Keep the same appointments I kept, if you try walking in my shoes

NineToFive outside the 925

Rainbow skirt
Rainbow skirt, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz

In response to an email I sent earlier today, a colleague replied simply,

Yasmine,

You’re so good with detail.

In a few simple words, he managed to cheer me up and, for now, make it all okay: The long hours; the nonstop conference calls, meetings, and events that take up nearly all of my time; the fact that I’ve only had one weekend day off from work-related stuff the last two weeks, and it’ll be the same for the upcoming two weeks as well. And I hate canceling plans with friends when we’ve looked forward to our hanging-out-in-the-city date for months now – especially when I, with all my attention to detail, invited all the rockstars to hang out together and offered suggestions on where to go and what to do. I had to smile when B sent out an email saying, “Thanks to Yasmine, our master coordinator.” Being the master coordinator sucks when all the plans are a moot issue now.

So, here I am – I and my obsession with detail – stressing over deadlines when it’s a beautiful 72 degrees outside and I could be sitting in the sunshine I petitioned God for all winter long (okay, so I sort of demanded rather than requested, but, hey, He made it happen, didn’t He?).

I wish there were a way I could fast-forward this week to Saturday already.

Slowly strolling in the sweet sunshine

Glorious mundanity, NineToFive outside the 925

Somehow I trick myself into believing that if I go around wearing floaty summer dresses, winter will end all the sooner
Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz

I took the above photo in mid-January and uploaded it to flickr in mid-February. The title:

Somehow I trick myself into believing that if I go around wearing floaty summer dresses, winter will end all the sooner.

The caption:

This day’s wardrobe consisted of the following: Flared jeans + floaty summer dress + gray sweater + puffy down vest. Four, five layers on any given day is quite normal, as far as I’m concerned. This is what happens when one is a proponent of the HIPPIEFUNK style.

Also, the lighting in this photo is on crack, and winter is not ending anytime soon. Both of these things bother me – the latter more so than the former, obviously.

Well, guess, what? My trick WORKED! It’s mid-March now, and we’ve had temperatures in the 70s and 80s for the last week or so. That, coupled with the recent Daylights Savings time change (which means it gets dark later now), are as perfect as it can get. It’s only too bad I’ve barely gotten a chance to enjoy the sunshine and daylight, since I still leave work later in the evenings anyway. Lunch break? What’s that?

I hope my proposition to be your friend will not be an exemption

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Salaam Namaste

Is it just me, or is this sign disturbing?
“Not that I’m a handwriting expert or anything but that handwriting looks kinda needy,” originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

I came across the above Urdu sign last fall while wandering around with friends on the infamous-amongst-Desis Devon Street in Chicago. My buddy, Zana, calls the sign “dodgy.” The translation reads: “Girl needed for computer work.”

Speaking of dodginess, Somayya forwarded me the following email a couple of mornings ago, adding, without any prompting from my end, “You can certainly post this on your blog and we can all get a good laugh out of it. HAHA.” While she was sincerely confused as to how the…uhh, GIRL…got ahold of her email address, the note is hilarious, regardless. I present, unedited for your enjoyment, Vick from Russia:

Hi,

I got your contact from the cyberspace on my search for a sincere man who is marriage minded and have value for love and friendship and recognized the significant of having a good and sincere relationship, so I saw your profile on zackvision.com and decided to contact you and I hope my proposition to be your friend will not be an exemption.

Well I am Vick Mazur as you may know me and I am from Russia, which my father is from Russia and my mother is from Liberia but at present I live and work in the Republic of Benin in a Charity Organization but I am a very good girl from a good family, my hobbies are playing basketball, reading the bible, working hard and watching movies. I dislike people that lies and dishonest things, i am not too fat and not too thin, i am average in height, i do not smoke nor drink, white in complexion with blonde hair and a nice eye ball and i am also a easy going lady but i will leave that for you to to judge when we start this friendship and I hope you are satisfy with this little details about me and I will also pray to God to make our friendship last longer without regretting knowing each others.

