http://www.kino-zeit.de/swf/flowplayer.commercial-3.2.7.swf
“We are traveling the love lane. Down the road we will meet again.” – Raj in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi :: I heart Bollywood – all of it! The music, the dancing, the cinema, the clothes, the drama, the comedy, and the romance. People in India are in love with this movie, as am I. I was laughing and smiling throughout the entire 3 hours of it.
Grandparents :: I hope you like the steady theme of grandparents or more frequently grandma that run through my posts. I think this picture is perfect.
Basil Harvest :: It’s Saturday night and I’ve just brought my pink bucket that has housed my basil plant all summer indoors. Little plant, it is time to harvest you. It takes me an hour and one close encounter with a pincher bug to pluck all the basil leaves off my basil plant and several more hours of errands(picking up ingredients) plus a quick tutorial on how to operate the food processor before I am ready to pulverize my beloved basil into beautiful pesto.
And pulverize I did. Goodbye basil plant and hello gobs of delicious homemade pesto.
Make New Friends :: Were you in Girl Scouts? Do you know the Make New Friends song? It’s a classic really, and singing it in a round…well, nothing less than a timeless tradition!
Oddly, the little one in this video has somehow become and old friend (those are the gold variety). I first met her when she was just about to turn 2 years old and now she is a confident and capable 4th grader. I don’t know if there’s anything better than the year of 4th grade and being 9 years old.
In case you are new to the Make New Friends tradition and can’t quite make out the words of the song via the rendition I posted. Here are the words:
Make new friends
And keep the old
One is silver
And the other gold
Toilet Flowers :: Add this to the list of “a few of my favorite things.”
GIFTS :: If there’s one thing I love, it’s giving a good gift – big or small, for a significant occasion or no occasion at all. Actually, I think no occasion at all perfect gifts are the best kind.
And today, I bought a no occasion at all gift for 3 of my dearest friends and I am so excited with how perfect the gift is for them. I’m also ruining the surprise by writing on here about it, but let’s face it — even though these three know about this little gem of a blog of mine, even they rarely read it.
A year ago, these friends came to visit and I was a mess. A crying, puking, jobless, anxious, mess. Perhaps you remember me at this time last year? In a span of 2 weeks I threw up on a blind date, threw up with friends at our annual reunion, threw up on the side of the road, and threw up at the Portland airport. I continued to throw up sporadically for several months. I wasn’t sick. It was just one of those life slumps where everything seems unknown and scary and well, you should know this about me – my coping mechanism for these types of situations is barfing – a very attractive quality of mine.
These same friends visited again this year and lucky for them they got to experience the non-puking version of me. However, I did notice myself trying not to have too much fun with them. Odd I know, but I miss them and I don’t want to…And you have to admit, not having too much fun is a way better coping mechanism than barfing. Yes, of course, we will always be friends, but each of our individual lives are ever changing. Our daily experiences are no longer shared and we live VERY far away from each other which I find nothing less than tragic. Yet, what our friendships have been, and are, and will become, though different from what they once were, are still precious.
So dear friends here’s a “perfect little no occasionat all gift” that I know you will each be ecstatic to receive in your respective corners of the world. Enjoy and know that you are missed.
Maybe one shouldn’t write about dates on the interweb, but as you know I’ve decided there’s only like 10 people tops who read my blog so the risk of backlash is low. Plus, I’m writing about a positive experience and even though I do have a picture that would make this post that much more amazing I’m going to refrain from posting it.
With that, you’ve probably gathered that I met someone at the video game party and we went on a date. True story: he was a gamer from Brooklyn. We met up a few days after the party for beverages and talked for a few hours about everything from gaming to family to career to gentrification. It’s unlikely our paths will cross again, but the evening was, in a word, REFRESHING. He was interesting, appropriately flirty, and had an adventurous and thoughtful spirit. He seemed ALIVE and I like those kind of people.
White Ra :: Picture me, Friday evening, happy houring with my favorite co-worker(who hates it when I call him that), we finish and he asks, “ Want to meet my friend for a drink? She has a friend visiting from out of town and I promised I’d meet up with them.”
“Mmmm, not really,” I say, but then after some coaxing agreed to go along for an hour.
AND I AM SO GLAD I AGREED because neither of us could have predicted the random night that unfolded from there.
Upon meeting said friend and her out of town guest our little foursome made our way to a bar. Several blocks away from our destination people start coming up to “out of town guest” and exclaiming, “OH! HI! OMG, Can I get a picture with you?” Before I knew it, I was taking picture after picture of “out of town guest” and every person that passed us on the side walk.
We get to the bar, sit down, and it’s the same thing all over again — rounds of drinks are being bought for our table, random people sit down with us to meet “out of town guest” or have their picture taken with him. All the while I’m thinking, “WHAT IN THE WORLD. WHO IS THIS GUY?!”
As it turns out “out of town guest” is a world class famous video game player from Ukraine. He’s REALLY good at video games. So good, that he makes a living(and a good one) playing video games and traveling to gaming conferences(which is why he was in Seattle).
Post hour of drinks, we took full advantage of the celebrity in our midst and followed him to a party hosted by one of his sponsors. It was like a scene from a movie: We were ushered to the front of the long line, told the bouncer who we were with, and were instantly given VIP passes which were good for free drinks all night, lots of dancing with video game fanatics from all over the country, and best of all allowed for hours of getting a kick out of watching gamer after gamer came up to “our friend” ecstatic to be in the presence of one of the best video game players on Planet Earth.
** He’s the one in the red jacket. He goes by White Ra. …And I’m the one pretending not to care that I’m in the presence of greatness.
http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf
INTROVERT :: Contrary to the popular belief of my dear housemates I am an introvert in my soul. Perhaps on the spectrum of introvertedness I can be found more towards the middle than some, but an introvert none-the-less. Next on my list of books to read is Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. I can’t wait.
notquitedhaka.com 