Two babies!

In case you were worried (I was!), the other baby pigeon did hatch! Still no camera thingy (uploaded the other pictures at my parents' house), so no picture (plus, I feel guilty every time I scare away the mama pigeon by watering my plants), but BABY PIGEONS ARE UGLY! If you really want to see a picture, go here -- mine look just like that. They make my so happy every time I see them...

Pigeon!

Here she is. I have an herb garden off my window, a very pleasant little place with basil, rosemary, parsley, and a flower I picked up somewhere. Underneath are tomato plants (growing beautifully, I must say -- my father-in-law, a good hand with flowers, mentioned that I must be using a setting spray -- I said that no, I wasn't, I was just letting things proceed naturally .... and then I looked up online what was causing the flowers to fall off rather than make tomatoes, and, lo and behold, I need a setting spray. Should have listened...); I went out to water them one day, and felt a fluttering, and here she was:

And this is what she left:

Here you can see both what happens to basil and flower when given minimal water (and probably some bird droppings) for two weeks -- as well as what wasn't there yesterday morning, but was there this afternoon:

I have a baby bird!

(The other egg may be a dud -- it's got a crack in one side.)

It's been fun to watch -- the papa bird will come by, sit on the railing (this is a balcony one story up), and talk for a bit, mama will answer, and papa will say something else; then mama flies off and has lunch (I'm guessing) while papa stands guard. Very sweet.

Soap!

I've been enjoying myself with some melt-and-pour soap. The first batch was very pretty, but cheap base, so didn't lather well -- smells divine, though, and very decorative. Good ornamental soap.

The next batch I had more fun -- rose petal bits, almond bits, olive oil, honey (that one was slimy, won't try that again!), and a better base.

Also tried a bit of rebatching, as you can see in the bright aqua ones -- they're a bit rubbery, but maybe they'll work!

Verdict: Soapmaking is fun, but when will I use all that soap? And who can I give it to?

Pigeon!

Himself helped clean house, which is truly excellent and wonderful, but, of course, things get lost when cleaning. So, I don't have the dongle (that's what it's called?) that connects the camera's card to the computer... so I can't post pictures of the pigeon that's nesting in my herb garden! Maybe soon...

Paris

On our way back from India, Himself and I stopped off in Paris. His family is from India, and his first name is very common there, so we were always looking around to see who was calling him. (Aside: I always found it amusing to shout out "Mommy!" in a crowd, just to see how many mothers would look my way to see if I were theirs.) For equality's sake, then, we found my name in many places in Paris.

(You may have to zoom in on that one.)

We had fun doing the 1976 Michelin Guide (picked up on my parents' honeymoon) recommended 4-days tour of Paris in 2 days, with the third for Versailles -- walking about 8 miles a day, which is very salutary, I'm sure, but does make your feet tired after four days of climbing stone temples barefoot in India.

We caught some examples of fine French design, which my French-Antiques-Saleswoman Aunt I'm sure would appreciate, such as the chandelier in our little hotel:

And we saw all the general sights, as well as, of course, some very exciting bookbinding examples:

at the Hotel Cluny, Museum of the Middle Ages:

Also managed to stop by Relma, a fantastic bookbinding shop. I'd never been to a real bookbinding shop before, only booths at the Guild of Bookworkers Standards meeting, so it was a great experience. Bought some cheap leather (that would fit in the suitcase) and some headbands -- some of the leather's already gone to make Himself a book, which should be my next post, if I remember -- either that or the bird that's moved into my parsley!

The last night, febrile under the Eiffel Tower, was not quite as fun, but I'm all recovered and well, and at least the pneumonia didn't really hit until the last night!

India!

India

As long promised, here are some of my pictures from India.

At a Hindu wedding, there is fire.
Also flowers.

Afterwards, we went on a trip to a temple important to Himself's family; no pictures at the temple itself, but my Picasa album (first picture in this post should take you there) has pictures I took along the way.
That's my favorite car -- the Ambassador. The British were making a style of car when they were in India, and they left, and it seems not to have occurred to anyone until about fifteen years ago that there would be any reason to change the design. They come in any color you want, so long as it's white. They're quite comfortable (think British taxicab -- same concept, really), but everyone in Himself's family thinks I'm silly for loving them, except his father, who's tickled and indulges me by requesting them from the chauffeur company.

The billboard (aka "hoarding") behind the car? Political ad. You have to see the hand-painted portraits of everyone in the whole party! My favorite candidate from the region, purely because of his name, is M. K. Stalin -- yes, named after Uncle Joe. (Naming's different there -- the "last" name is your given name, functionally your only name; initials before the name might point to your father's name or place of origin, and you might mention your caste at the end of your name. M. K. Stalin's father is the breathtakingly skilled orator Karunanidhi, hence the "K." Why I'm so hot on Karunanidhi? Tamil is an excellent classical language, but most people speak it in a nasty nasal manner dropping syllables all over the place and using compressed grammar; when he speaks, you can tell how beautiful it really should be.)

Of course, if you haven't got a driver, or even a car, you can fit the whole load on your scooter. Didn't get any pictures of it, but they do that with families too -- family of six on one motorcycle, with only the father in a helmet -- which is still an improvement over the last time I went for any period of time (2003), when helmets were almost unknown in this region.

