good things

- L buying me a Carribean Passion fruit smoothie from Jamba Juice

- Sarah McLachlan's Afterglow album

- The expression on Seher's face when she walked into her "surprise birthday party," held about a month-and-a-half before her real birthday

- Wandering down Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, watching Seher pick out her bajillionth pair of dangly earrings. "Stop being a hater!" she kept snapping at her brother's disparaging comments.

- The sidewalk vendor who told us, "Keep laughing!" Shivering in the Berkeley cold, I responded, "Seriously, it keeps you warm, you know."

- Another sidewalk vendor who unexpectedly greeted us with "Assalamu alaikum."

- Gifts from Somayya: (red!) pants, multi-colored knitted scarf, (red!) bag, dangly earrings

- Somayya's huge, unselfish heart, and her untiring capacity for giving

- Celebratory dinner in honor of N's new job, and my "greedy bastard" frozen mocha photograph

- Halaqa and cupcakes at the Border's café

- L's sexay new shoes

- Shopping with selective people (you know who you are)

- Discovering the StoryPeople. Brian Andreas is a rockstar and a beautiful genius, and if I could afford to buy a print for each and every single one of you, I most definitely would

- Discovering that shopping is a lot more fun when I don't have any money, because I can then wander around downtown unencumbered by shopping bags and without giving in to my impetuous decisions to invest in yet more pants and flip-flops, my two weaknesses.

- Spending an hour at the public library for the first time in months; being wide-eyed over the fact that I have access to all these books, like, oh my God

- L playing Irfan Makki's When the Leaves Begin to Fall on repeat while we were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the way up to Sacramento

- Wearing my red shoes today