baby knows, but baby don't tease me

i went to harry potter world! which was awesome! and included a twelve plus hour road trip! with an infant! please know that i mean every single one of those exclamation points. i am screaming this at you from your screen.

buuut i'm not going to tell you about the trip - at least not right now - because i feel like it deserves more concentration and pretty words than i am currently able to give it. (i mean, harry potter world.) plus, i want to literary rant. it's been far too long since i've done one of those. (i think. honestly i've been away from this blog for so long that the previous post could be a literary rant and i wouldn't even know because i am a lazy bum who won't check.)

anyway, last time we drove down to florida, i reached a point about halfway through the trip where everything on my ipod was making me nauseous or angry or bored. basically, i was sick of my music, had run out of things to say as we sat in traffic, and the car was too quiet. this time, i was prepared. i brought audiobooks! (can i just say that as someone who claims to love libraries and someone who has complained numerous times about how audiobooks are too expensive, it took me a ridiculously long time to check out audibooks from the library.)

we listened to the golden compass first because i loved that series and my husband had never read it and always said that he wanted to. (i remember being mindblown after finishing the first book and immediately going to the library to get the second and third. and refusing to read anything afterwards for days because i did not want to leave that world or those characters. my husband's reaction to the book after listening to it for almost twelve hours? "meh.") but once we had finished that one, on the way back to virginia, we started deception point by dan brown, and oh. my. god.

so at first i thought that this might be his debut novel, and i was willing to cut him a little slack, but i just looked it up and nope. it's not even his second book. it's his third. as in, you had two books to perfect your writing and my slack? you get none of it. he wrote this after he wrote angels and demons, and i read that and did not have to stop in the middle to rant about his writing. at least, i don't remember doing that, and i don't think that's something i'm likely to forget, but that is exactly what i had to do while listening last night. my husband loved that, let me tell you.

my main issue with dan brown was always that reading his robert langdon books made me feel uncomfortable. like i was invited to a dinner party and the host was obviously playing footsie under the table with that guest that he was flirting with while his wife was cooking dinner earlier, and his wife is sitting right next to him and you're not sure if you should say something, but she has to know doesn't she? i mean the way he's looking at that guest makes it abundantly clear that he is in love and there is no way that she could have missed that, is there?

but anyway, this was an entirely different issue. this was a writing issue that even i, as someone with no formal writing education and exactly zero published novels under her belt, know not to do. see, in good writing, you are taken along on a journey with the character. you see what s/he sees, learn what they learn, fall into the story. when you want to build suspense or create curiosity about something then you don't tell your main character about it. they should not find out and then tease us with the information. we should not have to read pages about how he is in total shock about what he is seeing and oh my god he cannot believe  his eyes and this is the most amazing thing ever and he can't stop looking at it and shut up i'm not telling you what it is. i mean, sure, end a chapter with something like that to make sure the reader starts the next one. you can maybe go a couple of pages once every book or two where the reader is left in the dark. maybe. but do not go on for over a chapter with the incessant teasing every single time new information is revealed. it does not make me want to read on to find out what's happening. it makes me want to smack the author with his book and never pick it up again. it makes me hate your characters, lose interest in your plot, and wonder how your editor has a job. it feels like betrayal. and frustration. and just enough annoyance to make me stop and rant. (also, it seemed like the characters themselves deal with this inside the book way too often. for example, the president flies rachel out to tell her something and after what sounded like forever (at least a few typed pages) talking around it, she snaps something about getting to the point already. which were my sentiments exactly.)

maybe it's because i'm listening to the book instead of reading it, i'm not sure. but i cannot handle this writing "style" - if you can call it that - at all, and i think this may have turned me off of dan brown books forever.

