What Goes Around

A ring, as in my wedding ring. I hope to get my wedding ring fixed in the new year. It has one of the prongs broken. I think that is what you call them. One of those things that hold the precious jewel in place. I could get it fixed here, but the lady at the jewelry store told me that it was a bad idea. I should just take it home to America and get it fixed there. I guess sometimes diamonds get replaced or "lost". One thing that I hope can change in the new year is I hope people will quit dying. Too many people died that I know last year. I am now in the stage of life that I go to more funerals than weddings. Well, that would be the case if I was in America. Actually, I have gone to more weddings, but if I lived in America I would have gone to more funerals. And the deaths all seemed to be a surprise. People weren't sick and then died, they just died. Drop dead. At least they were not painful deaths. But still, for the family it is a huge shock. Death is s...

When people think of India, they don't think of the cold weather. Usually you think about the extreme heat. But surprisingly, it gets cold here in the winter. And it is winter right now. Okay, so today is only 61 degrees, which isn't too cold, but inside our house is colder than it is outside. I am sitting on our new couch with a wool blanket over me. I am wearing two pair of socks, jeans, a t-shirt under a long sleeve shirt, with a jacket on. I have been wearing my stocking cap all day, but decided to tough it out. My head was starting to hurt. Earlier today, I was at work and noticed that I could feel the coldness from the floor through my shoes. I tried sticking my feet on the room heater to try to warm them up. But I felt a little rude with my feet on the heater, so I put them back in my shoes. I don't know if it is that my shoes are old and have holes in the bottoms and that is why I can feel the cold, or if everyone can feel it. I wonder if people in Alask...

Recently I decided to go shopping for a fancy pillow. You know one of those pillows that are contour for people with neck pain. So I went into a well known store and found them. Kind of expensive if you ask me. But anyway, I was willing to pay the big bucks for no more neck pain. As I was checking out, the cashier said, "You know these are buy one get one free? Would you like your free one?" Of course I would. Anything free is great. So off I went with two contour pillows. When I got home I immediately put my new contour pillows on the bed. And that is when I realized that I didn't need two. One was enough. So what to do with the other one. I decided to take it back to the store and get my money back. That is when the problems began. I went back to the same cashier who sold me the pillows and told her that I only needed one pillow and would like my money back. She looked at me strange. She said that they were buy one get one free. Duh. I knew that, but I...

While we were in Thailand a few weeks ago, I discovered a delicious sauce at the buffet table. It is a brown sauce that you add to your food and it makes it taste so yummy. So when I went to the grocery store to buy the things I like to take back to India (tuna fish, thai iced tea mix, fisho, thai curry), I found the sauce isle and bought me the big bottle of cooking sauce. That is what it is called, cooking sauce. Cooking sauce is a brown sauce, like soy sauce, only yummier. I add it to rice, to eggs, to vegetables, to soup, to almost any dish. And it makes it taste better. I don't know what it is because it is in Thai, but Maggi makes a similar sauce and they call it brown sauce. So my brown cooking sauce is my new obsession.

Steve and I are opposites. I am still amazed at this fact after 16 years of marriage. Take the other day. We were in the Bangkok airport, walking to the taxi area. We had just gotten of the plane and gone through baggage and we were heading to the taxi. We had to go up two floors to the drop-off area, where it is 50 baht cheaper to get a taxi. Steve was talking about this "diamond" that he found on the plane. He thought maybe it was the lady in front of him. But then he lost sight of her. So he was wondering if he should search for her. I had my mind set on going straight to the taxi area. So I was leading the way. We got to the escalators, where there were two options. One is the stair kind and one is for luggage carts. One was on our left and the other was on our right. I pointed to the stair one and said, "Should we take this one?" But then I changed my mind in a flash and said, "No, we should just take this one." And I headed up the cart...

We are in Chiang Mai, Thailand right now. Every six months we have to leave India, so we use it as a time of vacation also. We come visit friends, go shopping, and have massages. Sounds like an easy life, huh? Well, when massages cost $4. you can’t pass it up. Today we were woken up by the sound of someone talking in a loud speaker. It was 5 am. Way too early for people to be talking outside, into a microphone. We ignored it until we got out of bed. Then I looked out the window to see what the noise was all about. It was the gathering of the 12,600 monks. A stream of bald men in orange sheets wrapped around them were walking down the street. And many more people in white who were worshiping or serving or something. We are in a hotel and we get a breakfast buffet with our room. This morning it was crowded with people in white and a small table of monks. There were no glasses, no cups, no plates and no silverware. Micah was a bit perturbed by that. I just got a small salad...

I just tried to order pizza on the phone. This can sometimes be a tedious feat. It was tonight. Here was my conversation. "Hello Domino's.. would you like to try our gabalygook pidally poop something or other special blahdi blah blah?" Me: "Hello? My phone number?" "Yes, go ahead" Me: "Nine seven" "Nine double" Me: "one double seven" "one double double" Me: "four seven" "four double" Me: "eight four eight" "Is this your first time calling?" Me: "No" "Give me your number again" Me: "Nine seven" "Nine double" Me: "No, nine seven" "Nine double" Me: "No double, seven." "double" Me: "No double. Let me try again. Nou sath (trying my Hindi)" "Nine seven" Me: "ek sath sath" "eight seven" Me: "No, Hindi mai (in Hindi) ek, ek" "eight"...