Visa

My parents got the visa to come visit us and God willing will be making the 8,000 (?) mile trip to the US of A first week of August. It would be 19 months since I saw them by then.

We are excited!

Long (Sleeping) weekend

So the long weekend went by in a flash. I had a huge, long list of things to be done and I have pretty much accomplished nothing. I woke up at 11 am this morning, had some milk, checked email and blogs and then puttered around until lunch time. There were some leftovers both of us had for lunch. Then I read a book until about 2 and then slept until 5 pm. By then, I was pretty disgusted with myself.

So much for the nice long list.

Friday evening I was hopeful of getting my ambitious list tackled. One of the projects I had in mind was rearranging the dining room closet and the guest room closet. God willing, we will have some back to back long-term guests starting August, so I had some plans for both rooms. Anyway, I pulled all the stuff from the dining closet onto the dining table and that is where it is sitting now. I have put away some of it, but most of it is still sitting there.

This is a picture of the dining closet before. Since I didn't actually do any work, I don't have an after picture.



In the unlikely event of a cleaning happening, I will be uploading the after picture. *Public service announcement ends*

This is one of the guest room closet. We are transferring all of hubby's cassette collection into an under-bed storage bin. He is in the picture scratching his head wondering as to how he got himself talked into doing this.



All Saturday morning I was thinking of going for some necessary shopping. But it was raining and that combined with my inherent dislike of shopping, I ended up thinking about it until evening when I could stop thinking and not feel guilty for not actually going. Other than all that thinking, I have no recollection of what I did Saturday morning. We had a showing of Pilgrims Progress at church on Saturday evening, Sunday went by with church, ladies meeting etc.

Today evening, I made some idlis home. I know none of you are interested in my Indian cooking tales, but this has been a a very difficult dish for me to master and I think I finally got it right today. (There is still scope for improvement of course) Husband and I may have done a victory dance in the kitchen. I am not admitting or denying it. There is no evidence, there are no witnesses.

The picture of those beauties - for two people who might be interested. Dad and Mom.



Here is idly with sambhar and onion chutney in my plate. Husband is behind the chutney. I want to give credit where it is due.



I also made lemon pickle for the future. I got 2 bottles full. By future I want it to mean 3 months, since we are technically supposed to eat them sparingly with rice, but at the rate we eat it, the future could very well mean 3 days.

Pickle is one of those dishes for which I assemble all ingredients beforehand like this. I cannot afford to miss any, the result will not be good if I do.



I am obviously not going to give a recipe because I know none of you are interested in a dish which contains 10 chili peppers and 16 tablespoon of red chili powder (paprika). Here is a picture of the final dish before being transferred into glass containers for the "future".



I had to write about all the food since that is about all I have to show for the three days I stayed home. Seriously, I get more things done when I work outside the home from 9-5. Maybe there is a time for everything and it was a God-ordained time for me to rest. I will console myself with that.

How did your weekend go?

Because in this case a verbose description would be superfluous - Haleakala Sunrise

This is what we look like at 6 am.




We saw a sky full of stars, but I don't have a picture of that. I have just committed it to my memory. The series of pictures (which you can probably tell) is from predawn to sunrise. It does not do the actual thing justice, but it is the best we have. It was an experience of a lifetime.


It was worth getting up at 1:30 am.

Hawaii- Part 1

Okay, before it gets too old, here is a brief update and pictures on the Hawaii trip. I can write because I have been good this week and did all the laundry. It took me 20 minutes to just put the laundry away. I paid for not doing it before leaving. I digress. Where was I? Oh, the trip.

We went to Maui and the Big Island. I definitely like Maui better. We stayed in a condo in Maui and the landscaping around it was so beautiful. We could see the ocean from our room and also there was the view of this beautiful garden and pond. The whole landscaping was like a Japanese garden. There were waterfalls, manicured lawns, lots and lots of flowers and shrubs, ponds and I will try and share some of the beautiful pictures from the 2317 we took.

View from outside our room



The middle one was our apartment I believe.



You can see the ocean in this


The pathway. You can see the steps to the dining room.



The dining room


I think there has already been an overload of pictures, I will post more later.

Did you really think I would finish it in one shot? I take two posts to post updates!

Back Again

I am back.

Hawaii was great..

Sun
White Sand Beaches
Tropical Rain forests
Impressive Volcanoes
Waterfalls

But being home feels SO GOOD.

On the to-do list for tonight after work

Laundry
Unpack suitcases
Laundry again
Download pictures

Be back again soon with pictures.

en route

We are still here at SLC Utah on the way to Maui. The flight has been delayed by 1.5 hrs so far. I have been up since 3.45 am and even sleep was bad yesterday. I dreamt that we woke up late and missed the flight. After that there was no hope of going back to sleep.

I am totally ready to go to sleep and we have a nearly 7 hr flight yet. R is sitting next to me and working on his laptop. I am posting from my PDA. I have three books to read and I am reading one of them now. We played quiz on the flight and I beat R. He was not very happy about that. Until seat 41D beat both of us. Another highlight of the day is that I ate the worst sandwich in the history of the universe. That is $13 I will not see again. Also I am surrounded by cute kids. There are two adorable twin boys behind me. When I saw one of them in his stroller I said "look at you, you are so cute" I am not sure why but he got so excited that he started laughing and flailing and nearly falling out of his seat. I didn't know I had that effect on kids.

I will stop for now as I might end up with some finger issues if I continue typing in this tiny keyboard. I will reply to emails when I get back.

Update-2

It is kind of silly trying to give you a part 2 for the update. But here is the thing. I have been struggling with severe back issues (still am) for the past month. It is more to the side than the back and it is worst when I sit down. I have a job where I sit down in front of the computer, so it has been torture. I walk around every 1 hour for 10 minutes, but by Thursday, I am usually ready to give up on life. Since the virus scare, I have not been paying bills or doing non-work things on work computer, so my time at home has been taken up with a lot of that tasks too. I am able to walk around and lie down without issues, but sitting down is a big NO-NO. The absolute worst place to sit is the couch at home. And coming from work, sitting down is the last thing I want to do. So that is another big reason why commenting has all but stopped. Can't comment at work, can't sit down at home.

If there is an upside to all this pain is that our garden has never looked better. I have no issues cleaning, cooking and manual labor like gardening. It is an interesting time in life. What can I say?

Hubby and I are going to Hawaii for 10 days. This is possibly going to be our last vacation for a while. I will catch up with you all when we get back. I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to some time off. Hope you have a good weekend and a great week. I will be back with pictures and something else to share.

And to all those who asked about virus stuff on the computer, just make sure you have Norton or McAfee or something like that installed. Be very careful where you go. Hubby informs me that google applications should be fine. This includes blogger, gmail etc. The ones to be wary of are the independent websites. They might not have good security measures in place. And most importantly ALWAYS BACKUP DATA IN YOUR COMPUTER. So even if something happens at least not all will be lost.