apropos of anything

Last night, while Dan was allowing the untimely consumption of a potted orchid, Anne-Marie and I were at the Braves game trying not to think about our imminent doom at the hands of George W. Bush. It was so beautiful in Atlanta last night we actually did manage to forget — for a while anyway — that the man is leading the polls as far as the Electoral College is concerned.

(By the way, AM has a new blog. Go read it.)

The Braves beat the Mets 5-2, with Tom Glavine taking the loss and John Smoltz getting the save. It was the first time all season that I’ve been to a game where Smoltz appeared, as lately the Braves have lost whenever I managed to make it out to Turner Field. Also, it’s the first time I’ve seen Glavine pitch since he departed for New York, which is interesting because while he was a Brave it seemed like I had to consciously work to see a different Braves starting pitcher.

We did the classic ballpark evening — peanuts and Cracker Jacks and Cokes and popcorn and nachos. I briefly flirted with the idea of cheese fries but ended up deciding against them simply because I knew I’d only eat five before grossing myself out. It was nice to be able to let go for an evening.

Tomorrow is the first Bush/Kerry debate, and despite the President’s astounding record of never having lost a debate (astounding in the sense that I simply cannot fathom how such a thing could possibly have happened, and yet there it is on the record books), I am hoping Kerry wipes the floor with him. I’ll be watching. You should too.

Some days you wake up and think, “Wow, I don’t know if I can manage to go to work today.” But you have to go because there are deal deadlines and Ivan will think you’re shirking if you don’t show up on the day you’re supposed to clean out the fish tank.

So you hie yourself to work, looking like something the cat dragged in after a night out in Hurricane Frances, and you sit down and try to focus, except you really don’t feel well, and that’s all you can think about. Well, that and vomiting. You remember you’re supposed to call your aunt who is in the hospital due to complications from her cancer, so you talk to her for ten minutes, and she is so cheerful and upbeat despite all the pain she must be in, and you feel like pond scum for thinking you feel bad when people who have it much worse aren’t sitting around complaining.

Just as soon as you get off the phone though, you feel much worse, like you could vomit any second. You remember there is a well-stocked medicine cabinet in the breakroom, and while you’re not sure you can make it there, you don’t want to send Ken or Ivan because they might not get the right stuff. When you make it back, you’re fairly certain you’re going to vomit, but Ken doesn’t want you to vomit in his vicinity, so he shoves you into Ivan’s cube, where Ivan kindly lets you sit and offers you a trash can, the sight of which makes you want to vomit even more.

You finally manage to swallow the pills you have decided to take with hot chocolate because when you want to gulp something down, it’s always best to make sure said something is steaming as much as possible. In a few minutes, they start to kick in, and you slowly begin to feel better. Soon you feel nothing because the drugs at work are so strong the painkillers numb every nerve in your body.

Then you read a story about how President Bush is leading the polls in key swing states Florida and Wisconsin, and you want to vomit all over again. Also to move to Canada.

I finally got a copy of Aasif’s pictures from Sumaiya’s wedding. They are far and away the best pictures out of our amateur bunch. So, without further ado, a selection of his pictures (from the valima only as I’m still filtering through the ones from the actual wedding day) that I thought y’all might like to see:

Sumaiya and Dave surrounded by Sumaiya’s brothers and our uncle Sami.

Me in profile, with my cousin Rashaad in the background.

My cousin Adnaan and my father. This one’s for Ken and Ivan.

My mother. Aasif gets fancy with the black and white here.

The photographer himself, with the bride. I think I took this picture; notice the obvious difference in quality.

Aamir, Adnaan, and me. Aamir is notorious for making faces in pictures just because he can.

No pictures of Mansoor in this set, and obviously I didn’t post everything. I think there’s about 400 plus pictures when you add in everyone’s pictures, plus not everyone wants their image posted online for all and sundry to see. So. That’s all for now, folks.

