Monday, August 31, 2009

running late, missed the train, everything is dropping

remember this morning when i was talking about feeding my amazon addiction?? well heres the story of how the day went spiralling down out of control after that (it eventually climbed back up, but thats beyond the point).

so to start it off, it was almost eleven. i was sitting in my bed in my pajamas facebooking. my dad came in and asked what my schedule was like for the semester. this was the zillionth time i have looked at my schedule over the summer (mainly the past few days) so i pretty much knew it by heart. i get halfway through and think, wait a minute... thats only four classes. i know i registered for five. i go back to the schedule i had just looked at and see 'Monday 1:30 IT 441 Prince William.' this class was bad luck.*

of course i panic because i have to shower, get dressed, and all that stuff (which takes around half an hour), go to fairfax campus to drop off anisah (which takes around 25 minutes), park (which can take anywhere from 5-45 minutes) take the shuttle to prince william (which takes about an hour), and get to class. i was also supposed to buy a parking permit since mine expired today.

so i take the world's fastest shower (the water heater wasnt turned on until i was practically getting out) and, shivering like crazy, put on the first clothes my hand touched. i throw my wallet and keys into my empty school bag and ran downstairs. halfway down, i remember my older sister had my car keys (they were given to her before we left for the summer "in case of an emergency") so i ask my parents for their keys (actually i stood on the stairs and called out that i needed keyes asap) and finally start to school. of course, the tires are making weird clicking sounds because theyve been locked for so long or something (my dad explained it, i nodded and took the keys) and they changed around the roads around campus. they closed the one i usually took and opened new ones. slightly confusing. i get to campus, find parking in the new parking deck which was awesome luck and go to the shuttle stop, only it's not the shuttle stop anymore. they got new shuttle stops too and closed some of the old ones. so i eventually find the shuttle stop and get on the bus. but even though i now no longer have anything to panic about, i cant get rid of the feeling that im running late. i hate it when that happens.

*the class is/was bad luck. i almost didnt register for it (i was registered for a security class instead) but at the last minute realized i needed another networking class to graduate and so had to drop my security class and register for this one. it was the only one that even barely fit into my schedule. it turned out to not be so bad (lectures are all recorded and put online "in case we cant make it to a lecture." i see myself not making a lot of lectures), and there are actually 4 girls in it (out of a class of 15)! thats a lot for an IT class.

*Running - David Archuleta

i am at a loss for words here

because laziness is my middle name and my morals have nothing against shamelessy stealing from other blogs and passing it off as my own stuff, enjoy these:

learn sarcasm, because without it, you and your life suck.


two girls were catching a cab when a guy approached them. they talked for less than two minutes and one girl gave him her business card to call her. here are his messages.



okay so maybe i cant steal stuff as easily as i thought. the first clip was taken from here and the second from here.

*Dutch Courage - The Spill Canvas

with a dreamy far off look, and her nose stuck in a book

where do you turn when your vacation has suddenly come to an end, school is suddenly staring you straight in the face, it's cold (relatively speaking... i'm used to the desert), and you really wish you could just jump back into last month??

amazon of course!

since i had decided not buy any books from amazon until the semester is over (i have a pile of borrowed books from people i really have to get through), i limited myself to 6 books. actually, there were 7 but i accidentally cancelled one (dont ask how) and considered it a sign from god. some of the books dont even count as going against my decision since they're not really book books, some have been in my shopping cart forever, and i needed something to look forward to so dont judge my amazon addiction.

heres what i bought:

Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games)
By: Suzanne Collins

F U, Penguin: Telling Cute Animals What's What
By: Matthew Gasteier

The Song Is You: A Novel
By: Arthur Phillips

Water for Elephants: A Novel
By: Sara Gruen

Well Enough Alone: A Cultural History of My Hypochondria
By: Jennifer Traig

Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood
By: Jennifer Traig

so i will be obsessively checking my order's status in hopes that it arrives early, while at the same time kinda hoping it doesnt so i can read the people's books and get them back to them. school is not fitting into my plans forthis semester. oh well.

and in case you're a little dense this morning, i'm back in the states.

