1. My V day gift from Sahir – a much wanted – Giants Blanket woo-hooo!!
2. Had the most funnest V day with our plus 1′s – Nik and Chiku at our fav restaurant – Shalimar where Sahir was so loud that the Shalimar folks asked him to keep it down!!
3. A last minute trip to Houston to go see Aval. We had a good time at the hospital where we did some puzzles and Amit and Aval’s mom made us some yummy Chai.
4. Hanging out with Amit, Reema, Barbara,  Kaushal and Priya in Houston. We had a great time with them.

 



Yummy Korean Dinner in Houston

 

5. Trying out new Rachel Ray recipes. I love her 30 minute dinners. This month I have experimented with Orzo and Quinoa and they were both successful
6. Finally deciding that we are not moving out of our Apartment!!! YAY!
7. The weather people in SF predicting snow here, which would have been the first time since 1976. The snow actually never made but it did send some beautiful sunshine!
8. Happy Birthday to my sister Renu (22nd) and her husband Rakesh (15th)
9. Finally going to twin peaks after living in SF for almost a year…
10. A extra day off (President’s day)!!

1. The end to a cold but really fun vacation in Canada.
2. Meeting up with Nihar and his girlfriend who were visiting San Francisco and cat/house-sitting for us
3. Going to Orlando, Florida to run the Disney Half Marathon. It was Sahir’s first half marathon and he did great!!
4. Planning a trip to Austin for Anar’s Baby Shower weekend. So excited to go see everyone again! 
5. Having a few chilled out weekends after a really long time. No travels, no big plans… just enjoying being home and in the city. 
6. While the rest of the country was having snow days left and right, we were fortunate enough to enjoy some really great weather. We have tried to take as much advantage as we can and spend a lot of time outdoors. The SF examiner also called it a “heat-wave” which was 67 degrees! I don’t think they have been to Texas!
7. I got to hang with Maya for a couple of days who was in town for work. It was awesome!!
8. Going vegetarian for a few weeks. This used to be a yearly tradition for us and then for the last couple of years we weren’t able to keep up with it but we started it again and it is a great way to detox.
9. Getting a mani/pedi after a really long time.
10. Flat Stanley coming to visit from San Diego, CA! We took Flat Stanley around San Francisco and took some pictures with him and sent him back to his friend Ricky

I know I am super-duper late with this post, just been really really busy! But hey better late than never right?

So here are the 10 things that made me smile in December -

1. We went to see the Roger Waters concert. This was the BEST concert I have EVER been to! Everything was just amazing.
2. Chiku and I went to see the Black Swan. Natalie Portman has acted really well but I didn’t quite get the movie entirely…. It was fun nonetheless.
3. Sameer and Zejfa came to visit us and we had a great time with them. The weekend was wayyy too short and I wish we all lived closer!
4. Holiday parties galore! Love this time of the year!
5. Chiku and I decided to brave the crowds and go shopping at the outlets the day before Christmas, but it wasn’t bad at all. We shopped and shopped and shopped like crazy! LOVED the amazing deals!
6. Sahir did his final big run before the half marathon – 10 miles right before our vacation! SO proud of him!
7. Meeting up with Hitomi, Tanbir and Maya in NYC. Love mah peeps!
8. Braving the crazy NYC blizzard and making it to our train with Sahir, Shekhar and Lubna. Glad we weren’t flying since all flights out of NY were cancelled but trains were just delayed
9. Our fun vacation in Montreal where Linken came to meet us. After which we headed to Quebec City for a few days. It was the perfect vacation where we probably ate 8 meals a day and slept a good 12 hrs every day
10. A great low key and fun New Years Eve with amazing friends, good music and the PERFECT Shawarma at the end of the night!!
    

    Happy New Year!!!

So… without further adieu… here is the list of 10 things that made me smile in November -

1. My Birthday! Surprise flowers, Happy Hour with my work buddies, Dinner at a WONDERFUL fancy restaurant (Quince), and Lots o gifts…. what’s not to smile about??
2. Our new rug! It looks great, the cats love it and it doesn’t shed! YAY!
3. Vineet visiting us from Dubai. Had a great time hanging out AND discovered a new brunch restaurant – Canteen.
4. Meeting up with Amina after many years. It was really nice to reconnect and catch up!
5. A great trip to Austin complete with amazing friends, tex-mex, bbq and just the warm fuzzy feeling of being home.  
6. Movie Night!! Once every few weeks we get together with our good friends Nik & Chiku, order take-out and watch a movie on netflix. This month we saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It was a creeeeepyyy suspense thriller movie.
7. Earlier when the Giants won the World Series and we were out celebrating, I lost my drivers license. Some good soul (a reporter from the Associated Press) found this and went through the trouble of locating me and dropped it off at my Apt Concierge. A big THANK YOU to him. This proves that San Francisco has nice people too!!
8. Training with Sahir for the upcoming half marathon! It’s really hard to motivate ourselves to run outside in the winter but we are doing it!!
9. Spending Thanksgiving with Nik and Chiku and all the yummy food they cooked for us. Currently NOT smiling about all the extra pounds but we can worry about that in January.
10. Getting a sweet message from Manali for Loy Krathong. We celebrated this beautiful Thai festival last year in Koh Phi Phi, Thailand with Manali and Terry. Can’t believe it’s been a whole year!

