sky of blue and sea of green, in our yellow submarine

Following in the grand tradition of posting lists of my random thoughts when I have nothing worthwhile to say:

Today was the first day of fall quarter. Hold the applause. Do you know I have 8 a.m. classes four days a week? Do you know how early I have to wake up? Do you know what time I leave the house? Do you know how gorgeous the sky looks at that time of morning? Yes. Must stay positive. (Don't worry, kids, stay tuned; further whining to recommence soon.)

So you want to know why I couldn't find the blue paper to print out my timesheet at work? Because it was placed in a cubby-hole above my eye-level, dammit. Really, I shouldn't have to strain my neck like that.

Fall quarter parking permits for school are now red. I like much.

Squash. As in, the vegetable. One word: NO. (Why does it always come back to this?)

Guys need to stop gawking while driving on the freeway. What's even more annoying is when you're forced to switch lanes and end up driving directly behind them, leading them to believe you're stalking them on purpose. Please. Don't flatter yourself. And get that victorious little smirk off your face. It's not attractive. And while we're at it, don't put your face right up against the window like that. Didn't your momma tell you? It'll get stuck that way.

An awkward-looking man with scruffy orange sideburns was walking down the street in downtown Sacramento this afternoon with his tie tucked into his dress slacks. Why? WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO YOURSELF? Please note the deliberate use of the caps-lock key. Obviously, this is something I feel quite strongly about.

Stressed and sad is not a good combination. Stressed, because I've only made it through one lecture and I'm already feeling claustrophobic about being back at school. It must be that damn biology class, I'm telling you, because the thought of Renaissance Literature tomorrow doesn't seem to have quite the same effect. And sad, because the world is a crazy heartbreaking place and ideally everything should be good for those of whom you know nothing but good, but it isn't. Does that make sense?

Did I tell you I've been working in downtown Sacramento during the past three weeks? Uhh, I guess I kinda forgot. I still haven't figured out yet if turning left onto a one-way street on a red light is legal. Someone tell me already, because I hate waiting for green lights. Meanwhile, I've stopped being intimidated by one-way streets, and my parallel parking skills have noticeably improved. I can now parallel park on both sides of the street! This is hella exciting, in case you can't tell.

I bought a pair of flared jeans for $12.99. Like, really flared. This is so exciting that it even merits a mention on the weblog. See?

When I told my friend S about the new job, he responded with a capitalization-laden reply along the lines of, "You're driving 75 miles to work during your summer vacation?! Are you insane?!" Of course I am. It's a skill I'm constantly working on perfecting. This is what spending almost an entire summer away from California does to you – you start forgetting key information about your friends, and that's just inexcusable. Besides, now that school's back in session, I'm regularly in the valley anyway, so what's an extra 15 miles to work from campus? It all somehow makes sense with my convoluted logic. Or lack thereof.

I'm working on perfecting my disdainful look, too, but it's not working out real well, because I have a tendency to roll my eyes and burst into laughter instead. Goshdarnit.

The seemingly never-ending freeway construction means that westbound I-80 is missing lane markings approaching the Interstates-80/680 junction. This also means that every evening, all the cars traveling in a westbound direction get extremely confused about whether we have four lanes or six at our disposal. Some lady nearly sideswiped me at the junction yesterday simply because she couldn't figure out where the exit lane began. CalTrans needs to hurry up and get this job over with and stop putting my life in danger already.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to research potential careers for me.
Re. teaching: NO.

I've been enjoying listening to the Beatles' album "1" on and off for the past few weeks. Believe it or not, the only version of "Yellow Submarine" I've heard before this is my father's. That, and his Pukhtu rendition of the same song. Fun stuff, but it's nice to finally listen to the original as well.

I feel like retiring, and I haven't even done anything with my life yet. Tell me, is this slightly problematic?

fill the spaces with wood in places to make it feel like home

Last Saturday, while I was volunteering at a painting competition at the art center and drawing henna designs on little kids' hands, the father of one of the children leaned over and asked curiously, "Where were you born?" I smiled sweetly and answered, "Berkeley." And while it was the truth, it was quite obvious that that wasn't the answer he had been expecting to hear.

With friends, I always laughingly append the answer with, "And that just explains everything, doesn't it?"