*Tranquilize - The Killers

sometimes in life you drop little innocent hints about yourself and your location across multiple social media platforms that in and of themselves are neither too revealing nor harmful, but if you put them all together then they maybe just might be if you squint and tilt your head slightly to the left. other times in life you spend years taking classes in cyber security and grow into a very paranoid person that is hesitant to even look at a computer without first putting a paper bag over your head. and then there are the times where the first and second overlap just so and you end up leaving the country for three weeks but scheduling blog posts so that no one will know on the off chance that you have a crazy stalker waiting to break into your apartment the second they learn that it's empty. (granted, i mentioned on here that i would be leaving the country ahead of time so really, the whole effort was moot but whatever.)

anyway, i'm back! (i was gone as of july tenth, just in case you were wondering.) and i am exhausted. it feels like i spent a ridiculously large portion of those three weeks on airplanes and in airports. (i will probably calculate the exact percentage of my vacation that i spent in the air because i am a nerd, but it will have to wait until tomorrow because of that whole exhausted thing.) another large portion of that time was spent without the time/internet access to blog. (which i had planned for, hence the scheduled posts, but i was still supposed to write something last week.) i'm sure there are stories from my vacation that will seem blog-worthy in the morning, but at the moment, the only thought in my head is how delicious chinese food would taste right now. 

also, i definitely remember spending a lot of time before i left cleaning my apartment, but when i walked in today (after a taxi ride that i could not keep my eyes open in after the airlines didn't send one of our bags after we had to suffer through an annoyingly not-direct flight because we made reservations really late this year) and thinking, ugh the apartment looks so effing cluttered. because it is, of course. because there is really no other way for it be. i mean, there are only so many places that you can keep things in a one bedroom apartment. add to that the fact that i have an unhealthy addiction to yarn, regularly make and bring home pottery pieces throughout the year, have more books than i have room for, and a very bad habit of keeping everything "for memories" and, well... i'm sure you get the picture. i am able to block it out for most of the year, but the second i go to saudi arabia, where my room (in both families' houses) is sparse and neat and empty slash big enough so that even some things thrown on the floor doesn't make it look too messy, that ability disappears and i come back and just see small and cluttered and junk. but at the end of the day, it is my small and cluttered apartment and i love it. which is why i am the worst at house hunting fyi. 

all i could think about

[one] so i've been stuck on this level in candy crush for months. this is not an exaggeration. i think i got to it in january or february. maaaybe early march. and i cannot for the life of me get past it. i think they should have an option available after you try a level a few hundred times (i usually go through all my lives around twice a day, which means i try the level ten times a day on average, which means i have tried way more than a few hundred times, which means i am pathetic.) that says, "you suck and we feel sorry for you. pay ninety-nine cents to move on." i would totally pay. anyway, this morning i was playing and doing awesomely. like, i really thought i was going to win. i still had twelve moves left and was close to clearing all the jelly and then my phone up and dies on me. out of nowhere. despite being fully charged. and of course when i turned him back on, candy crush just figured i had rage quit or something and counted it as another loss. ugh. way to ruin my life, jasper.

[two] i really like rainbow rowell. the author? i've read everything she's written multiple times despite just discovering her late last year. shortly after i discovered her, her newest book (due out this summer) became available for pre-order. which i obviously did. i have been waiting all year for this book. i really have been. for some reason, though, i have thought it comes out july first. and i planned my summer travels around that, as stupid as that sounds. well, okay, so i didn't really plan it around it but i did happily think for the past three months that the timing was so perfect because her book would come out on the first and i would leave on the third and is there a better way to spend your last days before leaving the country than lost in a book you have looked forward to all year? i think not. but i just found out yesterday that i am an idiot and the book doesn't come out until july eighth and i am so disappointed. it's obviously not the end of the world and my husband can easily just bring the book when he joins me later (because he is not leaving the country with me because he went and grew up and got a job and now has to worry about things like vacation days), but still. i won't properly be able to read it because i will be doing the visiting family thing and then i will come back and do more of the visiting family thing and taking a day to devour a book will probably not be appropriate. gah.

