An eventful weekend - A year of college, 25 years of marriage, Father's day

This week marks 25 years of our marriage.. the original events happened between 10th June to 16th June.

Everything we did and are doing in this time frame is being called a celebration! I am happy with that. 

We also had the kids finish another year of college and celebrated Father's day!

On Friday both San and me had to take the day off to go vacate the little one from her freshman dorm. Thankfully she goes to live in an apartment with three friends starting next year. 

Given so many schools along the coast all having graduation ceremonies this weekend( as well as dorm vacation deadlines the same weekend), we expected 101 S to be a zoo.. and it was!

Started driving before 5AM, made it to Santa Barbara by 9 AM, got the kids room cleaned out and van loaded in under 2 hours. Most of the time was spent waiting for elevators on a 10 story high rise building where everyone has a cart with stuff loaded and waiting for one of two elevators.  The eleveatorshold two carts and two people max at one time, and serve a gazillion students and parents. 

Then the little one had to go study for her finals. We got her something from Chipotle, dropped her off at the library and had time to kill till she finished her finals. 

The kid suggested we go to Apna kitchen and hang out in State street. So off we went. The food and chai were excellent in this place. We also had some ice cream from a local ice cream place right near the restaurant that was downright yummy (McConnell's) . We still had time to kill.

Gandhiji providing some quality cognitive dissonance... 

There was a movie theater near the restaurant and we decided to sit down in air conditioning for two hours. My legs were killing me after that morning drive and I had to do the entire drive back. San was still recovering from her muscle tear!

We saw a Will Smith movie. I dozed off in the middle of the movie and it was too slow moving for a supposed action flick. Then I got a kick in the ribs right in time to see some action scenes. Apparently she loved it. At least one of us got paisa vasool.

Did I mention that we were the only two people in the theater for the entire movie!!! They ran a movie and trailers just for us!

We left the movie and literally picked up the kid right as she got out of the exam hall and drove back. Had a 20 min stop to eat the tamarind and curd rice that San had made. It tasted so good.. we had to gobble it up and start driving. We made it back by 11PM.

Legs are still recovering from driving 11 hours and walking around all day. That movie was a good decision!

Apna was interesting.. Gandhiji wearing coolers and endorsing beer... Kaliyuga is well and truly here was my thought. The bay area is overrun with "kudigara pappans".. something I tell my wife all the time. It is the times we live in. That is not the topic for this post.. so will leave it at that. The food was great! 

Jr. drove back from Irvine by herself without a stop! Was very worried but happy when she pulled into the driveway. The best 25th anniversary gift is that we are all in one place!

We went to an Italian place (Rollati in downtown San Jose) to celebrate this morning. The little one had scouted this one out. The food was delicious. Ate a full pizza and am in python mode right now as this post is being typed. Strongly recommend this place. Great food and great service! 

After this we decided (San did) to walk around SJSU as she was showing us where she went to school, her library, her cafeteria, where she had her graduation etc. etc. The kids have not seen this nostalgic side of San. Neither have I .. it was fun while it lasted. We did take a "bench photo" at SJSU. 

We wrapped it all up with a dinner at Sri's kitchen. The dinner was simple but great! Also ended up visiting my first ever job location which used to be a walk from this strip mall. The whole place has changed as have we over the years.

It has been a great week of "celebrating". Let's see what the next Quarter has in store for us.. 

In the middle of all this I did work on a collage for my dad to wish him.. not sure if he can see it properly! Pretty much all highlight photos of him (from the photo of his wedding) to the last one we took with him during our visit to Chennai in February on his 85th birthday. 

Spent a lot of time looking at pictures today! If anything, hope my kids keep taking pictures every now and then and store them!

This should go without saying.. but the credit for us rolling on smoothly for the last 25 years completely goes to Sangeetha. I was hired as the #2 employee of Sangeetha Inc. 25 years ago and the small startup has released two successful products and the company is still going strong under her leadership!

I lucked out big time in this birth!