like a fish needs a bicycle...

adventures at the temple

ok, so i have way too much on my plate to be doing this right now, but i have to document some of the madness of this weekend. hope you find it as laughable as i did...

volunteering as a guide
at the house of worship yesterday

me: (walking past a group of russian-speaking visitors, minding my business)
strange middle-aged man in the visitor group: (turning around, grabbing my hand) "all i know is allah-u-akbar"
me: "excuse me?"
SMM: "all i know is allah-u-akbar"
me: "ummm, ok. allah-u-akbar to you."
SMM: "my grandmother's father was arabian muslim."
me: "oh, ok."
SMM: "where you from?"
me: "my parents are from iran, but i was born here."
SMM: "oh, you persian? yeah, i'm from ukraine. are you married?"
me: "no, not married."
SMM: "you are so beautiful! beautiful girl like you not married?"
me: "ummm, guess not."
SMM: "i want you to be my friend and teach me about bahai faith."
me: "well, have you met maya? she speaks russian and she can answer some questions for you."
SMM: "i know maya. but i want you to be my friend and i can give you my phone number."
me: "well, if you have questions about the Bahai Faith, i'd be happy to answer them for you now."
SMM: "what about if i give you my phone number?"
me: "that's really ok. but did you have any questions?"
SMM: "no. i just like your eyes. can i give you my number?"
me: "ummm, no, thank you. but have a nice day."

now that's some sunset

wow. so, the other day, i went to the house of worship in the evening to pray. the sunset was so beautiful i almost felt like i was back in texas again... i think sometimes nature is the perfect greeting for beginning a conversation with God.

death to the new year's resolution (reincarnated)

so last week i posted about my frustrations with new-year's-resolution-gymmers. sadly, i deleted that post fairly quickly... mostly because i might have come off a little--ummm, how shall we say--not nice? but actually, that entry was totally nice and lovely.... it just truthfully expressed my exasperation with inconvenience in life. it wasn't directed towards people, but towards particular inconveniences, which have (not suprisingly) resurfaced in my life this week. thus, i feel i must blog about them once and for all. so, as always, no offense intended and i love everyone, but my blog is for expressing myself. so here we go...

ok, the gist of last week's entry was this: people who are now going to the gym in hoards, merely for the sake of trying to fulfill their redundant new year's resolutions of weight loss, are making my life more difficult. the fact is that they probably won't be at the gym in a few months, when almost all of them will have lost their commitment to lose 5, 10, or 5,000 pounds (which they will almost inevitably not lose this year). i, on the other hand, am a regular gymmer, and i'm at the gym as much (if not slightly less) than i was before new year's, and i'll probably still be near my gym-attendance average about 6 months from now, when the madness of new year's resolutions has passed.

but for now, the new-year's-resolutioners are depriving me of already-impossible-to-find street parking (in smurfing freezing weather) and crowding the gym... to the point that i have to wait for a machine, to the point that there should be a mist of febreze circulating around the sweating masses, to the point that the noise of the machines in the cardio room sounds like the bowels of the titanic.

the amazing thing is that the gym is more crowded now than it was last week! how is that possible?! how have these people not lost their steam yet? i await the day when they'll realize that health is about lifestyle, not short-term activity bursts that revolve around societally-imposed rituals... and on that day, my gym experience will return to a much happier state. so with that said, i maintain my friendly and playful stance: death to the new year's resolution. :)

smurfs up in this piece

well, everyone, the time has come to initiate you into what will, no doubt, be the hot new thing. that, my friends, is SMURF. that's right, smurf--as in the smurfs.

basically, about 2 weeks, ago, i decided that my language was a little uncouth. so in an effort to effectively replace words like "freakin'" and "pissy," i opted for a harmless, fun, and very useful word--smurf. the great thing about smurf, and all variations thereof, is that smurf words are so versatile!

for instance:
"you look smurfy today!" = "you look beautiful today."
"are you smurfy?" = "are you freakin' crazy?"
"that smurfs me off." = "that pisses me off."
"smurfy!" = "awesome!"
"smurf me." = "bite me."
"you my smurf." = "you my girl/you my dawg."

so saying smurf words is tons of fun, and totally inoffensive. also, it's hilarious. i routinely crack up when i or anyone else uses them. and our office has really taken ownership of smurf--let me tell you, we have some hysterical people in there, and it's always a party.