[three] sometimes i think about the way we actually are and the way that we are remembered and the gap between those two people and if it matters at all and which one is more important. (i once started a short story that kind of touched on this that i constantly think about and say i will finish, but three years later and most of it is still in my head. which i guess is better than forgetting about it completely, but still. get your act together, sarah.) anyway, what brought on this latest round of pondering things which probably don't matter much at all in any scheme of things, grand or ungrand, was lilacs. i love lilacs in the way that i love navy blue and the number seven, in a nostalgic eye-rolly phantom limb sort of way. they were my favorite for a long while (all three of those things) because they were my mom's favorites, and growing up i really had no personality. (it was also a case of crippling insecurity and self-doubt and liking things that were valid to like, and who was a better judge of worthiness than my mom, right? sometimes i want to go back to little me and just shake her.) anyway, lilacs are no longer my favorite (they are second, though. and i'm pretty sure it's because i really like them and not just because i used to like them. my favorite flower is sunflowers and daisies because they can both share the number one spot if i say they can), and every time i see them i think of my mom. but, as it turns out, lilacs are not my mom's favorite flower. oops. i found this out last year (possibly the year before) and yet in my head, even though i know they aren't, they are. because they are what i associated with my mom for so long. i don't think i'm making sense anymore, but you get what i'm saying, right? lilacs are not my mom's favorite flower, but i will always remember my mom loving lilacs the most: my mom vs how i remember my mom.

*Landing in London - 3 Doors Down

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

one of my favorite things about traveling in the summers is the airplane ride. i know a lot of people that would not agree, but i love them. so much. i love travel in general - bus rides, car rides, whatever. the longer the better - and airplanes are pretty high up on the list. i have had horrendous trips, of course. it would be naive of me to expect anything else. i mean, i have had at least two airplane rides a year for most of my life. sometimes more. there is no way that they could all be good. but the bad ones do not wipe out the good. i still love my airplanes. (i did learn that the saudi side of me has the right to brag that its airline is a million times better than the american side's.)

this year is the first in a very, very long time that i will not be going on an airplane. and that makes me sad. though i am partially (read: mostly) relieved to not have to deal with the familial obligations that come as a packaged deal with travel, and i fully appreciate the fact that i can actually go out and watch a movie and get ice cream whenever i want this summer (a post on my bad luck with movies coming soon), i want my airplane rides. i really, really do.

and i want a real airplane ride, too. none of that one hour flight to new york type of thing. i want my thirteen hour flight with two meals and my touchscreen movie screen and crossing time zones. i would seriously go to the desert for two days just for the airplane ride. (and then i could see some of the people i actually really want to see.)

you know how you get vouchers for free flights for life if something happens to the plane you're on? (i actually dunno if this is what happens outside of tv shows, but let's pretend.) yeah, i want those. but i don't want my plane to crash or anything. i need to find a survivor of a plane crash who got the free vouchers for life but is too traumatized to ever fly again. i would kindly take them off of their hands. so if you know anyone, feel free to send them my way.

*Leaving on a Jet Plane - Chantal Kreviazuk

could be a good excuse

so i had to turn on captchas for comments, and i'm really sorry. i know how annoying it is to prove that you are not a spambot every time you want to add your two cents to a topic, but the number of spam comments was getting a little ridiculous. too many were tricking the spam filters and getting through. just this morning i had to delete at least ten spam comments from past blog posts. and while ten may not seem like a lot, it's still super annoying. so, captchas on.

this past weekend my cousin and his family (wife and daughter) came down to visit us. he's been getting his master's in new york at columbia for the past year and decided to see dc before he leaves the country again in december. we've developed a sort of expertise in touristy stuff around virginia and dc because of all of the relatives who decide that it's a cool place to visit. usually, though, they stay more than a couple of days. since this cousin was only here for the weekend, and we didn't want him to feel jipped of his tourist experience, we crammed a lot of stuff into those two and a half days. we did malls because for some reason they are always popular with the visitors, the zoo, old town alexandria, the air and space museum, all of the main monuments in dc as well as the capitol and white house, a trip to skyline caverns, as well as taking the time to do art projects and seesawing with the kid and watching soccer matches on tv. it was busy and required a lot of walking in the hot sun, but fun.

and his daughter is adorable. in the beginning, she could not seem to remember my sister's and my names for anything. for a while, she called me sammy and my sister musa (because apparently guy names are easier?) and then she started calling me yellow and my sister pink (because of the color shirts we were wearing). that seemed to stick the longest and so on sunday we decided to wear the same colored shirts so as not to confuse her. monday, though, the day they left, i wore pink and my sister wore yellow to see if she had learned to tell us apart. turns out she had and somehow managed to learn my name in her sleep and called me by it from the second she saw me. she still had a bit of trouble with my sister's, but most kids seem to have trouble with anisah. but yeah, she was definitely one of the most behaved kids to come visit us.

anyway, that was my weekend and why i was not blogging. i actually have a good excuse this time.

