A Serious Case of the Gimmes

Like I discussed at length in my previous post, sometimes when I want something, I want it really bad. A few years ago, it was the iPod (you can read about it here and here) Now, everyone knows that I am a music ignoramus. And I hardly never listen to music. Even when I am at the gym, I watch TV while working out. If there's ever a person who should not get a 30GB ipod, it's me. And I knew all that and yet I wanted it. I imagined myself listening to music all the time and filling my ipod with new age music. Cut to 2010, I have less than 3GB of music in my ipod. The newest album on it is Vettaiyadu Vilayadu. I use for 30 mins each night to listen to Crazy Mohan/S.VE Shekar dramas.

My newest craze is the Kinect. For the uninitiated, Kinect is a sort of add on for the XBox 360 which lets you play games without a controller. In their own words, you are the controller. So they have a camera to track your actions, so that in a dancing game, it tracks your dance moves and you can see it on the screen. I really think Microsoft is marketing it really well. When I see the Kinect ad where people are having fun dancing, driving imaginary cars with imaginary wheels, I want one too. Again like the ipod, I don't doubt that the Kinect is an awesome game platform. It's just that S and I are one of the laziest people to roam the earth. We like our couch and enjoy the time we spend sitting on it. The only games we play on the Wii are the ones that we can sit and play. When we feel the need to exercise, we haul our rear ends to the gym and we both believe that exercise games on the Wii or Kinect are not very effective. So buying the Kinect is not really a good move for us at all. I am sure we will be all excited and play with it for a week and then let it gather dust till someone visits us and wants to try it (that's what happened with the Wii Motion Plus!) However since both of us are moderately interested in regular video games, I am sure that we would enjoy playing games like Halo on the XBox. The XBox 360 costs $199 and with the Kinect bundle it costs $299. Despite everything I've written here I am sure that we will end up buying the Kinect bundle (if we decide to buy the Xbox 360 that is).

While I am very free with my money when it comes to day to day things, ("Let's buy the more expensive laundry detergent", "Let's go out to eat, I don't care that we went out for dinner yesterday", "Tip the waitress 30%, she was really good to us") I am usually wise (or so I think) when it comes to big purchases. I still use the same laptop that I used in grad school and I have no plans to replace it anytime soon - even after watching the numerous MacBook Air ads on TV. Our TVs at home are really old and despite my initial love of the iPad, I don't plan to buy one ever. I know that I am not the most careful with money (like my father likes to point out every time I tell him we went out for dinner for 2 days in a row) but since I don't spend on these big things, I used to think that it cancels out. But the Kinect seems to prove otherwise. Since S is worse than me, I am sure that we are never going to leave our children houses, wealth and money. However we both have a zest for life and a desire to live our life to the fullest, travel widely, do crazy things just because we want to and this kind of people are never expected to have money in the bank, are they? :-)

PS People don't give me grief about people who save money and yet manage to live a full life. A girl is allowed to have her delusions right?

Mishmash

As I begin to wet my feet in the waters of blogging once again, I find it easier to write posts that are just a bunch of unrelated thoughts. I don't know if it's a side effect of Twitter, but for now this will have to do. But fear not loyal readers, I will start writing posts dedicated to specific topics.

* For all the grief I give H about living in UK, I think a little part of me is obsessed with Britain. Most of my favorite authors have been British right from my childhood. And the I think there is a lovely ring to the English accent. I would love to tour through Europe, making sure to spend some time in the English countryside. All in good time. :-)

* In a lovely gesture, S got me a Coach handbag for my birthday. While the bag is very nice, I have come to realize a lot many things. My ratty wallet looks even rattier when ensconced inside the Coach bag. I need a new wallet pronto. Also I am now terrified of having a pen in my bag for the fear that I might get some ink in the lovely velvet interiors. Also, I don't have a zillion bags that switch in and out of circulation, I usually buy one bag, run it to the ground and when it starts looking nasty I get the next one and so on. I am terrified that this might happen to a bag that costs as much a laptop. I am now in a constant state of worry, I actually wiped the desk with a wipe before placing my bag on it. I think I am only cut out to carry unknown brand bags with a zillion pockets!

* In other news, S has finally taken the plunge and ordered a Nikon D90 DSLR camera. Which means that he will take longer than ever to take pictures. I kid you not, I stood in front of the Statue of Liberty for 10 whole minutes with the same plastic smile on my face while S fiddled with the various modes in his humongous point and shoot. So I foresee hours of posing for pictures in my future. Why can't the man be happy those small cute cameras that can fit into my pocket and have no buttons except the click button?

* We watched The Town yesterday. It was a good one. **SPOILER ALERT** But it was so obvious in the beginning of the movie that Coughlin was going to die. I kept bracing myself for that and tada as predicted at the end of the movie, he dies. **END SPOILERS** At the beginning of the movie, we saw a trailer for "Jack Goes Boating" and I immediately told S that we are going to watch this movie. I loved Little Miss Sunshine and Sunshine Cleaning and I am not about to miss the next movie from the same makers.

* Endhiran is being screened in Madison this weekend. When Padayappa was released, I remember my friends inviting me to watch that movie. But I simply had zero interest and refused to go. But I admit to watching Sivaji and will definitely watch Endhiran this weekend. I think Shankar is doing a good job of marketing the movies and creating a buzz or I guess my threshold for masala movies has decreased over the years. :-)

That's all for today folks.

Filler post

I have nice post written about my Vegas trip - complete with pictures and all. So till I get that one ready, here is a filler post for my faithful reader(s).

* Friday afternoons are the longest of all afternoons!

