A weekend in Seattle

Since I was meant to go to Seattle for training this week, Delta and I figured we might as well go for the weekend before, and spend the weekend with my Cos and her hubby. It turned out with a spot of luck that Seattle was in a reasonably clement weather mood, and we made a marvelous weekend out of it.

Although Cos and I always manage to wrangle a bit of time to catch up with each other when I'm in Seattle, it had been a long time since I'd actually had a chance to spend the wekend with them. I'd (almost) forgotten how it feels to wake up in the morning to a whole host of animals staring you in the face expectantly. Or to have a cat stroll self-importantly into your room in the middle of hte night and decide to curl up again using your stomach as its bed. I'd (almost) forgotten how much I loved it all.

I must admit, I was curious to see how Delta would take to the animal farm - but he seemed to adapt to it right away (in fact by the second night he had taken to mumbling "here, kitty, kitty" in his sleep even when the cats weren't actually in the room).

That Saturday, we decided to go hiking in the Cascades. The train we had originally wanted turned out to be still snowbound, but we managed to find another little one and stomp off into the woods after all. Everywhere we looked, we could see signs that spring was afoot, and instantly, our spirits soared, for we knew this marked the start of a full season of biking, tennis, hiking and camping.


That evening after our hike, I asked Cos' hubby whether he'd be up for cooking dinner at home that evening. I've learnt from experience that he's a fantastic cook, and far be it from me to miss out on such an opportunity whilst in Seattle.
"Of course he will!" Cos interjected when I asked, thereby not leaving her hubby any option. I reckon she'd had her sights set on his cooking too.

And so proceeded a great evening at home, with the boys taking over the kitchen (tilapia vindaloo), while Cos and I - well, someone had to be decent enough to make sure the wine didn't feel neglected!

I'd never quite appreciated female emancipation quite like this before, I must admit.

The next morning, we all headed out for a walk by Alki beach, and then around Green Lake. A perfectly peaceful and relaxing day (punctuated by periodic stops at Starbucks, wouldn't ya know it).

(Note above how Seattle residents do not bother using sunglasses - they'll try to fool you about the weather, but don't let them tell you otherwise. :)

Nothing like a spot of luck

The IT fella popped his head into my office today.

"It's laptop refresh time," he told me, "that means you're getting a new laptop next week."
"Oh, really?!" I blurted, "but I just got a new one last year - I get one again?"
"Yep, you're on an old model, you need an upgrade."
And he headed off.

I sat in my office, beaming at myself.

I'm getting a new laptop! Now I don't anymore have to figure out how to confess to him that my 'A' key isn't working properly because I have cookie crumbs lodged under it.

An elephant on ice

A couple of weeks ago, Delta and I woke up with an unsuppressable urge to go ice skating. So there was nought to be done but to don our woolies and mosey on down to Central Park, where we could avail of the tree-lined ice rink.

I knew that Delta, having played hockey most of his life, would be a great skater. But nothing prepared me for the gazelle he turned into as soon as his feet touched the ice. Swooping, swishing, swaying and swirling amongst the crowds while I on the other hand, like an elephant on ice, had to focus all my energy on preventing my legs from getting entangled in each other.

As always, I was most amazed by the little kids on the rink, who torpedoed themselves in random directions (seemingly all aiming to take me down), with little regard for self or life. I thought it was quite cute.

Until, as was inevitable, one kid bumped right into me. "Oh!" I thought, but the kid was little affected. He bounced right off me, and simply changed his direction and hurtled off again towards another unsuspecting stranger. I, on the other hand, engaged in much unsteady teeter-tottering and precarious swaying, before I finally managed to steady myself by the sheer strength of luck.

But who goes ice skating for elegance anyway, eh?

Smooth criminal

The other day, for the first time in my life, I knowingly and intentionally committed a crime (Well, other than the time that I refused to pick up Bella's poop, which would have resulted in a crime had Doobs not stepped in to help out).

Doobs, Bobbis, Delta and I were at the multiplex cinema near our place. It was an overcast, thunderous, monstrous day - the perfect day to spend watching movies. We went to watch Vantage Point, which turned out to be so bad, just SO bad, that after the two hour film had finally ended, we felt we rightfully deserved our money back. How many times has that happened to you? All the time, right? Me too. But this time, it was different. This time, we were having none of it. We were going to make a stand for consumer respect and dignity.

"I know, let's make up our money by sneaking into another movie!" said Bobbis. Mostly as a joke, but somehow, the idea stuck.
Somehow, we convinced ourselves that sneaking into another movie was our birthright, after having wasted two ours of our precious lives on Vantage Point.

We walked by the other movie theatres in that area. The only other movie about to start was Charlie Bartlett. Heard of it? We hadn't either.
"I don't know," I said dubiously, "none of us even know what this movie is about. Do we seriously want to go risk this again?"

