I just have to be there

Brandon is hot. Collin has rain. Bilbo has honeyed words.

• OK… it’s hot

• Thunderstorms galore

• Weather talk

• Rain gage 

• LEGOLAND Review!

• More pasta!

• But maybe…some inside information could help.

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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE

PROVIDED BY OTTER.AI

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

lego, bilbo, dragon, build, good, talking, work, dwarves, starts, cool, point, big, treasure, thorin, people, mountain, tolkien, door, pieces, thought

SPEAKERS

Collin, Brandon

Collin  00:04

Welcome to Oh, brother, a podcast of three brothers trying to figure it all out with your hosts, Brandon. Colin. Aaron. On this week's show, I just have to be there. Boy. Oh boy. Oh boy. How's it going?

Brandon  00:25

I'm ready for it to be less than 90 degrees. That would be really excellent.

Collin  00:29

I would really appreciate it if it were less than 90 degrees and less than 115% humidity. Just just through me personally, I'd rather

Brandon  00:41

it's not helping.

Collin  00:43

Bad. Oh my gosh, it's 94 right now. Yeah. I'm not. I'm shockingly, I'm not okay with that.

Brandon  00:53

Yeah. I don't know how our Arizona friends are alive. Yeah. I met a bunch of people from Arizona this summer. Oh, I hope that they're okay.

Collin  01:05

No, I think they have all just melted back into the desert at this point. Yeah, they were. Yeah, they were.

Brandon  01:18

Good. They were explaining to me that. In the summertime, they live in Phoenix. So, you know, that's fun. They're explained to me how, how it's really important in the summertime to cook with the microwave as much as possible. Ah,

Collin  01:35

you know, as you want as little heat going into your house as possible. Yeah,

Brandon  01:41

right. It's already too hot in there. So it does not do that. I was like, Oh, that's good. And thought about that? Yeah. Yeah,

Collin  01:54

I had a friend down in Texas text me and he was like, Oh my gosh, I don't know. I'm gonna do like, in my not future proof home, I can barely maintain 78 And I just responded with, like, till de weeps in 103 year old home. Yeah, true. But it's not even it's not nearly as hot as this down there. Or in Arizona by a wide margin. So

Brandon  02:23

I cannot move. No, thank you.

Collin  02:27

Um, you know what? I'm good. I'll say I know. I'll opt out of that one.

Brandon  02:31

Yeah, it's also

Collin  02:34

just night. Yeah. It's not normally

Brandon  02:37

above 90, almost 100 degrees like this long in a row. Like it usually gets hot in the summer, but like, it's been like two whole weeks. I know Arizona, like a whole month of over 100.

Collin  02:55

Cleaning momentarily, but

Brandon  02:57

we also have humidity. Arizona. Okay. Yes.

Collin  03:01

Something that you have constantly reminded us for the last 70 years is dry heat. Right? Yeah. So yeah. How about

Brandon  03:09

damp heat? Yeah, not pleasant. Turns out nobody likes it. Yeah, it's been really exciting. Thunderstorm action this week. We had a little bit of that going round. Yeah. So the weekend I guess what it was? We can't Yeah, we get Yeah, I went outside to I realized that it was like, I just I don't know, just having an iPhone was like thunderstorm warning, special weather statement. And I was like, Ah, I am gonna go out and move the trash can. Susan and her friends had just got done with their garage sale. So it was extremely full. So I was like that. I've not know, I'm getting going out. There was like, late it was like 1130 Right. But I went outside and it was just it was so windy. That like it wasn't raining. But like it was you could feel that it was the rain getting blown out of the front. Like yeah, it was a way right. So it wasn't like it was weird. Like it was like a mist in the air. But it was because it was the gust front blasting all of the rain from the storm forward. Yeah ahead of which is fun. So that tells you

Collin  04:34

Yeah, which tells you good times are to be had here shortly. Hold

Brandon  04:37

me. Oh my gosh, I've made it just in time to get this trash. Yes. Getting kids and they play it in the yard a lot. So they're out like scampering the lawn furniture like table and the chairs and stuff. They were granted

Collin  04:52

that inside. Yeah, yep. Better. Better bring that inside. That's for sure. Yeah,

Brandon  04:57

that table would have been God Yeah,

Collin  05:02

we dealt with that. Monday morning, down in, in Springfield, we had limbs down power outage, we had staff, one of my staff members called me and was like, He's He's younger guy and he was like, How do I get out of my garage? I don't have power. And I was like, Ah, excellent, great question.

Brandon  05:24

He that red handles what I did. And

05:28

it's, it's very eager person. And so I, I tend to forget like order of operations for people, because I'm going to say, Okay, you see that red handle on that? When you pull it? It's going to and I hear a

05:40

good chunk.

05:42

Yeah. And I was like, okay, so I should have like, depending on how healthy your spring is, it will either only stay down or only stay up from here on out, and we're kind of you know, stuck with that for a little while.

Brandon  05:53

I mean, how to get out his house anyway. It's fine. I know.

Collin  05:56

I just like I like making sure people are fully informed before they make a decision like that. Yeah, you know, it's, it's fine. It's fine. Yeah. Yep. And then

Brandon  06:05

Monday night, your Monday night, already.

Collin  06:11

We have storms, here in here in town. And the average within our little town was six and a half inches over the course of a handful of hours. Um, this resulted in me being a woke soul. On Monday morning, I was awoken at 6am by my staff member in Springfield, calling me saying the old power's out. I can't get out of my garage. On Tuesday morning, I was awoken by my staff member here locally that says, Colin, the road is gone. And I said, I'm sorry. You're catching me at a white? Said,

Brandon  06:51

I mean, I believe you. But yeah,

Collin  06:53

yeah, there's the road that we usually take. It's gone. And it's just covered in water. And I don't know what to do. And I was like, did you try and go the other way? So we mapped out the other way. And she called back and she said, it is also she goes, there's about four feet of water over the road. And I was like, Cool, cool. Cool. Well, don't drive through it. Oh, yeah. They're, they're in this little tiny like, Toyota Camry. And I'm just like, Okay, well, that's as much as we can do right. Now, we're kind of have to brainstorm. I said, go do the rest of your visits, we'll figure this out, right? Like, it's not worth going through us water to get to this point, like, just hold on. So we had to break out the good ol map and find a route that was 20 minutes longer than every other place to come around, like, go way out to the east, go super far north, and come in and drop in from the north side is the only way that we could do this. So Holy cow, that's Wow. And also, the client was without power. And so not only was the road gone and flooded from both directions, but she was without power.

Brandon  08:05

And this client is in Barcelona.

Collin  08:11

So we're trying to, you know, communicate stuff and not bother her too much. But also like, hey, just stop by. And this is going to lead to a new question that we asked on our client intake form. Who is your electricity and gas provider? Because we kept going to the electrical provider that everybody uses and reporting an outage and they were like, there's no outage at that house. And we were like, yes, there is. Yes, there is. And so finally, yesterday, I called the random, small little coop that nobody has ever heard of. Oh, hey, this is Betty. Ah, yeah, it looks like there's a power outage at that. At that location. We'll get a crew headed out over today.

Brandon  08:59

I was like, Okay, then. Oh, my gosh.

Collin  09:02

So now I'm going to get even more weird looks on my intake form of like, where is your water shutoff valve? Where's your breaker box? Speaking of electricity, who brings it to you? Because

Brandon  09:14

that one guy is not going to like this. He is going to be so grumpy.

Collin  09:18

Angry, he's going to understand. And I'm going to have to say, hey, one time somebody was traveling over in Barcelona, and we thought that the electricity provider would just take care of it. Turns out they didn't even know there was an outage because she's the only one on this entire road

Brandon  09:36

that uses them. And wow,

Collin  09:40

okay. Yeah. Oh, that's what she said. She goes, I said, Oh, she's often such and such lane and she goes, Oh, we don't service anybody over there. Hold on. Oh, no, no, there. We have one person. And I was like, is their last name such and such? And she goes, Yeah, well, we'll get a crew out.

Brandon  10:00

Well, thanks for playing.

10:03

Cool, cool. Cool.

Collin  10:05

So this was after and, uh, you know, so we were having to deal with rotting food in the fridge and not having any water. Oh, by the way, this client just so happens to have four dogs and three cats. Oh, of course. Of course, I will say that, thankfully, um, and I think this is from their experience over the years, they use massive water buckets for their dogs inside the house. And so usually we would change them out just like every day or two because it gets kind of gross with four dogs. And I was like, oh, slobbery food in there, but then I was like, Ah, well, this is very convenient, because I have no water to give you dogs.

Brandon  10:49

So, so it's already full, so it's fine.

Collin  10:51

But we, we topped it off with ice from the freezer, and dumped it all in there. And it's a nice new stuff and everything. So they have power now. Everything's fine, but it was just one of those like,

Brandon  11:01

Ah, yes. Okay, well,

Collin  11:05

new thing to list I guess. Like,

11:08

oh my gosh. So yeah, that was

Collin  11:12

that was that was interesting. That was a lot of that was not a lot of fun. I don't recommend recommend that. Yeah, very fun. And we've got more storms. We've had more storms every single day. This week, today. Oh, today, we had two rounds of storms move through to

Brandon  11:27

dos. We haven't had that many. We've had a couple here and there was like listeners if there was there was any doubt that this podcast is being recorded in the Midwest. Just count how many times we started talking about the weather at the beginning of each episode. And that just that right there, that shoes in a that's how you know.

Collin  11:47

It really, I I am working on a training, training. Have I told you the phrase that I'm training the kids on? I told you this?

Brandon  11:56

Is it oofta because that's an important art and heritage lesson. Okay, that's a

Collin  12:01

good one, though. No, it is in fact, every time it rains, so. Okay. You're in the Midwest every time it rains.

Brandon  12:08

What do you say? He? I don't know. Oh, you say

Collin  12:14

we needed this. Oh. Have you?

Brandon  12:20

Have you When are you going to start training them on the amount of rain like towed strangler? Downpour gully washer, right. When does that come into effect? Where's that on?

Collin  12:34

That's a bit more advanced. I feel like okay, a fourth grade level. We're not quite there yet. But yes, that will the goalie washer. I mean, we already have obviously like the cats and dogs and sprinkle and obvious I mean sprinkle is like an actual science. It's actual sensor, but the the toe strangler that will be that will be coming soon, I believe. But yeah, yeah, I told it. I showed him how to walk onto your front porch.

Brandon  12:59

Put your hand on your hips and go.

