Book List for 2008

This is the book list I have for 2008. As per my resolution I was planning to read 50 books. But since I am also doing the 90-day Bible reading, I am reducing the goal to 36 for 2008, an average of 3 per month. The books listed below are a mix of every thing. From recommendations from other bloggers, IRL friends, then there are some in there which I have read many times but still like to read over and over again. Please add your recommendations too in there. I would love to give those a try as well.

Here goes my list. Those which I already read, I struck off.

The Bible

Eats Shoots and Leaves (Lynne Truss)

Wise Blood (Flannery O Connor)

When Life and Beliefs Collide (Carolyn Custis James)

When the Morning Comes (Cindy Woodsmall)

Peace Like a River (Leif Enger)

Odd Thomas (Dean Koontz)

The Time Travelers Wife (Audrey Niffeneger)

Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Marquez)

My Utmost for His Highest (Oswald Chambers) currently reading

Where Is God When It Hurts (Philip Yancey)

Road to Yesterday (L.M. Montgomery)

Gods Unfinished Symphony (Dr. Tom Oommen)

Inheritance of Loss (Kiran Desai)

The Hiding Place (Corrie Ten Boom)

I am America and so can you (Stephen Colbert)

The Quotable Lewis

God's Smuggler (John and Elizabeth Sherrill)

Till We Have Faces (C.S. Lewis)

The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)

Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)

Jo's Boys (Louisa May Alcott)

Alice's Tulips (Sandra Dallas)

Belcanto (Ann Patchett)

There is no me without you (Melissa Greene)

Between two loves (Nancy Kennedy)

Hero’s walk (Anita Rau Badami)

Crunchy Cons (Rod Dreher)

Serve God, Save the Planet (Matthew Sleeth)

Love's Enduring Promise (Janette Oke)

Love Comes Softly (Janette Oke)

Taking Charge of Your Fertility (Toni Weschler)

The $64 tomato (William Alexander)

Little Men (Louisa May Alccott)

The Little House in the Big Woods (Laura Ingalls)

Farmer Boy (Laura Ingalls)

Little House in the Priarie (Laura Ingalls)

On the banks of Plum Creek (Laura Ingalls)

By the shores of Silver Lake (Laura Ingalls)

The Long Winter (Laura Ingalss)

Little Town in the Prairie (laura Ingalls)

These Happy Golden Years (Laura Ingalls)

The Purse Driven Life (Anita Renfroe)

The Last Christian Generation (Josh McDowell)

Open Hearts Open Homes (Karen Mains)

The Litany of Everyday Life (Margaret Kim Peterson)

The List

For a while now- actually since I came back- I have the vague feeling that there is a lot of stuff to do around the house and I have been unable to do anything. I am exhausted after coming back from work and it takes all of my energies to cook something. When you have a two week vacation of only eating and sleeping, you pay a price. That is the law. I am paying the price in 3 extra inches around the waistline and almost hitting a 100 on the scale for the first time in my life. Not to mention the general lassitude.

Anyway since I am a listaholic (I have never heard this word before. I think I just made it up. Has any one heard this one anywhere?) I thought I would make a list to get myself in the groove of things. So I took a notepad and started listing all of things I had to do in and around the house. I came up with 59 things. I am not kidding at all. When I started writing, it felt like my pen got a life of itself and started scribbling down thing after thing.

The fun part is that my list has items like fold laundry, clean kitchen etc. which I cannot ever essentially cross out unless we start eating out completely and throw away clothes after wearing them once or twice. I am guessing I might have to do the laundry this week from my mile long list. Because even though he works from home, husband insists that he wants to wear something. And dearest of husbands, he doesn't ask for much.

My plan was to make a list of things I could do this week. But it looks like I will be done with this list some time at the end of 2009.

You could check back with me then.

Honors of War

Most studies among married couples show that people fight about finances the most.

This is what we fight about. A conversation before sleep:

Me: I got a comment on my blog the other day from Lizzy that my travel trials might beat her worst experience

Hubs: It still won't beat mine

Me: WHAT?

Hubs: Yeah, the time I went to India via Singapore

Me: Oh, you mean the engine caught on fire

Hubs: No, that never happened, but we nearly hit a mountain when we were trying to land during a typhoon. We only missed by 10,000 ft.

Me: Mine is so much worse. Don't try and steal my thunder. Plus we had a lot of turbulence in one sector.

I do happen to think mine is much worse. At least there is something romantic in trying to land in a typhoon and almost hitting a mountain etc. I mean it is a tale to tell to your grandchildren. Trust me, there was nothing romantic about mine. It was just plain frustrating and ...illogical. Here is a conversation I had with a United agent sitting in a call center in India.

Me: Another concern that I have is that the when my first bag was delivered, they never gave me a call, but rang the bell at 3:00 am. Thankfully, my husband heard the bell, so we got the bag. How many people do you know are wide awake at 3:00 in the morning?

