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Monday, November 7th, 2005
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9:31 am - Apples!
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When Jishnu, Crystal, Grant and I set out for the Apple Hills on Saturday, we had a master plan: we were going to zip from farm to farm and acquire freshly-picked-by-ourselves apples at Denver Dan's, fudge at the Honey Bear Ranch, some Sangiovese wine at Jodar Winery, and finally, at the end of our travels, finish with buying vast quantities of apple cider doughnuts. We were in love with the plan - we had made maps and directions all based on our beautiful plan. I had even fantisized about sitting in bed with my cider doughnuts and reading Mr. Strange and Johnathon Norell.
So of course, we came home with $53.22 of jams, vinegar, corn and bumbleberry syrup (Crystal and Grant wents nuts over the bumbleberry and emerged from Denver Dan's with bumbleberry syrup, bumbleberry jam, and a bumbleberry pie) and $28 of apple crisps and pies. No apples, fudge, wine, or cider doughnuts were bought, much to the plan's dismay.
We had a grand time - one of the greatest things about the day was meeting the very tall, very sweet owner of Denver Dan's who gave us about five hundred different types of jams, syrups, apples, and vinegars to sample and to crown it all, a giant piece of apple crisp with ice cream. Tragically, he is a diabetic and is surrounded by mounds of sugar and people moaning orgasmically over the sugar he is dispensing out to them. He is the sugar equivalent of being thirsty while stranded on a raft in the middle of the ocean.
We finished the day with an impromptu dinner party - Crystal and Grant dashed home and picked up Harry Potter, the most adorable labrador puppy alive, and the fixings for oreo milkshakes and Jishnu and I began making herbed goat cheese rounds which we finished with Crystal's help as the puppies romped around. Grant supervised their antics while I laughed uncontrollably and tried to take a million pictures all at once. Dinner was so delightful and simple - we ended up sitting at the table for hours telling stories.
We ended the night with milkshakes and Super Mario Kart as the two monkeys fought for the dominion of the sofa.
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| Tuesday, November 1st, 2005
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9:30 am - Random Thoughts
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I haven't been able to think of a complete topic to write about for a while and the longer it's been since I've posted, the more I feel that I should actually say something so instead I think I will do the 101 things meme which will be equivalent to saying a whole lot of nothings all at once.
1. Random was the favorite adjective of choice for my friends in high school - we shoehorned it into every possible place an adjective could go in sentences on all sorts of random (hee!) subjects.
2. We were fairly odd. In our defense, this natural tendency was probably helped along quite a bit by the fact that it was a school so small, I took all my classes from 8-12 grades with the same 14 people.
3. In high school, we all sat in the same damn seats in every single classroom for all four years.
4. Scarily enough, those seating charts are all still implanted firmly (in a way O-Chem never was) in my memory.
5. In a serious blow to my baking pride, I really didn't like the pizza dough that I made from scratch.
6. I liked the frozen-for-who-knows-how-long and then accidently left soaking in a pot of water for hours TJ pizza dough more than my own.
7. I'm going to try a new recipe this weekend and hope for the best.
8. Otherwise, you might want to buy stock in Trader Joes because Jishnu and I are addicted to making pizza. We have all of our movements down perfectly in our pizza dance and are able to swoop around the kitchen completely efficiently.
9. In marked contrast to when we try out new recipes and spend the evening scrambling around the kitchen, muttering the directions and imprecations in equal measure, and occasionally bumping into each other.
10. The chef at the cooking school we attended over the summer told us we should always say "Hot behind" while carrying volataile ingredients.
11. While we shout this out frequently while cooking, we never manage to do say it while actually holding hot things.
12. Our glee in bad puns is long-lived. It lives much beyond rhyme or reason.
13. I feel like I am in grave danger of over-anthropomorphizing Baloo. (Hah! Did you really think I'd manage to get through a post without him?) Halfway through a walk, I stopped in shock because I looked at his feet and my mind freaked out and shrieked "NO, I didn't put his shoes on before we left! Bad mother!)
