min-myinnersoul

To my generation, Nipper is an old treasured friend. Nipper is the dog you see on that immortal brand logo of His Master's Voice, better known as HMV. Most of us , in the good old days, owned a HMV Radio and certainly bought a few HMV records - or at least one or two, for the money would stretch only so much those days. In India, until Television really came to the country along with the Asian Games of 1982, HMV radio was the prime entertainment medium of the land. HMV has now gone into receivership and , I'm afraid Nipper will now be consigned to a dusty shelf in some museum. Nipper, was Mark Barraud's dog and lived in the late 1800s in Bristol in England. On his death, a sorrowful Barnard painted the famous picture of Nipper listening to a gramophone with a puzzled expression and sold it to the Gramophone company. A marketing genius there called William Owen made it the logo of the business and thus was the immortal His Master's Voice born. The Gramophone Company star...

My state is coming into election time. The politics of it - who will win; who will lose, etc is beyond the purview of this blog. But this blog will certainly muse on the economics behind it. I am foxed as to why anybody wants to stand for any election - for the economics behind this is akin to a Las Vegas casino. On a conservative estimate, each candidate would spend about Rs 15 crores in each assembly seat ( see this speech as evidence of such numbers). More than three quarters of it is not for campaigning, but to bribe the voters (shame on you and me). Traditionally it used to be just cash and liquor.  But apparently now even water drums, watches, sarees and T shirts feature, as evidenced by this photograph and this article from The Hindu today. The number of assembly constituencies in Karnataka is 224. There are four political formations in the fray. So that makes for 900 serious candidates. At Rs 15 crores per candidate, that amounts to an expenditure of Rs 13,500 crores ....

Barbarians at the Gate is the name of the scintillating book that detailed the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco in the mid 1980s. It was made into a movie as well and for a long time it was the biggest M&A transaction in the world. I strongly recommend the book, if you have an interest in business. ( or if you like thrillers !)   Take 2 seems to be happening in the goings on with Dell . The resemblance to what happened with RJR Nabisco is uncanny.   The Dell story started with Michael Dell, the founder teaming up with Silver Lake, a private equity firm,  and announcing a bid to take Dell private at $13.65 a share (a 25% premium over the closing price of $ 10.88 prior to this announcement). When rumours of this started to surface in January, people thought it was not a doable deal. Dell after all is a struggling PC maker in an industry which is declining with the onslaught of tablets. In any case its a fiercely competitive and somewhat commoditized industry. Whoev...

I am finally pulling out a few Easter decorations. Slim pickin's this year. Since these decorations are only out for 1 week, I decided to go with the "less is more" approach. The Happy Easter printable can be found  here  My mother-in-law gave me these little ceramic bunnies a few years ago. They're so sweet.    They look so solemn though, don't they? Maybe they're sad that they only get to stay out of the attic for only a week..poor things:o) We have Spring Break next week, and I am looking forward to sleeping in and spending some good quality time with my kiddos.  Have a great rest of the weekend!

We are saying a prayer of thanks today. S.R. seems to have made it through this dreaded flu business. So far, no one else is showing signs of catching it. Keeping our fingers crossed;o) Since we haven't been able to leave the house, I have been working diligently on her new bedding. I finished the scallops on her quilt yesterday. Now I am waiting on the rest of the fabric to arrive so that I can complete the quilt. I am a tad bit nervous about the actual quilting bit. It may take me a few days before I can muster up the nerve to tackle that:o) I have a ton of fabric scraps leftover, so I decided to make good use of them and turn them into pillows. I have never spent this much time on one pillow, and I will have to say that I am pretty proud of the results.  I hate any form of hand stitching, but after seeing this mermaid pillow, I knew that there might be some hand stitchery in my future:o) (source) While I was piecing the scallops together, I kept thinking that the littl...

It's the first day of Spring!! I'm so excited!!!  I'm ready for flowers, outdoor play and all the fun things that go along with warmer weather. Right now we're stuck indoors. S.R. has the flu. Hopefully she's on the mend. It's been a rough couple of days.  If you follow along on Facebook, you know that I have finally started piecing her  quilt  together. It's coming along very nicely. I have just a few more rows to finish, and then I wait for the rest of the fabric to come in the mail. I have been doing some spring cleaning as well. It's amazing what you get accomplished when you are forced to slow down:o)  I realized that there are a few rooms in the house that I have made changes to, but never shared them with you guys. E's room got a mini makeover a few months ago. You can see before pictures  here . The position of the bed and the bedding were the main things we changed. We switched it to a Star Wars theme...The bedding is from Target. The Death ...