Agent: Ma'm, there could be a reason that the person didn't call. Maybe he didn't want to disturb you at that time of the day.

Me: (I take in a moment to absorb this.) What you said just now...does this make sense even to you? He comes to my door and rings the bell at 3 am to deliver something and he doesn't call me before because he doesn't want to disturb me?

Agent: Hmm, well, yeah...

Me: !!!

Praise and Prayer

I got my other missing bag. Currently doing a happy dance. I have not yet opened it due to the airlines' habit of delivering baggage at unearthly hours. Thank you dear ladies for all the prayers. It means a lot to me.

I also got a $50 gift certificate from them as a compensation. It is not stellar, but better than nothing.

It has been a stressful week. I am still suffering from jet lag of sorts. I have a mountain of laundry to fold, the Christmas decorations are still up, house is a mess. I come from work, look at it and wonder when I will get it all done. Then I wring my hands in despair and cook food and go to sleep. I do manage to keep up with the dish washing and that is about it.

Ok, I am going to stop with the whining. My posts lately have been somewhat whiny, I do realize that, but it is temporary. I promised to get back to regular programming sooner or later.

I would like to request prayer for one more matter. My sister was not doing too well and was taken to the emergency room yesterday. She has high temperature, vomiting and pain on one side of her body. She is probably going to be discharged this afternoon, but I would appreciate prayers being lifted up for her quick recovery.

And that is all for today.

In which is the end of the long tale (mercifully)

My dear sleepy husband was waiting in the Airport. My flight was supposed to come in at 11:40pm, but came at 11:55 instead. Then by the time I filed a claim and got out, it was 12:35 am. The lady at the counter was SURE that the suitcases were at Washington and that I hadn't looked well. She was lucky that I was close to being a narcoleptic or I can't tell you what I would have done. Thrown a chair at her maybe.

I am just kidding.

Kind of.

Anyway, I got out and R came out of the car with a bouquet of roses and a lot of my anger melted away at the sight of my man. He got me a card (ridiculously cute one!) and food from Chipotle and then we drove off to home sweet home. When we got there, I opened the garage door to find this:


How sweet is he?

In case you can't read it well, it says: "Home is where the------ is!" The ----- is a pet name he calls me which I do not wish to publish in the blog, so I purposely asked him not to take from the angle.

These are the flowers. They smell great. The picture is not good, it is crowded in with the other stuff, but it was really nice.



So ends my trip odyssey. I do not mind telling you that for all intents and purposes it was nearly the end of me.

Update on the bags: I received one of them, the one with the persishable items, the other one I am still waiting on. At this point, I am thankful for small mercies people! I am especially grateful that I got the one which had the food items.

I who have nothing- Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of my rant tale. So when I finished yesterday, I had left off with me sitting on a flight from Dubai to Frankfurt wondering if I'd be able to make my Orlando connection. I got out of the flight at 1:35 pm and there was an Emirates agent waiting for me. No placards this time. I asked him and he said that I have been rerouted on a United flight from Frankfurt to Washington and then from there to Orlando and I would reach Orlando at 12 midnight. So I walk purposefully to the Emirates airline counter to give them a piece of my mind and ask for a free upgrade to business class. First I go to the United counter to have my new ticket and asked him for an upgrade. He said it is not the fault of United Airlines that I missed my connection and so they can't do anything for me. I was supposed to fly on a Lufthansa flight originally, so they are not responsible either. The hand washing there would have done Pontius Pilate proud.

Where were the Emirates people? They did not have a counter at all in the transit area. Their counter was in Germany and I could only meet them if I had a German visa. Considering that Germany was not even a transit point in my original itinerary, I could not meet with them. After fighting with the United people, I went to the Lufthansa counter and even though it was none of their problem, they were most helpful and actually called the Emirates guy to the desk. They found that Emirates had actually failed to reissue me a ticket and that would have caused me a lot of problems when I arrived in Washington and tried to board a flight. The agent at the counter said that they have money, but they do not even know International Law. Anyway, the agent came along huffing and puffing and said he was sorry. That was a pretty simple word for him to say considering that all he lost was 15 minutes coming from Germany to the transit area. I asked him about an upgrade or a travel/food voucher and he said that they don't do it.

Emirates airlines in spite of the money sucks big time.

He also knew that my boarding was in 15 minutes and I did not have time to stand there and argue with him. So I boarded my flight to Washington on United which actually reached on time. I wish I could say that everything was great after that. Immigration went through smoothly and when I reached the baggage claim area, my checked in bags were nowhere to be found.

I who went with 2 checked baggage came back with nothing. The bags were at the other side of the Atlantic sitting disconsolately with no one to claim, orphaned and unloved.

When I came to Orlando, I filed a claim for the suitcases and today, after pestering them every 5 hours found that one of my suitcases have been located at Frankfurt and is on its way to Orlando. I might get it sometime tonight or tomorrow. The fate of the other as of now is unknown. The other had some pickles and spices and some food articles loving prepared by my mom. I don't know if I will get it and that makes me sad. I cannot put a price on those items. If I did, it would be $2600. I don't know a place in US where I would get it. I would have to go all the way to India and have my mom prepare them again. I have no leave so I have to take unpaid, so the cost would be $2600 at the minimum.

