Winter Trip to Colorado

We spent the winter break at M’s sister R’s place in Louisville, CO. The original plan last December was for all of us (M and I, our parents, R and family, my brother and Peter Pettigrew (he invited himself so it was awkward to refuse)) to fly to Chennai last December. That way we would get away from it all (i.e. winter) and conduct M’s father’s 60^th Birthday celebrations with the requisite Hindu rituals. For the uninitiated, (I belonged to this category till right before M’s dad turned 60) the 60^th birthday is kind of a big deal in Hindu culture, what with your life presumably having been all fruitfully-lived and and your marriage having yielded offspring who are now old enough to throw you your 60^th birthday well, rituals. The ceremony involves the presence of all those who are near and dear and everything, so at the heart of it, it’s really just a big family re-union.

 

But you know how the economy is bad and times are bad and everything is bad and so it was decided that we’d just have a low-key get-together at R’s place for around a couple of weeks.

 

Those ten days at R’s were as close to an idyllic vacation as we could probably have had, in our current state of joblessness and apartmentlessness. We spent a lot of our time with R’s one year old N, sipping wine (not always at the same time), playing scrabble. On one isolated occasion, I puffed my first ever cigar while discussing the nuances of female masturbation with R and her best friend V. We puffed and nuanced away till the wee hours of the morning. That was something.

 

What else? We had our parenting skills scrutinized by the manager of Med, but you already know about that (see post below). Oh and we went snowmobiling one day in Winter Park, CO and I spent a week after picking icicles from the roof of my mouth.