Please I will like to stop for now, kindly tell me more about yourself, your profession and country so as to march one more step towards forever, honest and sincere friendship and I will send you my picture when I hear from you.

You can also reply me at my yahoo email address: [ ]

Yours truly,
Vick.

Back in business

Links to love

This is just a Public Service Announcement to let you all know (as if you really care) that all my 2003-2007 archives have been imported over from Blogger!

Those of you who don’t care about such things can just ignore this post, but others who are interested in importing from Blogger to WordPress may find this helpful, for your future reference.

Hamza, who mysteriously seems to know all about this drama, pointed me to the New Blogger importer. If you have a free weblog hosted on WordPress.com, you just log in, click Dashboard > Manage > Import > Blogger, and you’re good to go!

However, I now have a WordPress.org independently-hosted weblog, and the WordPress.org dashboard only lets you import from what they call the Old Blogger; those of us on the .org who want to import from The New Blogger Formerly Known as Beta will have to wait until WordPress 2.2 comes out.

However, if you are like Yasminay, you are hella impatient. So, I sat down and read through the ten thousand bajillion (okay, only 141) comments on that post that Hamza pointed me to, and finally found something helpful. BRILLIANT! I logged into my placeholder WordPress.com account, clicked the “Import” tab, and imported everything from Blogger. Then I clicked the “Export” tab, saved the file. Then, I logged into my brandnew fancy schmancy WordPress.org account, clicked “Import,” selected the file I had just saved, and voila!

Regardless of which way you go, this migration tool imports all your Blogger posts, comments, and categories/labels, without modifying your Blogger weblog in any way. And now I have three copies of all my weblog posts all over the internet, so I guess I can finally stop worrying.

Basically: Hamza is a rockstar, even though he’s one of those instigating chai-lovers. Thanks, buddy!

Stop sniveling and get over it

Links to love, NineToFive outside the 925

Get stoned at work
Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz

Driving along to work this morning, I heard on the radio that today is Get Over It Day. The website is hilarious – you can type out what you want to get over, and click “submit,” and it turns into a piece of paper that gets tossed into the blazing bonfire on the homepage. Here are some issues that people are getting over. Also, some girl called in to the radio station, sniffling that she wanted to get over her ex-boyfriend named Alex, who had just dumped her. Also, she was twelve. TWELVE! Yes, I laughed.

Anyway, one of my personal philosophies has always been, If you refuse to do anything about it, then you have no right to whine about it, and it’s served me well so far. In all honesty, though, Princess Pretty Pants and I whine quite a bit whenever we’re around one another – but, in our defense, at least it turns into fun stuff. Like the time PPP and HMan and I trudged up the summit path in Muir Woods. By the end of it, PPP and I were hella tired, we couldn’t even see the ocean from the top of the mountain, we whined about how much our feet ached, and we stubbornly refused to walk all the way down to my car.

So, we all hitchhiked instead. TWICE.

Beautiful solution.

A lot of my whining lately has been about work – when I can even muster up the energy to whine. And, of course, there are always random trivial things I should get over.

Things I’d like to get over:

– People who call me and don’t leave voicemessages, and then get offended when I deliberately don’t return their calls
– People who answer the phone with a tentative, questioning, “Hello?”, even though they can perfectly well tell it’s I who am calling
– People who reply to my text message(s) by immediately calling me back. If I had really wanted to have a verbal conversation with you, don’t you think I would have called you directly?

Okay, enough with the phone.

Also:

– Work-related meetings on weekday evenings
– Work-related meetings/events on weekends
– People who are micro-managers
– Traffic
– People who don’t wave when you let them merge into your lane
– People who make hanging-out plans that don’t involve food. What kind of friend are you?
– Friends who make me miss the previews when we go out to see a movie together (I LOVE previews, dammit)
– People who borrow my beloved books and music CDs and then lose them or somehow just never get around to returning them to me
– My own possessiveness about personal items like clothes, books, and accessories

What would you like to get over?

