fasting

While fasting was interesting, I'm glad I don't have to do it every day for a month.

Coming soon, a review of An Inconvenient Truth, since Zilla asked.

just rambling

It's raining. I love being snug inside and listening to the sound of rain and thunder.

Tomorrow is the birthday of one of my roommates, the one from Pakistan. Since it's Ramadan (and she's Muslim), I told her I would fast for her birthday, so I'm going to get up at five A.M. to eat sehri with her and then not eat or drink anything all day until sunset, when she breaks fast with iftar. Is it odd that I'm kind of looking forward to it? I've never been religious myself but I've always found different religions and cultures fascinating, and the idea of trying this out to experience for one day what my roommate (who is also a really good friend) does for an entire month every year appeals to me.

I'm genuinely enjoying the whole roommate this year, now that I'm rooming with three people I'm friends with and enjoy being around. We watch TV together and take turns buying milk and bread. It's cool. It may seem odd that two girls from Ohio can coexist so well with a girl from Pakistan and a girl from Sri Lanka, but it's great fun.

Anyway. That was my pointless rambling for the day.

tv addictions

If you're going to be addicted to something, better a TV show than, say, drugs or alcohol or phone sex, right? First it was just Numb3rs, and now this year my roommates have gotten me into House, and this evening one of the roomies and I watched the premiere of Heroes, which looks awesome (like X-Men but not).

I face a dilemma, though. An Inconvenient Truth is being shown twice this week at our local theater, and a friend of mine wants me to go with her tomorrow at 9, which would mean... missing the end of House! Eek! I definitely want to see An Inconvenient Truth one way or the other, but I'd rather go Wednesday and avoid missing my TV goodness... but she can't go then. Decisions, decisions.

(And no, it wouldn't just be choosing a TV show over going out somewhere with one of my friends. I'm not quite THAT pathetic. It would be choosing one of my weekly rituals with my wonderful roommates over going out somewhere with one of my friends.)

so mad. SO MAD.

I saw Who Killed the Electric Car? with my roommate this evening.

OH. MY. GOD.

I was literally almost in tears as we were walking out of the theater, I was that upset and frustrated. Roomie and I spent pretty much the entire second half of the movie staring at the screen in open-mouthed shock at how much corporations and the government SUCK. Did you know Condoleeza Rice used to be on Chevron's board of directors? I sure as hell didn't. Roomie and I quickly came to the conclusion that she really, REALLY needs to get registered to vote between now and November so she can help get our current Republican Bush-buddy senator out of office. Because right now, my mindset is that anybody even remotely connected with this administration needs to go.

And of course, the stuff in the movie about the Bush administration wasn't even the main focus. When they showed the footage of the electric cars being secretly crushed and shredded and destroyed in the middle of the desert, and then showed the footage of the GM spokesman guy promising that all the parts from the cars would be "recycled"... and when they showed people being led away in handcuffs for trying to block the trucks that were taking the cars to be destroyed...

Y'all need to see this movie. Seriously. Now. If you're not lucky enough to have a little independent theater that show awesome films like this, you need to get your hands on it the minute it comes out on DVD.

Oh my God.

murphy's law

If it's just after midnight on Friday night, and you're returning from a friend's room in the basement of your dorm to your own room on the third floor, and you're in your pajamas and your hair is messy and you're carrying an armload of statistics textbooks, and you want nothing more than to go to bed... you're bound to step out of the elevator to find yourself face-to-face with a cute guy you know. And not even a cute guy you know well enough to consider a friend so you don't really care that much if he sees you in your pajamas with messy hair, but a cute guy you only know slightly. From band.

Cute Guy: Hi.

Me: Hi... you're an interesting person to run into in my pajamas.

Yes, I actually said that out loud.

(And yes, I spent Friday night watching television, doing statistics homework, and going to bed by twelve-thirty.)

five years ago today

I was in my ninth grade English class when my teacher said someone had attacked the World Trade Center with planes. I thought she meant fighter planes firing missiles at it or something. I didn't know what to think.

It wasn't until I got to lunch that I really realized what was going on, because TVs had been set up in the cafeteria so we could all watch the news coverage. When lunch period ended I seriously considered skipping my next class in order to stay there and keep watching CNN, and skipping class is something I would normally never ever even have thought about doing.

Anyway, my next class was biology, and my biology said something I'll never forget: "We aren't going to have another normal day for a long time." We all thought this might be just the beginning, but even though there hasn't been a major attack on American soil since then, she was right. There hasn't been a normal day since, not really, not according to what we thought was normal before that day.

I had a dentist appointment that evening.

It was a Tuesday.

Funny, the things you remember.

so apparently i've been tagged...

...by Zilla. You know, for a meme. So here goes.

1) A book that changed my life: Eats, Shoots & Leaves, because it wasn't until after I read that book that incorrect punctuation really started driving me nuts.

2) A book that I've read more than once: The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King, because there's so much awesomeness in that book that I never get tired of it. So what if my mom pointed out a big plot hole after she read it.

3) A book I'd take to a deserted island: Life of Pi. It's one of my favorite books, and it's (sort of) about a castaway in the Pacific, so it would fit well with a deserted island.

4) A book that made me laugh: Several (including a number of other books mentioned elsewhere in this post), but Catch-22 especially comes to mind, an odd book in that parts of it make me laugh out loud and parts of it (like when McWatt and Nately die) make me rather teary-eyed. Zilla, you should be ashamed of yourself that you've never finished this one.

5) A book that made me cry: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I rarely ever cry at books, but the ending of this one had me bawling.

6) A book I wish I had written: Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis. Sinclair Lewis was such an amazing writer. I wish I could write like that.

7) A book that should never have been written: The Da Vinci Code, I suppose. I've never actually read it, but I have read Angels and Demons, and it was so ridiculous and so poorly written that it definitely didn't rate a sequel.

8) A book I'm currently reading: State of the World 2006, required reading for my Environmental Alteration class.

9) A book I'm planning to read: The next one in the Lord Peter Wimsey series by Dorothy Sayers. It's Unnatural Death. I looked it up just now because I realized I didn't actually know the title of the next one in the series.

10) Who I'm tagging next: Oh, hm... Patrice and Jen, though I don't seriously expect them to do it.