Wow. 2009 is here and I haven't posted. Let's see what we missed.

A trip to Toronto and Montreal. A fantastic meal at Nota Bene for Red K's birthday. Another fantastic meal at Red K's house for Christmas. Another fantastic meal at Chez L’Épicier. New Years in Montreal.

And back to mercury-freezing temperatures in Madison.

On the positive side, there is going to be an India trip from Jan 30 to Feb 15. Awesome!

Movies seen have been Slumdog Millionaire (Don't miss!) and Gran Torino (80 year old Dirty Harry rocks!)

Books read have been The White Tiger (Booker winner. 2 days flat. Needs to be moviefied.)

Wow that's a long long time between posts.

Well, I figure I should start this one slow and easy. With topics that are in my comfort zone like books.

I'm currently reading Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters by Matt Ridley. And Shantaram: A Novel by Gregory David Roberts. I'm on chapter one of both books so I'm not sure I can comment with any authority. Genome is written in Matt Ridley's usual easy to understand and yet gripping style (See The Red Queen.) Shantaram is an interesting beast. The descriptions of Mumbai are familiar and nostalgic (especially when he reaches Colaba. I lived there for quite a while,) but his prose is slightly flowery so the book might start to feel heavy in my hands soon. (It is a heavy book. 994 pages!) Interesting both books also have subtitles. I've never quite understood subtitling. Must be a publisher driven trend.

In vacation news, I've been traveling all over the place. Let's write about the involuntary vacations first. A trip to Menominee that involved some driving, some bad driver/dongle issues and an almost-bought pasty from Schloegels. This was followed by two consecutive trips to Philadelphia. Both involved 12 hour work days and mysterious driver problems. (Stupid multicore processors and stupider driver developers who can't handle multi-threaded programming.)

The voluntary vacations were many but all restricted to Wisconsin. There was a trip to Wisconsin Dells and Lake Delton. This involved time spent at the Mt. Olympus water park, a drive-in theater, sushi and four missed exits on the way back home! (Four!) And a week or so later, Lake Delton disappeared. No kidding!

This was followed by a camping trip to Kohler-Andrae State Park. The water at Lake Michigan is freezing! But the dunes cord-walk was awesome and so were some of the pictures I was able to take of a red-winged blackbird.

After that was a nice long trip to Door County. This probably needs a post by itself. It was very eventful and involved trips to Potawatomi State Park, Peninsula State Park, Washington Island (where the wheat for Capital Island Wheat is grown!) Cana Island Light and Whitefish Dunes State Park. (The water at Whitefish Dunes wasn't that cold!) Lot's of pictures of gulls and terns.

Finally, there was some impromptu camping this weekend too at Governer Dodge State Park. We were pretty underprepared for this one as we weren't expecting to actually get a spot. So underprepared that we didn't even carry a flashlight! Of course, smart as we were we ended up purchasing a hand-crank lantern from Walgreens instead. It was ridiculous the amount of cranking we had to do for a small amount of light. Overall, apart from a spider-bite sustained by Red K it was fun. (At least we think it was a spider-bite. If she starts sticking to walls we will know for sure.) We also stopped by at the House on the Rock and the Frank Lloyd Wright visitor center but didn't take the tours (of the House and Taliesin) as they were prohibitively expensive. (Thanks to Red K for being my fellow traveler and navigator.)

So there was this guy see. And once upon a time he used to read a lot of comic books and watch a lot of movies and read non-fiction and then he would write about it all, so his legion of readers could live vicariously through him. Then he started reading fewer comic books and watching fewer movies and reading fewer books and more importantly writing fewer times.

Where did the time go? Some of it was spent working longer hours and weekends, some of it was spent going out to bars and meeting new people and talking to them and arguing with them. And unlike comic books and movies and books, people were a lot harder to write about. So his blog started being updated a longer and longer intervals. Some readers called him out on this. Others, their lives equally busy and their blog updates equally delayed, understood. And yet the thought of stopping his blog never occurred to him. I think it was because he was never concerned about his readership numbers (although he did check his stats counter often enough) and he wrote his blog as a record for his future self. Anyway, our story pauses there because I have to tell you about what I did.

