Someday

Whenever I go on for days or months between blogging, a reader tells me that they miss reading my blog which makes me happy and sad at the same time. And when that happens I try to get my posterior in order and whip up a post. This one is for N.

I am going through a period of restlessness now. I feel like time is slipping away from me and there is so much to be done and I've done so little. Like always I flit between hobbies, one minute wanting to swim like a fish and the other minute looking for ice skating lessons in Madison. I always tell myself that I will accomplish them some day, but I fear I am running out of "days" in my life. The only hobby that I am consitent with has been my French lessons. I've had lessons on and off for almost 2 years now. I will be honest and admit I've not been studying consistently at home. But I enjoy my lessons immensely. I love the language, the way it rolls off my tongue. When I come across something written in French, I try to read it out aloud and when I understand the meaning it makes me immensely happy. Someday (see what I mean when I wrote about "someday" earlier?) I hope to be fluent in French and then I want to learn me some Italiana!

Tomorrow the boy and I complete three years of wedded bliss. I am going to stick my rule of not writing about anything mushy, but I am lucky that I married someone who loves travel as much as I do. We make good traveling partners too. We've been itching to go somewhere because we haven't been anywhere since our Maui trip. Any suggestions? I am planning a vacation to Yellowstone in summer. Where I really want to go is Paris and Venice, but that has been on hold thanks to S' visa issues. Someday...

Holiday Notes

I am forced to put up a post because I had signed a blog treaty with my buddy. I figured he would never live up to his end, but he has and so I need to post too. Since the treaty never said anything about quality writing, I figured now would be as good a time as any to post a holiday version of my miscellaneous blather.

Tis the season! I love Christmas - the lights, the cookies and the gifts! Especially the gifts. In case people are wondering, I love receiving gifts. Every time I check my mail, I expect someone to have sent me a gift. This expectation amplifies during Christmas, with the only problem being - there is no-one to buy me gifts. For one thing, my family lives far far away and secondly we don't celebrate Christmas. Last year, I told S that we should exchange gifts. He took that to mean that he could buy himself some random camera crap off the internet and call that his gift from me. The day Amazon delivered it home, he realized he didn't have a gift for me and bought me a perfume from Macy's and gave it to me unwrapped, one week before Christmas. To give him credit, he did remember the name of the perfume that I had tried that last time I was at Macy's. But people of the internet, my whole intent in deciding to exchange Christmas gifts was the act of opening a beautifully wrapped gift on Christmas morning! So this year I am mostly done with my Christmas shopping and I am hoping S gets me something good. When I say good, I don't mean diamonds or ipad good (although those items would be appreciated). It means paying attention to small details good. Let me illustrate. This year for my birthday there was the usual spread of expensive gifts. My favorite was a $10 blender bottle from GNC. Every day I drink a smoothie for breakfast. A couple months before my birthday, someone (who is not me) left my bottle at the gym and it was gone forever. When I stopped at GNC a couple days later I was told that my bottle was not sold there anymore. I wasn't heartbroken, but I was pretty bummed because that had a narrow mouth which was easier to drink from. So for my birthday S scoured the internet and managed to snag one for me. This is what makes a great present!

Speaking about ipads, they seem to make great presents. I sent one to my sis and I was pleasantly surprised that my mother has learned to use it and doesn't the computer anymore. I was also shocked when my technology challenged father told me that he would like to learn to use the ipad because it seems easy. Say what you may about me being an Apple fangirl, but other companies would be wise to learn from Apple as far as usability goes. But for all this talk about ipads, we still don't own one. S and I have iphones and we have a Macbook Pro that doesn't take all day to boot and it sits on our couch or bed all the time. So I don't have a need for an ipad. I am just going to will the universe into giving me one. I will let you know how that works out.

Merry Christmas to everyone. Joyeux Noel!

Mish Mash Post

Hello my dear lovelies. I forgot to sign up for the Indie Ink Challenge this week. I went through the archives of past challenges and I picked one - a story of how I fell in love with my husband. But as I started writing it, it was too long and mushy and not very interesting (think Ross and Rachel from Friends). So I thought I could do a general post about what's happening in my life right now.

