Depressive Housekeeping August 5, 2007

You have to start with the dishes that have not been sitting around for several days.  The old ones need to soak in soapy water so the food gunk comes off.  The trick is not to think too much.  Overanalysis will lead to not finishing the dishes.  Actually, any analysis will lead to not finishing the dishes.  In extreme cases, it is also advised to turn off the TV, unplug the phone, etc., to avoid becoming distracted by things that will lead you away from the kitchen.  Distraction spells disaster.

Once you rinse the dishes, they need to go straight into the dishwasher, no exceptions.  Problems arise if clean dishes are still in the dishwasher from the last time it was run.  If there are clean dishes in the dishwasher, things must be done in this order:

1. Put all dirty dishes in soapy water to soak.
2. Empty clean dishes from dishwasher; continue until all clean dishes are in cabinets.  Don’t think, just do!
3. Rinse dirty dishes.  As they are rinsed, put them in the dishwasher.

It might be helpful to prepare the garbage to take out at the same time.  Sometimes this is distracting and the dishes will not be finished.  Again, it is helpful to not contemplate the task, just to do it.

If you have something to listen to on the radio or on CD, this might help stop the thinking.  It might also be helpful to make coffee or another beverage during the cleaning (something to comfort you).  This is not the time to think about the food in the refrigerator that needs to be thrown out.

After the dishes are in the dishwasher, keep moving by scrubbing the sink and the countertops.  Have the cleaning supplies in the kitchen to avoid the possibility that this will not get done.  This is not the time to worry about how dirty the floor is…that can be saved for later.

Bibliophilia Goes Global…(or How I Became a BookMooch Junkie) April 4, 2007

I can’t deny it any longer…I have an addiction.  I am hopelessly and completely addicted to BookMooch.com!  I can’t stop myself from mooching and giving books, my library is increasing instead of decreasing…I check the site and my email several times a day hoping someone has mooched something or received a book I sent to them…

How did this happen?  It all started with del.icio.us…

My primary computer these days is the laptop provided through my job.  The company I work for started to go through an extremely high-profile merger/acquistion (the company talking heads call it a “merger of equals”…really, some other company bought us) and I thought it might be a good idea if I removed anything personal from the company laptop just in case I came in one morning to find a pink slip and an empty box on my desk.  Once I started that project I realized I needed a different place to save my bookmarks…and I had a LOT of them!  So that’s how del.icio.us came into my life…I moved most of my bookmarks to my new del.icio.us page and, having nothing better to do, started snooping around on other del.icio.us users’ bookmark lists.  I did a search on “books” and that’s how I found…<insert hallalujah chorus here>…LibraryThing.com!!

What genius thought this up??!?  A user-friendly community-based way to catalogue your entire library!!  And it’s FREE!!  Well, it’s free if you only have a couple hundred books you want to catalogue…for collections like mine…let’s just say I happily paid a nominal fee to have lifetime use of the site for my library and leave it at that.  (For the curious, I’ve included a link to my catalogue…right side of the page, scroll down a little, there ya go!)

I took most of a weekend and catalogued (almost) my entire library/book collection/random stacks of bound material.  I’m a total bookish nerd child, but I haven’t had that much fun on a website in a very long time…anyway, while taking a cataloguing break, I noticed a link that said “swap yours”.  Hmmm…what could that possibly mean?  Curious, I clicked it…

…and there it was!  A link to BookMooch.com!  <More angels singing…>  I investigated and discovered that what I had been hoping for for so very long actually existed!  A place where I can trade books (the ones that I cannot sell on Amazon.com) for other books!  A place that allows books I actually want to read to show up in my mailbox!  Books I don’t have to return to the library…oh glorious day!

So I went through my catalogue from LibraryThing and created an inventory of books that I was willing to send to people.  This is the way it works…for every book you upload you receive 1/10th of a BookMooch point.  For every 1 BookMooch point you have, you can mooch a book from someone else (in your own country; if you want to mooch internationally it will cost 2 points for the same book).  Within a matter of hours I had fellow BookMoochers requesting books from me!  I have already sent out over 30 books since the middle of February…

But now I can’t stop myself…!  I love the site so much I asked the guy who runs it to send me business cards, so I can help him advertise…I know, I know, I need some sort of help, some type of intervention, maybe.  Seriously, though, check it out.  Maybe you have some books you wouldn’t mind parting with in exchange for others?  I bet you do…!