I know it's not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but if you would, please pray that I would get my other suitcase as well with nothing missing. It has other stuff than food as well. I would hate to lose all that.

So I hoped to finish this with 2 parts, but this post has gone on long enough and I will write one more part tomorrow with updates and a picture I can't wait to show.

In which I write about the harrowing tale of my trip from India to USA-Part 1

If brevity is the soul of wit, then all the explanation below is redundant. I guess the title says it all. But I am going to flout Shakespeare and explain in detail (in TWO parts) the bone chilling tale of my trip. Makes sense to me that if I suffered so much, I might as well get a post out of it.

I was supposed to leave India on the night of 14th Jan at 10:00 pm. My flight route was India-Srilanka-London-Chicago-Orlando. Just for kicks, I check my online itinerary in the afternoon. I saw that my India-Srilanka flight is unconfirmed, Srilanka-London flight is canceled and there is no information on the rest. So I call the airline in a panic and they said that they are rerouting me through Dubai and so now my itinerary looked like India-Srilanka-Dubai-London-Chicago-Orlando. Clearly, stopping at 5 airports wasn't enough.

The up-side was I got to spend some more hours with my parents and started from home at 9:30 pm for my flight at 1:10 am. I flew to CMB (Srilanka) and there outside the plane was a staff waiting with my name printed and holding a placard. I felt like a visiting dignitary for a moment, but knew that trouble was afoot. The flight which was supposed to leave at 3 am to Dubai had been delayed to 4:15 am. And they reissued me a new ticket which would take me from Dubai to Frankfurt and then straight to Orlando. I praised God that I wont need to do customs at another airport, drag my heavy bags and then recheck it for my domestic flight in US. There were two others (one incidentally a junior in my college in India) who had the same problem and they still had to go through London while I got a direct flight. I tried not to look too happy even though I felt inordinately so.

But not for too long.

I got to Dubai and then there was security checking there, and then ran all the way to the gate (at the other end naturally) where my Emirates flight to Frankfurt was waiting. So I make it, get settled comfortably, but it took a while for the plane to take off. I never thought about it. Thinking back, it was a good thing I didn't because if I did I would have known that there was not a snowflake's chance in hell that I would make my Orlando connection in Frankfurt. Ignorance sometimes is bliss, people. Take my word for it.

About half an hour before we landed, I felt that it was going to be a close shave and I asked the flight attendant if I'd be able to make it to the 2:05 connection if we reach Frankfurt at 1:30. And she told me "You are not the only one with this problem. We have several passengers with the same issue." If any one of you reading this think this is an answer to my question, please raise your hands. Try as I might, I cannot understand how that is supposed to make me feel better. So other people have connections as well that they might not make. Am I supposed to stand up and say "All the people in this aircraft who might miss connection flights say Boo???" So different people have different issues.

Compare me to another lady who is traveling by herself and has not had a nights sleep and been spending the time since 10 pm (plus the time changes) the previous day at 3 different airports and being rerouted and delayed and in spite of all the traveling already done has another 4000 miles before she gets home. Then we will talk. But I didn't say that.

Second and final (thankfully!) part of this gripping tale will continue tomorrow...Stay tuned or not.

My name is Annie

and I am a member of Bloggers Anonymous. Well, I don't know if that exists, but if it did, I would be a member. I have been a dreadfully bad blogger. Of course since I am with family, I can always use that excuse, but to be honest I would blame it on the mouse. The computer in my parent's house is an ancient article and you pay for the Internet by the minute. I know, a very novel concept for the rest of the world. And the mouse, it is enough to give all the mice in the rest of the world a bad name.

When all is said and done, the reason is I am busy sleeping and eating. I am so lazy that I am not even commenting on the few blogs that I actually managed to visit. I am growing fat with the food of the land. And my stomach has bloated to such proportions with this lifestyle that I look about 3 months pregnant. I hope my dear husband will recognize me when I get back.

It is a very rambly, no point post the kind you have come to expect from my blog. Thank you everyone for your sweet comments and emails. I will get back to everyone as soon as I can (when I get back). Hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas and New Year. I made a list of my goals for 2008. I think it is the first time I am doing this. There are only 4 main things which I am listing.

• Read the entire Bibe by March 31
• Walk every morning for half an hour
• Set up a flower and vegetable garden
• Read 50 books this year

The garden has already been started by my father-in-law, so that goal is well in running. I have already read 2 books this year, so that is off to a good start. I am a little behind on the Bible reading and I hoping to catch up today. Walking has not happened a single day and I am hoping to do it once I am back home.

It has been fun reading the goals some of you have listed. I will mostly stay off online until I get back.

Have a wonderful time, everyone!