Yesterday, with RedK and her sister B, I went to Milwaukee, specifically the Milwaukee Public Museum to watch Body Worlds. (Don't click on that link if you are easily disturbed.) Body Worlds is a traveling exhibition of preserved human cadavers in various poses, displaying various aspects of the human body. The bodies are preserved using a process called plastination. All the exhibits had the skin removed so that musculature, bones and internal organs are visible. To display the circulatory system, red dyed plastic was forced through the veins and arteries and the body then dissolved. This was definitely an excellent way to spend 25 dollars and an afternoon. We spent the rest of the evening driving around Milwaukee (pretty but boring) and watching After Innocence (depressing) and Hot Fuzz (hilarious and surprising.)

Tonight, it's time for Samba and all you can eat meat for $33.

It was a weekend of snowstorms, ice and musicals.

It began as a quiet Friday evening that consisted solely of staying home, watching maybe the first 4 minutes of the movie Ghost Rider with Ms. Non Sequitur and then turning in early in anticipation of the coming snowstorm from hell.

Saturday began with a quick ride to KitKat's house in the wilderness to pick her up. I left my house at 9:15am with no sight of snow and returned by 9:45am to white streets! The storm had begun.

The snow continued all the way to 6pm, turning into little particles of ice at around 4pm. Driving was going to be impossible but we had to get to State Street to watch Rent at the Overture Center. After a lot of debate (Hob: "No way we're driving! I don't wanna die!", Ms. Non Sequitur: "Hob, you are such a wuss!", KitKat: "Hob you are the biggest wuss I have seen.", J: "There is no way I am walking!"), we all decided to call a cab.

The cab was late, but the driver was a someone who wasn't even the least bit fazed by the condition of the streets. I rode shotgun and man was it a scary ride. The cab skid, skid again and skid some more. But luckily we reached Paul's Club with no incidents. A quick Miller Lite for everyone (Cousin Q, JR, The Bowman and Akon joined us at Paul's,) and off we went to the show.

Rent was ok. The music was catchy most of the time but the lyrics seemed forced to fit the music. (Vice versa sometimes.) But then again that's a feature of all musicals. Overall, I felt that it lacked something. Specifically, a small carnivorous dinosaur, like a velociraptor or deinonychus, that would eat cast members sometimes. Now that show I would pay top dollar to see.

(If that last paragraph seems bizarre, I would like to add that I actually thought of the dinosaurs during the show. Also a hip-hop musical with rapping instead of songs would be wicked!)

State fair, state fair, O how I love thee!
Thy caramel apples and pink cotton candy!
Thy puff-daddy-on-a-stick and fried alligator meat!
Thy chickens and cows and giant sleeping pigs!

No seriously, that State Fair had some good food. And Ms. Non Sequitur and I ate a bit too much of it. Meeting Wendell and Big R was fun. Hope they visit Madison soon!

Yesterday was spent at Kitkat's place. Kitkat made meat-balls and fried eggplant, her hubby M made chicken curry and rice, Ms. Non Sequitur made Turkish salad, I made fried shrimp and little Ijjac made happy fun time! We watched Van Helsing. It was surprisingly TP. (TP == time pass. For my Indian-English challenged readers, it means decent.)

Later in the day, Ms. Non Sequitur and I hung out with teacher Q and arty R at State Street Brats and The Vintage. Gin and tonics FTW!

And of course, classes started today at UW-Madison. I wish I could take a class or two.

Summer is almost over. It was a good summer. Lots of sunny days and lots of parties. Fall is next and hopefully will bring with it some exercise.

We had the first game of the Fall Ultimate league and we won! Go team Magneto! (I have to think of X-Men-ny shout-outs for the team. Mutant Liberation! Down with humans!)

This evening, I drive off to Minneapolis with Ms. Non-Sequitur to meet Wendell and her hubby. And to go to the Minnesota State Fair. Cotton candy, caramel apples and corn dogs. Maybe I'll buy a cow.