*Belle - Beauty and the Beast Soundtrack

Saturday, August 29, 2009

all my bags are packed i'm ready to go...

thats a lie. i'm so far from ready that ready is a tiny dot on the horizon i need binoculars to see.

my wash needs to finish so i can finish off my bag, the house needs to be cleaned, and we need to see the zillion people here to say bye. since we're leaving midramadan, everything is screwed up. usually we have all day to clean and pack and everything and then at night we'll all get together for dinner and sit with each other all night till we leave. with messed up work schedules and stuff, this cant happen.

i wake up at 9:30, do my cyber stuff for an hour, then start the super thorough clean of the house. since we're leaving it for a year mostly empty, it needs to be hospital clean when we leave. even then, it's slightly gross when we get back. at about 12, my uncle calls. he wants to come over to say bye from now. okay, he usually only stays for an hour. while he's here, my cousin and his two kids come. then, my other uncle and his whole family comes. my cousin leaves. it's now around 3, and i realize i have a wash to do. i slip out of the room and start it. i sit with everyone for a while and then sneak in to my room to at least give it a quick clean in case i dont get back to it. now it's almost 5:30 and everyone just left. and we're leaving to another uncle's house pretty soon to break our fast. we wont be back until after 11 at the very earliest, and thats pretty impossible.

instead of doing what i can while we're here, i'm blogging.

tonight is gonna be crazy.

*UPDATE*

it's 1 am and we just got home. my bag is packed but too heavy (it wouldnt be if my parents didnt stuff it with their pointless stuff we dont need to bring and then blame it on my clothes after i ended up leaving a bunch because i couldnt get them to fit). i got sick from my brother who cant seem to master the whole dont-freakin-cough-or-sneeze-or-breathe-on-people thing. my throat is swollen and my head is throbbing fit to burst. i have an obnoxious mosquito bite on my foot from my aunt's house along with a cut that suddenly appeared out of nowhere. im living off of barely any sleep because i woke up early to get everything done which obviously didnt work out too well. and im in an all around pissy mood.

this flight is gonna be great. *rolls eyes*

*Leaving on a Jet Plane - Chantal Kreviazuk

Friday, August 28, 2009

what do you think of me? are you quite proud of this make-believe

despite what you say, you dont love me - not the real me. you cant. because you never got to know me. i didnt let you. so instead you made a pretty picture of me and locked it up in your heart where no one could spoil it, no one could change it, no one could stain it with the bleeding touch of reality. not even me. not even you. you fell in love with the idea of being in love, with the idea of someone being in love with you. you needed someone to be there for you always. you needed a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on. so you took my picture and made it be what you needed. it couldve been anyone, but it was me. you needed me to have no needs of my own, so you imagined i didnt. you are deaf to what i say, you are blind to what i do. saying i love you doesnt make it true. you can stop trying to prove anything to me, because i stopped caring. you suffocated me with the smothering image of what you wanted me to be, and all your dreams about the future cant revive me. dont grieve over me because despite what you say, you don't love me.

*So Damn Beautiful - Polaroid

driving slow on sunday morning and i never want to leave

it is 12:55 pm jeddah time on friday. do you know what that means? it means there are less than two days left of this vacation. 8:00 sunday morning, i will be watching the desert fall away as the plane (which i've been told has gone on a diet and gotten smaller and more squished) begins the 12 hour flight back to america. sad, isnt it?? kinda scary how three months can fly by so completely unnoticed.

you know what's even scarier, though?? the fact that monday (yes, the day after we arrive) school starts up again. and along with the normal college drudgeries to look forward to, i have part two of my senior design class. before the end of every class the last month of school last semester, my professor told us, "work on your project over the summer. it'll be near impossible to build everything in three months when you have other classes to worry about." sound advice giver that man. unfortunately for us, we (my group and i) are apparently the very worst kind of advice takers. we heard the advice, we commented on how smart it was, we promised to email each other over the summer to get stuff worked out, and then we did... absolutely nothing. none of us wanted to be the instigator of the work, so we all avoided sending that first email.

main problem(s): we are a group of 3 instead of 6 because two weeks before final presentations our professor split our group up to accomodate all the "brilliant" project ideas he had come up with that none of us wanted to use. not only do we have a half-size group, we also made a ridiculous amount of suggestions last semester. so while group A has six people and only has to work on getting an ocean current guide distributed online, we have three people and get to deal with so much more. we have to syncronize the software on the network of their computers, get firewalls up, connect all computers to the network and fully secure it, install a server, work on the advertising of the company (we're basically focusing on web advertising though i think), and fix the website. besides fixing the website (which is a daunting task since it's crap and will have to be completely rebuilt), the rest seem managable... alone. put them all together with the work of four other classes and the stress of getting everything ready for graduation and applying to grad school, it seems a little much.

*sigh* i'm not gonna lie, at times this summer i did want the day of our return to america to hurry up, but at the moment, i'd kinda like to freeze time over here for a while.