14. I think the only saving grace is the fact that I recognize the insanity of this.
15. I looked up the spelling of anthropomorphize.
16. Last month Jishnu read Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norell. It's the only book that he's read in all the years we've known each other (four years on Nov 9th!) that I haven't read before him. While he was reading it, I tortured him by calling it Jonathon Norell and Mr. Strange (as he tends to mess up the names/titles of things I am reading and it drives me batty); now that he's done reading it, I'm torturing him by reading it at the pace of melting glaciers.
17. I'm stuck in a boring part of it and it's hard to lug myself out.
18. I should though because he desperately wants to discuss all his theories about the book and has no one to talk about it with.
19. Jishnu is much much much better than me at figuring out plot twists.
20. I am any author's dream reader because I accept all narrators implicitly, never question red herrings (or even identify them as such) and simply coast along plot-wise. I save my neurotic scanning of the text for the way in which the words are written.
21. Since I usually read books I like more than once, I have the second reading to concentrate on the mechanics of the plot.
22. It gives me a thrill every time Jishnu outwits an author.
23. Why can I not finish reading A Breath of Snow and Ashes? Why must Diana Gabaldon torture me so? There are too many BAD things that happen in this book to people I love. I can't even look at the book without wanting to throw pointy things at it.
23. Why can I never think of a graceful way to end a post?
24. Does that sentence count as one?
remaining 101 items to be completed soon....
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| Thursday, October 6th, 2005
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3:27 pm - Stressed Out Bear
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I was going to begin an entry yesterday afternoon with the sentence "Behold, [our] house is left unto [us] desolate!"* We had just left Baloo at the grooming parlour and wailed all the way home. We've never left him anywhere alone before and we thought we had the worst of the bargain. Baloo has been the light of the house for the last five months and the house truly did seem somehow smaller and darker without him.
We both moped around the house for a while (mostly by staring sadly at his kennel) and Jishnu comforted himself with a bit of cheese and I sat down to begin this entry and then my cell phone rang - it was the groomer saying that Baloo had freaked out after we left and was refusing to let them touch him.
We triumphantly (sad that he behaved badly, though) brought Baloo back home and he installed himself on the couch and heaved a sigh of contentment. We talked to our vet's assistant and she said that the doctor might recommend sedatives for Baloo because he really is in desperate need of some grooming for his crazy hair and toenails.
The poor bear's travails were not over with the afternoon. He had attacks of diahrrea all night long, somehow managing not to soil his kennel, and now he is on a cottage cheese and rice diet for the next five days. I called the vet's office (again, I'm sure they looove me there) and apparently, stress attacks can bring about diahhrea in puppies.
I'm waiting for Jishnu to come home so that he can keep the Boopers under observation while I go get his cottage cheese rations.
*One of the few lines of poetry I can remember; however, I had to look up the author - Tennyson, a line from AYLMER'S FIELD
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| Wednesday, October 5th, 2005
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9:26 am - Worried Anticipation
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We've been ordered by our dog trainer to get Baloo to a groomer post-haste. This was a few weeks ago. We've been dragging our feet on it because we love his ruffly, wavy, generally unkept look and are afraid of him coming out of the salon looking like a pit bull. Sadly, the day of judgement has finally arrived and the poor bear is going to be shorn today at high noon. (Hopefully, he won't follow the fate of Samson.)
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| Tuesday, October 4th, 2005
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9:23 am - Serendipity
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The last four days have been brimming over with serendipity (and, as you'll see, excesses of shopping). On Friday, we went to Berkley (which I now adore and want to live in) with Mike and Chante and had an orgy of delectable pastries, excellent pizza, perfect bread, and cheese with which Jishnu wishes to have a torrid affair - and that was only the morning!
