11 February 2014

No therapy like retail therapy

Last evening, Sharmila brought the girls back from school and the girls could barely contain their glee at the prospect of two unscheduled holidays. (Fulton county has closed schools Tue and Wed due to inclement weather – which in Atlanta-speak after the scare of the previous snowmaggedon roughly means “some clouds have been spotted over Birmingham, Alabama” 😉 ).

In any case, the girls were rejoicing and Sharmila was getting really mad at the thought that she would be again stuck at home with the kids. So, some mild form of caterwauling ensued between Tasha and her – she demanding that we go somewhere for the weekend and Tasha wanting a “staycation”.
Having been burnt before, I stayed completely out of the fray. There is no good that ever comes out from me getting in the middle of a fight between Tasha and Sharmila. But it was starting to get heated up.

Trust Nikita to calm things down. She gave Sharmila one of those hugs with “mommy wommy” words and said “We will go shopping this weekend”! Incredibly enough, it worked! Tasha also wanted to join them for shopping!!! There was total harmony after that!

I went back to my room realizing that perhaps I am the one who came thru most damaged in a fight that I did not have a dog in at all!!!

11 February 2014

Another gem from Niki

As many of you know, Sharmila is a pro painter and her favorite topics are boats, horses and such. Once in a while, she ventures into other areas. Sometime back, she drew an abstract painting. For the paintingly-challenged like me, an abstract painting is just that – abstract. No subject, object and all that… at least, that is what I think.

Anyways, Sharmila had put up one of her abstract paintings to dry in the garage. When she drove into the said garage in her car bringing Nikita back from school, another of those hilarious episodes ensued.

Nikita looked at the painting up and down… tilted her head to look sideways into the painting and then finally declared “This goes into the ‘I don’t understand’ pile” and stomped away!

Rest of us were on the floor with our sides bursting…. we laughed so hard….

9 February 2014

Another 10K

Starting to pick up distances again . Consecutive 10K runs. Still long ways from my 32K runs. Part of the run today was with the Chalupa group. Whole of the coffee though was with them 🙂

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9 February 2014

Same place, same time, new person…

Just like last Puja, this time too in the evening I walked up to the restaurant nearby (from where the Puja was going on) and settled down at the bar for a glass of wine. This time Sid joined me instead of Rupak and Amitesh. The bar still has a chessboard. So, Sid and I tried to solve the 8 queen problem again manually. Sid came up with one very quickly and that is pretty much all we got this evening….

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7 February 2014

Patron Cafe, anyone?

One of the best things of the team I work with is the end-of-week or sometimes end-of-day call for “Let’s go for a drink before we go home”. Unsurprisingly, we have solved a lot more problems at a bar than actually sitting in a office. Today’s rule was – “No office discussions”.
Gasan, the team entertainer introduced Sunjay and myself to a new drink – Patron Cafe. It is a shot of coffee and tequila. While we were impressed with his knowledge of the history and owners of the drink, he was no match to our ultimate question – “Tequila makes us sleepy. Coffee wakes us up. Why go thru that hysteresis curve?” 🙂

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