Of purses and splurges

A friend of mine recently tried to re-introduce me to minimalism. Awesome. Here's the problem: I have a nagging purse-addiction that I can't seem to shake off. The only silver lining I could discern from this is that purses are not illegal drugs. Although husband is more than willing to write them off as contrabands.

Looking Back and Moving Forward

We waited for 2009 in the blistering cold with a throng of about a million only to welcome it barely sober, in a nondescript bar and surrounded by strangers. It is difficult to sum up the year in a single unifying theme but many things have happened that I do not want to leave to posterity.

This year was spent getting out of the house more and getting acculturated. We sat through 100-plus minutes of hilarity and innovation that was 39 Steps. We caught Lily Allen live, in the year that's supposed to be her last in a while. We cheered on the opponent of the eventual US Open Champion Juan Martin Del Potro, as we obliviously sat directly behind Del Potro's player box. We drove to Atlantic City and did not touch a single slot machine and drove back wondering why we went to Atlantic City in the first place.

But this year was also spent as much at home as outside of it. I re-discovered the simple joys of staying at home and sitting next to entertaining banter, witticisms and ridicule of people we know and don't. Of companionable silence and noisome irritations.

This year, I got older in terrible style, learning the hard way that sharing my birthday weekend with someone else is not such a hot idea: there can only be one center of the universe and it is never shared with idiots. And so, I was in the City, miserable and disappointed, still waiting for that elusive ultimate birthday that shall be my Best. Birthday. Ever. Maybe 2010 would be it. (In a lot of ways, it was.)

This year was my first year of being a wife to a boy who unabashedly claims to be the ideal husband. And so I spent the year trying to live up to an ideal husband's expectations. Fortunately, ideal husband is a big believer in education and thus, school became the scapegoat for being a lazy specimen in the domestic affairs whilst ideal husband was forced to fend off for himself. We said good bye to nice, healthy home-cooked meals and hello to instant junk.

This year, I faced my fears but never really confronted them. I defeated some demons but gained new ones. I made new friends and discovered fake ones. I learned many new things and re-learned forgotten ones.

Well, 2010. Be kind to this old soul who just wants a small place under the sun.

And the Oscar goes to

...Mary & Max! Forget Up, Mary & Max is undoubtedly the best movie (across categories) of 2009.

Up was not without its fine moment, but the 10-minute montage of the bittersweet circle of married life cannot sustain me through talking, psychotic dogs with robotic voices.

Now, take Up's much talked about 10-minute montage, and stretch it to some 80 minutes of claymation and you get the beautiful and compelling story of an odd friendship that blossomed across continents through a series of exchanged correspondences, between a misanthropic grandpa and an unassuming little girl.

Must watch.

I, according to the Man

become chatty at night and just plain pissed off in the morning.

I am not a "morning person," that's not a revelation. That I am a __ person at all is! But in keeping with the general theme upon which our relationship seems to be grounded on, he is a chirpy, sunshine-and-rainbows "morning person."

Really? We can't even have that in common?

Wannabe Chemists/Metallurgists

W1: I am made of steel.

W2: No, you're not. You're just cast-iron, some two steps removed from steel.

W1: Whatever! There's enough chromium and stuff!

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More geeky, less science.