I was walking around in downtown Mumbai and I heard these drums and fireworks, so I had to see what was going on and I came up on this parade going through town. I didn’t know it at the time but there is a 10 day Ganesha festival going on and today was the grand party thing. Anyway, I was watching this parade/party/people just going nuts throwing colored powder and dancing, and I started to take pictures. I wanted to get as close as possible to get some pictures and all of the sudden all of these children came up to me asking me to take their picture. It was really cool, all of these people covered in magenta powder just dancing literally in the middle of the street. I was just taking pictures then a bunch of the crazy magenta colored dancing people started pointing at me and motioning me to come over. I looked around and realized that I was the only white person around and made the “who me?” gesture and they all cheered and motioned more. I walked into the street and I was immediately mobbed by guys, girls, children, adults, all asking me my name and where I was from. They all wanted to shake my hand, like I was famous or something. I was shaking hands, talking to fifty different people at once while all these kids begged me to take their picture. Then this guy came up to me and asked if I dance, so I was like, “sure” and so he grabbed my hand and brought me into the middle of the street, threw a bunch of magenta powder on me and we all started dancing to the drums that were being played. It was crazy, there were these open trucks carrying a bunch of people just throwing colored powder, beating drums, laughing, and dancing. I kept getting pulled in fifty different directions by all of these people wanting to show me stuff. I got pulled into a huge room with a huge statue of Ganesha there and they wanted me to take a picture, so I did. Then they ran me over to this truck with a little Ganesha statue that had a plate of cake on it, and they handed me a handfull of cake to eat (it was good, that Ganesha sure can make a cake). I really am not describing it that well, it was just amazing. Everyone was so nice and just wanted me to take their picture or shake their hand. I have never hugged, hand shaked, and introduced myself so much.

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Traveling for Thanksgiving is not something everyone will be doing this year. The gas prices are soaring again and the plane tickets are overly priced. I tried to get the money together just to travel to Oklahoma and back and with the gas to get down there and the gas to drive around up there and then get back the dollar signs were soon getting larger than they had been.  I tried to make a budget to get to Oklahoma and back and use it to the best of my ability but the budget was beginning to bust. I don’t understand why I was the one nominated since the family in Oklahoma has no issues with money. So I tried to re do the budget and still get up there but the harder I try to stretch our money just for gas to get up there it still isn’t working. We would still have to get a motel to stay somewhere and have food for the entire weekend. I tried explaining this to my husband and of course he wants me to find a way because it is his family. I don’t understand why he isn’t getting the fact that a dollar can only stretch so far. However my budget revision will continue the rest of the night until tomorrow morning and we will decide Thanksgiving Eve whether we will be going or not

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West Texas is for the birds. Seriously. I hate living here. I was born in Houston then raised in Dallas, both beautiful places to live if you ask me. A lot of people loathe Houston but I’ve always thought it was pretty neat. When I was 14, we moved to Hamilton, Texas. Just on the outskirts of the hill country, green pastures, remarkable wildlife… It seems like the only wildlife I see around here are my neighbor’s ugly dogs. Hamilton is gorgeous. There are trees as far as you can see and little creeks that run through the acres and acres of green. Sometimes I feel like I’m not even in Texas when I’m here in Lubbock. It’s so flat and dry. Even in the summer, there’s hardly any green to be seen. There is a huge meat processing plant outside the city limits. Because of this, when it rains or when the wind is blowing really hard, half of Lubbock smells like a damn cow turd. Have you ever heard of such a thing? There are also these horrible dust storms that can hit an any given time. Lubbock is so damn flat that there is nothing to block the wind. I’ve never seen anything like it. The sky turns brown, literally. It’s absolutely disguising. You can’t see anything and your car is instantly a complete mess. Lubbock is hours and hours away from anywhere and pretty much in the middle of nowhere. If you have a choice, don’t move here!

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