*Sunday Morning - Maroon 5

Thursday, August 27, 2009

design has changed a bit. obviously. i got tired of the white and the black and the feeling that everything was bleeding into everything else. this isnt what i had in mind at first, but with school starting i doubt ill get around to changing it anytime soon. let me know if the colors and contrast are headache inducing.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

i learned to play on the safe side so i don't get hurt

i doubt i'll ever be jumping out of a plane armed with only a flimsy parachute. as much as i say it looks fun, bungee jumping is definitely nowhere in my plans for the future. even if it wasnt against my religion, i cant see myself drinking or getting into drugs. i have too strong of a survival instinct. unfortunately, that instinct only covers things that i view as "extreme." i have the same complacent attitude about some of the more everyday risks that put me and others in danger as i do about germs. i lay for hours in the sun without sunblock simply because i'm too lazy to put it on... there's no way i'll get skin cancer. i won't buckle up if i'm in the back seat... what are the odds of a car crash throwing me through to the front? if i need to, i'll text in the car... i'm a good enough driver to multitask.

this public service announcement (PSA) produced by the gwent police department shows just how big of a risk that last one is. the psa was said to be too graphic and violent to be shown on american tv (though it's nothing worse than what most shows are airing) so americans can really only see it online. having grown numb to most of the psa's showing in america, i think this one os great for shocking people into action - or in this case, unaction.


in the video, a teen driver gets distracted by her texting and hits a car head-on. after that crash, another car hits them in a side collision. you see the texting driver screaming hysterically as she realizes her friends are dead. the camera switches to a young child in one of the other cars asking why his [dead] parents are not waking up. it switches again to a glassy eyed baby who was also killed in the collision. the video continues with the police and paramedics on the scene.

did you know that the chance of crashing increases 23 times when you're texting?? that's more than drunk driving! but people still dont see it as a big enough risk to take seriously. only 17 states ban texting while driving for all drivers.

is this really a risk you're willing to take?? no text message is worth your life... or anyone else's.

share the video. the more people see it, the better.

*Because of You - Kelly Clarkson

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

been to the bottom of every bottle

my sister and i were at the convenience store thing near A's house where she wanted to get gum. we of course looked around and ended up buying way more than gum (come to think of it, i dont think she even got the gum). anyways, we ended up buying energy drinks - the four brands the store had that we hadnt tried (when we got home there was a debate about there having been a fifth one that we didnt get, but i dont think it existed) to see which one was better. we bought bison, code red, boom boom, and bugzy. the store also had red bull. i'm not a fan of red bull at all... or most energy drinks for that matter, but i had heard some raving reviews about bison (a saudi energy drink) and thought it was worth a try.

after careful consideration, the three of us decided on the following verdict: bugzy, code red, bison, boom boom. the best drink i had tonight though was a non-alcoholic beer - pomegranate, my preferred flavor. i cant go into that store without buying one.


bugzy and code red had a silmilar taste that my sister said was cherry flavor, but bugzy had less of that defined energy drink taste so it won first place. boom boom was just awful. i wouldnt recommend it to anyone. it tastes fine at first, but wait a minute or so and you get this heinous after taste, like really really strong bad cough medicine. bleh. my cousin ended up pouring most of hers down the kitchen sink. bison was the last one we tasted - right after boom boom. the fact that we could still taste the boom boom might have affected the way it tasted to us. we debated putting it in second place, but in the end decided that, at the time, code red was better.

*How You Remind Me - Nickelback

Monday, August 24, 2009

i believe i can see the future because i repeat the same routine

it's amazing how much fun you can have when you break out of your routine.

every year since i was born we've spent the entire summer with A and K. yes, we visit everyone else, spend time with other cousins, but every day would end with A and K. most of our outings were with A and K. they became the routine. but, awesome as they may be, routines become monotnous.

last night, we went over to another cousin's house, Kohl. I dont think we (me and my sister) have ever stayed at her house alone since she got married. it's always with the parents and brothers or A and K. but yesterday, due to some obnoxious interfering, we ended up at her house. i love this girl, her kids are adorable, and her husband is awesome. we just didnt like the fact that people made plans for us without consulting us and then proceeded to tell us what to do, we get enough of that at home. i have a problem with people telling me what to do, but i wasnt about to tell Kohl 'no we're not coming' because she had nothing to do with it and that would just be rude. so we went. it was lots of fun and we ended up getting back into the house 12 minutes before my dad woke up - and consequently woke us up - for suhoor (the morning meal in ramadan).

anyways, today me, my sister, Kohl, and her son went out to a mall and tea shop instead of us going to K and A's. also a first. it was also super fun. we have plans with her again tomorrow for another mall and thursday to try a burger place for suhoor - yes, going out for burgers at 3 in the morning is perfectly acceptable. while it feels a little weird to be spending the last couple of days here with people other than K and A, it's also a lot of fun.

i cant believe three months are already up. only 5 days left and we're gone.

