Astrovelo

Last year, we had a lawn service cutting our grass, but this year I decided to do it on my own. On Sunday, I took out the lawn tractor for the season’s first cut. I put the fuel in and started to turn the key, but nothing happened. I realised that the battery was dead. Opened up the hood to take it out and saw some movement under a grille over the big fan on top of the engine. There was a bunch of cotton stuffed in there and a small furry face with big black eye looking at me. As I rattled the grille, that mouse scurried around inside and she has 4 babies suckling on her. Mom ran away while I unscrewed the grille leaving all those little babies behind. I couldn’t just kill them, so left them out on the driveway and went inside the house. When I came back after 10 minutes, the babies were gone. Either their mom carried them away or some birds had a yummy snack.

I was so glad that the battery had died. Can’t imagine how messy it would have been if the engine turned over and started. And cleaning up all those mashed mice… urgh!

I was looking around the garage for some more gardening stuff and discovered another nest in the wheelbarrow. This time, I just picked up those babies and chucked them in the woods. I don’t think they survived the fall. If I find any more mouse nests in the garage, I am going to turn into a cold-hearted killer and reach for a hammer to smash their skulls. I remember when we were kids, my brother and I used to have a competition for killing mice. Next time when he comes to visit, we should have another round. :)

One thing I must do other than putting some mouse traps around the house is install some shelves in the garage and clean up all the crap that is lying around. Should get a shed built in the backyard as well.

Lately, the mortgage and credit crisis that brought down several financial companies to their knees has been in the news. The negative impact of this crisis on the stock market and economy in general was enormous. With all the talk of mortgage-backed securities, CDOs and some other acronyms that were flying around, the whole issue was quite nebulous to me. Guess who came to rescue me from all this confusion… My favorite radio show: This American Life. The recent episode that was broadcast last week, “The Giant Pool of Money”, explains the whole situation very clearly. It is a must listen if you were confused like me and want to know more. They basically took an individual on every rung of the chain from the mortgage borrower to banker to broker to wall street guys and used their personal stories to illustrate how things worked and how they went down. It is almost funny to hear how the requirements for mortgage approvals became more and more relaxed. It is very nicely done.

Some interesting points:

• Creators of CDOs, the very instruments that caused all this trouble, received an award for creating a novel financial vehicle for investment.
• There is US$70trillion (that is right with a 't') in fixed income savings worldwide. That is more than all the transactions that happen all around the world in an year. Fixed income savings means money for investing in very low-risk investments such as US treasury bonds. They don't want to lose even a penny of that principal. This crisis made a huge chunk of that money disappear.
• The financial companies and bond rating agencies calculated the risk for these investments using wrong data.

Long long time ago, I don’t recall if it was before we got married or after, V promised me that she’ll buy me a pipe as a gift on my 40th birthday. Today, I get closer to that day by one more year. If she keeps her promise, I’ll get my first pipe in just 2 more years. Below is just an example of what I’d like. They are called Meerschaum pipes made from a rare mineral called meerschaum. She is free to choose a design of her liking.

Adit has a new umbrella and he has been using it a lot. No matter how many times I tell him to rest it on his shoulder, he always carries it so that it rests on his forehead. :)

Over the two weeks, I didn’t get a chance to update on the progress of our caterpillars. They turned into these exotic-looking cocoons. Make sure you click on the photo above to see the bigger version to see them clearly. After a week or so beautiful Painted Lady Butterflies emerged from them.

Please note the difference in the colors on the anterior and posterior sides of the wings.

We kept them in the house for a week and on Wednesday, released them outside. Ashwini actually picked them up by their wings one-by-one and let them fly out of her hand. Adit wanted to do the same, but we didn’t let him as we wanted those poor butterflies to fly away with intact wings. :)

The butterflies survive for about two weeks after coming out of the cocoons and they have to mate during that time to continue their life-cycle. We didn’t want to imprison them for their whole life. Half of it is good (or bad) enough.

