Boys in the House

The Spouse is so excited. He's having a Lord of the Rings party today. He's invited some other guys who are similarly inclined and they are going to watch all of the movies, in order, all day. He had ham & cheese coissants and coffee for the first arrival. There are frozen pizzas for lunch and he just put a big ol' batch of Payson's Papa's Chili in the crockpot for dinner. It is so cute.

Because he reads this blog (as do some of the other attendees) I have to be careful about what I say. Actually, I think The Spouse anticipates a prolonged essay on the theme of his general geekiness but I'm not going to. I might tell them they are geeks but none of them are. They are actually all really cool, really funny and frankly, really good-looking men who are getting together to watch some movies and drink some beer.

What is charming about all this to me is that this is really the first time in our married life, I think, that The Spouse has arranged something with the guys in our lives that didn't include the families. And that's important because men, straight ones at least, tend to be very weird about friendship. Listen to them talk and most of them will talk about some guy as a 'friend' who they last saw while in high school. At least that's what The Spouse tends to do. His friends are all these guys who remember his first bike while my friends are women I see on a regular basis. Then there are 'our' friends, which include some couples and families, who come to all our dinners and parties, the people we hang with at the coffee hour after church, that sort of thing. But the fact is that a lot of those people, the ones with whom we spend the most time, the ones who are truly the core of our community, include really great guys who could hang out anytime provided someone troubled to arrange it.

I don't know that any of this is operating today. Now that The Spouse owns all the Lord of the Rings movies he figures it's just time to watch 'em all in order and do so with like-minded individuals. But it's still really cool that he did this and I hope they destroy the Ring of Power in time.