*Every Day is Exactly the Same - Nine Inch Nails

she said you're smart but in a stupid way

i was never known as a stupid kid. overly shy, socially awkward maybe, but never stupid. i always got good grades, was always one of the kids who cheated by giving answers not taking, and i was known for this stuff. so it's a constant surprise when people who claim to know me as smart make remarks that could only mean that they see me as really really stupid.

for example, when shopping online, my mom felt the need to explain to me that a tunic is just a long shirt. you know, so i wouldnt think i was buying medieval clothing.

my uncle's wife was showing me something in a magazine. it said the word neighbor in arabic which she thought that she had to translate for me because there is no way that i would know what it meant with my limited knowledge of over 12 years studying arabic. then to make things worse, she went on to explain to me that a neighbor is a person who lives next to you. i mean, really?? i had no idea.

my cousin thought she had to explain what manageesh (flat bread with cheese or zaatar or something else on it) are to me and my sister. i've spent every summer of my life coming to saudi arabia. i lived here for three years. throughout that time, i have eaten manageesh a countless number of times. i think
i know what it is.

my other cousin thought i wouldnt know who amr diab was. you dont even have to be arab to know that.

my mom didnt think i would enjoy reading something because it had "big words" in it. umm... my vocabulary expanded beyond the three-letter words years ago.

there's plenty more examples, but those are the most recent.

on a different note, i went to google today and for some reason thought it had something to do with beauty and the beast. i got excited. it didnt. the 400th anniversary of gallileo's telescope could not have been any more of a letdown.



*Smart in a Stupid Way - Steven Strait

Saturday, August 22, 2009

you spin me right round baby right round

the other day, my family had a barbecue. no big deal, right?? except that it was held under the hot desert afternoon sun. yes, we have become that big of a group of bbq addicts. we'll risk skin cancer and heat stroke for a good hotdog/hamburger combo. it's a disease i swear. it was mainly held for two reasons: my brother-in-law has the worst bbq addiction of us so my dad was throwing it for him, and my cousins all wanted to experience one of our bbqs because apparently the million pictures of them we have on facebook make them look really fun. almost everyone wimped out though and hid away in the cool air conditioned house. my dad was doing the grilling and a couple of cousins kept him company while me, another cousin, and my brother-in-law spent the entire day running up and down the stairs to get from our house to the grills running errands. lots of stairs. in the heat. with my hijab on. for hours and hours. it was torture. i couldnt even eat any of the food.

today - as i'm sure everyone who is not hiding under a rock somewhere has heard - is the first day of ramadan. so last night a group of us went out to bid goodbye to food for a month by having a really late super fun dinner at some chinese restaurant. okay that's a little over dramatic since i'll still eat 1.5 meals every day (i'm not a big fan of breakfast, but ill get down a small cup of water and a cookie) and the purpose of the outing was not really saying goodbye to anything. it was just a planned thing that got delayed for a few weeks. when we were done, the mall was practically closed and the door we came in from was locked. a security guard had to let us out of his secret security guard only door.

anyways, we got home last night at 1:30ish and i ended up going to sleep close to three. only to wake up at four to get ready for umrah. i could barely open my eyes and my contacts burned like crazy when i put them in again after only an hour of being in solution. i wear them too much - over twenty hours a day. my doctor tells me not to exceed 8 or 9 hours. but as i was saying, we went up to makkah for umrah and omg it was so freakin crowded. it was more like hajj. and that's after everyone said they're not risking going because of the big scary monster known as swine flu. mashallah though.

speaking of swine flu, we were at the supermarket yesterday and this lady started to lecture/yell at us for not wearing masks. apparently we were not taking care of the kids that were with us or ourselves and pretty much deserved to die of swine flu because that's apparently what we wanted. my cousin tried to explain that she works in the hospital and the masks do little to nothing to help protect you, but she wasnt easily convinced. today in makkah, this dude was wearing one of those eye-coverer-things (the ones you get on the airplane so you can sleep or whatever) over his mouth and nose as a mask. i had a really strong urge to ask him if he knew he was using it wrong. i didnt.

my point - which i assure you existed at one point - seems to have gotten lost somewhere around the second paragraph and has refused to ask for directions. going right back to the beginning though i'm pretty sure it was supposed to be about my family's love for bbqs and how ramadan is going to put a stopper on them for a while.

