Lunch With T. Boone? Well I Wasn't Really Doing Anything Else.....

So I'm sitting in my jammies at 10:00 am this morning (one of the benefits of having an office at home), working hard, when a call comes in to invite Jim and I to today's luncheon at the Hilton Anatole "T. Boone Pickens, A Conversation With A Living Legend." Well I happen to think that this man will give God good advice when he is elevated from this world, so the answer was of course, "Yeah, you betcha!" Second thought, "I'd better get in the shower"; third thought, "Sorry Boone, not wearing pantyhose, not even for you."

Benefitting the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, today's event raised $1 million dollars for their goal of "Making Cancer History". The underwriting and seat sales brought in just over $905,000, and before Boone began his conversation with interviewer Evan Smith, Mrs. Pickens let them know she'd be kicking in the balance to make it a "cool" million.

Now hubby has seen Boone plenty of times down at the restaurant, but the "Office Wench" misses out on all the fun people who come in. So when he began talking I was too enthralled to eat. I did try everything, fresh vegetables al dente, a fried chicken breast that was very tender and a salad, all well executed for so many people in the ballroom. But the main course, T. Boone, was done to perfection.

He talked about politics, todays economy and what he sees the future holding for us, our children, and our grandchildren. I'm in the process of reading a book (for the second time in two years) that parallels his projections, and we are facing changes to our society. We can either make the changes ourselves or have some other entity make them for us. He recounted discussions he had with Obama, McCain, Giuliani over the past year and their responses. His overall conclusion? Neither candidate has a policy in place to effectively change our national dependence on foreign oil, which he sees as a greater threat than a war on terrorism. We've gone from 55% dependence on foreign oil, now approaching 70%, and at some point our suppliers are going to start calling the shots. Free market economy, right?

His hopes are that whomever is elected will put a policy plan in place within the first 100 days in office that will create a path towards energy independence for the United States. We can drill all we want, but it won't be sufficient to satisfy our high usage, we'd have to produce more additional oil than the Middle East currently produces to make that happen. And a million natural gas cars will not make a dent in the 250 million cars out there running on gasoline (not to mention the trucks that haul our food and products cross-country). He ended with one thing that he wanted us all to take away from today's talk, "I'm for anything American, oil, gas, coal, nuclear, wind, as long as it is something produced by America."

Thanks for the wonderful lunch Boone, next time I'll get the check.