I am most excited about our trip to Hawaii next week. This is the first trip and S and I are taking together that is longer than 4 days (not much longer, it's just a week) I feel so nice and adultish to tell everyone that we are going away to Maui for a week, especially since our honeymoon never happened. S and I are the kind of people who take their travel booking very very seriously. We stayed up an entire Friday night (till 6am, no kidding) arguing and trying to decide which island to visit. S won that round (I wanted to go to Oahu), so if anything goes wrong in this trip, I can always blame him. When we picked the island, we had the harrowing choice of picking the hotel. Do we pick a resort or a condo? Do we want to cook during the vacation? Will the island have enough vegetarian friendly restaurants so that we aren't eating salads for every meal? Finally my parents came to our rescue and my Dad said that he didn't want his first born princess cook while on vacation (He actually said that since we do so much takeout during regular days, he didn't foresee us turning on the stove while on vacation. He also said Oahu has a lot more historic significance and to go there for our first visit, but we chose to ignore that) Once we figured out that we were going be staying on a resort, I had my heart set on this hotel on Ka'anapali Beach (The reason I liked this hotel was because it has a gigantic kickass pool - I know the beach is just a few meters away and I am weird for fixating on the pool, but humor me). We were pricing the vacation on Priceline and it gave us a number slightly more than our budget if we left on that particular week in August. S okayed it (the man has a problem saying no to me, he would buy me the moon with his credit card if he could) And then Priceline turned on us, it kept telling us that this price was not available though it turned up on the results. We started looking at other, more affordable hotels on the Ka'anapali Beach and me finding faults with all of them and wistfully going back to the website of the one I liked to ooh and aah at the pictures. After two hours of this, S put his foot down and booked this hotel on expedia (Yup I am that spoiled :)) And this is how we came to book our most expensive vacation to date which cost almost 2 months of my paycheck.

So we are off to Hawaii in 2 weeks and I am most excited. I will be taking my laptop with me and I am planning to post a picture everyday. We are planning on snorkeling, snuba diving, taking a rainforest and waterfalls hike, watching the sunrise from Haleakala Crater, driving on the Road to Hana, rafting the sea caves at Kanaio Coast and taking in a luau. So much for a relaxing vacation. But we may end up not doing all of these, especially considering my limited swimming skills. I hope to write a recap when I get back and I guess that will cover what we did do.

In other earth shattering news, we canceled our satellite TV service. I can hear a collective gasp from all cable stations right now! It's not because we want to cut down on our TV watching (honestly, we don't watch a lot of TV) But I would DVR a lot of sitcom reruns and all we were doing was watching Seinfeld, That 70s Show, Will & Grace and Frasier over and over again. We figured getting rid of cable would force us into watching shows that we really want to watch, but we don't because we don't want to hunt for it on Netflix or iTunes - like Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Pushing Daisies etc. Also S and I are huge fans of Lost and we are thinking about re-watching the series. And if we save some $$ every month by doing this, why not? We connected one of our old laptops to the TV and bought a nifty little wireless keyboard and mouse the size of a remote and use that to stream what we want to the TV. We plan to get a HD antenna for the TV so that we can watch the local channels. People tell me that it is possible to build your own DVR on your laptop and if the antenna works out well we plan to build one as well. It's been working well so far. I am more motivated to go to the gym in the evenings now since I can watch TV there. There are some things I miss - like Conan on TBS. But they upload the entire episode on teamcoco.com the next day. I will survive. The icing on the cake - no commercials.

If you have been reading so far, congratulations, you are now at the end of the post. The only thing you need to take away from this post is - I am going to Maui in a week and you are not :)

Just a Bunch of Keys

Last Monday, I drove home for lunch like I usually do (I live 1.5 miles from work and yes I eat lunch at home everyday and sometimes even play on the Wii a little before going back to work) At my door, I looked for my keys in my purse and couldn't find them (My car keys are in a separate key ring. Don't ask why, no reason). No biggie, I figured I had just forgotten to take it in the morning since S had left for work after me. I went to my favorite sandwich place for lunch and didn't worry about it.

