remember that time?

do you guys remember when yahoo was a legitimate search engine? and people used to ask jeeves everything before they killed him off to seem more professional or something? and there was an e one. excite? anyway, i remember having research projects and the teachers telling us to use all four of the search engines (redundancy is underrated i guess), and then one day, but it was nothing as sudden and noticeable as that, google just kind of took over everything. and suddenly you're not "looking things up online" you're "googling it." and all the other search engines crawled into the dark corners with their tails between their legs and just let it happen. (i guess backbones are overrated.)

i also remember a project i did in seventh grade. part of it was looking up things that happened (o)in the year, month, and day we were born. it was the first big school project where we were required to use internet sources instead of just books. (remember those days? now they have to force us to use books in research projects and even then i usually lie about it.) anyway, the teacher kept telling me that i was searching wrong because i had too many words in my queries. apparently i was being too specific or something? (i typed 'earthquakes in april 1988' and she went crazy.) now we type entire sentences into google. i've searched for entire paragraphs. i've put so many words into my search bar that google had to cut me off and tell me to shut up halfway through my request. (every time i do though i feel my seventh grade english teacher glaring at me.)

anyway, i really don't know where i was going with this or what even brought it to mind. but yeah. there it is. google. and searching. and... stuff. here's a quote i like to make up for my lack of a point (it's secretly one of my biggest fears. (the quote. not not having a point. i got over that one ages ago)):

“As the poet says, all happy couples are alike, it's the unhappy ones who create the stories. I'm no longer a story. Happiness has made me fade into real life.” ~Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love

i think i abused my right to use parentheses in this post.

*Stutter - Umbridge (A Very Potter Sequel)

hypnotized by the words you say

i was reading about different internet k-holes the other day and couldn't help nodding along to most of them with the thought of, "haha i've done that before" going through my head. from youtube to tumblr to hate reading, i'm sure we've all had days when we get lost on the internet and came out several hours later not really sure what had happened. according to mcsweeny's, an internet k-hole can be defined as:

 (n) Impulsive-yet-not-random, thematic internet navigational trajectory that leads a user through various websites or pieces of content that include a variety of media (i.e. text, pictures, animated GIFs and video) in such a manner that when one ‘emerges’ from said tunnel, one is viewing something entirely unrelated to the ‘doorway’ (first piece of content in tunnel). Popular tunnel themes include porn, conspiracy, creepy, Wikipedia, and apocalypse scenario.

and of course by "days" i mean every single day of my life. obviously. for example, yesterday i got online to check my email, download music, and then do some writing. after checking my email, i went and checked the blogs i followed for updates. the i checked facebook and noticed a friend had shared a picture from tumblr. i clicked through to that blog and saw a post from a different tumblr blog i used to read that basically picks apart twilight. while i will still say that i did enjoy twilight, i am not one to pass up on anything combining books with snarkiness and grammar. call me a nerd, but it's just who i am. so anyway, i clicked through to that blog and started reading through the gazillion posts that i had missed since the last time i read it.  halfway through that, i clicked on a link she had posted that basically showed four pages from another tumblr of why robert pattinson is awesome. (most of it was gifs from interviews of him promoting (read:bashing) the twilight saga movies.) from there i found myself watching a video of kristen stewart and a few other actors [trying to] read bits from 50 shades of grey. then i was watching a video of gilbert gottfried reading 50 shades of grey followed by selena gomez acting out 50 shades of blue. and the next thing i knew i was twenty-four pages into a blog basically dedicated to 50 shades of grey hate and wanting to read more, it was time for dinner, and i had done nothing i was supposed to.

beware the internet k-holes. they sneak up on you, suck you in, and only let you out when you don't want to leave it.