Once more: Where it begins

Blogistan and the Wide World of Webs

Things to write in: ROCKING
Things to write in: ROCKING, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

I remember when I first switched from RamblingMonologues to SweepTheSunshine.v1 (as I have taken to calling it), one of my favorite blogistanis, Binje, groused, “Yazzo, only you would go from one loooooong weblog URL to yet another long weblog URL.”

So, here we go yet again – another switch, but with a shorter URL this time. I can’t even begin to tell you how exciting it is for me to type “sweepthesunshine.com” without my fingers tripping over the keyboard, attempting to type “blogspot” without screwing it up. Then again, I can’t even type my name half the time without misspelling it, so…

This whole switching-to-Wordpress drama would not have been made possible without the help of my buddy and Tech Support Rockstar Extraordinaire HijabMan, who put up with all my questions and issues and complaints with good humor. Clearly, I pick my friends really well.

When we virtually “sat down” at our respective ends of the country and rolled up our sleeves to get started on this drama, he first told me to go ahead and install WordPress. I said, “It asks me, ‘Please create a MySQL database for this software to use.’ Holy shit, what is THAT?”

Five minutes later, thanks to HijabMan, I had a MySQL database. One minute later, WordPress was installed. Hell, that was quick. “I’m still astounded we got even this far,” I pointed out at the end of it, “but that’s cuz I didn’t have to do anything.” Clearly, I am useless, but not totally! While my Tech Support Rockstar dealt with all the complicated background stuff, I managed to tackle the minutiae – things like: Formatting the blockquotes to my liking, resizing the columns, adding an entire section to the sidebar, fiddling with the flickr plugin formatting, changing the font size and search box font and footer colors, adding that slight gray border around my photos, and ten thousand other trivial things, because I am so obsessive-compulsive and stubbornly refused to fully inhabit this space until the design was to my liking (which is a perfectly normal stance, isn’t it?). I am also the worst dictator to work with, and if you tell me that you hate my small font sizes, I will say, “I hate you, so shut up,” and kindly invite you to increase the text size from within your own browser, thankyouverymuch.

Still, I am indebted to my buddy HMan, and this is saying a lot, considering he had the audacity to offer insights like, “Your [blogger] template right now is, umm, kinda ugly.” Vat BLASPHEMY. Also, if I hear him say, “Can I make a suggestion?” one more time, I think I will stab him.

In summary:

DotCom Pros
– Shorter URL
– BETTER COMMENTING SYSTEM! (Multiple exclamation points!!!! Remember when you had to spend a ridiculous amount of time, trying to submit comments through my Enetation system on the old sweepthesunshine? And then I had to spend a ridiculous amount of time deleting repeat comments, since Enetation has issues, pretty much. Basically, that time is over. Also, I hate the Blogger commenting system with a passion.)
– Three columns = better-organized weblog. Or something.
– [I can’t remember what else. I’m still too excited about the spiffy new commenting system.]

All my weblog archives (2003-2007) are still at SweepTheSunshine.v1, because I don’t, as yet, know how to transfer them over. (Thanks a lot, Blogger Beta, for making things so complicated.) If you know how I could do so without breaking anything, please share your expertise. I’m sure you’re much more technically proficient than I am. (There is this option, actually; I’m just too scared to touch it for now.)

Anyway, let me know how you like! If something’s screwy, or could be improved, tell me.

It’s looking really empty around here, I know. I promise real posts soon. Between work meetings/deadlines and the time left over for some small semblance of a social life, I have plenty of potential posts, but little time to actually write them.

Meanwhile, welcome to my new-and-improved sunshine space – we’ll have a high of 72 degrees F on Saturday, and a high of 78 on Sunday. (Seriously, we will, at least in the East Bay, where I live! I’m really excited about this, since I was this close to renaming my weblog STALK the Sunshine.)

Once again: Numbered lists & lots of things in Threes

Resident Rockstar

This way down
This way down, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

Four years of blogging, and up ’til now I’d managed to dodge completing any memes thrown my way (I’ve been tagged for my share, though, you can be sure; I still owe you one, Maliha!), and I still don’t even know how to pronounce the word “meme,” so why don’t you rockstars help me out here?