Collin  13:02

We needed this. We needed this. Because you do. Yeah. So

Brandon  13:08

sounds like you already have the rain gauge. enacted? Correct? Yes. Yeah, we do have one. Do you so I I was joking with Susan the other day because her mother's new husband, right. And her dad was the same way like they were chronic rain gauge monitors. Yes. All the time. And so I was I missed. Like, I thought that like when you get a certain age this day, you just get mad at one. Okay, because I didn't I've never seen a rain gauge for sale. I don't know. I've never looked for what is

Collin  13:42

I will say that ours was we were we were gifted. Okay, so we were gifted not one but two, by dad by our father.

Brandon  13:54

Because they go to his house, or they go to him. Yeah, that's what happened. I think he just didn't do it. My forwarding address. Yeah.

Collin  14:01

You just need to I think you just need to make a simple easy apply for one.

Brandon  14:06

And it should be pretty, pretty good.

Collin  14:09

But yeah, that's yeah, it's it was their learning Wonderful, wonderful.

Brandon  14:15

Phrases. So yeah. Yeah. I'm glad that that's that part of education is not being stepped over. That's going to be good news. This will be

Collin  14:28

this will be done. You will be will that we will know. They will know our heritage.

Brandon  14:33

Yeah, let's do this from around the globe. Is there things that you say when it rains outside? Do your local area farmers say random things to you when it rains? I need to know this. This is important demographic information that we're lacking relaxing. Okay, need to know Don't ya?

Collin  14:56

Back on local, brain calm Insert local mean that something something's true

Brandon  15:02

because even Missouri you also say if it even if it rains a whole lot, you know, the a lot of people will be like, well,

15:11

you know, and we're gonna

Brandon  15:13

need this later. So might as well you know, like Yeah,

Collin  15:17

or or no, it didn't need all that at once right?

Brandon  15:20

That's true. Right like yeah, I've also heard the old I'd rather not have it all at once but at least it's raining like that, you know,

Collin  15:29

I've literally I've literally seen these three comments on Facebook posts. Yes, but if we had to get it, I'm glad we got it right, like

Brandon  15:41

then you get the really learned people, they're the ones that are like real monitors of the situation. And they'll be like, well, that still puts us behind for the year even though we got a lot recently. You know, that's the that's how you know you're dealing with a professional. Right? That's what

Collin  15:58

we one of our clients, so we we really whittle down basically all of the clients that come to our home except for like, three and one so uses us on a fairly regular basis. This man his wife, absolute gems, he's at

Brandon  16:19

Loomis, so older couple with the other dogs too. Yeah.

Collin  16:23

Yeah, yeah. And every time they drop them off, and we talked to them, and yes, yeah, he's he like you talked about like rain gauge kind of sewer like, man, he's got this dialed in for like, he knows exactly. total amounts versus what we're supposed to have versus like forecasted and we're talking like, almanac stuff out of the car would pick up and drop off.

Brandon  16:46

Right? They know, they know. It's great. It's real scary when they when you hear like, oh, man, we haven't got this amount of rain since like 1987 here

17:04

Yep. How What

Brandon  17:04

do you mean? How do you know that?

Collin  17:07

Where was that stored? Right? Like I don't even how what? No, like, yeah, they very good. Very good at it. So we're Yeah, I think we're we did have the oh, here's the other thing, right. We had enough to listen to lift us from the burn ban. So you can have backyard barbecues again. Hey, adulation. modulations peeps, that's a lot of rain. So that's good. It was again, six and a half inches was the average over our ever are just the city just within city limits. Like that was six and a half inches. So yeah, it just it just dumped and chaos. Terrible.

Brandon  17:42

I mean, again, we needed it, but

Collin  17:49

Oh. Oh. We last week, you gave a review of the Springfield historic Museum. Oh, yes. Right. i Today, I will humbly submit to you a review of Legoland in Kansas City.

18:07

Oh, yeah. Let's go. Okay.

Collin  18:12

So we, we didn't know what to expect. We're bad tourists. We just kind of bought tickets and showed up. So which is fine, right? People do that. People do that all the time. And both of our kids love Lego. And so we thought, hey, this is where people go who love Lego. Right? Like that's that was our thought. Have you ever been to a Legoland?

Brandon  18:40

No, I have not been to one. I walked by the one in Time Square. But okay, we didn't go in because Susan had already been in there. And I have a statue of liberty Lego magnet. So I don't need to go back.

Collin  19:00

I mean, I'm going to read to you the general description of Lego Land it says um, and this is not it's not no copyright intended or whatever. Fun, fun, colorful, misspelled colorful, because it's got that you in there and inspirational. Legoland is where awesome awaits for families looking for a great day out or the ultimate vacation experience.

19:25

Time okay. I feel like that last sentence puts a level of expectation on this experience that cannot possibly be met in any way.

Brandon  19:40

Now this is really overselling.

Collin  19:45

Yeah, this this puts this in league with Disney Land, right. Like like Busch Gardens like this puts it in league with all sorts like a Carnival Cruise.

Brandon  19:55

Yeah, big, big sigh level activity here.

Collin  20:00

So, and again, we go online we know enough just to buy tickets and we buy them for the day. And we I expect like what do you what what would you expect to be in in a Legoland? Ah, I mean,

Brandon  20:16

big Lego statues. Right? I personally would expect a room of just Lego bins and tables with which you could build Lego. I would obviously expect lots and lots of really overpriced Lego for sale. Like weird things built out of Lego, like the architecture and like, big like moving things, right?

Collin  20:57

I don't really know. So, yes, yeah, I expected lots of like, just basically like rooms of bends, maybe guided builds on certain things like God. Yeah. Like the master builder. That's called what it would come out and give a class on how to build something like using just the parts.

Brandon  21:21

Oh, Alec, structural build advice, right? Yeah. Yeah. Alternating brick thing when you build the walls and stuff like that. Yeah.

Collin  21:28

Or, or all sorts of like, or like, yeah, or we're going to build this. This figurine today, like that's our factory, build it using using like, just classic Lego, no custom pieces. How do we build that? Because that's what a lot of the the models, the big human sized models and stuff that you see. Those are classic Lego pieces. There's very few custom builds the pieces in those not like yeah, getting certain sets. So not expecting that. They had said they had like a cafe for eating?

21:59

Well, I mean, yeah, right. Okay.

Collin  22:02

And I expected this thing to be

Brandon  22:04

inclusive. All the tables to be built out of Lego in the cafe, though, quite clearly,

Collin  22:09

I expected this thing to be huge. Mungus No, no, no, terrible. No. So walk in. Okay, so I will say, here's the end result, I'll just cut to the chase here. If you are a fan of the Lego of Lego, and the end the LEGO Universe.

Brandon  22:29

Pretty cool place. Okay, if you like to build Lego, not so cool.

Collin  22:37

If you have watched all of the Lego movies, which they have a little theater in there for you to go see if you have not seen them. They just play them on repeat basically, all day long. They rotate through them. If you are not caught up on the lego cartoons, or you don't know the latest action figure that is new Lego or you're not like in really in deep with the ninja a series of Lego.

Brandon  23:02

All of this is just I forget that that exists. Yeah.

Collin  23:08

So you walk in, and immediately on your right, is a little carnival ride, where you sit in like a little Lego thing. And it's like a kind of like a tilt a whirl. Where are you kind of how else would I describe this? Where like, oh, the right, okay, this is a context that nobody else has. But at that carnival ride where you usually sit down and it's like a big fake balloon. And it kind of the whole thing spins in a big circle. And then it kind of raises and tilts and goes down and whatever. One of those is just sitting over here on the right. Nice listeners.

Brandon  23:39

That is a classic ride from Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri case, you're wondering how I know exactly what Paul is talking about right now, just in context, for those of you who have not yet discovered the weirdness of Silver Dollar City. Continue, please.

Collin  23:53

Okay. Over on the left is the Lego VR experience where you where you strap a Lego where you strap a VR headset to you, you sit in a chair, and then it's like the

24:08

Oh, and then the chair itself like moves like it goes up and over and around. And it's okay. The VR movie is what it is like you're you're not interacting, whatever you're just experiencing a race I think is what it is you're driving, you're supposed to be in a car. And it just happens to you're just watching it but it's all Lego visually, but you're in the chair or the chair moves and bumps and spins and stuff as you're sliding around on the track and whatever it is it

Brandon  24:36

is it just Lego racing. Remember Lego bricks. Yeah,

Collin  24:39

it's Lego. Okay,

Brandon  24:40

so Ha, go racing was so awesome. There's a cart. There's a cart game that needs to be brought back, man. Yeah, Lego racing was

Collin  24:48

awesome. Yeah, it's Lego racing.

Brandon  24:52

So which is which I yeah, I really

Collin  24:56

like that game. But imagine that but it's more cinematic. Now with how they presented here, cool, okay, then you go over and then on then on your right from that is your first build. And it's a build a race car to go down a track. And so they have like some very basic pieces and wheels. And you can go like, futz with it to race and see how you get to go faster. Then on the left is, is the ninja thing. There's like a rock climbing wall. There is a game where there's a pad of a grid of nine squares on the wall. And then when they light up with your color, you're supposed to like hit it. Then there's a maze where there are lasers that hit mirrors, and you're supposed to not break the lasers when you go through the maze

Brandon  25:42

to get points. But okay,

Collin  25:47

there's no Lego over there. Like that's just like, Oh, you like the Lego ninja. Now you can be a Lego ninja. Like, odd. Then there's a huge place that in the corner of like they used to have like McDonald's, all basically ish Lego themed on the outside and your typical tunnels and webbing and stuff on the inside. That's all the main entrance, then you go to U turn, and they've got a little What is it, a little train set thing where you can kind of and here's the other thing that was a little frustrating about this is they would have this immense centerpiece. And this was a cement centerpiece where everything else, everything was done. And it was all glued into place. Obviously, master builders don't want you touching their bridges. And the train just went around. And they did have little buckets of Lego. But they were just like, not very interesting Lego to build. And there were no people to do this. So you could build like a small tower. And that's it. Like, it was hard to make it more interactive. They had like a kind of like a girls zone that was kind of more there, I forget what the Lego brand is called, where it's more of like the girl lifestyle brands where they have whatever, like, they had a whole section for that.

27:08

And that like, and then they had the Duplo sets. For the small kids. Yes, those were all of the build areas. I was looking at the map on their website, which by the way, is the least helpful map I've ever seen in my entire life. I just want to throw that out there Lego.

Brandon  27:29

This is a really you have a world class design team. And this is what you came up with. I'm very disappointed. Just looking at this, quote unquote, map. Attraction map.

Collin  27:44

Now it's not good. Not good. Not good. Okay. The Duplo set was kind of nice because then they had some pieces that were more like giant Lego bricks. That was like actual brick size

Brandon  27:54

that you could have. That's what I would want like, okay, massive bricks, yes. Really cool. I

Collin  27:58

would just want a whole floor have those, but they have you know, they had like one or 200 of those in a corner and you could build a tower or you can kind of pick up rage out of them, you know, really basic stuff. But again, I would like us room just a giant Lego like all the classic Lego pieces, make them a giant, let's do that.