We started out at a bakery that Chante went to as a small child and literally bought them out of all their cheese puffs. I am not a great cheese-lover and much less so in the way of desserts so we only bought three of them initially and boggled at Chante when she bought a dozen. We realized that this was a huge mistake after eating one on the way back to the car. We all turned and ran back to the bakery (Chante and Mike also having decided to supplement their dozen) and begged them for whatever they had left. Sadly, the bakery only had six left - which Chante bought and then gave to us, very sweetly, when we realized that was all the bakery had left. Thanks again, Chante - we've been eating them happily!
After our bakery adventures, we went to the Cheeseboard Pizza Collective and collectively devoured one of their beautiful pizzas - it was so good that the car was silent as we all concentrated on the symphony of cheeses melted together on the crust. Our next stop was at the Cheeseboard Cheese Collective where I fell into raptures over all the bread and bought a long sourdough baguette, a hot jalapeno and cilantro X roll, and about five pounds of perfectly made English muffins and Jishnu lusted after all the cheeses and emerged from the shop with four different specimens. I'll leave it to him to give you the dirty (or rather, smelly) details on his blog.
After the food orgy, we had a grand time at Sur la Table and the Crate and Barrel Outlet. We got a ridiculously heavy cast iron skillet (I now understand why people used to use them as murder weapons) and I decided that tarts are going to be the next dessert I conquer and so I bought a tart pan and Jishnu bought a shaver/slicer for his darling cheeses. At the C&B outlet, we indulged in buying lots and lots of glasses that we don't really need but are such pretty receptacles for our drinks of choice: Coke and wine.
In between the two cooking stores, I found the sofa of my dreams, convinced Jishnu that he too longed for it and then had to leave it behind. It is soft and squishy and as deep as a twin bed and the general effect is of sleeping on fluffy leather clouds and I am now pining for it. This is it.
We concluded the day with expeditions to Ikea and Trader Joes. Ikea, of course, is impossible to leave without a random assortment of glassware, candles, hangers, and hampers so we dutifully bought varieties of all those and also a multi-level desk for Jishnu's music work. Once we clean up his studio, I'll post a picture of it. We assembled it on Saturday and since, thankfully, the Ikea instructions as hieroglyphics have improved, we had a lot of fun and came out of it feeling like carpenters.
Ack, I can't believe it has taken this many words to describe Friday - I'll leave the rest of the weekend for another post.
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| Wednesday, September 21st, 2005
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9:18 am - Contentment
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I am sitting in bed eating a beautiful ice-cream cone, with a new novel next to me and Baloo snuffling at my feet - what more could I ask for? (well, possibly Jishnu, but as he is presently working out and I am not, he is aiding my sense of contentment in his own way)
Jishnu has lured me away from my very infrequently updated livejournal to blogspot with the siren lure of ease-of-posting-pictures feature. If we ever find our camera, I will be able to document Baloo and his odd ways. I'm going to try to write every day in an effort to promote writerly discipline - which after a summer of productivity has fallen prey to too much outside work (but, as it is work that pays, there is a silver lining). As I told Mike on his blog, I will be like a modern-day Samuel Pepys!
Today, we took Baloo to lunch with us at Sam's. Jishnu and I are addicted to their schwarma - it is a work of art in the way it balances textures and colours and flavors; the speckled brown pita holding together layers of creamy white yogurt sauce, espresso colored meat, grass-green cucumbers and the flame coloured splashes of hot sauce. The waitress at Sam's is very sweet and always goes into raptures over Baloo and doesn't bat an eye when he begins to eat mountains of ice. Sadly for my ears, Baloo has inherited Jishnu's love of ice crunching. The lunch and our ramble through the park afterwards was a bright spot between bouts of teaching.
I had meant to talk about Baloo's first meeting with his friend, Harry Potter, the most adorable and happy yellow labrador puppy alive, but I'll wait until I have the pictures from their summit.
One last note of contentment - Jishnu is now lying next to me in bed - eating a French vanilla (which apparently is not a geographical indicator) ice cream cone and reading To Say Nothing of the Dog. A few years ago, he would never have been caught eating french vanilla ice cream or reading for fun - hopefully, I'll learn better habits from him as well and you'll see him bragging on his blog about my regular exercise habits.
