Gifts from India!
I was completely surprised today when Subbu at work brought in gifts that the offshore guys (Danny, Sivakumar and Krishnan) in India that we work with mailed to him (check out that run on sentence!). They sent me a beautiful hand carved jewelry box, an elephant keychain and a miniture caparison. It was very thoughtful! They said it was a gift of thanks for all my help (I’ve taught them a lot of flash/actionscript). They sent a gift for my supervisor, Tim as well. They sent him a hand carved elephant candle holder, keychain and caparison as well.
A caparison is usually a gold plated decoration that is put on the head of an elephant during festivals in Cochin, India (that’s where the guys are from). I’d love to visit India someday although the one experience I had with Indian food wasn’t the best. I loved the naan, but the rest was just ok… I’m willing to give it another shot though. They say Indian food is very different from each region of India. Plus the culture is very interesting to me.
I want to ride an elephant!
now playing: New Young Pony Club - Get Lucky
Redesign puhlease!
This site is in need of a major redesign.. and I’m feeling extra creative… I’m working on mockups. I’m pretty sure I want to move this site over to WordPress. I’m using WordPress on one of my other sites.. but I need to find a nice easy way to move Nucleus to Wordpress.
I found this method that talks about exporting the RSS feed from nucleus into wordpress. Buuuut, you lose comments and photos. Not acceptable! Isn’t there a better way? Has anyone else done something like this??
Also saw this on sourceforge. Looks promising but I can’t find any comments on it or anyone that’s used it.
We’re using Drupal at work as our CMS and it looks really great and very expandable. Sites like MTV, The New York Observer and other high profile sites are now using Drupal. I’m considering using this as an alternative to WordPress but I think Drupal may have a lot more features that I may or may not need or ever want.. we’ll see.
now playing: Sunset Rubdown - The Mending of the Gown
Valencia Sunrise
I haven’t seen a sunrise more beautiful than the sunrises in Valencia. They’re so dramatic.
now playing: The Pixies - Alec Eiffel
Holiday glum
Thanksgiving is here! Holidays are kinda sad for Josh and I because we miss family and it’s rather lonely having dinner for 2 on these big holidays. I try to do some kinda dinner thing but it never works out and it’s just not the same (I’d rather work on these holidays to keep my mind off them!).. then I get homesick and Josh and I plan on moving back East. Each year we get more and more itchy about moving. This year is no exception. If only we could decide on a city/state! Any suggestions?
I’m very opposed to the Carolinas and a lot of the South… because of what little I’ve seen/heard in these places.. but still open to convincing… maybe?
In May we’re taking a train back to Buffalo and may look into places to move to. I’d like to live outside of NYC.. but Josh wants to live someplace warm and sunny.
What we love to do in SoCal - and hope to find where we move to…
- Wakeboard/Jetski (basically we need a lake nearby)
- Josh likes his sand/dirty toys - atv, dunebuggy, etc.
- I love a big city nearby for the artsy community, music, etc.
- Liberal cities are a plus because of their open-mindedness
now playing: TV On The Radio - Staring at the Sun
Birthday visit!
Tracey visited for our birthday! We had a lot of fun. She arrived at lunch time on Thursday so I picked her up and she spent a few hours in my cube until we went home. We were really hungry so we made a quick decision to grab pizza at BJs and got a pizookie! They didn’t understand the twins part.. and gave Tracey the pizookie but we shared it.
Then when we went home, we opened up gifts from Mom and Dad via web cam conference. Mom and Dad got me a cute button up jacket and a nice silver cuff bracelet along with the monetary ability to go shoe shopping with Tracey! Tracey got me a cute headphones zip up I wanted, a game called “Don’t Quote Me”, a really clever paper clip holder that looks like a sink and its magnetic so they stick to the faucet!! and the book “Handmaid’s Tale”. Josh got me a totally awesome Diesel watch that I really liked. LB got me a gift certificate for Maggiano’s/Chili’s/Macaroni Grill/Corner Bakery.