Tuesday morning, when I was scrambling to leave for work, I groped around in the little bowl we use for keys and I couldn't find them. I started worrying then. That night, I searched in the usual places that I find my keys, in my coat pocket, my other purse, in my gym bag, in S' coat pocket and so on. No dice! I remembered that I had gone to the gym on Saturday morning and I had my keys then.

On Thursday I went to my apartment office and asked about a temporary key. They gave me one, but said that I would need to change my locks if I had lost my keys which would cost $75. My heart skipped a beat, because I was planning a shopping trip that weekend and my entire budget was around that much. I convinced myself that I had left my keys at the gym and asked the nice lady at the front desk if anyone had turned in a set of keys. She told me that if they key ring contained the gym access card, they would look up the phone number and call. And if I hadn't been called, they didn't have my keys. She also mentioned that replacing that access card would cost $10. I knew that my shopping trip was doomed.

When I came home I started thinking about my key ring. It had a MVP card from Food Lion, a grocery store chain in Raleigh, NC which was where I landed in the US in 2007. I didn't understand why they would give discounts only to people with cards, but if that meant a little lower in food costs, as a poor grad student I would take it. I didn't know that this was how most grocery stores worked. I also had a NC State Wolfpack Rules key tag (is it what it is called?). I have not attended any game in college ever, but I felt so proud to get that. It meant that I was a part of NC State. After that Food Lion incident, I went a little card crazy and I had a nice little bunch from a myriad of stores. One time when S had a stopover in Minneapolis, he found this keychain at an airport store that looked like a small licence plate and said "Jan". That gift meant a lot to me because after a two hour flight and with a three hour flight ahead of him, if he can stop to buy something because it had my name, it means he loves me right?

When you think about it, a key ring is so much more than just keys. At first I felt bad because I didn't want to spend the money to replace my keys. But then I started feeling sad about losing all of this. And just as I was typing the last sentence, S threw a bunch of keys at me. He found it, gentle readers! I think he is a keeper. I have never been happier to hold keys in my hand. Isn't this a beautiful sight?

So We Meet Again

Let's fast forward through the apologies and reasons for not blogging. I have not been doing anything special and this time round, I don't feel particularly sorry too. :-) I do have about 5-6 drafts, waiting to be concluded and polished. I think I will make that my March resolution - to publish my drafts.

I have begun French lessons again. The current teacher switches completely to French during the lesson and expects me to answer all her questions in French too. It has been interesting to say the least. But her methods seem to be very effective. My previous tutors were French exchange students studying at UW. While they were nice and sincere, my current tutor is a teacher and it shows. I would really benefit from 4 hours of studying for every class, but sadly I just flip through her notes the day before her class.

There seems to be so much I want to do with my life lately that I don't seem to have the time for. These include, but are not limited to - completing Super Mario Galaxy 2, finishing Donkey Kong Country Returns, getting 3 stars on all levels in Angry Birds, reread Lord of the Rings, reread all Harry Potter books before the last movie, reread "A Room With a View", watch something from Netflix, steam vacuum the apartment, vacuum the car and so on. I don't know if I can ever get all this done. When I was young, I would dream of having a huge library filled with all my favorite books. Now I realize that even if I do have a huge collection of books, I would most likely never read any of them again. This realization made me more accepting of the Kindle. I have been reading a lot more since getting it. And the instance gratification of just buying another book when I finish one has been awesome. When I was really young and believed in genies and granting wishes, my wish was that whenever I finished a book, a new one should magically appear (new books then, meant changing 2 buses to get to Eashwari Lending Library in Gopalapuram). Kindle has made that wish come true and so we are uneasy friends now.