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| Thursday, May 12th, 2005
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12:05 am - LOVE!
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I have been avoiding writing in this journal because I wanted to write
a long and lyrical ode to our dog of love, Baloo - but that very same
dog of love has been making me wake up at 5:30 every morning since we
adopted him and then requires constant vigilance at all other moments
of the day and much tabulation of poop/urine bulletins between his two
parents and so I haven't had the energy to write anything. Please hop
over to Jishnu's blog
for pictures of the puppy. (You may have to scroll down as Jishnu has
been very prolific lately). Since I still don't have the energy to do
justice to Baloo, let me just say that he is not really a dog - he's
actually a teddy bear walking around on four legs. And he has the vocal
range of an opera singer - especially when he has been put in his
kennel for the night and alternates between being really really MAD at
me, his evil mother and really really SAD that such a dog as he could
be locked up in JAIL.
Oh - before I babble about Baloo for hours, I should babble about my
lovely, lovely wonderful mother-in-law. There are two things that must
be understood before y'all understand why the fact that she is buying a
new bed for our bedroom at her house (since we are living with them
this summer) is so very sweet.
1. She is an OB-GYN and has developed the ability to sleep anywhere and
would quite happily dream on a bed of pointy, pointy rocks.
2. I, on the other hand, am the twin of the princess in the fairy tale
who could distinguish the tiny, tiny pea underneath the forty-seven
million featherbeds and complained she didn't
sleep well (in my defense, this is a direct inheritance from my mother
who would probably ask for an extra cloud if she was sleeping upon a
bed of pink and white clouds already).
Obviously, she and I come from entirely different bed-valuing worlds -
but she is still going to buy me a soft and pretty bed because she is a
true-blue dream of a mother!
I no longer have to think of complicated excuses for coming back to
Davis to sleep in our own pretty, pretty bed to save my back during the
summer! Hooray! I love her! I would marry her this instant if I wasn't
already married to her son!
I am also clearly drunk on brownies. (Sorry, baby. We are still eating them.)
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| Wednesday, May 11th, 2005
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8:41 am - Confidential to Jishnu
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Dear husband of mine, (tyrannical banner of sweets for breakfast that you are)
I am eating triple chocolate BROWNIES and COKE for breakfast! Come to D.C. and try to stop us!
love,
your wife (who is definitely not eating rice-krispie treats so is still safe under the rules!)
current mood: gleeful
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| Saturday, April 9th, 2005
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12:54 am - "second star to the right and straight on 'till morning"
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I've just come home from watching Finding Neverland
at a friend's house and it has inspired me to really start writing - I
want to be Peter (the Peter of the movie, not the play) and create and
write and put my emotions into something that could have greatness.
There was one scene that affected me deeply - ( spoilers for the movie )
I think I need to have a scene like that in my book.
I had a hugely exciting morning - the kind of morning that made my
inner bookworm wriggle with joy. I went to the public library used book
sale and made out like a bandit. The sale started at 12 P.M. and as I
was driving there, I was thinking "ooh, I'm going to be there at 12:10,
I'm going to be the first person there and I'll just wander around and
around." Dear friends, I walked into a mob scene (and in the heart of
Davis, no less!) - I had to park a few blocks away because of the crowd
of cars and when I walked into the sale-room, it was utter chaos.
