Year without a Summer...

While I wait for the rains to stop, I chanced upon this article about the year 1816. 

This article made me realize the smallness of the earth and how an eruption of a volcano in Indonesia would result in the decrease in temperature in the Europe and the Eastern part of the USA and in turn result in a year that had no summer, followed by a bitter winter and then one of the world's worst famine happened!!!

Surprisingly, this also resulted in a lot of other good things... like... the most spectacular orangy sunsets... invention of the predecessor to bicycle... invention of mineral fertilizers... and some world famous books and paintings...

A note of thanks to wiki that gives me food for thought!

A Complaint and a Plea!

Sunny during the week , And rainy during the weekend!


Don't you think it's so unfair?
Yet again, we can't go anywhere...


Try to be more considerate towards us, O Lord!
We beg you!

Music...

With V so far from me, I have only one thing to give me company.


Music!


It's amazing how music brings peace to my mind... It makes me forget my loneliness...

For past two days, I have been swinging to all my favorite dance numbers in Hindi and Telugu and Tamil... Of course, I would not want to play romantic numbers... They would give me heartache!

When I work, I have a single song run in the background for hours together... It does not bore me at all! In fact, it helps me focus more on work and less on the song!!!


So, for another 3 days, I can follow the same ritual... And then??? And then I will have V with me! :)

Mixed emotions...

Crying myself to sleep.... 
Then getting a funny dream...
And waking up clutching my tummy and laughing out loud...


That's a strange thing to happen!

Knotty Tidbits: 8

Title: Compliments!

These days I am all into playing computer games on V's new i-Pad. And my favorite game of all is the 'Bust A Marble'. That's where I get to burst marbles making crunching sounds! The only catch in the game is: every time we lose, we need to start all over again from Level-1. There is no way to save the latest level of the game and pick up from where we left. 

When I completed 13 levels in the game for the very first time, I was all excited. I was jumping and screaming "I won! I won! I won! I have crossed 13 levels!" And you know what V said: "Marbelous!" That's the best compliment I got in the recent times!

'Bust A Marble' is a 'marbelous' game indeed! :)

Bolster that was once a pillow!

Two of our pillows flattened to almost nothing after three months of use. Initially we pushed two of the pillows into a single pillow cover and used it under the head. But soon I got tired of it and wanted to make something out of them. 

And this is the result of the doing! Don't they look pretty?!

I rolled each of the pillows and hand-stitched it so that it would not unravel into a pillow again. It looked like cylinder. Then I stitched some fancy covers for it. And that's how the pillow took re-birth in the form of a bolster! :)

This bolster cover has some nice frills attached to it. Ain't it lovely?

And this one has machine embroidery done on it. In fact I stitched each line using a different embroidery stitch and now I could even use this cover for sampling the stitches before I decide to use a particular stitch on some other cloth! :)

Now V is very happy to use these bolsters for support while watching movies from our laptop! :)

Coins and Piggy Bank...

This post is dedicated to my Ganga! :)

No matter how much we earn, still coins play a very important role in life... For checking our weight at the bus stand or buying tickets for a bus ride or for paying for vendors in the train, we all need change... 
 
There is always a thrill to holding coins in our hands. It reminds me of days when one rupee would get us at least 10 orange peppermint candies... We would maintain a piggy bank made of terracotta. It would resemble an egg with a slit on the top for dropping the coins. The only way to get the coins out was to break it. But we three sisters found out another way of getting the coins out of the hundi (as we would call it!) With a help of sharp object like scissors we would hit at the slit of the hundi and carefully made the slit large enough so that by turning the hundi upside-down, we could see the coins fall against the slit and then with a small scissors we will hold the coin and pull it out. It was fun pulling out all the coins and them pushing them inside through the slit.

The major contribution to our hundi came from our dad's wallet and the major contributor is/was Ganga. The unsaid rule was: The destiny of any change in Appa's wallet was the Hundi!!! :) Ganga was/is the first one to look out for loose change in Appa's wallet or Amma's purse or on the computer table or fridge top or anywhere in the house. She was/is very good at looking at the right places and at the right time and the coins would be on their way into our Hundi even before we could open our mouths in protest! Now you know why I dedicated this post to Ganga! :)

We continued to maintain a Hundi long after we finished college and started working. After getting married, I could not help continuing the tradition. But I wanted a Hundi from where I could take out the coins without having to break it and so here is my creation...

I decorated an empty ice-cream box with fabric. I added a slit to it's side for the coins to slide in! Ain't it a nice idea? :-) 

Now I am ready to flick some coins from my husband's wallet for safe-guarding them in my Hundi! ;-)

Muscle Joke: Antakshari...

It's exercise time again! Here's another Muscle Joke...

While we were playing Antakshari at home, one of my friends sang the same song again. When we objected to it, he said, “This is the male version of the song!!!” And later, after a couple of rounds of the game, he sang the same song again. This time he explained, “It is not the same song. It is the remix version of the song!”

Happy Exercising! Hee Hee Hee!