Before
Patchy grass thanks to the recent rains that had washed away all the top soil.

More big patches ready to get sodified

The tilling begins…I mixed 3 parts soil (from the tilling), 1 part cow manure, 1 part organic compost and 3 parts top soil (mostly on the surface).

More tilling…Took out square blocks of grass so as to accommodate fresh squares (rather rectangles) of sod.

I paid about 1.50 for a 16X24 block @ Home Depot. Lowe’s has the same deal and I did end up buying some from Lowe’s but I must tell you the sod doesn’t stay that great if you show up in the evening, thanks to our Texas sun. I’ve read online that you can get great, fresh sod if you show up early on Fridays at your friendly neighborhood Lowe’s store. Here’s how a not-so-great sod block looks like. Dry and yellow. Worry not, it’s grass. It will grow any which way it can eventually!

Many of our sod blocks were completely parched and were breaking apart into chunks of dirt and dry grass. To fix that, I set them aside and soaked them with a few sprinkles of water. This way, it is easier to get them to blend with one another once you have assembled the checkerboard. Here is an almost-finished picture of our checkerboard. We did not redo the entire lawn, just the bits that had gone bad. All in all, we bought about 30 blocks of sod out of which we ended up using 28. So yes, you will need a lot of sod even if you’re trying to do some ‘patchwork’.

After
Once all the blocks were set to cover the baldness of our lawn, it was time to invite the rain gods. All we had do was chant a few mantras and voila, 15 minutes of perfectly-directed showers on our lawn were bestowed upon us. Haha.

Hope you liked the pix and maybe got a couple of ideas about sodding your lawn in the process. It’s not that hard at all; just a little bit of patience and time (and the ability to undergo some torture in the sun) is all that is expected from you. Please do leave a comment or two and it’d inspire me to write more about my next lawn and garden project (to be kicked-off tomorrow).

Well, what other lame excuses do I have? Oh yeah, I got a little occupied with my MCTS^ prep as well. I gave my first exam^ on April 25th and thankfully, passed. I still have the second exam, 70-562^ pending, to get the actual certification. I’m not sure when I will finally be prepared for the second one since I have already rescheduled the exam twice by now. There has been a lot of stuff going on at work too. We sent out a major release for www.joe.com^ last month and then I started work on www.lennar.com^.  If we did some cool LINQ on Joe, we got to do tons of nifty jQuery and AJAX on Lennar. There were a lot of painpoints in the project, while being fun and pleasure at the same time. You know the kind when you get whopped by someone and then get to go for a shiatsu massage?   The entire credit for that would go to my huge learning curve with Javascript in general.

A trip to good ole Dallas

To add to all the fun and frolic I bored you with above, I also managed to get a day off from work last week. Yes, a day off! The last time I took a day off was in October of 08. A few more months and K would have buried me alive. For a change, this time I was actually looking forward to my ‘vacation day’. As most of you know, we live in a country called Texas and the country happens to be so huge that, it sort of becomes mandatory to board a flight to visit any place in the neighboring country (United States). However, this time we did not want to mess with all the visa formalities etc. to go to the US, so we decided to stick to Texas and zeroed in on Dallas. Dallas is a 3.5 hour drive from Austin. The drive is not that popular among travel folks nor is the city of Dallas a great tourist destination. Having said that, we still wanted to explore the area and have a good, relaxing time. And relax we did.

We started our trip on Friday evening and reached Dallas by 9.30 or so. Most dining options were out since it was ‘too late’ to eat per American norms! We somehow found an Indian restaurant^ and hurriedly ordered whatever was available at that time. To say the least, it wasn’t one of the best Indian culinary experiences we have had so far (Yelp 1-starrer coming soon).  After finishing our dinner, we headed to our hotel all ready to crash, thanks to a loong Friday filled with craploads of work, a bootcamp and a 4 hour drive. Fortunately, our hotel experience was nowhere close to our Indian meal experience. Just the previous night, we somehow got a pretty sweet deal for The Adolphus^ (pic below).

