>if the tower's a-rockin', don't come a-knockin'

but seriously, to explain... emma and i climbed the TV tower thing the other day and when we got to the top, it was swaying like a mofo. rickity indian quality or fatman hitting it's harmonic from climbing it, i don't know, but it was shaking. had there been anyone at the bottom to "knock" on it, i believe it could've come down. it was a little unnerving at first, but i forced my head to believe it was safe. ended up, it was a really cool view, and emma practiced her spitting. being an iowa farm-girl, i expected more from her, still she is slowly improving. but anyways... for some reason, we decided to go on our reconnaisance mission around the hotel barefoot. brilliant. i'm pulling my husky++ frame up this tall, tall tower in barefeet. i'm WAY too heavy to do ladders in barefeet. the the load limit on my feet is way lower than 250lbs/(surface area of bare foot on ladder rung) psi. it hurt on the way up and it hurt at least twice as much on the way down. googly. on the way down it was more hanging and touching a rung briefly enough to grab the next rung with my hand. i had to take a few breaks on the way down so i didn't just give up and drop down (that would've been messy). the next day i was wrecked. the balls of my feet=wicked sore, shoulders were all tight and achy. i think i'm super-tarded. it was really fun, but i paid the price up until about yesterday. i'm just about back to pre-antenna-climbing form.

in other news, it's been cloudy for at least the past 72 hours. it is great. gloomy and cooler and it's been raining i'd say 70-80% of the time too. my kinda weather. it's been raining most of the morning as well today. the site is muddy as balls which is also fun. two days ago, i was walking out of the turbine building (and by turbine building, i mean open-sided tin shanty that leaks like an horny nympho on a 3-day bender) with the customer's labor supervisor, saw a mud puddle and jumped in it full on, intentionally dousing us both. it was grand fun. he said i reminded him of his little boys... even when they are dressed up nice for weddings they always find a mud puddle to jump in. ah, i'll never grow up.

i'm looking for the 'six feet under' opening screen with the lone tree on the hill. i think that would be a cool wallpaper if i could grey the sky out a bit. but i can't find one big enough to stretch to wallpaper size without pixelating. blast it. or i guess any lone tree on a hill would work, i'll look for that too. anyways...

we went to ramesh's for dinner wednesday night. i got something called a loongi from ramesh. i call it a man-skirt. the material is nice and light, the pattern looks like the towels you see sometimes in the restaurant washrooms. i'm not dissing it at all, i really do like it (thanks ramesh). it is pretty cool. i might wear it sometime i suppose. i can put it on like in the picture, and then fold it up and tie again to get some breeze going on. you wrap it like a bath towel. i'm not sure if they wear it scotland-style. i get stared at enough already. if i wore that i think there would be lots of stares and accompanying laughter. here's a pic of me in my loongi and emma in her saree (small adjustments by ramesh's wife srivani), with her new bindi and glass bangles. here is a picture of ramesh's lovely wife, srivani, and julia all indian-ed up.

we were invited to have a typical south indian dinner. south indians eat their meal on a banana leaf. this  is a typical layout (propz to emma's microsoft paint editing skillz, i was just lazy, so i used hers). it is quite a procedure. you have to mix stuff with other stuff and there are oils and butters and curries, etc. it was interesting and we ate with our hands. i ate with my hands the first time we were there just to be a goof. there was a special part to this meal since the day we were invited over was a holiday for their lord ganesh (he has another name, buti only remember this one). ganesh is an elephant-headed god. i forget what of. check it out in Wikipedia  if you would like to know more. apparently ganesh likes the special thing we had, so we eat it instead so he can't have any. dunno.  the meal was excellent.  srivani is an excellent cook.  it was completely vegetarian, but  wasn't jonesin' for meat afterwards.  all the rice and tamarind rice fills you up good and full, i REALLY liked the gherkin curry.  it was a great experience and i thank both of them for the invitation.

hopefully i get tomorrow off, i need some ME time