Little old women handing out grocery bags, old men lumbering around
trying to direct the massive traffic jam of people, and book and books
and books tumbled about as far as the eye could see. I pounced on the
fiction section and started frantically scanning the books and found
three that I wanted in the space of a minute; I couldn't bear to even
blink because I was sure that someone would grab a good book out from
under my eyes - which happened! I was trying to read a title upside
down - it turned out to be a P.G. Wodehouse novel - and someone
slithered his hand around my waist and absconded with it! Clearly, he
had been practicing his upside down reading skills. I realized that
there were more books piled in boxes under the tables so I ended up
crawling across half the room, being kicked and stumbled upon by half
the people there (the aisles themselves were so full people were
tripping over themselves to begin with so I didn't feel too bad about
adding to the confusion) but it was worth it because I found hardcover,
perfectly new editions of books by Nick Hornby and Chitra Banargjee
Divakaruni, two of my favorite contemporary authors. My funniest find
was probably the pristine copy of Martha Stewart's opus (and the start
of her rise to fame and notoriety) Entertaining
- which the three old ladies who were working at the cash registers
were mightily impressed by - "oh, you're set for life with that book,
dear!" they told me. I also found a new copy of the David Lodge
novel, Nice Work, that Jishnu
bought me as a present on our date last week. He paid $14 for it at the
store and I was able to buy it for 50 cents; since I haven't read the
first copy, I'll be able to return it for cash and amazingly enough,
that $14 will practically pay for the 25 books I got today - they were
only $20! I'm still in awe. I came home dancing and jumped up and down
while showing Jishnu all my loot. (And, he bought me something pretty
while I was gone! A handbag which Jeff and Sivram have both mocked but
I adore)
I'm taking our friend J to the sale tomorrow (it lasts till Sunday,
which is the "stuff all the books you can in a bag for $3 day") so I'd
better be off to bed since we're planning on being there when the doors open. I'm so excited - I'm going to find him books in
the fiction section and he's going to find me books in the non-fiction
section as these are our respective weak points.
(Siv, if you read this tomorrow, make sure I buy my plane tickets.)
current mood: bookworm heaven
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| Thursday, April 7th, 2005
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1:49 pm - Pooh, pooh, pooh
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I am at the gym, waiting for Jishnu to finish his weight-training and ruing the day that I stopped working out regularly. Before spring break I had finally gotten to the point where, while I didn't welcome the thought of exercising, it had at least become a natural part of my day. Now, after a week of vacation and a week of being sick, it's back to the feeling of "pooh, pooh, I don't wanna work out!" And I can no longer hit my normal distance/calorie count on the elliptical machine which is more cause for poohing. I don't think I will have time before Jishnu is done but I have to remember to tell my two funniest gym stories soon - they involve flying cellphones and less-than-opaque nightgowns.
I've got to go home and prepare for the class I'm teaching tonight; it's a new session which means a room full of new faces which always freaks me out. Oh, but afterwards, we are going to Sophia's, a bar here which features an aquarium full of exotic fish (one of which looks exactly like a very ugly bulldog) and the only mixed drink I've ever liked - a Kamikaze. Look for a hungover post tomorrow.
current mood: tired/nervous
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| Friday, April 1st, 2005
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7:42 pm - Hail Mogambo!
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Jishnu and I went to a Mr. India party at Leena's (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.3) gorm10
) house last night. I remember watching Mr. India when I was ten years
old and visiting my uncle in India - sadly for my enjoyment of the
movie, I have become much more jaded since then and couldn't believe in
any of the special effects (invisibility and the usual dushum-dushum
fighting which both freaked me out since I was a very gullable 10 year
old). The movie was still a lot of fun though because we all sat around
and laughed at the crazy subtitles and overacting during all the
dramatic scenes. I'm sorry we left early, Leena - we were just so
tired. It definitely fueled a desire to watch more Bollywood movies,
though - can we watch that movie you are always taking about next time?
(I think it is called Main Hoon Na?)
The idiots next door (sweet though they are during the daytime) are
having a drunken frat party out on their front lawn - which to our
great joy is just about 5 feet from our bedroom with its 84 year-old,
thin-as-paper windows - and my head is throbbing from the pain. I've
been looking up noise codes for the city of Davis but I would feel like
too much of an old person to actually call the cops so I'm stuck with
it, I guess.