*Shiver - Maroon 5

i was too lazy to play or paint or write or try to make a change

the auto-correct on my sister's phone changes my name to satan. i'm not sure why sarah, being the most common name in the universe, needs auto-correcting.

i was recently told that the princess diaries movie came out ten years ago. ten. as in a decade has gone by. how did this happen? is this what getting old feels like? going through life normally and then sudden reminders jumping out just to remind you that time is passing right under your nose? 

my ipod has been dead for way too long, but i don't want to charge it until i download the new music i want to put on it. i put it off because i was busy, then i was lazy, and now i've forgotten what songs i wanted. life is hard. 

i made some sort of cheesy-spinach-bread last night and had a slice for breakfast. it was really good, but now i'm dying of thirst. i once complained that i was thirsty because the kitchen was too far away from my bedroom. since then i've moved to an apartment where it would probably take me less than ten steps to get to the kitchen, and i'm still thirsty and still too lazy to hydrate myself. 

i'm also too lazy to follow a single thought past its initial two sentences, read more than a paragraph at a time in my book, or make any effort at having a life that exists outside of my immediate family.

i might go up to CT this summer to visit my grandmother. i might go on a different road trip. i might go to the desert to visit family. i'm supposed to be meeting people to discuss potential dissertation ideas. i should be studying for my qualifying exams. at this very second i think i'll just sit on this chair and stare at a computer screen for three months.

i got on the computer today ready to write. (i really want to be a real writer, you guys.) but i suddenly looked at the clock and realized two hours have gone by while i got sucked down an internet wormhole and am now too lazy. i'm never going to get anywhere in life.

*Weekend Wars - MGMT

don't you hesitate to buy my love

i left this morning at nine:forty-five to go to the sacm graduation (the final celebration for my master's degree before i have both feet steady in my phd program) and came home at six. i don't think anyone fully understands what a time suck graduations are until you're going home from one. and then it kind of slips your mind before the next one so you leave every single one with that gnawing feeling of, "but wait... what happened to the entire day?" and since most of the day is spent in rooms with artificial lighting and no windows and too many people you don't really realize how much time is passing. it feels like you've been there for three seconds and three hours all at the same time. it's like you're in some kind of time warp black hole kind of thing where there are hundreds of people who don't know each other that are all celebrating the same thing. i dunno. it's weird.

after the ceremony (where they gave us absolutely no food. for someone who went for the food, i was disappointed. and hungry) we stopped by the job fair. aside from the companies that weren't hiring women, the one company that was so super excited by the fact that they started hiring women six months ago (but not for any of the cool jobs, they're pretty much secretaries) that it kind of made me sick, a chemistry company that outsourced their IT department, and a pharmaceutical company that wasn't hiring IT at the moment, everyone was super excited for IT graduates. here's what you go home with when you are an IT graduate looking for a job:

• twelve pens (two with highlighters on the other end) and two pencils
• two notebooks (about the size of your hand) with attached pens
• a triangle highlighter with three colors
• six USB flash drives (for a total of eighteen GB of storage): one looks like a giant pill, one an ambulance, one's on a keychain, two mini ones, and one normal one
• two of those to-go coffee cup thermos things that i'm totally blanking on the name of
• a t-shirt and baseball cap
• a light up bouncy ball 
• a stress ball
• a measuring tape
• a keychain
• a clip thing or something (i really have no idea what it is)
• one of those id carrying case things that attach to a belt hole
• two bottles of zamzam (the special water from makkah)
• six bags: a leather briefcase, two small backpack/laptop case things, and three of the reusable shopping bag type bags
• a ginormous pile of brochures and catalogs
• three jobs pretty much promised to you and others that you're "really likely to get"
• a really bad headache

pretty much a ridiculous amount of things. i'm obviously choosing a potential career based on which company bought me the nicest present. companies that only had a pen, you're not looking too good. (except for you alyamamah university, because i really liked your pen.)

*Buy My Love - Wynter Gordon (i never listened to this song. google suggested it.)