Birds of the outback are back at Mystic Aquarium this year as well. We went for a member’s preview yesterday. Kids had a lot of fun like last Summer and we have a lot of arm and shoulder pain from lifting the kids up to feed the birds. No – we were not feeding our kids to the birds, but they were holding sticks with seeds stuck on them for the birds.

I am sure we’ll be back to the aquarium many times before the end of the season for the birds to go back. We have made good use of our aquarium membership. Must have made at lease one trip every month ever since we moved here last July and bought the membership.

Ashwini with her new Summer haircut

Keeping an eye on her parent's cooking. Making sure that they do it right.

Last week, our old friend, Shailen came to visit us from Oxford, England. He stayed with us for four days and went to Yale for a conference over the weekend. We chatted and chatted for hours and ate a lot of good food. When we have guests over, we usually spend a lot of time cooking at home (which we enjoy). But, Shailen being omnivorous, we decided to go out and enjoy some restaurants in the area. We get magnificent seafood around here.

Tuesday: Rice Spice Noodles – Thai food with seafood Flanders Fish Market – we ate 3 pounds of steamed mussels and clams

Wednesday: Village bake house – sandwiches; had my favorite tuna melt Liv’s Oyster Bar – Shailen and I ate 3 dozen raw oysters, clam chowder, fried calamari, etc.

Thursday: Frank’s gourmet grille – diner-type food. ate fish sandwich and soup. Shailen made salmon risotto at home

Monday: USS chowder cup III – seafood. had a great fried fish sandwich and awesome fresh coleslaw. V made Shrimp at home.

While I was changing Adit’s diaper in the bathroom, Ashwini came along and climbed into the wash basin.

The caterpillars have been busy eating and growing over the last few days. On Saturday, they climbed up to the lid of the jar they call home and started the process of entering pupal stage.

As I bit into my first mango of this season, the sweet taste brought back a ton of good memories of eating huge amounts of mangoes. Last year, some friends had told me that import of हापूस mangoes was allowed in US. But, I never saw them in the stores. This season, V found them at our local Indian store last week. They were expensive (>$2 per mango), but are definitely worth the money. They should get cheaper as we get into May.

My last mango season in India was in 1993.

We are raising ‘Painted Lady’ butterflies this year, too. The caterpillars came in the mail last Saturday. They have been eating a lot and growing very rapidly.

Me: Ashwini, do you remember how the caterpillars turned into cocoons and then butterflies last year? Ashwini: Yes. It is called metamorphosis.

It was quite a sight to photograph. First couple of photos show Moon near Pleiades (M45). Moon was getting close to set by the time I captured (3rd photo) one of the bright stars, “Maia”, being occulted. Last picture is just of the Moon.

Taygeta and Caleano are behind the Moon and Maia touching the dark part of the Moon.

The forecasters predict a clear sky tonight. I hope it comes true because tonight, a thin crescent of Moon will be occulting the beautiful star cluster, Pleiades (कृत्तिका). In northeastern US and Canada, Moon will actually be over some of the stars of the cluster. In southeastern US, Moon will be very close but won’t occult the stars. Same is the case for Western US. I am so looking forward to this after getting rained on many recent celestial events.

Here is a link to some more information.

Finally, finished with filing our tax returns for 2007. Shelled out additional $55 for using e-file to send the data to tax agencies and shall mail the checks on April 15th.

The total amount of taxes we paid this year is more than:

• V's starting salary at her first job; OR
• my starting salary at my first job + my second job; OR
• total money both of us made in all of 5 years of graduate school (1991-96)

It is such a beautiful day: sunny and 60’s. First decent day after ages. I took the kids to a birthday party and on the way home, we couldn’t not go to the beach. We were hoping to spend 30-40 minutes running around in the sand, but we had to leave early because as always Adit went and fell in the water. He was chasing the waves in and out, but miscalculated and met a wave head-on. I hope the forecasters have mispredicted and we will get a similar day tomorrow instead of rain.

One ear for Ashwini, one ear for Adit and they were both happy!!!