Astrophotos
For the first time in my life, I have eaten fish every day for the last 5 days.
| Monday: | Seared Big Eye Tuna |
| Tuesday: | Grilled Chilean Sea Bass |
| Wednesday: | Sushi with Tuna, Salamon and Eel |
| Thursday: | Fisherman's grilled cheese sandwich with Tuna |
| Friday: | Sushi with Tuna, Salmon, Eel, Shrimp, Whitefish and Octopus |
I am not a big meat-eater. I only eat seafood, even that probably once every other week. This week was a big change from that routine, hence this post.
Happy 0.5th Birthday, Adit!
Adit sitting up with “The Hungry Caterpillar”
Adit turned 6 months old today. Half an year zoomed by since his birth. It just seems like yesterday when we made our trip to the hospital. Here is Adit’s monthly progress report.
- Adit is
- very vocal. He still doesn't make any dada-baba sounds, but screams and coos to show his happiness and discomfort.
- still very smiley. Within 30 seconds after getting 4 shots at the Doctor's office today, he smiled through tears when the nurse said goodbye to him.
- sitting up with help. He likes to stay sitting and play with toys.
- turning on his side to reach for toys, but can't roll over completely.
- holding the toys in his hands to take them to his mouth. He manipulates them with his fingers and passes them from one hand to other. Sometimes he throws them and picks them up again. It is nice to see how he is learning new motor skills.
- usually busy trying to put everything within his reach into his mouth.
- not sleeping through the night. Wakes up at least once and wants to be fed.
- getting ready to start eating solid foods. Today, he ate his first few spoons of rice cereal.
- very happy to be outside the house. Likes to go for evening walks in the stroller. Over the weekend he sat on the swing for the first time. Guess who was eager to push him on the swing.
Father's day card
Ashwini’s preschool teacher helped all her students make Father’s day cards. She asked them questions about their dads and wrote the answers in the cards. Here is Ashwini’s essay about her dad.
| MY DAD... |
| I like to play with him with blocks |
| My favorite thing is giving him hugs |
| He likes to work |
| He is ten |
| He looks like a boy |
| We sleep together in the same bed |
Poop
Ashwini thinks adding the word “poop” or any of its many variations such as poopy, poopoo, poopyhead, etc. makes anything funny. :)
Saturn in Beehive cluster, M44
Saturn is the bright one at bottom right.
reprocessed photo taken in Mar ‘06.
Funny
One of my colleagues has this ‘out of office’ email message.
I am out of the office and will be back on Monday June 26. Because of the volume of email during my absence, I will be deleting all messages upon my return. If you are sending me an important email, please plan on resending it to me on June 26. Thanks,
Cracked me up on this bleak Monday morning.
Happy Father's day
Wishing a very happy father’s day to my dear father, who is enjoying the Summer with his grandkids.
I hope to be half as good as him as a father, a husband and a human being.
Joke
Got this forwarded to me today…
Thought for the day: There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer's research. This means that by 2040, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.
This is funny, but factually incorrect. Alzheimer’s affects short-term memory while old memories remain intact. People with Alzheimer’s can’t recognize their grown-up children, but recognize their childhood photos. They don’t remember if they have taken a bath or their medication, but can recite poems learnt in school. Hopefully, these elders should have learnt the use of these things a long time ago and that won’t be affected by Alzheimer’s disease.
Joke
Got this forwarded to me today…
Thought for the day: There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer's research. This means that by 2040, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.
This is funny, but factually incorrect. Alzheimer’s affects short-term memory while old memories remain intact. People with Alzheimer’s can’t recognize their grown-up children, but recognize their childhood photos. They don’t remember if they have taken a bath or their medication, but can recite poems learnt in school. Hopefully, these elders should have learnt the use of these things a long time ago and that won’t be affected by Alzheimer’s disease.
Assassination Vacation
Assassination Vacation was my second Sarah Vowell book. It was so entertaining and educational. The book is about Sarah’s travels to visit many locations that were center stage as well as little sideshows in the assassinations of three sitting U.S. Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, and William McKinley. She makes this dry political history into something very interesting. The book is so full of facts that I definitely need to read (listen to) it again.
Here are some (not all) interesting facts that were unknown to me before reading this book.
- Presidents #17, 21, and 26 were murdered after the Civil War in a span of 45 years from 1865 to 1901.
- Coincidentally, President Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln was nearby at all these assassinations.
