Carefree at the fake beach in Emeryville, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

and i wonder if everything i do
i do instead
of something i want to do more
the question fills my head
i know that there’s no grand plan here
this is just the way it goes
and when everything else seems unclear
i guess at least i know

i do it for the joy it brings…
– Joyful Girl (Ani DiFranco)

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Last Friday through Sunday, I did the following (in no particular order):

1. Made new friends to love

2. Tried to calmly answer some rude man’s antagonistic question wherein he asked me for “statistics regarding Muslim women who are subjugated” while I was innocuously standing in line to order a grilled cheese sandwich with a side of french fries. One of the new friends asked me later, “Do you get that a lot?”

3. Went to Baker Beach with the new friends, and walked in the waves and the sand

4. Realized that one end of Baker Beach has nudists – and not just any end, but the end closest to the most gorgeous views of the Golden Gate bridge, dammit!

5. Remembered that this is the year I was supposed to learn how to swim. (There are still a few months left to summer! I can do it!)

6. Moderated the opening plenary at a conference in San Francisco, and realized how much I missed the work I used to do (although not the workplace itself)

7. Magically, did not trip in my high heels at said conference

8. Unleashed The Yasmine vocabulary (“Stalking, stabbing, & crack”) on a few unsuspecting conference-goers

9. Referenced biking-related videos in conversation, and made folks laugh: 1 – 2 – 3

10. Took photos of San Francisco’s gorgeous St. Ignatius Church. Then, my camera battery suddenly died on me, and I decided it was a sign to sit down and meditate and converse with God for a bit

11. Scraped a few layers of skin off the sides of my thumbs, and now I can’t bend them enough to text-message properly. This is blasphemy.

12. Listened to the rockstar T tease me about my lack of timeliness in replying to emails, and laughed when he added, “If I had sent a text message, you probably would have replied immediately!”

13. Explained approximately 4,975,332 times how I do the headwrap

14. Realized while looking in the mirror that I inadvertently give the wrong answer when asked about the length of my hair. It’s not almost to my elbows; it’s actually just past my shoulders.

15. Watched one of my new friends shuffle through the CDs in my car and pronounce them quite an eclectic mix

16. Had gelato in Berkeley with My Favorite & Most Rockstarish Married Couple ever, Ayesha and Faraz (okay, actually, they totally tie with Baji and TP), and discovered my new favorite flavor: Lemon Creme. And my other new favorite flavor: Milk & Honey. (“Look, Ayesha!” I crowed. “We can get a free preview of heaven!”) The latter flavor is in honor of the upcoming San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.

17. Reunited with several friends; one of them, much to my amusement, acted as “my one-man cheering squad” whenever I walked into a room – “Yaz-MEEEEEEEN!” – which totally made me feel like a rockstar. (I have a feeling we need to work on his pronunciation, though.)

18. Took photos at a tiny beach I randomly stumbled upon in Emeryville:

19. Also unleashed my fake Desi [South Asian] accent on unsuspecting non-Desi folks who weren’t sure quite what hit ’em – and who then asked me to explain the intricacies of Desi accents and give a few examples (which I did later in the afternoon when one man mentioned he’d be flying back out of the Bay that evening for work, and I queried, “Vat is dis vork of vich you esspeak?! Ve are ROCKSTARS!”, resulting in much laughter from the rest of the group)

20. Smiled when a friend slung his arm across my shoulders and said to me, “I am so glad that you’re here.”

21. Highfived a rabbi