Random thoughts on a Monday morning...

What is so sad about a Monday morning?

Assuming one sleeps an average 8 hours a night, 30% of the week is spent in sleep. In the remaining 70%, hardly 24% is spent at work. In a whole week of a little more than what we sleep is spent at work.

Come Friday, most of our emotions peak looking forward to the weekend. When it is Saturday evening already, and we think, "Wow! What did we do the whole day?". Sunday morning, a mournful one. Somehow seems like that last day on Earth. We clutch desperately to our sheets and comforters, like there's no tomorrow. Then comes a very sad Sunday evening, haunted with memories of sad and tragic movies, that relive in our minds for no obvious reason. And then there is that dreaded Monday morning again.

Week after week, the Fridays keep giving us hope and the Mondays keep letting us down. With everything about this being so predictable, why do we still let ourselves be deceived by the hope for a longer weekend? Hoping the weekday never begins...

All this on a Monday morning, at a light that would just simply refuse to turn green. Maybe, it was feeling blue too!

I looked around me. On both the lanes by my side were sad faces reflecting my same thoughts, no matter how interetsing their jobs, sipping away their coffee, hoping the caffeine could wake their spirits, wishing, wishing, and wishing...

The signal just turned green and the row of wheels inched ahead, and right when I was close to the intersection, it turned red again. Well, a little happiness, a few more minutes.

Monday morning...The only time a traffic jam seems to be a bliss.

Thanksgiving '05 in Death Valley

Raj and I took a few days off work this November and made it a very 'long' weekend. Our tour started off with Death Valley in CA/NV, the most natural place of great extremes, then to Las Vegas, the most unnatural place of great extremes, then a short rendezvous with some friends in Southern CA.

An amazing creation of nature-Death Valley. Walk a few miles from Stovepipe Wells and you see the most unusual formation of rocks and canyon. The Mosaic Canyon is being continually formed and polished and changed by the forces of nature.







A few miles from here, we walked up to the Sand Dunes. Interesting ever-changing formations created by the weakened winds that drop the dust and sand they carry at this point. Here, a successful panorama attempt with my prided Nikon.


I guess because of the time of the year, we did not get to see a single bloom. The only natural inhabitant we could spot was this scrawny fox Angry at the touristy invasion of humans, he would not stand still for me capture him on a full frame.


After a few touristy breezing stops at Devil's Golf Course, Natural Bridge and Artist's palette, we came to Bad Water Lake.
Why Bad Water? 'Cause it is very salty...infact these days there is more salt than water. Also this is the lowest point below sea level in the Americas. Another panorama...

That pretty much covers our Death Valley trip. But the highlight was the night under the stars in StovePipe Wells. Heavily blanketed and lying comfortably against the trunk of out rented Saturn, we watched an amazingly cloudless night sky. I could not photograph the stars, but the picture is in my head. Clearly the night finds its way up as the top most romantic times. We managed to catch a glimpse of a couple of cosmic dirt shooting by, and made our secret wishes.

We wanted to lie there forever, but the cruel winter managed to make us shiver up to our roots...just giving us about 45 mins to savor the beauty of it, 45 mins to ponder the purpose of our existance, to form a new respect for the magnificence of the universe, to analyze our relative perspective of material needs...

And then get ready for some Poker in Las Vegas:)

More Death Valley pictures here.