Brandon  28:20

And, and then

Collin  28:23

you can go through the the city scape of Kansas City built out and log out like, and that is cool. They have interactive, interactive buttons that can make things do big. They do stuff in the in the pieces. And of course there was date, because this is Kansas City, but it's also Kansas. Can you imagine what was also built out of Lego?

Brandon  28:49

Was it

Collin  28:49

AWS it was there were different scenes from the movie Wizard of Oz. My

Brandon  28:55

next guest was gonna be Dwight D. Eisenhower's childhood home. But I figure that's probably not.

Collin  29:00

No Nobody. Nobody, nobody knows that.

29:03

But it's a

Collin  29:05

that was neat. And they had basically major scenes of the movie in massive bill pieces. And then the city scape was cool. They had the Arrowhead Stadium, they had the where the Royals play. And they're all lights and stuff inside as well.

29:23

And then overhead the lights for the entire room of the segment. The whole thing that cycled on a daytime nighttime cycle, which was cool, because then you could see the pieces at daytime and at nighttime and things changed because now you could see because lights came on and then they turned off in the actual buildings. They projected weather onto the white walls behind there so it was like raining or storming or whatever. There was supposed to be an interactive train that you could drive but it looked like it had been derailed so that we couldn't

29:57

do that

Collin  29:59

and In, in the most obscure thing, you come through that. And there's like a, like a haunted forest adventure.

Brandon  30:11

You're like, okay, okay,

Collin  30:14

so you go in here and you sit down in the glow cart and conceit for people, which is great, because I had four people, you had four people so far. I filled it. And you sit down the bar close Kaushik lap, and then you pull out a little fake gun. And it's the kind of thing where you're supposed to go around and shoot little targets.

Brandon  30:34

But ah, like the flooded mind ride the actual best ride at so Dollar City tie in event. Yes, that ride. Amazing. Like, so cool. This ride. Again,

Collin  30:51

it's in a building on the second floor. And for little kids.

Brandon  30:54

The real reason the flooded mind, right? It's so good is because when you are at Silver Dollar City, and it is 1000 degrees, it's one of the only riots it's like inside.

Collin  31:03

So yeah, and you're splashed with water. And the wait even the wait time to go right? It is pleasurable, because you're in like a tunnel, and you're inside with fans.

31:11

That's really why the floods

Brandon  31:19

are either, right.

Collin  31:22

Yes. And so but this one, like you could like you couldn't actually shoot things on the walls you had to what they would do is they would pull this this right thing, it would go right up to a wall and on there was like a video projection of a Lego scene. And you were supposed to shoot the characters that were coming out at you and like they pulled you like within six inches of this thing. And it was a it was a bit intense. And they're like, Lego ogres and dragons throwing things in like you're supposed to shoot and then and then the car it was an actual car on wheels would back up. And then the whole thing would pivot. And you would go along your path throughout this thing. And it would do that like five times and then you were done. And you're supposed to save the princess or whatever from the dragon but and, and that was it. That was what we could do. That's a little upsetting. Right?

Brandon  32:14

And I also wish would isn't there after you describe this. It's like displays of like classic, like really old LEGO sets. I think that would be really cool. Yeah, right. 90s Legos, like the sick pirate ones from the 90s. Those are cool. Yeah. So like the old like night Castle things. Yeah, it's fun to have on there.

Collin  32:33

That'd be a neat way to turn this into like, like I like the little bit. It's kind of a little of a bit of a museum aspect. It's also a little bit of interactive aspect. Again, this was really for like, oh, yeah, you love, love the LEGO Universe, come experience, the LEGO Universe, and all the characters and you're like, I don't like I just really want to sit at a table and build. And so this led to at the end of this also, it's very loud, because this is a pretty small space. And there are throngs of people. And like the ninja thing had its music on 11. There's all sorts of noise going on in here. So for kids who are very sensitive to Yeah, overwhelming situations, like, I don't know, my own this, this becomes a hard environment to navigate. And so we gravitated as far away from the noisy space as possible, which is over by the Duplo for small kids. And we discovered what was agreed upon by everybody, the best part of this entire thing, which we paid a not insignificant amount of money to be at. But was the tables by the aforementioned Cafe had? Like, what was it like a five by five inch square base piece that you could get in green, white, tan, or black? And then they just had massive buckets of the single Lego in colors I've never even seen

Brandon  34:13

and what you were supposed to do was piece by piece, build a picture of whatever you want it. Whoa. Okay.

Collin  34:25

And so if you so you'd imagine like just a blank piece, and colors. And so it's kind of like building like, like, piece by piece or pixel by pixel. How am I going to make the shape of a heart? Or how am I going to build a turtle like the picture of a turtle or a flower or whatever. And that's, you could just do that. And what was also neat is that once you built it, they have a massive wall of where you could just stick these up on the wall, grid by grid. And so what would be neat is at the end of the day, because You could come in and see everybody's artwork that was on the wall. And the pictures that they made. And some people had nice messages. Other people have had like, super one guy made this avocado that looks 3d. And I don't know how he did that, because I barely made letters. Okay. I am not good at this. But it was really like that was very, like you could see like, there were because there was no like, competition aspect because there was no like, you weren't racing a car, or you weren't just like this was the place where the Lego people went? Because they could they could be what could they do with it? They were creative. Like this is where Yeah, people went in. And there were I mean, the other thing that I liked about this is that it said, all adults must be accompanied by a child. I love that. That's so cool, right? It's very nice. So, you know, there were the kids and dads and we just grabbed a table. And we all sat down. And we all plugged in, chugged and found and it was also cool, because you know, what, what's the other piece about this is the collaborative effort of Lego building, hey, I need more tan pieces. And so like, random kids would hear that you need tan and they'd like to bring tan pieces over to you. And then you'd like go give them the the black pieces or whatever, the blue pieces, whatever you needed to make it work, because each kind of bucket in the middle of the table had slightly different colors, right? It was kind of all just mixed him. So this, we did this for like, I don't know, 25 minutes. This was everybody's favorite activity was sitting down and just making our little designs and then hanging them up and having our picture taken next to him. But that was that was it. Like, we weren't impressed by the giant ninja Lego mascot that walks through. With that was a bit terrifying.

Brandon  36:54

Sounds a bit terrifying. To be honest.

Collin  36:56

I was like, that's okay. And then we were like, Okay, well, ah,

Brandon  37:02

we've been through so we'll leave it.

Collin  37:05

And we did. And I think I mean, I would there was not a single thing that we could have done more other than the VR, but that would have been way too young to overstimulating to at the level that we were like, like, I was kind of shocked by just how loud it was. It was really like at the end of it. I was like, man, yeah, if they just had a room where the only noise in there was in terms of people searching for Lego. I would be all in on that. Like, let's just do

Brandon  37:37

the work? Yes. Ah,

Collin  37:39

if you're wondering, we did not buy the Annual Pass, which allows you to come every day and spend two hours here. I don't know what doing what. I don't know. I don't I genuinely don't know.

Brandon  37:55

The value of the of that.

Collin  37:59

Because we went once and we kind of asked everybody at the end we're like, Would everybody want to go back in? Everyone was just kind of like,

Brandon  38:07

I don't know. Like, maybe if we're in town again. We don't have anything else to do. Yeah, not like soon like maybe. Yeah. And

Collin  38:16

apparently they do change pieces out periodically like that hold ninja corner. That was only there for a couple of months, and then they do something else. But I'm like, but I don't want to do more dodging lasers or kicking a wall or whatever. Like that's okay.

Brandon  38:33

Yeah. Yeah. Do a thing. So anyway, it's very hard. But we went survived. Yeah, so that

Collin  38:48

was that's the that's all I you know, I don't know how many how many Lego pieces I'd give it out of other LEGO pieces. But I would just say if you want if you need something to do, and again, like I said, if you're in the LEGO Universe, and you want to see some of your all time favorite Lego characters, in part like lifesize. Sure, go do it. But it was, it was pretty it was it was underwhelming and like the size and scope and like what you could do and also overwhelming giving the number of people in the small space.

Brandon  39:24

Yeah, that's a 10 I don't know. It sounds odd. Right? It's like yeah, it's like that. Oh, yeah. Sorry. It wasn't more exciting. I guess I haven't really.

Collin  39:37

I mean, it was it was still fun day in the in town. We got to go we got to eat lunch Scotch pizzas. So like, a lot of it and we all with the kids got to pick out a you know, a little Lego thing at the at the end. So it was not all for naught. But yeah, it was like okay, well, that was our stud. So, you know, I was another x perience which is fine. We went on an adventure is what we say

Brandon  40:03

go. There we go to and it was a terrible, and I'm just kidding

Collin  40:15

What's it look like go LAN? Like

Brandon  40:16

you gotta you gotta do better Lego, so many good things.

Collin  40:19

But here's the other thing.

Brandon  40:21

Like these are all over the country. Like, there's not just this one. And yeah, I don't I don't know

Collin  40:30

what are they doing? I don't know. I don't know. It's weird, right? Like

40:38

no one else

Brandon  40:41

really know how to make it better, right just like more building I guess. And like because you know, that's a weird it's a weird thing to have like a theme park

Collin  40:51

about, right because it's

Brandon  40:55

brick that you build stuff with you know, and I've never like it's weird that I mean I know it's to like compete with other things and be like flashy and fancy rampid like the fact that there is a LEGO Universe is a bit odd, right? Kind of makes sense, I guess because they do have all these license things that they have, right like the Lego Harry Potter stuff and like the Lego Lord of the Rings stuff and right. You know, they have all these properties that are licensed to them like Batman and all this stuff and, or the best LEGO game ever. Lego Indiana Jones. Okay, I'm standing by that one,

41:34

for sure. So, I mean, it

Brandon  41:37

makes sense that you would want to do something, and like have access to that. But like, ultimately, it is a creative building tool. You know, yeah, it's kind of like its purpose is to like build cool stuff. And it seems like having a place where you can go and look at Lego and like, not build stuff. Seems like a like a missed opportunity. You know, like, like a big missed opportunity. I feel like that's, that's just kind of kind of weird, right? Like, yeah,

42:18

it misses the element of Lego that I personally connect with, which is the freeform creativity. I'm going to take some a bucket of random pieces and assorted colors.

