White Elephant Tape Measure Exchange

I forgot to mention at least two things in my last post.

My parents and I watched An Inconvenient Truth on Sunday. I thought it was extremely well done. It wasn't as depressing as I'd feared, but I also didn't see it as uplifting either. It's good that it's not depressing, because that would lead to fewer people watching it. One sad aspect is thinking that we were watching the guy that could have been our president. The world would have been a very different place. Of course, I might have had a similar reaction had I been watching a Barney video. Almost any entity, animate or not, would be better than what we have. One of the more disturbing things to me were the photos of glaciers that have receded or almost disappeared completely. I kind of hope they weren't paying attention to the seasons when they were making the comparisons, but I suspect they were. I guess it all makes me wonder just how much damage we have to do to the earth and just how many peoples lives have to be directly impacted adversely by the resulting changes for enough people to do something that will really make a big impact. I say big impact because I know that every hybrid car, every solar panel and every recycled French fry makes a difference.

I can't remember what the other thing that I forgot was. Oh yes, when we went to Kim Son on Friday night, we had deep fried bananas and ice cream for dessert. I think I've determined for certain that I only dislike raw bananas. If they are well cooked, I like them. I don't think they are cooked enough in banana pudding and I suspect this is due to some sort of allergy.

Tonight the Durham FM Association had its annual Christmas party, which included a white elephant gift exchange. I'd never participated in one of those before and it was surprisingly fun. I ended up with a 12' tape measure, by choice. My dad ended up with a 100' tape measure by choice. Some things definitely tend to run in families. About 40 of us ate dinner that was catered by the Shrimp Boat and it was pretty good. It was definitely better than last year for some reason. JH joined us for dinner, which made it even more fun.