And right now I'm almost falling into a food coma. I just returned after having a super meal at the Shish Cafe. You gotta go!

I'm blogging under threat here. Someone on my blog-roll (and I won't say who) threatened me with removal from their blog-roll if I didn't update my blog. So here goes, blogging under pressure.

What have I been doing?
Not exercising. I'm what you'd call skinny-fat. Thin with a gut. And the last two months or so, thanks to the gym being closed on weekends, and frisbee, my body has, shall we say, deteriorated. Luckily, classes will start at UW-Madison from Sept and with it the gym hours will go back to being normal.

What have I been reading?
I started reading The Extended Phenotype. I was in the middle of Maximum City when the library decided that someone else deserves to read it first. Hopefully, I'll get it back and find out what happens to Manoj the Crossdresser. I also realized that I have too many comic books and probably need to sell some of them. After I have read them one last time.

What have I been eating?
Too much partially hydrogenated fat. And it's not good for me. Don't eat partially hydrogenated fat people, it kills puppies.

What have I been listening to?
The College Dropout and Late Registration. Mr. West can't really rap that good but he can sure produce a nice sounding album. Drive slow.

Well, there's your post. Hopefully I won't have so much aalas next time and will update quickly enough.

Oh widdle bloggy-woggy have I been neglecting you? It's because I've been sleep-deprived and drunk.

After I got back from Amsterdam, that week was spent recovering from jet-lag. This activity involves struggling to wake up, having many, many cups of coffee all day, and then struggling to fall asleep at night. It's a lot of fun.

Just when I thought I had succeeded in bringing my biorhythms in sync with the other residents of Madison, a week was up and Commodore's Cup had begun.

Commodore's Cup is the Hoofer Sailing Club's annual competition. It's a week long event, with about a dozen teams competing against each other. The competitions include sailing, windsurfing, and non-sailing stuff like flip-cup and a talent competition. My team was the Redneck Yacht Club. It involved dressing up like a redneck all week. Wifebeaters, gas-station hats, everything! Mid-week was toga night so I found old sheets and slung 'em around me and hey voila, I'm a Roman. And then a bunch of us in togas decided we had to go to a bar, so we walk all the way to the Plaza in the middle of State Street in our togas. Did I mention that there was free beer every day during Commodore's Cup?

At the end of the week was the Commodore's Ball. A formal affair that began with a pre-party at a friend's house. The night progressed to ballroom dancing, (my taking Ballroom 101 in Summer 2003 helped a little bit!) This was followed by the usual going to bars in tuxedos and gowns. We Hoofer members aren't afraid of attention.

The week after Commodore's Cup I traveled to Charleston, WV again for the same customer. They seem to have cleaned up their act though 'cause I didn't see cigarettes next to candy in the vending machines again. Instead I saw Kashi snack bars! I was flying back on Thursday. Of course the city of Detroit loves me, so my flight into Madison got canceled and I spent the night in Detroit.

Friday it was back to the Terrace for a Hoofer's social and playing the game of Wait-I-remember-your-name-just-give-me-a-second. Saturday was the Simpson's movie with nerd-or-geek J, JJs going-away party and dinner with Wendell and Domestic Nemesis at the Maharaja! It was fun to meet Wendell and talk about capybaras.

This update is late.

This should have been posted maybe two or three days ago. Right after my incredible trip to Amsterdam, London and Brussels. Here's what happened...

Day 0: D and D's wedding. This was on the Monona lake front and was beautiful. Excellent food, an open bar and great company. (Ms. Non Sequitur and her super cool sisters and their ultra cool friends.) The happy couple exchanged vows at sunset. Pics on Ms. Non Sequitur's blog.

Day 1: Amsterdam. I was picked up at Schiphol airport by Cali A, Jersey R and Mumbai S. We headed straight to the Flying Pig Uptown and settled in. If you ever go to Amsterdam, I would recommend living at the Uptown Flying Pig hostel. Clean rooms and incredibly fun people to hang out with and a bar that stayed open all night! Of course, I had to catch a 4am bus to London so couldn't party as much.

