When everything goes wrong........

Last week I had two experiences that have made me believe that some of the days everything that you do goes wrong.....

On sunday, Sindhu and I had invited some friends over for dinner but being brilliant at time management we had committed to a couple of friends that we will go to a telugu movie "Athadu" with them in Cleveland. Sindhu, poor thing, got up at 7 AM on sunday and started cooking so we can finish most of the cooking but afternoon and go watch the movie...I too got up at 8 AM with some help from the alarm...I jumped in straight away after a cup of coffee...we cooked for most part of the morning till 10:15 when my friend called and said that he wanted to go to the temple too so we will have to leave by 11:15...by that time we had finished Palak Paneer, Carrot Soup, Kofta Curry (Partly)....so we showered and went to the temple and watched the movie and came back and jumped straight back into cooking...we made fried rice (different recipe this time)...Sindhu wanted to make Gobi Manchurian (she is an expert at that)....when she started with that we realized that we were out of corn starch... and in the mean time I was getting hungry as I had very little to eat from the morning...how ironic ??? i was cooking since morning and I never had a chance to eat...I didnt want to eat the stuff that we were cooking so decided to make a sandwich...first of all the fridge wasnt working well...so the patty wasnt frozen so I wasnt sure if it will taste good...wanted to make it as usual in the microwave.. but that was being used tothe Gobi stuff...so decided to heat it on the stove...in the mean time I put some bread in the toaster....the patty got burnt and so did the toast so I could eat that and threw it away (I hate throwing away food)...thought will have some rusk....but took a bite and realized that it had softened up...grrrrr....tasted aweful...I was getting hungry by the minute...then Sindhu said that we were out of corn flour which is an essential ingredient for Gobi Machurian (GM)...so I went to the indian store hoping to find it there....but there was no luck....so came back but by then Sindhu had furthered her preparation so I had to think of an alternative so went to the closest grocery store....I could find corn starch for 15 mins...I found everything that could be made out of corn but not the one that I wanted...finally made it back and we finished cooking just in time when my friends arrived...luckily they had volunteered to get dessert else we would have been in a fix:):)

Episode two:

I had a grant submission today and I was asked to write the grant abt 72 hrs before the deadline !!!! Normal time for grant preparation is 2-3 months for making up a good grant and more over this waa my first major grant ever and I was to do it from scratch to finish with no reference to prior grant applications.....I went abt the task like a maniac....i wrked abt 12-14 hrs a day on the grant and was on the verge of going insane when I found out that I was going to miss the deadline as the signed cover letter had to reach Atlanta by thursday at 5PM....and it was 2 AM on thursday when I found that out....this was about the time I almost finished with the grant proposal....my world was just about to draw a blank but I decided to call them this morning and to my relief they said that it can be electronically submitted today and the letter can be mailed by the next day....got one day's extension...that was all i wanted...now I had to get the signatures from all the people involved in the project which is a big deal as I am dealing with residents and surgeons that are hard to catch hold of....and on top of that my advisor had not given me his CV which was essential as he is the Principal Investigator (I not being a citizen cannot be a PI)....the signature page doesnt come up till all the documents are electronically submitted !!!! great...i had to wait till 3:35 pm for my advisor's CV as he was in meeting constantly and had some other things to do....he gave me the CV finally but with some corrections that I had to make great!!!!!! then I printed the thing out ran over to the OR and got the resident's signature....had to wait for him to finish his surgeryand I didnt have much time left...then i noticed that the grant application needed some official's sign too !!!!!! so I made a couple of calls and got to the person who had to sign on that and went to him..he was very very co-operative and signed it immediately...now I had to FedEx the letter in next day shipping and I wasnt aware of the ;last pick time for next day air...so borrowed my advisor's car and went to FedEx...according to Murphy's law....there was lots of traffic and when I got there, there was a line....some printer was down so they were fixing it, finally the line moved....and when it was my turn the weighing machine had some issues and then the credit card receipt printer went out of paper !!!!! great !!!! everything happpening at the worng time...then finally I pay and get out...there is big traffic jam and it delayed me till 4:40 pm to get back....then finally I got on to my PC and put everything together anc hit the submit button at 4:50pm....ten minutes before the deadline.....now that I had such an adventure for this grant I will be very very happy even if it is partially accepted.

Episode 3:

I will make it short....

wednesday evening...wanted to heat up the boiled eggs....put them in the micro wave.. and started making masala for Kootu...and also put some dal to boil and was cutting eggplant... all this was being done simultaneously so i can go and play badminton....I forgot abt the eggs and I had a mini explosion in the microwave...I had to clean all that up and in the mean time...the masala got burnt....and then for some reason the dal got burnt too....then I started grinding the masala and found that it wasnt getting ground in the Grinder....so put some peas and water to elevate the level of the paste to that of the blades so they can grind the masala....but it turned out to be a disaster as the peas had gone bad due to the non-functional freezer...had to throw that away....I settled for plain dal with tadka (dal was what I could salvage from the burnt vessel) and eggplant...