But now that we'd gotten the adrenalised mode of criminal intent, there was no stopping us. In fact we might have even snuck back into Vantage Point if that had been the only option, so intent were we on doing the sneaky thing.

You might think, talk about having a really wasteful approach to time. And you wouldn't be too far off the mark. But turns out, as luck would have it, Charlie Bartlett served us just fine to lift our moods. There was even a poignant moment that brought the single tear to my eye ("I can't believe you're crying at Charlie Bartlett!" Delta whispered, appalled).

As we left the cinema, we still felt obliged to whistle and yawn in feigned nonchalance, to dissuade the wily ticket checkers who might have suspected our malfeasance. Now I feel quite seasoned enough to pull off ye' ol' Italian Job.

Who says we can't be artistic?

"Do you have plans for Friday night?" Doobs asked me.

"Nope, I was just thinking of staying in, having a glass or two of wine, and painting one of my canvasses."

"No way, can I join you and paint something too?!"

"Sure thing, let's make it an art evening! Let's get a bottle of wine, I'll put out all my paints, you can use one of my canvases, and let's see where the evening takes us!"

"Hey guys," Bobbis asked, "if you're going to do that, can I make a short film of you creating your paintings?" Bobbis has recently started a challenging course in short film making at NYU, and was constantly looking for interesting subject matter for her films.

We all looked at each other in glee. This is going to be one hell of an art evening, I thought.

I told Mrs. Pooks as much as I was chatting with her later in the day.

"It's Art Evening at out place. Doobs and I are going to paint canvases and Bobbis is going to make a short film about our work," I told her.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA" was her reaction.

"That's it. For that lack of faith, we are going to have to give you our paintings and fully expect you to display them in your house."

Mrs. Pooks laughed, being used to our inanities as she is.

And so we started the evening. Doobs picked up a bottle of wine. We ordered in some take-away. I spread out all my art supplies across the dining table. Bobbis set up the spot lighting and positioned the camera.

And strange as it might seem, what an Art Evening it was!

Empire building

Last Tuesday, there was an unusual email awaiting me in my inbox when I got in to work. My cousin Sal, who is normally to be found immersed in his medical residency in Chicago, dropped me a single line:

Am going to be in NYC this evening. Want to meet up? Call me.

Did I want to meet up with my cousin whom I only get to see once a year?! Of course! So we made some quick plans; and that evening found Rohinton, Delta and me heading off to meet Sal on the Upper West Side.

As we gorged ourselves on Peruvian food, he filled us in on what he was doing in the city. He'd come for an interview for a specialised fellowship at Columbia.
"I really hope I get it," he confided, "this is a great program."
"When will you move here, assuming you get in?" I asked, ever-hungry to have more family in the area.
"This autumn."
Sal's brother and his wife were due to move to New York sometime this year too. "When's that happening?" I was curious.
"Oh, they'll be here by this autumn too," he clarified.
Brilliant! I thought.

"Yeah, I think we're going to stay on in this city for another couple of years too," Rohinton added. I'd been dreading Rohinton and Jeet's upcoming plans to move to Chicago for a while now, so my heart surged when I heard this news.

Did you catch that? Suddenly there's going to be brothers and sisters in law and cousins and all sorts in this city with me. A whole bamboozled family.

Watch out, the Jones's, for here come the McPipes!

Epiphany (well, at least a little one)

This morning, I was woken up at about 5am by a loud scraping noise on the street outside. Living in the city, one gets accustomed to street noises in the night. Sirens, beeping horns, garbage trucks, and the like. But those don't constitute as disturbing. Those, I've learned to sleep through.

This was different, an alien scraping that penetrated my dreams and drew me out of my slumber. I have to confess, I'm not at the best of my temperament at 5am. Infact, it's safe to say I'm downright grumpy.

I cursed, put the pillow over my head, and tossed around. I tried to burrow myself deep into the duvet. I sighed repeatedly with the cumulative frustration of all of life's weary woes. Finally, I could take it no longer.

I cracked open an eye. Sat up in bed and swung my legs over the side. In my groggy state, I felt around gingerly with my toe for my slippers. Finally, adequately mobilized, I headed to the window to poke my nose about.

It was a snow-shovelling vehicle, diligently paving a way down the avenue. Even as I watched, it disappeared around the block and faded into oblivion. Curses, I thought.

And then I took a moment to look around, absorbed the scene in front of me. And literally, my breath caught. Have you ever seen a snow-covered landscape in the night? Freshly fallen, and undisturbed. Glistening white in its purity. The pristine beauty of the moment just took my breath away. All of a sudden, my heart was brimming.

It is entirely beyond my comprehension, how even in the grumpiest of moments, the simple beauty of something like a snowfall at night can lift you up beyond yourself.

Lupine behaviour

This weekend, Delta, Davis and I went to one of the nicest little Cuban restaurants I've ever been to. Your typical family-run establishment, just barely six tables squeezed into a tiny room, grandmum cooking in the kitchen, daughter waiting on the customers up front. When the food came, it just smelled so darn good, I dove into my plate with gusto, and left the conversation to the boys.