Day 2: London. Cute T picked my sorry, sleep-deprived ass up from the airport. (Travel tip: If you wanna fly from Amsterdam to London use VLM airlines.) I had had two hours of sleep the previous night and spent the whole day wandering around in London like a zombie with T who was extremely eager to show me everything. Tower Bridge, London Tower, St. Pauls, Millenium Bridge, Covent Gardens etc. Then I took the London underground and traveled to my aunt's place at the edge of town. How I stayed awake in the train I have no idea. But it was worth it because my aunt had made delicious Indian food. And to finish off the night we went to an authentic English pub called the Old Cherry Tree which was really old (built sometime in 1700s) and served some great beer. Sleep.

Day 3: Woke at 11! Wow! Hadn't slept in like this since, well, since a couple weeks ago. Anyway, my aunt made some authentic English breakfast for me: sausages, bacon, grilled mushrooms and tomatoes and eggs over easy. Delicious! Then a quick train ride back got me back to downtown and it was more site seeing with T. T's mom had stayed over the previous night due to the crazy bomb scare and in the evening her sister A came down from Oxford. Delicious Indian food for me two nights in a row! The night ended with a late excursion to Westminster to see The Big Ben.

Day 4: An early morning flight got me back to Amsterdam. But not before I forgot my jacket at T's place. Ah, well, I get another excuse to go visit her! Within half an hour of reaching Amsterdam my friends decide that we're going to Brussels that day. This was not such a good idea: the train ride was a whopping 4 hours long! Damn! We got to spend only 4 hours in Brussels. We took a bus tour and learned all about Brussels' past. Over and over again. After that we sampled some authentic Belgian beer and tarts. Another 4 hours on the train. Spent mostly sleeping.

Day 5: We went to Zaanse Schans. Windmills, cheese-making, Albert Heijn coffee museum, bakery museum, Toy museum, etc. etc. So many museums, so little time. At the cheese shop we sampled some excellent cheese such as aged gouda, aged goat cheese etc. etc. In the evening, we decided to relent and finally visit on of the 500 or so Argentinian steak houses in Amsterdam. (Why so many? I have no idea!) Great food and free shots of jenever and grappa in the end. Then we went for a pub crawl. 5 or 6 pubs, free drinks at each one, and shots along the way. Yours truly reached the hotel at 6 or so!

Day 6: This was supposed to be when we went to Dusseldorf. But when S called at 9:30am my roommates were in a sorry state from Day 5. So like the brave little soldier that I am, I got ready and joined S. We didn't go to Germany but instead roamed around in Amsterdam. Dam Square, Madame Tussauds, etc. etc. (Who knew there was a Madame Tussauds in Amsterdam? I didn't.) At around 2pm or so my friends finally woke up. So I decided to have a nap instead. Later at 4 we went back to Leidseplein, and danced in strange sounding discs like Sugar Water etc. We decided to have a quiet night and came back at a relatively early hour. 3am.

Day 7: Airport. Flight. Finished reading The Selfish Gene. Watched Garden State. (Natalie Portman is muy cute.) Spent almost 6 hours hanging out at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Finally got back to Madison and was driven home by Kitkat.

Day 8: Work as usual.

I miss you Amsterdam. And London. And even you Brussels.

(The next trip will be to a beach though. No matter what!)

Update time.

What is Hob currently reading?
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. This has been the most gripping non-fiction book I have read in a while. Recommended reading by everybody!

What is Hob currently doing?
Playing around with Ubuntu 7.04 on Microsoft VirtualPC 2007. Oh, the irony!

What is Hob excited about?
Cousin Q's friend's D is getting married on Saturday and Hob's gonna go!

What is Hob really super-excited about?
Flying out to Amsterdam on Sunday! And spending two days in London with T and aunt S! And the rest of the time in Amsterdam! Amsterdam! Lalalalalalalalala! Amsterdam!

Phir milenge, break ke baad!

Happy Fun Times again!

