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I was inspired by Julie's blog today to carve a few different sizes of the speech bubbles. I opted to leave them blank so I could write stuff in them. I started with Julie's PDF but made the sizes different.
Does it add or contract that you can see my scars in this photo? And this is my 'good' arm....
le sigh.
I have a new addiction and it's the food at FRSH.com. They deliver all over Gurgaon and if you are someone who likes to watch what they are eating you can do it best with this service as every item they prepare has a clear mention of the number of calories it contains.
The curd rice for instance, oh the curd rice! Why must I write a review at this time of the night when FRSH isn't open. It is now open until 9pm though as compared to before when it was only an morning-afternoon service. Anyway, how much I crave it now - at 1am! So, moving on, the curd rice is phenomenal. I have to admit I have only once had curd rice in Mysore before and that was completely forgettable, this on the other hand is something I can eat everyday and still not be done with it. "Seasoning" or "tadka" for the curd rice is packed separately to keep it warm and crunchy. It has cashew nuts, curry leaves, red chillies, peanuts, etc. and it completely enhances and elevates the taste of the dish. The pomegranates in it do the same too, I would never have thought of adding fresh pomegranates to curd rice but it just works so well.
The honey loops blueberry yoghurt is another one of my favourites. I just can't get enough of that. If reminds me of the innumerable jars of muller I used to buy at Tesco. It is like one of those really nice flavours of Muller or Onken you get in gourmet grocery stores in India. It is a lot healthier though, because it has oranges, apples, pomegranates, blueberry purée and to that you add crunchy honey loops, I had no idea something this healthy could taste this moreish.
I love pasta but red sauce isn't really my thing. I couldn't have imagined to like red sauce pasta this much but I did & it had broccoli in it! With only 550 calories in a bowl, this is one dish I don't mind licking the plate for.
These are my top favourite dishes out out all the things I've tried at FRSH. They have poha, shakes, juices, bhel puri, sabudana khichdi, etc. but I prefer the above items the most.
When you visit their website and pick a delivery slot, they are there at that time. I've been ordering from them for a while now and they are seldom late. They deliver all over Gurgaon to both office and residential customers.
XOXO
Shivangi
(Shivangi Reviews)
Contact: mail@shivangireviews.com
Find me on Facebook, search "Shivangi Reviews"
Used as the illustration to the poem, "Lovelorn Poet in Chicago, IL:
If They Asked Me" at www.lovelornpoets.com/2011/05/31/lovelorn-poet-in-chicago...
I only used this photo so that I could write a sentence with the words icon bokeh in it. I normally wouldn't write a sentence with bokeh in it at all but I have this time and I expect tomorrow I might write one with multiplicity in it because I know what's next although in the end I'll avoid it like I might avoid a theme of the week or something even though I'm doing a theme of the year.
Well, today's shot, so I might as well write this up instead of doing anything like work.
I considered when I wrote this post a few weeks back that I was tempting fate with my hubristic words, but I don't generally believe in notions of universal karma, so I just went with it. But the universe doesn't really care whether I believe in it or not, and today it decided to have me put my money where my keyboard is.
On the upside, I got my steps in. Here is my tale of woe.
Robin's workplace has been having people come in one day a week the last couple of years, but for 2025, they've decided to jump that up to two, and today was the new day they added. So I treated this morning like a Tuesday and drove Robin to the train through a light mix of snow and freezing drizzle, then followed a Tuesday procedure of picking up a Dunkin' Donuts coffee (only coffee) and heading someplace nice to sit in the car read a book for a little while before going back home and doing something productive. My preferred parking lot is closed for the winter, so I went to that cemetery down on Roosevelt Road where I've sometimes taken pictures of coyotes and hawks. It's a quiet place, far enough away from the road that the highway noise is a dull whoosh beneath the wind, and I like to turn off the car and just listen.
Unfortunately, I sometimes forget to turn off the lights when I turn off the car. This isn't usually a problem, especially on a cold day, because I periodically turn the car back on to run the heater. But this time, the car didn't come on. Fifteen minutes into my morning, the battery was dead, and here I was sitting in a dead car in a cemetery in the cold, thinking of those posts I've written about how nobody likes to change their own tires tire anymore and how Zoomer kids will just sit in a dead car and wait to die.
I grumbled to myself for a little while, then pondered my options.
First, I needed to figure out why the car wasn't working. That was easy; there were only two options. Either the battery had died or the alternator had died. We just got a new alternator last summer, so I doubted that was the problem. The battery, on the other hand, was three-and-a-half years old, which is right in line with the expected life span of a car battery. The fact that it had gone dead in only ten-to-fifteen minutes of sitting with the lights on suggested the battery was very bad.
So, then, what do I do about it?
1. I could wait for Robin to come home. On a regular Monday, I could call Robin and have her come get me in the other car, but Robin was downtown today, and she wouldn't be back until about 6, when she expected me to pick her up at the train station. So I could sit here for an entire 9-hour day and wait for Robin to walk home from the train station, get the other car, and come get me. I kind of figure that's what a Zoomer kid would do, but that would be boring and dumb, and the cemetery guys would look at me weird and eventually come tell me to move my car.
2. I could get a jump. I could ask the cemetery guys to jumpstart the car with their cemetery truck, or I could call Triple-A and have them send somebody. But the problem there is that I was pretty sure, considering the electrical behavior that got me stuck here in the first place, that the battery wasn't just depleted but outright deceased, and I kind of doubted it would take a charge.
3. I could walk home, get the other car, and go buy a new car battery. Fortunately, the cemetery is only 3.25 miles from my house, and it was only sort-of drizzly, so that's what I wound up doing.
I walked home, grabbed the new Honda, bought a battery at the Autozone, drove back to the cemetery, and put the battery in the car. I was then struck with the dilemma of having two cars in the cemetery with only one body. I didn't want to leave an unattended car in that cemetery any longer than I had to, so I drove the old Honda to a grocery store parking lot about a mile away, then walked back for the new Honda and drove it home. Then I walked back to the grocery store and picked up the old Honda and drove it home. All in all, I walked about 9 miles. The fitness tracker on my telephone says I took 20,141 steps.
One thing a Zoomer might have done that I would never consider is call for an uber, but I've never used uber, and I wouldn't have wanted to wait for an uber to come find me anyway. I figure I did what I needed to do faster by walking, anyway. I was done with the whole mess by about 1.
Old Man Yells at Cloud Moment: If you've been following this page for a while, you might remember a post from the Plague Era when I found an ancient receipt from a time when my Dad bought me a car battery in 1992. That battery cost $48. The battery I bought today was $248. That's an increase of 517%. Average inflation from 1992 to 2025 is 124.9%, so car batteries have far outstripped inflation.