LOTR at the Ravinia festival

It all began when A's office was selling tickets to the annual Ravinia festival held every summer in Chicago's Northern suburbs. 

A hard-core Lord of the Rings fan, A jumped at the thought of an LOTR concert and bought tickets. Not just the usual picnic-in-the-lawn tickets, but Pavilion tickets, with a built-in chair for each person. Fan-cee and not even crazy expensive!

Yes! The very-talented Chicago Symphony Orchestra was going to play the soundtrack for the second film in the epic trilogy- and we were going to watch experience the show LIVE. 

I was excited but not over the moon or anything. I truly love LOTR but am not a die-hard fan.

Instead, I started wondering about whether we should attempt to take Precious with us and make her sleep in the stroller...so she can sleep under the stars and you know, I could blog happily about it. Thankfully, I read on the Ravinia website that no kids under 7 were allowed into the Pavilion so whew! That erased all scary visions of little S screaming and we being asked to leave ASAP. 

I felt liberated to NOT have a choice.

So I arranged for my sitter H to show up, made and packed some burgers and ran out the door, ready to get lost in a fantasy-adventure world full of hobbits and Gollum.

We drove up with our friends M&A (they are lawyers but not that they deal with either mergers or acquisitions, really). 

The show was simply breathtaking. Live music played by one of the best orchestras in the world made a huge difference. A and I switched between being glued to the screen and then glued to the orchestra. I've watched the Twin Towers several times but no previous experience was a patch on this.

Sméagol/ Gollum- My favorite character! He is SO psychologically complex. He incessantly talks to himself, refers to himself and his alter-ego using the 'we' form and uses the double plural - 'birdses, hobbitses' - making him extremely unique and interesting.  

Can't wait for the third movie to play in Ravinia next year.