We went to Cheesecake factory the next night with Tarrah, Josh and Ruben. Ruben got both Tracey and I a box full of goodies from Origins. There’s this really nice “peace of mind” sensory therapy stuff that relieves tension and stress; it contains peppermint, basil and eucalyptus (stress relief = just what i need). Everything from Origins is 95% certified organic. yay Earth! Tarrah gave us our stockings! She was disappointed last year when the dogs had stockings but we didn’t, so she made Josh and I each a stocking 
now playing: Electric Six - Gay Bar
Mind the gap!
Amritz and Sarah got me an awesome door mat for my birthday And 2 dish towels that have underground stops on them too- Paddington and Hyde Park
Tracey’s coming next week! Stars is tonight!
Things have settled down just a bit around here. I’m finally all caught up at work, got rid of the cold and the laundry pile at home has receded.
I’m really excited that Tracey is coming to town next week for our birthday celebration. I went to Philly in September but that feels like a year ago!
Going to see Stars tonight with Amritz and Sarah at the Orpheum. Didn’t realize it was downtown! That’s gonna be a loooooong 38 mile drive on the way home… wish I could take the metrorail… we’ll see.
now playing: Alcest - Souvenirs D’un Autre Monde
Mexican Riviera!
So I finally had time to write a bit about Mexico. The cruise was fun. It was nice to relax with Josh and have no phone calls and no work interrupting our relaxing! Josh was sick a day or so before we left, but we had 2 sea days where he could rest and get better. Aside from the news about the fires we had fun.
First port was Puerto Vallarta where we took a scenic coastal drive and saw places like Elizabeth Taylor’s former house and Richard Burton’s former house. The coastal areas were beautiful. Small cobble stone streets added to that old Mexico charm. It was really pretty. We also stopped at Our Lady of Guadalupe church and it was beautiful lots of gold leaf and very white inside.
In the afternoon we did the swimming with the dolphins adventures and it was sooo much fun! Definitely the highlight of our trip. We were in a huge salt water pool with the dolphins. They did all sorts of trick… for example the dolphins would give us fish and we’d toss them back to them and feed them. They’d kiss us and we’d hug them. All the while they swam in and out of us upside down at the surface of the water and we’d pet their bellies. They were super cute. They’re much larger than I thought too… like 7 - 8′ long or so. The trainer said the one was 600 lbs! We even got to train baby dolphins. They were 9 and 10 mos old (the adults were 35 or so). The babies were still like 4′ long. The best part was riding the dolphin. We held onto their fins and and they swam upside down across the pool super fast. It was amazing! We were late after the dolphin stuff getting back to the ship, but it didn’t leave without us because it was Princess booked shore excursion. So it was like a bonus, instead of taking the bus back to the port we got to take a small inflatable boat with engine over the to ship. It was a lot of fun
Mazatlan was nice but maybe just the port area wasn’t so nice.. we went into the “Golden Zone” for shopping and stuff and it was a lot of construction. The sales people were very pushy saying “almost free!” CONSTANTLY. It turned us off and we ended up going back to the boat. But the taxi we took back was cool. The driver didn’t speak much English so I brushed up my Spanish and spoke to him in Spanish. We stopped at each monument and he told us a lot about the area. I translated a bit for Josh.
The next stop was Cabo San Lucas. Cabo as by far the best stop! And we were only there for 5 hours 
We only had time for shore excursion, not much to see the area. We went snorkeling in Chileno Bay. A catamaran took us out there… about an hour ride. The water was SUPER salty. You couldn’t sink if you wanted to. We saw lots of colorful fish and coral. After about 30 minutes of snorkeling or so we got back in the boat and has some snacks and drinks and then back to shore to get back on a tender to go back to the cruise ship. There’s no port at Cabo, so the cruise ship anchors and you take tendor boats out to shore. Both Josh and I want to go back to Cabo again and spend more time there. It was so beautiful.
I get motion sick a lot so I took ginger pills and got sick anyway that night so I took dramamine day and night and so did Josh and that was the only way we didn’t get motion sick. It’s almost like a more pronounced movement on the ship would have been better. The subtle swaying was nauseating especially when we weren’t on the upper decks.
I posted lots of photos in the photo album…
now playing: Stars - Bitches in Tokyo