Friday was Russian food at Arbat followed by beer at the Great Dane in Fitchburg with Little A. The Scotch Ale at the Dane rocks!

Saturday was chilling at home, a cookout at Uncle Js place and a crazy crazy after-party at Lucky's Tavern. (So crazy that I paid for only one drink but people kept buying me more drinks, I walked home not quite in a straight line after having learned what a Scoobie Snack is and what happens when the barmaid decides to tip a bottle of flavored vodka directly into your open mouth! I also met a Steffi Graf/Gwyneth Paltrow lookalike!)

Sunday was Ultimate Frisbee practice at Brittingham Park with Little A's friend Crazy A. I love the game! If only Ms. Non Sequitur had been a better salesperson before I would have definitely joined the summer league. Now it's nail-biting tension as I wait for replies to my forum post on the MUFA website to see if any teams need a player. If not, feck it! There's always sailing at Hoofers and the possibility of drowning in Lake Mendota!

Multi-parter coming up.

Part 1: Cairo, GA
I reached Tallahassee on Tuesday. The drive to Cairo took half an hour longer than expected (Damn you, bad-directions-Enterprise-car-rental) and spent most of the day working. Wednesday. Work. Thursday we went to Crystal Seafood for some much needed dead animals and I ate like a king. A very hungry king. Alligator tails. Lobster tails. Shrimp. Baked potatoes. Hushpuppies. Cheese grits. Corn-on-the-cob. A very hungry king indeed! And to top it all I spent the rest of the day at the bar of my hotel where they were having karaoke night. Small town (Pop. 9,239) bars are fun! Everyone knows everyone else. Except you! And you spend all night making new friends.

The journey back was interesting. I was on four flights! Tallahassee - Orlando, Orlando - Greenville, Greenville - Cincinnati, Cincinnati - Madison. Sadly, only on the Tallahassee - Orlando leg did I have any company in the plane - C! I got home at 10:30 in the night. Said hi to Katie who was staying over at Ms. Non Sequitur's and plopped into a deep slumber in bed.

Part 2: Six pubs. No idea how we got there.
Saturday. Me, Ms Non Sequitur, Katie - go! Stadium Bar? Church Key, Paul's Club, Piano Bar, Paradise, Madisons.

Part 3: A surfeit of Y.
Sunday was spent lazily. I got Katie and Ms. Non Sequitur hooked on Y: The Last Man. New converts to the graphic novel club! Ice cream at Micheal's for dinner!

Part 4: Bonus Monday!
It began nice and lazy with phone calls to desh. And a lot of Chuzzle. (Warning: Do not click on that last link unless you want to be horribly addicted. I dream of Chuzzles and it is not funny!)

Then it was me and Ms. Non Sequitur. Lunch at Noodles. 28 Weeks Later at the Orpheum. Half-price Margaritas at Frida's. Knocking on Cousin Qs door! (There's a story here ;) Renting Little Miss Sunshine. Becks, where Cousin Q and BF N joined us. Becks has the most awesome jukebox ever. I just walk over and there are free credits in there! I love drunk jukebox patrons!!

This was such a boring weekend. Not.

Friday was the Hoofers Social which was on the lake front! Saw a lot of people in daylight for the first time. I was relieved that they didn't burst into flames under direct sunlight. No vampires! Met Sailor M after a long time. Challenged her into eating a double scoop of ice-cream on a waffle cone at the Union. She struggled but finally finished it! Then I browbeat her into buying me a glass of wine at Barriques.

Saturday begin with sailing on a Colgate 26 with Jerry and Joy from Hoofers. It was a race! My first race and we won! (We won because we were the only boat in our class but let's not get technical.) After spending a couple of hours hiked up (and losing one my brand new gloves to a wayward swinging boom,) my back was a little sore.

Nothing a little beer can't fix! It was a graduation party for Ms. Non Sequiturs cousin RaHa and her friends Bri and Ann. It's a little hazy now but there was a half-keg of Coors Light involved and some Red-Headed Sluts! And a lots and lots of food. Reached home at 1.