Tragedies are usually associated with Greece - a tribute to the richness of its theatre in the 5th Century BC. Over the weekend, you could be forgiven if you changed your tastes to a Cypriot tragedy. For that's exactly what has happened - albeit in the more prosaic world of economics.   These are the facts. Cyprus is another Eurozone country in deep trouble. It needed a bailout. So far, nothing unusual. A bailout was duly announced over the weekend. It was the terms of the bailout that sent a jolt reverberating through the world of economics. The EU is bailing them by about €13 bn (chickenfeed by the standards of bailout). But the conditions of the bailout are that all bank depositors would be levied a tax of between 6.75% and 9.9%. That means on Tuesday when banks opened, all depositors would lose that amount instantaneously.   The genesis of the problem is, alas, not new. Cyprus is a very small country. In boom times, it went berserk pushing its financial industry, positioni...

This year the hubs and I coached E's Upward Basketball team. It was filled with lots of surprises, and it was a lot of hard work, but all 5 boys seemed to have a great time playing. We had the awards night this week, and I wanted to give them something special. I'm not a fan of trophies, and at this age, the trophies usually are broken to bits within the first few days of receiving them. After our very last game, I got a candid shot of the boys.  I decided that I would make picture frames for the boys as their gift. I found all of the items at Hobby Lobby. -Picture Frame -Purple Spray Paint -Wooden Basketball Cut-out -Hot Glue Gun(had on hand) I laid the frames(minus the glass and backing) on a cardboard box outside where there was plenty of ventilation.   I sprayed 3 coats of purple Krylon paint on the frames..waiting 10 minutes between each coat. Once they were dry, I glued the little basketball guy to the corner of the frame making sure not to let it hang too low across the...

Everybody wears glasses. Figuratively, if not literally. We view the world through the prism of our biases and values. That is all fine. But what I cannot fathom is why this is rose tinted. We think of the past as some long lost Utopia. Notice , how often the phrase "good old days" is bandied about. Certainly old, but good ??? I suggest not. The past is actually closer to hell than heaven. After all we have "progressed" ; haven't we ? So progress must equate to betterment. So, why the rose tint ? Nowhere is this more evident than in US politics. Everybody waxes eloquently about the founding fathers and swears by the Constitution that was written a few hundred years ago. The founding fathers have been elevated to sainthood. Balderdash. They were as roguish as the present lot. They had slaves and it was perfectly OK to shoot a fellow Senator. The Second Amendment begins as "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State ...... ...

We celebrated S.R's birthday over the weekend in fun fairy fashion. All of the girls seemed to have a fabulous time with the fairy jewel hunt, the impromptu dance party and the goodies to snack on. Everything came together like it always does...at the last minute when I feel as if I will collapse at any second:o)   The invitations. pardon the white-outs...we all like just a tad bit of privacy:o)  I usually email invitations, but this time I decided to print the invitations and mail them.  I thought the  fairy digital clip art  was adorable. All of the girls were to come dressed in their "fairy best". S.R. wanted me to make her a Queen Clarion costume. I used the  Charlotte Apron dress  as my base and built on top of that. It was a pretty quick sew, even with all of the extra details.  And yes, that is snow falling in the background...it very rarely snows here, so we had to grab a quick shot outside. S.R. was a trooper, though, because she was free...

Today is a special sort of day. It's the day we welcomed the sweetest little girl you'll ever meet into our hearts. Today, she is 5.  It's hard to believe that 5 years ago she looked like this...and please tell me, how did the time fly by so quickly? I can't believe how much she has changed in just a few short years.  Here she is at 1...   at 2....  at 3...  at 4...  and now at 5. This child always has a smile on her face and a song on her heart.  I love that every where her little feet take her, they're skipping all the way, with that wild mess of curls swishing back and forth.  She has a wit that takes everyone by surprise, and makes us all laugh. She lights up a room where ever she goes, and has the kindest, sweetest soul. But along with that sweetness comes a lot of spunk. I love her just the way she is! I'm so glad that God chose her to complete our little family. Happy Birthday my sweet angel!