Brandon  42:30

And I'm going to create Yeah, I mean, that's true. And I do that is my favorite part. Also, I say that though. As a person, I just looked around my room here and realized I have many, like, Lego sets that are just like decorating my bookshelves. Right? Like I have a bunch of like little ones like I have no, in the in the living room of my house. Ladies and gentlemen, I have a whole bookshelf full of a Harry Lego pile. Lego Harry Potter. No Harry Lego Potter's very Lego Potter sets, just like on a bookshelf just played with my Harry Potter books. Right? It's just all kind of and I have have them in my little room here. I have some like random cars and stuff the dad gives me all the time until like, I have some actually forgot I have a little like one of the little small ones, you know, that are like 10 bucks or probably more now because of inflation. But it's like a little hobbit one and it's Bilbo and Gollum in the cave. I have that little Lego set right here. Right? I probably should have mentioned that a couple episodes ago,

43:43

but it's fine. Okay.

Brandon  43:49

I have it though. It's sitting right over here. Bye. Bye TV pretty good. Like, I like that part of it too. Like, I like the little like building them and looking at like all the little details and stuff like that. And like the ones like that. They're like movie themed, I'm sure. They're like, fun. And I like those things anyway. But like, you know, that's I remember as kids playing with Legos, like we would buy the big set. And then we would put it together and then play with that set for a long time. But then it would get recycled into like some new creation, right? Yes. I mean, like, you know, we had some really cool ones. We had the,

44:33

like the,

Brandon  44:35

like the forest Robin Heidi thing. Or was that one was really cool. I remember we had to have a very long I had to have very long talk with a mother. Right? This is how we got that. I don't know if you know the story. No, I got that one is because it was kind of expensive, right? And we were gonna go to the toy store anyway. And I was like, listen, mom, here's The deal, I think it would be better if, like, instead of buying everybody like a little toy, what if I spent a little bit more money and got something really big that we would all like, hey, we could play together. That's think that would be great. She bought it. And so

45:20

boom,

Brandon  45:21

it worked. And we did. I mean, I'm not saying I like lied to mom. Right. But like, there's

45:29

no, but that's the whole point,

Brandon  45:31

right? It's like a togetherness thing. That's how we used it. Right? We had, I mean, all those bands that are just like hanging out and like, play with him right now. Like, our boy, one of those cowboy ones are sick. Right? And it's like a creative play device, where you can like, act out little stories, if you're into that. Like that's what I was into. We were into collectively, right? I think, like, playing out little scenes with the key people and like doing stuff, right? Kind of like making your own LEGO Universe. Right? Because like, why is this hot rod thing in the middle of a western town? Don't worry about that. We're just getting moving along. Yeah, yeah, I'm moving a lot because I happen to have that Lego set. That's why right. The pizzeria and the Old West jail. Of course, those exist in the same universe. Boom. Right here on the floor of my house. Right. There's no rules. Free Form. Right. Yeah. So like kind of harking away from that is a little bit odd choice. But that's, you know, that's just maybe my own personal take on it. Like I'm kind of agree with you. Right. There are certain things that make Lego special to me. And some of those things aren't not

Collin  46:41

yet. Right. Like Yep. It just missed missed the mark. Boris. So yeah. Yeah, it's a

Brandon  46:52

it is. It Hills what it is? Yeah, that's all right. Yeah. Yeah.

Collin  46:59

Yeah. What do you think? Yeah. So you wrapped up your garage sale? Sorry. Sorry. A garage sale was wrapped up in your premises?

Brandon  47:06

Yes, yes. Yes. I had to carry things. But you know, that is my lot in life. So, sir. So yeah, let's begin to that. And that's pretty much all the excitement we've had this week. Nothing very going on. What else did I do? I made more pasta recipes. Ah, in this ongoing summer project of me learning to cook stuff. Sure that I'm doing that. I did a thing and made some pasta broccoli. It was delicious.

Collin  47:48

Really nice. Okay.

Brandon  47:50

There we go. Wow. Yeah, there we go. It has been added. Susan was like you're making this again. Right. I was like, Yeah, sure.

Collin  48:00

That's what we want, right?

Brandon  48:04

She informed me that is most assuredly what we want. So it's fine. Wonderful. Say go. That's basically been in been practicing cooking things as again, I'm famous for not being able to cook. It was one of my character traits. And so we're working towards remedying that element, at least a small scale for now. Right? doing basic stuff, but just trying to contribute and practice because it's kind of fun making little things right here. There.

Collin  48:43

So try it out. Just I we've talked about this many times of the the finding the areas where safe spaces to fail, of like, starting small going. I mean, I'm sure people get uppity about food sometimes, but going, Hey, if this is fine, if this doesn't work, you know, there's a restaurant around the corner that we

Brandon  49:09

would take out is always an option. Right, like, fall back on. But it'd be you know,

Collin  49:16

it's all going to be okay, right.

Brandon  49:24

Yeah, pretty much so that's kind of how it's been.

Collin  49:26

Yeah, pretty good. Made some

Brandon  49:30

pasta broccoli was on the menu. Nice time. So it was good. Really good. So yeah, that's about it. That's pretty much all I've been doing. Ah, like, dreading having to go back to work because that's terrible. It's always really horrible. Sitting through staff meetings, nothing's watching the same training video for the 75th time in a row. Like I'd love it. So that's fun. Just trying to put off that negativity until halftime, right? Like, trying to enjoy the last little bit before it's time to go back and deal with bureaucratic nonsense. Before teaching actually starts because teaching is fine. I like that part. It's the other terrible shenanigans that I don't like.

Collin  50:37

Yep, paperwork

Brandon  50:37

is always what gets ya. Yeah. Paperwork, as long as I have to sit there. I just have to, like, be there. And they like tell me things just have to like, it's horrible. And, like, it's so like, the other thing is a lot of like, teaching stuff, right? There's always like, happiness. Right? Some of these people are extremely peppy. It's horrible. Right? They're like, really excited. And they're like, oh my gosh, we're gonna write down our y's. Like, stop. Just stop. No, I don't know. Like to bring up all that kind of nonsense, like really like, team building Pepe, like weird stuff. Like, I just I need I need to I have things to do. Okay, let me go do right, where you're going, like,

Collin  51:31

I really want to go actually do work. I don't know, if you run into this of like, of going. Like, oh, the the amount of time that I could have spent in planning, organizing, addressing, you know, like doing all this stuff. Not the prep work isn't important. But sometimes I do feel like, I just want to go to get this done. Like, I don't want to sit here and have another committee meeting about this. Like I could have, I could have actually just got this work done. And I could be home. I could be home right now. Well, it's because

Brandon  52:02

like you have, there's a lot of prep work that you have to do for your own class. Right? Ah, like, my prep work is different than the English teachers prep work is different than the math teachers prep work. Is it different than like the fourth graders prep? Like, you know what I mean? Like, there's a lot of stuff that I have to do that's like, very specific to my classroom. Right? And like, they don't ever give you time to do that. But you talk about all this stuff, like you give me these big lists of things. Like, here's our goals, and here's the things we're striving to achieve and all that other, like, positive nonsense, right? But then they're like, don't ever give me any time to like, sit do it. Like, it's like they just like give you like, they yell vague.

Collin  52:47

Like, what's the one thing I'm looking

Brandon  52:49

for? Like bullet point words that you write? Like, buzzwords? There we go? Oh, yeah. Like they just like shot like vague, buzzwords at you. And then like, don't tell you anything else about how to achieve those things. I was like, Okay, well, I have things I could do to work towards that goal, kind of, I guess, I think. So. If you would let me go do those things. We would be like, really good. Okay, because I can. Like, at this point, I know the things that I need to do, or like, the things that I want to try to change, right, you know what I mean? Like, I have kind of a, you know, the things that I have areas of focus that I need, I know that I need to work on to like be better, and not letting me do that. So like Oh, make sure you look at your standards. Like I've done that for two years in a row. I've put them in three different spreadsheets for you. I'm not doing that again. Okay.

54:05

Don't look,

Collin  54:08

I don't want to

Brandon  54:11

the most frustrating thing, right? Because you're like, okay, like, like, you know, because you're the way that I feel about it. And then I'll stop writing about this, because I'm sure it'll happen in next few weeks anyway. But like, I did the thing. And then I've moved on to like, two things down the road. And then they keep being like, oh, let's do this, which is the thing that I did, like, two steps back on my little. We're thinking about this as like a board game, right? I keep like moving forward. And then they like Chutes and Ladders me back to the start and like, oh, do this thing like oh, you know, did that right? And then so you get tricky and they're like but now do this like I also already did that. What do you mean?

54:59

Oh Oh this is very annoying. Do you feel like

Collin  55:08

I don't know if you're had that moment, but I've had I've encountered that where I go,

Brandon  55:13

like, do we really need to go? Like,

Collin  55:18

I don't know how to say like, like, did the goalposts get moved somewhere along the line? Or did I misunderstand where the original destination like where we were supposed to be heading originally? Or are we making this got

Brandon  55:29

moved? That's, that's what it is. The goalposts have definitely moved. Alright, sorry. Yeah. Right. So it's like, it's not a mystery. It's like, oh, yeah, the goalposts moved and then they're like, mad and like, but didn't even tell us you were moving the goalposts and then you expect us to, like read your brain and be like, Whoa, I should have known that we're gonna move like, ridiculous, people don't understand anything, just let me go and do this case. data and numbers and tests are important, but they cannot be the be all end all of how you structure, your understanding of the head of the educational system works. It just is not possible, right? For a myriad of reasons. They're just bad science.

56:20

And so,

Brandon  56:21

like, that's, like, it's important. It's good to know, but it's also like, Okay, we have to take other variables into account in to deal with them as well. Right? Just like one little set of criteria is not useful. intervene. Sounds like, you know, pretty good. Admin people love data and numbers and why Excel spreadsheets and like, things like that, that are not fun to deal with.

56:54

Doesn't sound like

Brandon  56:55

them at all. Oh, yeah. No. Anyway, I'm not letting that negativity in my brain yet.

57:01

Sure. It'll happen sooner or later.

Brandon  57:06

I think pasta making techniques right. That's what we're gonna focus on here. Yes, focus on suppose we could focus on journeys, maybe journeys, inside information. Yeah.

Collin  57:34

Hopefully, might might have to learn about some information.

Brandon  57:37

Maybe Maybe we could gain some inside information,

57:40

right.

Collin  57:44

We rejoin our intrepid travelers.

Brandon  57:48

Now, before we start, oh, as I was finishing up reading today, I don't know why I'm thinking about this before. But like, it sort of smacked me in the face. Like, what I'm reading, I think it's important here, since this chapter 12 is called inside information, that we take a small step backwards and get some insight inside information about this book as a whole. Right, before we continue the journey, I think it's kind of worth a shot to do this, right.

