Pretty Blue Update!

Here's a quick update, before I dash off to a rehearsal:

* I did not win the Oscar pool. This disappointed me greatly, because I am ridiculously competitive. I *almost* won; for the majority of the awards I was neck-and-neck with another party guest, and came out ahead at the last instant because I called No Country instead of Blood for best pic; and then this guy who had been sitting quietly in the corner all night said "Actually, I got the most right," and showed us his ballot. And I'm totally not bitter about it or anything. ^__^

* As of this morning, I no longer have a soft cast on my foot. I had "the opposite of surgery," where the surgeon removes all of the metal pins he put in during the surgery, and then I had my pinholes sutured with silver nitrate, which was pretty cool. Unfortunately, I've regressed back to creeping down the hallway. I was all excited about getting the cast off and the pins out, but it looks like having the opposite of surgery traumatizes the foot just as much as having surgery does. In short, it hurts to walk, and it'll hurt for a few days. On the plus side, I can wear a regular shoe again.

* I saved $10 by giving myself a manicure while watching the ABC premiere of Raisin in the Sun. The manicure turned out all right; bought a kit for $2 which gave me a little jar of white polish and a little jar of "nail color" polish so I could do it French-style, and surprisingly I was able to pull this off. Raisin in the Sun wasn't bad either, although I was disturbed by the choice to make Asagai Beneatha's teacher, instead of her friend. Made the inevitable romance just a little creepy. For the record, Sean Combs can act... and thank goodness.

That's all for now. Sorry there isn't any more... um... substance; it's been a light news week in Blue-land. ^__^

Everything You Need To Know About Toe Surgery: or, Pretty Blue Foot!

So yesterday I had surgery on my (right) big toe, since the break was complicated enough that it couldn't simply be buddy-taped to my index toe.

(It is a testament to my nerdiness that when I saw my own x-rays, the first thing I said was "cool!" and then when the doctor gave me this "no, it's not cool" look, added "I mean, that looks like it's going to be difficult to fix.")

I showed up at the hospital ready to roll up a pant leg and let the surgeon do his work, which... shows how little I know about surgery.

Things I learned:

1. I got the full "awesome" treatment, which included being wheeled around the (tiny) hospital in a wheelchair. Am waiting to see how much they're going to charge me for the ride.

2. I had to remove all of my clothing, including my bra, because the three metal hooks "might interfere with the equipment." The hospital gown they gave me had been pre-warmed for my comfort. I wish all of my clothes could come to me pre-warmed.

3. The operating room (operating theatre?) looked pretty much like they do on TV. I was hooked up to lots of beeping machines, there were those giant round lightbulb things hanging over me, etc.

4. The local anesthesia hurt terribly going in, but after that I didn't feel a thing.

5. Not even when the surgeon took what appeared to be a small electric screwdriver and literally screwed things into my toe.

6. There was a nurse whose duty seemed to be to stand by my head and ask me questions, so as to distract me from what was going on at my feet (she also prevented me from craning my neck up to watch, unfortunately). What question did she lead off with? "You have a very pretty voice. Where are you from?"

6.5. To tie in to the "where are you from?" question and Manish's recent post on mispronouncing Sanjay, when I was first introduced to my surgeon he asked me ("building rapport," no doubt) why I pronounced my name incorrectly. I explained that it used Germanic rather than Italianate vowel sounds, and he knew what I was talking about, which was actually pretty neat. Those med-school grads are smart.

7. At the end, they gave me a choice of colors for the soft cast which I will be wearing for the next 4-6 weeks. It should be obvious which color I picked.

8. The soft cast (and its combination orthopedic shoe) are gigantic. So much so, that when I was in the recovery room trying to put my pants back on, the nurse helping me said "you might not be able to get that foot into any of your pants, honey" and brought me a pair of scrubs to wear home. I'm excited to see how much these cool scrubs are going to cost me. Also curious to know what I'll be wearing for the next 4-6 weeks.

9. Vicodin rocks. The nurse did warn me that I would wake up at 2:30 a.m. in great pain regardless of the Vicodin, and whadda-you-know, she was right. I wonder why.

10. When I go back to school I am seriously going to get a cane from our prop shop. The surgeon and the nurses all told me "you can walk normally on this," but I have found that trying to put any weight on the foot results in giant screaming pain and thus have been literally hopping back and forth to only the most necessary places, like the bathroom. (If this continues for the next day or so I will call them to ask if the pain is "normal.")

11. If you're ever planning to have surgery, go to your local animal shelter and adopt a cat. Having a kitty purring on your chest is the best thing to make you feel better. If I were the entrepreneurial type, I would start a business that rents cats to people recuperating from illnesses and injuries. (The business would also include a human assistant who would stop by every day and feed the animal, clean the litterbox, etc. Oh, and feel free to tell me that this business already exists.)

That's all for now. I'll keep you posted as to my recovery.

Pretty, Pretty Gifting

Before I packed them all away into my suitcase, I set all of the gifts I bought during my Indian adventure out on my bed and admired them.

I love giving presents to people, and I particularly love these presents. ^__^

Now all we have to do is wait for Christmas.

