Ladies and Gentlemen,

How ya'll doing? I apologize for my lack of blogging presence over the past few days. I needed to get away from the computer for a bit and I also ran into some computer issues so that stalled me as well. Damn, we are so reliant and dependent on these damn things. On Friday afternoon at work, I got the fateful "Windows 2000 cannot startup...blah, blah, blah....something something corrupt" message and immediately started shiting my pants. I thought - there it goes - "I've lost everything". After some scrounging around and lots of driving back and forth between my office and the IT deployment centre, I actual got my laptop back, reimaged, and working fine. The upside - didn't loose any data files so that was great. The downside - lost all my customized settings, especially in Outlook where things are now working very much the way I don't like. Slowly, everything is getting back in order but one bummer is that I've had to reinstall a bunch of software and unfortunately, I don't have Adobe Photoshop anymore cause that was from my buddy Phil - gotta get a CD from someone now to get it back.

Aside from computer ish, this weekend and the past few days before it have been pretty good. On Thursday night, I went to a Salsa club called El Babalu. I danced a bit and had a pretty good time. It was a YPM event - Young Professionals of Milwaukee. It's kind of a cool event to go and check out cause these guys who organize have varied events with one thing in mind. They want to have various "yuppies" from around the Milwaukee area mingle and meet each other. The plus side is that I get to meet people who don't work at the same company so I can branch out a bit. The event itself was pretty good - a fair amount of people. One crazy thing was this girl who fainted twice. She was really close to me, or maybe I was really close to her both times. And she even smacked the back of her head right on the floor the second time. It turns out that she was diabetic and her suger levels were too low. I think that everyone thought she was loaded at first but afterwards, we found out what the real deal was. It was really weird though cause both times she fell, I was trying to help her up and I have never had anyone look at me like that before. It was such a blank stare - basically as if she was looking right past me and didn't even know I was there. Very strange feeling - that is for sure.

Friday night, I played volleyball after work for a couple of hours. A very fun sport and damn, the majority of girls that play that sport are VERY fit and hot. There were a tonne of people at the rec centre where I went just playing pick up and it was a lot of fun. After volleyball, I watched the movie Catch me if you Can starring Leonardo Dicaprio (whose career seems to be turning around again) and Tom Hanks. The movie was pretty good and entertaining for the most part. But, there were just a couple of scenes - like the whole applying for medical jobs part that were a little too much. Interesting concept for a movie though - I'd like to find out how much was really true.

Yesterday, Saturday, I went to Chicago to visit my buddy from Waterloo Ravin. We had an awesome time just chilling in Chicago. I almost didn't go actually cause I was being so lazy all afternoon but in the end, I decided to go and I am glad I did. We went to the Funky Buddha Lounge and had an amazing time. The music was fantastic. The patrons, especially those of the opposite sex were great. I was shocked by the amount of brown people there actually - it's funnny but at times, it felt like I was at the Guvernment or Indian Motorcycle or something (because of some of the peeps there). Overall though, the place was great - the best part is that they have four guys who play live African drums while the DJ is spinning house, hip hop, reggae and old skool. It's pretty awesome to listen to the song and then here the drum beat going with it. Very neat sensation. And there is something about live music, and drums for that matter, but I was totally groovin' last night.

This morning - woke up at Ravin's place and his mom made fantastic Indian Chai for us and Uthapa...so good. All those masalas were totally reminding me of home and how much I miss my mommy's cooking. Speaking of cooking, I made some killer stuff yesterday before going to Chicago. I made chick pea dish (chole for you Marathis) and a stirfry with brocolli, mushrooms, yellow peppers and red onions. The trick to the stirfry however was that I started cooking it as an Indian dish with Indian spices and then part way through, changed my mind and made a Thai peanut, garlic, hot sauce for it. So in the end, it's an Indian-Thai fusion stirfry that turned out pretty good.

Last thing for the evening...did anyone catch the Simpsons tonight? Homer made fun of Indian food - it was pretty damn funny. Get ready for Joe Millionaire tomorrow night...
Good night all.