Making Progress

I went this evening to Lowes to check out things like showers and sinks. I'm planning a home improvement project that I'm sure I'll use as blog fodder as it progresses (witness the chronicling of the patio last summer).

I also ended up going to see Get Smart again with a different friend and sure enough, it was funny AGAIN. One part was so funny, it brought tears to my friend's eyes.

I'm still planning to see WALL-E with my mom (when she visits in a week and a half), Wanted with Stacey, but I have no takers yet for Hancock. Anybody?

No More Experience

Star Trek: The Experience will be closing in Vegas in the fall.

I'm so glad I got to see it before it closes!

(Thanks, Shawn, for the tipoff.)

Geeky Girl Fun

Just ran across a link to this calendar celebrating geeky girls on Neil Gaiman's blog. Thought the geeky girls or aficionados of geeky girls would appreciate it.

Long Weekend

I had a very good weekend. I hope you all did too. Mine was a good blend of being busy and bumming around:

Friday I bummed about the house a bit (trying to get something done, but not really wanting to expend any energy) and then went to a friend's house for dinner. We ate yummy chicken in tomato vodka sauce with peppers and olives and watched the fireworks from the balcony, the view slightly obstructed, but it was still very nice.
Saturday I managed to get to the grocery store before I went off to see Get Smart with another friend. Wow. That was a brilliant movie. Absolutely brilliant. I laughed my butt off. I will definitely buy a copy, and am tempted to see it again in the theater (which is rare for me). Steve Carell is perfect. Highly highly recommended. We had an early dinner at T.G.I.Fridays (I had a surprisingly good itty bitty steak and jalapeno mac and cheese) and then I went home to make sugar cookies for Sunday and cat food (not for Sunday).
Sunday, I got up and quickly went to work decorating the sugar cookies. My brother-in-law is visiting his dad and so my sister decided to have a "girls only" party. I decorated a lot of girly style cookies and thankfully most of them were eaten. I got to use the lovely coloring gel that Stacey gave me and really can't wait to try making more sophisticated colors. We talked and ate and watched The Holiday. Despite my general skepticism about romantic comedies, this one was quite good. I'd even consider *buying* it! I'm in a point in my life where I really identified with Camaron Diaz's character, so it didn't hurt that Jude Law's character was pretty damn charming. (Granted, he's supposed to be an Englishman in the middle of winter and he's sporting a tan that looks like he just got back from a beach vacation in the south of France.) The unrequited love plotline with Jack Black and Kate Winslet was extremely sweet as well. Unrequited love sucks. I'd recommend avoiding it if at all possible.

I've made some progress in getting the house in order, but I also got to be out and about. A good weekend, all in all.

India: Our Favorite People

Since I just posted about an aspect of India that I found most distressing and most challenging, the intrusion of others' attention and expectations, I'm now going to talk about the nicest people we encountered in India:

The Dewans: This was the family of a school friend of Cheryl's. They live in a suburb of Delhi called Vasant Kunj. We stayed with them for a couple days when I first arrived and then again when we returned from Agra and then a third time just before I left. They were very kind to us and made sure we had tasty meals and a bed. The young people of the family, Aanchal and Abenov (sp?), took us out one evening to see India Gate (pictured above through a bus window). It turned out to be a wonderful local tradition for families to go out to park along the grassy mall that stretched out to either side of the monument and eat ice cream cones bought from a cart. There were street vendors selling the sorts of things they normally sell at concerts or fun ride parks -- bubble solution and lit up plastic strings (the kind you fix into a circle and wear around your neck), stuff like that. The weirdest thing was a little 3D show in a box that showed images of gods and tigers and things. It was 3D like the old ViewMaster viewers, with a stereo picture set up. You pay, then peek inside, and I was expecting something like a peep show. However, it was really geared toward children, I think. Anyway, it was a lovely evening.
The other very sweet thing Mrs. Dewan did for me was to teach me how to put on a sari and gave me a sari blouse of hers that I altered to fit me. I'm very grateful to her and to all of the Dewans for their care of us.

