thank you!

Thanksgiving at the Pierce house was a lot of fun, as usual. Somehow, the kids table has turned into the under 30 table, and there were more of us than the "adults." My cousin R wowed us with his knowledge of wooing women (apparently, the dim ones can really be a lot more fun), and our guest P told us some things we never quite considered about the melding of medicine and business. D and Y were visiting from Cairo/New York, and seemed to have a pretty good time. My brussels sprouts (despite boohooing from several male family members) were received so well the full pan of them disappeared. Beforehand, we talked to my absent Aunt Y by Skype for the first time. My mom and Aunt A carried a laptop around the house, showing her the tables and the food--kind of cheesy but pretty cute. Didn't have anything else to eat after the 2pm meal, but did have some coffee at the movies later. We ended up heading to the only independent theater in northern virginia to see "Slumdog Millionnaire"--a film that more than made up for the bad choice we made at Blockbuster the previous night. Where "Snow Angels" was a self-indulgent, non-sensical myriad of characters and painful scenes, "Slumdog Millionnaire" was an exciting, colorful myriad of characters and lovely scenes. It was a cavalcade of colors and sounds but nothing about it was painful or forced or overdone. Quite sad in regards to the recent Mumbai attacks, the movie was something of a bittersweet entertiainment. Not sure what I'd say if I was familiar with real-life Mumbai at all, but, as it is, I admired the storytelling acumen of the writer of the novel that inspired it and the screenplay. I guess I just feel like a good movie is hard to come by in this day and age, and this definitely is one.