It's a land of caste and economic distinctions, but most people overlook one or the other. Sometimes both.

Here, a fine house is next to a pretty low-end one (there's more pictures in my album of true huts, made of twigs -- there's very little true homelessness in this region, as you can always drag some sticks and palm fronds together and make a very basic shelter). In the towns where I've lived, that could mean either that the person in the low-end dwelling (who has a shop affixed to his house, and has sold a wall for advertising -- people everywhere are enterprising!) is high-caste but in reduced circumstances, or, more likely that the person in the fancy house has come into money, but is low-caste or "scheduled caste" and will not be made to feel welcome in a nicer part of town. (You can see that a bit in Houston -- I've gone out in some odd areas on Google Street View (I always like to check out where such-and-such a murder happened, mainly), and there'll be no sidewalk or curb, mostly abandoned houses or trailers, and then what would be a million dollar house in the middle of town, but has a tax value of $100,000, due to the $10,000 lots nearby.) Less common in the smaller towns, but more in the bigger cities (like when I was living in Madurai, or especially this time in Madras/Chennai), people, especially the younger generation, won't care about caste (sometimes even overlooking it when it comes to marriage, although that's less frequent), and will hang out with and live near people of the same economic standing, education level, and job type.

In any case, people today are more likely to live like this:
than like this:
But I suppose some things do have to change over time.

One thing I'm glad has changed? Medicine -- levaquin is nasty while you're taking it, but pneumonia, even when young and otherwise healthy, is no fun. Just don't want to do anything for a few weeks; without the medicine, apparently, it would have dragged on for months. But I'm all better now :)

Pneumonia!

So, I had a great time. The wedding was exciting, and I did get half a day to do some very rushed shopping in. I've been to India several times before, twice for 3-4 months each, so I'm familiar with the area, and know what shopping to do. (It's like when I go back to London, where my family lived for three years when I was in high school -- it's a shopping trip, not so much a sightseeing one, although, with London as with India (to a greater extent, as changes are more massive), it's also a "look how much things have changed!" trip.) Photos to come, when I get around to retrieving the camera.

Paris was a blast -- the Michelin guide my parents picked up on their honeymoon was printed in 1976, before the Louvre had pyramids and when the Orsay was still an abandoned train station, but it's really excellent. (I took a Let's Go guide (I won't get Lonely Planet, as they're Let's Go's main rival, and Let's Go is written by my old classmates) for things like modern opening times, etc.) It has a guide to how you can do all of Paris really fast in four days. I thought, "Great, we'll skip Montparnasse and Montmartre, and add in the Musee d'Orsay, and moving quickly we should be able to make it in three days."

That's until Himself says, wistfully (he's never been to Paris; I have, twice -- once with family, doing the full tour, and once on a one-day hit-the-Orsay-and-the-Eiffel-and-the-restaurant airplane layover), "can we go see Versailles?"

Ok, so we skip the Champs d'Elysses, as well (it's just the view down to the Arc de Triomphe, really -- we saw that in the shuttle back to the airport and while walking through Tuileries, anyhow), and do Michelin's Paris in Four Days, adding in the Orsay, in two days! And spend a day at Versailles, which was actually quite fun -- since I went (in 1995), they've added audioguides, which were most informative; and, we got to go out to see Marie Antoinette's fake hamlet where she could pretend to be a peasant, which I hadn't seen before.

We've walked about 8 miles (by Michelin's approximations) a day for two days, after several days of standing up barefoot for several hours in India, and spent a day doing a lot of walking at Versailles, and we get back and are sitting under the Eiffel Tower (it sparkles now -- didn't do that back in 1995 either!), having french fries and hot spiced wine (that's the good stuff), when I finally feel completely miserable and give in to miserableness. I've been coughing (in India, you can see the little black particles dancing around in the air -- never a good sign), and my throat hurts, and my feet hurt, and I'm finally losing my voice ... and then I get chills and am just feeling awful. We walk back to our lovely hotel, Himself kindly having given up his lovely and so-sweet idea of getting wine and cheese from little shops along the way and having an in-room picnic, where I try to check out with my French (Rosetta Stone was good -- helped a ton, and especially made me confident), with no voice, and feeling like I'm burning up -- turns out I have fever, too.

The next morning at the airport we get some cough syrup ... on the plane home, I feel like I'm dying -- turns out codeine's over the counter in France, and it's the only medicine I'm allergic to. So we didn't think to check the bottle... that's one miserable flight! After two days home from work sick in bed, I go back to work, just coughing a ton and feeling so tired, but not really thinking much of it (the pollution in India has had me cough for six months once before -- although then it may actually have been pertussis, I've since learned). My mother finally made me go to the doctor today ... turns out I have pneumonia! So, that's why I haven't made a thing, haven't read anything except one mystery novel at the doctor's today, and haven't had the energy to post.

Not to make it picture-less, though, I'll put in a few of the Margaret Bag from Oh, Fransson! that I made for my sister at Christmas. She loved it, and Himself said I should quit work and just make bags :)

The outside fabric is scotty argyle, and the inside is little scotties on brown fabric. Very cute.

(My skinny sister ... used to be a model, eats like a horse, 5'10" and 117 pounds or so... she got the Irish side (including the red hair), and I got the stocky German side!)

Didn't it turn out nicely?

Now back to resting... I'll be doing a lot of that for the time being!