Rambling again

My family is not really religious. Well, my father is and I attended four years of private religious school and then another uhm, three, (four?) years of after school religious school. Both my sister and I were batmitzvahed and I've returned to read Torah in the past, although not recently. My mother doesn't appear to have strong beliefs either way. She believes in a God, but doesn't go along with the religious trappings, except to periodically please my father. I tend to side with her...I don't need religion for some sense of community, and it just doesn't occur to me either way most of the time. Okay, so people biblethumping pisses me off, but I resent being told I'm going to hell or being looked down on for not falling in step with some religion. I tend to think of myself as a very moral person, and I dislike people making a decision about me just because I "haven't found Jesus." I've come to the conclusion that religion is really about excluding people who don't share the same traditions and beliefs. It's all very stupid, I think.

Wow, that paragraph really didn't end up where I orginally had in mind. Anyway, so while my mother remains ambivalent about most religious practices, she wholeheartedly loves chocolate and I can depend on getting a good Easter basket every year. My father doesn't object...it's just chocolate. This year's basket (or more properly, box) was particularly good. I got a bunch of chocolate, a set of coloring pencils (24! Now I can do color schemes on the different plates!) and the new Tori Amos CD.

I hadn't really been considering buying the new Tori. I'd been listening to the free tracks on the Tori Amos website and they hadn't really connected. But...wow. Those tracks really weren't representative of the cd as a whole. There are some excellent tracks on this cd and the melodies are frequently beautiful, The tracks that sounded scratchy and disjointed on the website actually flow beautifully on the actual cd. I am very pleased. The reviews were correct that Tori has mellowed. But I think its fits. No one likes aged rockers trying to stay "hip" afterall.

See, that last paragraph was actually the point of the post. I got really derailed didn't I?