I love Berkeley. I'm not there very often and, admittedly, I'm still not an expert at figuring out my way around, but if you leave me at the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph, I'm all set to go. From there, I can navigate my way to anywhere. There is only a small, select group of people I can tolerate shopping with, yet I'm content browsing for hours on my own and Berkeley is optimal for such an experience. I've bought candy from small corner shops and eaten it all while walking down the street. I've sat in cafes while drinking hot chocolate, watching the world walk by my windows, waving at people I happened to recognize. I've conversed with sidewalk vendors and returned the genuine, crinkly-eyed smiles of homeless people at the corners and tried on flip-flops and handled dangly earrings and slathered on lotion at the Bath & Body that's now gone. I've taken my sweet time walking slowly from the BART station to the campus, inadvertently eavesdropping on people's conversations, inwardly amused at the juxtaposition of buildings.

"Telegraph is overrated," a girl said dismissively to me recently. I remember raising an eyebrow and making a curt, snappish remark in response. Perhaps my Berkeley experiences are not truly indicative of what it's like to actually live in the town and know the place like the back of one's hand, but the very fact that I don't live there makes me appreciate it more, maybe. Berkeley is weird and wonderful and whack, and the fact that everything there is all slightly shabby and imperfect, eccentric and unexpectedly out-of-place, is what makes it all the more appealing.

I can see myself living in Berkeley.

I was in Berkeley recently to have lunch with a friend. Walking back to our car afterwards, I stopped abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk, hands on my hips, craning my neck upwards, and exclaimed loudly at no one in particular, "I love those bay windows!" It was a three-story house, two of the levels made up of the wide bay windows I couldn't help marveling at. My friend, who had obliviously continued walking ahead without me, stopped and turned back, a bit disconcerted by my sudden display of enthusiasm. I suppose she didn't know that it's a habit I have, this stopping dead in my tracks whenever something captures my interest.

The Berkeley building reminded me of how much I miss our old Victorian home with the bay windows and soaring rooflines – the tall, dilapidated house we spent over a year taking apart and rebuilding, knocking down walls and taking out excess doors, retaining the old moldings and doorway carvings, polishing the hardwood floors until they gleamed, reveling in the sheer glory of the house, a vast expanse of space and light. We remained there for only two more years after the year of renovation.

There are college students living there now, and a Volkswagen Jetta parked in the driveway. They sprawl on sagging couches on the wide front porch, littering it with six-packs, and the elegant bay windows sport posters of rockstars. My father's geranium plots and brick borders, once intricately laid out and lovingly tended, are long gone, replaced by a patch of grass and nothing else. I miss the ingenious placement of those red geraniums, so vivid against the gray and white of the house.

I also miss our behtuk in the village, and the way the multicolored shutters shimmered in the afternoon sunlight. I miss the smell of rain, and the indescribably peaceful feeling of sitting on the rooftop and gazing down on the village. And my bebe and how she refused to acknowledge me as "Yasmine" and stubbornly persisted in calling me by my middle name, always.

I miss the miniature rose bushes from the house we lived in before that, and the level, green lawn. I miss watching the sunset from the laundry room window, and standing on the back porch to gaze at the stars, and reading so many more books in one year than I have collectively since then.

And before that – well, before that, there was this, and I came back, didn't I?

They say you leave behind pieces of yourself, too, in every place that you live in and leave. I, of all people, know how true this is, having abandoned bits of myself everywhere, gradually shrugging off the qualities and habits and personality traits I found lacking, ill-fitting, awkward, unnecessary, or even, yes, embarrassing. But I also think one learns to pick up pieces, too, and so it becomes not just a matter of leaving behind pieces, but of learning to resourcefully substitute new ones for every bit you discard.

The individual self is a jigsaw puzzle.

Or maybe I'm just a sentimental fool.

will the change come while we're waiting

On Monday I start working in downtown Sacramento, and I'm already missing my lazy slow-motion life of the past couple of weeks. Much of it has been spent drinking endless glasses of cranberry juice, reading stacks of books from the public library, and eating tomato-cucumber-extra cheese sandwiched between slices of whole wheat bread. Clearly, I am not a firm believer in the strenuous lifestyle.

In the daytime and afternoon, when the heat of the outdoors keeps me closeted inside and the heat of my room makes me flee to air-conditioned areas of the house, I contort myself into the confines of the living room armchair – head on one armrest, knees curving over the other, legs sprawled over the side so that my toes touch the shiny black end table hugging the side of the chair – and read.

I'm very fidgety when it comes to sitting like a normal human being, seeing as how I must always have my feet up. I sit cross-legged at the dining room table, and stretch out my legs when I'm sitting on the floor. I prop up my feet on any available surface – a friend's coffee table, the dashboard of Somayya's car, even the model sofas and glass tables in Macy*s furniture department. Even now, typing this entry, my feet are resting up on the seat of my chair, my knees bumping against my chin, my fingers spelling out typos galore as I try to maneuver my hands around my legs in order to reach the keyboard. I need to invest in a footstool.

Lying across the living room armchair like that, is it any wonder that sleep is constantly on my mind? And, just think, I don't even have to feel guilty. Oftentimes, I turn my face into the back of the armchair and nap, the book resting on my stomach. Once awake, minutes or hours later, I continue reading from wherever I left off.

In between the guilt-free naps and guzzling of cranberry juice, I've found it is a bit unsettling to pick up Ray Bradbury's novels and come across dog-eared pages, marked when I last checked out the book from the public library at least five years ago.

Bardbury's Fahrenheit 451, especially, is filled with corners folded up from the bottom of the page to form little triangles now so smooth that, with the book tightly closed in my hand, I would barely have even been able to tell that the pages were marked had I not known to look for them. Either the book hasn't been touched in the past five years, or the reader(s) after me appreciated the same passages and decided to indulge my need to mark them.

The thing is, I dislike jotting down notes in the margins of books, or highlighting passages, or underlining sentences that jump out to me. But, for as long as I can remember, every time I've come across a passage that strikes a chord with me, I absently fold up the bottom corner of the page and continue reading without pause. Rereading the same book much later, even if it has been years, the first thing I always do is check for dog-eared pages and, finding one, skim the page until I recognize why I had marked it so.

Rereading Fahrenheit 451 a couple of weeks ago, I came across a page I hadn’t marked back during high school, containing a passage I must have glossed over then with no more than a cursory reading, but which holds so much more significance now, especially in light of today's date:

"Someday the load we're carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn't use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us. We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And someday we'll remember so much that we'll dig the biggest steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up. Come on now, we're going to go build a mirror factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them."

What do you see in your mirrors?

help out a beautiful cause, fi sabeelillah

Buy a t-shirt and be a rockstar just like meeeeeeeee.

the economics of scale (and kids who are way too easily amused)

H: guess how much gas was at the gas station here tonight
Me: umm
Me: $1.95?
Me: $1.89?
H: nope
H: lower
H: try again
Me: FOR REALS?
Me: $1.75
H: haha, i pumped around 1.79 at this same gas station this morning, but nope. try lower
Me: holy freakin smoley, man
Me: $1.70
H: try again
Me: $1.65
Me: $1.50
Me: WHERE DID YOU GO TO GET GAS?
H: well, the one next to the gas station i pumped was 1.69 but the one i pumped at was lower tonight
H: try again
Me: this is killing me
Me: $1.45?

H: try 10 cents lower. $1.59
H: 1 freakin 59
Me: DUDE
H: okay thank you
H: finally, someone is showing me some enthusiasm
Me: wow that's so crazy
Me: hell yeah i'm enthusiastic
Me: this is GAS we're talking about!
Me: CHEAP GAS!
H: i mean c'mon this is the biggest thing since like sliced bread and i've been like the only one who's been going on about it for like a day
Me: i live for this kind of stuff
Me: YEAH!!
Me: look, i even used double exclamation points
Me: obviously, this is a big deal
H: but on mace blvd there are 2 gas stations and they've been having price wars for the last 3 days as far back as i've noticed
H: 2 days ago the valero was 1.90 and the one next to it was 1.89
H: then yesterday they were both 1.85
H: then last night one was 1.89 and the other was 1.69, but this morning one was 1.89 and the other was 1.79
Me: where's the $1.59 one at?
Me: i'll be needing it on friday
H: then i drove by again tonight and the valero had dropped it to 1.59
H: and the one next to it was 1.69
H: that's a 20cent swing in 12 hrs
Me: that's soo crazy
Me: wow
Me: i love it
H: it's on mace blvd right across from nugget market. there are 2 side by side on the same corner
Me: gives me incentive to visit you guys more often now
Me: dude, i pumped gas this morning in cordelia for like $1.90 or something
Me: and here it's at $2.09
Me: i'm so jealous now
H: yeah its been fluctuating so much, i don't know what it's gonna be at tomorrow
H: but it seems to generally drop a lot in the evening
Me: hahaha well hopefully it'll just keep going down down down down
H: talk about economies of scale
Me: seriously
Me: i'm so excited, you don't even know
Me: okay well maybe YOU know though
Me: i'm excited someone else is excited about cheap gas too
Me: yeeuhh boyyee
H: for serious. i haven't been this excited since...hmm...i was 5? or something
Me: hahah
Me: yeah we're just way too cool
H: guess what
Me: what what?
H: i pumped gas at 1.59 haha
Me: you shut it
H: no, you know what's new?
H: did i tell you?
H: i pumped gas for 1.59/gal
H: okay okay
H: enough
Me: okay you can stop now, buddy
H: it just blows my mind away
Me: yeah really
H: i took a pic of the sign when it said 1.79 this morning, i wish i took one for the 1.59 or at least gotten a receipt

>continue reading

this city's made us crazy and we must get out

Yesterday, I:

One. Used the "PowerPoint elastomeric acrylic latex caulk with silicone" caulking gun to grout the cracks along the living room walls and ceiling. Doesn't that make me sound smart? Hi, my name is Bob Villa. Actually, no, I'd much rather be MacGuyver instead. Anyway, I finally understand what all the hype about being tall is. Nice view up there. My 5'1" self really appreciated towering all the way up there by the ceiling. I got to stand on a shaky, nine-foot ladder, invite cobwebs in my hair, and pretend I knew what I was doing wielding a gun - okay, a handyman's tool, but whatever, the end result is looking good. The sad part is, I got so used to being tall that I kept missing steps while gingerly making my way down to solid ground. I won't even tell you how many times I almost fell off the ladder. My mother is sworn to secrecy, too, so don't even try.

Two. Started re-reading Ray Bradbury novels I haven't touched since high school. (I'm back in my one-book-a-day phase and loving every minute of it.) Make sure you at least read Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, The October Country, and The Golden Apples of the Sun. Especially Fahrenheit 451. Don't say I never recommended any books to you. If you need more books, plow through this post.

Three. Spent about an hour in the evening at the California State Fair in Sacramento, listening to Maroon 5 perform live. "Listening" being the key word here, since everyone and their mother seems to be taller than me. (Remember that note about me being short?) They performed practically all the tracks off their Songs About Jane album, and managed to sound just as good (if not better) live. That takes some damn good skill, I say. Although we finally weaseled our way into a good enough spot that we could kinda sorta see the group, most of the time was still spent craning my neck and balancing on my tip-toes. Not only did Goth Girl in front of me keep turning her head to throw sneers and evil death glares my way, but then she would also comb her fingers through her hair or twist her head so as to deliberately block my view of the stage. I've decided that, next time, I should invest in a pair of 4-inch spike heels. That way, not only will I be taller, but I could also prepare for future encounters with Goth Girl by using the shoes to stab her if she continues to annoy me. Didn't I say I wanted to be MacGuyver? S'all about using mundane, everyday tools in creative ways. Thank you, thank you. Hold the applause until the end, please.

Four. Vented off any lingering irritation with Goth Girl by returning to the relatives' and spending half-an-hour twirling around my aunt's living room with my niece, Zaynam. "Boboji!" she kept pleading, "aik aur [one more]!" I kept getting up to oblige her, spinning 'round and 'round and 'round while she clapped her hands, scrunched up her face, and giggled gleefully. At the end of it, my vision blurred and my head circling, I was beginning to doubt whether I'd be able to make the drive home. The best part was when Zaynam would stand in the middle of the room, chant, "One! Seven! Five!" and I'd yell out, "Go!" and she would twirl, arms outstretched, eyes tightly shut, only to trip over her feet and land on her face, still giggling. Word of advice to those of you who are interested in attempting this in your own living rooms: Maximize the fun of blurring colors and minimize potential injuries by keeping your eyes open while twirling.

rocker boy extraordinaire

I know everyone gets all excited (you do! just admit it!) whenever I talk about my brother's hair. So this is just to let you know that the spiky orange mohawk is back. You read that right. And, yes, you know you wish you had a spiky orange mohawk, too. You do! Just admit it!

the earth is his canvas


it's a jungle out there.


but look what you get out of it: tomatoes, jalapenos, and basil.
someone needs to make pasta, and soon.