Meanwhile, brimful tagged me for this “Three Things” drama, and then had the audacity to retort in response to my whining, “Yasmine, I knew immediately that I was going to tag you. I’m evil like that.” Luckily, I love brimful’s writing and her fantastic taste in music (don’t let her self-deprecation about either of those things fool you!), so I’m going to man up and do this.

So much for trying to step away from numerical-lists and bullet-point posts, though. And, really, I am so boring that there’s absolutely no reason why you needed to know any of the following about me. But, here we go!

Three things that scare me:
1. Car crashes
2. Getting water up my nose
3. Thinking that, one day, I’m going to raise my arm too quickly and chip my front teeth while drinking from a glass

Three people who make me laugh:
1. ummm, EVERYONE. I am so easily amused, it’s not even…funny
2. 2Scoops, for his emails/IMs/facebook wall posts/5+ minute long voicemessages where he gets cuts off/weblog comments/shared love for the Pearls Before Swine comic strip
3. Z when he uses “MUTHAFUCKLE!” in IM conversations (I can’t remember if we made this up together, or if he did singlehandedly, but it hella makes me laugh, regardless)

Three things I love:
1. My sister, and our amused, knowing glances shared across a crowded room
2. The smell of citrus, particularly tangerines and oranges
3. Punjabi songs, because they remind me a little bit of my dialect, Hindku, and thus always make me laugh in recognition

Three things I hate:
1. People who micro-manage
2. People who drive under 80mph in the fast lane
3. WINTER. &*$#($%#@!

Three things I don’t understand:
1. People who are such drama
2. People who think that wearing socks with sandals/open-toed shoes is perfectly okay
3. High school

Three things on my desk:
1. (Hiding under my keyboard:) Lots of yellow post-its, with scribbled song and book recommendations
2. An empty paper plate that used to contain a piece of pistachio baklava
3. The phone I refuse to answer, unless someone calls specifically for me, and then B has to tell me to get Line One (or Four, or whichever one it is)

Three things I’m doing right now:
1. Holding a BOYCOTT TODAY campaign, because I am annoyed with various things about today
2. Looking forward to this evening’s dinner with the lovely A!
3. Telling everyone I know that they have to join me at Suheir Hammad’s poetry session in San Francisco next week! (And, look! She’s going to be performing in Berkeley the evening before!)

Three things I want to do before I die:
1. Visit Spain
2. Drive on a cross-country roadtrip
3. Something constructive, helpful, and occasionally selfless with my life

Three things I can do:
1. Remember all the lyrics to every single Savage Garden song
2. Figure out all the places where people are missing commas in material they give me to edit (last week, it was an architect’s design portfolio in PowerPoint)
3. Ignore/reject phone calls from anyone without feeling a twinge of guilt

Three things you should listen to:
1. HijabMan singing on your voicemail, especially when it’s ’80s songs! Freakin’ awesome
2. Your heart – because, your brain? It doesn’t know jack. (…Or is it the other way around? I never listen to anything, clearly)
3. People who encourage you to buy books. Those are the friends worth keeping

Three things I’d like to learn:
1. Sign language
2. Praying the five daily ritual Islamic prayers with regularity
3. Dancing

Three favorite foods:
1. Potatoes, in pretty much any form (Samosas, masala dosas, boulani, biryani, aloo parathha, french fries, mashed potatoes…)
2. Hot apple pie with ice cream (or cold apple pie, alone)
3. Dessert of any sort – so, basically, sugar

Three beverages I drink regularly:
1. Cold water. The end. (I am so boring, really.) Irregularly now, I also drink the following:
2. Cranberry juice
3. (I wish I could say blue raspberry slurpees, but, really, it’s:) Pulp-free, organic orange juice that I take – along with fresh doughnuts – to halaqa every Sunday morning

Three TV shows/books I watched/read as a child:
1. MacGyver!
2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
3. All the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books I could get my hands on

Three people I would like to tag: (Uh, dude, who and his/her mother hasn’t filled this out yet?)
1. Arafat
2. HijabMan
3. Uzi
And some more for good measure!
4. Knicq
5. Momo
6. DeGrouchyOwl

The sun must come

Glorious mundanity, NineToFive outside the 925, Salaam Namaste

flickr beach collage via H_A
All photos originally uploaded by yaznotjaz; collage created last summer by Hashim_A, rockstar (and tea-lover. gross!) extraordinaire. Photos may be individually viewed in the Muir Beach photoset.