Photo Op for Mahmoud April 4, 2007

Well, crisis averted.  President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided to free those feisty British sailors!  Mahmoud handed out medals to commanders in his Navy for their bravery in capturing the British.  He is releasing the sailors as a gift to the British people but he is disappointed that Britain has not admitted it was wrong for sending its sailors into Iranian waters.

Tony Blair had no comment.

I hope Mahmoud enjoyed his press conference…

One more time from the secretarial pool… March 30, 2007

Until a few weeks ago when Human Resources asked her to leave, our department had a slightly wacky secretary…er, administrative assistant.  I can’t diagnose her exactly, but it seems there should definitely be an entry in the DSM that covered her symptoms.  I know, this all sounds terrible…I really don’t mean it to be.  I’m sure she had a good heart, but strange things happened while she was here.  Very strange things…

Let’s call her Dorothy…we discovered the other day that Dorothy had files on everyone in the department.  This concept is fine, of course, nothing wrong with organizing work by the people that requested it.  Her filing cabinet held multi-colored folders, each neatly labeled with one of our names on it.  She also had folders for each person we had ever interviewed, regardless of whether they were hired or not…

When I came into work yesterday morning I had a pile of these folders on my desk, one for each of the people on my team, as well as for our interview candidates.  Her manager had cleaned out the filing cabinet and was distributing them among the supervisors.  I resisted perusing through them for a full hour and a half, but then my curiosity got the better of me.  I was a bit surprised at what I found.  I was expecting copies of expense reports, meeting requests, office supply orders, etc. – nothing but the usual administrative ephemera.  What I actually found was…well, it can only be explained as an online journal in the form of emails to herself!  But these were hardcopy printouts of the emails to herself.  I have no idea why someone would write an email to themselves and less of an idea why you would then print them out and distribute them randomly in file folders with people’s names on them!  There was also information on leasing a Lotus (the car, not the plant), as well as copies of patient information that I shredded right away.  My suspicion is that Dorothy must have been hitting the reprint button on the color printer at her desk because there was no reason she should ever have access to patient information.  Recipes, receipts, more copies of email messages (between her and other people this time)…I got the impression maybe the filing system was a ruse of some kind, a way to hide the documents, not actually a way to file them…<sigh>…

The thing is, we knew something was a little off when we interviewed her.  She was older, lived in Atlanta, but said it was no problem to move to Phoenix even though we weren’t offering any re-location money.  Dorothy said she could fit everything in her Jeep Cherokee…hmmm.  When she arrived she parked her fully loaded Jeep in the parking lot at work – for a week!  I’m not sure where she was sleeping/eating/bathing, but she did have different clothes on every day.  Then she let us know that a “friend” had agreed to let her stay at her place.  A few weeks later the “friend” decided to kick Dorothy to the curb and she had to find an apartment.  She was convinced that she could go to an apartment complex, get the keys and move in that day.  I’m not sure there is a complex in the Valley that would allow that, but ok to try.  The poor dear came back later that day very dejected - the earliest she could move in was in a week.

The department manager, Dorothy and I started talking about the difficulties of moving to a new city (the manager and I had both relocated to Arizona from Chicago).  I started to tell them about the slight problem I was having with my bank.  I bank with a national bank, so I thought there would be no problem with my account when I moved.  I was wrong.  My bank insisted that the delays with my deposits were due to my “Chicago” account number and that if I opened a different account that originated in Arizona the processing would be much faster.  I doubted this and did not want the hassle of changing my bank account.  Then Dorothy offered a suggestion…”What you need to do is go to the library, get a library card, take the library card to the bank and say ‘See, I am an Arizona resident!’”  The department manager and I literally froze…after a few seconds that felt like an eternity, I mustered a “uh, right, thanks…” and tried to take the conversation in a different direction.  To this day I have not discovered the relationship between the bank account and the library card…<sigh>…

“Rediscovering Islam” Class…Week 10 (I think) March 29, 2007

For me, it’s more like “Discovering Islam”, I guess.  As a new convert, I have more than my fair share of “Eureka!” moments on Wednesday nights…:)  The blessed part is that each week I have an opportunity to feel like I belong to something, even though intellectually I know that I do.

