STORIES, STORIES

About an hour ago, I turned 28.  I'm writing to remind myself that I will never be as young as I am right now, from this moment forward, and therefore, turning 28 isn't such a bad thing.  Birthdays are like restore points. We contemplate and reflect, we sift through experiences and expectations, and we scramble to make immediate changes. We take the same page from last year and fold it across the middle to meet this year's page and compare like mad. On this day last year, I was THIS . And this year, I listen to this same song with a good feeling.  The secret to surviving a birthday is to expect Nothing from the world. So, Dear World, I expect nothing (but Champagne).  Love, Me 2011

My uncle in my room, on my laptop, checking out movies from the 30s on IMDB.

My father's older brother is in town. His kids, nieces and nephews call him Daddy, and his grand-kids and great grand-kids call him Doctor T. He is 74 years old mashAllah, and is the oldest geek I know (IRL). My (dying) obsession with Dean Winchester has become widely known in our family, as with all my obsessions really, mainly because I just don't shut up about anything. So I'm all like "Dean Winchester is the hottest demon-hunter EVAR."  Then I walk into Daddy's room and I see he's been doing some reading. He is also a big fan of iPhones, and won't stop trying to convince me that it's 10x better than my Blackberry. I can swear he has a trollface on when he makes fun of my phone.

I got an Eid present from Dean Winchester . It's a phone cover for my Blackberry. I love it. Okay, I know, I know, the important question here is "Why do I still have a Blackberry?" and the answer to that is, well. I have no answer to that. There are many questions in life that are best left unasked.

Here are the top 5 things I ALWAYS manage to forget about Eid.  5 - How little sleep I would get . The transition from the vampire lifestyle of Ramadan in Jeddah to the relative normalcy of an average person's day is a bastard. 4 - How much food I will eat.  Food is available, nay, FORCED UPON YOU, the entire day. There's breakfast, then Breakfast, lunch, then Lunch, dinner, then Dinner, and so on. 3 - How my dad is the reigning patriarch of our family , and therefore, we have to prepare for the onslaught of cousins, aunts and uncles, instead of the other way around. This is a contributing factor to Number 5 above. 2 - How kids are a huge part of Eid , and how noisy and crazy and unreasonable they are. All of them. Demons. 1 - How there's always an Eid breakfast with the other Jeddawis . I in fact missed last year's breakfast. The thing is, in our family, breakfast is The Big Thing, so I can only manage to sneak out of the house for a couple hours to go to this bre...

-- Break Time 

My long-time friend and podcast co-pilot Sally is getting married! *insert ululations * We had a little iftar with her before she leaves (she's getting married abroad), the only thing I could manage at such short notice. There were tears. I'm hoping for more proper celebrations, where I can wish her properly, and take real pictures of the beautiful bride (and her beautiful groom). <3

I wear my glasses ironically. Love me.

I FINALLY FINISHED THIS BOOK. What a tool. It took me a month and a week.  I didn't know who David Niven was until I read this book. Apparently, he was some big-time actor in the 60s. I got this book from Matt (who gave me a whole box of books), and I felt obliged to read it. It wasn't bad for an autobiography, to be honest. It was funny and witty, etc, but most of the time, it read like a drawn-out Wikipedia article. The only thing is that I can't read an autobiography of a person I'm not interested in. It was such a task just to get through 3 pages. Niven has a habit of name-dropping, which didn't work on me because I just didn't know any of the people he name-dropped, aside from Fred Astaire and Frank Sinatra.  This book proves that there are just some stories that you might think are interesting, but are really not. That's the problem with autobiographies. It's like when someone tells you a very long story about their dream the night before, and ...

I meant Friday's, the restaurant. (Why is it called Thank God It's Friday's? Isn't the grammar a bit.. off?) Had a nice iftar with friends after finally getting off work.  Eggplant stuffs. I was forcing Suhail to do the Dean Winchester face the whole evening. He wouldn't do it seriously. Oh, and hottie Ian is back at Friday's. ;)