Christmas thoughts 2007

• Christmas eve was a traditional American holiday at my house. We went to the movies. We saw National Treasure 2, which was quite entertaining for the portions of the evening when I was able to suspend my cynicism to allow myself to believe in a world that one could quite easily wander up to the president and initiate a conversation unmolested by the Secret Service. Afterwards we came home to build gingerbread condos.

• A broadcast text message is not a heartfelt holiday greeting, but I still got a half dozen of them. If you sent one, I'm talking about the others, not yours. It gave me warm fuzzies to get yours.

• Remember Legos? When I was a kid, they came in one shape - rectangular. You could build anything your imagination would concoct, but when you were done, it was rectangular. Square cars. Square people. 90 degree angles. Well, it's a new day in LegoLand, and you are not determining what you build anymore. Today's child gets a Lego Set to build a specific robotic dinosaur eating space ship. It has 4,251 pieces and ain't one of them square. In face, ain't two of them alike. Don't bother using your imagination - this stuff fits one way only, and it takes a degree from MIT to assemble these things. The kids don't even do it...They go and play with their brothers' stuff, returning to the table once in a while to proclaim "you're doing GREAT Uncle Keith!"