So… what did you smile about in November?

1. Sahir’s big 3-0 Celebration!! (No, I’m not cheating, the party with family was in September and the party with friends was in October )
2. Anuj, Anar, Mehlam and Faiza visited us. We had a great time with our Austin family!
3. Running the SF Nike Women’s Marathon. Trisha ran the entire race with me (even though she is much faster than me) AND we crossed the finish line together. It was an amazing feeling! And of course the icing on the cake was the Tiffany’s necklace! See pics here.
4. Visiting my sister Renu and her family in San Diego. Food + naps + games + cuddles + fun = a great relaxing family weekend!
5. I bought a new area rug for our living room. We are still waiting for it to be delivered within the next few days.
6. Going on a mini shopping spree. I hadn’t bought clothes in some time and it was definitely time for me to drop some cash
7. Giants WON the World Series!!!!! Whoo Hoooo!!
8. Signing up for YET another half marathon – The Disney Half Marathon! haha – Yes… it does sound like I’m addicted!
9. Discovering a great Mexican Taco’s place – Papalote.
   I’ve had a hard time finding a good taco place in California. Somehow I can’t get used to corn taco’s and that seems to be the trend in California! But at Paplote – you can get your taco’s in flour tortillas
10. Our upcoming trip to Austin! YAY!!

So what did you smile about in October?

1 – We spent Labor day with Lubna and her brothers in Yosemite National Park. Yosemite is gorgeous! We did 3-4 hikes in the 2 days that we were there and it was just so beautiful and serene.

2 – Manish, Girja, Jai, Prashant and Pavitra visited us. Had a fun fun time with everyone especially little Jai.

3 – I ran my first Half Marathon!!! It was an amazing experience. The last 2 miles were the hardest but Sahir ran them with me so thats what got me through it!

4 – Signing up for the Nike SF Womens half Marathon in Oct! This is the one I originally wanted to do and it was completely sold out but I managed to find my way in. It just goes to prove how far a girl will go for a Tiffany’s necklace  the finishing medal

5 – An impromptu work visit to Minneapolis. I got to see Mall of America and compare it to Mall of Emirates (which is apparently based on the idea of Mall of America). Yea… there is no comparison. MOA is huge and big but MOE beats it hands down!

6 – Sahirs parents came to visit us. We had SUCH an awesome time with them! Shopping, sight-seeing, cooking, gossiping. It’s always so much fun with family. Now the house is so empty I miss them a lot!!! 

7 – Watching the Opera (Aida) with Sahir. Never thought I would understand it, let alone enjoy it! It was beautiful! Definitely want to go to more.

8 – Watching the musical Dreamgirls with Sahirs parents. It was really entertaining and we had a great time.

9 – Celebrating Sahir’s big 3-0! We had a party at home with family and friends and Sahirs mom cooked up a huge feast! (I helped ) We had another party with other friends over the weekend.

10 – Shekhar coming to visit us for Sahir’s big 3-0. It’s always a crazy party with Shekhs!

(Bonus) 11 – Giants going to the Playoffs!!!! YAY! The only thing I dislike about it is that we can NEVER find parking. Oh well… that’s the fun of living in SF

So what did you smile about in September?

1- Getting a haircut! After way too long!

2- Sameer and Zejfa getting a baby kitty – Simba. And boy is he CUTE!

3-Sahir created a video in which he is playing with Stoli and emailed it to Sameer. Sameer then showed this video to Simba and the cutie patootie actually started playing with the computer screen!! It is adorable — Watch here

4-Starting to volunteer with the SF public school.

5-The prospect of the fog going away and summer actually coming to San Francisco!!

6-Running, running and more running.

7-Visiting Chicago and meeting Hitomi after SO long!!! Had SUCH an awesome time!

8 – Playing Apples to Apples with Sumair, Nicki, Hitomi, Sahir and Deepti. What a fun board game!

9 – New job + paychecks  = yummy!!

10- Looking forward to friends and family visiting us in September!! (Sahir’s parents, Lubna, Manish Girja and Jai) YAY! Can’t wait!!

So, what did you smile about this month?

