I think the best form of apples are Granny Smiths. They are superior to every form of apple there is and will be. So imagine my heartfelt disgust when I came home and realized that, in a moment of unpardonable distraction, I had picked up a bag of the traitorous Crispin apples at the grocery. Words cannot describe the gastronomical misery I feel, now that I have a 5 pounder of Crispins to get through! You might think that, as similar as they look, they would taste the same. But NO. They don't.



The difference starts right when you bite into the Granny Smiths. You can hear it resounding in your skull, the crunchety crunch of absolute anticipation. Scarcely has this sound of foreplay died down when the delightful nectar slides down your chin and slithers its way into every little pit of taste sensation on your tongue. The taste is precisely described as EXPLOSIVE. It's sour at first and if you are in the right mood, raises a series of goosebumps up and down your whole body. Then the sugary syrupy potion takes over your senses with undertones of the sour explosion that hit earlier.

Here is when you forget that you are eating a mere apple. It transcends into a higher sensual experience. You can't stop yourself and take another massive bite of this piece of perfection in your hands. The reverberation of the most joyful music you have ever heard livens up your sinuses once more. Then the most narcotic of textures caresses your teeth and your palate. It doesn't stick to your teeth or coat your palate with slime. It's not gritty or cloying or pasty. It feels like you have swallowed a light happy spirit. It lights your thoughts up and spurs energetic brain function as it makes its way across your mouth. Devouring a Granny Smith is like having an apple high.

The Crispins on the other hand are just disappointing to say the least. In fact, I am not sure I can devote any more alphabet real estate to these pathetic loser breed of apples. I just wish I had been a bit more awake during yesterday's zombie walk through the aisles.

Alas. This lamentable crispin week is going to stretch so unbearably long.

I missed blogging on (E:strip)! It has been pretty un-therapeutic and unproductive for me to believe that not blogging and generally not running amok here would help me concentrate on my dissertation. I think I am going to make sure that I refer back to this post when I come to lethally erroneous conclusions such as these.

I met (e:paul) and (e:jon) (Are you the same in-the-flesh Jon that I met today? As you perhaps noticed, I really don't look too different from my profile picture. However, I couldn't say if those are your hands hovering over the keyboard though.) today for lunch and also ran into (e:terry) and (e:jbeatty), apart from nagging (e:imk2) a bit. It was my best day in 3 months and I think it spells out in clear non-blurry neon-lighted alphabets that keeping away from (e:strip) is just a climb down into the unhappiness drain - where I have been rotting and languishing for an unhealthy period of time. There is also one more subtle inferential point here for future reference. If I ever need to have just such an awesome day as today, I need to meet and chat with approximately 5 (e:strip)pers or more (whether they want to or not is immaterial.)

Since there is so much to generally catch up on here, I am just going to pick (e:strip)pers to stalk all week so that I stalk all their posts these past 3 months and embarrass them as thoroughly as possible on my blog and generally exercise my penchant for ill-advised inappropriateness into shape.

But first, a few things I want to shout out loud.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, (e:jim)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hope you had an awesome day and if you did, everyday in this following year gets progressively better till you hit the BIG 30 - when it gets EVEN better. Your NO #1 stalker is back! (But will need to take break to stalk every one else.)

(E:Mike), say hello to your brand-new-and-improved but with some-of-the-old-evil-retained stalker!

(E:paul) and (E:Jon), sorry about all the hideous coughing. I just could not help it and I thought you were slightly freaked out about it. I promise I will be healthier next time and not cough all ominously at lunch. This change in weather brings out the worst in me. :/ Thanks once again for coming out to lunch and listening to me drone on and on. And yes, for not gasping in horror and edging away when you heard the ominous coughing. All the gestures meant a lot to me!

(E:jbeatty), All the best with your project and your exciting new job and all the other new things that you are doing (that I need to update myself on by stalking your blog at some point). I still have your Lebanese cook book and I haven't forgotten that it belongs to you. I do intend to return it at some point and I promise that I am not scheming to make it part of my library and deny that it ever belonged to you (though that might be something to consider, now that I have spelled out the possibility. It does have excellent lentil-soup recipes...) My dull dull totally slow grey cells figured out FINALLY, about 4 hours after I walked out of Caf� 59, that you were talking about the *Sea*bar and not the C-bar or C-barn as I thought earlier - which, btw, was a source of terrible bewilderment to me. I mean, what on earth does sushi have to do with hitting the c-bar or even a barn, right? Since you mentioned that it was kind of an exclusive pricey place, I was actually deeper in the fog about the name than you could possibly have imagined. I briefly considered asking you to spell it but decided against it because it seemed like a tad too obsessive of a move over nitty-gritties at lunch time.

