I'm back.

I had originally read my ticket as being for January 6, but it was actually for the 7th. So I was at my parents' a day longer than anticipated.

Break was quiet. But sometimes, quiet is good. There was no bad news to deal with, unlike last year - no unexpected death, no health issues.

I got to go shopping at a Coldwater Creek shop for the first time - I had got the catalog for years and never actually ordered other than accessories from it, but I'm impressed enough with the quality of the clothes having seen them "in person" that I'd order from the catalog in the future.

I also had my first bubble tea. A bubble tea (and other specialty beverages) shop opened in a new little apartment complex/shopping area near campus up there. It was good, but I'm not really heartbroken that there's not one here. It would be NICE, but there are other things I'd rather have close by.

I spent a lot of time just doing "stuff." I went to my mom's midweek quilting group with her. I baked cookies. I watched a lot of Food TV (I have become quite fond of Paula Deen's show, even if it's unlikely I'd fix any of the recipes. I used to be a big fan of Rachael Ray, but lately her voice and laugh get on my nerves; Paula Deen is more like a good-natured aunt or neighbor lady whereas Rachael Ray strikes me as that popular girl who is also pretty and a good student...). I laughed with my brother and sister-in-law. Simple stuff but good.

I finished the Fibonacci sweater, and the long-term many-stitches-on-small-needles purple striped socks. And I finished the first of the aran braid socks and got the heel turned on the second. Pictures will come later when my camera has charged back up.

A lot of the knitting was done while watching the forementioned Food Network, but I also got to see several good movies on TCM, a channel my folks get but I currently do not. (Although I am seriously considering looking in to "upgrading" to the digital cable package largely so I can get that particular channel). Got to see "Rear Window" all the way through for the first time. Incredible movie, but then I love Jimmy Stewart in just about anything, and I enjoy most Hitchcock. I also saw a couple lesser-known, British movies: A Night To Remember, which is a very documentary-like look at the Titanic disaster (with a very young David McCallum in a minor role). Good movie, very suspenseful, well made, no goofy romance story tacked on (Yes, I did NOT like the '97 version of "Titanic"). Found myself getting angry at the ship (Not the Carpathia but the small steam ship) that kept ignoring the distress calls and flares, which for me is a mark of a well-made movie - if it can make me sad or angry about a situation even though I know it's a movie I'm watching.

I will have to check out Eric Ambler - he wrote the book on which the movie is based.

I also saw a movie - it was a very early Robert Mongomery movie, he played an Irish-ish servant-type who was rotten all the way through. There it is:
"Night Must Fall." It was a suspense movie, very much in the Agatha Christie vein, I thought (although there was no detective). It also originated as a stage play and the movie was very "stagey," if you know what I mean - like you could see how it could be carried out on a simple set with a few scene changes. It was pretty fascinating, also, in that it was (apparently) a British-made movie, and it dated from 1937. It's interesting to see how different movies are from now and from in the past.

I think, by and large, movies from the past are less "cynical." Look at "It's a Wonderful Life" - could that be made today, other than as a syrupy, overdone, made-for-PAX-or-Lifetime-tv type of movie? But when I watched it this year - I had seen bits and pieces of it, even seen bits and pieces in Spanish on one of the Spanish-language channels - but had not seen it in its entirety, I found it quite moving - and really, the major underlying assumption the movie makes is that people are basically good and decent, and will help others in distress. I wonder if that sentiment is still as prevalent today? (I know, I know, some people want the final scene to be all the people that George Bailey helped going out and kicking the tar out of Mr. Potter, but really, would that solve anything?)

I miss having the chance to watch old movies. And renting isn't the same - I like the serendipity of finding something on, thinking "I'll give this fifteen minutes to see if it interests me" and then finding a neat movie I'd not have seen otherwise. I really should look in to (a) how expensive and (b) if my little old television would need an upgrade to get the digital cable. (I think I would also get some other good stuff like BBC America and the various Discovery multiplexed stations [a side note: I do not like it when a cable station "multiplexes" itself into several different special-interest channels, because my el-cheap-o cable service usually only carries the original channel, and usually all the "good stuff" gets moved to the 'plexed channels]).

So all in all, it was a good break.
Actually, the most difficult part of the trip came at the return - I wound up for the first time with a bad dinner companion on the train. The only way I can describe this man is as a boor. It was him, another young woman, and me. He wouldn't let us get a word in, hardly, and even when we began to converse about things he had to loudly inject his opinions on topics tangential to what we were discussing (for example: the young woman and I were talking about jobs and how important non-salary items are, and I mentioned that I was happy with my health coverage, which started him on a rant about how bad the health insurance system was in this country and how much better it would be if we followed any of several other country's plans. Be that as it may - and I really don't know enough about the pluses and minuses of them to comment - it WAS NOT THE TOPIC OF THE CONVERSATION. I almost leaned over to the guy and said, "Dude. Let me be happy with my life, okay?"). He also insulted Christians after learning that she was Catholic and I was (at that point unspecified) Protestant. He said it was a "hypocritical religion" (please, sir, do not confuse some of the practitioners with the belief system itself) and said he didn't like religions that played "my god is better than your god" (granted, some people who call themselves Christians do, but not everyone). He then went on to espouse his particular (adopted as an adult) belief system, and said he thought it was *better* than all the others because it was "more universal."

Um, yeah. You don't like it when others do it but you feel free to.

It takes a lot to get me to enter into that kind of a fray, but I quietly responded that all I asked was to be allowed to follow my particular faith with the freedom AND RESPECT that I granted others who followed theirs - or who followed one not at all.

He didn't really have a response to that. But am I wrong to be flabbergasted that a total stranger would take it upon himself to say unpleasant and, at least in many instances, untrue things about a deeply-held and important belief system of a person?

I am sure he must have had bad experiences with the religion in his past. But that is not true of all. When I was a kid - from childhood up to high school - I was desperately unpopular, totally an outcast in my peer group. And the congregation my family belonged to at the time was the ONE other place, outside my family, where I was treated with kindness and respect. (And I always thought: my family loves me because they HAVE to; these folks don't HAVE to but they love me any way). And so, I still remember being loved by people at a time when I felt totally unlovable, and it hurts me to see people run Christianity - and, by extension, the people who made me begin to feel that I was a worthwhile human being - down as "hypocrites" or worse. I realize people are entitled to their opinions, but I'm entitled to mine, too.

Am I just too bland and nice, with my usual Opening a Conversation with a Stranger gambits of "What do you do for a living?" "What do you like about it?" or "Tell me about the place where you live/grew up?" or discussion of the weather?

I found him an extremely upsetting person - not just because of the whole religion debate, but also because he talked fast and loud and never paused to let us respond unless we actually interrupted. And he had opinions on EVERYTHING, many of them things that my understanding was you didn't really discuss in company where you didn't know people well.

It actually worried me enough that evening that it took me a while to fall asleep, thinking that I might wind up eating breakfast with him and if he had thought up some other ammunition to respond to my gentle plea for tolerance of my beliefs, too. I figured the only thing I could do was bring my book and say to him that I never felt like talking in the morning, and proceed to bury my nose in it. (And let him tell me I was rude). But fortunately, I wound up eating with a jovial Postal Service employee and a quiet, weedy young man that I gathered was a college student. Didn't even see the guy again, and although I wish that he finds some peace in his life (he seemed a very angry person to me), I do hope I don't encounter him again.

Sorry. End of rant. It's just, I so rarely encounter a person that so rubs me the wrong way that it's very unsettling when I do.