Anyway, in the afternoon it was off to The Mercy Center orphanage to honor Steve Blumenthal, who died a year ago today at the age of 41 from a massive and sudden heart attack.
Mike and Riza invited a Filipino caroling group over to their house tonight, and they serenaded the neighborhood with some folksy Christmas carols. They really sang quite well, and were a lot of fun and light-hearted. After they finished on our street, Riza and Epril went with them to go caroling, first at Beth and Richard's house, and then at Geoff and Honey Mae's house. As always, Epril was thrilled to meet some other Filipino people.
I watched a really interesting documentary tonight on — of all things — the history of dyes. Yes strange. However, I was enthralled. First, it was cool to find out that 150 years ago, chemists went on to great riches simply by discovering how to make a certain color... and then selling it to clothiers. Purple was the color of royalty, because the only way to make purple dye was from the purpura shell, and it took almost 3 million such shells to dye one garment purple. The most interesting part, however, was learning that dye making was the forerunner of the pharmaceutical industry. You see, scientists used (still use) dyes to stain cells to be able to see them better. Scientists discovered that certain dyes will stain bacteria but not human cells, and using the knowledge that these compounds could effect bacteria and not people, the first pharmaceuticals and chemotherapies were created. Neat, eh?
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