Pretty New Glasses!

If you happen to be in Mysore looking for a good glasses shop, I thoroughly and completely recommend Ismail Opticals.

Not only did they give me 24-hour turnaround (when I explained that I was only staying in Mysore for two days and couldn't take a week to get the glasses back), but they hand-delivered them to my hotel (at 10 p.m.), and fitted them for me outside of the reception desk.

At no extra charge.

I am loving these glasses. Not only because they are oh-so-cute, but also because my world has suddenly popped into high-def. The ophthalmologist who wrote my prescription said that it was only a small change from my old pair, but... it is a very big improvement to me. Not having to squint at things is huge.

Here's the picture!

Finally A Successful Header!

I've been trying to photoshop a decent header featuring me actually wearing the pretty blue salwar for some time now.

Last night I had an inspiration.

(Focus Features, I'll pull it the minute you ask. But it's a lovely image, yes?)

Simpsons Day: Paint It Yellow!

I know, Harry Potter got an entire week and the Simpsons only get a day. Which is funny because I like the Simpsons much, much, much more than I like Harry Potter. (Eight years ain't got nothing on eighteen, after all, and I grew up with the Simpsons but was only introduced to Mr. Potter in my later life.)

Anyway, here's another image to add to my collection of "can I make it look like me?" avatars:

Make your own here!

BTW -- heard Apu has only a line or two in the film. I'll be interested to find out what his particular lines are. We can probably guess what one of them will be.

Pretty Blue's Voice

Thanks to the additional technology I've... um... imported into my laptop, I can record audio files and share them with whomever I want.

Which means you.

Anyway, it's interesting for me to listen to people's voices for the first time, or to match voices to images or voices to text. It always surprises me, a little. I never expected Garrison Keillor, for example, to look like Garrison Keillor -- his voice seemed to suggest someone soft and pillowy and rounded, but Mr. Keillor is so angular and craggy and off-putting.

So, if you're interested, you may hear my voice below. If you'd rather not have the way my writing voice sounds "in your mind" distorted by the way I actually sound, then obviously don't click it. But I bet you will. It's less than a minute long, and you're curious. ^__^

Click here to hear!

Pretty Spinach Dish!

S. often teases me about the lack of edible food in my refrigerator (to which I perpetually refer him to the abundance of pulses and grains in my "Indian food cupboard").

He's also been eating rather poorly as of late, due mostly to an erratic work schedule.

So -- to prepare for his arrival and for the afternoon he would spend telecommuting in my apartment while I temped in someone else's cube -- I cooked up a very nutritious, tonic-like mixture of spinach and tomatoes and chickpeas and cheese, which I first invented in March.

Below is the picture. Doesn't it look delightful?


(Editor's note: S. never did eat it. He worked so hard that he forgot about lunch, poor thing. Then we went out to dinner and had tapas. The spinach dish was put into Tupperwares and is now serving as quite excellent cubefood.)

Pretty Fictitious Film!

After S. and I discussed who our "favorite" (read: "people we think are hot") actors are in Holly- and Bollywood, I began to wonder what might transpire if they all ended up in a film together.

So, with the magic of image editing, I created the promo poster.

However, it looks much less "Hollywood" (or Bollywood, for that matter), and much more like a Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation.

Ah, well.

And here it is:


The tagline (if it would fit onto the image without making it incredibly busy) would read:

Three travelers.
Three sexy accents.
Three different prices to get in.
One love story.

Shripriya, wanna direct? ^__^

Pretty Blue Tango

S. was at a concert yesterday. He told me what was on the menu... Astor Piazzolla's tangos, played on a very unusual combination of trumpet and harpsichord.

Oh, I am so jealous... I said, because I was, in fact, so jealous.

So, at the right time, he called me. He opened up his phone, and I opened up mine (putting it on speakerphone) and the melodies of the tangos filled my little kitchen, as I stood with the trumpet playing on my right side and rasam bubbling on my left.

Though the sound quality was... less than what might have been desired... it was still one of the best concerts I ever attended.

Pretty Happy Birthday Kitty!

Happy birthday to the person whose birthday it is today!

If it's not your birthday today, it's not for you... if it is, then it's for you!

(In other words this is for a person who has asked not to be identified by name but would probably be really, really confused if I put up a pseudonym. Although, for this person I might pick... Ginevra. *__^)

Here's a picture of a kitty!



psst... it's from i can has cheezburger...

Pretty Watercolor (for S.)

Because I know he's online right now... here's an internet-style bit of connection. Fingers stretching through the ether and all of that.

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a reimaging of springtime in Central Park:



I think he and I are probably behind that cluster of white flowers. ^__^

Pretty Blue Salwar Header!

I've done some tweaking to the layout... namely adding an original header, which I know is incongruous with the title of the blog. I know-I know-I know. But it's too late to call the thing "Pretty Trying To Imitate Preity Zinta's Dress-and-Jacket Combination from KHNH."

Soon enough I'll take another picture with the salwar and make a nice shiny header out of it.

Soon enough.