Ah! Finally, Jishnu has emerged from the theatre (Sin City) - I'm going to go meet him downtown to escape.
current mood: pained
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| Thursday, March 31st, 2005
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6:45 pm - Fitzgerald and pie
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"Afterward John remembered that first night as a daze of many colors,
of quick sensory impressions, of music as soft as a voice in love, and
of the beauty of things, lights and shadows, and motions, and faces."
F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz"
I love Fitzgerald's short stories even more than I love his novels - he
is definitely my favorite male author (from the traditional canon, at
any rate) - and I think that his short stories are tiny, beautiful
jewels. ( Click for more Fitzgerald ramblings )
Jishnu and I went to the law school talent show last night. It was
unexpectedly hilarious. (And incredibly long - it lasted 4.5 hours!)
Acts included two rock bands, visits from Anna Nicole Smith and Michael
Jackson impersonators, a professor crawling around in bib and
diapers as he accepted the youngest-looking professor award, some
insanely good singing from the a capella group, some sexy Korean
drumming, and rolling-in-the-aisles-funny amateur movie that involved a
law librarian and student falling torridly in love in the library
stacks.
In other news, I got my haircut today and now have even more bangs!
Sarah and I scheduled our appointments together so we had a nice Steel
Magnolias-esque experience.
I think I am going to go look for some pie now - this short story is making me very hungry with all its luscious descriptions.
current mood:  hungry
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| Tuesday, March 29th, 2005
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9:18 pm
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"She looked around at Harry, her face glowing, and he saw that the
presence of hundreds of books had finally convinced Hermione that what
they were doing was right. "Harry, this is wonderful, there's
everything we need here!"
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
It probably wasn't necessary to add the identification line but
just in case any of y'all has been reading in a cave that is
Potter-less, I've been careful to attribute my source. I'm re-reading
the last Harry Potter novel now in anticipation of the sixth book's
release this summer. I realized that I barely remember the last half of
the book - considering that it was published a week before my wedding,
a period for which I was wandering around in a state of mind
alternating between deliriously happy and wishing that I could be any
other person in the world, any other place in the world, I'm surprised
that I can even remember who died at the end. One of my favorite
memories from this week is from immediately after we got home from
picking up our copies of the book at midnight - my brother and I tucked
ourselves up into my bedroom and read the whole night through until my
mother found us the next morning at 9 o'clock and dragooned me into
some wedding-related.
I just have a few minutes before my friend Sarah arrives; we're going
for a walk around the neighborhood to talk since we haven't seen each
other for two weeks. It's grand to be back in Davis - each time Jishnu
and I come back, it feels more and more like we are truly coming home,
rather than a transitory residence - I was actually homesick for our
house and the rhythms of our day. (This is all I need, more places to be
homesick for.) After days of driving around Orange County, I've
realized again how lucky I am to live in Davis, where the idea of
driving more than a mile for something induces horror. To illustrate: I
broke the keyboard on our desktop Monday morning by accidentally spilling
a glass of water and the closest place to find a replacement keyboard
is past downtown (where we live) and over the freeway in South Davis,
at the Office Max, next to the Safeway - I have been reduced to only
looking at pages already bookmarked on Firefox (and therefore
accessible by the mouse) because I don't want to drive to South Davis
until Wednesday when I can also go to the Safeway (which I usually
scorn, both for its far-awayness and its horrible produce and ugly
store) for their 10 daffodils for $1 sale. The actual distance
between my house and Safeway/Office Max? 1.5 miles! I'm
making up all these elaborate plans for 1.5 stupid miles!!!! I am
going to die when we live anywhere else than Davis.
Sarah is here and so we are off to our walk - goodnight!
current mood:  cheerful
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| Tuesday, March 15th, 2005
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12:12 pm - Dogs, bags, and butts
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You are the cake of my endeavour, and my jelly roll forever;
My tapioca tartlet, my lemon custard pie;
You're my candied fruit and spices, my juicy citron slices;
You're the darling, sugar-sprinkled apple dumpling of my eye!
