The Olivet Discourse in Mark's Gospel

I'm studying Mark's Gospel right now, copying out a chapter a day by hand. Tonight was Chapter 13, Mark's telling of the Olivet Discourse in which Jesus predicts the destruction of the Temple and the "end of the age."

I find it so incredibly obvious that this passage is not in any way about the physical return of Jesus at the end of time. It baffles me that anyone would take it that way. The Lord repeatedly refers to "you," plural, meaning His apostles who just asked Him about the destruction of the Temple, and caps it off with "this generation shall by no means pass away until all these things take place." Now, you have to make that phrase jump through a lot of hoops to make that mean something other than "y'all standing around Me here." And a lot of people do, because they are confused by the particular kind of language Jesus uses (straight out of the Old Testament, BTW). By doing so they forget that when Scripture addresses a particular group of people, say, the Corinthians, or the Exiles, or the Church at Laodicea, or in this case, Peter, James, John and Andrew, the first application of the Word is to them, and then from that application we may extrapolate what is meant for us to keep and to learn.