The Happy Gardener

I will never climb Mt.Everest. Not that there was any danger of it happening any time soon. But still. I am firm on this decision. I finished reading Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. It is a raw and real book and illustrates, among the many other qualities, the stupidity and recklessness of humans, as a species. Finally took my car to a car wash over the weekend. And now it's like watching the world in high definition as I drive - it's like some one just upped the resolution and the windshield doesn't even exist. This happens every time I get my car washed. I should do something like this for my glasses too, once in a while! I've been very bad. There are people out there who are not only willing to read my blog, but also willing to acknowledge the fact by leaving comments abt my blog and I haven't replied to them. The problem here is twinfold : a) I somehow don't get to read the comments until much later. b) I don't have anything witty to say in response. Now ...

Does anybody else think that the guy from CSI Miami (apparently his name is David Caruso) is a little too orange? I don't know if it is the bad color settings of my TV but that guy always reminds of an apricot. Just had to express the thought. Running through an empty grocery store aisle with a cart, achieving critical speed for lift off, cruising, and decarting in the nick of time to prevent a collision with the cereal boxes is one of life's pure undiluted joys. And just like a fairy tale, at the end of the rainbow is a box of cereal. As I was loading the bags into my car after my exciting trip to the grocery store, I started thinking of our typical daily paper/plastic footprint. I recycle as much as I can, try to use my reusable shopping bags whenever I can, and never throw away any plastic bag without loading it with some trash and yet, I feel like there's all this plastic and paper in my life. Compared to this, I think India was/is light years ahead in this field. Wheth...

And on to the next post. Massachusetts, in an attempt to keep driving fun when there's no snow and salt on the roads, has rotaries. What are rotaries? They are roundabouts or traffic circles. I think they should be called newbie-traps or HonkFests. So Mass folks added rotaries to their roadways. And, on a whim, they decided to do away with the yield signs. Until some guy in the Roads and Traffic Department(which itself was voted out of MA in early 70s, I believe), came up with the bright idea. He said: "Why remove them when you can place them in highly ambiguous positions around the rotary?". "'Tis true!", said the wise men of the council, nodding their heads. And thus came to be the yield signs. One is never sure if one is the yielder or the yieldee. Actually, that seems like a pretty deep, philosophical statement. "Who is the Yielder? Who is the Yieldee?". Anyways, back to fun and games at the rotary. When I first started driving around in MA an...

The details will kill us all. The number of things that one has to remember on an average day is staggering. Like this morning : I was packing my lunch and I suddenly remembered that my rent was past due. "Broccoli!", I thought, " I completely forgot about it." Tangent: I've always thought that it is the act of swearing, and not the actual swear word, that gives us the release. Half the time, what we say when we are swearing doesn't even make any sense in context of the object we are swearing at. So, I think, if said properly, any word can make a good cuss word. This had prompted me, in recent times, to try to move away from my favorite D words (dang, darn and damn) to the new B word - Broccoli! This works fine - especially if I emphasize the first syllable. There was still the problem of the C word (crap) - what with WTC being an oft used expression. Broccoli just didn't go with it. Neither did squash. What the squash!? What the Squash!? What the SQUASH...

Apparently, Siddhartha was leading a pretty good life, filled with beauty and luxury, until one day when he went out for a little drive, came across some sick and old folks and decided it was more than he could handle. He then turned away from his life, became an ascetic, achieved Niravana and became the Buddha. If I ever end up the same way, it will be because of my car insurance. The greatest peril of leading an optimistic and cheerful life is that you end up inviting the wrath of Fate. It is called "Asking for It". Basically, Fate just gets sick of your annoying grin and has to try real hard not to sock you in the eye. This is a general observation.

Weekly reports are the bane of my existence. Having said that let us move on. I miss my parents - miss coming home to my parents once in a while. But today, as I walked to the grocery store (I love the fact that I can walk to the grocery store - even if I only do it 10 times a year, I LOVE it), I started thinking of how we take some joys in life for granted. And I came up with a list of frequently overlooked advantages of growing up, leaving home and living by yourself: - In the words of Seinfeld : "I enjoy the fact that now, if I want a cookie, I have a cookie. Okay? I have three cookies or four cookies or eleven cookies if I want.". - The above is also true for brownies. - I am the master of the remote control. And of the couch. - At any given time, if I open my fridge, everything in it is something that I like, or liked at some point of time. - I can get up at any time of the day, on weekends atleast. - I can potentially wake up and just read my novel for a while. - I can ...

Fall is a beautiful season. I am sure people have mentioned this before but I feel compelled to state it anyways. It is really gratifying to walk out of work and see so many hues of orange, amber, rust, maroon and yellow along with green. And often, you get to see all these colors in a single tree! Today, ofcourse, nature decided to show off. So around 6.15 pm, it arranged for a light drizzle, an overcast sky and a misty rainbow in the parking lot, to go with the colors, as I walked to my car. I drove home on the short windy road, with lots of trees on both sides, as I do everyday, marvelling at the colors and was a couple of minutes away from home when a small part of the sky started clearing a little, and sunlight came in at that perfect angle to light the clouds and show the world that there are indeed, 87 hues of blue and pink in life - and not just in the a Sherwin Williams catalogue. Talking about colors, I discovered the name, burnt sienna, when I bought my first oil colors kit....