John Bennet
I'm in Palo Alto right now in my mother-in-law's office instead of in
Davis packing up multiple suitcases and making large quantities of Rice
Krispie Treats as I had planned - as I left the book I'm currently
reading in the car, y'all will have to make do with a poem that I
memorized recently in preparation for painting it on our kitchen
cabinets - it's a little silly while you're reading it but say it out
loud - the words just roll off your tongue and make you smile.
Jishnu's last moot court rehearsal was last night and his mother very
sweetly canceled her office for the afternoon and drove at breakneck
speed to get to Davis in time for it. We tired her out last night
making her look at all our current obsessions online till 1AM (the
gorgeous dogs at the local animal shelter that we are torturing
ourselves by looking at since we can't yet adopt one, Jishnu's most
wanted replica/refurbished sports cars, and the many ridiculous things
we want to buy on E-Bay) and the end result was that she forgot
her cell phone and pager at our house when she left early this morning.
As she is an OB-GYN, this is a catastrophe. Luckily, I had a book on
tape checked out from the library so the two hours it took to get here
were not bad at all. I also got to talk to my brother Sivram and
arrange a date for him and Jishnu in Philadelphia :)
I'm bidding on a bag with a picture of a dog on it right now on E-Bay
and the suspense of it all is killing me - I've already lost this bag
once but luckily there were many more for sale - sadly, I'm going to
end up paying more than I would have if I had outbid on the first big -
but I obviously need this bag
desperately, dog-obsessed as I am. It's the argument I used with Jishnu
and he very graciously accepted it. Here is the bag
- is it not the very bag for me? To explain why this bag is so
absolutely meant to be mine, I must digress for a moment. Jishnu has
been attempting to acclimatize me to the broader range of adult
language but for a person who grew up with the idea that the word
"stupid" was too vulgar to say, it has been a rocky road. However, my
favorite word now is "butt" as we have taken to calling my
mother-in-law's fat beagle (the love of my life and the star of my
userpic) Tara the Butt (like Jaba the Hutt) and the word "butt" has
become lovely to me by association with her. It's become a term of
endearment in our house, much to my mother's dismay and disgust -
especially when we call her Mommy Butt (Jishnu's still too scared to
actually say this to her though). This bag that will be mine has the dog's butt very tastefully drawn on one side!
Okay, I just checked on the auction and I was outbid again! But
luckily, there was another one of the bags up for sale that had a
buy-it-now option that was at the outside limit of the amount I was
willing to spend on this bag so I am now the proud owner of the
dog-butt bag! Hopefully it will arrive while I am at my parents' house
and I can horrify my mother with it. Ohh - my mother-in-law just came
in and when I told her that I had finally won the bag, she gave me the
money for it as a gift - she is so nice to us and I am very lucky to
have her.
My mother-in-law is done seeing patients so we are going out to lunch
before I head back to Davis - I am so excited - I have the dog-butt
bag, I'm going to have a nice lunch with her and my father-in-law in
the park, I may see Tara and Shelby (the other dog who is equally
lovely) when I stop by the house to visit Jishnu's grandfather, and I'm
going home to my parent's house tomorrow! (please pardon the gushiness
of this last paragraph and chalk it up to travelling stress).
current mood: ecstatic
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| Saturday, March 12th, 2005
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10:55 am - Finally!
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"Ursula having always that strange brightness of an essential flame
that is caught, meshed, contravened...she was so quick, and so lambent,
like discernible fire, and so vindictive, and so rich in her dangerous
flamy sensitiveness."
D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love
As usual, I have been floundering over how to begin a journal
entry and using it to postpone actually writing something. I can't do
that anymore because I have far more important things to procrastinate
on - namely, my first novel, which I am in the process of writing very
very slowly indeed. I think that I will just start each entry with a
line from the book I'm reading at the moment - that way, I have no
excuse to put off writing and I can hopefully provide you, my dear
readers, with something that beautiful or funny from a book to whom you
might be a stranger.