I must admit, this has been one of the best hotels I have checked into in the US and highly recommend it if you’re in or around Dallas. The next morning, after getting a good night’s rest and waking up all refreshed, we decided to venture out, leaving behind our car though. The Adolphus is located right in the heart of Dallas’ downtown and if you’re in Dallas, there are tons of things you can do in the downtown. Our first stop was The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey^. I highly prescribe all Dallas visitors to stop by this modern marvel. The museum brings in front of your eyes, the entire proceedings of the fateful day that JFK was assassinated. A good three hours were spent at the museum. Then, we started to stroll around the ‘grid^’ checking out the wonderful buildings surrounding the museum. A few pictures below for your viewing pleasure.

Sixth Floor Museum on the left. You can see the 6th floor window from where JFK was shot at. The second pic shows where JFK’s car was (right where the crowd is standing) when the shots were fired.

After wandering around for a good six hours, it was time to get out of the Downtown and explore the burbs. At the same time, I was in no mood to get the car out. We said ‘heck, we gotta experience some American public transport now!’. We took an all-day premium pass at a DART kiosk and off we were within 5 minutes, on-board a rail.

We roamed all over the town changing trains and buses, visiting malls, eating and taking naps. Yes, K took a nap at The Galleria^! At about 7 or so, we ended up being dog-tired and thought it was a much saner option to go back to the hotel than to miss our last train and then get mugged. We had made plans to catch a movie at the Angelika^ but, before that, we wanted to hog on some Indian food; but we were looking for something better than the previous night’s onslaught. You might wonder why most Indians are hell bent upon eating Indian food everywhere they go. There is a reason behind that. You see, in America, the food served at almost every Indian restaurant is, ummm, you know, not that Indian. I’m not kidding. Indian restaurants try too hard to Americanize Indian food and in the process, forget the whole Indian deal there is to Indian food. So every Indian is on a self-imposed quest to find that one Indian restaurant you can eat at and say ‘Mmmm.’ Yours truly has been on a similar quest since 2001.

After driving for a good 30 minutes, we reached a place called Chettinad Palace^ in Plano. It was not a fancy place by any stretch of the imagination. But at the same time, we felt a tad optimistic as we had heard good things about it (and we were hungry too). The food arrived in 15 minutes and I must say, we were quite impressed. It was still not the quintessential Indian-American restaurant we were looking for. Ohh well, something to strive for in life you see. We ate to our heart’s content and headed back to the hotel since the last movie at Angelika had started like 45 minutes ago. No regrets though. The food was awesome, the day was pretty uneventful. Mission accomplished.

The next morning, we went back to some of the places that we had visited the previous day in Downtown, to do some picture-clicking. Why again you ask? Well, the first time around, we forgot to put the batteries in our camera. So no pictures!!! This time, we were ready with the batteries and managed to take some good pix. All the above pix were taken on the second day, just in case you haven’t figured it out by now. After an hour’s worth of pix, we headed back to the hotel, checked out and were ready to hit the burbs again. This was never planned to be an action-packed trip Just a good, relaxing time is all we wanted to have. We were going to Plano again not coz we had started missing Chettinad Palace already but to meet some family friends. They had invited us over when they visited Austin last time and it had been more than two years since then. I told you, Texas was a big country after all!  We went to their place, ate some home-cooked Indian food and chit-chatted for a solid two hours. Needless to say, there weren’t too many things left to do for the day. At around 4PM, we were ready to head back to Austin. K had started to miss Dash and Dash is a handful when left alone for more than 4 hours. It had been more than 48 hours this time.

The drive back to Austin, even though on a boring Interstate^, was nothing short of exciting. There were thunderstorms, rainbows, sunshine and a lot of construction! K clicked some random pictures on the way which eventually turned out to be pretty darn beautiful. Well to appreciate the beauty on some of them, you will have to look past Dash’s saliva on the glass window.