credit goes to lacey for "smurfed up." so in a bad situation, you can say "dude, that's smurfed up," and be totally clean about things. this phrase has now been added to the acronymic lexicon in our office. so SU is now one of our acronyms. ("what an SU situation.")

also, liz is so hip and cool that she came up with an awesome name for our office: "smurf unit." that's right. our office ain't no g-unit. we tha smurf unit. if that's not intimidating, i dunno what is.

texas girl in the snow

aite, y'all, so i'm a texan, born and bred. ain't no shame in it. i'm proud to be from texas. but i'm not gonna lie... we ain't got no winter where i'm from.

so, this week marks yet another significant snowfall. i must say that i'm actually quite proud of myself. in the past few months, i've learned how to bundle up, scrape snow off my car, use a shovel and a snowblower, even how to drive slowly in lower gears. it's really not as bad as i was expecting--it's doable. and come april, when the weather finally "warms up" (relative term), i'll be able to say that i've survived a real winter.

here are a few epiphanies i've had about the cold. these should be especially handy for my fellow southerners who may be venturing up north sometime:

1. i finally understand what SUV's are actually good for--snow and ice. strange how there are way more SUV's in texas than there are here, even though there's little to no use for them in the texas weather (believe me, no one ever off-roads it--the most action those H2's ever see is the un-snowy highway).

2. when it comes to curly hair and the humidity-induced frizz, snow is just like rain! turns out it's still water and it'll still make your hair poof. who knew?!

3. water-proof snowboots that you can tuck your pants into are from God.

4. the water bottles you (read "i") keep in the back of your (read "my") trunk for emergencies will promptly freeze and noisily tumble around your (read "my") trunk like the blocks of ice that they are... every single time you (read "i") make a turn.

5. of course you (read "i") always can if you (read "i") want to, but you (read "i") don't have to go to the gym when it's below freezing. :)

nas's playground

welcome, all, to my new on-line playground. glad you could make it.

so, a couple of quick things to start... first, a big shout out to my girl lacey for hosting me and my own particular brand of endearing neurosis. thanks, lace! second, just like the other recent addition to the lay-c.com family, my good friend, george, i am, as of now, fairly unacquainted with the ins and outs of blogging. please bear with me as i fight my way up the learning curve.

third, you should know what led to my newly acquired status as a blogger. peer pressure, mostly. i finally caved after about a year and half of people telling me that i need to blog. this assertion may or may not be true. hopefully, i'll have something meaningful, or at the very least, entertaining, to offer the blogosphere and the world. we'll see...

but i should say that even more important than the loving encouragement of others (i.e. lacey and delara saying "do it!" in a somewhat intimidating sopranos-tone), i feel like blogging could really be my thing. i'm all about the documentation and sharing of life (as evidenced by years of journaling and my now ever-expanding webshots page), and i embrace this in every form and fashion. but just pictures can be unfulfilling. so i figure it's better not to lose any more time in documenting my life holistically, because i'll only end up succumbing to the peer pressure later. so now's as good a time as any. thus, blogging is my new preferred incarnation of this phenomenon of documenting one's life--and sharing it with others.

also, i'm a compulsive communicator. my friends and family know this from the endless stream of phone calls and e-mails i exchange with them, and the fact that i prioritize this communication over most other things in life, no matter how pressing and important such things are supposed to be (take law school applications, for instance). and with my new blog, communicating with the important people in my life will be that much easier.

so blogging will be the perfect marriage of my life-documentation tendencies and my love of communication. good thing, too, since lord knows there are no other marriages in my future--at least not for quite some time. as disappointing as that may be for some old persian ladies who know me and my mama, such is reality.

and finally, please take the time now to reconcile yourself to the fact that i will rarely, if ever, properly capitalize when i blog (anyone who's ever e-mailed me knows this). though i completely embrace proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling, i consider the uniform lowercase to be my expression of informality in writing--it's how i would express myself if i were talking to a friend. so welcome, friend, to my uncapitalized world (interesting double entendre there, huh?)

ok, so that's me. this is my world and that's all for now. i know what you're all thinking... this is a very long entry. i'm aware of this. but i just had to lay it all out to start with. fear not. i join in you saying, "wow, i hope all the entries after this one are way shorter." so here we go, people. bookmark this site now. then... visit often, share your thoughts, and stay and play awhile...