[photopress:dinner.jpg,thumb,alignleft] Spent an evening with the parents in the ‘burbs of Spring Branch.  My mom cooked a very yummy dinner with Korean banchan, grilled fish and miyukgook - seaweed soup traditionally eaten on birthdays.  Yum!

 

[photopress:lion.jpg,thumb,alignleft]While helping my mom prepare dinner, I noticed a new stuffed animal on the shelf.

Me: What is this?
My Mom: 2006 is the Year of the Dog.  So that’s a dog.  
Me: But this is a lion.
My Mom: No, it’s a dog. 
Me: Dogs don’t have manes. 
My Mom: It was made in Singapore. It’s a dog.
Me: What does being made in Singapore have to do with whether it’s a dog or a lion?
My Mom: It’s a dog!
My Dad: It’s a lion that looks like a dog…[my mom starts to argue]…ok, ok it’s a dog that looks like a lion.  Can we eat now?

*The thing to the left of the lion/dog is a rooster, which my mom got last year since 2005 was the Year of the Rooster.  It scares me. 

As promised, my mom offered a choice of free pens/trinkets. My parents are in the medical field (pharmacist and ER physician), so they collected free stuff at lots of health fairs, medical conventions and conferences.  They keep their loot stashed in two separate boxes.  One’s for backup, I suppose. 

All of these items are free, promotional items with the names of pharmaceutical companies or other medical-related resources printed on them.  There were also boxes of notepads and other random things like paperweights, calculators, lainards, bandaids, etc.  I rummaged through all the boxes looking for anything with “Viagra” printed on it, but no luck.  I think one of my siblings swiped them.  

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I left Spring Branch with a bag full of party favors: three flashlight pens with the names of health insurance companies on them, a regular ballpoint pen (by Crestor, a cholesterol medication), a travel sized, USB optical mouse (by Lexapro, an antidepressant), a travel pillow “for the cats,” my mom said (by Sonata, a sleep aid), and a water bottle (by Advair Diskus, an asthma inhalant).  In an interesting example of ironic (or appropriate?) marketing, I also got a 32MB memory stick by Namenda, a medication to treat moderate to severe memory loss symptoms associated with Alzheimer’s.

But my favorites were a ballpoint pen shaped like a syringe (a promotional item of the Georgia Army National Guard - wtf?), and a ballpoint pen that lights up when you click it.  The lightpen is by Combivent, an inhalant used to treat emphysema.  Random, huh?

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