–
Tomorrow is the sister’s birthday, and in ten days it’s mine – and I’m so horrible at this birthday business, mine or anyone else’s. Last year, all I wanted for my birthday was sunshine. This is a predictable wish, and it worked out quite well in 2006. I already know how I’m going to spend the last day of my birthday month, this year. It’s the first day that I’ve got to figure out.

Today, I spent the morning at the dealership, learning that a 30,000 mile service and new brake pads and rotors on my car would cost a whopping grand total of $810+tax. Tomorrow morning, I should make them give me a spiffy rental car to make up for it. Spiffy cars can make up for a lot of things. That’s why people buy red sports cars when they go through mid-life crises. Me, I’m going to go through a quarter-life crisis. Perhaps, I might as well have an identity crisis, too, while I’m at it. It’ll be like this morning, when the lovely gentleman who was driving me back home from the dealership asked, “So, where are you from?” And I raised an eyebrow and responded coolly, “Oh, the Bay Area, mainly. But I also grew up living in Sacramento and a few other places.”

“Oh,” he said, and I smiled at him. There was silence for another minute, until he ventured again, politely, “I meant, where are you from originally?” I mentally threw up my hands in defeat, and replied, “Pakistan.”

“Oh, that’s nice!” he said, delighted.
“Yes, it is.”

After this morning’s car-related dramas, I’ve spent the rest of the day at work, because, unlike the rest of America, I’m not off for President’s Day. That sound you hear? That’s the sound of Yasmine unsheathing her stabbing paraphernalia – because, as Hamza asks, “What fun is life without stabbing paraphernalia?” But, seriously, what is this drama about working on a national holiday? It’s disgusting. Almost enough to make a kid contemplate unemployment. I should be sitting outside in the sunshine, looking at the fourteen plastic grocery bags filled with tangerines that we picked this weekend, eating breakfast in the courtyard – all the things my parents were doing this morning when I called home to ask the daddy-o about advice related to my car.

Instead, I’ve spent the day indoors, ostensibly project-planning, but also day-dreaming about sunshine and beaches and warm water and the day my hands will turn brown again, because, as the sister exclaimed over dinner last week, “You’re so white!”

That’s it. When spring is here for sure and the weather stays consistently warm, I’m heading down to Santa Cruz for some sunshine and sand.

Does Josh have a job? Thanks for letting me know

All-Star Crackstar Squad

When I came in to work yesterday morning, I checked my personal emails and found this one – accidentally, I’m assuming, sent the evening before by an administrator from my alma mater, to the University’s pre-health sciences listserve, of which I’m still a member (yeah, don’t ask – I don’t know why, either):

Hi, P!

Hope you had a good time with Earlene and Dorothy–and that you made it back in one piece to CM :-) I didn’t hear a peep out of SV for my birthday, but just received a message that her car is not running well because they had to put chains on (what’s that about?) and that she doesn’t have money for food or rent. Sigh. And what to do. If I call, I will have to ask that question I’m not welcome to voice (“Does Josh have a job?”), so perhaps I’ll just wait a bit. BIG SIGH!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

My first reaction was, Holy freakin’ smoley, she is going to be SO FREAKIN’ EMBARRASSED when she realizes she sent this to the entire list! My second reaction was, YEAH! Does Josh have a JOB? Get with it, Josh! And, hey, what’s THAT about CHAINS, huh? And then I kept laughing to myself the rest of the morning. I was so amused by this hilarious start to the day, that I changed my GMail away message to the following:

It’s so funny when people send emails to the wrong recipients. TOO MUCH INFORMATION, kids!

A few hours later, as I was frantically preparing for an afternoon meeting, I clicked through my open firefox tabs and found a new email in my inbox, this time from blurker, erstwhile blogger, and fellow GMail user, Shaheen, with the subject line: “Friday night.” Her email read:

Hey Jasmine!