By 7PM Sunday, we were back in Austin. We picked up Dash on our way. He wasn’t too excited to see his parents. Maybe it was more fun at the doggie party he had with his siblings, mom and aunt over the weekend. By the time we reached home and he got to see his toys, he was back to normal; ready to cuddle on the couch. The following day, which happened to be the official ‘vacation day’, was reserved for movies and detoxing (Indian food does that to you). Aah, this is my version of a perfect vacation. I do proudly accept that I’m boring

Fri
- Check out Slumdog Millionaire

Sat
- Walk the Talk
- Go do our APA thing at the Trail of Lights
- Xmas dinner at a friends place

Sun
- Go grab a steam cleaner from Home Depot and steam clean our dog urine/poop infested apartment.
- Steam clean some more until we are dog-tired.

I and Khushi have decided that 2009 would be a completely green year for us. I’m not talking about going green with The Money Experiment that we have taken up recently but green as in ‘environmentally green’. We are totally charged and excited about all the cool things we will get to do, while at the same time, be able to give back to mother nature. We thought it would be one of the best new years resolutions we could make. However, the new year, even though is just a month and a half away, yet seems so far. So we thought why not start right away? Why wait till Jan 1st? In fact, I was thinking it would be kinda cool to see how green we have gone in the 45 or so days. And then maybe redefine our goals accordingly which would in turn be our real green resolutions for the coming year

A few things we are planning on doing as part of our initiative.

1) Will use CFLs.

In fact, we did change a few bulbs a couple of months ago and we have been seeing outstanding results so far. Just last week our community signed up some kind of a deal with the Austin Energy Company and gave us a free CFL upgrade. Right now, almost all our old bulbs have been replaced with CFLs. They did not change the ones in the closets, for some reason, which should not be a big deal after all.

2) Will drive a better car.

I don’t think we will be able to buy a Prius or a smaller car next year, but we shall try to get our ‘greener’ car out as much as possible. I just compared the stats on my two cars and I don’t think the 2000 Mitsubishi Montero scores well on the Green-o-meter. The CRV fared much better I must say. With the CRV, we would also be saving about $600 in fuel costs over the year.

3) Will keep all electronic equipment ON only when required.

Just this evening, I came home from the grocery store and as I enter our darkly lit living room, I see at least 8 to 10 LEDs glowing in the dark. That would be all my electronics running on standby mode. I’m sure they have been draining enough electricity everyday to light up an entire village street in India.

I do understand most of the equipment we use nowadays is Energy Star compliant but I don’t think there is anything out there that does not draw any power at all while on standby. Some of the equipment that is plugged in, I have not used in the past several months. I have a pair of rabbit ear antennas that has not been used ever since we got cable 4 months back. Time to unplug such stuff. Keep an eye especially on wall chargers. We tend to leave them on the wall almost 24X7. Even though the charger is not connected to a device, it can suck a lot of power. Unplug it as soon as you know your device is charged.

4) Shall use the laundry and the dishwasher smartly and sparingly.

This shouldn’t be too difficult. Many a times, we tend to turn the washer on even when we have a handful of clothes. Believe me, not only does this use more electricity, you end up wasting a lot of water as well. TXU has a few very helpful tips on using your washer, dryer and dishwasher. Check it out. Also, we tend to leave the dryer on even after the clothes have dried. Come up with an estimate as to how long your usual dry cycles might take. You can do this easily by checking on the clothes every few minutes to see if they are already dry. The next time, set your cycle to around that time.

This shall be a work in progress and I will keep sharing tips as and when I come across new ideas. Feel free to suggest your ideas as well by adding comments on this page.

Wish us luck and good luck to you too
Image courtesy: http://explore.toshiba.com/images/showcase/green-recycle-img.jpg

Police curry is the nick Praveen gave it after eating the egg curry that i made today. So i asked him why Police curry? Thats when he said,” the cops in India(usually belonging to the Maratha family) are known for their Non-veg cooking”. I was quite surprised when he told me about a cop who lived near our home in Bijapur who was very popular for his cooking (double income, nice!!). He charged a whopping 300Rs just for a serving of his delicious Chicken Curry. Wow! Gotta try that. Another one that goes on my “To Do in Bijapur” list.