58:27

Because,

Brandon  58:28

you know, we've we've remarked on several occasions, that this book is very different than talking to other works. Right? Like, if you read this and you read Lord of the Rings, it reads differently. Mm hmm. Right. Is that fair to say? Would you agree with that statement? Very. Okay. Now, if you read this versus the like, the summer million, it's way different, right? Or like the loss tails and some of the other like, you know, little stuff, it reads just reading it is really different. And I realized that Tolkien has an explanation for this. Right? There is an in universe explanation as to why that is, because the author of The Hobbit is not in fact, J R. R. Tolkien, the author of The Hobbit is in fact, Bilbo Baggins. Bilbo Yes. Right. So there and back again,

Collin  59:26

is written by Bill Bill.

Brandon  59:31

Right, which is why it takes a bit of a different you know, it breeds differently because it's not the same author. Right? So. What's going on here in Tolkien land okay. So, we have to remember that at some point, Tolkien was in fact trying to create a mythology for England.

Collin  59:59

Right? Yeah. I thought that was his gold, this aspect of this whole thing and of just his life always, every time I hear about it, or I think about that just makes you go, ha, ha, ha, that's

Brandon  1:00:11

he did that he went, he went whole hog. It's well documented, right? He had like, Elvis is an actual linguistically correct language. There's two versions of it. Right. Based on what we talked about a couple weeks ago, the one group of ELLs stayed in Middle Earth and the other one left to the undying lands. And that caused a schism in the actual language, right, which caused the two languages to develop differently. Tolkien is he's kind of nuts, right? But, like, in his brain, what happened here because he was also very immersed in medieval literature, right? Tokens, like Final? Like the answer to this is something called the Red Book of West March.

Collin  1:01:03

Right now talking

Brandon  1:01:06

in Tolkien's universe, right? This is to be treated as a found document. That was then translated by talking into the stories of the Silmarillion. The Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, right? That's the connection to the real world. Right? based on actual medieval texts, they use this, this is a medieval device, right? Like, having, like a found literature document that then influences a story. Right? This is like a, this is actually a medieval literature device that was used in stories. Okay, this is weird. But that's what Tolkien is doing. So the Hobbit is written by Bilbo. Okay, The Silmarillion is translated by Bilbo from texts from the library of L. Ron in Rivendale. During the Lord of the Rings, when like, he goes there, and he just stays there for the whole time. That that's what he's doing. canonically Bilbo is reading these elvish texts and transcribing them into the common language. Right, right. Yeah.

Collin  1:02:26

So Bilbo is JRR Tolkien.

Brandon  1:02:32

And then, like, the Lord of the Rings is supposed to be like, Frodo is writing the I mean, and like Bilbo helped, you know, put it all together, but like, it's all like

Collin  1:02:41

so and Sam always has a little bit of ADD, he adds to it. But yeah,

Brandon  1:02:45

it's I like the appendices and stuff in the weirdness. Some of that's Bilbo, like, researching like little things and putting them in there, right. That's what it's supposed to be. So canonically This is a found document that was together. And then like, I think one of Sam's daughters ends up with the book or something like that. I don't remember exactly. But, like, this book is found by Tolkien and then translated. Right. So the other thing you have to think about here is that this book is written and narrated by Bilbo. Right? So this narrator is actually supposed to be an elbow. Right? So it's like, he's, you know, it's written in a way, like, it's real casual. It's like, he's telling the story to people,

1:03:30

right. And so,

Brandon  1:03:34

you know, that's why he's like, you know, whenever he's talks, like he says, like, weird things. He's like, Oh, yeah, but by now, you know, all about Thorin. Right? That's because he knows all about Thor, and because he spent so much time with him

Collin  1:03:44

in this whole thing. Right. So I feel like

Brandon  1:03:48

and like how you get like weird descriptions of things sometimes. And it came to my mind in this chapter in particular, and I'll I'll kind of mentioned where when we get to it, but like, I just realized, like, oh, yeah, this is Bilbo is supposed to be writing. Yes. Right. Yeah. And I think just like, especially from here forward, I think that's a really important information to have. Right? I probably should have mentioned this at the beginning. Sorry, listeners, but like, I feel okay. I feel like you know, up until now, it kinda like it just to me. It's really important starting right now.

1:04:29

Right? Because of that,

Brandon  1:04:31

we're getting a lot you know, we've we've already kind of chronicled his journey and his personal growth and stuff. But like, I think starting in chapter 12, it's really important that Bilbo is the narrator, and the writer and the author of this There and Back Again tale. Just kind of for the like the impact that it has, it kind of changes the impact of the story, kind of when you realize that Bilbo is supposed to have written this. Yeah, right. I think the events we're getting towards we're kind of going towards that climax event right now. And I just feel like, it's a good place to mention that. I didn't want to wait till it was all the way over, I'd be sure. But like, it was just on my mind today as I was finishing reading, like I was like, ah, yeah, and you can think about it, it just sort of changes a little bit the aspect of the story, right. Some of the things, you know, now you have to contend with like is, how reliable of a narrator is Bilbo? You know, back throws? That's always a fun thing to throw in there. Right, like, pretty good, I would say but prone to some exaggeration, but it's, yeah, a bit. So I think that that's, I just wanted to mention that a little bit before we started, because I think I think that is that kind of changes some of the context of, especially now towards the end, right, of what we're going to see, and what's going to happen and how you frame that. Knowing that Bilbo is writing this,

1:06:08

I think is some important information to just have and think about. Yeah, and I think that's, I think having that that that framing lens for the entire book, but especially here in the latter chapters where we get to see a lot

Brandon  1:06:24

of a lot more Bilbo

Collin  1:06:30

action. I mean, he's, he's been pretty good so far. But like, there's a lot of there's even more character development through the rest of the back half of the book, I really feel like or like that, or maybe not that but like, we really now see the the reaping a harvest of a lot of the growth that he's experienced. And so that telling of it in that way. is important in in Yeah, it does. Coming from that narrative voice

Brandon  1:06:57

from Bilbo helps

Collin  1:07:00

present some of the topics, the ideas, the encounters, it does change how it frames it, and I think how you should interpret it.

1:07:09

Yeah, definitely.

Brandon  1:07:10

So I just wanted to mention that little bit of strangeness here, that kind of understanding the context of the book a little bit how Tolkien was thinking about this, which is just, there's just an insane level of like, like depth and like, thinking about how this works, you know, like, there's all these memes about like, oh, yeah, you know, the how authors, right, and then the last one is always him like, yes, you created several functional languages, and then built a whole history of the universe to explain how those languages came about, like, is that wrong?

Collin  1:07:54

I actually just ran across this, that same meme today. And I I'm texting it to you. But yes, it is. I just, it will come here in a minute. But yes, I just came across this one today. Yeah, it was like how boys tell story. Oh, girls tell the story. How JRR Tolkien tells the story. Train tracks to show like, Oh, yes, he built the whole yard and the switch system and all this stuff. So yeah, that's funny that you mentioned that because I was like, oh, yeah, I just ran across that race and that over. Real, real quick, real time input from a live listener audience here. Did you were you did you recommend the Amazon Series Three Pines, or did you not recommend that? I did? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Was Rick. Okay. Yeah. We had that somebody who was interested, somebody in the house, who shall not be named was interesting. In in that so okay, we can continue on with.

Brandon  1:08:59

Susan says the books are really good that it's based on it as well. But okay. Yes.

Collin  1:09:08

With all that context in mind,

1:09:09

we go on into chapters, chapter 12,

Collin  1:09:15

which yet again, uses a phrase starts off for a long time. How long? We don't know. But we can assume

Brandon  1:09:21

Yeah. GEORGE Stewart a lot of standing around and you know what I mean? Like, really? I love her a lot. But now it's time for Bilbo to do his task, right that he was specifically brought for. And again, he's grumpy, right, he's not enjoying it. Being at the mountain still. Because you know, he's crossed with Thorin when thorns like Oh, right. It's time to time to go there. Your job and he's like, think I've been doing a lot of work around here. Actually, what are you been doing? Riding my coattails like I did all this stuff. I broke you out of the dungeon. I brought you down the river. I saved you a lot of times and now you're gonna go throw me into there why you stay out here? Fine, whatever get over. So he's not pleased about this yet but he

Collin  1:10:27

does say But anyway, I think I will go and have a peep at once now who's coming with me?

Brandon  1:10:32

Yeah, nobody ballin did come inside, you know, he came further than anyone else came in with him. You know, kind of down the hallway until the stairs or whatever. So he came in ballin is the only one that was like, alright,

1:10:51

I'll come in a little bit.

Brandon  1:10:56

But we do find out a little bit spoilers for later in chapter but dwarves are not quiet at all. I think we already knew that. Really. But it's so it's best that they don't come anyway. Right.

Collin  1:11:16

He was not fond of of him his presence and he was happy to have him kind of happy to have him left

Brandon  1:11:21

behind. Yeah. You know, so as Bilbo goes down, he's talking to himself, you know, I like the now you're in for that last Bilbo Baggins. He's just go in and he's like, fine. K going.

1:11:39

What is this?

Brandon  1:11:40

Yeah, so this this, this part is really interesting, right. And I think that that's important, where we talked about the context earlier. He starts going down and he starts, he's noticing things right wisps of vapor floating up the red light, there's a red light growing right? Hearing the rumble. And he, he stops in the hallway, right. And though there's just this little line in this paragraph, going on from there was the bravest thing that he ever did. Right? He's at this point he's like, at, you can almost kind of visualize like, he's at a point of no return. Now. He's come all this way from his house. He's done through all this crazy stuff. And this is the moment he can either run away. Or he can go and see what now he is 100% Sure there's a dragon in here. Yes, right. He feels like all of these little clues, right? The sounds and the stuff, the vapors and the light, glowing. And now he knows there's a dragon in there. And he stops. And he has to decide to make this monumental decision whether to take another step

Collin  1:13:07

or not. Right. And so,

Brandon  1:13:12

you know, I like he fought the real battle in that tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait. Yeah, that's a really powerful sentence, right? Like, there's so much that you can think about with that, you know, tokens very, like, you know, the general theme of a lot of this stuff is like, it's very, you know, personal things are like, you know, the small things matter, you know, and that's even more so the Lord of the Rings, obviously, but like, here, you can see like it then out of all of the dangers that he's faced and all of the, like, really critical things that have happened, right, like, and all the stuff that will come later, you know, again, we're getting some major foreshadowing here. Yeah, yes. No, like, out of all the battles that he's already been through, they were chaotic and crazy for all kinds of things. The biggest battle that he's ever faced is in this dark hallway alone in this mountain. Yeah. Yeah. And it was, it was an internal battle. Yeah, it was it was.

