WAM

Are you a Woman?
And
Are you American?
And
Are you Muslim?

Then you know what it's like to be a WAM, (Woman who is an American Muslim) bam thank ya ma'am.

You have got to check out the entry on A Call For Essays on ZP's Blog.

They're looking for anecdotes from an American Muslim Woman's perspective & life.

We've all been touched by someone we know who is an American Muslim Woman.
If you know someone who is an American Muslim Woman... pass on the info, please. And you can help reach the goal of creating a book dedicated solely for the purpose of enlightening those who don't do crap, and still call themselves muslim. Just kidding.

No seriously though, pass this link on.

I'm just a medium for spreading the word. There, I command you, word, Spread. Spread, like you ain't never spread before!

Chick Flick Club

At work, I'm a Behavior Data Specialist. So, as a result of being at the bottom of the heirarchy, we are also given little chores to complete on the unit every week. Mine for the past two months was "shredding paper." Great. So, anyway, one of my co-workers filled me in on a little secret about these secret locked boxes, that are picked up once every month by a "shredding company." Yay. So, I reduced all my work to just picking up paper and dumping it somewhere else. Classic. Well, there are three floors to this building, and each floor has a little box. Now, I can't overload one box, the closest one to my office out of sheer laziness. I have to at least be considerate of the people who actually Need that box (plus, Beth told me to not fill up the box with the papers that I should be shredding myself, damn!) So, I slide a few through the cracks here and there and some upstairs in the Medical Records room too!

This entry mainly deals with the Med Recs Room's employee. I forgot her name. I'll call her Bob for now. So, Ms. Bob happened to be having a conversation with some other lady, Bill, about her favorite movies. And guess what, they all happened to be MY favorite movies too! hahaha. I started cracking up because I had no idea that anyone loved chick flicks the way I did. Woah. So we ended up having about an half hour conversation about chick flick movies and I told her about French Kiss, and While you were Sleeping, and First Knight, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, and all the rest. Man, she was on her way to Chick Flick Heaven when I started to describe them to her. Anyway, she trusted my judgement so much that she said she was going to go straight to the store to purchase the movies. And two weeks later, when I went in for my weekly (getting rid of the paper I'm supposed to shred myself ) duties, and Ms. Bob said she couldn't get enough of them. Vondervul.

I think we might start up a Chick Flick Club. Who wants in? I call President.

Yard Sale

I haven't blogged in quite a while, and honestly, I just didn't have much to say. Or maybe I did, but just didn't want to put in the effort. Anyway, I'm beginning to feel like my old self again, and I thought, I'd start off this wonderful blogging experience again with a little account about our recent outing.

Oh, yes, before I begin, I realized when I was down and out of the blogging scene that I hadn't been blogging about personal stuff. I was always humorous and specific about things in my life that I really didn't mind people knowing about me. But I guess, I am much more conscious than I thought (that means it's a ridiculous quantity of self-consciousness floating in the air...) and I think it's about time, I spread it out and let you all see a piece of me that you may not be aware of.

I am generally not a very confrontational person (reminds me of the dinosaur in Toy Story!), so I'm mostly always in the middle on issues, especially because I usually don't have all the information about issues to be able to debate. I should have taken Debate class in HS. I suggest all students to major in English (or at least minor in it) and definitely take Debate in HS. It'll do you wonders no matter what field you go into. Being able to persuade people and defend your arguments in any environment where you have to deal with people is always a good thing!

Anyway, yes, finally
--Yard Sale--

I was sick again, this past weekend. I started feeling fatigued Friday afternoon after lunch, and realized exclaiming, "Oh, Erik you're so smart; Good job, Erik; Excellent workin'; Wonderful, Erik" was getting really tiring working with kids who were learning to respond appropriately to touching their cheeks, nose, the glue on the table, their own picture on the wall; autistic kids with language and learning disabilities. So, I took it easy, and gave him a lot more Spongebob than necessary. Good thing, Erik is a restless kid; it made for a good pretense to take him for a wagon ride every 5 minutes around the Marcus Institute unit.

Anyway, went home, called out sick on my evening meeting with our jamaat visitor from FL who had come especially to train the madrasah teachers on providing a positive and reinforcing environment for the children, and jumped into bed by 6pm, and was out until 8.30 am. Wow, crossed over into the next day. Had to call out the next day as well. But as I inhaled a few Ibuprofens (thank you CVS), I was feeling a little better, but still a little light headed and drinking tons of watered down OJ (home made flavored water--plus we were running out of OJ--making it easy for my hujband); I was evidently cleansing out my system.

By 12.30pm, I checked out Craiglist for fun, and found out that there were some Yard Sales going on. Yay. It had been ages since I had last yard saled. Or better yet, ever yard saled. The last time I went, I was about 18 years old and went with my mom's ex-co-office inhabitant's secretary, Laurie. She was so fun, cute, and peppy. Tons of fun. So, she's the one who taught me to yard sale.

Yard sailing (?) is an elaborate scheme. There's tons of planning that is involved. First, you have to figure out where the yard sales are occurring and when. Then you have to create a map, with a beginning and end, linking all the locations together.

Anyway, thanks to google maps, that was a breeze. They have this really cool feature that allows you to not only add on destinations, but to move them around in different orders, too. It's crazy cool.

So, I found a few within proximity, okay, not really, but hey with a driver, it ain't so bad.

This yard Saling trip was actually really cool for Hasnain too! The coolest thing by far, I think we both experienced was getting to go through all the cool neighborhoods and backstreets (+ without getting lost!) All these years (me = 3, Hasnain = 8), we had primarily stuck to the interstate. Going the back route is such a new thing for us, it's so much fun just taking the normal routes. We love checking out old neighborhoods, and just cruising pass houses that look either like mansions or like trailers IN THE SAME NEIGHBORHOOD. It's astonishing.

Anyway, We had tons of fun, and got some cool gadgets, and useful stuff. Hasnain picked up some ancient Lego set, and I picked up the game Pente that they played in "A Beautiful Mind" I always thought it was like Othello, but I guess a little different. It's addicting. Besides 1000 piece Puzzles and books, yard saling is mighty fun.

Anyway, this entry didn't turn out how I wanted it to, b/c I ended up finishing this on a different day than I started it, so there was a bit of a different flavor running through me. But, I'll come back.


oooh, that reminds me, if you were an ice cream flavor, what flavor would you be?
I think I'd be ..... hmm. I think I'd be Chocolate Chip. Generally just a plain vanilla, but every once in a while, I have a few surprises, that always stick out.

Be creative, you make one up, too!