1. - Hiking Mt Tamalpais over the July 4th weekend. It was a fun, sweaty 7 miles with the most gorgeous views complete with a picnic lunch from Whole Foods. Thanks Seema!
2. - Going for the Sf Giants vs NY Mets game. It was fun!
3. Aaron and Vienna visiting us. We had a great time!!
4. - Visiting beautiful Portland and meeting Kanu, Chaddah’s, Manish and Girja. It was lovely meeting them since  we hadn’t seen them all in a really long while.
5. - Volunteering. I started volunteering with my friend Paawan, who is a small business owner. She has a catering business – The Green Corriander (www.greencorriander.com). Please read about it . If you live in San Francisco you can order food from them or stop by for lunch at 22nd and Gurrerro. The food is as close as it gets to delicious indian home-cooking.
6. - Running. Yes, I started running again. I signed myself and Sahir up for a half marathon in September!
7. - Cats. You make me smile every single day with your silly antics, cuddling and meowing.
8. Starting work. After 11 months of chilling! It feels weird but also great to work in San Francisco’s financial district
9. A post-card that I received from NY from my besties Hitomi and Maya. Thanks girls! Miss you tons and can’t wait to see you soon!!!
10. Garmin’s awesome customer service – The GPS that we bought earlier this year in DC stopped working and they are going to send us a new one!

So what did you smile about this month ?

Ten Things to Smile about in June

1 – Shekhar visitng and introducing us to Karaage — Yummy japanese fried chicken!

2 – A quite random last minute trip to Austin, TX and visiting all our dear friends that I miss a lot!

3- Celebrating our 3 yr wedding anniversary in Austin (where it ALL began )

4- Not really happy about falling sick and being out of commission for a week and half but thankful for Sahir taking care of me and COOKING me dinner! (That never happens!) and the boy CAN cook! He’s been lying to me!

5- Getting the iphone… FINALLY!!! It is a must-have in San Francisco! (not kidding!)

6- Cooking up many new dishes this month (Fried Chicken, Keema pulao, Paneer from scratch, Green chutney, Chicken Pad Thai, Tofu Tom Yum Soup, Tofu Chow-Mein, Veggie Quesadilla’s)

7- Finally watching the American cult favorite The Big Lebowski. It was quite funny!

8- Thankful for living in San Francisco especially in the summer where the high is usually 68 degrees as opposed to 100 degrees in Austin!

9- The great location we live in where EVERYTHING we need is literally within a 4 block radius. And anything else is a short bus ride away.

10- Finding a GREAT Japanese curry restaurant (Muracci’s) in San Francisco. It is sooo goood!

(Bonus) 11 – Going for the SF Giants and LA Dodgers game at the ball park. I love baseball games, they are mostly just really fun fun picnics!

So what did you smile about this month?

So its been a LONG time since I penned down my thoughts… I actually went to http://stoli.wordpress.com and was shocked when it said “The authors have deleted this blog” and I thought what the? huh!?! when??!?! and then I realized I put in the wrong address

So what have we been upto??

We spent a month in Incredible India…

Bengaluru
Sahir’s cousins kids

Kochi
In a houseboat

At Kochi Harbour

Watching Kathakkali

Kochi Jew Town, at the restaurant Dal-Roti

Goa(watch out for another blog on this)

Ahmedabad (for a wedding)
The happy bride and groom with us

At the reception

With the families

Mumbai with friends, friends and more friends

Kashmir (Sahir still needs to write a blog post on that)
Sahir with his buddy

Me as Kashmir ki kali

Divia and me with some very hospitable Kashmiris

Gulmarg

Gorgeous Kashmir

Delhi (where Sahir fell seriously ill with food poisoning and had to be admitted to the hospital)
At the Rashtrapati Bhavan

Rohit’s wedding luncheon

In general just being silly

After India, we went to Dubai for Sahirs brother’s wedding which was a TON of fun!
Henna

My 2 yr old niece getting some Henna

The entire family for Nanima’s 75th birthday

After spending some wonderful time in Dubai with both our families, we came back to the US to continue our nomadic lifestyle… and you thought it was over… tsk tsk We stayed in DC for a few weeks, went to Canada for a couple of weeks and then got back to DC where we were snowed in with the biggest snow storm that DC saw in a 100 years! (we had to see the best one right? cant be seeing no itty bitty storms!)

Sahir and Sameer getting ready to shovel the snow

Sahir was excited about this!

Winter Wonderland!

Stolu experiencing snow for the first time in his life…

Currently we are back in Austin enjoying life before moving to Canada. Basically fun on the run!! Somewhere in there I was getting slightly annoyed with everything (you know stuff like not having a home, living out of a suitcase) but then I realized that hey! this is the only time we will actually be all over the place so why not enjoy it!!  So here we are… back to basics in Austin, Texas where we originally started from, with all our wonderful friends but without the cats and I miss them immensely! :-/

So heres a gist of what we have experienced in the last few months

• Reuniting with my baby kitties. For all of you wondering… YES they remembered us
• Driving our car from DC to Toronto and back in a bad bad storm – yea… not a good idea – don’t do it!
• The worst storm in a 100 yrs in DC about 3-4 feet of snow… I felt like I was back in Buffalo
• Being back in Austin… it was a very surreal feeling since I wasn’t expecting to be back so soon.
• Our cats became friends… yea they didn’t really care for each other before but now they cuddle… and it’s so cute!

So all in all its been an exciting couple of months and we still owe a couple more blog posts from our travels but they are on their way… so keep an eye out for them.