Word a Year project

So Case started this project where you get a word for a year of your life and get to write your own lifestory .I really enjoyed doing this... do check it out here
My Entry:
I was born in India in the month after May,
Now I live in Texas half a world away,
Flying to work all over the US of A.

Mind let loose

"When things are coming at you, you just deal with them. Its impossible to distinguish good and bad because so often good turns into bad and bad into good."

I thought that was one of the most honest assessments of life I had ever heard. Typing this quote got me thinking about this book I had when I was growing up that I would write in .Quotes that made sense, funny thoughts, silly poems, serious poems... really anything that I found interesting.And some other pages in the book just had memories locked up of seasons past... a perfectly formed leaf, a faded picture and a butterfly wing that floated by. I remember so distinctly now the joy I got from turning thru the pages but try as I might I can't remember when the joy stopped and when it became a drudge and when the book went from a prized treasure to a forgotten dusty object in the basement lost in the several moves I made.As this year comes to an end , am trying to take an inventory of all the days of years past. So many of the pages in my memory are missing... and am just one individual with a tiny life so I do wonder how history can be written for a culture with any degree of accuracy.Considering that I cannot remember events a few years past clearly or objectively,I doubt any one individual can remember all the events in a period of time .Perhaps so much of what we take for granted as happened must've been some "historian's" imagination... well barring the big facts like X was a king or a Y war occurred.That would be a shame really if all the personalities we really just imaginations... or maybe not coz everything is as real as you believe it to be.And good turns into bad or bad turns into good.

So yes, that's what happens when you let the mind loose and type as you think instead of thinking first and tying next .But,I thought I would just go with the flow today and see what I come up with. :)
Peace and season's best to all.

Black Friday

The target was to snag the insanely priced Sony Viao at 399$ available only with a ticket of course only in limited quantities at each BestBuy store which were to open at 5am. So this muggle who rarely ever sees the clock before 8am ,managed to be awake and out @ 4am to an outside temperature 32F with gusty winds. As crazy as this might sound after the next in a few sentences , this muggle actually thought that between the "early" start and the weather being so "bad" , there would hardly be anyone around to shop and that there was a good 70-80% chance of getting a ticket for the sweet deal.

So, as muggle drives around its still completely dark and the roads were deserted raising my hopes until..... I turned into the mall to a beehive of activity. I learnt very quickly that 'early start ' and 'bad weather' are very relative terms as far as a black Friday is concerned. In front or should I say all around BestBuy there were at least 300 people camped and I mean camped complete with a tent ,sleeping bag and all such paraphernalia . Apparently "early" meant coming in the previous night equipped for a night out not breezing in an hour before opening time. Anyhoo, at this point I figured rightly the they deserved the door buster deal and moved on to the next item on my agenda. A more sanely prized HP for 599$ at Office Depot which was scheduled to open at 6am. It was about 5am and the line was only about 50 people long.All things considered , a decent chance of making the cut, so muggle stood there in the freezing cold getting progressively more cold and anxious by the second as the store manager with an alarmingly thin bundle of coupons started handing them as he walked down the line. It seemed to take the guy an eternity for each person and each time as he gave away the previous pieces of paper I saw my chances of getting the deal go farther away......after 40 highly tense minutes muggle got a coupon the last but one piece of paper left. Yippee! Not making that would've made for one batty muggle. Correction , one very cold,hungry ,mad batty muggle.
Proceeded quickly to IHOP to celebrate the hard won victory with hot coffee and warm pancakes dunked in syrup.
Here's hoping for peace and pancakes to all!
Happy Holidays.

DC, Instant noodles,purple hair and new baby

So, what was I doing while I was AWOL?
1) Ran away to DC. (Got upgraded to first class on the way . Good start to the "holiday")
2) Hogged a whole bunch of rather irresistible home made yummies courtesy mom in law.I'm so not getting on a scale before 2008.
3) Co-hosted baby shower for the imminent nephew arrival (yeah! just one more month to go and I'll officially be an aunt. )
4) Hogged some more before I flew back to Cowtown and since then been on an exclusive diet of instant noodles. I counted 8 empty packs yesterday . That was a bit of a jolt. My mom was paranoid about the preservatives in these things and I guess some of that rubbed off. Plus I figured it wont hurt to introduce some veggies into my carb only diet so shook my grocertia(grocery+inertia) and stocked shelves with stuff.
6)Week has been otherwise eventful for people I know with Joanna having a beautiful baby boy on 14th and Case dyeing her hair purple to celebrate her birthday.
8)Also finished 8 Agatha Christie novels. I love reading mysteries that are cerebral and engaging with so many characters having a likely explanation for murder , am guessing till the last page about how she will glue her yarn together and am almost always surprised nicely.No complex bomb plots and conspiracy theories, just gimme a good ole murder mystery that I can loose track of time with.
Understandably with so much happening one was distracted but after a "gentle" nudge from Case am back and blogging.
Peace!

