Weekly Life Updates

OMG. I don’t know what to say about this week. All last weekend it poured heavily, there was no internet, no TV, no electricity, and no going anywhere because of the floods and trees falling. The kids were extremely bored, and so was I honestly.
I shouldn’t crib though when other places around the world are struggling with heavy rain and flooding – Texas, Mumbai, Florida. I wonder why the rains are so unusually heavy this year. Is it an El Nino thing or something?

Snubnose spent most of the weekend doing homework and projects. In between, she practiced her ballet steps for her role in The Beauty and the Beast show that’s happening sometime in Oct/Nov.

Piglet spent most of his time playing house-house with me in between harassing Snubnose and chasing her around the house.

It was actually a relief when Monday rolled along, the skies cleared, and I could pack off the kids to school, and head to office.

One pleasant side-effect after all that rain, is the lovely rainbow that showed up early Monday morning and the beautiful sunrise. This post would get too long, so I am not including the pics here, But head off to my Instagram to see the skies in their full glory.

We did do one thing last weekend, which was Piglet’s eye exam that I was talking about here. The check-up went swimmingly. He was a champ throughout the test, and we don’t need to worry about anything till next year. We asked the ophthalmologist about Piglet looking very closely at his paper while writing, but he said those were probably just mannerisms. There is really nothing to worry about.

Phew!

On to other updates.

First up, I wanted to share with you this absolutely magnificent (if a mother may say so) work by Snubnose. This work is in the Modigliani style, and is the second of Snubnose’s Modiglianis. Here’s an earlier one done using oil pastels.

She finished the one below a couple of weeks ago, and it’s sitting next to our staircase, while we figure out where to hang it. Of late, Snubnose has been doing fewer pieces, but the ones she’s done are pretty large in scale, and our house is starting to look like an art gallery.

I really should give away some of them, but my heart just does not allow me to.

I have this beautiful white top from Mango sitting in my check-out basket for the past couple of days. The white top is very simple and minimal with the surprise of the ribbon tie at the back. The material also looks very good.

The only thing stopping me from pulling the trigger is that I am bang in the middle of my weight-loss journey, and I don’t want to get clothes when I don’t know what size I”ll be in the future.

That’s why I am passing on this top. But because I’m a very caring, sharing person, here is a link to the top online, if you want to take a closer look. If you do end up buying, drop a note in the comments about the quality.

I am a bit curious about Mango right this moment. In the mall, their clothes are well-cut but snooze-worthy especially when you compare them with Zara and H&M, but the pieces on the website look really good. I am wondering if it’s just good photography, or if the mall shops have a stock issue.

I am in the midst of some small tune-ups on the blog. Because I hope to travel sometime in November, I was looking for some of my older travel posts to get my enthusiasm up. I am not traveling with the kids or hubby, so I am a bit conflicted about it. Anyway, I was looking for my older travel posts when I realized that my posts are a mess and impossible to find.

To tackle this, and because my travel posts are the ones I most like to revisit, I’ve created a set of travel badges on the sidebar and below the header (only on my home page) that will help me and the reader access specific travel posts with a single click. I still need to clean up my tagging, but I am happy with the work I’ve done so far.

I should also probably look at my older bookish posts and sort them too. I’m sure those are just as big a mess. That task is sounding so huge though (a database of almost eight years of blogging) that I will probably just sit on it.

What I am going to focus on next week is on some back-end changes to display photos in some of my posts better. My current blog theme does a good job of displaying my food pics but I am thinking maybe have the photos open in their own light box, or have some posts appear full-screen, or something along those lines. Let’s see how it goes.

And finally books.

The lack of any distractions last weekend (the rains) meant that I sat down and finished Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. I had complained earlier that I just couldn’t get into the book (and there are some serious flow-related issues). However once I got through the slog of the first half of the book, I was simply racing along. This is actually going to be one of my favorite books this year.

I also started and finished Gone Baby Gone by Dennis Lehane. I read this book after seeing the excellent movie adaptation, so I hoped that the book would be good too. It was an excellent read. Even though I already knew all the twists and turns of the plot from watching the movie, I still enjoyed it a lot. I now want to get my hands on its sequel Midnight Mile. Have you read this series? What do you think of it? I am surprised that such an excellent series is not featured much on blogs. Is it because it’s not new?

Watch this space for full-on reviews of both these books.

So, these are my updates for this week. It’s been a quiet week, but my calendar for the next 2-3 weeks is buzzing with blog events, work deadlines, and personal commitments. I don’t know how I’m going to juggle all of it.

How has your week been? Also long-time bloggers, do you have any tips on blog organization? Also, any plug-ins you can recommend for displaying images? Do share.