*It Could Be a Good Excuse - The Used

a little place that sits beneath the sky

despite a ridiculously trafficky drive back home, i had a fantastic time in CT. filled with steam trains and steam boats, island tours, diners that have been around since before even my mom was born, castles and pirate stories, it was just a really, really fun time. and it in no way helped me prepare for school. which starts tomorrow. do you think i could teach myself the programming i was supposed to learn all summer tonight? do you think if i start studying for my qual exams right now it would do any good? or do you think i should continue to pretend that there is a month between today and tomorrow and i'll be just fine if i don't think about it too much? personally, i see myself going down the third route. and possibly regretting it later.

but back to connecticut. i'm normally not the kind of person that gives good reviews of trips with details and pictures and researched information (mostly because i'm way too lazy), but i thought i'd actually be a bit educational today. (though i'm not going to post pictures because i think my camera is still in the car.) anyway, while in connecticut, we took a tour of gillette's castle, which is nestled up in the hills over the connecticut river. (did you know that the state of connecticut was named after the river and not the other way around? me neither.)

originally the private residence of william gilette, the state bought the castle and turned it into a state park in '43 when his family claimed it was just too expensive to keep and put it up for auction. william gilette was an actor, playwright, stage-manager, cat-lover, train-builder, and all around awesome guy most famously known for his portrayal of sherlock holmes on stage. he's the one that gave holmes the deerstalker hat and curved pipe, and coined the phrase "elementary my dear fellow" which later got changed to "elementary my dear watson." he was a fascinating person who is pretty much forgotten now, and definitely worth reading about. he used to live on house boats, but fell in love with the view of the CT river and the hills and built his estate, seventh sister (named after the hills he built on) so he could always see it. (and you can't blame him. the views are breathtaking.) he had built in furniture that reminded him of his boats, mirrors strategically placed so he could see who came in the front door and who was at his liquor cabinet from his bedroom, secret doors for escape passages, and an elaborate fire extinguishing plan because he knew firemen could not reach his castle fast enough. he also built his own train, laid three miles of track around his property, and built two "train stations." einstein and president coolidge were two of his most famous visitors. (einstein and his wife reportedly thought gillette's train driving was terrifying.) gillette's house had forty-seven doors, and each one was completely unique. everything was hand-carved, he used straw matting meant for the floor to cover his walls with, and he loved cats. he had between fifteen to twenty cats at a time, and when he lived on his boat used to throw tea parties for them. his house was filled with cat statues and figurines (which reminded me of my grandma), and apparently when he had to give away some of his cats at one time he was so specific about who they went to that he required resumes and interviews before he made a decision. 

there were so many cool things to see in the castle, and so many interesting things to be learned about gillette, that this blog post could go on forever and still not capture it all. if you ever find yourself by the CT river, you should definitely make your way out there. totally worth it. oh, and his good friend (who he built a house for on his property) was the brother of the guy that gave the cherry blossoms to DC. i thought that was cool. 

*Midnight Show - The Killers

you liar

so we're in CT. (and can i just say that despite the fact that the drive down to florida is twice the length of the drive up here, i would rather do that one in a heartbeat. so. many. tolls. and our gps tried to take us through ohio to escape them? yeah, i dunno what it was thinking. probably just jealous that it never got a name, because jasper's GPS was shouting at us not to listen to it.) but anyway, we get here and check into our hotel and call my grandma who arrives to take us on a small driving tour of the town i haven't seen in twelve years and my husband hasn't seen ever. then we went to dinner and came back to the hotel to unpack or watch tv or something equally boring.

while booking this hotel, i read a few reviews that said that the walls were thin. understatement of the century, people. the people in adjacent rooms might as well be living with us. every cough, every opening of a drawer or click of a pen can be heard as if i was sitting right next to the person. (which oddly didn't bother me too much.)

anyway, the guy to the room on our left was talking to his son on the phone. i only paused to listen because it sounded like he was having an argument and nosiness runs in my family. so anyone i hear him saying, "when i say, 'ian carlos' (i'm not a hundred percent sure of that one) you say, 'yes dad.' and apparently his son was just not getting it because he kept repeating it and repeating it and getting more and more frustrated. finally he said, "yes! yes, dad." so i guess ian figured it out, and then he said, "okay ian, i need to make a few business calls. good night." and he hung up. and then do you know what he did? he watched tv! for the rest of the night until he went to sleep. no business calls no nothing.

