Dinner, a movie and an interesting visitor

As mentioned in my previous Friday Five post, last night we invited 2 couples from church over to our new apartment for dinner and a movie. The movie was "Life of Brian", which caused quite a stir when it was first released in 1979. You know how it goes-- the religious right decried it as an affront to their faith, and its loudest opponents were those who hadn't even SEEN it. Typical misinterpretation and narrow-mindedness. What the movie DID do, however, was raise critical thinking about blind faith and about how the central tenets of true faith (specifically, Judaism (e.g. the Pharisees and Sadducees) and Christianity (e.g. the many denominations)) were splintered because of human (mis)interpretation. We got into a discussion of the movie during one of our small group sessions, and some, who had seen documentaries about it, expressed interest in actually seeing the movie.

So, we set a date for Friday. Allan made corned beef in the slow cooker and whipped up some tasty risotto. One friend brought brownies. We were set with both wine and sparkling cider. But before we could even serve ourselves food, an unexpected visitor dropped by. A man I'd never seen in my life came up the stairs looking for "John Smith".

When I explained that not only was there no John Smith here, but we HAD indeed been receiving a lot of his mail, the guy got a worried look on his face and handed me his business card. By now Allan and our friends had gotten curious, and peeked over my shoulder to read the card. A chorus of "Oooh"s ensued. Why? Because this guy was a U.S. probation officer, apparently assigned to John. So while Allan got the food ready, I spoke with the probation officer about what kind of mail we'd been getting for John Smith, how long we'd been here, and if we'd received any strangers coming by (like him, LOL). I also explained that all the mail we'd been receiving for John was obviously forwarded by the post office, because every letter (mostly bank statements) was addressed to his former residence, and had a sticker with our address affixed over it. So it was clear that this guy gave the post office and his probation officer a bogus address. Was he in the wind? Must have been, because when the officer left, he sighed wearily and said "Looks like I have more work to do tonight".

We had a good laugh over it. It figures that the first time we invite our friends (whom we'd newly met in the past few months) over, someone from the U.S. District Court comes by for a visit! What kind of shady dealings must they think we're involved in! ;-)

Anyway, we proceeded to have a nice dinner and settled down to watch the movie.

Now, let me begin by saying that I absolutely abhor Monty Python. I do not find them remotely funny in the least. I guess they are like marmite/vegemite-- you either love it or you hate it, there IS no in-between. So it was with some trepidation that I sat and watched it. To my surprise, I found it rather decent. I'm sure a large part of it was, as Jenna pointed out, the fact that we were watching it with good company. It provided some good food for thought as well as raucous laughter. So while I personally still wouldn't go out and spend $20 on it, it's worth seeing if you ever want to get together with friends and rent it one night.

All in all, it made for an interesting and entertaining visit. Good food, good company, good movie... and a surprise visitor to spice things up! Good stuff :-)