(E:terry), you looked absolutely gorgeous today! Was that a new haircut?? I can't wait to come and check out the floors and all the stuff that you guys have done to the house on April 27. I have a friend who bought a new house recently and I think it might be excellent inspiration for her to check out all the cool homes around (E:strip). How many of you are going on this tour??

Once again, it feels good to be back and I think I am not going to go away at all. Well... till of course someone manually drags me away to the infinity upstairs. Wait, I don't believe in that. Make that, till I am reborn into the rodent kingdom for all the heinous deeds I have committed as a biped. Wait, I am already a rodent. Maybe I should aim lower - the invertebrate world? All the heinousness should amply add up by then...

PS: I wonder why all the accent marks in my posts are not working... They are turning up as &#65533. Is that a mocking message reminder that its really quite ridiculous snobbery to use accent marks in plain English?

I have been kidnapped into colour and design land and I love it! :)



Recently, at a meeting, I was asked to generate icons and schemes for a future webportal. I have no idea whether the controlling powers would end up using my silly little colour palettes and icons, but for the moment, I am completely lost in the delirious world of The Colour Lovers!



I love how the members take ordinary colours from the RGB spectrum and come up with crazy names for single colours such as "Upside Lemon", or for palettes such as "Finals Suck" or "Microwave Brother"
.

I then followed some links and came across Colr.org. It may well be spelled wrong but it is absolutely brilliant in its ability to take any image or website and break it down to its consituent colour swatches.



This lovely little feature captures the myriad ways that colour wheels are found in life and in art.



It led me further to a most exotically creative collection of lamps Happy Hour Lamps!

I think I now know for sure why rainbows have fascinated humans for centuries. Its palette is probably the most perfect one ever created.

It should be renamed the bigfataddictiveden in an appellative description of just how inexplicably addictive it is, for shoppers of all persuasion.

I went in looking for some "organic body mist" - my replacement for the deodorant sticks (all of which I tossed in the garbage earlier this year, because of the cancer inducing antiperspirant aluminium content).

I strayed a bit and I spotted the newest Dove shampoo and conditioners. I tossed them in my shopping basket. With my recent haircut, my hair is even shorter than (e:paul)'s new buzz cut. The shampoo and conditioner will probably last me forever. But what the hell. They were cheap!

I deviated a bit more and saw that the bakeware was on sale. I picked up a couple cake-baking foil pans. And I don't even bake and have never baked in my life. What the hell. They were cheap!

A bit more meandering found me with a pillow. A pillow. I already have one. Why do I need another one?? They were cheap!

I was passing by the cleaning shelf and grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Hello?? I have a HUGE bottle of rubbing alcohol at home. What was I thinking? CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP

I wandered into the food aisle and picked up some nice-looking almond cereal. I have *several* boxes of varied cereal. Why... Why... Why...

I came very very close to getting a cast-iron cooking set, a pack of five fruit-flavoured "body-butters", a torchiere silver-finish floor lamp and some wild accessories for the pillow I had tossed into my shopping basket earlier, but thankfully didn't. This is exactly why I never take the cart at Biglots; the basket overflows or becomes extremely heavy for my stick-like forearms very very quickly.

I just wanted to chronicle this episode of unadulterated greed and lack of shopping self-control, so I can look at this and stop my inexorable decline towards ratpacking.

Who am I kidding. I so wish I had picked up the five-pack of fruit-flavoured "body-butters". Afterall, I do have about 1.8 m^2 of skin...

What an apposite day for offering one of the most precious human sentiment to everyone who has gone out of the way to make me feel so blessed!!

Thank you, Amma, Appa and K for always standing by me and in fact, encouraging me, in all the crazy things I have decided to do throughout these years!

Thank you, CBA, for being the best-EST advisor in the whole wide world!

Thank you, SGF, for being the most brilliant teacher there ever was and will be, and for bringing clarity into my brain!

Thank you, PL for making me fall in love with what I do and showing me how to be passionate and not passive.

Thank you to everyone who left me with their most precious thoughts before they left this world.

Thank you, Paul, for bringing us together with (e:strip)!

Thank you, (e:strip)pers for making me feel at home in Buffalo and welcoming me with open arms!

Thank you to everyone who smiled at me on the streets, laughed at my inane jokes and never made me feel out of place!

Thank you SA, for getting out of bed at 5:00 AM just so I wouldn't have breakfast alone after that miserable night. I wonder where you are and hope you are super-happy and successful!

Thank you JC, for being the most caring and responsive landlady I will ever have and almost being my second mom in the two years I was in Rochester. I miss you!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!