*You Spin Me Right Round - Pete Burns (not the new ugly version)

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

so, um, as you can see, my blog is under reconstruction.

unfortunately, messing around with the coding has made me bored and frustrated, so - typical me - i'm stopping halfway through for now. i'll finish the rest of the changes later... i hope. but now, i'm going to go read.


living is easy with eyes closed

the nigerian prince zawababafufunene has 36 million dollars that he is waiting to put in YOUR bank account!

sound familiar??

i think almost everyone has seen some variety of this scam. the person changes, the amount of money changes, but the idea is always the same. i want to give you a bunch of money but you have to pay me and give me access to your bank account first. and in the face of 36 million dollars, what's two thousand?? at least that's what is probably going through the minds of all the people that fall for this.

my grandmother fell for a similar scam recently... or would have if my mom hadnt stepped in with the harsh voice of reality. a bunch of my cousins were also a hair away from falling for it and got pretty far in the communicating back and forth before they began to see some fishiness in the scheme.

maybe i'm just a really cynical pessimist and ready to see the worst in every situation, but i could never understand how anyone could believe in this. someone you have never met has millions of dollars and wants to give it all to you? practically for free? i mean, really?

life must be great when you can close your eyes to everything that makes me doubt that scenario. when you can trust the goodness and generosity of people to that degree. when you believe that there are people out there that want nothing more than to share their great fortunes with you. when life is like the tv movie of the week.

*Strawberry Fields Forever - The Beatles

it's a very, very mad world

i'm sitting in my room, on my bed, watching dvds of tv shows my cousin wanted me to see. i take a break from staring at the screen for a second as an episode ends and casually glance out my window... and there are a lot of cars out there. like a lot a lot. the road in front of our house has parked cars along both sides, as does the road to the side of our house - the whole road. i can count 25 cars from my bedroom window, but half of the road is cut off from my view so i can only imagine how many more are out there. keep in mind that we live in a pretty deserted area so cars are pretty much a rarity. around us we have a bunch of empty lots and buildings that are still being built. we have a handful of neighbors that, for the most part, are pretty ignorable. so why are there so many cars out there?? i dont see any lights that would signal a funeral or wedding, so there's only one thing left to assume: death eaters. yes, voldemort has come back from the dead and moved headquarters from the uk to saudi arabia. and forget about brooms, air conditioned cars are the only way to travel in the desert of course. there's no other logical explaination.

death by death eater is a much cooler way to go than death by flip-flops, which apparently i'm destined for.

i'm sleep deprived and my head hurts... don't judge me.

*Mad World - Gary Jules

Saturday, August 15, 2009

no hope, no love, no glory

you always like the bad guys... because they always lose.

that's what my cousin's daughter told me last night as we were watching a turkish drama. i had been on the "bad guy's" side since last year, when the show came out. in my opinion, the "heroine" was way more of a bad guy than he was. anyways, she said this comment very offhandedly and half-jokingly. but it got me thinking about how true it is. i usually do find myself cheering for the bad guys. the ones that are completely hopeless. that have a troubled past and no future. the ones that, even when they win, always lose. the ones that suffer from an eternally unrequited love. the ones that people can shoot with a smile on their faces. the ones that die with no one to grieve their deaths. the ones that dont give up. that dont pity themselves. that can walk with their heads held high to their immnent doom. the ones that survive the unsurvivable. they are just so much cooler.

psycho-babble time. i think they hold such an appeal to me for two reasons, reason number one, their complete independence and refusal to give up. they keep going long after it's clear they'll have to surrender. i've never been a fan of self-pity, and that is something that they (at least the ones i like) have very little of, and even if they do pity themselves they don't just sit around and mope. they don't give in to it. they are so much less helpless than the good guys. reason number two, basically the second part of her comment. they always lose. they have no future, and for someone who has an aversion to plans, who hates to think about the future, who can't commit, and who can't make a decision to save her life, the thought of having no future for some reason seems very attractive.