Speaking about books, the Borders in Madison is closing. I really feel upset about this. I realize that Borders drove out all the independent booksellers out, but I really liked Borders. The staff there actually read books and could always pick out any book I wanted without looking it up in the computer. They also had a staff picks section and I've discovered some gems that way. The Kindle felt very heavy in my bag when I walked into Borders one last time for their closing day sale. We didn't buy anything though, the checkout line was a mile long. Barnes and Noble will get all our book sales now.

Moving onto cheerier things, the weather here is positively unpleasant. We have this thaw-freeze cycle which coupled with fresh snow makes driving an absolute nightmare. I swapped my Sonata for S' Yaris today, since the man drives farther for work. The roads were not kind to the tiny car. I literally skated and skidded my way to work. I have endured this long winter and the last stretch is trying my patience. I can't wait for Spring and then glorious summer. I can't wait to do some more traveling. Definitely Door County and Upper Michigan again. Visiting New York in summer would also be nice, I am itching to watch the new Spiderman musical before they close it for good. If only the snow would melt and the sun would come out soon!

So what have you all been doing?

General Rambles (aka I am Offically Out of Sensible Titles)

I love visiting used book stores. I have written about this in the past as well. I love the smell of freshly minted books as anyone else, but I think that old books have more character. Also the smell of old books take me back to Easwari Lending Library, where I spent many happy hours as a child. Yesterday, I went to Frugal Muse, a new used book store that I had been meaning to check out for a couple of months now. And it was really different than the second hand book sellers that I had been used to in India. All books were in very very good condition. Everything was neatly categorized and sorted alphabetically (which makes me think that more than half the cost of the book is the cost of identifying it and placing it at the right spot) But I missed digging through the piles of books and finding a hidden gem. Or just picking books that looked interesting. I remember when S and I were kids, we went to the platform book sellers near ESI Hospital in KK Nagar (this was back when my husband actually used to read for pleasure!) We spent nearly an hour and I was so happy to dig through piles with S. Once, during my final semester at Pilani, I went to Rungta House to sell the textbooks I couldn't carry home. And digging through the ginormous book stacks filled with textbooks in all editions, I came across a Wodehouse! I was thrilled beyond measure and incredulous that someone would actually sell "Righto Jeeves!" Long story short, that book cost more money than I got from selling my texts, but I still have that book (that is if my mom hasn't thrown it away or donated it very generously).

You all know best that I love watching sitcoms. Back in Hyd, my sitcom watching was whatever was on Zee English and Star World and the DVDs from the US sent by S to me and by K's brother to her. When I landed in the US, Grad living did not permit the time and cash for TV and satellite/cable. So I caught up most of the shows on hulu and other sites on my trusty laptop. Going to Florida to visit S would equate to a TV wonderland for me and I would be loathe to stir out of the sofa to actually go out somewhere in Tampa. Naturally when I got a job and my own apartment, the first thing I did was to buy a decent TV and a get it hooked to Dish. You would think that all is for best and that the reason I don't blog is because I am too busy watching TV. Well you are almost there, except I am watching the same shows over and over and over. I have 15-20 shows that are set to record on the DVR and barring the the current ones which have new episodes almost every week, I always end up watching staples like Seinfeld, King of Queens, Frasier, Will & Grace etc. And I have watched every episode there is of these shows and I am too lazy to try and find reruns of some interesting old shows. This wasn't a problem when I was using my laptop as my primary entertainment device. Since there was no schedule of any sorts, I would dig and find a lot of new things to watch. So gentle readers, do you see my dilema? Since I pay an obscene amount of money to Dish each month, I feel a moral obligation to watch my money's worth of shows on TV. But digging through hundred channels trying to find something new is not easy. This is where you, the readers of this blog who have excellent taste in TV viewing, come in. Suggest shows for me to watch. Doesn't have to very good - these are shows that I would see while cooking or have in the background while getting dressed for work (I know I watch too much TV) etc. So it has to be new content and at least slightly interesting and funny. So suggest away!

Happy New Year!

Happy new year to all my reader(s)! I hope 2010 brings all your dreams to life.