Back to my Police curry, after gobbling it all, thought of scribbling the recipe real quick. Maybe i should consider charging Praveen too mmm…

Ingredients-
For 4 eggs.
Note- my measurements are usually eyeball amounts.

1 small finely chopped onion
Half a can tomato sauce/puree
2-3 tbsp coconut milk
1 finely chopped green chilli
2 tsp minced garlic
2 tsp grated ginger
2-3 curry leaves
2-3 mint leaves
1-2 tsp red chilli powder
1-2 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp turmeric powder
Half tsp garam masala powder
1 tsp chai masala
1 tsp heavy cream
5 tsp of Olive oil
2 cups water (for consistency)
some freshly ground black pepper
salt to taste
Cilantro to garnish.

Method-
1. Boil water. Add the eggs to the boiling water for 10-15 mins or until hard boiled. Swtich of the heat and add some ice
cubes. When the eggs cool, peel the shell and cut them into horizontal halves.
2. In a pan, heat some olive oil. Add the halves one by one and fry them until golden brown on both sides. Rest them on a
tissue paper to remove all the excess oil.
3. To this residue of oil, add the chopped onion and fry until translucent. Then add the minced garlic, ginger, curry leaves,
green chillies and fry for 2 mins. Later add the tomato sauce/puree, coconut milk and cook for another 2 mins. Add the
chilli powder, coriander powder, turmeric powder, garam masala powder, chai masala, freshly ground pepper and salt to
taste. Cover and cook for 3-5 mins or until the oil starts to leave its ends.
3. To this mixture add water and boil.
4. After a boil, add the heavy cream, the fried eggs and mint leaves. Simmer and cook for 10 mins.
5. Garnish with Cilantro and serve hot accompanied by Basmati rice or wheat Roti’s.

ENJOIIE!

The movie says 8 vantage points. However, after almost 90 minutes of onslaught, I couldn’t find even one. This is my first movie review here and I wanted it to start on a positive note but turns out that destiny had different plans. I was given a few movie passes by my employer the other day and I wanted to put them to some good use. I and Khushi had one of the best Thai lunches ever and we wanted to complement it with an afternoon movie. But damn misfortune, we chose Vantage Point. When it comes to movies, I’m not too picky. I will pick a movie by reading a couple of reviews or just by counting the stars next to the title. And 9 out of 10 times, I like one or the other thing about the movie. Vantage Point, where do I begin? OK let me try by saying that VP is the worst movie I’ve seen in recent times and most probably a long time to come. I really do not want to waste my energy writing a full-fledged review since there is nothing to talk about for this movie, I’m serious, zip, zilch, nada, zero, nonka. The only motive behind writing this post is to save you from the misery that I’d to undergo watching this joke. I beg you, do not waste your money on this piece of *#%$ even if someone gives you a free ticket (like I was). This is the worst movie of 2008 since I’m more than confident there will be not as bad a movie as this one coming out for the rest of the year. I know I’m repeating my words, but that is how pissed after watching this movie. There is no script whatsoever, the writer I guess got bored after writing a couple pages or maybe joined the writers strike! The characters are half-baked, almost all of them out of place. And at the end of it, you’re left completely frustrated and cheated after all the initial buildup. The actual footage for the movie is about 20 minutes which has been repeated at least ten times over and again to cover the entire length of the movie. WTF?! The whole rewind concept (where the director chooses to rewind actual movie footage in real-time) falls flat on its face. What was Pete Travis thinking? Do not listen to any of the reviewers on other sites who have given the movie big thumbs ups and A pluses. Either they slept through the movie or they just want you to undergo the same misery as they did. Save your money and watch something else. A biiiigg F

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