1:14:19

It's a yet

Collin  1:14:23

another look at how this book, as we've commented, again, many times of how the scope of it is, is very narrow. And it is it is, I think there are a lot of aspects to it, but it is a story of personal growth, personal development of below, right all along. It's about Bilbo learning more about who he is, what he's capable of. And this really being the test of that and, and a reminder that at some point, there will be internal battles that nobody else knows about. And that's the other aspect of this like, this is not privy to it Anyone else in the story, we are seeing this as told by Bilbo to us what the struggle was of this internal battle that he was he was taking on of, I'm not against all odds or whatever but but but really, really takes us and zooms in and personalizes this of like, everything that led up to this and that will follow from this pivoted at this moment, like, this was it this was the upon of everything it was everything else was hung or strung upon is at this moment, this is what determined it and this was what led up to it. And I think that's very a very, um,

Brandon  1:15:41

it happens quietly, alone, in a tunnel,

Collin  1:15:45

and a mountain, right. And it was this moment, I love that it wasn't a major battle, or it wasn't a big epic scene, or the spiders or stuff it was it was this. No external things except the red light and the vapor and the snoring or the growl. You know, this is a very of a large cat, whatever it is, like it, I love how just it's very poetic how its presented, and how you can reflect into your own life and go, Oh, my gosh, like, How many times were there moments like that nobody else knew. But it was really hard for me to do that.

Brandon  1:16:18

Yeah, exactly. Right. Like there's there are external struggles and their internal struggles and right we, even though we don't always, like, we can't always like, empathize and kind of like, you know, put ourselves in this in the shoes of the external struggle, because, you know, we'll have an experience like that kind of stuff, right. But like, the internal struggle is like a very universal thing. Right, we all have internal struggles that we deal with, all the time, and nobody knows about them. Right? And, you know, that's highlighting that here, where the whole rest of the book is largely been about external struggles. Right? This moment, this quiet moment, just reminding everybody that there are internal struggles, also, they are can be

1:17:11

bigger,

Brandon  1:17:13

and more impactful than any external struggle that you might go

Collin  1:17:16

through. Right? This is so quiet moment in this tunnel. Right? That's it's quite profound. Little moment here, or this paragraph, right? It's very, you know, it's pretty intense. You know, so

Brandon  1:17:36

you can't also help but think about talking in a trench in the First World War. Right, like,

Collin  1:17:47

you know, waiting

Brandon  1:17:50

for something. You know, like, kind of can't help but put that spin on it to a little bit right of the author's own experiences, right. But it's a universal it could be anybody's experience.

Collin  1:18:01

Exactly.

Brandon  1:18:04

Exactly. So, yeah. There we go. Anyway, he decides to take that next step. Yep. And oh, boy. Oh, boy.

Collin  1:18:16

Boy, does he the glorious smile.

Brandon  1:18:18

Right? Yes. Now, it's interesting that we go here from this quiet moment of introspection to literally in the next coming paragraphs. This other part that I thought was really good was that to say that Bilbo is breath was taken away is no description at all. There are no words left to express his stagger moment, since men change the language, and they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful. It's a lot, right? Yeah. He's, he has no description. No way to accurately describe what he is seeing. I thought he's heard the stories. He's heard about this stuff. He's doing the same. He kind of describes the dragon a little bit, but ultimately, it is so outside of anything that he's ever seen or heard about that he has no word to describe anything. Yeah. Right. And at the same time,

Collin  1:19:27

again, this kind of a little bit of foreshadowing, but not only is he awestruck by by the dragon, also, by the board, yes. The splendor of the lust, the glory of such treasure, as had never yet come home to him. Except at this point, right. Like, to me, I was like, Okay, now there's days they're wealthy. There's a lot of golden in the mountain and then

Brandon  1:19:52

oh, yeah, right when you just heard about treasure, treasure, treasure, that's all that the doors have said. Right. Didn't really give any sort of qualified, right. But this is like a whole entire room that's piled up full of treasure with the dragon sleeping on it he was not ready for that. Right? He was probably thinking like couple of treasure chests of nice shiny things. Room. Oh, it's insane. It's just like I,

Collin  1:20:34

I don't really know how at no point like, he was just preoccupied with a lot of other things along the way, like surely at one of the songs that was alluded to in this, like, it came up. But at all those points, he was like, sick. He was missing his handkerchief. He was recovering or like fighting off spiders or like all this stuff like he was going through a lot. So it's kind of funny to me, like he gets to this point. And now like, what, I guess also, like, there's no way you could prepare for this. There's nothing that they could have told him like, even if they were like, No, you have no idea. He's like, No, he's I'm sure I have some idea. It's like no, like, this is gonna be intense.

Brandon  1:21:14

Yeah, it's crazy, right? Like it's so it's just so beyond his reasoning that he's just like, standing there. Staring mouth a gape at like, war. And, you know, he, I think too, in this next little part, right? He it kind of,

1:21:36

you know, his expectations

Brandon  1:21:39

make a little bit more sense, right? Because he was hired to burgle. Right? Yeah. So like, potentially steal the treasure back. Right? If he's standing there going, I there's no way I can burgle this. Right. So he just like grabs a cup and runs away. Right? This like is his little test run. You know, he's like, goes down there. It's just data. He has no idea what to do. It's like, oh my gosh, there really is a giant dragon. This is more treasure than I can ever imagine. I will take this cup. Let's go. I'm gonna go show everybody that it's here, I guess. And, you know, again, if his, you know, expectation was I'm going to steal the treasure away from the dragon. Yeah, well, there's no way this is happening, right? No, no, the task is now. Impossible.

Collin  1:22:32

But he takes the cup up anyway. And everyone again, yet again. Everyone's like, super excited. It's wonderful. Like the treasure is there. And then

Brandon  1:22:43

it's all dashed very quickly.

Collin  1:22:46

Right? Like when it says, says the drawers are still passing the cup from hand to hand and talking to lively of the recovery of their treasure when suddenly a bask rumbling woke in the mountain underneath as if it was an old volcano had made up its mind to start eruptions once again. i I wonder who made that possible? Who knows? Right? Then the doors forgot their joy. And their confident boasts and coward down in fright.

Brandon  1:23:15

Yeah, right. Which smog was still to be like, I also like this, right? It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your Cachola calculations if you live near him. Right?

Collin  1:23:29

I love this so much. It's

Brandon  1:23:33

because you're like, ego, right? Oh, yes.

Collin  1:23:38

There's a dragon. And ah, oh, well, okay.

Brandon  1:23:42

I mean, Bilbo brings that up. And it's brought up several times in this in the next chapter, right? They have this big plan about how to get there about what they're going to do about their route about how they're going to get inside about getting inside. They never really addressed the plan about what to do with Dragon they never they never talk about now, no. Nope. Oh, interesting. A bit of a problem, right? Like, they just sort of forget to do that. And I just

Collin  1:24:26

Yeah, and we get into this now with just these descriptions of like, these are just these are just gushing with, with meaning. And and I love almost everything. I mean, this entire book but like Tolkien really knows how to lay it on. And when he describes this next part of the dragon in the gold, it's just like, it's just dripping with with I don't know, it's just so good. It's it's dragons may not have much real use for their wealth, but they know it's To announce as a rule especially if your long possession and smog was no no no exception he had I love this part kid pass from an uneasy dream and which a warrior altogether insignificant size but provided with a bitter sort of great courage figured most unpleasantly.

Brandon  1:25:19

Oh, yeah. Again,

Collin  1:25:22

this what all is taking place and being directed or not directed in this in these elements, right, they have these larger forces possibly at play in this

Brandon  1:25:35

even in this tale. Yeah, for sure. And so, yeah, now the dragons awake. Hmm. Dang it. What do we do now? Yes. So basically, you know, it's, they're kind of at a loss, none of that kind of thing. It now though. They are like, Oh, we have some people that are just outside, still down by the river. We should probably go tell them that the dragons awake because we don't want them to be slain. Right. Bombur you know, or whatever brings us up, right, that bomber and Bofur are still down there. Which is a problem. Yes. Yep. We have two quick,

Collin  1:26:30

right. We have to, we have to do something about this. For sure. I love when he before he runs, he runs out he says to hunt the whole mountain until he had caught the thief and had torn and trampled him. What's his one thought? It just immediately shows just how how fixated he is on this and nothing's really going to stop him until he's satisfied with getting let's be let's be let's let's circle back to this is one cup. Right?

Brandon  1:26:57

Is one cup with one. Okay, just so everyone's clear on this is one. Yeah. So he he like the dragon leaves because he doesn't know about the like. Side door. Right? It mentions that he you know, had thought that he heard something up there once and he meant to like smash it and make it but he never got around to it. Right. Yeah.

Collin  1:27:21

But he's quite uncomfortable with not knowing what was up there. Yeah.

Brandon  1:27:27

And so he busts out the front door, and it's like flying around the mountain to look and so they you know, scamper inside and like close the door, but like, not all the way because they don't know if they can open it again. So they like leave open a crack so that they can get in there like put a rock in the door. They do the old put a rock in the door so it doesn't close all the way through.

Collin  1:27:51

Yeah, but then get get everybody in there. And it's it's a church. Oh, yeah. Hold it. ponies are screaming in terror. Yeah.

Brandon  1:28:04

He says our eight some horses Whoopsie daisy.

Collin  1:28:11

And they're there. They're just hiding in there as he's out. scorching the

1:28:15

mountainside.

Brandon  1:28:17

Yeah, but you know, we get some. He doesn't know who is there. He doesn't know why they've come. He just knows that there are people there. He thinks that is evil from Laketown. Right. But this, you know, again, how much does the dragon obsess over this right? Long he had hunted in vain till the dawn shield his wrath. And he went to his golden couch to sleep and to gather new strength. He would not forget or forgive the theft. Not if 1000 years turned him to smoldering stone. But he could afford to wait. What's cash? Oh, yeah, that's fun. Now there again, the doors and below are back to bickering about what to do. Right. And

Collin  1:29:19

they debated a long time on what was to be done, but could not think of any way of getting rid of getting rid of smug. Which had always been a weak point in their plans. felt inclined to point out

Brandon  1:29:32

there's never brought it up. And you know, Bilbo is like what are you guys gonna do? And they're like, I don't know Bilbo. What do you think we should do? And he gets all grumpy again as he should. Because I was not engaged to kill dragons. That is a warrior's work, but to steal treasure. made the best beginning I could. Did you expect me to trot back here with a whole horde of roar on my back? Yeah. Like what? Are you kidding? Give me. Yeah. Ah,

Collin  1:30:05

yeah. And they do go back and forth of like, yeah. What do you want to do? I don't know. What do you want to do a for work for a while, right? Yeah, but they wait. Again. Yep. Oh, can we get another? Another? I want to book I don't know, I'm not sure if this exists, but like, I just did a book of all of billows dad sayings. Because Because we get another one drop here where he says every worm has his weak spot. And if I don't Yeah, right. No. Of course it's a worm, right? The guy? What? Anyway

Brandon  1:30:54

But now he decides, you know, it sort of decided that the best thing we can do is I'll go back down there and check out and see what's going on.