- Eventhough, President Lincoln is revered as God these days, there were quite a number of people who hated him when he was alive.
- Garfield assassin, Charles Guiteau was a member of Oneida Community, a utopian commune. This cult believed in complex marriage, where every man was married to every woman and other weird things like male continence, mutual criticism and ascending fellowhip. Read more about Oneida on Wikipedia.
While technically Maryland remained in the Union during the Civil War, it was the border state, a schizophrenic no-man's land with the North at its door and the South in its heart.Listen to its state song. Sung to the tune of the German Christmas carol “O Tannenbaum”, “Maryland, My Maryland”, was written as the Civil was breaking out in 1861. The first line goes, “The desot’s heel is on thy shore.” Who is the despot? The new president, Lincoln, who it’s worth remembering, had to sneak into Washington for his inauguration so as to avoid the assassins waiting to jump him in Baltimore, a city which, in the song, is rhymed with “patriotic gore”, commemorating the blood spilled on its streets on April 19, 1861, when a mob of local secessionists attacked a Massachusetts regiment passing through town. “Maryland, My Maryland”, the song says, “spurns the Northen scum!” The song also calls for seceding from the Union, to stand by its sister Virginia, going as far as to allude to that state’s motto, Sic Semper tyrannis:
Virginia should not call in vain, Maryland! She meets her sisters on the plain– Sic semper! ‘tis the proud refrain
Sic semper, of course, was the proud refrain hollered by Maryland’s own John Wilkes Booth after making good on shooting the aforementioned “despot” Lincoln at war’s end. One might think that a state song hinting at presidential assassination would have eerie echoes when the state’s native son assassinated said president and therefore it might be headed for the title of “state song emeritus”, the dustbin into which Virginia herself tossed its racist favorite “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny”. But “Maryland, My Maryland” did not become the official state song until 1939. Despite the occasional nice try to ditch it, it remains the state song to this day.
Go here to listen to this same passage from the audiobook. She continues this thought a little further and connects John Wilkes Booth to Tim McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber to an obscure magazine called Southern Partisan to the Attorney General of USA, John Ashcraft.
If you have never heard Sarah speak, you must do it. She has a very peculiar style.
Orkut
Finally, after the whole world has done it, I have an Orkut account. Please feel free to add me in your network.
Elvis Costello
It was Elvis Costello and the Imposters with Allen Toussaint last night at the Ann Arbor Summer Festival. We received free tickets from work, hence decided to go for it. I am not a big fan of Costello; didn’t even know many songs of him other than “Monkey Man”. It turned out to be a very enjoyable concert. It was good music eventhough it was all new and we were not familiar with it. Rock’n’roll with a jazz twist. Allen Toussaint is from New Orleans and played great jazz piano.
Before the concert, we went to eat dinner at Ann Arbor’s newest Japanese restaurant, “Cherry Blossoms”. They still don’t have their liquor license. The food was very good and didn’t need any sake to wash it down. But, still we’ll have to try it again when they get their license. On the next table sat an old couple celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary. The man was in the Air Force stationed in Vietnam where he met his wife in the 60’s.
Work?!?
A: What does Dada work with, Aai? V: He works with big magnets. A: What do you work with? V: I work with computers. A: Do you know what I work with? I work with books and toys.
Me: Ashwini, wake up. Time to get ready. A: No. five more minutes.
A few minutes later…
Me: Ashwini, wake up. Time to get ready.
A: No. I want to sleep for some more time.
Me: When will you wake up?
A: I am waiting for Prince Charming to wake me.
Face recognition
Followed a link from Urmila’s post and used the face recognition software. Used this photo as input and here are the results…
Adit looks like: Diego Maradona Hugh Hefner Forrest Whitaker Tom Jones
I look like: Ricky Martin Guy Pearce Clark Gable Sean Bean Mark Wahlberg Jon Stewart Bing Crosby
Conclusion: The face recognition software at this website is a piece of crap.
First haircut
Just like his sister, Adit starts to feel hot very easily and gets uncomfortable. This leads to him scratching his head and pulling out his hair. To keep his head cool, we decided to give him a haircut. He absolutely hated the buzzing sound of clippers and I had to do a rush job.
It is not the best of haircuts, but it sure is keeping his head a little cooler. According to our friend, he looks like a new army recruit. She also came up with an apt nickname: “Bheem”