* The reason that this afternoon seems really long is because I was up half the night reading "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" It's one the best books I've ever read. Stieg Larrson knows how to tell a tale. I encourage all my readers to pick up the first book in the series "The Girl with the Dragan Tattoo" Even S is reading it, which is saying something! :-)

* I had a very private confession typed out here, but then I realized I don't want y'all to judge me. :-) Maybe another post another time

* I am trying to plan out my trip to West Virginia. The flight tickets are so insanely expensive. Ironic that I never had the urge to go WV while in Raleigh, 'coz that was so close. Now it's too far to drive, too expensive to fly.

* When I was young and in school, I was really into public speaking. I used to sign up for every debate and such. Something happened since then and that girl seems to be missing. I had to give a demo to some customers today and when I learned of that in the meeting room, I froze for a minute. In the end, I think I did well, but it was not something I enjoyed. In a similar vein, I used to be an introvert right from the time I was kid, but I seem to have gotten worse now. To the point that I have stopped going to team lunches and parties because I am so incredibly bored. Don't get me wrong here, the people at work are really nice, but I feel I have very little in common with them, since I am much younger and at a different stage in life. I have been in Madison for more than a year and I don't have a single friend. I would like to remedy this, but I am at a loss about how to go about this process. I have started going out with the people at work for lunches and parties - so that's a start. Any suggestions would be welcome

Don't have the enthusiasm for writing more today. But check back again folks, the Vegas post will be up soon

No Point to it Post

My initial idea for a post was along the lines of "Love is driving 7 miles to lunch at Chipotle with the husband, while there is a Chipotle a couple of blocks from my work" But after writing a couple such lines, it made me gag. I mean we had been going out for 5 years before we got married and this makes it our 6th year of togetherness. And even in the first year, we never did coupley things because we knew each other since we were kids. It's really hard to flutter your eyebrows and nod shyly at the guy with whom you played in the mud as a child. So why flaunt the love now I say.

However Project Move In Together has been going along well, thank you for asking. There is something to be said about having another living soul in the house to share conversation and food with. Though the cooking has increased significantly, I am not complaining (yet) since I am getting some help (sort of) in that department. S really does a great job cleaning up after I finish cooking. He gets into action the minute we finish dinner (and some days I am too lazy to even drop the dinner plates into the sink. And also if anyone in my family is reading this, no I do not mix yechai plates with the other utensils. We wash them in the special faucet outside the kitchen.) He is a mean cleaning machine, armed with his Windex and trusty sponge. In a whirlwind, he transfers all dirty dishes into the dishwasher and cleans the kitchen surface area before coming to bed. But he almost always forgets to turn the dishwasher on and I am subjected to a nasty surprise in the moning while hunting for a bowl for my cereal. But still the man tries and I and confident that I can train him to my system of cleaning pretty soon.

I know that I have been writing a lot about not living with my husband and now living with my husband. I think that's because that thought seemed to consume my entire being. And everyone who talked to us would end the conversation with "You guys should start living together soon." That comment used to drive me insane. Like we weren't trying! If all they wanted to do was sympathize, I would have welcomed something like "I know you guys are trying to get together in the same city, I hope it happens soon for you." The result of so many frustrations and yearning was that, we sort of built a pedestal of living together. We would prefix a lot of things with "When we start living together" - to buy a PS3, eating better, going somewhere etc. To the point where we felt we couldn't be happy living apart and that life would be heaven once we start living together. Again, living together has been awesome. But it has been a different kind of awesome, more of a being there for small moments awesome. We haven't done most of the things we planned to do when we move in together. But it has been nice to just lay on the couch and talk before going to bed. Going to the grocery store together. To be home when S gets home from work. I could go on and on.

I know this post is winding and pointless. But seeing as this blog is becoming my diary, I just want to record my feelings for posterity

This and That

Greetings, gentle readers of the blog. I would like to bring it to your attention that this blog has been complaint-free (well relatively atleast) for quite some time now. Since this blog has been painstaking built on a solid foundation of whine, cribs and unadulterated vitriol, I want to assure you that I am not straying away from my ideals. It's just that, in an effort to make this blog seems as well read, I have been self promoting my blog to everyone I know and thus I am out of people to complain about. I have often wondered why I didn't start this blog anonymously. I think I loved seeing my name on the screen too much and I am now paying the price. And there was this certain person, whose blog I idolized and since he didn't blog anonymously, I guess I inherently assumed that the "cool kids" signed their name to their blogs. Sadly the said idol has given up on his blog now, and I am now left with this.

Now that I have managed to fill an entire paragraph complaining about my inability to complain, lets move on. In other non-complaining news, my husband S has now moved lock, stock and barrel to Madison, WI (for the next 2 months, keeping fingers crossed that it gets extended beyond that) and you all can stop calling me the sad ol lady of Wisconsin. You know, I can actually go to movie on a week night now. Or go to a fancy dinner on week night. Or even go bowling on a week night. Or play Monopoly on a week night. The possibilities are endless. And I am hoping this move will end the huge DVR fights that plague us on weekends - the I-will-not-watch-The-Office-Again, You-should-have-seen-Modern-Family-on-Hulu-if-you-care-so-much etc. But on the other hand, he must start watching Desperate Housewives with me and I must learn to endure 24. Talking about 24, does anyone else think that Jack Bauer has been heavily influenzed by our own Gaptain Vijayakanth? When I am feeling a little more inspired, I swear I am going to dig out youtube videos where they both do the same thing. And I wish I knew what sort of batteries Bauer's cell phone runs on. I never see him charging it and yet people page stuff after stuff onto that phone. I do nothing with my iPhone except talk, check my email and play the occasional solitaire, but come 8pm, it's begging to be recharged.

Yet another blathering post brought to you by yours truly. Read, enjoy and comment!