Mom and Pop were here this past weekend, arriving late Friday night and staying through until this morning when they left right after I did for work. I didn't envy them the 7 hour drive back to Georgia, but then I had to work today, while madre mia got President's Day off.

Monday's day at the office started no differently than it usually does, but I had a slightly different answer for my colleagues and their common day-after-Sunday question, i.e. "How was your weekend?" Honestly, despite the nascent head cold and sore throat, my (unsung) antiphon was this: The two days I had off from work and spent with my folks were a weeklong vacation from which I didn't want to return.

It just strikes me as odd how our perception of time's passing varies so much. We didn't really do that much over the two and half days we had together other than converse, watch a couple of movies, and eat, but all of that "took its time", culminating in a conspicuously relaxing weekend. Apparently time doesn't have to fly when you're having fun.

While more than half our time was spent in conversation, we got a fair amount of movie watching in as well. Yesterday after Steffi left for her third on-campus interview, the three "bloods" sat down and watched two of the Focus Features films, Lost in Translation and Swimming Pool, that Steffi and I have in our colleciton.

I doubt SP had the same impact on my folks as it always does on me, but I enjoyed seeing its cinematic conundrums and ambiguities unfold on screen. (I even managed to "endure" the film's overt erotica while sitting on the same couch as my mommy and daddy -- I guess we all turn into adults eventually.) What's so entertaining about the film is that it leaves so much up to the observer, and I came away from this third or fourth viewing with a new discovery.

In a scene where Sarah Morton, the Britsh crime story author, sits at her desk, typing into her Samsung laptop, the camera "sits" across from her, "watching" her as she works. The shot closes in until only Sarah's head and the top of the laptop are framed from top to bottom and then pans slowly to one side, over the writer's right shoulder, then to the left. The motion seems pointless at first, but when I noticed it during this viewing, it made me think back to the "psychomachea" concept and how the camera might be attempting to demonstrate the struggle between Moreton's "angel on the right" and her "devil on the left."

But don't quote me on that.

Well, I'm going to have to call it a day. Still not feeling so hot and could use the rest. To conclude, I'm going to steal something from Mike Jasper's bag of journaling tricks and simply say:

Later!

(Thanks, Mike. I promise not to make it a habit!)