Travel boots on

Just because there isn't any blogging doesn't mean I'm vegetating. C'mon people a lil more faith,a girl has to work after all. And when work calleth this gal's gotta wear her travel boots and be off to far far away lands . Living in a hotel out of a suitcase is a wee bit limiting for the creative juices. I spend most of my energies getting lost in new and interesting ways or BSing my way out of trouble or into...no matter.
So the first thing I do after I land in a new place ( which is usually every week) is concentrate on figuring out a foolproof way to get to and back from work to hotel. This done, second order of business is to locate a place where I can get decent predictable grub without too much trouble. Considering that I do not eat meat and am looking for at least semi-healthy food the later can get challenging specially if one is located in the Midwest of the US of A. The great country is not so great for vegetarian food options on the go.This any vegetarian traveller struck in airport lounges munching on lays chips will verify. Anyhoo... remarkably after only a single dinner mishap with an un-named pasta with what appeared to be marinara sauce and suspicious lil brown bits which I wasn't brave enough to investigate too deeply into , I'm more or less all set to camp here in Salt Lake city .

SLC impressions:
*The city is smaller than I thought it would be. Winter Olympics n all, I was expecting something much bigger.
*It feels to me like an old coat ... rundown, faded,hidden away.But the surrounding mountains are phenomenal.

Pink Ribbons

With pastels.The motivation for the picture is here.

Camelman

Vegetating

For all those wondering about the non-activity on the blog.I haven't been writing coz there isn't anything to write about.I've been playing vegetable past few days.Playing vegetable needs one to switch off mind and mobility,lie on a couch with a good view of the telly keeping remote handy while consuming copious amounts of calories and watch McCoy kick ass on re-runs of Law and Order. I find the best way to deal with this mode is to lie back and wait for it to wear itself out. Fighting is futile...

Me and Murphy's law

RULE 1: The other lanes moved faster

Got stuck due to car breakdowns, accidents, construction etc 3 times in 4 days. The 4th day I parked 3 blocks away from work , 10 minutes from a crucial meeting and it starts pouring...which brings me to rule 2.

RULE2:You will always find something in the last place you look

Searched the front and back seats( in,on and under) frantically for an umbrella .Other than some gooey brown remains of indeterminate origin wrapped in plastic, there was no sign of one. At this time I was debating the relative benefit of making a dash for it . Considering that 3 blocks+downtown lights+ pouring rain makes for one wet muggle for the meeting Vs sitting in car waiting for rain to stop would result in no muggle for meeting. Neither sounded like a good idea. As a last resort I open the trunk hoping for something, really anything at this point and ta-da .. there it is the elusive umbrella.So naturally, one would assume that alls well with the world now .Well,lemme tell you that one would be completely and utterly wrong in that assumption.Moving on to rule 3

RULE3:There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over

So DRY batty makes it to meeting on time . When I say meeting, I really only use that word in the loosest possible sense. It was really an excuse for batty muggle bashing . Lower end of the food chain and all that.

So everything that can go wrong went wrong....oh wait whats that ominous red light blinking at the bottom of my laptop screen ;)

Blue Bridge

Ipod ,ticker etc

I gots to get my iPod re-programmed. So picture this, its wednesday evening after a bad day at work and the 3rd run this week after a long and I mean period of absolutely no running .So, my legs feel like jelly and am doing the run on autopilot. By the 4th mile really am only thinking of getting one foot in front of the other and the only 2 reasons keeping me going are a) the anticipation of a long cold drink and b) some catchy rhythms from my ipod in shuffle mode.At this moment then the song "Beeti na bitaye raina" starts playing. (For the Bollywood uninitiated "Beeti na bitaye raina" is a famous song on how time passes very slowly for a disappointed lover). Yes, time did indeed move very slowly after that and yes, I gots to get my iPod re-programmed.

Suggestions for my run playlist are welcome.

Other than that the running is going pretty good. The mileage is still below 15miles/week and am shuffling even slower than I used to. But, I'm running . And I'm happy.
Added mile tracker from ticker factory just for kicks.