aint it so cool gettin in and gettin out of the volgenau school

when i was in third grade, i sat in my doctor's waiting room (dr. haymen i think his name was?) with my family. there were little chairs and those toys where you push wooden beads along colored wires and books. i went for the latter and picked up a hard cover book with a missing dust jacket titled excalibur. though i didn't get a chance to finish the book at that visit, i left the office with a new found interest in arthurian stories. i never ended up finishing the book, actually. i remember asking for it once as a present, but i never got it. enter my fourth grade teacher who shared the same interest in all things medieval. we had an entire section of the year devoted to it in which we read and wrote stories about knights and castles, made ceramic castle candle holders, and ended with an authentic medieval feast (no utensils were allowed, we used pieces of bread instead of plates, drank apple cider, and the only lighting came from the candles in our handmade candle holders). it was awesome. as the years went on, though my obsession with king arthur never actually died down, it did get covered up with other interests and obsessions. (i like to obsess.) the other day while watching merlin, all of the traditional arthurian elements came into the story: he knighted characters like lancelot and gawain, sat around a round table, and merlin put the sword in the stone (yeah i'm a season or two behind the rest of the world). and suddenly my fourth grade self, who was apparently alive and well for the past fourteen years just waiting for this moment, came up to the surface with as much excitement for the whole thing that i had back then. and within the course of the forty minute episode, my obsession jumped right back to the top.

the only problem with this is that i recently bought a bunch of books and now i don't want to read any of them because they have nothing to do with king arthur or his knights.

oh, and off topic but because i said i would post it, here's the video of my convocation speaker's rap. he sent it out in an email with the lyrics to all of us saying how he wanted it to go viral. with only around seven hundred views, i think he's going to end up being a little disappointed. but he is an awesome guy, so you should watch it:



*Convocation Rap - Dean Griffiths

it's funny how things change

growing up, i never went bowling. my family did a lot of "family things" together, we were all in sports, but we just never bowled. the first time i went bowling was towards the end of my undergrad years. since then, i've been quite a few times, but i'm not really sure why i'm sharing all of this with you. to get to the point, a couple of months ago my husband decided that it would be fun to go bowling with my whole family. we'd gone with my brothers and sisters, but never my parents. what with people dying and parents leaving the country, though, it kept getting pushed back. then trying to find a time that worked when my brothers were home from school proved to be impossible so we decided to go today with my grandma, parents, and younger sister.

when i mentioned the bowling plan the first time to my parents, i thought they would say they weren't interested. but they were actually surprisingly up for it. apparently they were big on bowling before us kids entered their lives? who knows what other kind of interests they had that i have no idea about. i mean, i know my parents had lives before us, but going twenty three years without ever knowing that your parents used to bowl is just weird. 

but that's not the point either. we get to the bowling place and my parents and grandmother's reactions were hilarious. they were surprised at how "automated" everything was these days. according to my mom, the last time that she went bowling, you had to have a designated score keeper [that was really good at math] to keep track of the scores. (my dad said that the last time they went bowling was '84.) according to my grandma, she remembers going bowling when there were boys sitting on little platform things that would jump down and set the pins back up after every turn. apparently, my grandpa was one of these boys at one time. 

i've obviously been taking this technology for granted. 

*Teenage Hearts - Allstar Weekend

you know how the time flies, only yesterday was the time of our lives

to balance out the blog post from this morning, WOOOHOOO I GRADUATED!!! and our convocation speaker rapped his speech. it was pretty awesome, i'm not gonna lie. once a decent video finds its way online i will post it for you all to watch and get jealous. he even brought a famous tuba player to accompany him. i mean, you really can't top that, i'm sorry. i don't care if michelle obama spoke at whatever university she spoke at. an old man rapping wins everything.

also, maybe time has flown by and i haven't accomplished anything major yet, but it's not like i'm not working on it. i mean, i really have learned some really cool things in school. and i really have been working on the whole becoming a published writer dream, too. kinda. and i really do try my best to like help people and whatever. that counts for something, right? and i mean, come on, i'm only twenty-four. though that may seem old some days, i still have time to accomplish stuff.

i've noticed that morning tiredness makes me pessimistic and night exhaustion makes me optimistic. both tend to make me grumpy, though, but i can hide/get over unnecessary grumpiness when i have half a mind to. you know, in case you were wondering.

i'm super tired. graduation was such a time suck. i got to school at twelve, took thirty seconds to walk across stage, and left school at five.

*Someone Like You - Adele

there was a time in my life when i didn't know where to go, and now the time is right and i still don't know

so i once again find myself facing another graduation day. and once again, after already completing a semester of my next degree, the whole celebration seems a little after the fact. but that doesn't mean that the butterflies that my stomach grows just for graduations aren't there. (actually, my stomach harbors butterflies to let out for just about every thing that could even possibly be mistaken for an occasion, but the graduation ones are different.)

i was a whirlpool of emotions the day of my high school graduation. the two most prominent of those were sadness and terror. leaving the sheltered hallways of my high school to take my first step into the real world without the teachers and students that i had spent more time with than my family was a big deal. a very big deal. before my undergrad graduation, i was more nervous than anything else. the idea that my time spent in-between school and real life was coming to an end scared me, to be completely honest. it didn't matter that i was doing my master's. i was already a semester into it and i knew it couldn't last forever. adulthood was looming big and scary just a year down the road. this morning, though, the nerves do not come from fear of the next step forward. i've already taken a few steps towards growing up since my last degree, and i find that i am looking forward to finally being done with school. (though i won't be for a while. gah.) no, the butterflies have gathered just to work me up over the passing of time.

it feels like just yesterday that i was telling my kindergarten teacher that i wanted to be a farmer, an artist, and an author. it was yesterday that i was using gummy worms to learn math in first grade. just yesterday i was moving across the country to start fifth grade in a new school, in a new state, with a semi-new language. it was just yesterday when i spent a year in saudi arabia, eating lunch on the stage in the elementary section and starting to overcome my debilitating shyness. it was yesterday when i spent my first day back at school in virginia locked up in the auditorium because i hadn't gotten my tb test after spending a year overseas. it was yesterday when i started mason afraid to be alone. it was yesterday when i finished my first degree at mason relishing every moment i spent alone. it was yesterday that i wrote the story, yesterday that i wrote two and a half novels and started to get over my fear of having my work read. it was just yesterday. all of it i swear.

and when i think about it, think of all the memories i have stored up and the degrees i'm collecting like they're limited editions, i panic. because it doesn't matter that i have two degrees in computers and am working towards my third. i still don't know what i want to do with my life. i still don't know how to balance books and computers without pushing one to the back burner. i still don't know how to walk the line between what's expected of me and what i want without disappointing someone. i still don't know how to fit religion and culture and family and dreams and fiction and reality and loves and distastes and personality and friends and responsibilities into a neatly composed package that is myself. i don't know.

instead of celebrating everything that i learned, that i know, this graduation is just bringing to light everything that i have yet to figure out, that i don't know, but probably should by now. guess i should go get dressed for it.

*Still Don't Know - Icona Pop

trying hard not to smile though i feel bad

the other day i went back to my old high school to watch my brothers participate in an islamic competition game show thing. it was pretty awesome, even if it did end up starting an hour and a half late and the computer died halfway through the game. when the game show questions cd froze three times in a row, the teacher switched to just asking the questions orally. now, i don't know how many of you are faithful watchers of nickelodeon, but there's an episode of victorious (the one where jade and beck break up for the second time) where cat tells jade not to forget two when she counts to ten, because apparently some people forget it. anyway, the competition consisted of multiple choice questions, and every time the teacher would give the possible answers (he used one, two, three instead of a, b, c) he would forget the number two. it reminded me of cat. i found it hilarious.

it is possible (read: probable) that you won't find this as funny as i did, partly because, well, i'm the kind of person that laughs at the wrong times (after the game show they had a little prayer/remembrance thing for my sister's friend's mom that recently passed away. when the speaker stood at the podium crying for a minute and then ran out of the auditorium and we all just sat there in awkward silence, i was fighting a really strong urge to break into laughter. yup, i'm the kind of girl that laughs at funerals.) and partly because i'm not sure i have full control over this whole words to sentences to story process this morning.

i stayed up later than usual last night to watch ten things i hate about you, because come on, if there was ever a movie to ward off sleep for, it's one where heath ledger sings can't take my eyes off of you. apparently my body didn't get the memo that i was going to make up missed sleep this morning, though, because it woke up at seven like usual and then fell into a really light, half-sleep until eight:thirty. i don't feel tired, but i don't feel not tired, if that makes any sense.

anyway, i have an exam to get ready for and an apartment to clean. fun day ahead of me. but tomorrow night i will be officially done with my first semester of my phd program and good riddance i say.

*One Week - Barenaked Ladies

i find it kind of sad

to start with, if you guys haven't seen this cover of lmfao's "i'm sexy and i know it" then you should watch it right now because it is awesome, and i am in love with it, and his voice is amazing, and it's better than the original in my opinion, and you know all this is true because it's making me write run-on sentences. that's serious. in case you don't like clicking links (sometimes i don't either), i'll embed the video for you right here:



in other news, i went on my end of semester amazon book spree a bit early this year and conveniently forgot that i said i would wait to read them until i finished the semester until i got through two of them. and i don't actually end the semester until ten o'clock tuesday night when i finish my last final. even though i sort of feel like i already finished school. but ew i told myself that i would stop talking about school because it is taking over my life. like some crazy future dystopian dictator that wants to control everything i say, do, and think. mind control is bad. even when seemingly good things (like education) are the ones doing it.

um... i'm graduating on thursday? i dunno if that is school related or not, but there it is.

okay, so this is really pathetic. i literally can't think of anything to write about that is not in someway related to school. i need summer. actually, what i need is to be done with school. gah.

*Mad World - Gary Jules

i'm not going to let stuff get me upset, and i won't let the little things get me depressed

yesterday was one of the many days i have had recently where the stress constantly swirling right beneath my skin started to boil and threatened to bubble over. it seems to be so much easier to get overwhelmed these days, and by things that i don't think the past me would have worried much about. does this mean i'm getting old? or have i just completely lost my ability to handle stress? i seem to have been misplacing a lot these days: my nephew's book, my flash drive, my ipod cable, my mind... all missing.

i'm a self-proclaimed pessimist, but i am not the kind of person (ninety-nine percent of the time) that holds on to a bad mood for the sake of being in a bad mood. if my day starts out crappy or doesn't go as expected, i'm always open for noticing a silver lining. while i may not go into any in-depth search for it, if it starts dancing in front of me, shiny and sparkling, i won't ignore it. so when, despite the stress, i got through my final with no moments of "oh my god did we even go over this in class? why is this test written in chinese?," and my group did well on our final presentation, and my professor brought pizza and i got a slice of veggie (last time there was only pepperoni left which i can't eat), my about to burst from stress mood was pretty much gone. and then when i was walking to my car after my second class, i fell into one of those moments that should only happen on tv and it made my night/week/month.

see, parts of our campus flood when it rains. well, semi-flood. there are these big squares that make up the sidewalk, probably around three by three, and they all seem to be bowl shaped, though i never notice that until they fill up with ankle deep water whenever we get more than a drizzle. yesterday, it rained. so there's a big group of people leaving all the main buildings, and when we get to the flooding area we kind of form a single file line and weave through the puddles like a long snake. one guy starts singing we're following the leader from peter pan and soon most people join in. when we got to the end of the sidewalk we all just went off in our own directions and acted like nothing happened, but it was awesome.

*Generator - The Holloways 

ten bucks says you don't have it in you

you're watching the tv tell a story about some famous guy who killed himself. he might have been a she, but the famous part is undebatable because we all know those are the only deaths that matter. and you look over and say, "life may get bad, but it never gets that bad. it should never get that bad." i think about punching you, but really, you're not worth it.

i never cut myself. i never inhaled water or took enough pills to need a stomach pumping. i never touched a gun or tied a rope or stood teetering at the edge of a cliff two thoughts past "what if." sometimes i wish i had the courage to.

they say that everyone dies twice. once when the soul leaves the body and once when their name is spoken for the last time. i just want to become famous enough to never have to die the second time. maybe then i'll never have to find out what comes next.

i think about the guy that killed himself. maybe he didn't do it because things got that bad. maybe he did it because he knew they never could.

-

goodness but there has been a lot of deaths over the past couple of weeks. my younger sister's best friend's mom, who was a close family friend and also worked at my high school, just passed away. i'm thinking all of the death inspired this. plus a verizon employee and a random internet poem.

*Dutch Courage - The Spill Canvas

please stop talking to me

if you know me in real life, you know that my favorite thing to talk about recently is the fact that the world and its mother believes me to be pregnant. if you're a regular blog reader, then you've probably picked up on this, too. (though hopefully in not such an obvious way? maybe?) since i've put on my first year of marriage extra weight i've had people congratulating me, coming up to rub my stomach, and asking how my kids were (this one still confuses me. i haven't even been married a year. this was not a shotgun wedding, people, let me assure you). for the most part, i just find the whole thing amusing. i have been working on watching what i eat and trying to make sure i have some sort of activity in every day (weight loss for the lazy and unmotivated), and honestly, i'm not as bothered about it most days as a lot of people would be.

i think i mentioned on here that one of my professors thought i was pregnant. he said it so matter-of-factly in the middle of a long-winded speech and immediately followed it with "so i'll go easy on you" that i just never got around to correcting him. he mentioned my "pregnancy" indirectly a couple of times after that, and there was just no way to correct the misconception without a whole lot of awkwardness. and since i probably won't see him again after the end of this semester, i was okay with avoiding the awkward conversation. apparently he wasn't.

last week he said to me, "i hope you don't bail out on us next week (we have presentations)." when i looked confused he added, "aren't you due soon?" now, some people may have gotten embarrassed or offended that someone thought they were nine months pregnant. i thought it was hilarious. because i may have gained some weight, but i know i don't look like i could pop out a baby in the next week. i answered with an awkward laugh and some stupid comment and the moment passed.

tonight, in the middle of a mid-presentation pizza party break, he came up to me apologizing for something. i had no idea what he was talking about at first because he was saying things like, "i wanted to apologize... i didn't see... i was going to last week... i wanted to apologize when you were alone..." i was basically thinking, "huh?" while still assuring him that it was okay. and then i suddenly figured out that he had figured out that he had been mistaken all semester and just wanted the conversation to stop. of course it didn't because he just couldn't stop with his awkward, half-finished apologies as he wrung his hands and got redder and redder. let me tell you, this conversation was so much more awkward and embarrassing than having him think i was pregnant. trust me. and then he said something like, "it's just cause you sit like that..."

um, what?

so apparently i sit like a pregnant lady. however pregnant ladies sit. i've also been told that i stand like a pregnant lady sometimes. i've been told i have the moods of a pregnant lady. lesson learned: i was born pregnant without the pregnancy and there's just nothing i can do about it. except maybe get pregnant? (no thanks.)

also, this was longer than i intended it to be.

*How Would You Like It - Jem

all we need is some relief through these hard times

since my last post where i was able to spend an entire afternoon making book spine poetry, a lot has changed. for one thing, projects that were supposed to be due on the sixteenth were suddenly moved up to the second. exams were suddenly made cumulative. and group members were suddenly called out of town on business trips. basically, school decided that i had too much under control, that i wasn't panicking enough and that, sadist that it is, it had grown to like my panic in the beginning of the semester and wasn't ready to be deprived of it just yet. so it threw a whole lot of stress on me and watched me squirm. joke's on it, though, because i have everything back under control and this means that i will just have less to do in the upcoming weeks. (except for that cumulative exam. i'm really not looking forward to that.)

but school wasn't the only thing to decide that things were going too well for me. i mentioned on here that my dad was over in the desert. what i didn't mention is that he was there because my grandmother was sick. after a couple of days when everyone thought she was getting better, she passed away on wednesday (i'm not going to get into a sob-fest about it here, though). a wednesday that i still had to go to school. that was fun. and then, a couple of days after that, i found out that my ap physics teacher from high school died. which you may not think is too big of a thing for me considering the fact that i graduated high school six years ago and really haven't had much contact with him since, but my high school was really small. and everyone was really close. and a death in the faculty is kind of like a death in the family to us. (remember when i talked about the death of our ap history teacher?)

anyway, between the deaths and the stress i was not having a very good week. though aside from a really bad thursday where i was sleep deprived and bursting into tears about everything, i was doing a pretty awesome job at coping. which was why i was avoiding blogging. because writing it all out would make it real, and i just could not afford to do that at the moment. but, like i said, everything is back in hand, my dad will be coming back on thursday which should help his mood a bit (or at least distract him? maybe?), and i received an email yesterday morning that made my day. all i have to do now is make it through the next couple of weeks, and at the moment, it seems very possible.

*These Hard Times - Matchbox 20