Sunday was a chill day at home, spent nursing the sore back due to the sailing.

Tuesday, I'm back in Florida on another involuntary vacation!

I got a cold and a bad one too
It made me sick like Winnie the Pooh
But the doctor, he made me fit
By prescribing antibiotics

Yeah, clearly my poetry skills have deteriorated along with the lining of my throat. This was a bad one though, and it kept me in on Friday. I watched Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music (The Director's Cut) and what a great documentary that was.

Saturday, after spending the whole afternoon at home, moping and ripping CDs, I went out and watched Spiderman 3 with Little A. A little Argentinian Cabernet Sauvignon at Barriques Wine Cave finished off the evening. Spiderman 3 is a must watch if you are comic geek. And it's a must watch even if you aren't. And before going to bed, I sipped a warm cup of Theraflu which knocked me unconscious.

Sunday, I was feeling much better, and spent most of my day bugging the crap out of KT and Ms. Non Sequitur who were trying hard to get their papers done. I'm now half a music educator and half a PhD in development studies. I need to leverage this unholy knowledge somehow and make more money. I also spoke to Gary who said she was sick and sleepy and had had a 36 hour shift. Doctors work way harder than engineers. And finally I watched Salaam Bombay which I had never seen before. I miss Bombay.

And Tall Mike has movie night tonight, where we shall watch the last two episodes of Dexter Season 1! Serial-killer cops rock!

Another weekend, another post!

Friday was a tossup between the Hoofers social and an Indian classical performance. Gary said on chat that I should go for the Indian classical. Well, I was too late for the Indian classical, and seeing as how I had a big Saturday coming up, I decided to spend a quiet Friday evening at home. Wow! Haven't done that in a while have I?! So Friday began at the comic book store, followed by a quick trip to the library for some music. TV on mute - check. CD in player - check. Sofa clean and comfy - check. Falafel sandwich - check. Comics - check. Quiet Friday evening - check.

Saturday began with some party stuff shopping. Hats, streamers, Happy Birthday banners, party poppers. Book in Indian cooking for the birthday girl. The birthday girl was R and the surprise party was organized by her boyfriend J and Ms. Non Sequitur. The party was at their beautiful house (I need a house now...) Lots of people, a keg of Leinies, lotsa wine, tons of food, damn this was a great party! And it was only the beginning of Saturday!

After the party, it was a night of karaoke at the Karaoke Kid with my buddy KT and her coworkers. KT had long islands and I stuck to my default whiskey-cokes. Yes, as usual I sang - Bohemian Rhapsody and With a Little Help From My Friends. A funny thing happened too with the second song. I asked for the Beatles version. Of course they had to pull the switcheroo on me, and play the more famous Joe Cocker cover which I had no idea how to sing! What do I do? Nothing much, I sing like a maniac anyway with KT doing the scat bits (Can we call them the scat bits? What do you call the bits of lyrics sung not as part of the main melody? Ms. Non Sequitur?) and me the choruses etc. Yeah, I could tell people thought I was a little crazy after that little performance. And then we did sake bombs!

Finally, I walked (read dragged) KT home and got her into Ms. Non Sequitur's apt. Hangovers galore the next morning!

Sunday. No hangover for me. I think I'm just blessed. Breakfast at Mickey's with these two crazy women (KT and Ms. Non Sequitur.) Fafafel and gyro sandwiches from Campus Biryani for lunch. Right now I'm listening to Dave Matthews Band and listening to KT tell me to finish this damn post already so she can read it. Ok, done.

This is a slightly premature what-happened-on-the-weekend post.

Friday. Dinner at Maza with Little A (Maza is the new Afghan place that's opened on State Street.) Chapali kababs. Searching for Angelic. Deciding that the Great Dane is a better option. (Mmmmmmm Honey Blonde beer!) Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind.