But for now... कुछ तो हुआ है and all of that... I'll leave this one up. ^__^

(Gaurav, does it mean I'm a for-real blogger now that I've got a header of my own?)

Pretty BollyPhoto Shoot!

Send me some more pictures, he said.
I've sent you all I have, I told him.
I'll have to take some new ones first.

This blog is in need of some prettiness, after all the dismal politicizing it's done of late.

And thank goodness I'm in a theatre department, where I can take my camera into the building, find a few people, and say "I'm trying to recreate a shot from Kal Ho Naa Ho -- do you want to help?"

As this blog is semi-pseudonymous, I can only give you the one shot that does not include my face. You'll have to trust that from the other end, my dimples are just as charming as Preity's.

Click on the image for full awesomeness. Don't you love the red dress?

Pretty Anticipatory Dancers!

I had to spend tonight attending a rather poor performance with some extremely poor dancing.

Luckily, I'll be able to spend tomorrow night here, where the dancing should be considerably better.

I'll give a full report when I get back. I'll be with the friend mentioned in this post, and there will be much fangirling.

And yes, I'm wearing the salwar. ^__^

Pretty Makeshift Capris!

Today is the first truly nice spring day.

Today is also, coincidentally, the first day of Spring.

I celebrated by turning up the bottoms of my blue jeans.

Hooray!

Pretty Blue Diamond!

Some random musings from my D.C. trip:

The Hope Diamond is desi. Who knew? (Probably... um... lots of people. But not me.)

In the Chinese wing of the Freer Galleries, there were a handful of objects, including this incense burner, which were labeled as "essential to a Chinese scholar's study area." It made me wonder what will eventually be displayed and labeled "essential to an American scholar's study area" -- a computer, obviously, but what else? A mug full of pencils? A handful of candy wrappers? A Successory?

I spent an afternoon trying to seek out desi-related things at the Smithsonians, and what I found was a mixture of historicism and exoticism. The Sikh exhibit, for example, was tucked into the Natural History Museum between a bunch of stuffed jaguars killing stuffed gazelles and a room full of butterflies on straight pins, as if Sikhs belonged in the same category as "mysterious creatures of the savannah." In fact, perhaps to complement the stuffed jaguars and pinned butterflies, the exhibit featured life-size cardboard people, each labeled "this is a Sikh." Just like, I suppose, "this is a Tyrannosaurus Rex."

(On the other hand, there was a lot of interesting information, much of which I didn't know, as well as a button one could push to hear thirty seconds of bhangra. I'm always one for pushing buttons in museums.)

There was an Islamic art wing in the Freer museum which managed to completely avoid ever using the word "Muslim," and a Jain statue hiding at the very end of a collection of Hindu statuary which, on the label, described Jains as "austere ascetics." Partially accurate, perhaps, but it doesn't make Jains sound like anyone you'd want to meet -- or like real people, for that matter.

There was theoretically a collection of Indian miniatures on display somewhere, as well as an illustrated Ramayana, but I never found them, and the people at the Freer information desk had never heard of either collection.

I had a great time looking at all of the artwork and statuary and household objects, but it makes me wonder how much of what I'm reading about the displays is filtered, and what they're leaving out (or adding in), and why. It also makes me wonder where the art and artifacts came from, and how we obtained them. (Yes, I know, this is not an original thought by any means.)

And yet, if little white girls couldn't go to museums to see these things, how (besides going to India) would they ever come in contact with them?

And... double yet, what does it mean to put a statue of the goddess Saraswati on the same level as a giant diamond and Seinfeld's puffy shirt?

Snowed in (or: Pretty Leather Mules!)

As you can probably guess (by the fact that I'm writing this and not schmoozing with Joseph Roach* and his friends) I did not make it to MATC. Over 400 flights to Minneapolis were canceled yesterday.

On the plus side, I got to see my show again and I got to see my parents, who drove in to a matinee performance. (I also got to go shopping with my mother and she bought me a pair of pretty leather mules! I seem to have acquired a collection of backless shoes as of late... odd, because they're kind of useless in the face of continual snow. Does that stop me from wearing them, or from wearing sturdy shoes in to campus and then changing in my office? Absolutely not.)

My advisers were in to see the play this afternoon, which always makes life a little squirmy because I want to sit right next to them and say things like "I know that light cue came up a beat late! The stage manager usually does it perfectly! I really didn't direct it like that!"

I'll write a longer post soon, but I wanted to stop in and say hi. So... hi!

* Just so you know -- I don't actually know Mr. Roach. Or his friends. But he's the person theatre grad students are supposed to watch out for at these conferences, on the off chance that they might end up next to him in an elevator or something and be able to share a few seconds of his time.

Un-pretty White Sweater (again)...

Well, the white sweater is down for the count. But this time the culprit wasn't haldi -- it was chocolate. And it didn't wash out.

I should just stop wearing white altogether. Or invest in some bleach or something.

Pretty White Sweater!

I cannot believe it. The haldi stains came out. In my graduate-student-grade washer/dryer and with Cheapest Possible Detergent.

I was so happy, I gave the sweater a hug.