Last week, Elizabeth and I bought pumpkins at the corn maze in Fremont. Yesterday, we carved them. I decided on a simple jolly roger design. But Elizabeth went crazy and wanted to carve all the Elvish letters from the One Ring into her pumpkin. (This is the One Ring The Lord of the Rings, by the way.) According to Gandalf, the letters written on the outside of the One Ring are in the Elvish alphabet, but the language of Mordor ("Which I will not repeat here," he says). Translated into the Common Tongue (i.e., English) this is what the inscription reads on the One Ring:

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

Well, all of this won't fit on a pumpkin. So, Elizabeth settled on the first phrase: "One Ring to rule them all." Halfway through the carving, I suggested that we should have looked up how to write "pumpkin" in Elvish, so that it would read "One Pumpkin to rule them all." But, she was halfway through carving her pumpkin, and besides, we may be giant dorks, but we're not that giant of dorks. It took Elizabeth about four hours, using a pen-knife, to carve out the letters.

Pictures of pumpkins

The Jolly Roger
The One Pumpkin
Both pumpkins together

Man, I love Halloween!