1:31:05

Right.

Brandon  1:31:09

Okay, so after he says that he's they go down there he goes down there again. Oh, have you

Collin  1:31:17

known more about dragons and their wily ways? He might have been more frightened and less hopeful of catching this one napping. Yeah.

Brandon  1:31:23

They they wait upstairs again for a long, undetermined amount of time. And they're like, Well, maybe he'll be back asleep. And I can go down there and, you know, look a bit more, you know, check it out. But although Smaug certainly looked

1:31:43

fast asleep, was only pretending

Collin  1:31:48

he had forgotten or had never heard about dragons sense of smell. Yes. It's also an awkward fact that they can keep half an eye open while they sleep. If they are suspicious

Brandon  1:31:58

actors, you know, an interesting trait to have it just

Collin  1:32:02

again, it's an awkward fact.

Brandon  1:32:07

Oh, yes, yes, indeed. So he is invisible during this time. You know, he puts his ring on to do this, but small can in fact, smell him. So Bilbo starts using his only defense he has his honeyed words sort of placate the dragon, right? He sort of plays up his smug splendor, right? And then he starts like, being very coy with the own answers to his question. Right. But I like that, like, you know, he's telling him, he's giving him titles like, Oh, I am, you know, I come from over hill and under Hill and, you know, I am the, you know, the famous the barrel writer, right, I love that one. But I like this is of course, the way to talk to Dragon if you don't want to reveal your proper name, which is wise, when don't want to infuriate them by flat refusal, which is also very no dragon can resist the fascination of riddling talk, and of wasting time trying to understand it, right. So they'll build those guys practice kind of being coy and readily with the old Gollum in the cave, right. And so he's being all Oh, yes, maybe I can. I mean, he's got he has to talk his way out of this. He's not going to fight a dragon. So this is his only recourse really, is to use his brain and his words to sort of get out of this situation if he can't. You know, and he's trying to not answer questions and smiles. I like you in the dwarves and build this like wars. Or no, no, no, what

Collin  1:33:56

you're talking about?

1:33:57

Yeah. It's mild knows

Brandon  1:34:02

the smell and taste of dwarves better than anyone else, apparently. And so sure, but, but again, now. Right, we are exposed to some drag in treachery as well, because now he starts throwing his own defensive tactics at Bilbo, which is to plant doubt in his mind, right? Oh, I suppose the air is soaking outside and your job is to do all the dangerous work and get what you can when I'm not looking for them. And will you get a fair share? Don't you believe it? If you get off alive, you will be lucky. Now Bilbo starts thinking like this discourse goes on and he starts questioning like, oh, yeah, I'm supposed to get to share the treasure. How am I gonna get home? You know, there's all these logistical problems that he's never thought about before and now he's like oh, so smug is planting doubt in his mind about the sincerity of dwarves, right? Yeah. And all that so negative a psychological battle

Collin  1:35:13

of a man's the dragon. And there's also other trickery at play here. It's talking about when smug, roving eye seeking for him in the shadows, which is again some other interesting connection to another roving eye in later books. Catcher makes you want to do certain things anyway, he wants to brush out and reveal himself in the books as in fact, he was in grievous danger of coming under the dragon spell. Right. And but he plucks up his courage and he continues.

1:35:44

I think that's a bit of the ring

Brandon  1:35:47

responding to the dragon as well, right? Because the ring wants to be found. So I've been told, yeah. But yeah, now he's, he's got all this doubt, right. He's got all this doubt. And all this stuff. And

1:36:05

he's just very confused.

Brandon  1:36:08

Now. Now. He's like, Ah, now a nasty suspicion began to grow in his mind. Had the dwarves forgotten this important point to or were they laughing in their sleeves at him all the time? Right. But he changes tact, right? He changes tact. He's like, Okay, fine. I'm gonna I'm not gonna think about that. Right. And I'm not going to dwell on that. Boom. We're not here to steal your treasure. They're here for Dan. Revenge, right? Which small thinks is hilarious, right? He's like, Yeah. Oh, he thinks that's so funny. Right. Now, Bilbo is trying to be sneaky again. He's, he's all like, you know? The smartest gloating like you know, when I was little? You know, maybe I was a little scared. But now I am old and strong. My armor is like 10 fold shields. My teeth are swerves. My claws spears, the chakra by Taylor Thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane in my breath. Death. Right. And to Bilbo responds. That's cool. I heard that. Dragon's bellies though were in like, you know, not as fortified as all that. So smug being the prideful dragon that he is right? says Your information is antiquated. And he sort of rolls over and exposes it is stomach to Bilbo which is a weird

1:37:50

visual, but

Brandon  1:37:53

what's happened here is small has laid on these like gemstones and stuff so much that they have embedded into his scales on his stomach and basically fortified

Collin  1:38:04

his his his underbelly. Right.

Brandon  1:38:11

You know, and he sees that build was like, Oh, yes. Oh, how can I know but but, but this is 100% not 100% True. Because he does a spy at least one area that is vacant of all defense. That won't be important later. No, everything.

Collin  1:38:39

No, it's everything will be okay.

Brandon  1:38:42

Yeah, it's fine. And so Bilbo leaves again, although he does make a really smart aleck remark to the dragon that shoots fire at him on his way

1:38:56

Yeah,

Brandon  1:38:57

I probably should the dead that that was not a great decision.

Collin  1:39:01

Tony's take some catching I believe after a while after a long start. And so do burglars Yeah, it was an unfortunate remark.

Brandon  1:39:11

Good job

Collin  1:39:12

Bilbo. Right. So

Brandon  1:39:17

now we are back in the same situation. We're talking to the dwarves about this stuff, but he does say he tells them about this weak spots which they are very intrigued to hear about right? Ah, then they their Talk turns to dragon slaying right. Historical, dubious and mythical and all the various sorts of stabs and jabs and undercuts in the different arts and devices in stratagems by which they had been accomplished. More on that a little bit later, but now though, so we're all here talking and stuff. And we're Is this where Ah, yes. So we he brings up his doubts that the dragon planted in his mind. Right. And you know, thorns like, oh, yeah, you know, we you're right, we didn't really think about that. But, you know, we'll, you know, we'll do whatever we can to make sure that you know, we're not trying to trick you or anything, just some oversight, you know, just some oversight. Oh, law. So, so that's kind of put at ease for now. Bye, but they start thinking about the treasure and they start kind of thinking about this stuff. And then now Thorin starts to fixate a little bit, or we get our first sign. I don't know what's going on here, right? Because now the doors are all talking about the treasurer and talking about all the stuff that's in there and, you know, the hammer and some necklaces and shields and all kinds of stuff. And Thorin starts muttering

Collin  1:41:13

about the Arkenstone Yes.

Brandon  1:41:19

We get our first little taste of, of He's like, he's like a little bit weird here. You know what I mean?

Collin  1:41:29

But fixated

Brandon  1:41:30

is fixated. Yeah. Although they do have to cut that short because Oh, yeah. Bilbo is like, Guys, we, we, you know, he gets this like really bad feeling. And he's like, let me shut the door. We need to come inside. And it's a good thing they did because the dragon is once again flying around the mountain outside. And he is like, right, as they shut the door and run down the hallway. They hear the sounds of something smashing into the mountain outside, which would be smog theory, once again. He's looking for how they got in right. And so he broke is is looking for all that he's looking for them. But he's out.

Collin  1:42:27

flying around. Now, I like we are yet again. Again, big moments, little details. In the midst of the complete destruction of the mountainside, the splintering of rock and stone. We are specifically told to their little lofty camping ground, the Scorch grass, the thrushes stone, the snail covered walls, the narrow ledge, all disappeared had a jumble of smithereens, which is interesting, because like, it's like, of all the destruction we're going to specifically fixate on the snail covered walls that that was that was what was you know, that was all destroyed.

Brandon  1:43:09

Yeah. With the they, you know, that's where the thrush was. We're eating their snails. That's fine. Yeah, now they are trapped inside. They have no door. Because smoke broke it.

1:43:26

And again,

Brandon  1:43:29

now they don't know what to do. In the meantime, the door have sat in the darkness and utter silence fell about them. And we're in here. Hanging out. Yep.

Collin  1:43:40

And smug is making a trip down to to the lake. Yeah, but we don't know about that yet. Oh, no. Yes, we

Brandon  1:43:48

do at the end of the chapter or the end of the chapter. Yeah. But yes. The end of the chapter basically tells us if you're wondering where smog was. You'll find out next chapter.

Collin  1:43:59

He's at least he's at least headed there. We know that we know that point. But yes,

Brandon  1:44:03

yeah. He's he's out flying around. And so that leaves them in the mountain alone, although they don't really know that for a while. Right. Oh, they're kind of confused. They're like, let's go down again. Bill was like,

Collin  1:44:15

I don't want to go down there again. I'm running twice.

Brandon  1:44:19

But he's like, Okay, fine. Let's all go. So, right, which is where we learn that it's good to build one by himself the first time right? Because the doors could not of course compare with the hobbit in real stealth and they made a great deal of puffing and shuffling with the echoes magnified alarmingly. But they do make it all the way to the bottom where Bilbo sort of like in testing whether or not the dragon is there, he decides to yell insults at smile, which is a plan because, you know, I don't really know what believes that was going to happen if Dragon was calm like I did.

Collin  1:45:06

Yeah, he can't get out. I don't know. So yeah, he already had a claim shot up in that one. So

Brandon  1:45:11

I don't know. Yeah, so he says Go Go get the we need some light to get some light and we can look around here so send some of the doors to get their Tinder boxes. It makes a little torches and they start exploring the halls the dwarf halls, right. And so you know, they just kind of go on around and elbows, you know, they kind of all go on their own little directions kind of looking off Bilbo starts heading across the floor, looking around for stuff, right?

1:45:44

Oh, I love this. Well,

Collin  1:45:45

this is partly this is where we're Bilbo has the light. And it says as Thor and carefully explained to Mr. Baggins was still officially their expert burglar an investigator. If he liked to risk a light that was his affair, they would wait in the tunnel. But do Go away, go off.