I talked more tonight than I planned on talking.  Sr. Miriam was discussing the first Muslims and how when they went to establish Medina they were really living in exile and that being a new convert was like a form of exile…exile from the religion we grew up in, possibly family and friends, and also from the larger society in certain ways.  She compared this to the feeling immigrants have when they come to a new country.  The difference, I said, is that immigrants don’t have the advantages of the coping mechanisms we have with this society.  Even though I might be misunderstood, or ostracized in some cases, by certain people, I am not in a foreign land with no understanding about the system around me.  I can more easily navigate the waters of being the “other” for the first time because I am still living within the confines of my native land.

She asked about our experiences since becoming Muslim.  I admitted that I was not prepared with answers for some of the questions I received.  To some questions, I think my answers were adequate; however, there are other questions I wish I had the opportunity to attempt to answer again.  Several times I should have handled certain situations in an alternate way.

Take wearing hijab, for example.  I anticipated some of the questions I received after starting to wear hijab “full-time”…”Do you have to wear that scarf all the time?”…”What is it for?”…”Is it political?”…”Is someone forcing you to wear it?”  These questions I answered easily.  One question was a bit more difficult to answer…”So no makeup and you’re wearing a scarf on your head – is the idea to look as ugly as possible?”  This one came from my co-worker who had a George W.-type smirk on his face as he said it!  I tried to stop the indignation in my voice, but it was too late…he got me.  I got a bit angry and answered his rudeness with nastiness of my own.  <Sigh>…I can only look at this particular incident as a test for me to check my temper in the face of ignorance and insults.  Since then I see each day as a series of small tests – testing my patience, my poise, my duty and sometimes my faith…but Allah knows what is best.

I’m not a criminal, I have allergies! March 29, 2007

Ok, so I understand why I have to provide my driver’s license when I buy Claritin-D, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it!  …ah, but Claritin…wonder drug, so far!  And it doesn’t make me fall asleep like some of the others.  The only problem is my local Walgreen’s only had the 24-hour ones, so I have to wait a while to take another one if this one wears off early…or should I chance it?

Just a little desert dust blowing around… March 29, 2007

Inaugural entries are always a little odd…I mean where to begin?  I think the best thing to do is jump right in – explanations will come as the writing rolls on…let’s start with last night’s wind…

So last night’s wicked wind blowing in from the west scared the cat, caused me to wrap my scarf around my face and slightly change my dinner plans.  We like to forget we actually live in a desert with all the strange and wonderful desert weather, but nights like last night serve as awesome reminders, subhanallah!  I had plans with Amelie* to take her out for dinner (sushi…yum!) at Celsius, a restaurant near my apartment.  They have a nice little patio, but their indoor seating only makes up about 1/3 of their tables, so the wind forced us inside to a couple of stools at the sushi bar.  Alhamdoulillah, we still had a great time and enjoyed our maki!

When I woke up this morning I had the sniffles…actually, it was more of a full-blown allergy attack!  I think all the world’s pollen landed in my apartment and triggered my allergies.  I have been entertaining my co-workers with sneezing and sniffles all day.  The only allergy medicine I had in the apartment was Benadryl…guaranteed to put me to sleep for hours, so not a good choice before work.  Definitely need to hit the drugstore on the way home…:)

Unfortunately, I had washed and hung my rugs out on the balcony yesterday morning and forgot about them last night!  The rugs ended up on the roof (I have to retrieve them this evening somehow) and my patio furniture was tossed around a bit.  It has about a 6-inch coating of desert dust on it…more cleaning to do…sigh…  The wind brought much cooler weather with it, so we’re back down in the 60s today.

It was Co-Worker Amelie’s birthday today, so we took her out for a wonderful Italian lunch at Nick’s Pasta and Pizza in Scottsdale.  Really fun!  Eloise brought a cake in for her and we all contributed to a big bag of girly stuff for her gift (body butter, shower gel, etc.). Mango “flavor”…yum!  I bought the bag of stuff at Costco of all places!!  I didn’t really want to ‘fess up to where it came from and when I told people they were like “Really???!?!?”  Seriously, it was a nice bag of girl treats…I had a hard time not keeping it for myself…;-)

My “Rediscovering Islam” class is happening again tonight…one of the guys in the class just said his shahada and according to Sr. Miriam is soooo happy!  We have such a good group in class and it’s nice to hear different perspectives because everyone is from a different cultural background.  I think we will be finishing the discussing the life of Muhammad (SAW) and moving on to discussing shari’ah tonight, insha’allah.  More later…because there is sooooo much more!

 * All names changed to protect the innocent…and the not so innocent…among us