Whew... It is over. That old saying "the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. We planned a 9:00AM start for a 9:30PM finish, well, at 11:25PM the last of the trilogy was complete. The movies themselves went smoothly, but it just took a LOT longer... We didn't get started until 9:30AM, and the guys wanted to get a quick sound demo before we started, so I popped in a demo dvd and played this 8 minute THX "WOW Demo" for them. Then we started the first of the trilogy at 9:40AM. Our plans were to stop between each movie in the trilogy, but the extended editions have the movie on 2 DVDs (plus 2 more with extras each) and we ended up taking a break after each DVD. That meant 5 breaks instead of 2. We played pinball, my arcade, a little air hockey, plus shot a paintball gun in the backyard (one of the guys brought his $750 hopped up paintball gun). Add in time to cook pizzas, buffalo wings, popcorn, etc, and it was easy to see how it could take so long.
In the end it was worth it. I feel exhausted though. I had never seen the extended edition of Return of the King even though I got it for Christmas last year. I didn't want to see it until I had my projector up and going, plus my Axiom speakers. I had to also get the basement done enough to have guest over, then came the hard time of scheduling it with everyone. The system has been ready for months, but getting people available on the same day couldn't happen until today. Anyway, the build up was eating away at me. I had a hard time sleeping last night, and as many of you know, the story of the Lord of the Rings is very good, and very involving. When it was over it was like being at the finish line of a long race. Not physically tiring as in aching muscles, but tiring none-the-less.
During the movies, I kept hearing people say, "Wow. Why would you ever go to a movie theater again?" and "This sounds awesome!" and so forth.
Congratulations and thank you to Axiom, SVS, Sanyo, Pioneer, Panasonic, Carada, and Blue Jeans Cables for making this type of experience possible for an average joe like me.
Oh, and thank you to my wife for letting me do it.