Brandon  1:46:03

They haven't gone out yet. But Bilbo he just goes straight across. He's going across the middle because he's looking for other doors and stuff on the other side. But as he is climbing across this mountain of treasure, ah he stood upon the top and still went on then they saw him halt and stupid for a moment. But they did not know the reason. Why was

Collin  1:46:34

this for a very interesting reason? I would say

Brandon  1:46:38

yes. So Bella finds the Arkenstone somehow is laying in this pile right? So below guests from thorns description, but indeed there could not be to such gyms wandering is so marvelous. A horde in all the world is very excellent description here, right. He's very taken aback by this. He's just sort of like gazing at it. Right? He's very, it's it's very taken aback. And he's just, you know, suddenly Bobo's arm went towards it drawn by its enchantment. So he's almost like, absent mindedly just grabbing it, right. But it's interesting, his response to this right? He says, I suppose I must tell the dwarves about it. Sometime I'm talking some time, right? Like, he's almost weary of this thing. Like now? Right? He's like, Yeah, I'm just gonna hold on to this for a little bit.

Collin  1:47:41

And he's, he's rationalizing this stuff, right? He's brash, he's doing it. They did say I could, I could pick anything, right? They'd say, I can pick my own share. So like, you know, like this. This is my share, like, that's fine. But he had an uncomfortable feeling all the same. Yeah, he wasn't

Brandon  1:47:59

really just pleased about this thing, either. So he keeps gone. He's looking and he finds another door, and he's gonna peek about and see what goes in. And he gets scared by a bad drug. It's really funny. A search shouting, right. But he starts crying out to the dwarves and they have to come rescue him. Which is funny, they bring more light now they're all sort of gathering around and looking around and and

Collin  1:48:35

I just love I'm sorry. Like, how this is described? Where it goes. They waited for a moment or two. And still there were no dragon sounds. And I just yeah. What? What exactly, were we okay, sure, fine. It's, this is where like, this is genuinely like,

Brandon  1:48:55

there is a getting back to

Collin  1:48:58

Bilbo writing this, there is an air of humor to this, as only somebody could retell, after having gone through a very traumatic time, right. Like, this is the retelling with a bit of a humor of something that was immensely stressful, highly dangerous, and he survived. So of course, there's going to be bits of things that were funny and how he

Brandon  1:49:18

paints the dwarves in these moments. Exactly. Right. And so, you know, now that there's satisfied that there is in fact, no dragon at home, they become emboldened and they start sort of like, exploring about and they they start, you know, grabbing some of this treasure and stuffed in their pockets. Yep. As there was going on. Yeah. Right. You know, they were looking all kinds of stuff. They were like, finding stuff and playing the harps on the wall right like that. But Thorin was searching for Something that he couldn't quite find. But he spoke of it yet to no one. No, no, he's

1:50:08

troubled by this though.

Brandon  1:50:09

He is troubled, right is this he's not being very thorny currently. Although they did find the armory, which that's a good place to start, right. It's very nice. They found weapons and armor stashed away. And they give Bilbo some of his very own armor, right?

Collin  1:50:31

Yeah, that will play into anything. No, nothing ever again.

Brandon  1:50:36

You'll never see this code of me throw

Collin  1:50:39

of what we don't know. We don't know.

Brandon  1:50:41

He says. He says you're here. It was a steal. Oh yes, it's silver to steal which the elves called mithril and it went with a belt of pearls and crystals, and a light Helm of figured leather strengthened beneath with hoops of steel. Instead of about the brim with white Jim's was set upon the hobbits head. So this image look it's just sounds hilarious, right? Like, like this really shiny, like regal armor placed on Bilbo the jello, weary of it. He's like he even remarks on this, I feel magnificently thought, but I expect I look rather absurd.

1:51:26

Yes, which, which I'm sure he did.

Brandon  1:51:33

All the same, though. Mr. Baggins kept his head more clear of the bewitchment of the Horde than the dwarves did. Oh, what's that mean? That can't be a good sign right. Now their thoughts turned to what they should do next. Their treasure is not one back yet. They're trying to figure out a way to get out of here. Right? So they start looking for the door? Because they can't do anything. If they're still stuck in a mountain. And as of yet, they have not found the front door. No, no, they have they're just kind of wandering. That's for sure. But, but Thorin is like okay, recovering his wits.

1:52:20

Hmm. Interesting.

Brandon  1:52:24

He knows where he is, right? He's got his bearings. Now. He's in the main hallway. He's seen this stuff. He knows where he is. So he says, I know where to go. Not in 1000 years. Could I forget this place? Let's go follow me. Yeah. And so they do. They make their way they sort of the rest of this is like describing a little bit about the place it how interesting and weird isn't there but they make it to the door. Right? I've never expected to be looking at it. This door is what it was. And I never thought I'd be so pleased to see the sun again and feel the wind on my face. And then because Bilbo is a hobbit he realizes that he's a bit hungry.

Collin  1:53:09

We come back around.

Brandon  1:53:11

Yeah, we do. We do realize we've been in here for two days, basically. Right? Because he's like, I don't know. He's like, I've missed breakfast today. And who knows how many others? How many others? Yeah, again. Like I really feel that

Collin  1:53:33

yeah, again, relating back to who knows how long this has been like who's we're all like, really? It's all unsure at this point. But yes, he's he's been hungry. True. So they tell him they tell him Okay, great. I know you're hungry. We need to really go marching to a new location.

Brandon  1:53:51

Yeah, it's gonna be several hours walking so let's go buddy boy. Right. And they do they walk up to their head into a guard tower right on the mountain. That's where they're they're headed to because they did see a little bit of a little bit away from the thing right. And they're they're hoping to kind of regroup in that spot and kind of come up with the next step of their plan. So that's where they had they had up the mountain up to where Dale was up to a an old guard tower up to the Raven Hill. Yes. So that's where they go they head up there and that's kind of where we stopped they get there and they are discussing the plan that's where they are there was no sign of the Dragon but that was

1:54:44

not yet anyway.

Brandon  1:54:48

That's where they are they found a little spot up on the mountain in the guard tower. They got a room big room back in there kind of tucked away hidden the safe for now hopefully I And that's where they are regrouping to see what happens next

1:55:08

couple of weeks

Collin  1:55:10

and we end on it so many mysteries, right? There's a lot of unknowns, these these little things like, what's it say? The south, there was no sight of a dragon. But there was a gathering of very many birds. Right. And at that they gazed and wondered, but no nearer to understanding it, right?

Brandon  1:55:27

Mm hmm. Yes, so we still have a great many never really solved any of our problems yet. You know, we'll have to see what happens here. But that's where we are great many unknowns, but at least we're still though is in a slightly less precarious place than he was before. Right. Now anyway. So we've regrouped. We've seen the treasure, we know the dragon is real, we still have to solve the problem of how are we can kill a dragon? The one part of the plan that nobody's remembered to think about until now? No, no, no, which, again, is a bit of an oversight. Right? Fair enough. All the planning be like a little bit more attention should have been paid to

Collin  1:56:30

that part. But you know,

Brandon  1:56:39

that bill does not build those area of expertise, right. So we'll see how it goes.

Collin  1:56:47

And just foreshadowing here. Again, we just went through a very, very, very personal, intimate, quiet moment, in the tunnel. Things get real big, real fast, very complicated, like at the end of this book just really does take off like a rocket from this point. Like, it's, like, amazing. As, as many of these things do, when all of a sudden, like, I just want to do this thing. And now there's like seven people over here doing this thing. And I did well, how did this get to this? This is really big. And I know,

1:57:17

it's very, it just

Collin  1:57:20

the contrast between those two, what we're about to go into is? Is it fascinating. I mean, yeah, we've

Brandon  1:57:25

been getting foreshadowing the whole book about, like, big things to come. Right. And we're running out of books. You know, so like, there's not a whole lot of time for those things to happen. So, yeah, the end of the book hots up real quick, because there is a lot to do. And there's a lot of things that have been alluded to this whole time. You know, a lot of a lot of things that have been alluded to and foreshadowed haven't haven't started to

Collin  1:57:59

think we spent two chapters like admiring Bay orange bees.

1:58:03

Yeah. Right. Like,

Brandon  1:58:06

the pacing is a bit wonky. Right. But again, I think that comes back to who is the narrator of this book? Right? Some of that? Oh, for sure. A little bit of sense, right? Because like, you know, we kind of skipped over like watering in a forest because that's like, a forest. But like the bees though, right. And yeah, I read a lot about I bought, I'd read a lot about getting my breakfast brought to me by a sheep, right, pretty well. And I think, a different experience,

Collin  1:58:34

that the details that were that were luxuriating on here, I think also to show you that personal narrative of like, that took a lot of time for him. Yeah, that that took that was date, that's it spent like ages, because now like all concept of time is lost, and things get out of hand. So quickly. In the back and the back half of the book. There's just so much and there's a lot of stuff that like, he's not privy to or like, again, it feels it does just feel so out of control from that personal lab.

Brandon  1:59:07

That's a good point. That's a good way to think about it, right? There's a lot going on outside of him, where up to now it's been relatively everybody, all together, all experiencing the same things. Right. And so like, Bill, those experiences are broadly similar to the dwarves, right? Even though he's like more enamored with like, you know, Beyonce house. What you know, then again, Bilbo likes his house, right, and it makes him homesick. And so he's thinking about being at home and he's in this other home, which is like, so familiar and yet, too weird at the same time. Yeah. Yeah, at the end. I mean, we'll find out. There's the crazy amount of things that happen here. It's just a few more chapters Yeah.

Collin  2:00:06

No good, good stuff. I'm very excited about this. Yes. Okay. Well, very good. Excited to cover these last one. How many how many? How much more do we have?

Brandon  2:00:21

That's what I was just looking at. I was looking through my table of contents here.

Collin  2:00:24

Chapter 14

Brandon  2:00:29

Were you 14? Five? Yeah, yeah, we're at five. Well, we

Collin  2:00:33

have to cover fire and water. So there's six including fire and water. Okay, okay. There's there's, there's yeah, there's 19 chapter. So

Brandon  2:00:39

yes, so the next one will be Yeah, those two those two those two boom okay that three more weeks

Collin  2:00:49

because it's six more chapters and when do you when do you as far as your timeline like when do you start like school and stuff? Is that coming up roll really fast cuz I know you're weeks kind of get insane then.

Brandon  2:01:05

Yeah, but I'll have time to read that's

Collin  2:01:09

totally fine. Okay, that's perfect. We will we will go deal with some fire and water it seems that a cool band

Brandon  2:01:23

winded fire though.

Collin  2:01:24

I know. Exactly. I said it's definitely said it's not a cool being.

Brandon  2:01:30

You know, token has expired a lot of musicians. So maybe maybe there is a band out there called fired water and we don't know about

Collin  2:01:44

hey, and with that bombshell and mystery that we can there's no possible way of knowing now. We'll call it a night. Love you