Shuffle on!

Balloons etc

I've been told in no uncertain words that while all this painting business is fine and good, I'm supposed to be writing also. Well here goes...
I'll start with the highly anticipated weekend plans.The local hot air balloon festival . This is located about 20 odd miles from my place.On an average day this should have taken 30mins. On this particular Saturday an overturned truck dropped bundles of hay and blocked out 4 of the 5 lanes and the fire truck/police took the 5th lane while we were sitting in a hot hot car in the middle of an interstate not moving with of course no access water or food . Well after about 2.5 hrs of this fun stuff , we crept inch by excruciating inch out away from the accident . At this point any thoughts of balloons and such were totally out of the window, and we promptly turned back homewards.

..... Peace!

Girl with Nosering

Green room and I

Girl in Red

I'm not sure what lies beyond the wall. The blue suggests sky above or water below. Either way, the other side holds something interesting I should imagine to capture the lil girl's interest . It was very fun painting the red dress...I've never painted human forms before and this one was surprisingly easy to do. And I have to say that I love acrylics...so easy to use and perfect for my temperament.Yes, am referring to the fast drying time.Waiting for oils to dry drives me nuts.

Blogging surprises

No one tells a blog virgin this but this blogging business is very very very hard. Having joined the blogging party fashionably late I expected to hear all the pitfalls ahead of time and be prepared .This so did not happen.

First big hurdle , the name.Not a whisper from all the blog gurus about how absolutely blank your mind goes when you have to pick a name for the blog . The pressure to pick a name to represent your personality and also sound suitably hip for the whole world to see.(Aww c'mon admit it, if you are vain enough to broadcast your thoughts on the WWW then you have to be vain enough to want the name to sound cool). My blog name had to be:
a)Fun because I do enough non-fun stuff on an involuntary basis.
b)Funky because I like funky.Funky is cool.
After intense creative back and forth with Schiebs I settled on Funkeying.

Whew!So OK after stumbling on the whole name thing, you would think its all smooth sailing from here on right? Wrong. Then came more trouble in the form of the choices for the blog display.The template, the font, the colors, the logo .. the list is simply endless.No blog veteran ever mentions that it would take only about a gazillion attempts to find a half way thru satisfying template and then a gazillion more trials before you find a font and logo that go well with template. And just when you thought you hit the right note, its inevitable for you to try that very last font style which you have no business trying anyway because you are supposed to be happy with your page now .But you do ........and of course it follows that this is THE one, the perfect font that you've been searching for all along and naturally it clashes horribly with the background you had picked after the aforementioned gazillion trails. Right then, back to square one . And all this even before you even start to think about the content to post....

Now that y'all know the mental anguish I went thru with all these weighty considerations, you will understand why I need to sign off now and make myself a tall cold drink.

Happy Weekend-ing!

Turkey trotting in cow country

I'm not an elitist runner,strictly speaking I'm not even a runner. I'm really a shuffler.... OK, so I have forward motion while I move my feet and I reach the finish lines... eventually. No complaints though, gives me time to think and more importantly un-think .

Motivation is really not the much vaunted runner's high ( which after about 6 months of running and not hitting I honestly think is bogus) but just the incredible satisfaction of finishing . But what really gets me into a good rhythm is the training for an approaching race ,so this year I'm signing up for the Turkey Trot 8 miler.

The first run yesterday towards gearing up for the trot after a long period of inactivity was not what one would call successful.The run involved some heavy duty puffing and panting interspersed with why-the-heck-am-I-doing-this-again- ing. Not a stellar opening day.


Shuffle On!

Whats with the painting?

Playing with colors is very relaxing for me . I'm not particularly good at using them.And inevitably, the end result is less satisfying than the process itself.So I end up getting annoyed and stop .However after seeing Chinni's persistence with her paintings am starting afresh... again.
Wish me luck and patience.
Peace!

New pastels and tulip..

Broke into by new pastel set and tried out the trusty fruit bowl and a tulip.
Not too thrilled with the results but am happy to have started painting again .

Hello World

Right then, on to my first post. At about this time I was expecting thoughts to flow and fill this space but am curiously blank . I know only that my first post's gotta be crazy cool , completely original and totally funny . The title of the post took care of the original part and the content so far took care of the cool ; All I need to do now is figure out funny... eh well, hitting 2 of 3 goals ain't so bad for day 1.
Peace!