Saturday. Breakfast at Mickey's Dairy Bar. Cricket World Cup at Union South. Ice-cream with Ms. Non-Sequitur at Union South. (Mmmmmmm Orange custard chocolate chip!) Cook-out at Uncle J's place organized by Cousin Q. Holy crap a food festival! Barbecued short farmer's market ribs. Barbecued Mexican-marinated pork. Beer and lot's of it. Tossing the frisbee. All kinds of dips and finger food including Cousin Q's looks-bland-but-has-a-kick chili dip. Made from habanero powder! More beer. Tossing the ball for the dog. Watching a looong croquet game. Barbecued chicken and veggies (including pineapple!). Brats! Sitting my the fire and identifying movies from their soundtrack. (Who knew that Baby Got Back is in the Charlie's Angels soundtrack!)

Sunday. So far, I've just got this post. I better come up with something quick!

This the 200th post! Wow, I lasted for a lot longer than I though I would...

This week has been interesting. Work was the focus of things until Thursday. Then on Friday it was cricket time! Streaming video works fairly decent on Shoutcast TV. Unfortunately as is always the case, the Indian cricket team decided that if Hob is going to watch, we better lose. Badly.

With that bitter taste of defeat in my mouth, I decided what better way to cheer myself up than a couple beers at the Union with people who have no idea what cricket is :) I met KitKat and her friends from development studies (or something... Humanities is all fluff according to me... KitKat is going to kill me when she reads this.), Ms. Non Sequitur and her friend the linguist (or something) and Musical JA and his friend Roberto! After getting slightly wasted, it was pizza at Gino's. I think pizza tastes better if you're drunk. And the waitress noticed my Amsterdam T-Shirt. She was Dutch. Or something.

Saturday, after an insane 20 minute jog on the bike path behind my house, I decided to head to Union South and watch the Australia-South Africa match. That was so much better than in India-Sri Lanka game. After South Africa started to lose, I decided that I'd had enough cricket for the weekend.

Then I went to watch 300 with Sailor M! The movie is violent, cartoonish, picturesque and has some of the worst dialog in recent years. You should watch it. It's like Kill Bill meets the Gladiator meets the Lord of the Rings. We followed this up with dinner at Casa De Lara and a pitcher of frozen margaritas! After this Sailor M had to go to her friend's birthday party, I hope she got home ok :)

And this morning, I watched the second half of Altered States, a completely crazy movie about a researcher who does ayahuasca while in an isolation tank. Thank you i-me-moi for your insane recommendations!

Drunk Post Warning: This post was written while inebriated.

Just got back home from a session of crazy dancing at Madison's with Q and her crazy friends. We danced to the likes of JT, Fergie and all kinds of crazy chick music like Avril and Kelly Clarkson. It was totally awesome!

Before that it was Gomeroke at the High Noon Saloon!. I was the closing act of the night with my rendition of Hotel California by the Eagles. I forgot the song midway but didn't care and sang out loud anyway! I rocked the house! (Humility clearly isn't my forte.) I'm totally doing this again... Before me, apparently Q sang and was, according to her uncle J, number 3 for the night. (According to uncle J, I wasn't quite in the Top 5 'cause I forgot the lyrics, but I "did good".)

And my apologies to Ms. Non Sequitur for choosing such a long song and killing her chance. I promise I'll let her go before me next time.

• You feel the wind. Really feel it.
• You realize just how many times you would fidget with it (A lot.)
• Most people who know you will do a double take. But some won't even notice until much later.
• You will do double takes in the mirror.
• The strangest people will call you names.
• People who have threatened you with dire consequences if you ever did it, will basically just say "whatever" and get on with life.
• Most of the time you'll forget you've done it, until you see yourself in the mirror or touch it.
• When you imagine how you look, you won't imagine that you've done it.
• In a shower you quickly realize why it evolved in humans in the first place - to keep suds out of your eyes.

Things you notice after shaving your head for the first time...

It's time for the annual adventure! This Thursday, I fly to the Greatest City in the World - Mumbai!

Here's hoping I can meet up with all the readers and lurkers and hanger's on of this blog. So please email me (address in the top-right corner,) and I'll send you my contact info (and also reveal my secret identity to those who don't know it yet!!!)