Just thought I’d let you know that I won’t be able to go out Friday night anymore. I have to take the kids this weekend; their father’s being a real jackass and saying he can’t look after them. He probably just has another playmate on the side to take to some fancy resort, again. I don’t know when the fuck he’s gonna quit that crap. I’m just glad I got out of it as soon as I did.

Anyways… I hope you have a great night without me. Don’t drink TOO much, and make sure you tell all the hotties about me too.

Your bitchin’ buddy,
Sandy.

It is a testament to my utter cluelessness that I spent about two minutes staring confusedly at my computer screen, wondering, Whaaaa…? Who was this supposed to go to? Who is this from again?! Maybe it IS a real email! And then I laughed my ass off and IMed Shaheen with, “SUTT PANJAA!” (except I misspelled it, and she thought I was saying, “SAAT PANJA,” which means “seven fives” or something).

Shaheen, I’m sorry you’re going through so much drama and turmoil with that jackass husband of yours, but we all know I need more drama in my life anyway, so at least I get to live vicariously through you. As soon as I get back from my night of binge drinking, I’ll be sure to lend you an emotional shoulder.

PS: I love Shaheen because she introduced me to “SUTT PUNJAAA!”, which is how the Punjabis say, “HIGHFIVE!” It literally translates to, “Throw a five!” Isn’t that great?! I think it is. (Almost as good as “Oopar/ooncha paanch!”, the Urdu version.)

And the toppling sand mounds

(3)BeautifulThings, Loss and laments and letting go

We are like these things, impermanent and unpinned.
We are like these things, impermanent and unpinned; originally uploaded by yaznotjaz. [Click here for larger view.]

A few things I have been grateful for, so far this week:

one. …That so many of you took the time to read my last post about Imran Saithna. And that, for once, my commenting system seemed to cooperate just long enough that I could read your own responses to and reflections on Imran’s life. One of the things I love most about blogging is the feedback (I admit it) from those who read, and it meant so much to me that you took the time to comment on the one post that meant more to me than anything else I’ve written in a long, long while. I’m trying to move beyond posting bullet-points and numerical-lists so regularly, and trying to go back to posting deeper, more meaningful pieces of writing. The last entry was a good start, although I wish it didn’t have to begin this way. Thank you all again for the comments, the GMail IMs, and the emails. As Rick said on flickr, No one can say exactly what paths one leaves on this earth. May your friend’s path be one of heart. Amen to that.

two. …That my lovely friend A‘s fiancé has finally woken up, after being hit by a car and unconscious for two days. After the last two days of holding my breath and being too scared to venture saying the word “coma,” I am so relieved about this much. The bad news: Both his legs are broken, and doctors are still unsure about the extent of his back injuries. The fact that A is here, halfway across the world and unable to go see him, makes this doubly difficult for her. It broke my heart hearing her voicemessage on Tuesday, hearing her voice say, “I don’t really know what to do…’cuz I’m sick, too, and I’m worried…and I’m just trying to be okay, but it’s really hard. [His sister’s] leaving tomorrow, and his parents the day after…and I get to stay here…by myself.” I can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like to be so far away from someone you love. Please pray that he recovers quickly and fully, so that he and A can live happily ever after in the green house in Berkeley that A covets so much.

three. [I don’t know why this list is harder than it usually is. Here’s a third thing:] …Dinner last night with B and N, two of my favorite Pukhtu-speakers and Hindku-speakers, respectively. The evening was filled with rocking (Malaysian) food, beautiful company, and the endless laughter that always characterizes our time together. My new favorite quote is a profound statement by B’s father: “There’s no point in making money if you can’t eat good food.” Listening, amused, as both B and N regaled us with stories, I promised N I’d make up some drama of my own, so that I, too, can have stories to share next time we hang out. As someone who prides herself on the fact that her life is “gorgeously drama-free, always,” this is really going to be SUCH a process. So, I ask you, how does one imbue one’s life with drama? Please provide advice, suggestions, and/or examples.