*Happy Ending - Mika

i'm afraid that this complacency is something i can't shake

the swine flu epidemic. for me, it was over. sure, i heard about the cases that were still cropping up, but i didnt care. not really. it was not as big of a deal as it was when it started (not that i was too worried about it then. i suffer from chronic complacency). not as scary. just another common cold... one that had stayed pretty far away from me. it got a bit closer when when K saw two cases (she works at a hospital), but still not close enough for me to take it seriously.

now, my cousin's husband's family has gotten it. his brother and nephew. his niece (the infected boy's sister) was sent to play with my cousin's kids after her brother got the flu (their mom conveniently forgot to let my cousin and her husband know that she had swine flu in her house). this was three days ago. she's been freaking out that her kids have gotten it, even though they havent shown any symptoms thank god. yesterday, we had our weekly family gathering, to which she brought her two kids. if - god forbid - her kids do have the disease, we would all have been subjected to it.

that should be close enough to shake me a bit, right?? it should make it more real for me... but it's not. i'm still as close to apathetic about it as i was from the beginning.

*Be My Escape - Relient K

Thursday, August 13, 2009

you're so vain

today, we went to have lunch at my aunt's in makkah. it's a freaking road trip to get there, but it was fun. after lunch we drove up to taif so that we (me, my sisters, my brothers, and my cousins) could ride the cable cars up the mountain because we didnt get a chance to last time. it was pretty awesome. then we drank sweet coffee by the side of the road, and my brothers rode ponies. we stayed there for a while, and ended up getting back home close to 11. at their house, i went in to their kitchen and saw a washing machine. now i understand why they thought my thinking it was weird to have kitchen washing machines was weird.

yesterday, we went out with A and her friend. they work at the hilton, if you remember. anyways one of the guests (the extended kind that stay for months) recently asked A's friend to marry him. it's a cute story and everything, but he doesnt speak arabic (he's from poland) and she doesnt speak much english. i still dont really understand how they communicated enough to get to marriage. anyways, we went out with them and a few of his friends/colleagues. it was surprisingly really fun, and one of the dudes lived in arlington for 2 years. he recently graduated from gw. small world. the other two were from different states. the work they were doing actually sounded pretty cool.

i just got an email from one of my cousins. he forwarded this link. he's super proud of it. because i doubt anyone has the time or the desire to read through the thing, it's a list of everyone that prince sultan bin abdulaziz thinks should be thanked or recognized or whatever. anyways, the reason for my cousin's pride?? my family was listed in the looong list of names. i would not have known this if he didnt bold and underline it in the email, because i would never read through all of that. seriously, there are A LOT of people in that list. maybe i just lack familial pride, i dunno, but the whole thing made me laugh and it seemed a bit pretentious to me, but thats just me. maybe they should revoke my saudi-ness or kick me out of the family or something, because my cousin was really excited about it. i'd be more excited if i got chocolate. :/

*You're So Vain - Carly Simon

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

don't go and get me started

every single person i know - even the best of them - do things that grate on my nerves. those little quirks that make you wonder for just a second why you're even friends with that person. okay, okay, maybe not that extreme. these annoyances range from facial expressions to actions to phrases. here are a few off the top of my head:

>>when people high-five after they've said something funny or witty. i mean, really?? is it that big of a rarity for you to be amusing?? is it really such a big deal that you have to congratulate yourself with a high five?? why don't we just throw a party for you? present you with a trophy? grace you with a dance? that slapping of hands amidst the laughter of the joke completely destroys any of the appreciation i had for what was said. or, almost completely.

>>when people use big words for the sake of using big words. the english language has many nuances. some words, though a thesaurus may say they are synonymous, just aren't interchangable. yes, they may mean the same thing, but they are used in different contexts. and, if the smaller word sounds better, use it. forcing big words doesnt make you look any smarter. and when someone tries to look smart by using a word that has a totally opposite meaning, i feel like having them tarred, feathered, and run out of town. i realize that people make mistakes, but you can tell when someone uses a word for the sole purpose of propping up their nose so they can look down onthe rest of us. so if you want to be a verbal snob, go ahead, but try and do it right.

>>when people say "i could care less." thank you for that very pointless comment. i think what you meant to say, was that you couldnt care less. saying that you could is implying that you care. and from the haughty tone and lofty look that usually accompanies this comment, i am pretty sure that is not what you are trying to say.

>>blank looks. not a poker face, carefully calculated blank look, but that slack-jawed blank look that just screams that absolutely nothing is going on inside your head. this one kid in particular seems to constantly have this look on his face, and i am constantly fighting the urge to smack it off.

>>when people get clingy. trying to smother me will not make me like you any more. in fact, it will make me like you a lot lot less. i dont like high maintenance relationships of any kind. if i disappear for a little bit, that's just my way of keeping myself sane. trying to impinge on my alone time is a sure-fire way to get your head bitten off.

>>when people dont do sarcasm. theres this one girl at school who would be a great person to hang out with, except that she doesnt understand sarcasm. it all flies straight over her head. and she thinks i'm "too mean." i eat, drink, and breathe sarcasm. i cant hold conversations without it. after a few minutes of sitting with her, i get strange urges to jump off of really high buildings.

