Not a good news story to start out the week.This was the first weekend in a while that actually felt like a weekend. I didn't sleep in too late - but I could have. My body's on a better sleep cycle now that I've been forcing myself to get up by 8:00am every morning; I'm able to actually get to sleep before midnight these days. It will make for a much easier transition once I start the regular workday schedule again. But for two days I didn't force myself into the routine to which I've become accustomed, so Saturday and Sunday seemed like they actually meant something. Plus Jen was home, so there was actually someone to talk to besides Sunny Dawg. But there wasn't much more exciting going on than running errands: to the market for groceries, to the library for books, to the pet store for dog food. I found a store that sells all sorts of outdoor bird accessories - feeders, houses, bird baths, etc.
Friday night we watched
Touch of Evil. I'd forgotten how goddamned cool that movie is. Say what you want about
Citizen Kane being Orson Welles' masterpiece - and you're probably right - but I'd rather watch Touch of Evil any day. The way he uses the camera to tell the story is perfect in this film - off-kilter angles, high or low perspectives, interplay of light and shadow. Best of all was the wide-angle lens that simultaneously distorts and keeps everything in perfect focus. It's the all-seeing eye, in a movie primarily about deception. Beautiful.
Saturday night was, shall we say, more low-brow. We watched Part VII of the Friday the 13th series. Bad, predictable, unimaginative - pick any adjective used to describe a movie you hate, and it probably applies here. I know, I know, I should give it up now - why torture myself, right? I don't have an answer, but I know this: only three more of them to go.
Sunday I spent reading. So much, in fact, that I began and finished a book in the same day, something rare for me. It was The
Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, and was about a group of friends who are seniors at Princeton working on their senior theses and trying to figure out what to do with the rest of their lives. The book gets lumped in with Dan Brown type fiction, because the catalyst for action is the study of a real book called the
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, written in the late 1400's by an anonymous author. In the novel, the study of this book reveals hidden riddles and codes that those who are studying it try to solve. But that's not what the book is
about. It's about friendship, dealing with loss, obsession. That's not to say there isn't any sleuthing or intrigue involved, but that's not the story's primary focus.
I also finished reading
When Jesus Became God, an account of the events of the 4th Century BC in which Christianity won official status via Constantine, but competing theological doctrines divided the Christian community. The author hurls lots of dates and names at the reader, but with enough of a storyteller's flair that it becomes an interesting drama. It covers the Council of Nicea & the development of the Nicene Creed, many other church councils and creeds, and the battle over the definition of the relationship between Jesus and God. Ultimately the position of the Arians, who claimed that Jesus was the Son of God, but not God Himself, was declared heretical and the idea of the Holy Trinity emerged. It was interesting to see both sides of the debate engage in the same type of character assassination and political wrangling that is familiar these days as well. Also interesting is to try to understand how and why some of the early interpretations of Christianity became heretical, and others became Church dogma.
I imagine it's still too early in the year to wish for this cold and rainy weather to go away. For the shortest month of the year, February sure does drag on. Hopefully today I'll hear back about 2nd interviews for the jobs leads that developed last week.
