One Fleeting Moment

The sister has finally arrived, with loads of stories (runway crash, disabled plane, cancelled flights... the works) and all of her luggage- a minor miracle considering the fact that she travelled on British Airways. The barbeque that was to be the young lady's introduction to society had to be held without her.

By the end of this week, the Boy will be off to collect flies (read conduct field research) in some remote Thai village and then onto Taiwan for a conference. The young lady will be leaving soon after for Salt Lake City to pursue a life which will probably resemble the lives of one these guys. And yours truly will proceed to work, work out, baby sit a couple of kids, host a post-doc and his lovely wife for two days, hang out with friends and then on August 22nd fly out to join the Boy in Taipei for six days. Should be fun.

This, my dearies is an atrocity, an all out assault on the senses. How am I supposed to drink that water, when I cannot get past the ugly design.
And just in case the offending object has not seared its ugliness on your brain, here's another picture, this time around on its side.Am I the only one who thinks this "orbtastic" (that's what the label says) water bottle screams inflated latex gloves rather loudly?

I was following this rather interesting thread here and look where I landed. Incidentally I spend the better part of most days at the first link, obsessing about all the cool designer furniture that I cannot buy. But atleast I can buy my own books.

These came as a rude shock or rather the bill did. Instead of being $2.99/bag they turned out to be $2.99 /lb. Now I cannot get over the fact that I misread the label on a three pound bag of cherries...bah! Atleast they look pretty on the counter.

and some leaves. Here's what I picked from my container garden the other day:

Labels: Food

A few weeks back, after about two hours of online researching we bought a Canon Power Shot S3 IS. The camera looks nice, has a great grip and like most modern gizomo's I am told it can do pretty much everything other than bringing about world peace!! The camera bag on the other hand is slightly on the larger side, as in enough-room-to-accomodate-lunch-as-well-camera large. Oh! well...perfect for a day's outing, I guess.

~Okra flower caught in bloom

After nearly two and a half hours of non stop action, this is what I got:
1. Huge robot like creatures from outer space love big American cars or put another way no self respecting autobot would transform into a Corolla or Prius. Since that other planet exploded way back when, these guys probably never heard of global warming.
2. Nokia cellphones when zapped with the enormous power of THE CUBE (don't ask me to explain that) turn into these spindly, stupid yelping robots. Now that is some seriously aweful product placement, if you ask me.
3. A beat up old Camaro with one seat belt can make a young man utter corny, nausea inducing goobledygook to his future girlfriend. Once again, not a great product placement idea. Or may it is and I am just way too old for such stuff now.

Labels: Cinema

Right next door a rather unique controversy has been brewing up over the past few days. The much talked about, renovated, rejuvenated (urban planners love throwing these terms around) Silver Spring Downtown is actually private property and not a public street as most of us believe. So we can run across that fountain all we want but capturing the act on camera is not allowed...atleast that's what the owners Petersen Inc. are saying.

A lot of ink, bandwidth and radiotime has been devoted to this issue and the rather vociferous, civic minded citizenry of Montgomery County are up and about trying to create a picturesque ruckus about it. But in an economy where cash strapped local governments are looking more and more towards public-private partnerships and its many variants to meet growing infrastructure needs, the question of public vs. private property becomes a very challenging one to answer. In this case since Ellsworth Drive happens to look and function as a normal street (during most hours of the day) the public percieves it is a public space with private shop fronts. Unfortunately the owners claim it is an open air mall, like many others in the area and hence its private property. Lengthy contracts and lease agreements work on paper but when it comes to popular perceptions, there are no easy answers.

The in-laws are in Moscow and they are in the process of settling in. The long periods of daylight are quite nerve wracking it seems and so is the price of potatoes. Isn't that like a staple of the Russian diet?

The annual Smithsonian Folk Life Festival is underway at the National Mall. Go check out the sight, sounds and tastes of Ireland and the Mekong Delta. The sheep herding demonstration is fun. Avoid the food stall that is selling Vietanamese food (the green papaya salad drill), they were out of almost everything when we visited. The tamarind juice at the beverage counter (courtesy our favourite Indian restaurant) is refreshing.

A couple of days back the Boy and I realised how thanks to blogging we now refer to friends and accquaintances by their blogger id's. It's not like we don't know there real names. So the celebrity blogger who happens to be a neighbour is the Greatbong and not Arnab. The same holds true for her and her. And I have started thinking of this gentleman as the wandering dervish. Ouch!!

Thanks to a colleague we dicovered a great Greek restaurant in out-of-the-way Spencerville, MD. Located in a tiny strip mall, about a mile south of the intersection of New Hamspire Avenue and Norbeck Road the Greek Islands Cafe serves up authentic spreads, gyro's and much more. I will be updating the restaurant page with more details later this week.

Dulce De Leche is the flavor of the month, served with a scoop of icecream drizzled with amaretto.

A, fellow foodie and civil engineer (of sorts!) suggested that we should watch Ratatouille and then blog about it. Since we value our friendships greatly and the advice doled out by friends even more we promptly went to the nearest theatre and watched it. But before that we stopped by La Madeliene for some portobello poulet crepes and a slice of Sacher torte which if you must know, was just perfect. So without much ado here's our two cents worth about the movie.

Remy, an epicurean rodent rises above his humble beginings to become the best chef in Pae-ree( Paris) with a little help from his imaginary friend, the legendary Chef Gusteau whose benevolent largese floats around him in times of need. If the presence of Chef Gusteau's spirit is almost Food Network-esque ("Anyone can cook" is his mantra), then the evil sous chef Skinner will remind you of Macdonald's and frozen foods and everything that is wrong with our food chain. Clever, clever, clever.

Then there is the food, the luscious, animated food which is so beautifully crafted, begining with the lightning melded piece of mushroom and cheese (a singed souffle anyone?) to the signature deconstructed rataouille that Remy dishes up for the too-thin-for-comfort food critic, Ego voiced by Peter O'Toole. And somewhere in the course of this two hour animated love song to Paris and its gustatory delights you will meet the clumsy Linguini who despite his genes cannot tell a bearnaise from a hollandaise, the ambitious Collete who can and a host of other humans and rodents - each with their own quirks, personalities and in case of the vermin, their own kind of fur. Just like ratatouille - a Provencal peasant soup with guts and character and a little bit of this and little bit of that.

Labels: Cinema