*Whatever you Do, Don't! - Shania Twain

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

and it's beginning to get to me

remember a couple days ago when i said i had blogger's block?? understatement of the year. it's more like thinker's block.

i think the strain of the summer is beginning to get to me. yes, the summer is a bigger strain than the rest of the year. theres just so much to do and so little of it can be blown off. in the beginning, i gave up getting enough sleep as i couldnt give up anything else. my body is getting back at me. to make up for the lost sleep, it has given up thoughts. of any kind. all thoughts. big. small. pointless. important. they dont exist for me anymore.

creativity is a distant memory.

i'm trying to help my cousin write a personal statement for a grad school application. i edited her husband's statement in ten minutes, and it was awesome. but that was in the beginning of the summer. with hers, the information is all there. it's typed up in word, sized and double-spaced. but it's dry. it's boring. it's a laundry list of facts. and i cant do anything about it. i cant spice it up. i cant make it flow. i cant make her jump off the page. if i was in the admissions office, i probably wouldnt even get through the whole thing before moving on to the next applicant.

i need my thoughts. i need my concentration. i need summer to be over. i may not want it, but i need it.


*It's Beginning to Get to Me - Snow Patrol

Sunday, August 9, 2009

you say i'm falling behind

facebook note thing, but i dont do facebook notes. so yeah...

Today at 9:49am
The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen -X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte -X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - X
6 The Bible -
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - X
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens -
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy –
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller -
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare -
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier -
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk -
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - X
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot -
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald -X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens -
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy -
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams -
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - X
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - not yet, but i plan to
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame -
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - X
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - half-ish
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - X (which should count as 7 not 1)
34 Emma - Jane Austen - X
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - X
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - X (didnt we already cover this?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres -
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden -
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell -
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving -
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy -
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood -
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding -X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan - X
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel -
52 Dune - Frank Herbert -
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons -
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth -
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon -
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens -
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon -
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck -X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov -
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt -
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - X
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas -X
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac -
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy -
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding -
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie –
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville - Xish ( i read the abridged version when i was young)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens -
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker -
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson -
75 Ulysses - James Joyce -
76 The Inferno – Dante -
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -
78 Germinal - Emile Zola -
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - X
80 Possession - AS Byatt -
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell -
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker -
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro -
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert -
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry -
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom -
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton -
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad -
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks -
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams -
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole -
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute -
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas -
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare -X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl -X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo -

40 and a half... stupid bbc.

*Read My Mind - The Killers

Saturday, August 8, 2009

i just can't get you out of my head

all summer, this song has been recurringly stuck in my head. whenever i finally get it out, they play it in the car, or i see it on tv, or someone sings it. and then come the hours and days of having it play over and over and over in my head. it's the drawback of having so many kids around.




quick translation: kids answer the phone and tells the dad it's for him. he tells them to say he's not there. they say my dad says he's not here. they then go on to tell the dad stuff like you're our role model and didn't you say lying is bad? by the end of the song, he answers the phone.

*Can't Get You Out of My Head - Kylie Minogue

i'll be your best friend

i am a salesman's best friend. really. if they could change every single person in the world into a copy of me, they'd do it in a heart beat - and not just because a world full of me would be the epitome of awesome.

you see, i have this problem with saying no. i've always had it... for as long as i can remember. my friend wanted a stopwatch that i had won from soccer, so i gave it to her. this kid proposed a trade in which i would give him my most favoritest ever batman toy and he would give my sister a little pig figure... of course i agreed. my cousin wanted me to spend a million hours of agonizing boredom with her while she went to beauty school or worked at a beauty salon or whatever it was she did... i went every single day.

i got better as i got older, but the word still sticks to my tongue, downright refusing to be said at times.

so, keeping that in mind, you can just imagine my helplessness with salespeople. for example, we went to this store the other day. a friend asked me to get a camel for her from here. so i go in, get the camel, and go to pay. the cashier immediately pulls out a book about saudi arabia. "wouldn't this be awesome? why don't you get this too?" and what do i say? "umm okay fine" of course. encouraged by my answer, he pulls out something else. i get that too. i keep getting until my sister comes to my rescue. i came out of the store with five things i didnt want, each one a little more expensive than the thing before. if i was alone, i would have probably bought the entire store. my feeble protests are of absolutely no use to anyone - especially not me - although i think they amuse the salespeople.

before you try and go all dr. phil on me, i do not avoid saying no because i want people to like me. and the no's only hide when someone is asking me for something. if anyone is offering anything, the hidden no's come back with a vengence. a lot of the time i just go/give whatever because, to be honest, i don't care about whatever it is. so if you obviously care enough to want something, and i couldn't possibly care any less and still be human, why not give it to you?? except in the case of my batman... that was just me being taken advantage of.

the point is, if you ever find yourself selling anything, be sure to let me know. i'm super good for business.

