Its been almost a month since the election and my decision to stay off consuming all political news and content has largely paid off. I still keep seeing headlines and masto/bsky posts around topics of interest, but I look at the headline and just don’t get into it. The first political article I read after few weeks last night was Biden forgiving Hunter and I am glad it happened. But now I am going back into that mode again to try and avoid consuming as much political content as I can. I am done, and I think I like this change a lot right now.
🍿 Sikandar Ka Muqaddar (2024) - ★☆☆☆☆
Never going to get back two hours of my life I spent on this back. Ugh.
We started watching mission impossible series with the kid last night and my wife remarked that the first movie we were watching came out when she was nearly the same age as our kid right now 😆. This is a series that really has just overstayed.
Something is happening in California. A distressing number of people I know as ex-colleagues or acquaintances on Facebook have all come out slowly but surely indicating they voted for Trump for one reason or another. These are folks I worked with for a long time while I was at Cisco and they are all pretty much South Asians and a couple of Eastern Europeans. I just feel weirded out reading all their posts.
Our downstairs floors are frigid this morning. Electric heat pumps are the absolute worst kind of heat there is - the system basically runs on Aux heat nonstop which almost always kills something inside that needs replacing. Sometimes I wish this system just conked altogether so I can replace it with a gas system which is far more better and predictable than this electric heat nonsense. It simply does not work in real cold. Period.
First real walk in cold today with doggo in low 30s is a sign of things to come. I am not looking forward to these walks as much as they do help me in some ways tolerate the cold. But ugh, I hate hate hate winter.
Had a wonderful Thanksigiving last night inspite of a few people not showing up. We started out at 6 and pretty much ate our way through till 12.30 in morning. Much food and drinks were consumed. Then we spent few more hours chit chatting while kids finally tired at 2am decided to call it a night. Eventually our festivities ended at almost 4am! Blessed and lucky to have friends in life whom we can spend so much time with. If another family had made it we’d have few more days/nights of this since they would’ve come out of town. On the plus side, looking forward to a quiet weekend with family and shopping!
A family bailed out on dinner tonight for good reasons, but it means we now have horrible amount of food to devour.
The rightful winner for great British bake off. Yet another good season of our favorite family show!
Thanksgiving menu tomorrow: Cajun chicken, garlic shrimp, two types of pasta, stuffed mushrooms, roasted bell pepper feta dip, hummus, apple crisps, chocolate pie, salad, green beans. Gonna be night of gluttony!
One thing I suck at is returns. So this new year my resolution is to get way better at returns and if I don’t like something I have to make it a point to return an item instead of hanging around with it forever.
Amazon returns have gotten more simpler. Now you just take the item (without the box needed!) and drop it off at UPS without any labels. They scan the code, pack it up and ship it back! I love this feature.
Yesterday was the last day for the only remaining woman coach in our gym. Post 2020 and DEI mainstream news the gym had gone from having an all 4 white men coach to 3 women and 1 male coach. Of the three women, 2 including the one who left yesterday were amazing while 1 was just ok. And now we are back again to all men coaches again (with slight diversity). Given that the owner has the knack of hiring only good trainers, I am sure even the new male coaches are all going to be excellent, but one can’t help feeling if he too was caught up in the whole DEI thing post 2020 and felt like he needed to do something…. and now he doesnt?
One of the most frustrating part about Democratic Party is the feeling that they don’t really feel the seriousness they keep preaching. Pre-election it was hammered to us how Trump was a threat to democracy, dangerous, fascist and wants to be dictator day one. The moment he won? Every single of those arguments went poof! Now the current president welcomes him, promises peaceful transfer of power and full assistance. The presidential nominee Kamala has disappeared again. Where is the conviction that a dangerous man is going to rule again? Where is that fire from Democratic Party about impending doom? When Trump lost in 2020, he didn’t just not give up but totally believed in his own lie and basically campaigned on it for 4 years. He and the republicans sold the lie nonstop. If Kamala wants to be 2028 nominee again she needs to start campaigning now. That fire needs to start in the belly now! The party needs to keep telling everyone that. Instead what we have here is oh well too bad we lost. Never mind that Trump will be a fascist comment - we didn’t quite mean it that way feeling. And I supposed to be angry and charged it seems! Fuck off’
I finally reframed this gorgeous original artwork this weekend. We got this as a gift from my aunt’s neighbor in 2008 for our wedding reception. Yeah I know we invited neighbor of our aunt coz that’s how it rolls in India. I honestly don’t even remember their face or who they are but this is THE gift that has stayed timeless and been with us through the decades. The original frame was finally coming off so I decided to reframe this myself after custom framing options proved too expensive. The kid picked the frame and mat and I couldn’t be more happier on how it turned out. I think this is the best gift we got and I really really love this art piece.
I have realized I am not a podcasts person at all. I have tried. I have tried hard to get into them and I just can’t. I don’t know how I ever got into first season of Serial and finished it - but I just cannot sit and listen to a bunch of people speak on a topic. I just prefer listening to music and every time I start a podcast within minutes I default back to listening to music. Podcasts are not for me.