and i just felt that, if you're going to yell at your son on the phone for ten minutes while out of town and then make up a lie to hang up because you get bored quickly, then the least you can do is make it a good lie. i need to make a few business calls? pshht. how about, i need to go slay a dragon that's terrorizing the pizza place next store? or i need to go, my flying lessons are about to start and i still haven't gotten my cape? or i need to go fight superman?

liars tend to make interesting stories, though, so i'm keeping an eye (ear?) on you, ian's dad.

*Liar - Mumford and Sons

there is no message we're receiving, let me know, is your heart still beating?

it feels like the little corner of the blogosphere that i inhabit has turned into a ghost town. updates to blogs i follow are few and far between. i'm lucky if i get more than three views on a post these days. and i think i saw a tumbleweed blow by here a few minutes ago. i dunno what happened, exactly, but i'm getting flashbacks of my fourth grade class taking the gold rush.

the inside of my head is pretty much deserted, too, which isn't a terribly great thing since school starts in a week and i am in no way prepared to pick up my preparations for my phd and act like i didn't just spend the past three months pretending school did not exist. and next week i'll be in connecticut visiting my grandma and pretending that my academic career ended six months ago like it would have if i wasn't such an idiot.

i keep writing and deleting fragments of thoughts and sentences and ideas. i can't follow a thought through to elaborate on anything anymore. hopefully a road trip will wake up my brain, and i'll come back to a repopulated blogosphere.

*Human - The Killers

i have been in jeddah for about a week now (which means internet yay!) but just have not found the time or will to get back into blogging. there are so many blog posts that i have to read to catch up on the blogs that i'm following, there are so many posts that i have written in my head that need to be translated to pixels, there are so many visits to make and people to see and chess games to play (my brothers - especially the eleven year old - are newly obsessed with the game), and my i key is hardly working so i have to pound on it seven times every time i want to type an i. you just do not realize how many i's you use until something like this happens.

anyway, today is the first day of ramadan, so happy ramadan to everyone. i'm going to get into summer stories later so i guess this post is just a tad bit pointless, but i thought that seventeen days without any sort of update was a bit ridiculous. so here i am.

oh, and  cut my hair. it's the shortest it's been since i was probably seven (and now i'm twenty-four). it was the result of a semi-mix-up and resulted in a mini heart attack immediately after, but it's grown on me and i kind of like it now. so yeah, that's my big summer news. 

it's once again traveling day. i'm going to spare you all the list of things i can't find and can't remember, because honestly i think the only thing that will do is make me panic a bit. so let's just pretend that everything's hunky dory (i was going to say peachy but somehow that came out instead. i don't think i've ever used the phrase hunky dory before this in my life). anyway, i should probably have internet in the desert both at my family's and my husband's family's houses, so hopefully i'll still be blogging for the next six weeks. now i'm off to find my sunglasses case (and hope that i didn't shove it into my suitcase at one point because there is no way i am unpacking that thing again) and try to remember what else i needed to bring. (yay for procrastination.)

oh, and i can't remember if i ever posted about them on here or if i just talked about it in real life, but a couple of months ago i read that crunch was making girl scout cookie themed chocolates. i finally tried them, and i have to say that i am not a fan of the peanut butter one (though i like that cookie). the samoa and thin mint ones are okay, though. 

pedicure on our toes, toes

yesterday my sister and i went to get pedicures, because we can be girly like that sometimes. (only, not that often i guess because it was my first pedicure ever, which my sister (and most everyone else) found shocking for some reason.) instead of normal pedicures, though, we drove the extra half hour and got fish pedicures (where a bunch of tiny (in my case) and not so tiny (in my sister's case) fish basically ate the dry skin off our feet). it sounds really gross when i say it like that. poor fish. it was pretty awesome, though, despite the potential fish cruelty. it was followed by a traditional spa pedicure.