I hadn't even noticed how assiduously I had been ploughing through my food, until suddenly I heard a clink, and realised that my fork had made contact with empty plate. I pushed the plate away from me, and glanced up at the boys. They were barely half way through their meals.


Delta raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Boy, that was a serious plateful of rice. You just wolfed it all down."

As usual, I missed the point and got entirely sidetracked by the wrong detail. "I wonder why they say 'wolfed' it down," I mused. "I mean, there must be animals that eat much more and much faster than wolves!"

"Hmm, not sure," Delta conceded, thrown off course by my sidebar.
"Wolf it down?!" Davis interjected, "isn't the correct phrase to woof it down, I mean like a dog barking?"
"Eh?" I grunted (Delta, ever the more polite one, said "oh, really?").


I was fairly sure I was right, but inasmuch as there'd been debate, I decided to come home and do some nifty googling. And confirmed my original belief: Incase you had any doubt, dear reader, (other than this designer dog boutique), the world still seems to have consensus around using the old lupine analogy for such displays of gustatory haste.

Going Huck

I was just thinking to myself this morning that I hadn't spoken to McKlaine in a long while, when all of a sudden an IM window popped up on my screen.

McKlaine: OMG OMG OMG
What in the world could have happened, I thought.
Ficali: Hi! What's up?
McKlaine: Guess what happened. Actually never mind. You'll never be able to guess.
Ficali: What what what

McKlaine: So we got this new neighbour a couple of months ago. And we never see him around - don't bump into him going in and out, getting the mail, nothing. Wouldn't even know he existed. No sign of him at all - except every night like at 4 a.m., he seems to drag furniture around.
Ficali: Are you serious? That's crap. You must be so irritated.
McKlaine: Like every night. Without fail. There's heavy things being dragged and pushed and pulled across the floor.

I wrinkled my nose in distaste. That's just weird. So I said as much to McKlaine.

And then he told me something that made my heart skip a beat.

McKlaine: Then last night, I was alone at home, just pottering about. From my room window, I can see directly into his living room. And I just happened to glance up at that moment, and there he was, just sitting there. There was an enormous fire blazing.
Ficali: Like in a fireplace?
McKlaine: I suppose so, but it looked bigger than normal.
Ficali: And then?
McKlaine: And then he got up and slowly approached one of the walls, and that's when I saw it. In thick black paint, across his living room wall, in large letters: "666"

A chill shot through my spine, and I quickly shut down the conversation window. Taking a deep breath, I started a new IM conversation.

Ficali: What! That's freaky.
McKlaine: Yeah I know, rather. What should I do?
Ficali: Move out!
McKlaine: Yeah, that's what I was thinking too.
Ficali: I suppose you could try a friendly gesture first - like bake cookies and go over and introduce yourself or something.
McKlaine: I would if I didn't think there was a considerable chance he would eat me.
Ficali: Hmm, so there's no other option? You're just going to move out?
McKlaine: Yeah, well that, and probably have to vote Huckabee now.

We're being nickled and dimed

I heard on 60 Minutes the other day that, due to the growing cost of metals, it actually costs the US Mint two cents for each penny coin they manufacture, and ten cents for each nickel.

What, I thought to myself. Nothing costs a penny or a nickel anymore. They should just get rid of those coins.

They interviewed a senior official at the US Mint. "It is unsustainable for the US Mint to continue running at a loss like this," he confirmed.

Then they interviewed a random selection of pedestrians.
"What do you think that it costs the mint two cents for each penny they manufacture, and a dime for each nickel?"
"Get rid of 'em," the people responded.

Then they introduced a senior chap in the government.
"We can't make the penny obsolete!" he shouted. "It's an ingrained part of American culture. I mean, people have grown up storing their pennies in their piggy banks!"
If you weren't squirrelling away all your pennies, you silly man, maybe the US Mint wouldn't have to make quite as many each year, I thought.

And then the government official continued, "the penny is an essential part of American history. There are many adages built around this. Like - 'a penny for your thoughts'. "
At this, I balked. I wasn't having any of it. You've inherited that adage from the British, you muppet! The word 'penny' comes from the British currency not the American! My inner voice was screaming silently at the telly.

So I went home and told Doobs about this. "Did you know it costs the US Mint two cents to make each penny?" I asked.
"Forget the penny!" she retorted. "They should get rid of the nickel!" I hadn't even told her about the cost of manufacturing nickels yet, so I was curious.
"Why?"
"They just don't make sense. They're bigger than the dime and they take up all the space in my wallet and I confuse them with quarters and then after all that, they don't really have any value. Even the homeless glare when I give them nickels!!"
Doobs was so inflamed about the subject, that I almost fell bad to tell her about the cost of manufacturing them.

When even a single banana costs at least a quarter, we really are being nickeled and dimed on this one.