running late, missed the train, everything is dropping

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

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

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

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

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

*Running - David Archuleta

i am at a loss for words here

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

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

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

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

*Dutch Courage - The Spill Canvas

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

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

amazon of course!

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

heres what i bought:

Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games)

By: Suzanne Collins

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

The Song Is You: A Novel
By: Arthur Phillips

Water for Elephants: A Novel
By: Sara Gruen

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

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

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

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

*Belle - Beauty and the Beast Soundtrack

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

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

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

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

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

tonight is gonna be crazy.

*UPDATE*

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

this flight is gonna be great. *rolls eyes*

*Leaving on a Jet Plane - Chantal Kreviazuk

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

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

*So Damn Beautiful - Polaroid

driving slow on sunday morning and i never want to leave

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

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

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

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

*Sunday Morning - Maroon 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Because of You - Kelly Clarkson

been to the bottom of every bottle

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

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

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

*How You Remind Me - Nickelback

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Every Day is Exactly the Same - Nine Inch Nails