Saturday, April 30, 2011

Royal Wedding, Figure Skating etc.

I'm back!!!

Stayed up Thursday night/Friday morning to watch the entire royal wedding - the result is that I am now suffering a cold and have lost my voice (no I didn't cheer, I was drinking something cold and the weather in L.A. at night was cold, I am thinking there is a corrolation). My thoughts on the wedding:

  1. LOVED Kate's dress! I thought it fit her perfectly and so classic. She reminded me of an old fashion Spanish Princess, like what perhaps Katherine of Aragon would have looked like. Her hair and the tiara were beautiful, truly like a princess. I thought the veil was a nice touch, in the Spanish style. Also the bridesmaid and flower girl dresses were so cute, I would love to get one of those pleated flower girl dresses for my baby!!
  2. I thought the Abbey looked great with the flowers and the trees! Again a nice touch, made it seem more intimate and less cold.
  3. I was amazed at how short the actual ceremony is itself, the real long part was the mass afterwards, funny how it seemed some of the key players in the wedding didn't know the words to properly sing the hymn.
  4. Some of those hats were insane, no? What were Princess Beatrice and Eugenie thinking? And all the fashionista's were wowing over Tara Palmer Tomlinson (I think that is her name, the chic in blue with the weird hat) I thought she looked hideous. Also Victoria Beckham might have looked cute but what a snob, looking down her nose at everyone.
  5. All in all what a fairy tale day!!

In other news - world figure skating championships were held this week, sadly I was unable to see any of it because none of the regular television channels were showing it, bummer. I had to follow through the ISU website. Alissa Cziny completely shortchanged, she deserved to be on the podium! I hope that she continues skating this way and into next season, so she gets a chance to win!

Monday, April 25, 2011

Royal wedding in LA

We are off to Los Angeles for a visit with my in-laws, will write when we return, all about the royal wedding!!

Have a great week!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Airline fees

Good news came out today about the airline passenger rights bill! The one element in the bill that I was supremely happy to see was the caveat that if the airlines lose your luggage they have to refund you the baggage fee! I am happy for this rule because it will hopefully prompt airlines to do a better job with not losing suitcases. As a customer service agent, the worst thing in the world was a lost bag; unhappy customers, no idea where bag is, constant work. Fingers crossed, this works to improve service in the world of airline bags!

I attend this Muslim woman's group on Wednesday mornings (kinda like Bible study). It is nice but I am having a hard time making friends there. Everyone is friendly enough but its clear I am the outsider (everyone in the group is from India, I am the only American). To some extent I think language is an issue, but is it also a cultural thing? We can't relate as well? I genuinely feel like the nerd, take today for example - after group discussion we eat a snack. I sat at the table with baby in my lap while the other ladies all sat in the living room chatting. And its not a child issue as all the other ladies have little ones as well (which is why we meet on a Wednesday morning, all stay at home mommies). I still like to go to learn more about Islam but it would be nice to be friends with these ladies beyond the polite, "hello's." Any suggestions or thoughts?

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Watching Oprah

I watch a lot of Oprah nowadays - a pitfall of being a stay at home mommy I guess. On Thursday she was showing some recaps of her shows, funny episodes. One of the incidents was when she had her favorite things Christmas show but for this particular year the theme was, "being thrifty." Thus, unlike previous Oprah favorite things shows where the audience walks away with tons of free stuff, that year the audience was given tips on how to have a more frugal holiday season.

Oprah was showing this episode because of the audience reaction. The people in the crowd were in disbelief, seemed upset (this spend-thrift episode was in 2008 when America was really hit by the recession, so the theme seemed appropriate). Mind you, these audience members did not even know the subject of the show they were seeing until they got into their seats.

Flip back to present day and Oprah was saying how she felt bad that these audience members were upset, how they appeared to be duped...um what?!

What is she talking about? These people are that greedy that they went to Oprah's show with a sense of entitlement?! They saw that they were at Oprah's favorite things episode and therefore they OBVIOUSLY had to be getting lots of great goodies. What the heck?! Who do these people think they are?! You didn't even know the subject matter of the show before you got the tickets - so why do you think you deserve big ticket free stuff because you happen to get into the favorite things episode?! You should just be glad you got tickets to the Oprah show, sheesh!

This is the problem with America today, everyone thinks they are entitled to something - you are not!

The worse part of this whole story is that after showing that old show, Oprah proceeded to give each of that old episode audience members a gift pack (tracking them down and Fed-Ex'ing to each member a gift pack), because she felt bad for what happened to them three years ago. What?! No! They got to see Oprah, that is all they paid for. This abject consumerism drives me nuts!

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Finding Friends

Living in Arizona, as you know, can be very lonely and that can be exacerbated by being a stay at home mommy - enter the stroller!

We reside in this big apartment complex and my mommy support group had recommended that I take the baby in the stroller and go around during the day, where there would be increase chance of finding other mommy's and perhaps other Indians strolling as well. Eureka! I have found some other mommy's, even joined a Muslim woman's group! They don't make up for continuing to miss my family and friends back in Virginia but it certainly helps to move the days along.

Speaking of which, I LOVE my mommy support group and can you believe it is offered free from the hospital I had baby in - what shocks me is that there are not more new mommy's taking advantage of this great club.

ps - on a side note, proud of the husband, he will no longer play Trump golf courses in boycott of Trump's joining the stupid birther movement. Sad that Trump has whored himself out to these racists.

Thursday, April 07, 2011

Stay At Home Mommy

Currently I am a stay-at-home momma....and you would think that would drive me crazy, wrong! I love it! I fall more and more in love with baby every day, she is too cute! She is so sweet as well! I can't even imagine going back to work and leaving her with someone, just the though makes me get weepy. Yes I don't get much done because she likes to be held all the time but somehow it works and we are both happy (smile).

Husband and I are now officially RedBox fans! Since we can't really go the movies, we do Red Box Fridays - its great! I look forward to it and only for $1! So far we have seen:
The A-Team
Unstoppable
The Fighter*
The Social Network*
127 Hours
The American
The Other Guys
Despicable Me
Remains of the Day (that was rented from the library).

*I highly recommend these two, they were fantastic!!

In figure skating news, they have moved the World Championships to April 24th and to Moscow (originally scheduled for late March and to be held in Tokyo). I can't wait!

Saturday, April 02, 2011

CEO is a tool

Watched a CNN interview today with the CEO of godaddy.com. Apparently he heads to Zimbabwe every year to shoot elephants. He says he does it solely for altruistic purposes, because the elephants are trampling the crops of local farmers there in Zimbabwe. The CNN presenter pointed that she had spoken with an elephant expert at the Columbus zoo and that expert had said that while the elephants are known for trampling the crops there are other methods to get them to stop without having to shoot them. These methods included electric fences (go daddy guy dismissed this as too expensive) and the use of honey bee's (again dismissed as ineffective).

The CEO guy justifies his killing by saying that he is doing this to save those poor people's crops and that those people are happy for his help. As far as I'm concerned, this CEO is a real tool - he thinks he knows more than an ELEPHANT EXPERT, who has studied elephants all his life. He is trying to justify his desire to shoot big game by clocking it in some, "I'm doing good," excuse. If he really wants to help these people why doesn't he help with more advanced farming methods, tools, schools, roads, hospitals, so they don't have to sustain on just those crops but could improve their lot in life. Here is the story - http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_7683.shtml

Baby is getting more animated - I am trying to teach her Danish, if anyone knows any good and cheap programs that teach children a foreign language, do send along the tip!