Last Thursday I had the most amazing BBQ of my life. It’s one of those things that just accidentally happens. I was in a hurry and didn’t measure out any of the spices… just threw things together, and it came out a scrumptious delectable work of art.

I tried again Sunday to duplicate and measure, but fell far short of this one time anomaly.

Little Atharv from Pune, is our adopted son to be. We will have more photos to post in the near future, and actually can’t wait. We still have to wait for his international clearance so our excitement is tempered with caution. Even though there is only a .0001 percent chance that things could fall through. Once it is 100% official we will start getting furniture/toys and clothes and wait.

1. After cutting green chili peppers, wash hands BEFORE touching anything else… like going to the bathroom.

2. Certain soaps and green chili together seem to react and become hotter.

3. Don’t tell the wife, her laughter only makes it worse.

Just slightly over 5 years ago I said to my then boss, Mark, “Yeah, I’m going to start my own business so I can have more free time for my side projects.” That began the most intense laughter I had ever spawned with a solitary comment, and if I had to guess he is still chuckling on a daily basis. I in fact have to concede that it may have been the single most ignorant phrase to ever come out of my mouth. Every morning I wake up and try and peel myself out of bed in a timely fashion to begin the monotonous routine that I have done seven days a week for the last five years… I hear hear Mark’s laughter echoing in my head, shattering the imagery of what I thought self employment would bring to my life.

After five years, Aubrey and I have built something pretty special and invested in our future. Someday it all pay off with perhaps a two week vacation, which I will utilize to do yet more work.

Right now we have the daily grind of the 9 to 5 retail blues, with the added responsibility of an online e-commerce site that accounts for about 20% of our day. Tack on to that the 4 other domains under my care, soon to be 5. All of which require blogging, social networking, marketing, graphics design, press releases tweeting (Still not sure I fully understand the value of this).

It may be time to hire out some of the burden, so I can take time to breathe.

I have always had a pension for advertising, from retro to modern. There has always been an appealing allure, and a symphonic construct of ideas grabbing focus on a page, television or billboard. Now having a retail business it means so much more to me. It simply is amazing that any human being including myself can be subliminally induced into buying a particular product, usually the most inferior of it’s kind, simply due to packaging aesthetics, or funny / clever ad. Here are some I found amusing from the past couple of years. Some subtle, and some not so subtle…

Step 7: Garnish and serve
Place the chicken on a serving dish, decorate with coriander leaves and serve.

Once again I am going to attempt a new blog. This time I am letting Wordpress handle the code, and I will do the rest. After attempting my own blog coding and getting frustrated by absence of time, energy and general unhappiness for what I was achieving… I finally gave in to the power of 3rd party software. Why spend time fidgeting with something that doesn’t make money? So here goes…