The guide at the Hilltop Fort at Gwalior: This fellow really grasped the fact that westerners did not respond well to the hard sell. His "no really, you don't have to hire me" schtick was frankly endearing after a week of "come into my shop! Come in to my shop!" Unfortunately, he wanted to take us around by car and we, being insane Americans who didn't realize that only poor people walk everywhere, wanted to walk up the hill to the palace and temples beyond. Thankfully, one of us struck on the idea that he could meet us at the palace and only give us the palace tour for a significantly reduced price. As we were the only westerners he had seen in a couple months, he took the deal. He spoke English quite well and really knew a lot about the palace. It was a lovely tour and I'm really glad we got to meet him. He tried to tell us some of his best lines for the temples, but by the time we got to them (without him with us) we didn't really know how to relate what he had said to the buildings in front of us. Very sweet guy, and if you ever go to Gwalior's fort, go to the south western gate and see if the tour guide is there.

Chime: She was a Tibetan refugee who ran a restaurant (Norlakh Cafe) in Leh. We went to her restaurant quite often while we were there. She made delicious garlicy fried potatoes and cream of barley porridge, so we loved to go for breakfast. About the third time we went,Bret and Cheryl had to wait for me to join them there, so the got into a conversation with her. The next time we saw her, she invited us to her nephew's wedding reception. It was a really interesting cultural experience, and some of the best parts were when we were able to help her with some of her cooking duties. She is intelligent and kind and very sweet. One of the most memorable conversations we had, I said how wonderfully sweet I found the faces of the Tibetan children and she pointed out that it was because our features were so different and that she felt the same attraction in looking at us and our Caucasian features. I know that "exotic" is essentially just different, but it was interesting coming from her. She is a lovely person with a lovely and intelligent daughter (whom we met at the wedding, pictured below on the left, and then once or twice after) and I'm really happy to have met her.

India:The Downside of Celebrity

One of the oddest things about being a western tourist in India is the paparazzi. We were often photographed, sometimes asked (families would crowd around us and we'd smile dutifully at the camera), sometimes not. Occasionally they'd do it openly, but sometimes there would be a decoy, where someone would stand near us as the "subject" but they were really taking a photo of us. Then there were the people with the camera phones. This trio, probably a father and son and the son's friend (or two sons, I suppose), walked towards us, with the father walking in front, providing cover for the son to take a photo as they passed. Cheryl and I spotted this and decided we'd had enough and we were going to take their photos instead. At that point, they stopped pretending and just stood there with thier phones up, taking photos. I kept my camera in front of my face, taking photos until they got bored and walked away.
(This didn't happen in Ladakh, only when we were south of the mountains.)

Very weird. And irritating, if you happen to be a private person...

I Don't Look Like a Celebrity

See?



Janiece, Michelle, and Jeri [Edit: and Shawn] all did this exercise too and similarly to Jeri, my matches were mostly HUH? I think that my totally normal features do not lend themselves to celebrity. I usually get mistaken for third grade teachers, or something like that.

Oh well. At least I only have to worry about paparazzi in India.

First Triple UCF Meet

Our good friend Tania was supposed to fly in very early on Sunday. However, the airline had other ideas and she ended up spending 6 hours in the airport waiting for her flight. Fortunately, she also had time to email Janiece and I and then she had the presence of mind to text me after I got up, but before I left the house. Genius, she is.
I picked her up from the airport 6 hours later and we met Janiece at Il Vicino, at Broadway and 6th. Yummy food was eaten, much talking was done, and you can rest assured that we continued the tradition of UCFers getting along just as well in person as they do online. Of course, we documented the occasion with photographs, and both of those lovely ladies have already posted about it. I have to say, I was very impressed with Tania's plucky good cheer, considering how frustrating the previous 12 hours had been. Yay Tania!
In addition to being lovely and plucky, Tania is also generous. She brought a present for Da Boyz. It's a cat mat (or catnip blanket, as Nathan calls it) with some super powered Alaskan catnip. The boys, usually very good at sharing, did not manage to share this very well. Here's a photo of Martin, trying to be dignified (note the beautiful tabby patterened fabric -- perfect for the boys!). And below, in my first blogged video (taken with my lovely Canon point and shoot), Matti being cute: