To define is to limit.

steal away into that way back when

2012-02-10T21:48:00.000-05:00

when i was in kindergarten, my friends and i would sometimes play aladdin during recess. i don't remember actually playing the game much, but i do remember the five minutes or so before when we would choose characters pretty well. i would always choose to play raja. for those of you not fully educated in disney characters, that's jasmine's pet tiger. i'm not sure why i was so pressed to play an animal, but i was the tiger every. single. time.

when i was in second grade, my friends and i made a teddy bear picnic kind of club where, once a week, we would each bring a teddy bear to school to play with at recess. i would always bring a small white bear i got with a pair of pajamas. he wore a matching pair. his name is stuffy. he still sits in the toy box in the playroom at my parent's house. i have this distinct memory of us all letting our teddy bears climb up the jungle gym. stuffy was the smallest one there.

when we were all much, much younger, my sisters and i would play this game about witches and small children. the details are a little foggy, but i remember two of us being witches (usually me and my younger sister) and we would catch a little girl (my older sister) and we always ended up turning her into a cat. we would play this while wearing our footsie pajamas which were fuzzy like fur. we would also play whatever my older sister was learning at school. i remember playing ancient egypt (my younger sister and i were slaves and whipped with a jump rope) and reenacting the experiences of chinese immigrants coming to san francisco.

my younger sister and i would also play these long, elaborate games that would last for weeks with little figures (rainbow brite and these small dogs and cats come to my mind) and the boxes from those hickory farms cheese and meat gifts. every night we would shove everything under my bed to be pulled out and continued the next day. the figures went on wild adventures, had little song and dance numbers, and even suffered through the mundane things like cleaning their houses/cars (the boxes).

one time, my sisters, a neighbor girl, and i all played doctor to a tree that had a root that was sticking up. another time my sisters and i made a lemonade/lemon stand (the only business we had was the neighbor girl and a lady who took some lemons, said she had to get the money from her house, and never came back. every saturday was filled with softball and soccer games, and whoever wasn't the one playing would hang out at the snack shack and playgrounds.

sometimes, i look back on my childhood and see all of the stuff that we had that kids these days don't, and what we didn't have that they do, and i'm just so grateful for everything. i had a great childhood, especially those california days. sometimes i think about how different i would be without that.

*Stay Gold - Stevie Wonder

makes me forget the things i never said

2012-02-07T17:22:00.001-05:00

i am sitting here in the mason library trying to teach myself how to be unstupid and suffering from the tortuously slow internet connection that, for some reason, keeps disconnecting and being generally uncooperative. what i really want to do is to smash junior against the wall and scream at the top of my lungs and tell anyone who will listen that i give up, but, being in a library and in public, that behavior is pretty much frowned upon. grr. instead, i decided to blog out my frustrations. it was at that moment that i realized that i haven't blogged from mason in like forever. not that it makes a difference, really, but i found it significant because, despite the passing of months, i can't quite seem to shake this identity crisis, and at the moment i'm very caught up in things that i used to do but don't do anymore. no matter how stupid and seemingly meaningless they are.

but anyway, somewhere between that realization and writing this post, i wandered into the land of unposted blog posts. i have one hundred and six drafted "posts" for this blog. i find that kind of ridiculous. sure, some of them are not actual blog posts. there are notes, reminders, songs to listen to, videos to watch, and what have you. but then there are a lot of posts that i left to search for a title lyric and just never posted. there are notes on things to write when i have the time that i have never written. there are song lyrics that must have inspired a post once upon a time, but i have no idea where i was going with it. i don't even remember all of these things that i once wanted to say but never did. there is just so much half-started stuff that i'm starting to think it means more than it does. i've been rewriting an email to a friend for three years. i've been thinking about remodeling my blog for a year. i only washed half of the dishes in the sink. i am getting a phd because i refuse to finish studying. it's known in my family that i will never eat the last of anything. i am incapable of finishing things.

of course, i may just be incapable of teaching myself to be unstupid and this is my brain's way to stop trying. procrastination and psychobabble: my two favorite things to do.

*Things I Never Said - Deep Purple

2012-02-05T12:09:00.000-05:00

i hate feeling stupid. i really do. and i feel like, once you reach a certain point in your education, it is no longer designed to educate you. it is just there to make you feel stupid.

like, you'll be learning how to add and subtract numbers your whole life, and then suddenly one day they come and tell you that from now on, you will be adding and subtracting letters and the answers will be fruit and if you mix the answer with a certain chemical that you have to basically invent with the help of the fairies and then send it to china using only the idea of pixels and the theory behind time travel, then you'll have what you need to start your assignment and you have three minutes to finish everything. and you're just like, "wait... what? how are you supposed to perform mathematical functions on nonnumbers? and i don't know the theory behind time travel. and why china?" and then the person standing in the front of the room looks down their nose at you and says something like "you should know this" in a deep and foreboding voice laced with ridicule and just a hint of disappointment. and all you can think is, why should i know this? how should i know this? you know what i know? i know everything that your system has taught me so far. if you didn't teach me to do this then why exactly do you expect me to know how to do it? does knowledge of random things i have no interest to just float around in the air getting inhaled by people and lodging itself in our brains? am i not sniffing the right air? should i be drinking some special water? what do you want from me?

gah.

time goes by so slowly

2012-02-04T11:00:00.000-05:00

yesterday was the longest friday. which i guess was an appropriate way to end what i'm pretty sure was the longest week of my adult life. maybe even the longest week of my entire life. actually, weeks have definitely not been this long since the invention of the internet. maybe not even since the invention of the car. but after i finish the million assignments to do today the week will be officially over.

it is taking all of my will-power to sit here and do my work (i'm waiting for a program to finish installing on my computer so this is not really procrastinating) instead of getting my book from the bedroom and finishing it. i couldn't even bring it with me to the living room because i knew if it was within reach i wouldn't do any work. and seeing as this is the one class that i think i'm really screwed in, i probably should put in the effort. right? right.

speaking of this class (OS security), i took it because i didn't want to take a malware engineering course. since i registered so late, there wasn't much to pick from (plus, i took everything i actually wanted/semi-wanted to take in my last degree). i get into class at seven on wednesday, bored to death from my four:thirty class, and guess what he decides we should learn this semester? malware engineering on computers and phones. which is basically harder than the class i had opted out of to take this one that was easier in the catalog description. stupid professors. stupid luck.

anyway, to take a short break from my school complaints which i'm sure will resume eventually, here are a few links to look at. first, check out these inappropriate answers to test questions/assignments. they're pretty amusing, and most of them are not the cliched "find x. here it is." ones. next, the world's population is expected to hit 7 billion pretty soon. this link shows where you fit in among all the other people. it's pretty cool. i was the 5,106,445,605th person alive on earth, and the 80,068,484,098th person to have lived since history began (i'm not quite sure where these people in history lived before earth). it also shows information about the population growth of the country you live in, what you can expect to see in your lifetime, and other interesting facts. it's definitely worth a look. finally, here's a link to a short story that was written by a college friend of mine way back in my undergrad days. (it's a 99 cent ebook.) i haven't had the chance to read it yet, and haven't read anything he's written in forever, but i'm extremely jealous of him so i thought i'd share.

*Hung Up - Madonna

let's go, time's a wastin'

2012-02-02T15:15:00.001-05:00

this morning, as i checked four of my email accounts, my blackboard account to see when an assignment was due, my patriotweb to see if my bill was paid, my bank account to make sure i had enough money to buy all the text books i suddenly need, my amazon account to track a package, my facebook, and my blog, i realized that i spend a lot of time signing in to things.

i must have spent a year at least just typing in my mason id and password into all of the different mason sites a million and three times a day for the past six years. none of them let you stay signed in when you leave the page, secure but annoying. and then when there are conflicting sites (like my two gmail accounts or my mason mail and hotmail) i have to keep signing out of one and into another throughout the day. there's another nine months gone. and when i go from joe to junior to a school computer, i have to sign into everything all over again. i've spent at least three months doing that.

and then i wondered, if i spent less time signing into things, would i actually be more productive? ignoring all the time i waste on the sites themselves, am i using precious moments to type and retype variations of 'skabli' and my password? let's say i spend fifteen minutes a day signing in. in those fifteen minutes, i could have written or edited a page or two of a novel. with a page everyday, i could have a publishable book done in a year. if i spent those fifteen minutes teaching myself how to program, i could write my own malware and infect the worlds' computers thereby guaranteeing myself a job with the us government after i get out of jail. if i spent the time exercising, people wouldn't constantly congratulate me on being pregnant. if i spent it doing something religious, i could work my way towards heaven. if i even just spent it playing online games (flood-it on google + is my obsession) or watching netflix i would at least be having fun.

but i'm not. i'm just inputting a username and password. i'm wasting time waiting to do things to waste more time. there has to be a more efficient way to do this.

*Tine's A Wastin' - Johnny and June Cash

i can't help but to hear an exchanging of words

2012-02-01T09:03:00.000-05:00

in class yesterday we were discussing tapping (as in bugging phones/computers/etc, not the dance). my professor kept saying things like "when an average person is overheard," "when a politician is overheard," "depending on what we overhear." it reminded me of the common phrase that i'm sure everyone's heard/used/read/watched. "i couldn't help but overhear..." when, in all likelihood, you very well could have helped it.

overhearing is passive. when you overhear something, you are not trying to listen. you are just sitting minding your own business when the sound waves wander upon your ear uninvited and unannounced. tapping a phone is about as far from passive as you can get. you are not just strategically drinking your coffee near the couple having an argument to get a good story to tell at lunch, you are being way more invasive. you are taking active measures to ensure that you hear everything that is said through that phone. you are listening to conversations thought to be private. you are not just "overhearing" anything.

i dunno why it annoyed me so much, but it just seemed like they were rationalizing. you mainly only rationalize things you feel guilty about or know you shouldn't be doing. i'm not saying that tapping is inherently a bad thing. in some cases, it is needed. but the wording used to describe it just rubbed me the wrong way.

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

and i am so overwhelmed

2012-01-31T10:09:00.000-05:00

yesterday was... overwhelming to say the very least. in fact, i'm still feeling overwhelmed and slightly panicked.

see, despite everything i said, i applied for the phd program with absolutely no expectation of getting accepted. as far as i was concerned, after my master's i was done with school. because i am so ready to be done. applying was really just my way to get everyone who was telling me to continue off my back. at least then i could say, "i was going to continue but i didn't get accepted." it was the best way to end all future conversations/arguments/lectures regarding the subject. so when i finished my last class last semester, in my head, i was done forever.

but then things went wrong. mason, going against its word on acceptance requirements, let me in. not only did they let me in, but they let me in late. yesterday i went to get my scholarship upgraded so they'd pay for my next stupid degree. they said they couldn't do anything until i was registered. since my account was still on hold at mason and they said it would be for the next five days, i thought, okay great i won't be able to get this done this semester. but my dad was with me so we went to mason to see. they took the hold off of my account on the spot and i was able to register yesterday morning. (oh, just to throw this out there, the adviser mason originally assigned me to is on leave. thanks for that, mason.) i then went back to the scholarship people and got them to present my file in a special meeting yesterday instead of waiting for the normal one in a few days. i went to my first class yesterday.

now, this would all be great if i actually wanted to continue. if i was ready for it. my dad was ecstatic at the way everything was just falling into place, as was everyone else the story was related to. me? i just felt rushed and panicked. and overwhelmed. really, really really overwhelmed.

after expecting to never step into a classroom again as a student, now i'm starting back up again completely unprepared. i'm behind and lost and so totally not in the mood for this. i know i could have deferred my acceptance for a semester, but i also know that if i did i would be even less prepared later. once i stop, i'm stopping for good. but now i have to look into qualifying exams and people to put on my faculty committee or whatever and all of these other things that i hadn't looked into because i was not supposed to get in. i have absolutely no idea what i'm doing.

i was done. and now i'm suddenly not. overwhelmed does not even begin to cover it.

*Broken Wings - Flyleaf

where have you gone?

2012-01-29T10:07:00.000-05:00

i am on a mission to save adverbs.

it seems like adverbs are all but disappearing from the english language. i, for one, blame the writers, or, more accurately, the people giving the writers advice. do you know how many times i have read "advice" telling me to avoid adverbs while writing? that falling prey to them puts you in the category of writers that tell instead of show? i can't even count the number of people who have given the editing advice of, "take out all the adverbs." but what i want to know is why? why should we take out the adverbs but leave the adjectives? how is describing a noun any better than describing a verb?

you may have noticed the outcome of all this advice. adjectives have gotten too cocky. they are making plans to take over the world... or at least the english language. there is no more time to waste. we must stop them.

how long has it taken us to realize that 'fast', an adjective, killed 'quickly', an adverb, and is now recognized as an adjective and an adverb? exactly when did people first start championing good over well? why are we now okay with eating healthier instead of eating more healthily (besides the fact that the second one now sounds weird)? we no longer shop smartly, we now shop smarter. how many adverbs do we have to lose before we put an end to this? i mean, sure, adjectives are usually shorter, but have we really gotten so lazy that we can't add a few syllables to every sentence?

do the right thing. use adverbs regularly, proudly, and well.

*Mrs. Robinson - Simon and Garfunkel

it's gonna be a good day, just wait and see

2012-01-26T23:17:00.000-05:00

earlier today, i walked into mason with a purpose. i was convinced that, having not heard from them a week into the semester, i was rejected, and they hadn't bothered to send me anything telling me so. i was ready to tell them that i thought they were unprofessional, disrespectful, and cheap. i go to the office and get some of this out when the dude at the desk asks me for my name and student id. i give them to him, he stares at his computer for a minute, and then he says he'll go print out my letter. i assume he means my rejection letter, so i sit down and wait. he comes back after a few minutes, hands me an envelope, and says, "i'm really sorry..." before i can answer he continues with, "but you're going to have to come back to school for a while longer. pleasant surprise, right?"

i was so convinced that i was rejected, so ready to accept it, that i didn't understand what he was saying for a couple of seconds. and then it hit me: i got accepted into the phd program. i managed to completely fool an entire committee of people into thinking that i knew enough about something to try and get a phd. how in the world did that happen? now let's just hope that i can continue to fool them into giving me the degree.

so anyway, i was at my parents house today while my husband was at class. when my mom dropped me off back home (only having one car brings back serious memories of pre-license days), my husband was already here. i went to get junior from my bedroom and waiting for me on the bed was a card and present (a new purse since i've been dragging my heels getting one but constantly saying that i need a new one). and then we ate a giant snickers bar (or like, a piece of it) that deserves a picture. if only i felt like uploading it.

anyway, long story short: i got into the program, got a new bag, and ate snickers. overall, a pretty awesome day.

*Good Day - Jewel

i've been living this lie for way too long

2012-01-25T11:20:00.000-05:00

for as long as i can remember, i've been selling myself as "the bridge between the east and west." i am from saudi arabia and america, virtually the polar opposites of the world. i am proof that it is possible to connect them, to bring them together in one place, one idea, one person. at the start of every semester, when we have to introduce ourselves to the class, the interesting fact about me has always been that i am half saudi and half american. (which, incidentally, has always reminded me of that quote from jane eyre: "But I don't mean to flatter you: if you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it.") anyway, i announce it like it's the coolest thing. like it's something that i myself accomlished. i parade around claiming that i can connect these places that, to an outsider, are so completely unconnectable. because i am the bridge.

in reality, the biggest similarity between the two countries is that i don't really belong to either.

i always find myself a little surprised that no one calls me out on my lie, because i most definitely am not a bridge. i am neither here nor there, not saudi and not american. how can i bridge the two places when i am floating aimlessly somewhere in between them. i'm struggling to make the two halves fit inside of me. how am i supposed to connect them for everyone else?

in every essay about myself that i have written since the tenth grade, whether it be for class or college admissions or whatever, i have been promising people that, if they just give me half a chance, i will connect the world for them. and if i were in charge of reading college admission essays, i'd rather let the girl who writes her essay about her fascination with snooki (i can't decide if it's sad that i had to google her name or if it's sad that i think it's sad that i had to google her name) in, than the girl who insists she's some sort of architectural structure. at least the first is honest.

so this is me, almost a decade late, telling you that there is a west and there is an east, and although they may seem totally different at first, there are more similarities between them than what meets the eye. but i am not a bridge between them and i never will be. just a frequent visitor of both.

on a completely unrelated note, here's a video about "doofy" commercial husbands that i thought funny. actually, the whole "target women" series is worth taking a look at if you have the time.

*Living a Lie - 3 Doors Down

i almost screamed when i saw you

2012-01-24T10:12:00.000-05:00

i am one of those people that startles really easily and really dramatically. and over the past couple of years it has just gotten worse. yesterday i was in the kitchen and my husband walked in. i turned around, saw him, and did that gasp-half scream thing, threw my hand over my heart which had conveniently stopped pumping regularly, and had to take a moment to get my breathing back to normal. he wasn't even sneaking in or anything.

a few days ago, i was watching a show on my computer in the bedroom. the door was closed so i wouldn't hear the show that my husband was watching in the living room. i heard the doorknob twist, which, to any normal person, would be enough warning that someone was coming in. and, i knew someone was coming in. but then when i saw him standing next to the bed, i had a heart attack as if he had just appeared out of thin air.

and it is not only at home where this happens, which is probably the worst part. a couple of weeks ago i was leaving the bathroom in target just as someone was coming in. as i went to push the door back, someone was pulling it from the other side, and then some lady was standing in front of me. i did my usual melodramatic reaction, screamed "oh my god," jumped back, and then tried to laugh it off. i think i terrified her. it would be really kind of funny if it wasn't also pretty embarrassing.

so yeah, you don't even have to jump out from behind a corner and scream boo to scare me out of my wits. all you have to do is announce your presence and wait for me to see you. i'm really trying to work on this. you know, for the innocent strangers that my drama affects.

*Jilted Lovers and Broken Hearts - Brandon Flowers

what is your excuse? why haven't i heard from you?

2012-01-23T11:35:00.000-05:00

so mason starts back up today. my sister just made her usual first day of classes phone call when she worries that she made her schedule wrong and she has way too much free time between classes. by the end of the semester, she'll make another call in which she complains that she made her schedule wrong and she doesn't have enough free time between classes. it's become a tradition.

while she's starting her classes, i'm still waiting around for mason to deign to answer my request to continue studying with them. yup, semester's starting and i still haven't heard anything. when i called harassing them on friday they said all the decisions are made and were mailed out that morning so i should hear something any day now. unfortunately, it's against university policy to say anything on phone/in person/through email. it's mail or nothing with these guys. i mean, i pretty much know that i've been rejected, and to tell you the truth, i don't even care anymore. i just want the conclusive answer. i don't want the thought of, "oh no, i might have to write a thesis in the next few months" hovering over my head. i have enough unwanted thoughts lurking around every corner without that.

but when i get rejected, the question remains of what should i do next? most people are telling me to continue at another school, but mason is the only school anywhere near me that has a phd in computer forensics. and i really like computer forensics. most of the schools in my area don't have any IT-ish phd programs because, let's face it, why would you need/want a phd in something like that? by the time you put the finishing touches on whatever you're doing it will be obsolete anyway.

blech. the good thing is that, accepted or rejected, this will be the last post ever about waiting to hear back from mason (possibly any school ever). that's kind of a relief, right? oh, and a friend had posted this song on facebook this morning. i think it fits this post too perfectly to be just a mere coincidence.

*Why Haven't I Heard From You - Reba McEntire

you love me but you don't know who i am

2012-01-21T11:58:00.001-05:00

i hate when formspring emails me telling me to check out what my friends have been up to, and i go to the site and there's been no new activity since the last time i signed in like a month ago.

another thing that has been bothering me lately, which i must admit i used to do all the time, is thinking that character a should just love character b because character b is good and loves character a. it doesn't matter if these characters are in books, movies, or tv shows, the same principle applies.

one of the top examples in my mind is from the hunger games because someone just mentioned this, but i could find examples from a hundred different things. in the hunger games, though, you often find people getting annoyed with katniss for not immediately falling for peeta when he says that he loves her. throughout the entire first book, they just can't stand her because she's pretending to be in love, and she's confused, and he is just so sweet (the main, more important plot of killing children aside of course). and then when she has to get engaged and married and everything, they're just so annoyed that she's not happy to be spending forever with him. and of course it just boils down to the fact that she doesn't deserve him and he's so much better than her.

but who said that, just because someone loves you, you have to love them back? who decided that what katniss wants (to be alone forever) doesn't matter because what peeta wants is so much more sweet and romantic? character b may very well be a fantastic person who deserves all chances at happiness, but that doesn't mean that character a should give up their own happiness for them. character a should not be expected to be swept off their feet just because character b has a really cool broom.

i find myself watching movies now that i watched years ago, and when before i was thinking, "oh my god just get together already," now i find myself hoping they stay apart because there is no way they should be together. maybe i'm just becoming even more cynical, but it annoys me.

i think that's what's really great about 500 days of summer. the girl goes off and finds her own happiness, despite the fact that the guy really wanted to be with her. and i know a lot of people hate her for that, but these are the same people that don't seem to realize that he was one of those people that fell in love with an image of her and refused to let go of it, even when it no longer fit her.

i'm starting to ramble. and i can't find a song lyric that goes with this.

*Let Me Go - 3 Doors Down

i don't wanna do this anymore

2012-01-20T18:23:00.000-05:00

so i'm sitting in my living room having just finished reading about what my favorite disney film says about me (except they didn't have my favorite so i was really reading about what other disney movies say about the people that love them) and wondering what to do. i had already checked my mail, scrolled quickly through my facebook news feed, and finished the show that i had been watching in five minute intervals all week. the only thing i knew that i didn't want to do was write. i didn't want to blog. i didn't want to reply to emails. i didn't want to add anything to any of the stories that are hanging around my computer hard drive waiting for their plots to thicken.

and then i thought: this is wrong. i like(d?) to write, and i have barely written anything lately.

now, i'm not saying that i should constantly be writing or even wanting to write. i just feel like i'm starting to fall into a routine in which writing does not exist. and i want to revive it before i manage to completely kill it. once i get into a routine, it's really, really, really hard to change it. unless it involves becoming more lazy. my body is always ready to change for the worst. i want to not dread writing, though, as i have started to do. and so, when what i want to do least is write, i will write. even if it's pointless, even if it's short, even if it doesn't make sense, i'll write. it's my new philosophy. or something.

*Unfaithful - Rihanna

with all this fever in my mind, i could drown in your kerosene eyes

2012-01-18T16:23:00.000-05:00

blogging is momentarily really hard. that is all the time i am going to waste talking about my current inability to blog regularly. the following were originally going to be posts by themselves, but i keep starting one and never finishing it. this way's better.

[one] i would like to be annoyed that the movie industry has completely given up on even pretending to put out new movies. remakes are one thing, but it seems like just bringing an old movie back to the big screen is getting more and more popular. the thing is, i completely get it. when times are tough, no one wants to risk spending fifty plus dollars to take their family to a movie which might very well completely suck. bringing back the classics is a way to guarantee an audience. bringing back the classics in 3d is a way to guarantee an audience to shell out an extra five bucks or so per ticket for nothing special. and the thing is, most of the movies i am excited for this year are either ones i've already seen or remakes of ones i've already seen. with movies like the lion king (which held two top spots at the box office when it was out for both the 2d and 3d versions), beauty and the beast, titanic (the preview for which kills me because it says from the director of avatar), finding nemo, and star wars all coming back with virtually no changes to them, you have to wonder if they'll just stop making new movies altogether. and you know, maybe they should.

[two] last friday i had written, "it is friday the thirteenth, and i have nothing to say." not sure if i was going anywhere with that, but there it is.

[three] in the days where all the energy i could afford to use was spent turning on my ipod, i was listening to a lot of bob dylan and bruce springsteen, because why the hell not, right? and then a friend posted a video of a song by the tallest man on earth, and i fell in love. you should go check out some of his music. you know when you like a singer and think that you're the only one who knows him and one day you realize that they're really super famous and you're just completely out of the loop? it was one of those kind of feelings with him. you see, i had a song of his on my ipod, but it was a cover and i always thought that he was just one of those random people that put out a good cover and disappeared. you know the type? it was awesome finding he had his own stuff, too.

[four] i feel like i should mention the sopa and pipa bills, though i'm sure most of you already know about them since the internet is on strike today. (you may have noticed that a bunch of sites are blacked out today.) you know, the bills that want to be laws that will basically destroy the funness of the internet in an attempt to stop piracy? yeah, those. you can go here to sign petitions and send emails to congress and stuff to let them know that you think the bills suck.

[five] i have friends who work at hospitals and are constantly posting pictures of children that they particularly like who are treated at their hospital. this could just be me, but it makes me extremely uncomfortable. i mean, it's one thing plastering pictures of your own children hooked up to tubes and sitting on hospital beds all over the internet, but another thing entirely to post pictures of other people's children. i mean, doesn't that go against some code of ethics or something? or am i just overreacting here?

[six] i feel like my blog needs a makeover. finding the motivation, time, and energy to give it said makeover is at the top of my to-do list. it's really too bad that i suck at keeping to to-do lists.

*Where Do My Bluebird Fly - The Tallest Man on Earth

man, i'm just tired and bored with myself

2012-01-11T20:38:00.000-05:00

it took a heavy dose of the frustration that comes from giving computer help to the computer illiterate to overcome the depression induced blogging dry spell i've been having. i suddenly understand what all my professors were talking about for the past five or so years. i suddenly see that people using optical drives for cup holders and thinking their web browser was google are not just stories made up to add an element of amusement to an otherwise dry class. it's true. it's all true. helping my dad with his computer problems for the past couple of years was just the warm-up for the kind of users that are out there. what i really don't understand is why people insist on making things complicated when they are provided with a simple, easy to follow, step by step guide to do everything they need to do in half an hour or less. i mean, i don't claim to be an expert at everything, but when i come across something i can't do and i have a set of instructions, i follow them. it's the logical thing to do.

gah.

at the same time, though, it kinda feels good to be presented with a problem and have to search for a solution. helping someone achieve their goals makes me feel like maybe i'm not a complete waste of a college education. i researched, and tested, and struggled, and was tempted to throw junior out of the window, and then i found something that fit what i wanted. and i played around with it until i was able to make it work. and then i helped "the client" learn how to use it. and it just feels good to work at something and have it turn out right, you know?

*Dancing in the Dark - Bruce Springsteen

and the games you play, you would always win

2012-01-05T10:55:00.000-05:00

i have been trying to write something all morning, but it is just not working out. i'm too annoyed by mason's apparent love for recorded messages to try and write anything coherent. i do have a bunch of notes written in several drafts that (hopefully) will make for interesting posts someday, but i just don't think today is the day.

instead, here is a piece that i wrote a few years ago and recently came across again. it's obviously from a time before i got stuck in the images and themes you find in everything i write today. kudos to you if you can recognize the eleven games referenced in it.

Simon says stop.

Simon says love me.

Simon says stay.

Break my heart.

I wish you were better at this game.

I'm going to jail without passing go, and you're climbing up chutes and not paying the five thousand for

spinning a ten. You're not waiting for a one to start and peeking into envelopes marked confidential. I

go fish until I'm drowning in cards, and you're declaring eights aren't special and every card can be

crazy. You call 'uno' but your hands are full and go to Queen Frostine without an invitation.

I'm trying to play your games, but you're breaking all the rules, and I can't keep up when I don't know

where up is. You're building castles out of the chaos you create and proclaiming yourself the winner.

You toss me to the side without a second thought, because whoever is stuck with the old maid at the

end loses, and it figures that would be the one rule you follow.

also, here is a list of new year's resolutions for 20 somethings that i meant to post earlier, but never did.

*Set Fire to the Rain - Adele

it goes unnoticed

2012-01-02T10:09:00.000-05:00

because vacations always throw my inner schedule off way more than what is traditionally acceptable, i realized pretty late yesterday that we were starting a new year. oh well. needless to say, i started twenty-twelve without much sparkly excitement and wishes for happiness. in fact, new year's eve saw me asleep at ten or eleven after watching the santa clause on tv and driving for a gazillion hours across the country, and new year's day found me stuck on the couch all day trapped in a marathon of the lying game, recuperating from all the business of the past week. (what is it about a marathon that makes it so hard to turn off? this must be scientifically studied.)

had i known it was new year's i probably wouldn't have done anything different, though. for one, this year is double even numbers which is like a slap in the face to me because i like odd. also, i don't know how your family vacations are, but after one of mine you need a day of nothing before you are back to normal. third, i was never one of the big new year celebrators anyway. i remember the first year i was allowed to stay up and watch the ball drop. i was so excited i couldn't speak, and it was the most anticlimactic moment of my life. i think i lost the new year's spirit then. and finally, i'm not a big hoper of a whole year of happiness. why should the whole year have to be happy? i find comfort in sadness, productivity in anger, and creativity in hopelessness. happiness is great for photo shoots and barbecues, but a year of happiness would be a total waste of time for me. and this year, i hope to do something worthwhile. (unless i get accepted to the phd program. then i'll just waste another year "educating" myself.)

the point is, this year started off slowly. today was supposed to be my productive day. there are bags and stuff just lying around from the florida trip that need to be unpacked and organized. there are dishes that need to be washed and clothes that need to be laundered. i have pictures i need to upload and songs i need to download. but i can't stop yawning, and every second i wait the chores seem to multiply and i just don't feel like doing any of that today.

*Again I Go Unnoticed - Dashboard Confessional

just realize what i just realized

2012-01-01T09:57:00.000-05:00

it always feels so weird to come back from a trip, no matter how short. everything is exactly where and how you left it. everything's the same, except you. it's like you paused time, went off for a while, came back and unpaused it. and no one knows except for you. or, you know, everyone who knew you'd left. whatever.

anyway, instead of trip highlights, i've decided to compile a list of the realizations i made over the past ten or so days. this may get long. ready? here we go.

[one] it doesn't matter where a kid is from, what language s/he speaks, how old s/he is, what religion s/he practices or doesn't practice, or what kind of family s/he grew up in, they are all the same: ungrateful and obnoxious. there was not a single family that passed that didn't have at least one child crying about not getting to buy an ice cream or a souvenir, not getting to ride on a particular ride, being too hot or too cold, being hit by a sibling, being tired of walking, etc. i mean, you are in disney world for goodness sake. shut up and enjoy yourself! and the parents are all tired from the early mornings, annoyed that they spent a gazillion dollars to listen to their kids whine a million miles away from home, and their feet hurt too. of course, the minute the kids get back to school, they'll immediately go into denial and remember the vacation as being the most amazing ever and start begging to go back. lesson learned: if i ever do have kids (my life so far has pretty much kidded me out) the first time they are going to disney world is with their own children.

[two] virginia has the most boring licence plate in the entire united states. not only does our default not have any picture, it also doesn't have what county you live in, the state's motto/nickname/accomplishment whatever it is, or anything else. it doesn't even have the state name written in a pretty font or color. virginia was the home of more founding fathers than any other state, that should entitle us to at least a pretty font. i realize that we're really little more than DC's shadow, but we have our slightly pathetic "virginia is for lovers" thing going on, we could at least try to use that.

[three] there are still a few good kids out there. a very small few. i felt i should point them out after completely writing off children in the first point. there was the tiny kid that stopped to say bless you to me when i sneezed. it sounds stupid, but he was really cute. there was the kid that, instead of just shoving past us in line to get to his family or pushing past with an 'excuse me,' stopped, excused himself, and waited patiently for us to let him pass before moving forward. and then there was the kid that, in the push and shove of amusement park foot traffic, accidentally bumped into us and came back to say that he was sorry.

[four] turning into a semi-professional couch potato leads to killer foot pains when you suddenly decide to spend all day walking and standing in line. after a couple of days of pain, though, all of it went away and i made an incredible realization: i am invincible. the last day at the parks was exhausting and slightly painful, though, so my invincibility was a bit short-lived.

[five] there are way too many harry potter fans in the world. way. too. many. harry potter world was super crowded, the stores were all pretty small so people were just squashed into them like sardines in a can, the lines to all the lines were really long, but it was still super amazing to finally get to go to it. and the forbidden journey ride was definitely one of my favorites from the vacation.

[six] there are a lot of disgustingly bigoted people in the world. it's sometimes hard to remember this when i live in such a diverse community. but wow are people prejudiced. and racist. and stupid.

[seven] and finally, mickey mouse is taller in person.

*Realize - Colbie Caillat

thinking to myself

2011-12-27T18:04:00.000-05:00

as we were driving back to the hotel from epcot a little less than an hour ago, i thought to myself, "i know! i'll write a blog post when we get back," and my mind filled with all sorts of exciting and interesting things to write about. but when i got back, i decided to check my mail first, and then change my clothes, and then respond to commenters, and by the time i actually got around to starting a new post, my mind was empty. i'm sure that i have something great to tell all of you, and i will write a trip recap post with all of the highlights when i get back up to virginia, but for the moment, i may as well have spent the last few days trapped in a basement watching infomercials for all of the stories i have to write. though, come to think of it, being trapped in a basement watching infomercials might actually make a pretty interesting post.

anyway, as i was writing the first line of this post, it occurred to me how stupid the phrase "i thought to myself" is. i mean, by nature of the action, thinking is something you do silently in your mind or brain or head or whatever. by that definition, who else would you be thinking to? why do people feel the need to specify that they are the sole audience to their thinking? are there other people hanging out in their heads that they sometimes think to instead? are there times when they do not think to themselves? can they ignore their own thoughts? can they teach me how to do this? did it take a lot of practice? do they actually leave their heads? where do they go? i just have so many questions.

i was supposed to leave to go to my cousin and his family's house at six, which is in four minutes, but i don't know if i want to stand up. i have done oh so much standing this week already, and laying on this bed hanging out in the blogosphere sounds too nice to pass up. the thing is, i haven't seen my cousin since i got here, and the rest of my family has. and he and his family were like super excited for all of us to come and kept telling me to call, but do you know how hard it is to find the time to call someone when you're spending all day in a theme park? six a.m. is too early and at night i'm too tired and during the day is too crazy. and to be perfectly honest, i'm on vacation and i just don't feel like it. i sound like a jerk, don't i? i should stop being lazy and go do my cousinly duties shouldn't i? i'm probably going to regret this decision.

*You Belong With Me - Taylor Swift

i'm going away for a while, but i'll be back

2011-12-22T19:23:00.000-05:00

so i just finished packing for florida and... i need a new wardrobe. desperately. everything i have has either been worn a million times and i am sick to death of it or it doesn't fit me thanks to my new found marriage fat. (this was going to be a post on its own, but i never got around to writing it. basically, everyone in my family - and i'm talking sisters, cousins, aunts, etc - gains weight after marriage. i don't know what it is about us, but i don't like it.) i will be leaving early tomorrow morning, and there is a high chance that i won't be blogging for the next week. hopefully, though, i will come back with a fresh brain that is capable of writing posts that are worth reading.

in my absence, please enjoy this medley of random links and videos.

>>i know that clips of the mickey mouse club are pretty much everywhere since it was where a whole bunch of actors and singers got their start, but this clip of ryan gosling, justin timberlake, and jc whatever his last name is, in my opinion, hilarious. i find the dance thing they do at the end especially funny.

>>remember recess (the cartoon)? well, this class remade the theme song with real people. aside from the fact that the elementary students are suddenly old, i think it's pretty awesome.

>>i thought this was a nice mash-up of the killers' somebody told me and the gorillaz feel good inc. both of which are songs you should listen to if for some reason you never have.

>>this poem, called the cold within, is worth a read. it tells a lot about the way of the world/society.

>>if you're on any other social media sites, you have probably seen the "shit girls say" videos. just in case you haven't, though, you can watch episode one here and episode two here. i have to admit that, stereotypical as this is, i actually do some of these.

>>this amazing fact generator is a great way to procrastinate (in case you were looking for one) and get smarter at the same time. a win - win situation.

>>i found this article interesting about how smartphone cameras are gaining popularity. now 1/3 of all pictures taken are with phones.

oh, and my professor finally posted my grade, officially ending my masters degree, but still no word from mason about the phd program. grr.

also, i was wondering. do people still go caroling these days? if you do or know people who do or see people who do, let me know.

*Misguided Ghosts - Paramore

you never left me no messages, you never sent me no letters

2011-12-20T19:54:00.000-05:00

ten - the numbers of days it's been since i submitted my final final. still no grade, though. blergh.

nine - the time i've been going to sleep lately. i feel kind of pathetic.

eight - the number of krispy kreme donuts that are currently sitting on my kitchen counter.

seven - the number of days in a week. (i don't know. this is the last number i have, and i really can't think of anything. thinking is hard.)

six - the time the celebratory dinner/whatever it was thingy that mason was throwing for fall graduates ended tonight. i had forgotten about it and missed it.

five - the number of weeks it's been since mason said they'd give me an answer in two to four weeks.

four - the number of people that have noted the fact that i've gained weight in the past three days.

three - the number of days until i will be in florida and thereby finally visiting harry potter world.

two - the number of dozens of sugar cookie men i made. i decorated a few of them as family members. they were cute.

one - the number of hours it has taken me to write this measly post. my brain has officially shut itself off.

*You Found Me - The Fray

2011-12-17T09:24:00.001-05:00

[one] so the other day someone said that i "write like thomas jefferson." granted, this person was a history buff that was in love with tj, but still. i don't really understand the comparison. i haven't written many historical documents lately (or ever) and i don't remember the last time i read anything by jefferson that was a confused list of images masquerading as talent (i mean that in the most affectionate way possible). was jefferson known for his writing? i mean, besides the things that are famous more because of their historical impact on the world than because they read pretty. i'm sure it was a compliment, but it's like when people tell me i write like (insert random author here) because it is the only author they know and think it will make me happy. thanks for the thought, but i don't really mind not writing like the greats. i'd rather you compare me with someone that makes sense. it was the first time i was compared to a founding father, though, in anything.

[two] when i watch the food channel and judges criticize people for having desserts that are "too sweet," i get so confused. i don't understand how a dessert can be too sweet. nothing is too sweet. i mean, unless you hand me a cheeseburger or a taco or something and i take a bite and get a sugar rush. but... dessert is supposed to be sweet. stop trying to be cool.

[three] facebook's new translate button is hilariously entertaining. the other day i just sat there translating my cousins' and friends' statuses and wall posts from arabic to english. some of them made perfect sense, but who cares about those?

[four] yesterday i found myself visiting all these old websites i used to frequent which led me to looking through old files and folders i have saved on my computer. not only did i find ample proof of what a complete dork i was, but i also found a book i had planned to self-publish and sell for charity a few years ago. it was basically just a collection of my prosetry and short stories, some of which have made it on the blog and some of which haven't, but i had completely forgotten about it. i have no idea what to do with it now, but a lot of the pieces were amusing to read through.

[five] for some reason, i cannot choose a title for this post. it will therefor remain title-less.

you're a rotter, mr. grinch, you're the king of sinful sots, your heart's a dead tomato splotched with moldy purple spots

2011-12-14T09:03:00.001-05:00

last year i came on here and complained about the idea of santa claus. i said that giving credit to a magical man for all the gifts a parents struggles to get for his/her children was wrong. this year, because i seemingly can't stick to an opinion, i'm here to complain about the opposite.

last year, best buy's commercials all said that santa got his presents from best buy because what they had was cooler than what a magical factory at the end of the world could make. this year, the commercials show moms getting such great presents from best buy that santa is no longer needed. they are doing exactly what i wished they would do last year: taking credit for the gifts.

but for some reason, watching santa become obsolete is more sad than funny. showing that moms who shop at best buy don't need santa is depressing. it's like they're saying that there is no longer any need for magic or wonderment this time of year, which is basically what santa is. a man who rides a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer to deliver presents to children all over the world for nothing but the occasional plate of cookies? yeah, let's get rid of him and then have moms stay up to mock him and rub it in his face that he is no longer needed. what kind of values is that teaching the children? where is your christmas spirit, best buy?

i see now that over the past few years, best buy has been slowly working towards this point of getting rid of santa claus. making him seem less and less competent until they could finally just throw him overboard without causing public outrage. and you know what that means, don't you? the grinch's heart has shrunk back down to three sizes too small, and he owns best buy.

*The Grinch's Theme Song

and now you're back

2011-12-12T21:42:00.000-05:00

a few weeks ago (or something like that) my high school bus driver sent me a friend request on facebook. this bus driver was, well... it's a little hard to describe him. i can't quite paint an accurate picture of him with just words. you really had to have been on my bus (which had some super awesome people on it) to really get him. but to try, he spent most of his time with his eyes on the giant rear view mirror thing he has watching the girls, he sometimes made some pervy comments, and not to brag or anything, but i was his favorite student on the bus. he would let me talk, eat, and stand up when no one else was allowed to (of course, everyone did anyway, but that's totally beyond the point). he tried to be our friend by copying the stupid things we did on the bus, like saying hi to random strangers we passed, but he would get annoyed when i brought a camera on the bus because "it made the kids crazy." (this was after he had me take a picture of himself, of course, and email it to him.) anyway, i have fond memories of that bus, and a lot of them include making comments about him being creepy.

the other day, my ap history teacher added me on facebook. this guy was also a character. he was our third teacher for that subject that year (our first one died and our second one was the vice principal or something of the boys' school and couldn't do both) and probably the craziest. the first day he taught us, he broke into song. a week or so before the ap exam, he had us coloring buffaloes in class. because, you know, studying is so overrated. one time, he started shouted something so loud (i forget what, but i think he was being a revolutionist or something) that the teacher from the next room over ran in because she was sure something terrible was happening. another time, he had me read a packet about harvey brown or someone that was as thick as the text book. i read for fifty minutes straight, and it was the most boring class i have ever attended. i still feel sorry for everyone who was forced to listen to me drone on that day. oh, and once, he said that he hoped his daughter grew up to be like me. (yeah, i'm pretty cool, and by that i mean very, very far from it.) i'm painting myself into quite the nerd, aren't i? also, i think his disappointment to the gift we got him at the end of the year - that we thought was perfect - takes the cake for the worst reaction to a present i've ever seen.

anyway, there is a point here. i recently decided that i was going to stop being nostalgic, mopey me. i was going to look to the future and live in the present, etc etc. do you know how hard it is to do that when, not only am i going against my nature, but my past is also on teen nick every day, on the radio every night, and now adding me on facebook? i'm not sure my resolution is going to last very long.

oh, and in case you were wondering, mason still hasn't answered me. anxiety is beginning to take over. i better have an answer before i go to florida.

*I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor

last night she said

2011-12-10T10:59:00.000-05:00

my final exam has been completed and submitted and i am officially done with all work related to my master's. i thought it fitting that the very last question on the exam was a monty python and the holy grail reference, since the movie has haunted my entire educational career since 2006.

anyway, yesterday i went to a dinner fundraiser thing, and i had forgotten how much fun the people there were, so that was fun. except for the part where this conversation cropped up:

me: could i have like half that amount of food?
her: but you have to eat for you and the baby.
me: um... what baby?
*awkward apologies and laughter and stuff*
her: (later) you really don't look pregnant at all, i swear. i just thought cause you got married...
*more awkwardness*

i'm still not sure if that was supposed to mean that i, like most of the people i know that have gotten married recently, should have gotten knocked up the second the ceremony was over. because, you know, my main purpose on this planet, besides cleaning, is obviously bearing and caring for children. or if it meant she thought i had a shotgun wedding, which is ridiculous if you know anything about islam. or if she meant something else entirely, that i just do not get. i'm betting on the first, though, based on what i know of arabs.

*Last Night - The Strokes

it's coming to an end, yeah

2011-12-06T12:45:00.000-05:00

at ten tonight (actually, it will probably be closer to nine:forty-five) i will be finished with the last lecture of my master's degree. does anyone else find that as crazy as i do? remember when i came on here and announced that i had gotten accepted into the program? remember when i first started it? yeah, it feels like yesterday to me, too. and now the whole thing is over, leaving me with a couple of cool tricks up my sleeve, a few new school friends, and another empty, grey, uncertain future staring me in the face.

i still haven't heard back from the phd program, and there are so many things riding on that decision. i need to know what i am doing next semester so i can plan accordingly. stupid mason. you may have noticed the underlying panic that's started to bubble under the surface whenever i mention school these days.

i mean, i still have the take-home exam to do this week, but after that i'm pretty much done.

i usually do an amazon shopping spree at the end of every semester, but i'm considering skipping it this year because i still have some books i haven't read from the border's going out of business sale. we're also planning a trip down to disney world (and of course harry potter world. EXCITING.) for the christmas break, and i think that may be a better use of my money. unless, of course, there are some books that you think i should get immediately. has anyone read the fourth eragon book, yet? how was it? was it worth me getting my hands on the third and reading that (as awful as everyone said it was)?

anyway, this post was mainly just to commemorate the last day of master's lectures. so yay for that.

*Sowing Season - Brand New

you're so good and you're so bad

2011-12-05T10:14:00.000-05:00

you know what one of my favorite parts of the christmas season is? (aside from all of the christmas lights and the same three christmas songs repeated nonstop on the radio by a hundred and fifty different singers, that is.) the sudden influx of lifetime and hallmark movies. i mean, lifetime movies on a normal day are pretty great, but nothing comes close to being as truly, horrendously awesome and cliched and a christmas movie. and the minute december starts, we are bombarded with them.

one of the funnest things to do with these kind of movies, along with mocking the dialogue and counting the number of cliches they fall into, is trying to guess the famous actor/actress that the stars of the movie look like. because, if you watch enough of these, you'll notice that they all look like someone. for a lot of them, i'm guessing it's the only reason they are hired, because they sure weren't have been chosen for their nonexistent acting skills. and then there are the actors that are really not bad, but mixed in with the bad plot and dialogue, they don't stand a chance. i like to imagine why they stooped to doing the movie.

anyway, the other day i was watching my first one of these movies of the season, and the main female character was a dead ringer for kiera knightley. not just in looks, but also mannerisms. she had the same facial expressions and way that she moved. it was kind of creepy after a while because all i could think of was her spending her whole life trying to be kiera knightley. remember that show they once had when they would give people plastic surgery to look like their favorite star? yeah, she would be one of those people who went too far. but the movie was great: predictable with accents suddenly appearing and disappearing, which is always fun. and i generally liked the actors. i'm looking forward to this month.

so thank you lifetime, for your wonderfully bad movies that never fail to put a smile on my face. this year especially, i think i need all the cheesiness you never fail to offer.

*Kiss and Tell - You Me At Six

i don't feel the way i've ever felt, i know

2011-12-03T09:42:00.000-05:00

my headaches have been acting up again lately, and refusing to respond to any medicine, even the ones that used to work. think really, really bad headaches that force me to bed at eleven because it's dark and semi-quiet in the bedroom, but don't let me sleep because it's too painful to close my eyes. (i never understood this. shouldn't closing my eyes be the less painful of the two? i mean, isn't closed its default position and open when they actually have to work?) think headaches that make you want to throw up from how bad they are, only you don't because the last time you threw up was something like seven years ago and you don't want to break the streak.

in short, it's miserable.

my contacts used to give me headaches, so i stopped wearing them. the headaches are still here. i think it might be because of this cough that won't go away because my head almost explodes at every cough, but i can't seem to medicate the cough away either.

but that's not really what i wanted to say. in the spirit of confessions, here's another one. there's a little part of me (don't worry, this is not the part that really has any control of what i do. yet.) that doesn't want the headaches to go away. this part rejoices at every failed attempt to medicate them. it revels in the memory of the way the prescription medicine my doctor gave me closed up my throat so i could barely breathe. it's throwing a party in its little apartment in my brain, celebrating and exacerbating the headaches.

remember how i mentioned i was going through an identity crisis? i still haven't gone into much detail about it, but suffice it to say that it's pretty extensive, stretching into most aspects of my life. you know what part of me hasn't changed? what part i'm still 100% sure is me? my headaches. i was, am, and probably will always be the girl with the headaches. not as cool as a dragon tattoo, but it's me. it's what i know, and with so many other things uncertain, with so many other foundations shaken, well, part of me wants to hold on to the only stable thing about me right now.

i do realize that that sounds messed up.

*Pain - Jimmy Eat World

i'm coming clean

2011-11-30T10:37:00.000-05:00

there are something like two weeks left of my master's degree. when did that happen? and i'm still waiting to hear back from the phd program. with uncertainty about my future once again hanging in the air, i think it's time for me to confess something. it's something that's been weighing on my mind for years now, a facade i've been keeping alive just because it was so convenient. but now, i think it's time that you all knew the truth. ready? here goes.

i am not a good student.

shocking, right? i mean, after being in school for a good eighty three percent of my life, i lave learned to be good at school. really good when the mood suits me. but i have in no way learned how to be a good student. you know the type? that studies and shows up to class and gets the grades and participates and learns stuff. i think that's where my biggest problem lies. i don't learn anything. i can ace a test with my eyes closed, but i will have no idea what you tested me on three point seven seconds later. i just figured out at a young age what teachers are likely to test me on, i keep it in my mind for the test, and then it's gone with the wind.

people just assume when they see me that i'm a good student because i have all the symptoms: i'm quiet, i like to read, i am usually writing in a notebook in class (they assume i'm taking notes), and i know a lot of the right answers. i'm here to finally correct this misconception.

you see, i am no better than a bad student who cheats. i have gotten through my education on smoke and mirrors, and now that it is almost done, maybe forever, i think that it is important for you to know this. i know nothing. and that will most likely come back to bite me now.

so when i fall flat on my face in the real world, and people whisper shocked comments behind their hands that they had such high hopes for me because i was such a good student, you can all go correct them. let them know that i have never once been a good student. tell them to drop their expectations to the level they would have for the burn out who sat in the back of the class sleeping and repeated fourth grade seven times. i'm kinda like him.

*Coming Clean - Hilary Duff (is it weird that this song has been randomly stuck in my head for the past day or so? it is, isn't it?)

we've reached the end of the road

2011-11-27T13:36:00.000-05:00

so i technically finished my novel today. but since i'm planning on going back and changing the beginning from third to first person before i take any time away from these characters and come back to edit, i feel weird saying i'm done. i got the required word count, at least. it's kind of weird how when i finished my first nano i felt happy more than anything, the second one was a flop because though i finished the words i didnt finish the story and never went back to it, but this one i feel kind of sad. probably just my mood lately.

i have a lot of editing to do on it, but i know where i want to take it and what i want to fix, so i'm hoping i actually will edit. i have a problem editing things that are longer than three pages. editing is just not as fun as the initial writing to me. i never understood the editing lovers, but i think i should learn from them.

i just wrote a few thousand words on my story, and switching over to writing this is harder than i thought. my mind is having trouble thinking about me so soon after thinking about my characters.

*Terrified - Story of the Year

i'm gonna be like him, yeah

2011-11-25T09:18:00.000-05:00

you would think that after doing nanowrimo for two years in open office (this thanksgiving, i am thankful for open source software and candy cane oreos. you know, in case you were wondering. oh, and my family. always, always my family.) i would finally learn that its word count lives in a fantasy world of its own and i shouldn't trust it. but did i learn? nope. and did i trust it? yup. and was i shocked to find that my actual word count was a thousand words less than my open office word count even though i shouldn't be? well, of course! how am i supposed to remember that open office counts curly quotes (the pretty " for those like my sister who don't know) as words. i mean, just because i have a whole dramatic realization every year does not mean that it should stick with me. right? right.

so i was just thinking that my blog might be easier to read if i wasn't constantly interrupting myself and switching between thoughts like a pinball machine. what do you think?

speaking of nothing i was talking about, november is almost over, and do you know what that means? (aside from the fact that rudolph the red nosed reindeer and frosty the snowman will take over tv networks and suddenly everyone on the street will get more stressed and obnoxious than usual of course.) it means that i get to go back to reading. i still have a stack of books that are just waiting for me to finish my nano, which looks like it will take the entire month this time, and i can't wait to get into them. oh, how i have missed my fictional worlds.

ew, that reminds me. the other day i was watching gone with the wind (i've said this before, but if you haven't read the book, go get it and read it now) and afterwards was trying to find a quote from the book online (i didn't find it :(. sad.) but anyway, i did find this quote:

For Ashley was born of a line of men who used their leisure for thinking, not doing, for spinning brightly colored dreams that had in them no touch of reality... He looked on people, and he neither liked nor disliked them. He looked on life and was neither heartened nor saddened. He accepted the universe and his place in it for what they were and, shrugging, turned to his music and books and his better world.

and i was struck with a horrible realization that i'm an ashley. and how awful is that? i have always been a rhett butler girl through and through. i hate ashley. but reading that line when i wasn't lost in the world of the book made me realize that i'm him. i do nothing but dream and read and listen to music and ew, i hate ashley.

*Cat's in the Cradle - Harry Chapin

2011-11-22T23:43:00.000-05:00

Sometimes a hurt is so deep, deep, deep

You think that you're gonna drown.

Sometimes all I can do is weep, weep, weep

With all this rain falling down.

~Rain, Patty Griffin

Deep within my soul, I feel

Nothing's like it used to be.

Sometimes I wish I could turn back time,

Impossible as it may seem,

But I wish I could so bad baby.

~Quit Playing Games With My Heart, Backstreet Boys

If you need to fall apart,

I can mend a broken heart.

If you need to crash, then crash and burn.

~Crash and Burn, Savage Garden

There are those who think that I'm strange,

They would box me up and tell me to change.

~Anchor, Mindy Geldhill

2011-11-22T23:16:00.001-05:00

for the past two months i have been parking in the parking deck every tuesday night without a parking permit. i just didn't want to pay a hundred dollars for one class, and the deck is always empty at night anyway so it's not like i'm taking a spot that a paid parker would need. i have not once gotten a ticket. but because today just keeps getting better and better, i come to my car after a class that was worse than i was expecting it to be and find a nice yellow ticket waiting for me on my windshield.

today sucked.

the only part that didn't suck was my three hour writing session with ash.

update: i didn't even look at the ticket yesterday, but they used to be 25 dollars. you know how much i owe? 75. so annoying. and yes, i know it's my fault. whatever.

it's been a really, really messed up week

2011-11-22T18:36:00.000-05:00

november 2011 takes the cake for being the worst month ever.

to put you in the right perspective for this next story, you have to understand that lately i've been in one of those moods where finding out you've run out of milk makes you want to collapse on the kitchen floor in sobs and just die right there, where the death of a fly feels like the death of an entire country and you just want to mourn it forever, you know the kind? anyway, everything is blown way out of proportion, and of course this when stuff actually happens.

so i was in a store parking lot today starting to pull out of my spot when a van came down the aisle or lane or whatever the space between the parking spots is called. i'm waiting for it to pass and another car comes from the other direction and has to wait for the van too since he's kind of driving in the middle of the lane. the van passes and the lady in the other car waves her hand. i assume she's telling me to go ahead so she could take my spot. the parking lot was kinda crowded. so i move forward half an inch, notice she's starting to move forward too, and stop. i'm not exaggerating when i say that the car barely moved at all. it didn't come anywhere near her car, and i stopped immediately. instead of just continuing on, she stops and pounds on her horn like it gives her a power boost she desperately needs. she then gives an extra long beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep and i'm just sitting there waiting for her to move thinking, "are you kidding me?"

anyway, because that isn't enough (i assume because it's getting no reaction from me), she throws open her door and storms over to my car. my window was opened a bit and she starts screaming into it. here's the conversation we had:

her (in a very, very thick accent): what is your problem?
me (very calmly): i'm sorry, i thought you wanted my spot. when i realized you didn't, i stopped.
her: i don't know what country you come from or how it is over there, but here in america we don't do shit like that. the one driving has the right of way.
me: *i refrain from pointing out how ironic it is that she's telling me about how "we do things in america" when, out of the two of us, i'm the one that can actually speak english and has probably lived here longer, and give her that patient-ish stare you give a child throwing a temper tantrum as you wait for them to realize how immature and ineffectual they're being.*
her: maybe you should go back to your country.
me: *continue to stare at her*
her: or maybe if you took that scarf off you could see. (for those of you that don't know me/haven't seen me, i wear a headscarf.)
me: *continue to stare at her*

after a minute or so of this she stomps back to her car, slams her door shut behind her, and drives past me, honking a few hundred times for good measure.

now, if it was a normal day, i would have just laughed this off. i probably still wouldn't have said anything back to her because i really don't see the point in arguing with idiots. if you're being stupid, no matter who you are, all you're likely to get from me is silence, and maybe a look or two. but because it was today, because everything else seems to be falling apart despite my desperate attempts to hold it all together, i just wanted to turn around, go home, crawl into bed, and never come out. and it wasn't because what she said upset me; it didn't. i'm just waiting for that last proverbial straw, i'm looking for it with eyes wide open, just waiting to welcome with open arms: the excuse for me to completely break down. i think i may need to.

*Tonight, Tonight - Hot Chelle Rae

if there's so much i must be, can i still just be me the way i am?

2011-11-22T09:51:00.003-05:00

in some cultures, being twenty three years old would make you a responsible, independent adult - or at least give you the option to be so. it would make you free. i do not live in one of those cultures. i grew up hearing that i would go from "my father's house to my husband's house," never my own house. i would go from being a daughter to a wife, with no time for being just me. i mean, sure, i could technically be me while i was playing the other roles, but it's not the same as when you're being you alone. there's never really any way to test your capabilities, find out what you're made of, without offending one person or another and being shunned by your entire world. i have often come on this blog to bemoan this fact (though i think i have stopped doing this as often as i once did). i have, a few times, wished for a narrower mind. i have said that it would have been easier had we not grown up with people telling us the world was full of opportunities ripe for the picking. we would not have grown up with expectations that can never be met and dreams that can never be fulfilled.

don't get me wrong, i like my life. i have a good life, full of blessings i am well aware of. i had a very happy childhood, i have always had food on the table, clothes to wear, and a roof over my head. i was not forced into marriage or kept out of school. i have a family that i know will always have my back no matter what, and it's actually made up of people i like. i have people to hold intelligent conversations with and people to act like a three year old with. i have a million and one things and people that i am thankful for every day. but still. there is always that "what if" hanging in there whispering about future selves that i will never meet.

the other day, though, i was talking to my dad and he was saying that he made a mistake by raising us like he did, like the kids from other cultures who will grow up in ways that we shouldn't even dream about. one of his arguments was that if we were raised like the mindless puppets i have always been glad i'm not, we wouldn't be questioning things now. we would accept things easier. which may be true. but it's one thing saying that myself, and another thing entirely having it said to me. kind of like how i can complain about my parents all i want, but no one else is allowed to say a word about them, you know? with him saying it, my sisters and i turned into mistakes that he can never fix, eternal reminders of what he did wrong. it didn't matter that he was taking the blame, we became the faults. the thing i fear most is failure, and with just a few sentences he turned my life into something that had been doomed to failure from the start, a failure that could never be turned around.

i love my dad. i really do. i don't always agree with everything he says or does, but i do understand where he comes from. (i was cursed with the ability to be able to see every stupid side of a situation, which makes arguing and getting mad pretty hard since i really, truly see where the other person is coming from and see how they think they're right. and you can't get mad at someone for doing what they think is the right thing.) he wasn't trying to be hurtful, i know that for a fact, and he was voicing an opinion that i have often voiced in the past. but when it comes right down to it, i think that my sisters and i were raised awesomely. i have always looked at the people who told me i was destined for a life of obscurity, cleaning, and gossip and secretly felt glad that i could see beyond that when they couldn't. even when i was wishing for ignorance, i was holding on to my knowledge like a lifeline. i was grasping my dreams of more like they were the only things keeping me going, because, at times, they were. they are what make me who i am. and suddenly i'm being told that one of the things i hold dearest to me, my ability to look out past the box i've been put in, was a mistake. i shouldn't see past the four walls closing me in, and if i was raised right, i wouldn't.

i'm not looking for people to tell me that my dad is wrong. i'm not looking for reassurances that my life is not one big failure. i'm not looking for advice to throw off my culture an embrace life. i'm not sure what i'm looking for, really, except the ability to vent. i've recently been having a bit of an identity crisis, which is a post for another day, and this conversation just came at a really bad time for me.

i am having a really hard time posting this post.

*We Are One - The Lion King 2 Soundtrack

these are a few of my favorite things

2011-11-21T09:04:00.000-05:00

if you buy one thing this winter, let it be the candy cane oreos. trust me on this one.

last night on the way home, we stopped by walmart because we needed brita water filters. walmart is a dangerous store for me, just like cvs. i can wander through those aisles needing nothing and come out with my hands full of bags of stuff i don't need or even particularly want. for that reason, i sent my husband to get the filters while i stood at customer service to return something. i didn't want to buy anything but the filters. as it turns out, on the way to the cashier i saw a stack of limited edition candy cane oreos. and who could resist a limited edition oreo? my husband "suggested" not getting them because he thought they were going to taste bad. but i'm the junk food expert in our house, and i had a feeling that they would be amazing. so i got them anyway.

and let me tell you, they are my new favorite thing in the world. go out and get some. right now. eat them and be happy. they're really that good.

*My Favorite Things - Julie Andrews

write me a letter, write it today

2011-11-20T09:17:00.000-05:00

there are very few people that would ever call me an optimist. i'm generally not one to buoy myself up with false hopes, but there is one time that i just cannot seem to suppress them, though i know deep inside they are most likely to come crashing down. every time i walk to the mailbox - and this has been going on for years - i will inflate the bubble of hope that there will be something there for me. something good. more often than not, i am wrong. on a good day, i might get a credit card offer. most days, though, find the mailbox filled with things for everyone else. it's very crushing. i recently starting receiving spanish pork catalogs. i'm still confused about them seeing as i'm not spanish, don't eat pork, and never signed up for them. but once a month one will be delivered to our mailbox with my name neatly printed on the back.

i was not always so mail deprived. once upon a time i was a little girl who would receive mail on a regular basis. and good mail, too. i had a few pen pals when i was younger, and it was great. looking back, my letters were formulaic, boring, and pretty pathetic. after the salutation, i always started with a mention of the weather. always. it was either, "the weather here has been warm lately. how is the weather over there?" or "the weather here has started to get cold. how is the weather over there?" sad, i know. but i was only like eight. give me a break. regardless of the fact that the letters were nothing to write home about, i wrote them regularly. every time i would get a reply from one of my pen pals, i would run to my room, pull out my stationary - which i used to have lots of - and start a reply. it would be in the mail the next day and then i'd wait for a reply back.

the recipients of my letters were an odd bunch: my great grandfather, my mom's great aunt, and my grandmother's first grade teacher are among the most prominent in my mind. sometimes along with the letters they would send little treats - a bookmark or an eraser - that would make my day. the teacher used to send my sisters and i big packages full of old jewelry and books. they were great.

the point is, i grew up having a really good relationship with the mail. i developed expectations that, fifteen years later, have yet to die, though all of my pen pals have. (is that too blunt of a sentence? i cringed a little when writing it.) i miss the thrill of getting handwritten letters in the mail, the excitement of getting a glimpse into another's life, even if that other was literally ten times my age. i miss getting good mail. i need to find myself some new pen pals is what i'm thinking.

oh, and i went to see cirque du soleil: qidam yesterday. i felt that it should be mentioned to, if for no other reason, make sure it is remembered.

*Write Me a Letter - Aerosmith

oh, i believe in yesterday

2011-11-17T09:33:00.000-05:00

i wake up this morning tired, which seems to be the new theme of my life. i have a gazillion things to do today and after spending half an hour checking my mail and basically wasting my time on the internet, i decided to get my writing finished first. i plug the thumb drive i've been storing my novel on into my computer and for some strange reason i see that it is installing the driver for the device, though the driver has been installed for a while now. and then, because things like to go wrong when i don't have time for them, windows tells me that it cannot recognize the drive and wants to format it. uhh... no. that is my novel on there and i refuse to delete it. i try the usb in joe, hoping that junior was just being stupid, but the same error popped up. and now i'm about ready to just go into a corner and cry about everything. (lack of good sleep will do that to a person, you know.)

okay, so before i go getting you all feeling too sorry for me, i did have a backup of it saved onto my computer. the other day i thought to myself, it would really suck if my usb stopped working and so i backed it up. i think now that that was tempting fate a bit too much. but that copy is missing the last two thousand or so words, and the last two thousand words are where i wrote all the exciting-ish things that i don't want to rewrite for several reasons that i will not list here. since i refuse to rewrite it, i have to try and recover it which will take time and stuff, and i just wanted to write, and now i can't, and this sucks.

plus it's gloomy outside and cold and wet. and i have to make the t-shirts for my brother's birthday on sunday which i know are going to turn out awful because, as i learned last night, i can't draw food to save my life. and i'm just tired and annoyed and not liking today at all.

and the title doesn't really fit. whatever.

*Yesterday - The Beatles

i don't care who you are, where you're from, what you did

2011-11-16T13:11:00.000-05:00

my nails are still orange. i don't know what to do about them. i mean, they're starting to grow out a bit to their normal color, but this is taking forever.

anyway, yesterday i met up with a friend for the biggest failure of a writing session i've ever seen. i wrote just over four hundred words in two plus hours, and he wrote even less. we'll get to actually writing next week. but as a catch-up hang out session it was pretty awesome, if i do say so myself. except for the part where a girl fresh from my old high school decided to complicate my life by forcing me to go out of my way to not see her because she was doing something secretive and she didn't want anyone she "knew" to see her. that doesn't make much sense partly because it needs a whole long, complicated, stupid story to fully make you understand what happened, and partly because, well, it just didn't make any sense.

what i don't think these children realize is that i really couldn't care any less about what they're doing with their lives. i don't know you, and even if i did i still wouldn't care. i mean, honestly, i do not spend my free time judging you or gossiping about you. not because i'm some kind of saint that just doesn't do that stuff, but because you are just not worth it. really. you rate so low on my radar that i'm not even sure you exist. so, seriously, children, stop adding me on facebook just to put me on limited profile. the only reason i accept your request is because i don't want to seem rude. don't run away when i pass you and your group of friends that are not ISA-sanctioned. i don't care who you hang out with. and don't make the mistake of assuming that the things going on in your life make any difference to me whatsoever just because we went to the same school. they don't.

*As Long As You Love Me - Backstreet Boys

2011-11-14T09:27:00.000-05:00

you know what's really hard to do? think up a band's name that is not already taken. my god are there a lot of bands out there, and they have the most random names. i sat in my room a few nights ago trying to think up a name for my main character's favorite band because she kept mentioning it and i was tired of writing, "my favorite band...." anyway, i guess i was procrastinating because i didn't want to use a real band's name and kept googling every random name that i came up with. i was searching stuff that i saw in my room, heard from the tv hum coming from the living room, random words from my spam mail, and anything else that came into my head. i searched for the walking dead, the rattling bones, the horse's mouth, the lines, the undead, the magic bones, the unnamed band, and a gajillion others. and they all came up with a band page. i finally ended up naming the band after the bottle of static guard sitting on my dresser, but i honestly think that the static guard is cooler band name than the horse's mouth. is that just me?

you think you're cooler than me

2011-11-12T21:21:00.000-05:00

my phone has an ego issue. it happened a short while after i mentioned it in my blog. i think that, being a dumb phone, it didn't realize that i wasn't really saying anything good about it, and the whole thing went to its head. now it simply refuses to do its job right, taking hours, or even days, to pass on the messages people leave it for me. it refuses to remember anything i want it to, claiming that its memory is filled with more important things. and it's apparently too dignified to raise its voice too loud to tell me that someone is calling me. it's really starting to get ridiculous, not to mention extremely inconvenient, and i'm thinking i'll have to go buy myself a new one now. stupid technology with its expiration dates. do you think that cans connected with a string ever got lazy on the job? do you think you needed to get new cans every few years? no. though i imagine the string might get some wear and tear.

and because it's november, and i'm sure you're all super interested in my nano-ing, it's time for my nano problems, though i'm not so sure if they're problems or not yet. i was writing this year's story by switching narratives between two characters. one of them was writing in first person, and one was writing in third person. first person has always been easier for me to write, but this character just seemed to work better in third. so i went with it. i recently noticed that i've started writing her in first person, too, though. for the past couple of days i had to go back every few paragraphs and switch all the i's with she's. i finally decided today that that was taking to long and kept interrupting the flow of my writing so i'm switching her to s first person narrator as well. eventually i'll go back and fix the beginning. i'm just not sure if i can write two first person characters and keep their voices separate. we'll just have to wait and see how it goes, though, i guess.

*Cooler Than Me - Mike Posner

11:11 just struck

2011-11-11T23:11:00.056-05:00

so this week has been crazy. filled with pretty menial things in itself, it has felt like a whirlwind of commotion with the whole being way bigger than the sum of its parts.

monday held long shopping trips with my sister as she struggled to find "the perfect outfit" for her senior pictures that day. while she did manage to find some things to buy, after a few hours at the mall, she decided to just wear the outfit she had pulled out of her closet that very morning. typical. then after sitting with my brothers (who were off this week) at my parents' house and playing several thousand rounds of gin rummy, my husband came back from school, we watched a movie, and then hung around the mall for a midnight release of some video game that we ended up not getting that night anyway.

the next day saw a hectic morning of cleaning and cooking, an afternoon of my family coming over (it was the first time my parents visited after i got married and it took a lot of failed plans before it worked out), and then an evening and night of class where we spent mind numbing hours of looking through the registry. that was fun.

wednesday morning my nephews and sister came over, i babysat my younger nephew, my brothers came for a sleepover, we had four loud kids playing in our small apartment, and the day ended with milkshakes in the freezing cold. not the smartest of ideas.

thursday morning we took the boys to the playground to play with my nephews, and when the rain and cold got to be too much to ignore, we went bowling. we came home for lunch and then the boys and i went for a walk in the cold. ali (my youngest brother) fell in a hole... kinda... and after playing video games until they were both slap happy, the day (which sounds uneventful but was really never ending and filled with quite a lot of moping and sulking)finally ended.

today we all went to run errands in the morning. i went to target to get the new - and last - harry potter with the extra documentary that i still think should not just be a target exclusive. we brought the boys back to my parents house, i sat with my mom for a bit, and then we went to the mall again (have i ever mentioned that i'm not a mall person?), went to watch a movie, got chinese take-out because all the restaurants were jam packed full. i saw my old math teacher at the movies who i really liked, so that was fun. when we got home, i watched harry potter while my husband fell asleep on the couch.

anyway, i didn't mean to make you all a laundry list of my week, but i felt that i had to write it out so my mind can see that it really isn't as crazy as it felt like. i think the fact that i haven't gotten a decent night's worth of sleep in a long time has something to do with it. but i have managed to do some writing on my nano novel so i'm only a few thousand words behind. totally catching up-able. i just need to update my word count on here and do a couple of five thousand word days.

oh, and it's 11:11 on 11/11/11 (or it was when i started this post). i found that cool. which is why i started writing this thing in the first place.

*Let's Just Get Married - Archie Star

turn back the clock

2011-11-06T20:31:00.000-05:00

i have orange nails. no, i'm not wearing nail polish, the nails themselves are actually orange. i'm not sure how it happened. last week i was using orange paint, but i also had nail polish on which protected my nails from any paint, or so i thought. a few days later, i took off the nail polish to find my nails - all ten of them - died orange. the whole nail, i'm not talking about little spots here. and the first day i took the polish off, my fingers were all tingly all day. it was weird. i don't know what happened, and i don't know what to do about it. i took off my nail polish on friday, and they're still orange. crazy stuff, i tell you.

on a different note, today i wore heels for the first time in years (unless you count weddings in the summer, which i don't because i do like zero walking then). i'm not quite sure how that happened, but i guess i turned into hobo-mode when i entered grad school and just never turned it off. during undergrad, i wore heels every presentation, most classes i had to dress up, and ceremonies. grad school came along and i lived off of flip flops and sneakers (which were always my favorites anyway).

moving on. we turned the clocks back an hour last night, and, as usual, i feel like my whole life was thrown off-balance. i can never decide if i'm one of the love daylights saving or hate daylights saving people. i mean, i used to only do work as long as the sun was shining, so when i got home at five and the sun would go down at five thirty (high school days), i would never get anything done. but at the same time, i always loved thinking it was late and then looking at the clock and realizing it was still really early. guess my indecisiveness extends to this as well.

*Brand New Day - Ryan Star

la la la whatever

2011-11-04T21:19:00.001-04:00

so today is looking like the first day (of probably many) this month that i didn't get my word count, let alone any writing, done. unless i manage to write a thousand some words in the next three hours or so, but to be honest i don't really see that happening. i mean, my husband is watching thundercats and i've heard a lot about it and watched some clips from a friend, but i've never actually seen an episode myself. and there are forgetful elephants with really bad accents on my tv. who could resist, right? plus, i really like the premise of my novel and feel like i'm butchering it with my words and i want to do it justice which at the moments seems to mean keeping it in my head, where it's been for a while. i probably should have stuck with my original idea and just spew words without caring instead of switching. oh well.

don't worry. that's all the whining i will be doing to you lovely people.

changing the subject, the other day i was leaving my apartment to go to school and at a red light, checked my pockets and bag and couldn't find my phone. my first thought was, "ugh great. i have to remember to gmail text my sister to tell her where to meet me (we carpool tuesday nights) and my husband in case he decides to ask me to get something on my way back." and then i stopped thinking about it. i make a quick cvs stop on my way to class because i am a cvs addict, i can admit it. anyway, i'm walking through the aisles and pull my phone out of my pocket to check the time (despite the fact that i now feel naked without a watch on, my phone is still the first place i go for the time). i stick it back in my pocket, but then pull it out thinking, "i might as well just text everyone now that i forgot my phone in case i forget when i get to campus." so i write out an overly long text and i'm about to hit send when it hits me that i couldn't be texting them if i had actually forgotten my phone. i was just glad i remembered before i texted. i'm also the kind of person who will look for their phone when they're on it. because i'm just smart like that. i have not reached the level of looking for my glasses while wearing them, but i think that may just be because i'm blind without them so if i can see clearly, i know when they are.

point of the story is, i'm getting more and more scatterbrained lately. i say something, and three seconds later i've completely forgotten it. i'm also getting lazier, something i never thought possible. i'm blaming that on the reason why i'm ignoring the interesting parts of my plot to have my character write a grocery list.

but i sat in my parents kitchen today with my nephew and spent a good fifteen minutes just listing everything we liked from different farm animals to foods to people to soap and water (i was surprised when he said that), and i realized that with so many things to like, getting a little scatterbrained is really not so bad.

i did not read over this post. it may be riddled with typos.

update: i wrote my words so most of this post is now invalid.

*Tonight, Tonight - Hot Chelle Rae

needless to say i'm odds and ends

2011-11-02T10:07:00.000-04:00

i woke up today with the motivation to write. well, kinda, sort, not really. i woke up with the desire to write but no motivation to get started. so i did what i do best. i procrastinated. i checked all of my emails and contemplated forwarding everything over to the new ugly email system my school has decided to switch to. (i decided to leave that for tomorrow.) i read all the blogs that were updated and checked the items on my ebay watch list that were ending soon. i decided not to buy anything. i thought about starting to knit my brother's hat, but decided to save that for after i write. i read the first november pep talk, didn't get too pepped, and then decided to just buckle down and write. i opened the story i started on yesterday and... decided that maybe i want to change it. maybe i'll write both for a while and see which one writes easier. i started to think that was smart and then i decided that it was a bad idea and i came here to blog to regain some sanity.

i think i will go get some cereal for breakfast. i eat most types of cereal without milk, but i have to have milk with granola and shredded wheat. cheerios and honey bunches of oats can go either way. because, you know, you really wanted to know that.

to prevent this post from being an entire waste of your time, did you know that lemons contain more sugar than strawberries and that strawberries are the only fruit that grows its seeds on the outside? did you realize that the names of all the continents start and end with the same letter? did you know that bats always turn left when exiting a cave?

*Take on Me - A-ha

can't believe it's that time of year again

2011-10-31T11:43:00.000-04:00

hey look, the nanowrimo word count is back (over to the left). which means nanowrimo is starting in less than a day. and i still can't decide which story i want to work on, but i'm sure one will rush to the front of my brain when i actually get down to writing tomorrow. it's nothing to worry about, right? right. (i just know this will be like last year when i switch stories halfway through the first week. i can feel it. ugh.) this also means that it's time for me to start my yearly unpaid advertising for nano and tell all of you to join the awesome insanity and write a novel in a month. if you have nothing to do next month, this is a great way to fill your time, but it's extra super awesome if you have school and work and chores and family and tv and a whole bunch of other things that you have to do at the same time. and i can't even describe the feeling i got the first time i held an actual bound book in my hand that i wrote (forget the fact that the plot had holes and the grammar was a bit off, it was still awesome). just do it for that feeling. so anyway, sign up at nanowrimo.org, add me as a friend (sarah_k), and start a novel tomorrow. trust me, you won't regret it.

in other exciting news... um... actually, to be honest there's really nothing exciting going on in my life as usual. i'm babysitting my nephew on wednesday and i'm excited for that because i think he's way too attached to his mom, but i don't think that will interest any of you too much. my grandma will be coming down soon, and that's always fun. but i won't be living in the same house so i dunno how much i'll actually get to see her. today is halloween, but since i don't really do anything for halloween it's not really exciting. and besides that, there's nothing really going on. oh except for all of the really cool stuff i've been learning in class which i think is awesome but don't really want to bore all of you with cause you might not be as dorky as i am.

*That Time of Year - Sick Puppies

i'll play guitar and knit and cook and basically just wonder when will my life begin?

2011-10-30T09:47:00.000-04:00

so yesterday i went to get my hair cut, and i almost had a heart attack. with every clip of the scissors breathing became more and more difficult. i usually just take a few inches off the bottom, but yesterday i cut off an entire foot (possibly more?). i mean, it's still technically "long" in the sense of the word that any hair under the shoulder blades is long, but it feels so short. last night i was braiding it and half of my braid was missing. i don't know how people can cut their hair short.

also, yesterday we had snow. in october. it was weird. and today it is sunny. the weather is obviously on crack. but i got to wear my koala hat and an old man complimented me on it. you can guess how cool i felt.

on another note, i didn't want to be reading a book when nanowrimo started because i've noticed that my mind tends to unintentionally transfer stuff from the story i'm reading to the story i'm writing. not plagiarism or anything, but i was reading the help the other day and all my characters stared to talk with a southern twang they didnt have a week before. plus, it's harder to write crap when you're reading something that is not crap. very discouraging. so anyway, after i finished my last book i didn't pick up another and to fill the time i've been knitting. and washing dishes. and doing laundry. and baking. and i feel like rapunzel in the beginning of tangled. minus the book reading.

has anyone else noticed that october is taking a really long time to finish? usually september is the long month and october flies by. maybe only having one class this semester is messing with my [insert proper word here cause i can't think of it].

*When Will My Life Begin? - Mandy Moore

all the small things

2011-10-29T10:40:00.000-04:00

sometimes i wonder about the small things that disappear with a person when s/he dies. the little nuances in character that really made the person unique. the things that some people may have never even known about them. take me for example, when i die, people may remember that i liked books, but would they remember which book i read when i was feeling depressed? which one i read for light reading during stressful days? which ones held my favorite characters and which i couldn't stand? would they remember that i used scraps of whatever for bookmarks - receipts, tags, gum wrappers, ticket stubs - and that the bookmarks would stay in the books to be used forever after that? they may remember that i liked to write, but would they remember which pieces i was most proud of? would they remember that my favorite punctuation was the question mark or that i could never really write anything worthwhile when i was happy? would they know that anything creative was written with openoffice writer instead of ms word and why? would they remember my many insecurities or just that i handed out cockiness by the bucketful?

when people die (or even just leave, but you know, i prefer the morbid), the ones they leave behind tend to remember memories about them instead of the people themselves. they remember what they want and who they want. the random pieces that made them a whole person are lost somewhere in the dirt they're buried in.

for future reference, here are some of the random things that make me me:

[one] the streaks left in the carpet after vacuuming make me happy.

[two] folding clothes is the bane of my existence.

[three] my favorite place is the ocean. large bodies of water fill me with a mixture of hope and sadness that makes my chest tight.

[four] i'm not a fan of feet.

[five] half of what i say is quoted from a book/movie/tv show.

[six] i don't like even numbers.

[seven] i like to sit in traffic and listen to good music.

[eight] growing up, all of my toys were boys. even now, most of my stuff that i name get boys' names (joe, junior, jj).

[nine] i've always regretted the fact that i never took a real english/writing/literature class since ap english in high school.

[ten] i hate change because the unknown brings with it a higher risk of failure, and failure is my biggest fear.

[eleven] i don't ask for help from others.

[twelve] i like the feel of sore muscles after exercising, but rarely have the will power to get up and exercise.

[thirteen] i get buyers remorse over just about anything, so it takes me forever to actually buy something.

[fourteen] colored socks make me happy.

[fifteen] my favorite number is fifteen, followed by seven and nine.

*All the Small Things - Blink 182

don't tell me you don't know

2011-10-27T08:50:00.000-04:00

i can't remember which class it was, or even if it was high school or undergrad, but i remember once learning about the origins/meanings behind nursery rhymes and finding them fascinating. i recently came across the meaning behind "peter, peter, pumpkin eater" and my interest was rekindled. my interpretation growing up of some of them was so off base it's ridiculous. here are a few rhymes, what i thought they meant, and what they really mean.

baa baa black sheep,
have you any wool?
yes sir, yes sir, three bags full:
one for my master, one for my dame,
one for the little boy who lives down the lane

growing up, i thought with full conviction that this was just about a talking black sheep who had three bags of wool to give to specific people.

i was originally taught that this rhyme was about the taxes people were suffering from in 1275 to the fifteenth century when they had to give, roughly, one third to the king and one third to the church and only keep one third for themselves. apparently now people are arguing this origin, but being the first one i ever learned, i thought i'd put it here anyway.

fun fact: baa baa black sheep was one of the first songs ever to be digitally recorded and played on a computer in 1951.

jack sprat could eat no fat,

his wife could eat no lean,

and so between the two of them

they licked the platter clean.

growing up, i thought this was about a married couple with digestion problems. jack could eat nothing fatty and his wife only like fatty things. they were a perfect match because they could perfectly finish a plate between them.

instead, jack sprat is reputed to be king charles the first, and his wife henrietta maria. king charles apparently wanted to wage war on spain, but parliament wouldn't finance it (so he was lean). he dismembered parliament and his wife imposed an illegal war tax (to get some fat).

jack and jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.

jack fell down and broke his crown,

and jill came tumbling after.

this of course was about two kids who went to a well on the top of the hill. i always believed that jack fell own, broke his head, and died which made jill faint and she tumbled down the hill too. she didn't die, though.

the roots of this rhyme lay in france, and the title characters refer to king louis xvi and queen marie antoinette. during the reign of terror, he was beheaded first (lost his crown) and she followed.

peter, peter, pumpkin eater

had a wife but couldn't keep her.

he put her in a pumpkin shell,

and there he kept her very well.

i always (up until recently) thought this was about a dude named peter that couldn't keep his wife. (my reasons for this ranged from he didn't have a house to it was a secret marriage.) anyway, he sticks her in a huge pumpkin house, and they live happily every after.

this rhyme was started in america to warn young girls away from infidelity. apparently, peter's wife wasn't the most faithful. his way to deal with this was to kill her and hide her body in a pumpkin shell. after that, he could make sure she never betrayed him.

*Over It - Relient K

what do you think of me?

2011-10-25T09:50:00.000-04:00

a couple of days days ago, i bought a few round knitting looms because i'm just really cool like that. my sister saw them in my car and asked what i was going to make, and this was the subsequent conversation.

me: hats. lots of hats.
her: why?
me: i'm making them for SPEW.
her: SPEW?
me: yeah, you know, the society for the promotion of elfish warfare... to protect the rights of house elves.
her: huh?
me: harry potter, stupid. it was in the last book of the series that you read... hermione made a bunch of hats to liberate the house elves.
her: oh.

the next day she came over and started making a hat of her own. while she's knitting, she asks, "so who are you giving these to again? elves?" i laugh and say, "yeah, to free them," thinking she had realized that i wasn't serious the night before. apparently, she hadn't, which i realized a few minutes later into the conversation. that was when i started to laugh at her and she started to defend herself and then say that if there was a charity event to give hats to the homeless for winter and they used the SPEW thing, they would be very successful.

i'm not sure which is worse: the fact that she believed that i was making hats for fictional characters or the fact that me making hats for fictional characters is believable.

anyway, i'm about halfway done with my first hat. it's coming out smaller than i was expecting (that's what i get for listening to my sister and husband and using the smaller loom) but it's still pretty awesome. i've never made a hat before.

*So Damn Beautiful - Polaroid

brown paper packages tied up with string, these are a few of my favorite things

2011-10-23T23:01:00.000-04:00

this morning, i made peanut butter cookies. i have a really bad history with homemade peanut butter cookies. they either turn out way to salty (we had this cookie recipe book that apparently thought salt was the best flavor for every cookie under the sun) or like watery and gross (that was when my sister made them) or something else goes wrong. but today's cookies were fantastic. the fact that there are only two left from the two and a half dozen that came out of the oven this morning can attest to that. the recipe is officially going into my favorites. oh, and i also think that my oven has decided to like me (finally), so there's that. overall a successful day for baking.

completely switching gears here, but for the last five or so years of my life, i have been known to ask hopefully every time anyone checks the mail if there is anything for me. there rarely ever is, and when i do get mail it's usually a credit card offer. sad, i know. but lately, the mail has been quite exciting for me. for the past week, i have opened the mail box to find packages from my grandma. packages! for me! is there anything more exciting? (well, except for the fact that she seem to alternate between spelling my name with and without the "h" at the end when i am definitely an h kinda person, but i forgive her because i'm understanding like that.) they have mostly been stuff about travel and attractions (i think she's trying to tell me something) and my list of places i must see before i die has grown ridiculously. i also got a prize for a raffle i won (free little gym membership for my nephew) and coupons for free ice cream and it's just all over wonderful.

speaking of raffles and winning, i've noticed that i've become luckier since my marriage. i can count the number of contests and raffles i won before i got married on one hand and still use that hand pretty well. but whenever i mention the fact that i'm married now, i win. case in point: i filled out a survey when in first got married (it was the first time i put my status as married on a form. huge moment.) and won one of the three gift cards to the gap they were giving out. case in point: i filled out a raffle ticket at a fall festival recently and had to put my "spouse's name" and ended up winning one hundred and thirty five dollars worth of gym classes for my nephew. i'm trying to think of a third case in point to make myself sound more convincing, but i really don't get the opportunity to enter many raffles.

anyway, good cookies, packages, and raffle luck. my day (read: week) went well.

*My Favorite Things - The Sound of Music Soundtrack

you want thingamabobs? i've got twenty! but who cares? no big deal

2011-10-20T21:01:00.000-04:00

it feels like, as a society, we are taught to value nouns. we are constantly striving to obtain the nouns in life. people, places, things. money, love, happiness. we like to collect things and judge others on the size of their collections. i'm better than her because of the clothes i'm wearing. i'm jealous of him because he lives in a bigger house.

verbs are only accepted as the necessary way to get to a noun. the more verbs you go through, the better the noun, but the verbs are otherwise disposable. happiness is better than being happy. we go around looking for the love of our life, forgetting to actually be in love. we strive for knowledge, but the act of learning is something we do grudgingly. we want peace but don't want to get along. actions are too common. they are the things that are better hidden under the rug, pushed into the shadow of the trophy we can put on display.

your verb is only accepted if you have the nouns to back it up. a person who writes is not a writer until s/he has a book to prove it. a person who cooks is not chef without a restaurant to cook in. we need a ribbon at the end of a race to validate running around the track.

why can't we just be content with verbs? why does the end have to justify the means to make the journey worthwhile? why can't we just enjoy the journey itself?

when we value life more than living, it's easy to fear death and forget that every minute we are dying.

*Part of Your World - The Little Mermaid Soundtrack

it's a beautiful day

2011-10-18T16:15:00.000-04:00

today is just one of those days when the weather is perfect and there's good food and i can't seem to stop yawning and i've been productive and lazy at the same time and i kind of just want to sit and stare off into the distance for the rest of eternity. you know the ones?

anyway, i was resubmitting a form for my phd application in person this morning because mason is pernickety and can't seem to understand the concept that if i had in-state tuition for undergrad, and i had in-state tuition for my masters, and i haven't left the state, that i should get in-state tuition for my phd... you know, if i get accepted and everything. so i'm giving in my form and the admissions person says, "are you anisah's sister?" which i am and had to confess to, but it struck me how for most of my life i've been referred to as someone's sister. i'm rarely just me, and i think i might kind of like to be once and a while.

i don't think i'll be able to do much concentrating in class tonight. it feels like i haven't been to class in years because last week's was cancelled and i think i might have forgotten how to go to class and sit and pay attention and learn. if ever there was a day when classes should be cancelled so we could all contemplate the whiteness of the walls, today is it. i think the breeze coming in through the window is messing with my brain.

a part of me really wants to sleep right now. another parts wants to go sit outside and let the sun beat on my back and read the book that for some reason is taking me forever to read. instead, i have to keep reminding myself that i have a class to go to tonight. yawn.

since i can't seem to hold on to a point here, please enjoy this video that i find quite awesome.

*Beautiful Day - U2

there's too much food on my plate

2011-10-16T12:58:00.000-04:00

i woke up today, took a shower, and then made myself a grilled bagel (have i ever mentioned my love for grilled bagels on here? i lovelovelove them) with banana peppers for breakfast. my husband had a cheddar cheese omelet and toast with jam and butter. we just opened our fridge and everything was right there waiting for us to devour it. fresh and packaged and kept cool by electricity. when breakfast comes this easily to you, it's sometimes hard not to take it for granted.

but for a lot of the world, fridges filled with food is not something to sneeze at. for some people, it's about as unobtainable as unicorns and leprechauns. we all grew up with our parents telling us to finish our plates because there were starving children in africa. as we grow older, we are asked to do more for these children than just eat our vegetables. and with the entire world in a recession, it's not only the children in africa who are starving anymore. when you have a fridge full of food, it's the least you can do to try and help those who don't. just being more conscientious about the food crisis is a step in the right direction, though there are several places you could go to donate money. you could also look up your local food bank and donate stuff there. there are easier ways to help, too, like playing online games like free rice which donates twenty grains of rice for every correct vocabulary word you get.

while still debating about what to write for this year's blog action day, i came across this site which has ten facts about food that i found really cool. for example, did you know that the color of the twisty-tie thing on bread changes in accordance with which day the bread was baked? or how about that sodas are called soft drinks because soft drinks were those with no alcohol, as compared to "hard drinks?" you know how twinkies supposedly last forever? yeah, well, their shelf life is really only twenty five days. i'll let you all go read through the rest yourself, but there were some really cool things on there.

anyway, food. stop taking it for granted.

*Too Much Food - Jason Mraz

i watch my dreams die

2011-10-15T11:57:00.000-04:00

i'm drowning in still-born dreams, getting tangled up in hopes i spun in moments of delusion, choking on wishes i now refuse to voice. i'm cursing my stupidity and tearing up the pages of my past, setting fire to older starry-eyed versions of myself and burying the ashes three hundred feet below ground. i'm stomping on the dirt and booking a one way trip to the moon to get as far away from them as i can.

i'm crying myself dry and peeling off the skin i spent years growing. i'm pulling out treacherous veins and twisting my tongue to squeeze out all offending words. i'm a garage sale of parts you can get for a bargain. buy my smile for two broken promises, my fingers for the sound of popping bubbles and one gilded lie. i'll trade you my mind for your stubborn logic and throw in years of blood, sweat, and tears for free. take everything i have; it was never worth much.

my heart is beating out seventy-six rejections a minute, my lungs inhaling disappointment and exhaling failure. i'm in this race to lose because it's the only thing i'm good at. i collect criticisms and bruises, put them on display under the glaring light of reality. i watch my reflection as the twinkle leaves my eye and what i used to call stardust turns my world a drab, colorless imitation of what i pretended it was. i'm sending my imaginary friends packing and forgetting to exchange emails.

dress me in assembly line grey, and take back my imagination. i don't want it, i don't need it, it never did me much good. turn my magic into technology and my art into science. fit me with blinders and give me a map of how to live my life. hand me a check list and i will follow it religiously. turn me into a robot and i will march to the beat of your drum. mine was always off-tune anyway. tell me what to be, and i will be it. tell me what not to be, and i will watch the possibilities sprout wings and fly away.

i give up. i give up. i give up.

*False Hope - Taking Back Sunday

you've got to get yourself together, you've got stuck in a moment, and now you can't get out of it

2011-10-13T13:38:00.000-04:00

Procrastination is my soul mate. he's my lifelong companion, the one i can always count on. he snuck into my room one day when Responsibility first introduced herself to me, and i swore my life to him then. we make secret clubs, and he tells me jokes behind Responsibility's back. Being older, Responsibility feels that it's her job to keep us in line, but she can't say anything when, really, we're not doing anything wrong. the fact that we don't do things her way has always rubbed her the wrong way, and that's made it hard for the three of us to ever really become friends. but i've always respected her. it's hard not to.

Apathy and i go way back. i met her when she was still going by "i don't care" and my parents chose all my clothes. most people i knew back then didn't like her, she still hasn't grown on very many, but that's never bothered her. she really couldn't care less. we used to throw rocks at Motivation on the playground - not one of my proudest moments - and i don't think Motivation ever really got over it. she still stays clear of the two of us. Apathy and i have one of those friendships when we can sit for hours together and just do nothing, say nothing, and think nothing without the pressing need for action weighing down on us. we thought about doing something the other day, but we couldn't get excited enough about it.

a couple of weeks ago, Lethargy came over asking for a place to stay for a day or two. at first i thought it was my old friend Laziness just going through a hard time, but i was quick to realize my mistake. Laziness has a charm about him that Lethargy lacks, like the attraction of dishevelment, crooked smiles, and stubble. Lethargy has all the charm of a growing mold. He has not just taken over my couch, but my entire apartment. even the air seems infected with the listlessness the rest of us are feeling. i think it's time for Lethargy to move on, but i can't seem to muster the energy to kick him out.

i'm hoping that november will bring with it Insanity and Obsession. i met them a couple of years ago after deciding to take part in nanowrimo for the first time and they have a way about them that i'm sure will scare Lethargy off. or, at least i hope it will. if they can't help me then i may just have to go play nice with the good habits, and i've been alienating them lately. i'm not sure if they'll forgive me.

*Stuck in a Moment - U2

it's been a long day

2011-10-05T23:53:00.000-04:00

today was a long day. a long, long day. today started at four when my body decided that it just wouldn't go back to sleep to avoid hitting snooze on my alarm one too many times. it also decided to spend the next hour and a half until my alarm actually went off and i got out of bed covering and uncovering myself because it couldn't decide if it was hot or cold. after leaving the house before the sun was even considering coming out for the day, i went over to my parents house to pick up my sister. together, along with my husband who was acting as driver before i could really wake up, we made our way over to the testing center to finally take our gre's. i thought i was unprepared last time because the only "studying" i did was to take an online practice test and a half. that was the last time i prepared for this test. add that to the fact that my brain was not fully functioning yet (while waiting for the building to open i was completely slaphappy. the radio played that no no no cat, and i was dying of laughter over it among other things) and i was pretty worried, though my mind didn't realize it at the time. thankfully, once i finally was able to sit in front of the computer and get the test started, my mind and body automatically went into test mode, a comfortable place for me. when i got my result range at the end, i was happy enough with it that i don't think i'm going to bother with a retest.

after the test my sister, husband, and i went out for a bagel breakfast. again. i swear that ever since my brother-in-law introduced us to this bagel place a few years ago a huge chunk of its profits has come from my sisters and i.

later in the day i went to my parents house and say with my mom, sister, and nephews. then my cousin and her husband and my dad came home. (did i mention that my cousin and her husband made a stop in DC to see us on their honeymoon? no? well, consider it mentioned.) that meant pretending i wasn't tired and being my semi-fake version of me that i use with some of my cousins that i am not particularly close to. the overly laughing and smiling and polite version. once my brothers came home we went out to olive garden. when we got home i helped my brothers with their homework, did a bit of reading with them, and then sat on the couch and alternated between reading my book and watching criminal minds with my parents.

i left my parents' house at ten, got home, couldn't find my computer and searched the apartment for it until finally finding it between the couch cushions. and here i am, blogging this in the commercial breaks of top chef: just desserts. and i am tired and can't wait until my head hits my pillow.

oh, and steve jobs died today. you know, in case you didn't know. must have been a long-ish day for him too.

*Long Day - Matchbox 20

i'm sorry for the way i am

2011-10-04T13:51:00.001-04:00

i think that it's just about time for me to issue a formal apology to the members of the IT community for being, as my brothers would say, "a suckish IT person."

i would like to apologize for the fact that i am perhaps the last person on earth that doesn't have a smart phone. the crappy thing i've been carrying around for the past three years or so came free from the phone company, has the memory of the proverbial goldfish, and has a camera that's not even good enough to be measured in megapixels. but to be completely honest, i hate phones and really don't think spending hundreds of dollars on something that will stay in a pocket or bag ignored for days is a very good investment. i always said i was too practical to be cool.

i am sorry that i prefer ink to pixels. i know that ereaders are the coolest thing since the ibm personal computer. they're practical and efficient and good for the environment. they're portable and convenient and everything else. i know all that, i really do. i have an ereader that i love. i named him and everything. but i will always prefer the actual turning of pages over pressing a button, and i am sorry that that is so terribly un-IT of me.

i apologize for choosing novels over computer manuals and personal blogs over info security ones. i'm sorry that the idea of a computer convention does not send chills of excitement running up and down my spine. i apologize for not keeping up with all of the technological advances happening every day. i know i should be more excited for my wired magazine to come than for my writer's digest, but most of the time i'm just not. i'm sorry that i don't want to electronify the entire world. i'm sorry.

i've seen the looks and and rolled eyes. i've heard the snickers and words whispered behind cupped hands.i know. but before you kick me out, i'd just like to say that i'm really not bad at this whole computer thing, and i actually do like it. well, most of the time. i've been studying it for a while, and that's got to count for something. i think the IT crowd is hilarious, read xkcd comics, and honestly laugh at most tech jokes. i may someday even make great contributions to the field, though my lack of ambition makes me think that i probably won't. but who knows? you may one day regret taking away my IT badge. so what do you say we just pretend that i'm not a total disgrace to computer nerds everywhere and let bygones be bygones?

oh, and just in case any of you were wondering, i baked cookies yesterday, and they were delicious. oven: 3, sarah: 1.

*Cold - Crossfade

sail away, kill off the hours, you belong somewhere you feel free

2011-10-03T13:20:00.000-04:00

i really want to write. or bake. or paint. or cook. or basically do anything that can be considered even slightly creative. i have that itch that makes me not want to turn into a fat blob of boringness. unfortunately, my body decided to have a civil war and there's a battle raging in my throat at the moment and someone's cannon keeps misfiring and sending shots to my head. also, my apartment has taken the change of weather as inspiration to start a new career. he's trying his luck as a refrigerator right now. i'm not sure if the chills and goosebumps are because of the war or the refusal to warm up, but any longer like this and i might as well give up my human card and turn into a full fledged bird. hey, at least they get to leave when it gets cold. (though chilly fall days and cold winter ones are usually some of my favorite days of the year.)

i think baking chocolate chip cookies would help the soldiers agree on a peace treaty and the apartment realize that refrigerators never get to smell like fresh baked cookies and pretty much make the world a better place, but i can't drag myself off this couch and out from under this blanket, and it's very sad. especially because i've been wanting to bake cookies for a very long time, and there's always something that comes up to stop me.

i also woke up to find that snow white was not keeping a very good eye on her dwarfs and that grumpy (who was always my favorite) has decided to possess me. yup, he's living inside my head at this very moment. he'd say hi, but he doesn't really like you all that much. and grumpy people just do not go around baking cookies and whistling while they work. (do any of you remember what book it was that had snow white really fat and evil and the dwarfs were pretty much her slaves? was that the book of lost things? does anyone know? i'm usually the person people come to with these kinds of questions. it's annoying me that i don't know.)

anyway, i'm going to continue listlessly flipping through web pages and hoping that i suddenly decide to get up and bake.

oh, and as for the title, tom petty's widlflowers has been stuck in my head lately. i have no idea why since i really haven't listened to it since the summer.

*Wildflowers - Tom Petty

you're a star in nobody's eyes but mine

2011-10-02T11:39:00.000-04:00

i was watching moulin rouge! last night, and don't you just love that movie? i think it may be one of my absolute favorites of all time. which is why it always surprises me when i can't get anyone to watch it. it took me four years to get my cousin to watch it. four. years. and even then i basically tricked her into it. but she liked it, like i knew she would. my sister would never watch it because she "doesn't like sad things." another cousin doesn't like things that are "about old times." and hardly anyone i know will watch a musical with me.

but this isn't a post about the stubbornness and bad movie taste of people i know.

when i was watching the movie, falling even more in love with ewan mcgregor (a common side effect) i decided that he is way to underrated. he has acting talent, an amazing voice, and good looks (though i know a lot of people who would argue with me on that one). but yet, he just never seems to make it to the top lists of most people. and i find that sad.

on another note completely, i recently read geek love and while i was reading it, especially at the beginning, i was more repulsed and disturbed than anything else. now that it's finished, i just want to go back and reread it. that's been happening a lot with me lately. i'll be reading a book and think it's great, and then put it down at the best part for no apparent reason. i'll wash the dishes and fold the laundry and there's really no pull to go back to reading. and other books i feel underwhelmed by, i feel like they're not living up to the potential of the story or the characters, and yet i can't seem to put them down without wanting to pick them right back up.

*Andy, You're a Star - The Killers

i'm nearing the end or the beginning, whichever finds me

2011-09-29T20:53:00.000-04:00

so i finished my application essay (yay me!) and then reread it and realized that it sounded a bit like a thesaurus threw up all over the paper. you know the people who use big words for the sake of using big words? yeah, i think i might have turned into one of them. my greatest fear has been realized. only, when i read it out loud instead of in my head, it didn't sound that bad. it still sounded a little bad, but i've written so many application essays it feels like they're all just a bouquet of lies and cliches at this point so i didn't really expect to fall in love with it. i'm planning on rereading it tomorrow morning and if it doesn't make me want to die, i'll submit it. if it does, well, i guess i'm back to ground zero.

i also - finally - got the three people to write my recommendation letters. i got my adviser to do the last one because some of my professors are obnoxious, and he was very happy to. i guess he doesn't get asked to write many recommendation letters.

i have also been wondering, where do you wear your watch? a couple of years ago my cousin and i went watch shopping with my sister and noticed she wore her watch right at the bottom of her wrist (like under the bone/on the bone/right at the edge of her palm kind of thing), and we thought it was weird because we both wore it above the bone. while telling my mom that my sister was weird, i noticed that she was also an under-the-bone person. my husband is, too. when i went to get a watch resized the dude working there asked where i wore my watch, but his was under the bone. and then i had the shocking realization that maybe my cousin and i are the weird ones. maybe most people wear their watches lower down, and i just never noticed until now. so i'm asking you, for the sake of my sanity, where do you wear your watch?

oh, and at the risk of sounding like a complete and utter geek, i love the class i'm taking this semester. i think it's one of the best classes i've ever had. i have a paper due tuesday, and i'm actually excited to write it. i mean, i'm sure i'll still leave it for the last minute, but i'm excited nonetheless.

*Days in Avalon - Richard Marx

i've tried, but i can't try no more

2011-09-25T22:46:00.000-04:00

i can't for the life of me write this stupid goals statement for my application. i just can't do it. people assume that applying for your phd is some great decision that took thought and deliberation. um, not for me. people think that after a bachelors and masters degree, you'd be an expert in your field. sorry to disappoint. people expect you to have some work experience to rely on, some real world something to give you that extra whatever it is that makes your opinions valid. for some reason, i don't think blogging really counts as computer work.

so how am i supposed to write seven fifty to a thousand words on my plans, credentials, and reasons for giving another chunk of my life to mason?

i was originally going to recycle the essay for my master's application, but it turns out that it was lost in one of joe's many brainwashings because of his susceptibility to viruses. i was crushed. the only thing i even remember about it was that i mentioned planning to work in saudi arabia/start a forensic office there to stand out from the rest of the applicants. i really don't need a phd to do that, making it useless for this particular statement. and then with the release of windows 8 and all of the changes coming with it (because microsoft seems to think that if they don't change absolutely everything, they'll all die), i'm already starting to feel that everything i'm learning is becoming obsolete before i even get a chance to use it. you can't really sell yourself when you're constantly wondering, "what's the point?" disenchantment does not come off as excitement on the page, surprising as that may sound.

i just want this application to be over.

*On Without You - Backstreet Boys

where'd you go? i miss you so. seems like it's been forever since you've been gone

2011-09-24T08:41:00.000-04:00

so yesterday we took the boys to see the lion king at the movies, and can you believe that they had never seen it before? i felt like i had failed my duties as an older sister. they had seen lion king one and a half. it came out when they were younger and when i bought it they would watch it on repeat all. day. long. over and over and over again for months. they had seen lion king two recently on the airplane. we used to have it taped off the tv, but then ali recorded free willy over the last fifteen minutes or so when he was small. but they had never seen the original one, the best one. we had it on vhs, but it got lost in one of our house moves. i was devastated naturally, because along with beauty and the beast and aladdin, it's up there with my favorite disney movies of all time. if you haven't already, i suggest you go watch it on the big screen before it stops showing. it's a guaranteed good movie in a time when a lot of what is being shown is just mindless crap that makes billions of dollars anyway.

while i was watching the movie, listening to baby simba talk, all i could think about was where did jonathan taylor thomas disappear to? he was my first celebrity crush - well, him and aladdin, but he was my first non-animated one - and i definitely wasn't the only one. i remember him taking off time from acting to go to college or something, good role model as he is (it was the biggest news of my elementary class), and then he came back and did a few guest spots on shows that he would probably be starring in if he didn't leave, and then he fell off the face of the planet. where did he go?

**UPDATE**: shortly after posting this, i did a quick google search and found this, an interview with him from the home improvement reunion (which i didn't know about?) about a week ago. apparently he's been "going to school, and traveling quite a bit, getting to read a lot of books [he's] wanted to for quite some time." basically a very me-sanctioned way to spend his time out of the spotlight. twenty three year old me approves of eight year old's me choice in crushes. eight year old me feels validated.

i'm going to go find my slap bracelets now and continue reliving my childhood.

*Where'd You Go - Fort Minor

i love you like the stars above, i love you till i die

2011-09-21T23:55:00.000-04:00

so i came home today, opened my email to see if i had any blog comments, and realized that i haven't actually posted anything in the past few days. my disappointment at my empty inbox (well, empty of anything new) prompted me to remedy that.

i'm applying for the phd program at my school for next semester (why, yes, i am certifiably insane), but i only really started the application today. it's due in about a week. most of it i can do pretty quick, but i need three recommendation letters. three. that means that i need to find people to recommend me, convince them to do it, and then make sure they have their stuff in on time. it's a pretty tight squeeze. especially since, being the youngest and least experienced in most of my classes, i'm rarely the one doing most of the talking. who really wants to take the time to recommend someone they can barely remember?

i knew that one of my professors knew me enough to write a personal recommendation. the only problem was that he rarely checked his email and never responds to anything. he prefers phones. but mason, great college that it is, updated to the new blackboard this semester without telling me and deleted the old one. that means that all my old notes, assignments, and syllabuses (i always though the plural of syllabus was syllabi. i feel stupid now.) are gone. thrown out in a giant virtual dumpster. that includes his phone number. i decided to email him and if i didn't get a response to cyberstalk him to find his number tomorrow. yeah, i'm that desperate.

twenty minutes later, i get an email from him saying "who does it need to be addressed to?" i was ecstatic. i email back explaining that the whole thing is done online now and that if i could submit his email they'll send him the form. his reply: "no problem. i would love to do it for you."

and i'm not gonna lie, i fell even more in love with him. i dunno if i mentioned my crush, for lack of a better word, on this guy here, but i was really obsessed with him. (he taught the two-student class i was in.) i loved going to his class early and talking and listening to his stories. he has an awesome sense of humor and is smart and amazing (and not really attractive at all but whatever). i could tell he would write me something good, because he liked me. he doesn't believe in pluses/minuses on grades, as he stressed repeatedly at the start of every class i ever took with him, and so when i saw the A+ he gave me last fall, i have to admit that i smiled like an idiot for a few seconds.

anyway, one of the other professors said i had to go meet up with him which i kinda don't feel like doing and the other one didn't answer. i'm not feeling very confident right now.

i think i procrastinated so long on applying because deep down, i know i'm not going to get into the program. they want you to have experience in the field and i have a grand total of none. i know that. and i think i naturally shy away from rejection and failure. which resulted in a very last minute application. tomorrow will be spent finding people to recommend me (and dragging up buried feelings of intellectual love for my professor of course).

oh, and i realize that the title is over the top. it's late, and i'm watching top chef: just desserts, and i can't think of anything else right now.

*Romeo and Juliet - The Killers

pay my respects to grace and virtue, send my condolences to good

2011-09-19T13:33:00.000-04:00

because writing anything seems like the hardest thing in the world to do these days, here's a poem that i read a few days ago in an anthology i recently bought. i liked it. maybe you will too.

The Poet Has Come Back

by Margaret Arwood

The poet has come back to being a poet

after decades of being virtuous instead.

Can't you be both?

No. Not in public.

You could, once,

back when God was still thundering vengeance

and liked the scent of blood,

and hadn't got around to slippery forgiveness.

Then you could scatter incense and praise,

and wear your snake necklace,

and hymn the crushed skulls of your enemies

to a pious chorus.

No deferential smiling, no baking of cookies,

no I'm a nice person really.

Welcome back, my dear.

Time to resume our vigil,

time to unlock the cellar door,

time to remind ourselves

that the god of poets has two hands:

the dextrous, the sinister.

*Human - The Killers

oh, look what you've done. you've made a fool of everyone

2011-09-14T10:26:00.000-04:00

years after i first suggested people read the hunger games, it suddenly seems that everyone i know has taken it upon themselves to read it. and then mention how it sucks. all i have to say to them is, "well, duh."

the movie for it is coming out soon, and it seems like the vast majority of the young adult reading population can only read a book when there is a movie deal in the works. i guess so that their imagination doesn't have to tire itself out for long thinking up images and scenes without the help of hollywood? anyway, for whatever reason, the series has been blown into twilightesque popularity, which is why i guess most people have decided to read it right now. because if something is that popular, it must be good, right? wrong. so very, very wrong.

if you read the books when they first came out, you would be reading them with the expectation of getting an entertaining book written for twelve year olds. mistakes would be more readily overlooked. the story could be enjoyed while ignoring the writing style, because, hey, it's a book for little kids that is not being touted as the next great american novel or anything even remotely close. which, incidentally is a pretty accurate description of the book.

don't get me wrong, i loved the series. but at the same time, there were a bunch of typos that jumped out at me. there were way too many times when the author took the easy way out and had the main character unconscious somewhere when major plot points were happening so that they could be covered in some brief bullet points when she wakes up. this is going completely again the rule to "show, don't tell" and while i could make the argument that she was giving us the story as a sixteen year old girl whose had her life turned upside down might get it, she still does it way too many times. there are some parts where your logic should stay safe in your pocket and others where the characters were just too stupid/dense to believe. but overall, i enjoyed the story, liked the characters, and thought it was a good series.

because i read it before it got hyped up.

now, it is being referred to as the best book ever to be written. it is elevated to a level of literature where it really has no business being. do i think that it shouldn't be a popular book series? no. people can like whatever they want to, and it does have a good story. what i do think is that people need to understand that just because you and a bunch of your friends like something, it is not the greatest thing ever to come to earth. take it off its pedestal and get over yourselves. if you read it now, no matter how much you say that general hype doesn't affect you, it does. even if it's just a little subconscious nudge in the back of your mind, your expectations are probably too high for the book. all you will get is disappointed.

the series is being called the next twilight and while its fans will rant and rave about how inaccurate this description is, i think it's spot on. no, the stories are not the same, but that's not what i'm talking about. they are both series that might have been enjoyed before they were hyped up to the greatest books ever written - a claim that neither series can come close to supporting - but now they have a reputation to uphold and expectations to meet, and they can't.

so go ahead and read the books if you want, but know that they were better when i read them, and try not to expect them to be what their fans are saying they are.

*Look What You've Done - Jet

you're constantly surrounded by the swirling stream of what is and what was

2011-09-11T09:24:00.000-04:00

i've been having life block (what do you call someone who lives that doesn't sound like a major organ?) lately that has translated in some way to a form of writer's block. you know, when you actually have some things you could write about, but just as you go to transfer them from brain to paper you realize that your brain has turned into a puddle of mush and the thoughts need to be hung up to dry before anything else can be done with them. life at the moment has gone... weird, is the only way i can describe it without writing out encyclopedia-sized posts. it's kind of like that moment in high school when, after using a calculator for years, your teacher gives you a page of math problems and says you have a minute to solve as many as you can... without the calculator. you stare at the numbers on the page, knowing that once upon you could solve them, that you used to race through these pages in less than a minute for that tootsie pop the teacher would give the first one to finish will all correct, but you just can't do it. your mind keeps trying to tell you which buttons on a calculator you would push, and next thing you know you've short-circuited something in your head and your answers are wrong. or it's like sitting in a college classroom and having someone come up to you and say you're no longer her best friend because you took the chair she wanted to sit in, thereby failing the friendship test. you don't know whether to laugh, cry, or pretend you can't hear her as you might have done in fourth grade. you forget how to deal with some things as you distance yourself from them for years. i think i'm forgetting how to live my life.

anyway, i saw this link on the side of a friend's blog, and thought i'd share it. it;s about how muslims should stop apologizing for september eleventh. the dude who wrote it is a comedian so it actually has some funniness in it. it's also pretty short. and september eleventh. so you should read it. if you want.

oh, and because you were probably all wondering, in the pancake war, i am oh for two. though this time they were cooked all the way through, i had forgotten to tell my brother not to stir the batter too much. over-strirred pancake batter makes for tough un-fluffy pancakes. which is what we ate. with chocolate chips in them. they weren't bad, but they couldn't be considered a victory. i will reconquer my ability to make pancakes, though. you can count on it.

school also feels weird because everyone i know has started to work on papers and homework and balancing classes with fun, and i haven't really started anything. but it's not like i'm out of school, i'm just taking a bite sized portion this semester, and it feels weird.

have i went over the number of times i can call something weird in one post yet?

*The Big Picture - Bright Eyes

yeah the power's out

2011-09-08T22:54:00.000-04:00

early august, i registered to take the gre today. a few days ago, i started to take some of the online practice tests to, you know, practice. this morning (it was actually around twelve) we braved the crazy rain that has been coming down for days and made our way out to the testing center. (the rain really has been ridiculous. this is more like what should have come down when irene came around.) i got to the center, checked in, rewrote a confidentiality statement that was really unnecessarily long, put all my stuff in my locker, got searched, signed in, and then the power went out. everyone who was either taking the test or waiting to take the test was herded back into the waiting room where we sat in the semi-darkness and gradually got hotter and hotter. the test center employee people were in another room by themselves loudly laughing and talking. after half an hour, they came out to tell us that the power would be out until after five at the earliest and that we should all sign out and reschedule. i got my stuff out of my locker and went home. though a part of me woke up this morning feeling like taking the gre was the absolute last thing i wanted to do today, another part of me knows that i will never wake up feeling ready and excited for it and kinda wishes i could have just gotten it over with. anyway, i forgot to reschedule today because getting home was a bit of an ordeal (flooding and traffic are not fun), but i should probably do that tomorrow. yay.

a friend of mine had recently suggested that i look at retailmenot.com before buying anything, so last night i spent a few minutes skimming through coupons. as my eyes flit past discounts on DVDs and restaurants, they fell on a coupon for some pet food, castor and pollux pet food to be exact. and my mind was momentarily blown (or semi-blown) because, as you may or may not know, castor and pollux are the names of two capitol brothers in mockingjay. i always wonder about authors' inspirations for character names. i guess suzanne collins looks at what she's feeding her pets (if she has any). i know other authors have said they look in phone books or movie credits for names, but i have never come across anyone or anything before and thought, "that's who that character is named after!" besides the obvious ones that are supposed to be named after or referencing certain things. i'm not sure how much sense i'm making outside of my head right now.

my brothers are at my apartment for a sleepover and are asleep in the other room. part of me knows that they will be up at five and expect me to be up with them which means i should probably go to sleep early, but the other part of me insists that it is just not tired. have you noticed that i am apparently always parts of a whole and never a sum of all parts?

in the morning we will have the first best buddy club breakfast in a long time, and we are making pancakes. after a disastrous first pancake attempt with this oven, it is sarah vs oven: round two, and i better win.

*The Power's Out - Flogging Molly

you never doubted my warped opinions on suicidal hate

2011-09-07T10:37:00.001-04:00

they always say that when you find yourself in an abusive relationship, you run. it doesn't matter who the person is or how nice they are on a good day, you pack your things and hightail it out of mayberry immediately. everything that happens on a good day is just not worth anything that happens on a bad day. abuse, emotional or physical, is just not something you should put up with. but what do you do when you're in an abusive relationship with yourself? how do you run away from the part of your brain that builds you up just so it can knock you down again and again and then kick you when your down? how do you escape from the hand that's swiping a razor blade across your skin to watch it bleed when the hand is yours? how do you move away from the mouth that overdoses and the legs that take you time and time again into misery? what do you do when you're abusing yourself more than anyone else ever could? you can't divorce your mind. you can't slip away from your body in the middle of the night. not alive at least. and that's what suicide is. it's getting out of an abusive relationship the only way you know how. the only way you can.

***

so i wrote this a pretty long while ago with the intention of keeping it drafted forever, one of those things that i would have written in my journal had it been on me and that instead went into blogger. but recently, for some reason completely unknown to me, i've been seeing a lot of stuff about suicide both online and off, and a lot of it has just served to royally piss me off. it's common knowledge that suicide is the one thing that no one can forgive. people insist on taking it personally. they put up with a person, tried to help him/her, and how does s/he repay them? by throwing away all their efforts and trying to kill themselves. it's really the height of indecency.

so they sit on their high horse and preach about how selfish people who commit suicide are. how all they think of is themselves, and what about the person that finds them dead? what about the pain they'll suffer and the trauma they'll have for life? what about their friends and family? did they ever stop to think about how their death would affect them?

what they don't seem to realize is that sometimes that's exactly the point and by the time that it comes down to suicide, it's usually so far past that that their little self-righteous rants are ridiculous at best. if it has come to the point that someone is willing to bleed out on their bathroom floor because anything is better than this, if someone is desperate enough to kill themself to escape the prison their mind is holding them captive in, do you really think that telling them to think about the people they're leaving behind will do any good? do you think they haven't thought about that already?

am i suicidal? no. do i think suicide should ever be the answer? no. but do i blame people for attempting suicide? absolutely not.

i read once that a person can withstand any suffering as long as there is an end in sight, a light at the end of the tunnel if you will. it doesn't have to be immediate, but the very thought that "it can't always be this bad" is enough to help them get through. some people, though, are incapable of seeing this light. there is no end to the suffering. what they thought was a tunnel is really just a hole, and they're falling deeper and deeper into the darkness, and they will continue to fall forever. and the people that refuse to see that to some people, suicide is not a way to get back at people, but the only way they can see to end their endless suffering, will never cease to get on my nerves.

*Hate Me - Blue October

why keep your feeble hopes alive? what are you proving? you've got the dream but not the drive.

2011-09-04T09:04:00.000-04:00

my family is coming back today, and i am excited.

of course, that brought to light the fact that i have been here for over a month and done absolutely nothing with my life. (in two days i will have been married for two months. when did that happen?) i mean, not that i was expecting some big, grand, amazing transformation or anything, but there was a part of me that thought that when my time was more my own, i would learn some discipline and sit down and write. that getting married would be proof enough to myself that i'm old enough to stop being a lazy bum and actually do something that i say i want to do, namely write.

so i have written a few things here and there, some of which i actually liked, but there is no discipline in my writing. sure, i can blog pretty regularly, but i can't seem to channel that dedication anywhere else. for some reason i refuse to take it seriously. i'd probably take it more seriously if it was more promising, and it can't become more promising until i take it seriously, so i will be caught in just another endless cycle. story of my life.

it also reminded me that the gre i signed up to take and was supposed to start studying for is next week. now normally, i would be completely okay with that. but everyone has been telling me such horror stories about this test and how hard it is and how it is nothing like the SAT (which is what i was thinking it would be like) that i am slightly freaked out. and now there's a little over a week to study and i have nothing to study. i tried doing the online practice tests, but whenever i started something would happen to make me need to stop in the middle so i don't even know where i stand. tomorrow is definitely gre study day.

but back to the main point of the post: my family is coming back today, and i am excited. i have missed them more than i thought i would. of course, i'm sure i'll be thinking about how annoying they are an hour or so after the time that they land, but hey, that's family, right?

*Beauty School Dropout - Grease

and my eyes don't recognize you no more

2011-09-03T13:27:00.000-04:00

water and i have just not been on the best terms for the past couple of days. i don't know what it is, but i've been having one embarrassing moment after another when it comes to water these days.

let's start with yesterday. we went out to have dinner at red lobster's after the longest day of waiting around ever. (we were at my parents' house waiting for the tv/internet installation guy. he was supposed to come between eight and twelve. he came at three:thirty and didn't leave until seven:thirty. i finished my book by ten:thirty, played sudoku for hours, did puzzles, played whatever one person board game type things i could find, made a bunch of peanut butter crackers i did not want to eat, and wandered around the house like a lost soul. it was a long day.) anyway, so we're at dinner and i'm just about done with my popcorn shrimp when i realize that i'm really thirsty and the waitress hadn't come back with my refill yet. so i take my fork and go to pick up an ice cube to suck on (when i was little my mom used to yell at me for using my hands.) when, instead of cooperating with me, it flew out of my cup and landed in the little thing of cocktail sauce on my plate.

whatever, i thought, and finally got it in my mouth - cocktail sauce and all. while i was sucking on it, the manager came around asking if everything was alright. i don't know why i felt compelled to answer, but i did. and after i got out my "fine, thanks" the stupid ice cube jumped out of my mouth, that's really the only way to describe it. it jumped out, bounced off the table, and landed on the booth next to me. somewhere after the point where i realized my ice escaped and before i saw it use the table as a diving board, i was simultaneously pulling an ostrich and dying of laughter. it was not my best moment. (it's times like these that make me doubt the fact that i'm actually twenty three and not seven.)

today, i was sitting on the couch drinking a cup of water and awkwardly reading a book while waiting for my nail polish to dry, when i somehow spilled a little water on myself. this caused me to pull the cup away dramatically, consequently splashing myself with a little more water. two seconds after i laugh about this with my husband, i go to take another sip. i spill more water on myself. i splash myself with more water. my face was soaked.

this morning i was filling up the brita filter and moving it back into the refrigerator. on its way over there and into its spot, it decided for some reason to just spill a bunch of water everywhere. i'm still not sure how it did this because it was still full when i put it in the fridge and it was not leaking anywhere. it just wanted to escape.

so, like i said, water and i are just not on the best terms at the moment. i think it might be because i've started drinking ridiculous amounts of water and my body is tired of it and staging a protest. but really, it's like water is now a completely different person. someone i have never really known, and i'm not sure if i would have wanted to.

*For Reasons Unknown - The Killers

there's nothing to do here

2011-08-31T10:30:00.000-04:00

in the arab world, eid is celebrated for three days. you visit family, you have big meals, you celebrate. here in america, we can barely find enough things to do for one day, let alone three. to celebrate eid yesterday, i went out to breakfast with my sister's family and her in-laws. i then ran a few errands, went home for a couple of hours, and went to class. i know you're jealous.

class was actually a lot better than i was expecting. the professor is pretty awesome and it's a writing intensive course, which i usually do pretty well in. it's classes like these where the super IT-y people usually get into trouble, because while they can build you a computer in three point seven seconds, they have no idea how to effectively explain what they did in words, especially not written. so i'm hoping i can end my master's career on a good note since i do in fact know the basics of grammar, something not as common as you would think in this field. can you believe that this might be the last class you ever hear me whine about on this blog ever? that is, if i don't get into a phd program which i'm thinking is pretty likely (the not getting in).

anyway, one cool thing about the professor is that he works in the private sector. every other professor i have had in this program in every other class has worked for the government. so we were basically just getting our minds stuffed with public sector work stories and tips and experiences. i had almost forgotten that the government is not the only one that uses computer forensics. it opened a few more potential options for me that i had been not seeing before.

like most other professors, this one enjoys telling stories of things he's seen and done in the field. (the cool thing about him is that he only tells the interesting ones. do you know how many stories i've had to listen to that ended with the professor either laughing or smugly smiling while the rest of us were listening to the serenading crickets?) so he was telling us about his mentor and the importance of using analogies to explain things to non-computer folk and how impressive this guy was at thinking up what to say and delivering it. "plus," he added, "he had a british accent. and everything just sounds smarter when said in a british accent... at least in america." and isn't that just so true? i think there are few places where the american accent makes someone automatically seem smarter and more sophisticated. it's kind of unfair when you think about it.

*Hospital Beds - Cold War Kids

you disappoint me

2011-08-29T18:05:00.000-04:00

today is just one of those days where looking at me will get you blacklisted and talking to me should make you fear for your life. you know the kind? i'm trying to read to pass the time until i can eat, but the characters are all annoying me too much.

anyway, it occurred to me that after a couple of posts talking about hurricane irene and the end of the world, i should probably mention how very anticlimactic irene turned out to be. at least for the area i was in. there was some rain, yes, but nothing too bad. we had a little wind, but we've had a lot worse. i couldn't even hear it howling outside, something i actually really like. the electricity didn't flicker, let alone go off. i had phone, internet, and tv up until i went to bed. early. i woke up the next morning to blue skies and sun. there weren't even any puddles outside (at least, nothing i could see from my window). all in all, i was a bit disappointed.

don't get me wrong, i'm thankful that there wasn't any damage for us to deal with, but i was gearing up for a good old storm. i wanted pounding rain and howling winds. i wanted power outages and candlelight. one of my favorite childhood memories happened when i was in fourth grade. we were living in california at the time and it was in the middle of el nino. we had a bad storm and were powerless for what i remember to be the better part of a day, but of course time seemed longer to my nine year old self. it might have just been a few hours. it was during ramadan and my dad cooked the food to break our fast in our fireplace. i remember playing charades by candlelight in my pajamas and how the house seemed different when viewed by flashlight. it was exciting, though we didn't really do anything too out of the ordinary that day. since then i have loved power outages. they bring with them the bittersweet nostalgia that tells of better days.

so to be told that we were having the biggest hurricane in the history of the world and to stock up on food and get ready for loss of power, ending up with a little rain and wind was pretty disappointing.

*Passive - A Perfect Circle

breathe in for luck, breathe in so deep

2011-08-29T15:55:00.000-04:00

you're waiting for me to say those three little words you've said so many times before. you're waiting for kisses that don't just come in the dark of night and leave an aftertaste of guilt in your mouth. you're waiting for me to stop twisting out of your embraces like i would shackles and chains. you're waiting for my teeth to stop biting and snarling long enough to smile. you're waiting for me to settle down and grow up.

well honey, you better exhale.

you're waiting for me to cross the finish line. you're waiting for parties in my honor and statues erected to celebrate the success that is me. you're waiting for me to make you proud. you're waiting for the day that my name is common on a stranger's lips. you're waiting for it to stop being used as a synonym for apathy and the death of promise.

well honey, you better exhale.

you're waiting for me to save the world. you're waiting for the red cape and blue tights to be pulled out of the grasp of the skeletons in my closet. you're waiting for me to spread my wings and shoulder the weight of the world. you're waiting for me to live up to your expectations. you're turning blue in the face because you swear i have what it takes,

and honey, you better exhale.

*Hands Down - Dashboard Confessional

it's so incredible that you're so rude

2011-08-27T12:58:00.000-04:00

dear irene,

when you said you were going to visit, we, like any good hosts, immediately got ready for your arrival. we stocked up on food and water, we brought in patio chairs for extra seating, and we made sure we had flashlights and candles in case you are afraid of the dark. we've been stood up by hurricanes a lot in the past - they promise that they're coming and then send a rainstorm to make their excuses for them - but you seemed pretty sure, so we believed. you haven't even come yet and you're already the center of attention and the topic of every conversation. your visit is all anyone can talk about.

you'd think, what with the way we're all getting ready to greet you, that you'd be a bit more considerate. i mean, i get that you might knock out electricity, turn lawn chairs into missiles, and cause some serious property damage. it's all part of your shtick, and i'm okay with that. if you didn't go above and beyond, you might as well just call yourself a little black rain cloud. i get that. i'm talking about something else entirely.

this morning i signed into amazon to actually buy the things that i put in my cart two days ago to think about. and you know what i noticed? everything in my cart is suddenly a lot more expensive than it was yesterday. one thing went from twenty five to forty one dollars. i know prices in amazon are constantly fluctuating, but it's usually a few cents this way or that. i haven't seen jumps like this happen literally overnight. there's no real proof that this is your fault, but you're the one variable in a long stream of constants. so you know what? i'm gonna go ahead and blame you.

after everything we've done for you, everything we've agreed to put up with, all the money that we spent to make sure your stay here went smoothly, trying to bankrupt us is not polite. remember your manners, ma'am. i hate to say it, but if i knew you were going to act like this, i might have said we would be out of town this weekend. and then you could have just sat home alone in the middle of the ocean wondering why no one liked you. and if you decide to get offended and not show up, well, i think i'd be okay with that.

yours truly,
sarah

*Chow Down - The Lion King

lesson learned and the wheels keep turning

2011-08-26T20:40:00.000-04:00

it seems like the only thing on anyone's mind anymore is hurricane irene. everyone and their mother is either getting ready for her arrival or telling other people how to get ready for her arrival. so to give you all a break from the hurricane talk, let's discuss something else. namely, college and what you learn in it.

so i was watching reality bites yesterday. i love this movie, and i think the last time i watched it was in high school or something. anyway, it starts out with the main characters graduating and then hanging out on a rooftop celebrating their graduation. one character, vickie, gets really drunk, but can still recite her social security number. troy mentions how impressive that is and she says that the only thing she really learned in college was her social security number. and i have to completely agree with her.

before starting college, i couldn't tell you my social security number to save my life. then after writing it on application after application, after needing it for forms and paperwork during the entire four years i was studying, it just stuck. i could tell you my social security number if i was bitten by a bear and bleeding out. nothing else i learned during college will stick with me as well or as long as that will. i mean, sure, i learned a lot in all of my classes, but most of it was forgotten as soon as i was tested on it. what i didn't forget will either fade with time or become obsolete in a few years. but not my social security number.

think about it. what else did you learn in college? they should make it their slogan or something: go to college; learn your ssn.

in other news, i went to borders today to take advantage of their going out of business sale and got a bunch of books that i've been meaning to read forever. you know those books that were recommended to you but you never actually read because you were too busy reading the books you chose first? yeah those. and they were all ridiculously cheap. it's kinda sad, though, seeing crowds of people swarming around the store and knowing that if half of these people bought books from there before, they might not be going out of business.

*The World We Live In - The Killers

fill their heads with rumors of impending doom, it must be true

2011-08-25T17:28:00.000-04:00

hurricanes and earthquakes and floods, oh my.

with the natural disasters coming at us like a swarm of mosquitos by a lake on the first day of summer, it's hard to deny the cold hard facts: the world is ending. you can close your eyes, shove your fingers in your ears, and sing yankee doodle at the top of your lungs all you want, but it doesn't change anything. we're witnessing the final act in this play of life. the curtain is getting ready to close and the actors are thinking about where to go for dinner after the final bow is made and the last of the make up wiped off. that's it, people, it's all done.

you know who i blame? nasa. or whoever it was that took away pluto's claim to planetship. it was five years ago yesterday that pluto was demoted from planet to orbiting space rock, and it's obvious that earth has not been taking the demotion too well. were there floods and earthquakes destroying countries every time you blinked when pluto was a planet? no. were there wars breaking out like acne on a teenager (not my best metaphor, but just go with it)? no. were there award shows where twilight beat harry potter in every category? definitely not.

there are sharks swimming in streets, people revolting over spilled milk, and lady gaga is getting more famous as you read this. and don't forget about the mass animal suicides earlier this year. i mean, now they're not such a mystery; they were just getting a head start on all of this.

now, if you're like me, then you really haven't accomplished anything worthwhile in your life, and any chances you might have had are never gonna reach you what with none of us existing in a few weeks time. so leave the fame and notoriety to disney stars, justin bieber, and stephenie meyer and spend your last few days doing something really worthwhile. when hurricane irene hits us this weekend, i, for one, will have no regrets about wasted time. for example, yesterday while watching doug, skeeter mentioned that one of the important things he learned as a bluff scout was how to keep your cereal crunchy, even in milk. i think spending the last days of my life trying to figure this out would be a great use of my time.

what are you going to do while the world falls to pieces around you?

*Losing Touch - The Killers

and i just wanna get mugged at knife point, to get cut enough to wake me up

2011-08-24T11:52:00.000-04:00

as i'm sure most of you know, the virginia/dc area had a pretty big earthquake yesterday (a 5.8). i've felt a couple of earthquakes in my life, both here and in california, but nowhere near the scale of this one. i was sitting in my apartment on the third floor going my turn on facebook scrabble games with my sister while my husband played crash racing on the playstation when everything started shaking. i was woken up yesterday by our neighbors downstairs who were getting new carpet put in and felt that in order to do that they should bang around and generally make as much noise as humanly possible. so when the shaking first started i just assumed it was from them. when it turned into a real things-falling-down-walls-vibrating-oh-look-my-chair's-moving sort of thing, i kinda figured what it was. so i sat in my chair, waited a bit for the shaking to go down to vibrating, said, "huh. that was cool," and finished playing my turn.

when i closed out of the games, statuses were of course talking of nothing but the earthquake. everyone was saying how scared they were, how they thought they were going to die, how their life flashed before their eyes. the only thing i felt during the earthquake was a slight annoyance that the harry potter plaque i made in high school had fallen down and i would have to go check if it was cracked again. (laziness at its finest, people.) and suddenly i was so incredibly jealous of these people. most of you probably weren't reading my blog back then, but i remember once wishing for a near death experience to kind of wake me up, if you will. i needed something drastic to happen to pull me out of my perpetual apathy. two years or so later, and i still feel that i could use a jolt that only fearing for my life can give me to really get my act together. after talking to my mom, mother-in-law, and grandma (thank god for voip phones when cell reception is down and you have worried mothers) my jealousy for lack of a better word just increased because here they were scared and worried when two of them are on the other side of the world right now and none of them felt the earthquake. if just hearing/reading about it could scare them enough, why couldn't experiencing it shake me at all?

i started thinking, and you know, i don't think i have ever actually been afraid for my life. i have been in countless almost accidents (my sister can be a crazy driver), a couple of accidents (nothing actually really bad to anyone but the car/bus), i've spent a night on the kitchen floor too sick to get up because all of the tylenol in my system i overdosed on, i ride on planes at least twice a year and haven't worn my seat belt on them since i was ten, my school has had bomb threats, i've had creepy people follow me to my car, and countless other things have happened that might make a normal person a little scared for his/her life... but me? nothing. i mean, sure, i'm terrified of death. i think besides failure and not measuring up it's the thing i'm most scared of. but i have never been terrified for my life, and i kind of want to be. i want to suddenly appreciate this thing that i have always taken for granted. i want to be forced to recognize that it is something precious. i want to be pulled out of this black hole of apathy and depression and realize that there's something worth living for, even if it's just life itself.

but i don't. i let opportunities for near death experiences pass me by. i let chances of fear turn into afterthoughts. i let the apathy win out every. single. time.

*This Week the Trend - Relient K

and i've been guessin', but i coulda been guessin' wrong

2011-08-23T10:25:00.001-04:00

a lot of people i know fall victim to the hypochondria that can so easily arise when you look at sites like webmd. a stuffy nose can suddenly be a symptom of meningitis instead of just the common cold. a stomach ache is a form of cancer, and a sore throat a sure sign that they have only days to live. i barely ever look at medical sites. i hardly give any sickness i might have a second thought. i try my best to just ignore any symptoms i may have until they go away. unless i have a cold, then i fill myself with alka seltzer plus because that is a miracle medicine.

but moving on, yesterday i did what i had sworn never to do. i caved and looked at webmd and emedicine and all the rest of those, and oh my god i was far sicker than i had originally thought. i did not just have cramps anymore, i was going to need to head to my doctor immediately and get prepped for surgery. a surgery that was sure to leave me paralyzed on half of my body which would surely lead to other diseases. this was not just a migraine that i had gotten and ignored millions of times over the past few years. (except for that time when i got prescription medicine from the doctor and my throat closed up the first time i took it and i could barely breathe and the migraine didn't go away. that was fun.) this was a tumor that they would not be able to remove without making me brain dead. that is, if i didn't die of a heart attack first which was what the pain in my jaw meant i was heading for. what was the point of going to a doctor, anyway, when i was sure not to make it to the end of this month.

convinced as i was that i was dying, i knew that i had to make every day count. live them all to the fullest because there were so few of them left. i first thought of all the delicious food i had yet to eat and the restaurants i kept saying i would try but never did. (i was fasting... it's perfectly normal for the first thought to enter my head be food.) but since i couldn't eat until sundown, i pushed the thought out of my mind as quickly as i could. then i thought fleetingly of all the things i had yet to see and all the places i haven't been that i always wanted to visit. but those would all require getting dressed, and i mean, i was dying. you can't expect someone practically on their death bed to get dressed and go outside. so that was out.

i ended up reading barrie's peter pan and playing online scrabble. i was just reading about wendy, john, and michael learning to fly - they hadn't even run away yet - when i decided that having just days to live put too much pressure on a person, and i think i'd prefer to just drop dead suddenly in the middle of eating a bowl of clam chowder with no expectations than to sit around and wait for my symptoms to kill me. and then and there i gave up my brief life as a hypochondriac. i have no idea how people can do it.

*Mad Season - Matchbox 20

there are things in this world that i don't understand

2011-08-20T11:55:00.001-04:00

you know what i don't understand? why people have double standards when it comes to books and say, anything else. for example, everyone is always shocked when someone confesses to rereading books, but it is perfectly acceptable to rewatch movies. "but... why would you read a book when you already know what's going to happen?" i am often asked. i already know what's going to happen in beauty and the beast, and yet i'll watch it every time abc family airs it. and for those that claim that the difference is that you can finish a movie in a couple of hours but finishing a book usually takes a couple of days, rewatching tv series takes longer and no one ever finds that weird.

also - and i know this point has been brought up a lot - why is it that knowing everything about a fictional world and dressing up like the characters is just about the dorkiest thing you can do, and yet knowing everything about, say sports, and dressing up like your favorite athlete is among the coolest. people's reply to this is usually that athletes are real, which i always found to be a lacking answer. knowing everything about celebrities - what they like and don't like, how they dress, where they eat and live and shop - well, that's toeing the line of stalkerdom isn't it? oh and fantasy football? um yeah, that's way less pathetic than world of warcraft.

in other news, i read a little princess yesterday. i grew up with the movies to this story, first the shirley temple one and then the other one when it came out. i thought i knew the story inside and out. apparently, i was wrong. if you don't want the book/movie ruined for you then i'd stop reading here. i understand changes like creating a war and whatnot because the added action makes the story translate better to screen. but do you know that in the book, the dad actually dies? i was not expecting that. one of the biggest parts of the movie (both of them) is at the end when sara discovers that her dad, who was presumed dead, is actually very much alive and they live happily ever after. in the book he dies and his friend comes looking for her. it was pretty anticlimactic considering what i kept expecting to happen.

oh, and yesterday i went into barnes and noble and all of the what to expect when you're expecting books were in the teen section. i found that ridiculous. and sad.

*One Thing Is For Sure -The Spill Canvas

can i say that there's something wrong with this place?

2011-08-17T12:14:00.000-04:00

the winner of the next food network star, jeff something or other, has his first show coming up, so obviously the channel is flooded with commercials about it. he's a sandwich guy and his new show is called the sandwich king. i'm sure it will be an awesome show, but i hate watching the commercial. see, jeff is one of those people that says "samwich" instead of "sandwich" and it absolutely kills me. i was slightly surprised by this because a few people close to me say samwich and while it can bug me once and a while, it doesn't annoy me anywhere near the way it does when jeff says it. maybe because it's on tv? maybe because i hear it repeatedly? i dunno... but if he ever mentions sandwiches in his show - which, being a sandwich show is pretty likely - i dunno if i could watch it.

in other news, i applied for graduation the other day and then for some reason decided to check graduation evaluation or whatever it's called when i looked at which classes i've taken and how many credits i have left. technically, it should say that i have everything completed. only, it didn't. it's a new program and is still changing, but for some reason they replace the old catalog instead of adding a new one. so when i started there was a class that was a requirement that switched to an elective and an elective that switched to a requirement. so that is missing. there is also a class that switched its course number. they were supposed to deal with this, but they didn't, so that class is missing too. my advisor said to fill out these forms and get them submitted asap to get the paperwork done before my application for graduation is processed and rejected. i try, and the person that i'm supposed to give them to is not going to be in the office until at least next week. this may not seem like a long time, but i have heard horror stories about my school's ability to process stuff close to graduation. i know of several people who had to push back their graduation. i really don't want to do that. i cannot drag out this master's degree longer than i have. i want it over with.

*Do It Alone - Sugarcult

look at this stuff. isn't it neat?

2011-08-16T17:46:00.001-04:00

i have been slacking on anything and everything that requires writing recently (like emailing and blogging and whatnot). i have something i want to write, but for some reason i just can't or won't, so whenever i go to write something else, my mind shuts down and my energy drains and i come up with a million different things i have to do and a million different reasons why i shouldn't reply to that email right now.

because of this temporary handicap of mine, here are a bunch of things online that i found cool/interesting/time-wasting and thought i'd share instead of writing a real post.

[one] you've all heard of the generation gap that seems to wedge its way between us and our parents and skew any form of communication that tries to make its way across. watch these videos of artists trying to explain their work to their parents.

[two] if you're like me, you grew up watching (or at least knowing about) the little rascals and know alfalfa and darla and their love story. here's a picture of them all grown up in case you've wondered what they look like now.

[three] i have yet to watch any of the star wars movies. people kept telling me to, and i kept planning on it, but it just hasn't happened yet. and i am not alone. watch this video of the star wars plot by someone who has never seen the movie, but picked up bits and pieces from pop culture.

[four] i don't have an iphone so i'm not one of the zillion of people devoted to instagram, but most people i know are and don't miss the chance to tell me how great it is or show me all of the pictures on their phone. i thought this was cool. it's a minibook made up of fifty of your instagram photos, and two books are only twelve dollars. if you want to hold any of your pictures in your hand, you might want to check it out.

[five] i think this is super awesome. it's a foldable table that acts as a piece of art to hang on your wall for storage. it's really cool, and i want one.

[six] number gossip is a site that will tell you all you want to know (and probably a bunch of stuff you don't care about) about whatever number you put in.

[seven] this is called the book of numbers. it's completely pointless, and i don't know why it's called the book of numbers, but i couldn't stop clicking to the next page to see the next animation. it was one of those things where all i wanted to do was stop, but i just couldn't close it.

*Part of Your World - The Little Mermaid

these changes aint changing me

2011-08-14T12:17:00.000-04:00

i had a few friends over for dinner friday night, and one bought me a vase. it was such a grown up person kinda gift. like, that's it. we're at the age where we can give each other vases and it's perfectly normal (or, should be perfectly normal at least).

anyway, one friend asked me if married life is different than non-married life, and that question has stuck in my head. in a way, i don't feel like i can answer it yet because at the moment i'm in a little bubble, cut off from the world and my usual life. normally, at this point in the summer, i'd be in jeddah surrounded by family and the dessert heat and whatnot. i haven't spent an august in america since i was in single digit ages, and never in virginia. so i really have nothing to compare my life right now with. with it being the middle of summer, there are also a lot fewer responsibilities waiting around for us. so i'm living in some kind of twilight zone at the moment, and comparing this to my "normal life" is just not possible. it's like we're stopped at the top of the ferris wheel, giving us time to look around for a minute before it starts turning again. once my family comes back and school starts up and the wheel starts moving, i can really say how different it is.

here a few small ways in which i've noticed it is different so far, though:

[one] i sleep in a lot more. i used to wake up between six:thirty and seven every day, sometimes staying in bed until seven:thirty. now, i don't wake up until at least ten:thirty, usually closer to eleven. yesterday i didn't get out of bed until one.

[two] after opening a package i got in the mail, a piece of plastic stayed on the floor for four days. until i got annoyed with it and threw it away. my dad would have had a heart attack over it being on the floor the second he saw it, and it would have never lasted four days out of the trash.

[three] i'm used to living in a town house with my two parents, two brothers, and one of my sisters. there are always a bunch of people everywhere. there is a considerable lack of humans in this apartment compared to what i'm used to.

[four] i'm one of those people that speaks in quotes. i'm constantly spouting a quote from a book or movie or a lyric from a song. my family (mainly my sister) knew all my references and understood them. my husband seems not to have read any of the same books, watched any of the same movies, or listened to any of the same music as me. a lot of what i say now either gets misunderstood or requires an explanation. i have subconsciously started to censor the quotes in what i say.

[five] my dad doesn't drink cold water, so at home the brita filter sat on the kitchen counter by the sink. here, it sits in the fridge.

[six] i walk up and down stairs a lot less. like, hardly ever.

[seven] i used to watch gsn and nickelodeon all the time. now i watch the food network and nickelodeon.

but besides these little nuances in my everyday life, i really don't feel like i have changed much at all. i know a lot of people who seemed to switch themselves in for a completely different version at their wedding, but i'm just not one of them. i still eat candy for breakfast and ignore everyone to read for hours when i feel like it. i'm just as lazy and awful at keeping in touch with everyone as i ever was. i'm still messy and obnoxious and i really can't see myself ever being anything else.

*All These Things That I've Done - The Killers

i've been locked inside that house, all the while you hold the key

2011-08-13T14:37:00.000-04:00

after having it sit in my amazon shopping cart for almost a year after it got recommended to me, i recently bought and read room. finally. and to put it simply, you should all go read it. buy it, check it out from the library, come borrow it from me, whatever you want... but it was a really good book. it's written from the point of view of jack, a five year old boy whose whole world consists of an eleven by eleven sound proof cell that he shares with his mom. he was born in there during his mom's seven year kidnap, and honestly thinks there's no world outside of it. trees, cats, other people, and ice cream are all "TV" - made up, or part of other planets that are floating around in outer space. which starts right behind Door. i think donoghue did a great job in keeping the story gripping and making a believable narrator, not an easy task.

but while the book was great, and i think you should read it, this is not a post dedicated to its awesomeness. there's one point in the book where a character mentions that it was assumed jack's mom had her reasons for running away or something. that got me thinking. i talk a lot about running away. i always have. i talk about getting in my car and driving until everyone and everything i know is so far behind me even the memory of them is faded with distance. but the thing is, i would never really do it (the part of me blind with wanderlust denies this confession vehemently). no matter how great an experience it might be, i could never do that to my family, and i'd probably be too lazy anyway. i like to talk more than do.

but anyway, if i ever got kidnapped, how long would it take for someone to suggest that i just finally ran away? how difficult would it be for others to believe it? would i get the requisite funeral to give my family closure or would i just be remembered as the family runaway? it made me think about how many people have been listed as runaways when they weren't. how many kidnappers have been able to get away with what they've done because of this. and then i thought that maybe i read too many books and watch too many detective shows.

*Be My Escape - Relient K

staring at the blank page before you

2011-08-10T12:51:00.000-04:00

yesterday afternoon facebook decided that it was too cool to work for me, and it hasn't come to its senses since then. now, i'm about as far from a facebook junkie as you could get so normally this wouldn't annoy me in the least bit. but recently it's become pretty much the only contact i have with my family and i have a bunch of scrabble (lexulous) games that i'm winning in that i would really like to finish. so yeah.

this could, however, be a good thing because yesterday i was also overcome with a desire to write. not to write just another short piece of prosetry, not to scribble down a short story or a scene from a longer one, but to really write. to lose myself in a world of my own creation, to meet new characters born in my head and introduce them to the rest of the world, to struggle with them over the obstacles that i never quite seem to plan. having no facebook could mean one less distraction from writing, and god know i find enough of those.

i actually didn't start writing yesterday. sad, i know. i just stared at a blank screen for a while before i decided to read, but the feeling is still here. as soon as the story comes to me i will begin to write it, and i am excited.

*Unwritten - Natasha Bedingfield

how do you do when i'm not around?

2011-08-09T10:38:00.001-04:00

i have had a killer headache since last night. it hit really bad out of nowhere and just won't. go. away. it's bad. like bad enough to keep waking me up at night. it's a strange mixture between throbbing headache and medicine head, though i don't have a cold and haven't taken any medicine. anyway, it's really starting to annoy me. i am not a happy camper.

moving on.

you know what i miss about my old house? my ability to people watch. i had some pretty interesting neighbors, from the couple that never took their child out of the house (though the mom would stand with her/him in front of the window occasionally) to the family that would form an assembly to bring their groceries one by one into their house. there was always something interesting going on right outside my window, even if it was just a congregation of squirrels or crows. here, i don't see anyone. it's like our apartment is in a little twilight zone of its own where no one exists besides us. i need to know what is happening in my [old] neighbors' lives. i'm just nosy like that.

also, i have taken to watching the food channel and travel channel all the time. i think i've watched more episodes of diners, drive-ins, and dives and man vs food in the past couple of weeks than most people watch in a lifetime. and all of those competitions like iron chef and chopped and whatever else. anyway, i watch them. all the time. and now they're infiltrating my dreams and i'm not sure how i feel about that. it's one thing when a book or movie will weasel its way into my subconscious, at least those actually have a plot. i don't remember much about my dream last night, but i can say pretty confidently that it wasn't the most thrilling dream i've ever had. though that could be because it was interrupted every three point seven seconds.

*How Do You Do - Foo Fighters

what have you been doing lately?

2011-08-08T11:17:00.000-04:00

i'm knitting a scarf. in the middle of august. it was all very sudden and now i have half of it done. see, i've had this yarn for two years now that i bought to knit into a scarf. one of my knitting needles has been missing forever though (ever since it impaled my sister when she stepped on it. it went right up through her foot. it was gross.) and i just always assumed it would show up without me having to look for it. it didn't. the other day i was in michael's and knitting needles were on sale for ninety nine cents so i got a pair, came home, and started to knit. i finished one thing of yarn (i can't remember what they're called) in two and a half days and am now starting on the second.

in other news, saturday morning we had an impromptu trip into dc and went to the spy museum and madame tassauds, or however you spell that. it was super fun. did you know that julia childs worked for a spy network? and that poe was a spy? and the dude that wrote robinson crusoe? and george washington, who couldn't tell a lie, apparently had no problem with spies. it was all very interesting and we saw super cool things like the hidden cameras and bugs that you would think were only for movies but apparently were used in real life, too. oh, and at the beginning you choose a secret identity and are quizzed on it as you go through the museum and i, being awesome, made it through my mission without blowing my cover. the person being quizzed next to me was caught and sent to jail.

on another note, yesterday i cleaned the kitchen which is really not that big (especially compared to the kitchen i just left) and it took me forever. over two hours. it was ridiculous. i think because it was the first time i really cleaned it (yeah, i've been lazy since we got back. sue me.) so i was scrubbing down everything. hopefully next time it won't take as long. anyway, i finish cleaning it and a couple of hours later we're grilling hamburgers and frying chips and making chocolate cupcakes and just generally making a mess. guess what didn't look all clean and pretty anymore? it never fails that the day i clean a kitchen everyone decides to have the messiest thing they can think of for dinner.

*What Have You Been Doing Lately? - Relient K

make up your mind and i'll make up mine

2011-08-06T10:11:00.000-04:00

the street i live on is confused and can't decide on what its called. you see, on one sign it is hills, as in plural. it finds its power in numbers, like an army of ants. it's stretches out as far as the eye can see. it's social and believes in the collective and works well with others.

on another sign, though, it's hill minus the final s, as in single. it's a one man army and has enough strength on its own. it's solitary and important in its own right. it is an island. it is the center of attention and doesn't care what you think.

it can't quite make up its mind on which it would rather be, so at the moment it is choosing to be both. best of both worlds, and all that. we get mail addressed to both hill and hills, so we can't tell by that if one of the signs just has a typo.

an indecisive for an indecisive person to live on. i kinda like it.

it hit me yesterday that at the end of this month i'll be back in school. blech. that i do not like as much.

*Make Up Your Mind - Theory of a Deadman

you were just always talking about changing, guess what i am the same man

2011-08-04T11:44:00.000-04:00

i started this post writing about the fact that i finally watched the 90s are all that on teen nick last night and how it was awesome and slightly sad at the same time. and kenan was so young! i mean, they all were, but he's the one i see the most these days and he was hosting the thing so we kept seeing him all grown up and facial haired and then we'd see him in all that and he was a baby. seriously. the post started to drag so i deleted it but still wanted to let you guys know that i miss 90s television.

anyway, i've been thinking about making a change (because, you know, getting married isn't a big enough change for me). see, i was talking to my cousins before i left saudi arabia and they were convincing me to get a new haircut (i have had the same hair style for as long as i can remember) since i'm married. it was apparently the first thing my cousin did and she said it was such an amazing feeling. they just about convinced me to cut bangs at my next haircut until a couple of days ago when i was thinking about it and realized that bangs can get really annoying and i just don't think i want them. she was also saying that her friend got a pet immediately after she was married and i should do that since i've always wanted a rabbit. that was an exciting idea for about three seconds until i decided that i like the idea of a pet rabbit more than i'd really like the actual pet. at least right now. it's just too much work that i don't feel like dealing with at the moment. plus, i want to be able to just get up and go on a spontaneous road trip without having to worry about who's going to take care of my pets. i mean, sure, i probably won't be going on many spontaneous road trips, but i want the option.

so i got to thinking that maybe the problem isn't that bangs are annoying and pets are a lot of work. maybe it's just that i really do have an aversion to change that's too strong. maybe i want to stay the same a little bit too much? to test out this theory, i am trying to think of a change that i won't have a million doubts about, but i'm coming up blank. maybe i will just go chop up my hair (every time i decide to do this though i remember my older sister cutting bangs a few years ago and absolutely hating it, plus, i'm not sure how i'd look with bangs seeing as the last time i had them i was five). ideas for changes?

*Changing - Airborne Toxic Event

it's a trap, one i can't quite escape so pretend it's the place that i love

2011-08-03T10:14:00.000-04:00

There's a girl who sits at the station watching trains come and go without ever getting on one. She tells whoever will listen that sunshine is just an illusion, mirror and smoke to hide the storm clouds that are always raging overhead. She says her favorite thing to do might be to watch people pretend to happy, but it's really watching people realize that they can't. She knows that there's no use looking for the light at the end of the tunnel because all it does is bring on the start of a new tunnel and she'd rather stay in the one she's in now, thank you very much. She talks about how everything is futile and pointless. She says there's no reason to wash your clothes if they're just going to get dirty again, no reason to eat if you'll just get hungry, no reason to live if you're just going to die.

There's a girl who sits at the station watching trains come and go without ever getting on one. She sits near the boy with the laughing eyes and listens to him talk about his first real job. He tells her that he's started to drink his coffee black because it seems like the adult thing to do, and sometimes a person just has to grow up. He tells her that the taste of it makes him gag and he can never drink more than the first two sips. He talks to her about dreams and hopes, and she wants to explain to him the beauty of a popping bubble and the music of a person crying, but she always forgets.

There's a girl who sits at the station watching the trains come and go without ever getting on one. She waits for a boy with laughing eyes that hasn't been seen for far too long and thinks about how sometimes a person just has to grow up. She thinks about conducting a symphony of shrieking brakes and wild screams, wonders if the sound of crushing bones would be heard above the music. When the next train is announced she raises her arms above her head and walks slowly off the edge, reveling in the sounds only she knew would blend together this perfectly. She thinks about the fact that she didn't think it would take this long as she gags on the metallic taste filling her senses. As sirens are added to the orchestra, she wonders if growing up always makes you gag.

*Out Through the Curtain - The Hush Sound

there's so much time, so little to do

2011-08-02T10:28:00.000-04:00

so i came on here this morning all set to write a post about ramadan (we started fasting yesterday. from four:forty-five to eight:twenty-one. my fasting day would be so much shorter if i was still in saudi arabia with my family.) but now i don't really remember what it was i going to write besides the fact that ramadan is here. and suddenly i have the desire to shove truckloads of food down my throat despite the fact that i'm not hungry or anything. i just want it 'cause i can't have it. my childishness has withstood marriage apparently.last night i was sitting watching a movie on tv and i came up with a brilliant post, but by the end of the movie i couldn't for the life of me remember what it was.

so i'm sitting here now with the desire and time to blog and nothing to blog about, and it hits me that this is something that happened to me all the time before the wedding craziness happened. and suddenly i'm really excited about the fact that i really have no life and lots of free time because that means that things are going back to normal. that means that the flood of endless to-do lists is calming down. it means that even after doing something as life-changing as getting married, the basics have not changed. i may be in a new house surrounded by new people, but i am still the boring anti-social hermit that i was three months ago. it's great.

i mean, yes, we do have things we need to do today, but it's more like normal errands than essential to our survival must get done immediately stuff, you know?

so in light of this sudden realization, let me tell you all about my grandma. so she calls yesterday to return my call to her after i got back from london. apparently she had lost my husband's cell number (my phone is temporarily nonexistent) but it turns out that it was right next to the phone where she thought it was, but the paper it was written on was turned over. anyway, we're talking and she suddenly goes, "oh sarah before i forget, guess where i went the other day?" she sounds super excited so i'm trying to think if she mentioned any plays she was looking forward to the last time we talked or exhibits opening or anything like that. "you'll never guess so i'll just tell you," she continues. "i went to see the last harry potter!!!" my grandma has known of my love of harry potter for years, but she has never actually read any of the books or watched any of the movies. her knowledge of the story is basically limited to the blurbs on the backs of the books and what she hears about it in the library (she's a librarian). but she was raving about the special effects and how the snow seemed to be falling on her and her friend's seat because they were sitting in the middle (she watched it in 3D and apparently the last 3D movie she saw was house of wax before she got married back a hundred years ago) and how many people were in it and the epicness of the fighting and the acting and the emotions and at the end apparently all she could think was, "no wonder sarah likes this series." i just thought it funny that she went to watch it. it really isn't what you'd expect to be something she'd like.

*Softer to Me - Relient K

i'm not giving up. no

2011-08-01T10:20:00.000-04:00

i can make awesome pancakes. i can, really. ask my brothers who have often eaten them at our sunday best buddy club breakfasts. i think my parents may have eaten them a couple of times, too. ask them if their word holds more weight than a ten year old. or just trust me. but i can make pancakes.

yesterday we decided to make pancakes for breakfast and to put things in perspective, most of them went uneaten. see, the first problem was the oven, which is not like my oven at home. it wouldn't heat up to the right temperature and every time it did, two seconds later it seemed to change again. second problem was the pan. i dunno what was wrong with it but it was weird. third problem was that he has the weirdest spatula ever. the first couple of pancakes that i flipped got messed up, but then i got used to it and the rest looked okay.

after making the batter and making the pancakes (one by one because there was only a small pan available. guess what i'm shopping for?) we got ready to eat.

we sit down and start and oh my god it was disgusting. practically the only pancakes that were cooked all the way through were the messed up first ones. some were slightly burned (not really, but darker than the golden brown they should be) on the outside and completely raw on the inside courtesy of the temperamental stove. half were blueberry and for some reason the blueberry juice was all over the plate and made them nice and soggy. i know, yum. and a lot of those weren't cooked either.

my husband comes up with a "brilliant" idea to just bake em for a few minutes even though i said i didn't think it would work. but he did it anyway, and went to eat one and practically died from how gross it was. full from the few i had earlier, i didn't eat any baked ones.

anyway, long story short: it was a complete fiasco. but i refuse to be bested by a stupid oven and pan. i will make pancakes again in this apartment and they will be awesome. they have no other option.

*Not Givin' Up - Natasha Bedingfield

if a picture's worth a thousand words...

2011-07-29T17:40:00.000-04:00

okay so i said i was going to post pictures of the wedding stuff, but thing is i really don't have many. see, i took a few pictures before the wedding (before everything was done and ready), and the pictures of pre-wedding once everything was done, wedding, and post-wedding were all taken by different people and i still haven't gotten them yet. but here are a couple of the pictures that i have.

the minute we got to the suite, my brothers ran over to the bed and did this, claiming it was the softest thing they had ever felt in their entire life. my nephew likes to copy the big kids. anyway, i thought it was cute. they actually stayed this way for a while. my brothers are in blue and green and my nephew is in stripes if you couldn't figure it out.

these are the plates of finger foods that were placed on each table. or, this is them while they were being made. a few more things were added to them and then they were wrapped up and brought up to the hall. my sister made them (as in, organized the food and chocolate... she didn't actually make the food).

this is my dad holding my bouquet. he had just brought it down from the hall where the flower people were setting up the rest of the stuff, so it was the first time i was seeing it in real life.

this was the cake topper from the wedding cake (duh). the bride looks nothing like me and the groom looks nothing like my husband, but the cake was good so it's okay. my sister had taken a picture of the cake when she was taking the pictures that were never taken, but i think my cousin has a picture. as soon as i get one i'll post it because it was pretty. (to be honest, i think i may have already forgotten what it looked like, but i remember choosing a pretty one.)

this is a picture of the hall from a little in front of the small stage i started out on. i walked down that aisle and we ended up on the big stage at the end with the couch.

this is a close-up of the stage thing. can i just say that it was really hard getting to and from the couch because that table with the flowers on it and the columns of flowers made a really narrow section that i had to squeeze through and my dress was really puffy. at the end of the wedding, everyone took turns taking pictures on the couch under the crown.

here's a view of the tables before they were actually finished. there were purple covering things for the chairs and the food and tea and coffee and stuff were added. there were also purple tablecloth thingies over the white. like see-through-ish ones. i forgot the name of the material.

okay, so not a wedding picture, but this is me with our guide for the harry potter tour. he was super awesome. he's holding a dvd player that he used to show us movie clips to prove that what we were seeing were the actual places from the movies. according to him, the harry potter tour is a very popular thing for couples to do on their honeymoon. he showed us pictures of this couple who went when they were setting up for the epilogue scenes of the movie and they were touching the actual set pieces and i was jealous.

this is us at "platform nine and three quarters." because they are currently renovating king's cross station, this was moved from inside the station to outside. that's why the bricks are reflective. they're really just a plastic picture of a brick wall. he (our tour guide) kept apologizing about that and saying that it was so much cooler inside and that we should come back again in four years when the renovations are done and it's moved back to its original place. he also stopped these other people who wanted to take a picture so that we could take pictures first.

so those are a few pictures. i won't get my actual wedding photos (like the professionally taken ones) until my family gets back here early september since they're bringing it with them, and i kinda wanna see how those turned out. i also want my cousin and friend to send me the pictures from their cameras because i want them.

*Dance, Dance Christa Paffgen - Anberlin

the sun is out

2011-07-28T09:16:00.000-04:00

you know what i miss about london? its weather. i mean, sure, we had some days that were ridiculously cold for summer or even spring. there was rain one second and sun the next and there was really no point in trying to dress for the weather because every time we blinked it was different. and yes, i did leave with a cold that i'm attributing to the changing weather. but still, it was so nice there, and the last couple of days were absolutely beautiful. and then we come back to the wonderful dc and its lovely heat wave and i never want to move from in front of my air conditioner again. yesterday evening it was a hundred and four degrees outside. how is that even legal? i mean, if people have sued termites for eating their houses and whatnot, why has no one started a case against the sun for cooking humanity?

you know what else i miss? at every crosswalk, painted on the street right by the curb, were the words "look left" or "look right." i'm not sure why exactly i fell so in love with that idea, but after a lifetime of being told to look both ways before crossing the street this just seemed so much better.

other small things that were different were: stop lights turn yellow before both red and green instead of just red, they have tkmaxx instead of tjmaxx, and their soft serve ice cream is a lot creamier/heavier/whatever than ours (but still awesome).

anyway, i'm going to continue to sit here in the air conditioned apartment and convince myself that since we got so much stuff yesterday i do not have to enter the heat ever again. i'll go outside when fall gets here.

*Dear Prudence - The Beatles

stretching out like rubber bands to kiss the cheeks and shake the hands

2011-07-27T09:20:00.000-04:00

so i just got back from london and have decided that i am kind of sick of trying to write blogs that recap the summer. mainly because it seems like i never have time anymore and by the time i get to writing the post, so much has happened in between that it ends up sounding wooden and laundry list like. but because part of me feels like all of this should at least be mentioned somewhere, this post will be a quick recap of everything from the wedding to this point. starting tomorrow (because hopefully i'll get back to blogging daily again) i will not be doing any more summer recaps.

so anyway, after the wedding we spent to more nights in jeddah (my side of the country) before going over to dammam (his side of the country). a lot of his family was not able to come to the real wedding so they put together a dinner in my honor/second wedding. i had a hair dresser make up lady come to the hotel room to do my stuff for me, and it was a disaster. because it was not really a wedding wedding, i told her to do something simple with my hair. she said she had the perfect simple hairdo for my face shape so i said okay and let her do her thing. she had half of my hair hanging down in my face while she worked with the other half so i couldn't see what she was doing until the very end when she pulled the hair out of my face to design the bang part. it took all of my will not to start crying and the only thing that stopped me was that she had already done the makeup. she had put my hair up in a tower on the top of my head. a roll of hair, a braid, a roll of hair, a braid, and then a final poof of hair. it was really tall. i looked like a character from a dr. seuss book. i wish i took a picture of it but i was too busy freaking out to think of it. we were supposed to leave the house at eight:thirty and she finished eight:fifteen so i just let her go and then started freaking out when my husband came in. we ended up taking apart the tower and by the end i looked okay, but it was awful. and i was nervous about meeting his whole family which made it worse. but the dinner was fun. we talked and danced and ate and my dress turned black from the street and it was a struggle getting in and out of cars. but it was fun.

his side of the country was ridiculously hot, though. even in the middle of the night it was sweltering which didn't make sense because the sun was gone so it should cool down. it didn't. also, it was awkward doing the whole shaking hand-kissing cheek thing with his family. on my side of the country we do right-left-left or however many lefts you want. his side does all right. i didn't realize this until ten or so awkward times when our heads would get confused and almost hit into each other. i picked it up though at the end.

after spending a week in his side of the country, we went back to mine for two days, and then we came back to america. there were a couple of days spent in exhaustion and then we were on a plane again to london. and oh my god i loved london. it was beautiful and the people were awesome and there was so much to see and do and i need to go back. as soon as possible. it was kind of expensive, especially since the dollar is worthless compared to the pound, but it was still awesome. when we got there, though, we found ourselves cut off from all forms of communication. this meant that i couldn't meet up with a friend, i couldn't contact my family, i couldn't check my email, or basically do anything. though this just gave us less things to distract us from the city. we did the main attraction tour (big ben, westminster abbey, buckingham palace, etc.), we saw stonehenge, went on the london eye, a river cruise, a harry potter tour (of course) and had a picnic in hyde park. we also went to a few museums, and oh my god are their museums cool. the science museum was mini compared to most smithsonian museums over here, but it was the coolest thing since the printing press. the museum of natural history was really cool, too, but i think all natural history museums are cool on principle. we also went to disneyland in paris for a day which was awesome. there is still so much i want to see and do there though, and i am planning my next trip from now.

so that's pretty much what i've been doing lately instead of blogging. i've been busy and things have been hectic. things should calm down a bit now, though. we just need to go shopping for a zillion things for the apartment and i need to get a temporary number since my phone is off until my parents get back and i need to get ready for school and apply to the phd program, but besides all of that, my days should go back to being pretty much pointless. yay.

*Rain Delays - Crash Parallel

where was it that we last left off?

2011-07-19T10:39:00.000-04:00

let me start off by saying that it is hot. really really hot. so hot that when the thermostat thingie last night said that the temperature in the apartment went down to 90 degrees, we were really excited. right now i'm sitting in the bedroom right next to the window with the fan going so it is not so bad, but the minute you step out of this room you might as well just step right into the oven. you probably wouldn't notice the difference. (our air conditioner is broken.)

anyway, back to the wedding. we left off right before we got to the hall, right? so we get to the right floor and the people outside the entrance to the hall are all really surprised to see us. apparently they didn't expect us so soon, though we were technically supposed to go up at ten and it was now eleven:thirty. so we wait outside of the hall on a couch for about ten minutes. or, my husband waited on the couch and i stood next to it because there was no way i was going to risk messing up my dress after the commotion it was to make it look like it wasn't shoved into a suitcase and carried across the world.

we were originally supposed to walk in together, but the hotel people thought it would be nicer for him to walk in first from one door and then for me to walk in from another. so we did. we met up on this small platform type thingie in the back of the hall and then proceeded the step-feet together-pause-step walk down the aisle with the photographer three steps ahead of us video taping and people sitting around us and my younger sister popping up and making me laugh everywhere i turned around.

when we got to the end of the aisle, we climbed up a few steps to the stage, exchanged rings (which was actually a bit harder than it would seem because someone tried to put it on the wrong finger. hint: the someone was not wearing a wedding dress). after that, we went to cut the cake. we cut through each of the layers and the hotel person cut us a piece to eat or whatever. the first bite we fed each other ended up half down my dress (i mentioned it was big, right?). the second bite i think was when the two forks were held together and we each took a bite. the lady had cut too big of a piece for my fork and half of it ended up falling out of my mouth. the photographer wanted a picture of the cake eating without anything falling on my side, so we had another bite and i think that one ended up okay.

we then went and sat down on the love seat on stage for us and shared a drink of some really really good strawberry juice that i really wanted to finish because it was so good but that was taken away after a sip. then after a minute of sitting we stood back up for our first dance or whatever (song: first day of my life by bright eyes). after that we sat back down and our moms came up to the stage to hug and tear up and say typical wedding day things like congrats and you look so pretty. then i was presented with a jewelry set from him which was really really pretty but i think i forgot to take a picture of it.

after that my dad, uncles, and brothers came in and congratulated me and my aunts came up for a family picture (two days after the wedding my cousin told me that for these family pictures we had pretty much pushed the groom out of the way and put people in front of him. yeah, oops). after the pictures were taken it was a flood of family members coming up onto the stage, a little bit of dancing, and then my uncles and everyone left. a bit after that my husband left. then my friends came up onto the stage who i haven't seen since high school graduation. it was really awesome seeing them though they gave me a bit of an inferiority complex because they got so tall and skinny and pretty and one's a college professor and the other one's working at a bank and i look the exact same as i did five years ago and am hiding from the real world and jobs in school. but despite all the differences they were the same and it was awesome.

each of these steps were done to a different song or song clip, most of which were chosen by me but a couple were suggested by the dj lady and cousins and then approved by me.

then i took a bunch of pictures with everyone and they opened the buffet. traditionally, the bride will wait on the stage and someone will bring her a plate and she'll just sit there while everyone eats and people will go up and talk to her if they want to. i have never really seen the point of that and instead went into the buffet with my cousin's daughters. and oh my god the reactions i got. i honestly did not think it was going to be a big deal, but apparently it is just not the way things work. my cousin kept telling me that i was supposed to be special and have stuff brought to me and my aunt was saying that i shouldn't be there and i kept trying to explain that i wanted to sit with my family and friends and not eat alone on a stage with a bunch of flowers to talk to. (two days later, my cousin was still talking about it.) i ended up at a table with my mom and sisters and it was fun. after that, my friend came up to us to tell us some bad news. my sister's camera had died early in the wedding and instead of going up to the room to take mine, she had borrowed my friend's camera. apparently though, i dunno how, none of the pictures she had taken were actually taken. maybe she was pressing the wrong button? no one knows, but there were no pictures. so i retook a bunch of pictures with people with my cousin's camera and then my friends, sisters, and a couple of cousins went back to the stage to dance.

after a couple of hours, it was just four cousins and my sisters half dancing and half just standing on stage talking. they left and at two:thirty we started getting ready to go, collecting our stuff and whatnot. i think i got back to the hotel room at around three and then i proceeded to take out a million and seven bobby pins from my hair and peel off the dress which now had cake and flower petals in it and try to brush out the poof of spray and hair that was on my head and wipe of layers and layers of makeup. all while i was suddenly hit with a wave of pent up exhaustion and was trying to convince myself that this all really did have to be done before i could sleep.

the whole thing was a lot of fun, though.

*Lying is the Most Funb a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off - Panic! at the Disco

everything is going wrong, but we're so happy

2011-07-18T18:25:00.000-04:00

before i start in on the pre-wedding wedding day preparations, i think it should be mentioned that today i watched a harry potter movie for the first time for the last time. i think that knowledge was sadder than any part of the film (which, though i felt was really good was nowhere near as sad as i was expecting).

so anyway, let's go back in time to july sixth, two thousand eleven, something a.m. in the morning. after a night spent mostly crying (because, really, no matter what the occasion, change and i have never been able to meet with a smile. there are always tears shed between the two of us.) i wake up with eyes so puffy i could barely open them. seriously. it was bad. i tried ice and tea bags and cold water and everything else i ever heard took away swelling of eyes, but nothing seemed to be working. in the words of my younger, i kinda looked like our elementary school drama teacher on a bad day. now, you don't know my drama teacher, but she had those eyes that seem to bug out of your head. you know the kind?

after resolving to let time deal with the puffy eyes, i proceeded to walk around my house like a ghost who has forgotten where it was haunting and why exactly it didn't just leave earth behind. i then realized that i had a nail problem. see, the original hair and makeup person included a manicure. we changed from them, though, and the new ones didn't. there was no time to go to another place that morning, and all of my nail polish was in my room here in america. my sister had pink mood changing, black, and clear. everyone said no to the black immediately, the pink was too bright to work, and so i tried the clear. only, it didn't show. no matter how many layers i piled on. i then tried to paint my nails with lipstick using a makeup brush and putting a layer of clear nail polish on top. this actually looked really nice... until it dried completely. then my sister (with the help of google) found that mixing eye shadow and clear nail polish makes colored nail polish. so i chose a nice purple color out of my older sister's new eye shadow set thing, and proceeded to destroy it. i crushed it into powder and poured it into the nail polish and lo and behold i had a really nice color. day saved.

after lunch we went to the hotel suite that i would be getting ready in. it was me, my two sisters, my two brothers, my two nephews, and my two brothers. for hours. it was loud and i was nervous and getting a headache which made me irritable. not fun. my dad had forgotten his cell phone at home, so everyone was trying to call us to get stuff ready and they couldn't reach us because they were only trying his phone. my sisters were making the plates of food that would be sitting on each table and my parents were in the other room starting to steam iron my dress. for about ten minutes. and the electricity for our room was turned off. apparently, steam irons are not allowed. so we had to normal iron the dress and i will post pictures of it later but oh my god it was hard.

while all of this was going on, i was waiting for my hair and makeup people to come. they were supposed to come at four. you know what time they ended up coming? six:forty. yeah, i was pretty panicked. so they come and decide that they don't want to start until seven:fifteen because apparently the styles i chose wouldn't take them more than half an hour tops. i sat and talked with them which was pretty fun. the makeup lady had been with her fiancee for eight years and decided that she hated him but couldn't think of a way to break it off after that long so was trying to make him miserable so he'd break it off. they finally started on my makeup (during which they ate the snacks that the hotel gave us and drank the water). the makeup took longer than expected, surprise surprise, and before the hair lady even started the photographer came to take the pictures.

of course, she was told to wait, and wait she did. for about an hour. because the hair took longer than she expected it would too. and with the constant cloud of spray she kept around my head and contacts that were dying to dry out, my eyes started to water. so the makeup lady kept frantically trying to keep me from looking like a raccoon with mascara running down my cheeks. the hair lady finally finished, and they both did an amazing job despite the fact that they have no idea how to manage their time.

i got into my dress which was so puffy i could barely fit through doorways, and found out that i had apparently lost weight and it was noticeably big on me. nothing to do about it then, though.

it was finally time for the pictures to be taken so i moved into the other room where the photographer had set up. i took a million pictures by myself in all kind of awkward and weird poses that she put me into - like pretending to run away or squatting facing the wall but twisting my torso so my front was facing the camera and tilting my head sideways and holding my arms in some weird position over my head (i swear they expect you to be freakin acrobats to be pictured by them) and then my parents and husband came up to take pictures with me. we took a million more pictures and then the photographer decided we were done and it was finally time to go down to the guests. it was about eleven:thirty by this time.

after a morning where it seemed like whatever could go wrong did, i was surprisingly calm at this point. the nerves that had been attacking me all day seemed to suddenly disappear. i think it was more the thought that, no matter how much i embarrassed myself it would all be done soon than the fact that i really wasn't nervous. remember how i mentioned that i don't like being the center of attention? yeah, that's because i tend to make an idiot out of myself every time i am. anyway, we went out to the elevator and rode up to the fifth floor (the suite was on the third) to where our guests were waiting.

*Let's Dance to Joy Division - The Wombats

why should i go out? why should i even move? just another lazy day afternoon

2011-07-17T11:56:00.000-04:00

so my blog views have reached a record low, i've lost a few followers, and i have a backlog of posts i need to read that is going to take me at least a couple of hours, but i'm back! i think. maybe. i hope. we just arrived back in america and this is the first chance i've had to get online since my last post. anyway, i get on facebook to let my sister know we got here and am hit with a flood of harry potter stuff. is it bad that i completely forgot about the movie up until this very moment? and i don't even know if i have the energy to go out and watch it before we leave for london because i'm just so exhausted from these past few weeks. that is so unlike me.

after writing that start of the post at around six yesterday, i went into the bedroom for a minute, laid down on the bed, and suddenly there's a very annoying alarm going off telling me that it is three:thirty in the morning. (the alarm was supposed to only be for yesterday to wake us up to check our bags, apparently it was never unset.) i then stayed in bed for a million hours, just took what i needed for my shower out if the suitcases instead of unpacking, put off all the stuff i needed to do today till tomorrow, and have otherwise just had a lazy day. after weeks of nonstop activity you have no idea how amazing today is to me.

anyway, i really will be starting my wedding posts soon, but before that, let me just give a brief overview of what a saudi (on our side of the country at least) wedding is like. you know, for those who grew up with the more western ones. it'll save me some words in the other posts. so the wedding starts off without the bride and groom - she'll be off getting makeup and hair and pictures done. the guests all start arriving where they will be greeted by the bride's family (mom, sisters, aunts, etc... basically whoever is free at the moment to stand at the door and greet guests). when the guests enter the hall they sit at one of several tables equipped with chocolates, finger foods, tea, and coffee. there is also a dance floor and music playing for those who want to dance, and waiters walk around occasionally bringing stuff like juice and whatever. after hours of this, the bride and groom come down for what is called the zaffah. this is basically a set of several steps depending on what the hall is like which includes things like throwing flower petals, walking down the aisle, cutting the cake, drinking juice, dancing, exchanging rings, and whatever else you want to do. the bride and groom will then reach a stage thing, sit down, people will come up to say hi to them and stuff, pictures are taken, and then the buffet is opened, the guests go eat, and the wedding is basically over. a lot of the time the groom will go away after the zaffah and the bride will stay and hang out with her friends and family who will have been covered up while the groom was there. i always hated the idea of saudi weddings because they seem to be more for the guests than the bride and groom, but i actually had fun at mine. i was slightly surprised because of my general distaste for being the center of attention. more of that later, though.

i am now going to go order a pizza and try to work up the energy to walk across the street and watch harry potter.

*Lazy Day - Plain White T's

2011-07-13T14:44:00.000-04:00

so i've officially been married for a week now, and i haven't been on a computer since the day before the wedding. since i am exhausted, this is not going to be a real post. i know, i know, so disappointing. anyway, i just wanted to post something because i feel like being online and not blogging is blasphemous. i will be writing a series of posts dedicated to the wedding in the upcoming days because there's a lot to write about and pictures to post and i just don't think that - with my tendency to use a hundred words to write what could be said in ten - i could fit it all into a reasonable sized single post. this past week has just been a whirlwind of traveling and visiting people and parties and i'll put all of that in a post, too. hopefully i'll have time to finish all the posts before i leave saudi arabia (saturday morning) or at least before we go to london (tuesday). even if i write them all and then have them posted automatically later.

anyway, for tonight i'll just leave you all with a piece of advice: get married; you get lots of pretty presents.