in other news, we're leaving on sunday for the desert. i should really start thinking about packing but when i look at the suitcases that i had my husband take out i'm instantly hit with a wave of lazy boredom and the feeling that if i get up to pack my head will surely explode. or my arm might fall off. or my leg might turn to ash. basically, i'll suffer some form of bodily harm, and who would risk that? we'll be gone for a little over a month and splitting the time between his side of the country and my side of the country, and i'm starting to just not feel like going. it's way too much work to travel across oceans and continents just to see people for a few days is my opinion. though that may just be my laziness talking (assuming that my laziness is a separate entity from myself). and that reminds me of a youtube video my sister sent me a while back. let me go find that for you. actually, my sister sent me episode two, but here's the first one:

seriously, story of my life.

also, i just used ke$ha lyrics for my blog title. i quoted someone with a dollar sign in her name. i think i should be tarred, feathered, and ran out of town, but that won't make me change them.

*Tik Tok (apparently she's too good for c's?) - Ke$ha

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Weekend Wars - MGMT

it's kinda funny how life can change, can flip 180 in a matter of days

i still remember what it felt like when my family and i first moved to virginia from california. i was only around ten years old, but i remember feeling like everything was just... weird. the way the schools were all indoor. (my schools in california had classrooms that opened directly to the outside. hallways, for the most part, were under the sky.) the weather was weird. (the few times i had seen snow before moving here were on trips where we drove to see it. it got so much colder and so much hotter here.) the people were weird. (definitely more arabs than i was used to.) i remember the sheer panic that came over me when we heard that we had gotten into isa. i remember that i thought the school was huge (by the time i graduated it was tiny to the point of suffocation). the only way i could find my class in the mornings was by looking for the pink ice skates with our names on them that were outside the door. every morning i would have a few heart stopping seconds when i would think they were taken down and i would never find my classroom, i would be late, i would get in trouble, and someone would probably talk to me in arabic. i remember waiting in dread the entire day as i counted down the minutes for the arabic lesson to come and pass. the days where we had double arabic still fill me with a horrified sense of panic.

but now i've lived in virginia for more than half of my life. the kids in my class that i felt so apart from have become my oldest friends. fifth grade was a long time ago. there's a feeling of being home associated with these familiar streets, with the greenery that drips from some places and is absent from others, with the diversity of people that live here. a feeling that my ten year old self would never have felt was possible. i haven't been back to california since the move, but sometimes i wonder if any feelings of home still linger there. it's funny how much time can change things. i've known some of my friends for thirteen years. thirteen. my younger self changed schools so often that i never thought i'd be one of those people with friendships that spanned decades, but here i am years later, counting down the days to the wedding of the girl that i remember as wearing headbands and glasses and not really liking when i first met.

*One Love - Blue

just realize what i just realized

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

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

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

the sun is out

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

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 

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

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

come tomorrow, tomorrow i'll be gone

so tonight is the last night i'll probably ever sleep in this bed. do you know how completely insane that is? i love this bed with all my heart. it's my place, you know? i study on my bed, sit for hours on the computer on it, read, eat, watch tv, play board games, paint, sew... you name it and it gets done here. and tonight's the last night of it being mine.

also, we were at 5 below this afternoon (sorta like a dollar store if you don't know it) and they had these books for one and two dollars, and, well, you know how i am with books. usually they just have things like world encyclopedias and trivia books about elvis and the beatles, but they had this whole collection of young adult novels and one had a quote by judy blume on the back. who could resist a book that judy blume claimed she couldn't put down? not me, that's for sure. so i bought it and just finished it. you know when you read a book that's good but you just should not have read it? like, you are not in the right emotional state to make friends with those characters and live through those experiences and have the story haunt your mind, and it may be a really great book but reading it was just a very big mistake? yeah. this was one of those times.

anyway, we're leaving for the desert tomorrow. (why does it feel like i blinked, and when i opened my eyes a year had passed?) i'm not gonna have internet tomorrow, but i should probably have when i get there. and then you guys can all follow along on the hectic final three weeks or so leading up to my wedding. won't that be fun?

random side note: have you guys ever watched boy meets world? you know when topanga and cory break up after the school ski trip and shawn says that it's been raining for seven days because god is crying over the fact that the perfect couple he created are no longer together? it's pouring like crazy outside right now and that's the first thing that popped into my head. i'm not exactly sure why, but there it is.

*Save Tonight - Eagle Eye Cherry