Adventures of the week

Seriously this was a pretty eventful week for me. Ok, first apologies for disappearing for few days though there was no dearth of topics to write on...I was just being lazy.

Anyway, so my week included a snake, the fire, identity thefts, phishing and breaking wooden boards. Too much, you say? Listen to my past few days and you would know how each day was more exciting than the other.

It all started two days back, on Thursday when I went for a run. Nah, it started before that when on Thursday morning I decided to bike to work. I used to bike to work before I joined Karate. But since Karate classes go late in night and I am usually starving after them, I started taking my car to office. Since I am in conservation mood, I have stopped driving altogether, so I decided to start biking again. Anyway, so I biked to office which is approximately 7 miles from my home. Since I biked after a long time, I was tired by the time I reached office, even though I loved it. I realized how much I miss biking.

Anyway, so I was a bit doubtful about going for a run since I was so very tired already. But anyhow, I decided to go for it and thats when it happened. There was another runner before me. He kind of stopped and start staring on the ground. I look down on the ground and see nothing. I continue running and since he had stopped and gazing at the ground too intently, I looked back and then I saw it. A brown snake slithering through exactly same spot where my feet were. I stopped dead on my track. The snake camouflaged pretty nicely with the ground. Unless you are looking from the other sied you can't see it. Anyway, so this stupid runner, who spotted him first (who should have warned me that there is a snake on ground) tried putting his foot on his tail. the snake slithered faster towards the grass. But this idiot can't let it go. He now tried to pick the snake up by his tail or something. Don't ask me why. Thankfully the snake was too quick for him and he disappeared in the grass. But honestly, don't people have an ounce of common sense? I spent my entire run cursing him.

The second part of adventure began at home. Though I was tired after biking 14 miles and running a mile, I still wanted to try out the new Cheese (Paneer) chili recipe, I found on internet. So I started by getting everything ready. Put the pot on the stove. It got a bit more hot than I intended it to be but still I put oil in it. Exact that moment I realized that I haven't put on the exhaust fan (which happens to be on top of the stove). So I turn that on and BOOM. There are flames inside the pot!! Honestly nice big flames. Actual fire. I was scared. I didn't know whether lifting that pot and putting it in the sink was a good idea or not but I did it. Next challenge came to turn on the tap as the flames were pretty high. I somehow plucked some courage and turned the tap on. The flame went off. Thankfully I didn't burn myself during the entire incident and I did make the Cheese chili later on and it turned out to be pretty good recipe.

Coming to Identity theft now which happened yesterday. An official Stanford laptop was stolen from campus which had personnel information including the social security number. So the university sent all of us emails regarding that. Don't ask me all the details but I ended up having all my credit cards, ATM card blocked and a fraud alert is issued on my account. But this means, I don't have any way to spend money now. Banks are closed on weekend so I can;t withdraw cash either. Plus I need to travel to Bakersfield in less than 2 weeks. I am not sure I will get any of the credit card till then and its so dangerous for a woman to travel alone with luggage and cash. God help me... (Figuratively speaking, I am still an agnostic)

And finally today morning I broke two wooden boards by hand. Honestly I was scared before we started. The boards were pretty thick and I wasn't sure if I had enough strength to break them. It wasn't hard actually except while breaking my first board, the angle of my hand was slightly off so I ended up hitting my wrist bone slightly. So I refrained from breaking more boards or try breaking the brick. My right hand is pretty sore at the moment but I am glad I did it. Its such a boost for my confidence. I also attempted breaking the board by my elbow but couldn't. And that hurts badly. You know, the rule of breaking the board is that you need to go all the way through. If you don't break the board and just bounce off the surface, it hurts like hell. It doesn't hurt at all (unless your point of contact is wrong, like my poor wrist bone) if you successfully break the board.

Ok. Now let me get back to nursing my wrist and my elbow. Have a great weekend...