Merry Christmas from the Club!

Just wanted to post quickly to say Merry Christmas from the lunch club! Our office is closed next week, so we'll be back in posting mode after New Years.

Today was a bittersweet day, with it being Leigh's last day. She is leaving us to go have her little one... he/she could come any day now!

It was only fitting that today's last lunch club with her would cover, what else, one of the less glamorous parts of childbearing... episiotimies! If you don't know what an episiotomy is, just... google it. Anyway, Leigh was arguing against the routine use of this procedure, and that the natural tearing was no more harmful, and in many cases has a less painful recovery. Of course banter ensued, and the boys were simultaneously intrigued and disturbed. I tried to find the most mainstream, least biased opinion I could, and according to The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Leigh is right on! This organization made a statement last year that episiotomies were far too often used, and that, while there may be a few instances where it might be necessary, their general use should be curbed: http://www.acog.org/from_home/publications/press_releases/nr03-31-06-2.cfm

Moving on from that topic we went on to television and movies. We're all still disappointed and fussy about the strike of the writers guild. I think for the most part we are on their side but we still miss our shows! We talked about how individual production companies are allowed to negotiate with the guild, and what if anything would cause one of the majors to break rank with the others and try to negotiate their own deal. Stephen suggested that if it comes to the point where the Academy Awards don't happen because of the strike, that might be enough to break the production companies. Stay tuned... you can visit http://unitedhollywood.blogspot.com for updates on the strike.

Our attention shifted to movies and I don't quite remember how, but we ended up dogging on Ryan because it seemed like he had a bone to pick with every movie we mentioned! The quote of the day came about as one of us summarized/mocked his commentary on Passion of the Christ and The Nativity Story: "So according to Ryan, Jesus wasn't bloody enough and Mary was a Muslim." His actual comments were that he thought people had overhyped the violence in Passion of the Christ and that he had heard the girl who played Mary in The Nativity Story was a Muslim. The generalization was much funnier. :)

Our lunch wound down to an end after that, as we all scurried back to our offices to tie up all the loose ends before our long break!

So from all of us at lunch club to all of you out there, have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!