Miscellaneous

Hi everyone. Sorry that I haven't been keeping up on the posting as of late, I had a couple of presentations that I had to give but I finished up the last one today so now life can get back to normal. So since I made my last real post not a lot has happened but I will try to come up with a few things to talk about. I hope that everyone had a nice Easter, we sure did! We treated ourselves by making reservations at one of the nicest "Western" style hotels for Easter brunch in their restaurant. It was really nice, the restaurant was decorated with Easter baskets and Easter eggs and the champagne brunch was quite nice. There was a ton of food and best of all, there was all different types of cuisines, Lebanese (yummy pita pockets), ham, a turkey, an antipasto table full of cheeses, olives and cured meats, crab, shrimp, oysters, clams, chicken, just everything that you can imagine. But it didn't come cheap, the final bill was over $100 for both of us, but it was worth it for a special occasion.

The summer is upon us here in Bangalore, though we have been having really strange weather. March and April are supposed to be just about the hottest and driest months of the entire year so I was sort of dreading their arrival but instead of hot dry weather we have been getting quite a bit of rain which has kept it nice and cool. This is nice for us since we are pretty comfortable in the cool temperatures but the unseasonable rain is causing problems with the summer crops and everyone is a bit worried about the mango crop this year. People here sure love their mangoes, and I will also be sad if there aren't mangoes this year because they are quite yummy, it's too bad that the US doesn't get good mangoes, they are really good... Anyway, along with the summer comes the power outages, we get at least a few a week, they usually don't last long but last Sunday we had a bit of a rainstorm with some wind and the infrastructure here is pretty shabby so of course the power went out because either some pole came down or a tree fell and knocked down the wires. The power switched off at around 2 or 3 PM and it didn't come back until around 8 or 9 PM. Eric and I piddled around for some time but eventually got bored and decided to go outside and play catch. We brought our gloves and a couple of balls with us to India so that we could toss it around every once in a while so that when we eventually return and hopefully pick up on slow-pitch again we aren't too rusty. We have no place to actually play catch so we just played right in the street in front of our house, moving to the side to let people, cars, trucks, and motorcycles by when they approached. It was a lot of fun and since the power was out along the whole street pretty soon curious neighbors were peeking over their gates to see what the strange foreigners were doing in the street. We had a nice time and we were even able to teach one guy how to throw (until he let loose a wild pitch and hit one of our neighbor's motorcycle). We stayed outside until after dark but pretty soon we forced inside by the mosquitoes. Ah yes, the mosquitoes. With the rain has come hordes of mosquitoes that I chase around the house like a crazy woman trying to kill. I usually get several every day. I have also noticed that Mira and Chaya have joined me in my never-ending battle against the mosquito, though their favorite prey item would definitely have to be the cockroach. Every couple of days I will find either a whole cockroach that has been played with to death, but usually I just find a leg or two here and there. Gross! But I guess it is better than me finding them and killing them. I would have never guessed that cats would turn out to be such good exterminators. Why call the Orkin man when you can just bring a kitten home?

Mira and Chaya are both doing well, Chaya maybe a bit too well, she is getting a little chubby and Eric has started calling the poor baby "Fatty" and other cruel and hurtful things. I will include some pics, you can decide for yourself if she is fat, I prefer to think that she is just "healthy". They are just about one year old already and I am trying to break myself of the habit of referring to them as "the kittens" as they are hardly kittens anymore. They continue to provide us with endless entertainment except for when they are sleeping which is from around 11 AM- 8 PM or so. Last Sunday when the power was off we couldn't play with them since they were snoozing the entire time. They are mostly well behaved and we have recently learned a new game, they love plastic bags and I have taken to tying a string around one of the handles of a big plastic bag and I run around the entire apartment pulling the bag behind me with two kittens chasing me and the bag. I wonder what our downstairs neighbors think is going on... It is good exercise for them, and me too. I also learned last night that they love the laser pointer. I was practicing my talk and I had it out and they would just sit and stare at the little red dot moving all over the place. I think that we are going to take video of them moving their head back and forth and set it to music. Pretty funny, at least for us.

Okay, that is a glimpse into our fun and exciting life!

How can you tell that these are my kittens? They love shoes!


It is a bird, is it a plane, no, it is Super-Mira!

What are you looking at?

One of Eric's favorite (and stupid) jokes, "Chaya has a weight problem, she can't wait to eat!"