* Happy birthday to Bilbo and Frodo Baggins! Today is the anniversary of the Long-Expected Party celebrating Bilbo's eleventy-first birthday and Frodo's coming of age in The Lord of the Rings. My thoughts are with the Lómelindi Smial of the Tolkien Society and everyone else who will be celebrating the Baggins Birthdays. Also on this day, according to the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings, 99-year-old Samwise Gamgee rode out from Bag End for the final time. He was last seen in Middle-Earth by his daughter Elanor, to whom he presented the Red Book. According to tradition, he then went to the Grey Havens and passed over the Sea, last of the Ringbearers. Cheers for the Hobbits!

* Happy anniversary to The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which premiered 45 years ago tonight on the NBC network! If you haven't read st_crispin's wonderful essay "Everything I Ever Needed To Know About Life, I Learned From U.N.C.L.E.," be sure to check it out here.

* Lastly, tomorrow will mark the fifth anniversary of my keeping this blog. Many thanks to my dear friend thrihyrne, who inspired me to begin this LiveJournal in the first place, and to all of you, my friends new and old, for sharing these years with me.


"I suspect we are legion. We are an entire generation, the field agents of today, and we are everywhere."
- st_crispin, "Everything I Ever Needed To Know About Life, I Learned From U.N.C.L.E."