Women in Love is my reading nemesis. I've been reading it for the past
7 years - since I was in the tenth grade - and I don't think that I've
yet to break the 50-page barrier. The language is beautiful and lush
and the characters are intriguing but my eyes begin to swim after a few
pages of reading unendingly lush prose - it drowns me. I've pulled it
down from its place of shame on my bookshelf (on the bottom shelf,
hidden between two volumes of Milton) and reading it has been like an
archaeological dig. I've found ticket stubs to a play that Vivian and I
saw in eleventh grade at a theatre in L.A. (oh, we thought we were such
grownups - standing in the will-call line for tickets, planning out the
furniture we would bring to our college dorm room that we'd share
together (wicker for her and mahogany for me) as we were still
innocents who didn't realize that dorms come furnished with hell's
leftovers), a leaf that I think is from a tree that grew next to the
balcony of my sophomore year dorm, and a handmade birthday card from my
college roommate that proclaims me the Queen of Blueberry
Muffins. I think that I will slip something from my life now into the
pages of the book and admit defeat again for this round - but never
fear, some day I will win this war and conquer the book!
On other fronts, I am reading Cousin Kate by Georgette Heyer (a brand-new obsession of mine - and gloriously one with over fifty books with which to indulge), Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor by
Stephanie Barron (I was very skeptical of this series - Jane Austen as
a detective? - having been burned by a few awful Austen sequels - but
it's wonderful so far; the writing is elegant and the plot is
thickening nicely), and The Full Cupboard of Life
by Alexander McCall Smith (J and I love the narrator of the audio books
so much - she has a beautiful African accent and my reading of the
books has been given so much more color by hearing her voice - my
in-laws are equally enamored of the audio versions and we have phone
conversations back and forth in the narrator's voice - or as J would
have me point out, it is only my mother-in-law and myself who indulge
in this - not the two boys, no, never them!)
I have a slice of cheesecake in the fridge and a husband and a pile of
Arrested Development dvds to enjoy with it so I will end here. I
promise not to talk exclusively about books in my next entry - and I still
have to document my visit from the lovely Cathlin and the glorious day that J and I had on Friday so this promise has a chance of surviving.
</span>
current mood: content
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| Friday, December 5th, 2003
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7:27 pm - Poor Sick Me (actually her)
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This is Jishnu, Purnima's husband/boy toy. She cant write a journal entry cause she's sick. I'm studying for property which is on Tuesday, and I thought this would be a good break. Right now, my baby is lying on the couch watching Friends. She got a job last week , and has been working to buy the things I like.
We're looking forward to the Return of the King, although I wont be able to watch it until Dec. 23. I find that I'm getting more and more boring as law school progresses, so in an effort to keep you all awake (although its probably too late) I'm gonna stop typing now.
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| Saturday, September 20th, 2003
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8:47 am - ...
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Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw", that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.
The Secret History by Donna Tart
I've been dithering over what the first line of my first journal entry should be for far too long now so instead I present you with this perfect opening line from the library book I just checked out. It's such a provocative beginning - I can't wait to see what the narrator's morbid longing leads him into.
I haven't kept a regular journal for a long time but this year is full of first times for me and I have the world's worst long-term memory for the details of everyday life so I'm determined to have some kind of record. This year(beginning in July) is the first year since I was four years old (I'm 23 now) that I am not in school, the first year that I've lived this far away from my family, the first year that I've ever been responsible for my own finances, and the first year that I have ever been married.
I'm studying for the GRE, the GRE English subject test, the CBEST, and possibly the LSAT so, while I'm not in school, I've still got piles of books following me wherever I go which is comforting. It's a little weird not being in my college town anymore - I miss my old friends and roomates so much but hopefully some of them will join LiveJournal with me - (Mirium, I'm looking at you!)
I'm going to go poke my sleeping husband now and ask him to come watermelon shopping with me - Welcome to my journal, everyone - I hope you enjoy it!
current mood: excited
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