Personally, 2009 has been hands down the worst year of my life so far! With the the exception of getting married, there has been a dearth of good significant events in my life. And even for the wedding, the days leading to it were horrendous, with everyday being a marathon scream session with my parents. All because of one single person! And that said single person is yet to call/mail or even know if we are still alive after the wedding. But I digress. Now that 2009 is behind me, I would like to think that 2010 has begun on a better note. It is not that, I don't want to face any problems in 2010, but I would like to have some normal problems in 2010. You know, the kinds I see my friends and others complain about!

And yes, I have some resolutions for this year too. The usual ones - a healthier lifestyle and pay down debt. And I would like to have a more positive outlook towards life. People who know me in real life, know that I am pessimist. And S is even more so! My parents feel that this sort negativity might add to our misery and maybe if we wished good things for ourselves instead of wallowing in our self pity, something good might actually happen. So I've decided to be thankful what I actually have and start believing in myself. In that note, I am thankful that we can afford for S to fly down every weekend and I believe that we will be together soon. :-)

So gentle readers, what are you looking forward to the most in 2010?

Madras Ahoy

Well I started this post as a Toys R Us/toys for kids in general rant. But then I figured I might as well make it a what's-up-in-my-life-now kinda post. I know it's very charitable of me, but I have since learned that I have a few more uncommenting readers and a couple more interested in the joining the Janani-blog-reader bandwagon, provided I get them a laptop from the US, bookmark my blog clearly as "Janani's Blog" in all browsers and leave a prominent link on the desktop. The lengths I go to make people read my blog! Whew!

As you all know, a trip to India is in the offing, and one of the highlights of the trip is that I get to meet my cute nephew/cousin A (Yeah our family relationships are pretty weird) From what I see in the pics, A is the cutest, sweetest, most good looking baby in the world (despite resembling his father! :-)) So I wanted to buy something for him and I headed into Toys R Us. After stopping for awhile in the Wii/Playstation aisle, I figured I would head into the preschool/infant section and be spoiled for choice. Boy was I wrong! What's with the toys for kids these days? Why do all of them have 1000 small loose parts that are definitely going to get lost 5 minutes after opening the toy. And why do all the toys make some sort of noise? My expectations were simple - I wanted to get something for A to play with, something that endures for atleast a month in entirety. There were a lot of walker kind of toys, but I didn't want to get those since his parents might have some definite ideas about that and buy that themselves. And for the same reason, I didn't want to buy any DVDs since his parents may have some rules about the kind of DVDs they want for their child. (Though I was sorely tempted to buy Blues Clues seeing the kind of publicity it gets on TV shows) Ultimately I chose to buy a Leap Frog product that makes a noise, but seems to be reasonable (atleast as per my standards). And also I like the ads on TV for Leap Frog and really think they are edutaining. And while I am at it, what's with all the pink and glitter for girl babies? I dream of having a daughter someday, whom I can dress in a pink frock and a bow, but isn't there something as too much pink? And I was also buying a baby doll for one of my aunt's friends. Most of them were cute and lifelike and said Mama, Papa and giggled to a good effect. And then I saw them. Pooping baby dolls. Ewwwww! Really, do kids like them? And more importantly do you want your kid to play with doll poop? Ewww!

And I was sorely disappointed with the service at Toys R Us. I walked to an employee and asked her for suggestions to get something for a 6 month old boy. Her only remark was to comment that I was in the right aisle before politely walking away. Contrast this with Barnes and Noble where I have been thrice to get books for babies and toddlers. The staff there were very helpful, walking with me across all the aisle and pointing the different kinds of books and what babies might like. And to top all these, I realize that the Leap Frog toy that I bought in Toys R Us is almost $8 cheaper online and in Walmart. Makes me feel silly now, taking the pains to go to Toys R Us. I have half a mind to return the stuff in Toys R Us and buy it from Walmart!!!

