• Music: watching Pirates 3

More stuff from vacation

Le'see, I forgot to mention in my last post that from Chicago to Manchester I had the funniest flight crew that I'd had from Southwest yet. There were a whole lot of jokes and one of them even sang a song at the end that was a parody of Auld Lang Syne. It was something like "Should other airlines be forgot and never brought to mind/ Remember Southwest got you here and got you here on... er, got you here just fine..."

And in Ratatouille I also thought it was interesting how they made it very clear that the Gusteau with whom Remy was interacting was a figment of his imagination and not a ghost. On the one hand that can be seen as an atheist kind of message, quashing anything metaphysical, but on the other hand it's a good example of how one can use an imaginary friend to explore one's own psyche.

Speaking of movies with the (damn, Semagic spell check doesn't let me write t e h) eval atheist agenda, I went and saw The Golden Compass last night with my parents. The animation was beautiful, and I would recommend it just for that. I could tell that it was a bit rushed to squeeze the whole book into a movie, and that just made me want to read the books to get a better sense of what was going on and a more detailed description of the characters and concepts. My mom's commentary after the movie was something along the lines of "But God gave us free will! Free choice is not an atheist message!" Yeah, all I have to say about that is that it is ironic that lots of churches are telling their members not to see a movie about free thinking.

We also went out and did a lot of shopping yesterday. I got a vest at KTP that should cut the wind a bit on my trike. I also liked the Vera Bradley wallet that my mom has, and so I got a really pretty one in teal with muted green and brown. Maybe it looks like an old lady wallet but I love the colors and it closes up the way I like and has an attached change purse. We met up with albatrosswoman at the yarn shop in Portsmouth, and found some cotton yarn for her baby hat commission. It is very bright orange, so I'm glad she was along because I probably would have picked out pastels myself. Cotton is turning out to be a lot less difficult to knit with than I had been led to believe. We tried to find interchangeable circular needles with long flexible cables, but failed, so we got some double pointed size 6 for the hat, and this morning I ordered online from KnitPicks what I wanted. I'm hoping I get it in time to have a knitting project to keep me sane on the flight, as the hat is coming along quickly:

	Baby hat earflaps
	It snowed last night. This is a big part of why I miss New England so much. I love the look of new snow on the trees.
	Here's the dragon that Alli made for me.
	And the dragoness tries out her new tripod. I think that facial expression is "too much holiday dessert." I don't have a double chin in real life, I swear.