Dame's Galaxy

Saturday morning: we set out to our second outing of the season. The weather is not quite encouraging, still we decided to drive to St. Helens. It took us around 2 hrs to reach the visitor center only to hear that clouds are blocking the best of the views. We are not discouraged and continue to drive, stopping at some of the view points and finally the Forest Learning Center. It was quite windy, so we headed to the gift shop after having a quick lunch in the car (yea, I pack lunch most of the times when we go out for my boys). The gift shop had may be 2-3 people in addition to us and suddenly something caught my attention – Mood rings. Well if you wear one of them, the mood rings change color reflecting your mood at that time. I decided to try one and it showed me green which says I am “somewhat relaxed”. I tried one of Abhay and the ring changed its color to Blue – And blue means “extremely relaxed”. Of course, you don’t expect anything more from a 14 month old kido.

We stayed there for a while and started our drive back. On our back we stopped to have some fries and milk shake from McDonald’s and that’s when I had my shock – The ring which I had originally on my finger is missing. We searched the entire car, searched my purse, Abhay’s diaper bag and what not. I lost my ring. The ring had one of my favorite gods graved in it. I wind back my memory and all I could remember was taking the ring off my hands to wear the mood ring. I just can’t recollect where I kept my original ring. We had almost reached home by then and its was getting dark for us to drive back and check anywhere. Oh my, I was so upset.  

I couldn’t sleep all night. The ring which I have been wearing for so many years is not with me. I just don’t feel ok anymore.

Sunday morning: I decided to drive to St. Helens to search everywhere that I went. Boys joined me. And Guess what – Weather is so supportive today and I can see many cars driving with us as we headed to St. Helens. We directly went to the Forest Learning Center post noon and I hurried to the gift shop. The shop is crowded with people today, for the good weather we have. I was waiting in the queue to talk to the cashier. There are still 4 people ahead of me. I decided to step out of the queue and walk every corner where I went ysday. And yes – there it is, the not so perfect round ring is lying just under the basket of those mood rings. Boy, can you guess how I felt when I found my God at 3000 ft elevationJ.

I returned from St. Helens with my ring and a Souvenir jacket which I got from that shop

Cheers

(.”)

<((>

./|.

Housing markets are down, people lose jobs..

what I don’t understand is why are in this state when all we need to do is to start printing more money.

We have this money printing machine, we have paper, we have man power to start the printing machine, we have electricity now, we have adequate transportation facility to take money all around..

So why not just print more money.. just do it and we shd be ok, right?

Cheers

(,”)

<((>

./|.

Few days ago I was in a meeting with one of my colleague when I accidentally stepped on his foot. My practice or the way I have been taught by elders at home is whenever I step on someone, I am supposed to stretch my hands to touch that someone with respect and then touch my heart with a sense of apology.

When I travelled from East to West, I made all efforts to not demonstrate such practices in public especially in front of a non-Indian person. But when I stepped on this colleague who is an Italian – my instinct fooled me to just go by what I have learned as a child. I stretched my hands to touch the person as a token of acknowledgement. And then immediately my sixth sense woke me from my eastern culture and I just pulled my hands back.

But, Guess what happened. The damage is already there. For sometime my Italian friend was quiet; May be he was making his own guesses and then turned around and asked – Was she just punching me !!!

Boy – Did I just get an award - “Team Boxer”

Cheers

(,”)

<((>

./|.

I have set my watch to run 12 min faster and so is my car clock. Yes, I did it when I was fully conscious and I thought I will never fall for this trick. But believe it or not: keeping my time 12 min  ahead of others help me plan ahead of time, beat my commitments in advance. For the first few days I still used to cheat myself and calculate the actual time (my time – 12min) but then when I am rushing for a meeting, I hardly do that math. I rather get cheated by my watch and be on time/ ahead of time for my meetings. Mislead myself by changing my time to exceed myself.

And why 12 min – I don’t know why I have it that way. May be my ishtayile J

Cheers

(,”)

<((>

./|.