0family\u00a0 \u00a0Since we have enough copies of the book, each of us will have a copy, and parts have been\u00a0divvied\u00a0out. \u00a0The lack of female parts relegated my wife to the sort of character parts that Scout would understand. \u00a0I get to be the narrator and Gandalf (naturally), plus a later appearance as Bard. \u00a0The boys will divide everything else, with my wife\u00a0handling\u00a0the poems and songs. So after watching the classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas<\/i> with our youngest, once he\u2019s in bed, we\u2019re going to dive into our own family rendition of The Hobbit<\/i>, in\u00a0anticipation\u00a0of the upcoming Jackson films.<\/p>\n