Things that made even a Monday quite a rocking day

I'm lazy and still working on writing about my meetup with Anjum - disgraceful, I know - but, meanwhile, here's a long-ish post for you, about this past Monday, no less.

ONE. Taking a nap on the living room floor, smackdab in the middle of the pool of sunshine spilling through the front windows and onto the carpet. Specifically, falling asleep while reading Ivan Turgenev's short novel, First Love, because that girl - Zinaida Alexandrovna - was so damn arrogant and annoying and self-satisfied that I just wanted to stab her. Or rip the pages out of the anthology. [Not so rocking: leftside arm- and shoulder-aches for the next day and a half. Did I mention I'm left-handed? This is problematic.]

TWO. Snail mail! Package from HijabMan, containing:

- Earrings from the Middle East! He had asked which I wanted more, flip-flops or earrings, and my shallow accessories-addicted inner rockstar told me to go with earrings, so I did. Because we all know I love dangly earrings. I can get flip-flops on my own anytime, but earrings from the Middle East? Lemme at 'em! So HijabMan sent me a photograph he had taken, I circled the earrings I wanted, and emailed it back to him with a note: "THE RED ONE IS MINE!" When I finally got them in the mail, my first thought was, Dayam, I have hella good taste. Alhamdulillah. Oh yeah, and I wore them right away, for the rest of the day. HijabMan is the awesomest. You should be his friend.

- Another mix CD from Baji, mix-CD compiler extraordinaire! Baji had given the CD to HijabMan to give to me when he visited California back in September. He forgot to hand it over, and the CD subsequently traveled with him around the world before making its way back to me. Baji will be so proud! This is a No-Theme CD, and it's rocking. It also has TWENTY-TWO TRACKS, so it took me the better part of three days worth of errands all around town to get through it. I'm now listening to it for the second time, and loving it, because Baji has awesome taste in music, even though I didn't recognize any of the songs (which says a lot about my taste in music, obviously). Baji, if I haven't said this before, you're my favorite rockstar. You're lucky I'm not a boy and about ten years older (oh, and ten times smarter), or I woulda challenged TP to a duel and married you myself. I woulda!

...and it's deja vu, because...

THREE. I ran into my brother the crazy artist at *gasp* the grocery store of all places. He grabbed my grocery list away from me: "Garbanzo beans? Oho, yaar! Chholay!"

I laughed. "Hey, speaking of chholay..."
His interest was piqued. "Naan 'n' Curry?" he immediately asked.
"No buddy, although, yeah, we should plan a Berkeley trip to eat at Naan 'n' Curry, too. But, hey, let's check out that movie you really wanted to see."

So now we're coordinating plans to see Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World together, even though I warned him that the reviews I had read so far pretty much summed up the film as sucky. But I've got to see it for myself. Plus, I liked a bit of Shaheen Sheik's music in the past (back when no one knew who she was and her music was good), so maybe that'll be some saving grace.

FOUR. Phone call from my favorite San Diego-an 2Scoops! Who always merits an exclamation point after his name (hey, I didn't start it; I'm just agreeing) even though he is stubbornly weblog-less. Nearly five-minute-long voicemessage ("you know how we do"). Best line(s) ever, about the little kids who were - uhhh, praying? suuure - at the masjid during the same time he was:

"This one kid, I don't know why he was dressed up like this, but he was wearing a karate suit, like, the white karate suit, and he had on a yellow belt and everything. And he would stand, and then he would kick to his right, and then he would stand, and then he would kick to his left..."

Apologies to 2Scoops if I mangled his story, but he talks so fast! (All the better to fit more hilarious stories into those five minutes, before he reaches the limit and the phone automatically cuts him off.) Also, hearing myself creatively addressed as "Y-to-the-AZZO" is enough to make me laugh for minutes on end, and people who make me laugh are my favorite people ever, and hands-down awesome by default. Seeeeeeriously.

FIVE. Discovering this slurpee machine! The only reason I haven't been talking about blue raspberry slurpees on the weblog for months now is become I haven't found any blue raspberry slurpees since last summer. Damn graduation. At least in college, I had a steady supply of such things. It's enough to make a kid consider going to grad suckool. Anyway, remember I promised all y'all your very own slupee machines oh so long ago? That's right! Vote for me!

SIX. Coordinating tentative dinner plans with Anjum, who is back in the Bay on business! [Actually, "tentative" is right; it's probably not happening this time around. Aww sadness! We'll make it work again, buddy!]

SEVEN. Checking out my friend H's facebook profile, on which he had posted the following quote that he himself - such a smart man - had come up with:

"Realize that maybe living the moment is not all its cracked up to be, that perhaps we need to live not just for today but for tomorrow should there be one."

Thank you, I needed that.

EIGHT. Email from my lovely friend, D. Best line ever: "Some days I wanna be a dude with a motorbike and no plans."

Oh, me too.