What I Did On My Labor Day Vacation

The Highlights (Les Lumieres Elevees):

Friday September 3rd

• Emailed an ex and wished him happy birthday. Also reminded him of my impending marriage and rubbed salt in non-existent wounds (oh, how we kid ourselves.)
• Had strawberry milk for breakfast.
• Watched "Exorcist I" - made in 1979 - on Bravo. Very cheesy movie which made no sense
• Discussed my wedding dress and trip to India with my sister on phone.
• Tried to watch Silsila on my laptop's DVD player. First, had to find and download a free DVD player that didn't shut down after a 30 minute trial. Then, had to restart it every 3 minutes since it kept skipping and freezing. Took me 4 hours to get to the interval. Thanks to MT who finally sent me a program + crack which worked.

Saturday September 4th

• Drove with Significant Other to Lake Geneva. Ooh t'was fun. We roamed the quaint little town, went on an hour-long boat tour of the lake and the many mansions that serve as summer homes to very wealthy folks, ate huge turtle sundaes, and finally fulfilled Sarwar's dream of JET SKIING which turned out to be AMAZING - even for a scaredy-cat, non-swimmer, non-risk-taker type like me. Oh the speed, the surf, the wind! It was brilliant. And Sarwar drove the jet ski like a pro. Even the trainers commented on his excellent navigation. Had an awesome, awesome time.
• Watched "Geraftaar", a really, really bad C movie starring Kamal Haasan, Amitabh Bachhan (in small role) and Rajnikanth (in an even smaller role). Needless to say, Rajniikath's legendary stunts were the only motivation for watching this horrible excuse for a 3 hour movie, but unfortunately he shows up after the interval and dies shortly after. However, he managed to display one amazing stunt that lived up to our expectations (and a few minutes later I fell asleep): when the running baddies run into a dead end alley, Rajnikath (an inspector) enters with a swagger and intimidates them by throwing a cigarette in the air, shooting at it with his revolver - thereby causing it to light - and then swiftly catching the falling cigarrette in his mouth - no hands. Classic.

Sunday September 5th

• Roamed around at the ISNA bazaar. Scowled at the Naseeb booth, held Sarwar and his stick back from the Asma Gul Hasan booth, pointed fingers at the HijabMan booth, ate some Biryani and samosas, and generally felt sinful and guilty for three hours.
• Watched lots and lots of the West Wing - 2nd season on DVD.
  

Monday September 6th

• Watched lots and lots of the West Wing - Bravo was having a Labor Day 5th season marathon.
• Watched "Vanity Fair" - it was alright. Mira Nair threw in the Bollywood aspect zabardasti se. Reese Witherspoon can't really come off as scheming; she's got too sweet a face. The plot moved in jerks, like a novel adaptation that either you know really well or guess your way through, and the rest of the characters were nobodys who didn't particularly impress. The story, however, was definitely engaging so hats off to Thackeray and bless his soul that must be turning in its grave after seeing a 19th century London gentlewoman say "suck up".
• Ate dinner at P.F. Chang's, which seems to have a serious problem with temperature control - it's really cold on the ground floor, and really hot on the top floor. But the food's good - especially the 6 layer chocolate cake with hot fudge, chocolate chips and strawberry syrup that was the size of a small brick. In my defense, I only ate one layer and Sarwar demolished the rest :P

And alas, thus ended my lovely break from the drudgery of work.

Now we begin the countdown to Thanksgiving.