Talking about shopping for India, buying something for Appa has been an epic fail! :-( My parents never ask anything for themselves. Don't get me wrong here, they make me buy plenty from here, but everything is for someone else. When it comes them, they don't want me to buy anything that costs more than $1. So I was pleasantly surprised when my Dad, for the first time in his life, asked for something without my begging and cajoling. He said that he wanted a couple of good quality T shirts, which are collared and had a front pocket (for the times when he is in a veshti). So the next time I am in the mall, I figured I would check the out the T shirts and to my horror I found that none of the T shirts had a pocket on them. I became desperate and yesterday when I was in Kohls, I saw collared T shirts with a pocket on them. I called S in glee and discussed which size would fit Appa and then I noticed that they were full arm T shirts! I sorrowfully called home and told him I would buy shirts instead, which he didn't want. To cheer me up, he asked me to get a 2010 diary for him, the only stipulation being each day had 1 page dedicated to it (My father is an avid diary writing for decades now and he needs a lot of space for the kind of details he maintains in his diary) Again, after scouring Barnes & Noble, Borders and the likes I failed to find him one. So finally he asks for the DVD of a movie called "Seven Times Seven" that came in the 60s or for Laurel and Hardy DVDs with some specific episodes. Again, unable to find the movie DVD and the required episodes are spead over multiple DVDs which cost $45 apiece if at all they are available!

On the subject of buying things for India, I am really at a loss for what to get for everyone. I think people who lived in the US a decade ago had it easy, coz these days anything I mention has people going "Oh we get these in India now." Well, I am giving up on buying anything for anyone this time, due to the lack of time and monies. It makes me feel a little sad because I used to love getting stuff from V Mama when I was a kid. But then, you people get everything in India now right? :-)

Ok I have to sign off. Gotta go and buy random crap to take home :-)

Little Things of Life

that makes me feel happy

1) Getting the green light at 4 intersections in a row

2) The tiny speaker that S bought me so that I can listen to songs on my ipod without headphones

3) Frozen custard at Goodberry's. Mmmmm

4) Catching the comedy show on Aahaa FM at nights

5) Discovering the new address of one my favorite bloggers whom I had lost track of and reading all her posts that I had missed in one go

6) Watching Ramany vs Ramany on rajshri.com


In difficult times, it always nice to make such a list! I recommend this exercise to everyone who is even mildly depressed or not in love with life

Kannamma

“Yeah honey, I am on my way home from the bank. The lines were more than a mile long. Can't wait to get back home babes.” Smrithi frowned and raised her voice on the phone, “Abhi, how many times have I told you not to call while driving? I am worried about you da.” She mellowed on receipt of the ensuing silence “No da chellam, it's just that I keep reading about these accidents, especially on the freeway. You know I love you don't you?. Sweetie pie, I am sorry I screamed at you.” It was Abhishek's turn now “Baby, I am sorry too. I know that you said that because you care.” They disconnected the phone with mutual I-love-you-s.

Smrithi went back to her Google Reader and continued reading comments on her new blog post. Another tab was open simultaneously where she was googling for tips on switching to Wordpress.

“Vasu, have you kept the dhoti and towel aside to wear to the temple tomorrow?”, Ramanujam intoned. “Eduthu vechuten naa*, I have washed and have let them dry separately on the terrace. And Geetha had come by today, it seems her brother's daughter has given birth to a son. We should go and see the baby next week. Also we should book tickets to Kancheepuram for the Utsavam. We should ask if your sister and her aathukarar** want to come with us. We don't want them to complain like last year.” Vasu droned on, all the while cutting vegetables for the night's dinner. “Ayyoo, I forgot totally about tickets. I have to book soon, else we have to travel in the General Compartment. You think of everything di.” Ramanujam smiled, and then added softly as an after thought, “Kannamma.”

Vasudha smiled and hummed all the time while making kootu***. Some how the pressure cooker's refusal to give a whistle didn't bother her as much today. She decided to serve curd tonight instead of buttermilk and didn't worry about having enough for tomorrow. After all some days are more special than others.

* - I have kept it aside

** - Husband

*** - A vegetable and lentil preparation