*Big Girls Don't Cry - Fergie

Thursday, August 6, 2009

my bones ache, my skin feels cold

it seems that the forces of the universe are out to get me. or at least get me very frustrated.

first, remember that wonderfully stolen internet connection that i was so grateful for in my room?? yes well, it has recently developed this allergy to google. not just google.com, but anything and everything related to google. chrome, gmail, blogger... you get the picture. none of them work on that connection any more. lucky (?) for me, my dad got dsl a couple of weeks ago, so im not entirely internetless. however, the stolen connection seems to have claimed my room as its territory and the new connection is too much of a wimp to get in through the door. so to use the excellent dsl my dad got, i have to venture into the living room. now, this wouldnt be a problem except that when i leave the safety of my bedroom to take joe into the living room, i run into the parents and the brothers who seem to think that if i'm not in my room i'm free to use for their disposal. not that being in my room gets me complete protection, but i can barely log into my email in the living room without having to pause to talk or watch or do something.

so i figure, okay the universe is sending me a message. it is trying to tell me that there is this thing called a world outside of the 15 inches of my laptop screen. in this so called world, people have these things called lives. and these people (yes, real tangible people, the ones i'm apt to forget about when i enter the blogosphere) communicate with each other without typing. they use the spoken word and hand gestures and other such crazy stuff. i'm not one to shy away from a new experience, so i welcomed the chance to live internet-free with open arms (or at least with very minimal hair-pulling, tear-jerking, full scale temper tantrums).

and then the universe decides to be funny and i get sick. stomach stuff (which may or may not be the result of stuffing my face for two months straight). so i'm stuck in bed for a day. not a big problem. i may not be able to enter the "real world" or the virtual world for a bit, but i am not completely lost. there is still that lovely fictional world of literature that i loved way before i met joe. and with a complete series of books borrowed from my cousins (english books that i'm not sure they knew they had. they certainly had never read them) i'm set. and yes, they may be really old and slightly pointless stories, but they were books. so i was content.

and then, then the universe started to take things too far. just when i get over the stomach stuff, i sneeze and suddenly i have a full-fledged cold on my hands. no exaggeration, it was that sudden. and if suffering with the sore throat, congestion, and coughing isnt enough, i find out that i'm almost done with the book series. i have one and a half books left. how did that happen?? there were so many of them.

so now, i'm kicked to the curb by the three worlds that i know and am left with nothing better to do than ask why? and blow my nose.

*Open Your Eyes - Snow Patrol

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

haven't you people ever heard of closing the god damn door?

i have had blogger's block recently. actually, it's more like extreme laziness mixed with bad internet connection and a case of ADD. but while reading Tova's Totally Awkward Tuesday (in the living room where connection actually exists) i thought of a couple more of my own awkward moments.

this one happened when i was ten i think. i actually have no idea, but it was around that time. we used to sleep over at K and A's the entire summer. their home was and still is like an extension of our own. we were never considered guests and would basically go about the house as if we owned the place. they lived in two apartments which were connected through a bedroom which ended up as more of a storage room. my aunt, her husband, K, and A in one apartment. the other apartment was for the brothers. at the time, though, one of the brothers had married so it was basically just for one dude... and all the sodas. so one day, feeling like a soda, i went on over to the other apartment. i knocked on the door first, and no one answered so i assumed that he wasnt home, which was great for me because this dude used to creep me out a bit. he was akwardness personified. anyways, i open the door and start heading towards the kitchen. there was a bathroom right next to the door i came through, but i didnt even spare it a glance. or, i wouldnt have except that i heard a commotion come from it. apparently the brother was in the bathroom (thats why he didnt answer the door). problem was, i guess he doesnt close bathroom doors when he's alone. now, under different circumstances i might have just pretended i hadnt noticed him and continued to the kitchen. but this guy was making a serious commotion and, like a car crash, i couldnt look away. after a minute or so i regained my senses and rushed back to the other apartment sans soda. needless to say, i had other people get me my soda for the rest of the summer.

*I Write Sins Not Tragedies - Panic! at the Disco