Halloween preparation!

This year my colleagues at work were excited about dressing up as X-men characters for Halloween! This was in the talks since quite a few weeks and I was amazed when we actually had a spreadsheet to keep track of who was gonna be which character. That's when it struck me.. I got to PREPARE!

I need to explain why this was gonna be a whole lot of preparation for me! I was till then one of the few souls who had not seen the X-men movies or read those comics! I wonder how I lived through this harsh fact for so long! Each time I brought up the X-men topic with my friends in last couple of months I felt like its time to rewrite those facts! So when one of my friends offered to lend me his X-men DVDs I grabbed the offer with both hands. This is when my preparation began.

Jean Gray - XMen

I took one whole week to watch the 3 movies. There was no doubt that I was gonna like those movies. Now it was time to decide which character I would be.. my teammates had already picked Storm and Rogue. So for me it was gonna be a choice between Jean Grey and Kitty Pride. I checked for their costumes online and loved the black shiny jumper suit for Kitty and hoped to find one for me in the local stores. I still had 2 whole weeks to go.. But weekdays just passed by in anticipation of weekends, then weekends passed by doing the other important things.. so on Thursday I decided to go costume hunting! At the eleventh hour! Not surprisingly the costume shop had no X-men costumes left and the jumpsuits were oversized for me! So I looked for some wigs and found a perfect red long hair wig for the Jean Grey look! The next day I walked into my office with long red hair! I saw a few eyebrows rise as I walked around, and heard a few chuckles! That was the whole idea, mission was successful! I was glad to see my teammates dressed up too!

Detroit Top 10

1. Visit to M&B's new house with a great view at a great location

2. Downtown Detroit after dusk

3. Wii games with M&B

4. His birthday celebration relishing cookie cake with M&B

5. Italian dinner with Sangria wine at Macaroni Grill

6. Rainbow on our way back from Ford factory

7. Visit to Ford Rouge

8. Dinner at R's palatial house

9. His photography craze .. captured even the parking lots of Detroit .. Here's my favorite snap :)

10. All the awesome time spent with M&B! You totally rock!

Diwali weekend

Diwali used to be the biggest and brightest festival back home for me! My favorite part was making rangoli at the door of our house! And of course enjoying a whole variety of sweets and bursting crackers and visiting friends and family and shopping and .. and .. I could just keep writing!

Now that I am away from all the actual festivities back home, we have our own variation and scaled down version of celebrations! Keeping our tradition (2 year old) going, we all (seattle-folks) met for dinner this weekend at our friends place who have traditionally been our Diwali party hosts! Though the gang meets often for dinners and birthdays and get-togethers this one is quite unlike others. This is only time in the year when our traditional clothes come out of hiding from the bottom-most racks of the closet! And everyone dressed up in their brightest and colorful sarees and kurtas, we could almost pose to be at a wedding in Bombay or so! :) Being in Seattle did not stop us from posing for snaps, we came up with different group definitions for the sake of group snaps! From all non-Mumbaikars to Windows engineers to Gatech rejects we had a snap for every group! :) After the snap session the night was long and intense with everyone engrossed in our all time favorite gang game - Mafia :) My stars changed position this time and its really worth putting this down here that I was Mafia for more than 1 round!

Needless to mention food and festivities are inseparable! Our hosts had made delicious dishes that we all relished! Now that I am reminded of that dinner, I have to mention the dishes .. sabudana wada, methi matar, paneer, biryani ... I wanna go back in time! If you have reached this line, I am sure you are feeling hungry too! Time to end this here...