In the words of Stuart’s old flame Anna Beth, let’s get that depressing stuff off the top of the page, shall we? (Okay, so she didn’t exactly say “stuff,” but I think a dozen people would drop dead from shock if I used her exact word. It’s not that they have problems with the exact word, but I don’t generally curse so much. I’m still remembering the lingering, dazed confusion that resulted when I called Greg an ass…)

Ken and Ivan (always good for a story, those two!) have spent most of the morning laughing at Batman protesting at the Buckingham Palace; it is admittedly an amusing story, especially when you are lucky enough to have access to one of the television wildfeeds and therefore can actually see what’s going on.

While I support his general cause, perhaps Mr. Hatch (remind anyone of another notorious Mr. Hatch? Let’s all take a moment to thank God that this one is wearing clothes.) should have worked out a tad more before putting on a Batman costume, because at this point, he’s even making Adam West look good. Also, the Batman connection? A stretch. Kind of like those pants, buddy…

Some people have told me September 11 wasn’t, and isn’t, a “big deal” to them. Hard as I try, I simply cannot understand why.

It’s been three years, and I still remember every detail of that day — what I did, what I wore, what I had for lunch, what time I came home from work, who I called, and who I went to go see. I remember being so horrified I couldn’t cry, even as I stood with Ivan, unable to move, watching as the towers collapsed on top of themselves. I remember how fast and hard our site crashed under the load of all the people franticly seeking information. I remember e-mailing internal versions of the homepage to Heather and Scott because they didn’t have access to television. I remember hurting for the victims and even more for the police officers and firefighters who did not stop for one moment before rushing into a battered, burning building to try to save just one more person. And I remember wondering what the events of the day would mean for Muslims in America.

It’s been three years, and our world and country have each become a much scarier place. The Patriot Act, the erosion of civil liberties, the “crusade” launched by our president, the cavalier use of the word “evil,” global estrangement, and misinformed wars that so far have resulted only in an ever-mounting death toll. And of course, the car bombs, the suicide bombs, the hotel bombs, the airplane bombs. A different kind of school shooting. Hostages. Fear.

It’s been three years, and we like to think our lives are no different than they were before — except there is a “before.” And we are expecting an “again” even as we work towards education and tolerance and, God willing, a different commander-in-chief.

Some people have told me September 11 wasn’t, and isn’t, a “big deal” to them. Hard as I try, I simply cannot understand why.

So, yeah, no more wedding posts. I was too tired and there was too much going on. I’ll try and post a couple of pictures later, after I’ve had a chance to size them down.

There is something unsettling about coming back to your house and still feeling you’re living a life that isn’t yours. I think I am still adjusting to Aamir’s being here — and to my computer’s often not being here since he’s been taking it to school with him. We reconfigured my wireless router to work with his shiny new laptop (it’s so tiny and cute!) today, so I’m expecting that I’ll be getting full ownership of my machine back soon, and that will hopefully translate into more frequent updating of this site.

I think working at a news organization gets to me sometimes; it is hard to constantly be surrounded by updates about how some band of insane people started shooting elementary school children or how another band of insane people is desperately working to blow us all up. They’ve added speakers to the large televisions in the atrium, so now we can hear the news while we eat too, and the result is so appetizing I’ve taken to eating at my desk or not eating at all. In Chicago, I saw the news — CNN.com and the BBC are in my daily rotation, after all — but it did not dominate my day or haunt my every action the way it does here. Perhaps there’s a reason I’ve been gravitating towards the non-news work lately…

I don’t want to hide from the news; pretending everything is all sunshine and lollipops never got anybody anywhere. Lately, though, it certainly seems like there’s nothing good left in the world.

The camera was on LSD, but aren’t we pretty girls?

Sumaiya and me

I’m trying to track down the other (good) copy of this picture…

This week so far has been about only the mehndhi, and now, 2000 flowers, 1000 lights, one arch, six tables, four trays, 65 chairs, and twelve tulip-shaped candleholders later, it is done. I think I can safely say everyone had an amazing time.

I am far too tired to write up anything resembling a description, so I’ll limit myself to the most important event: the stealing of the shoes.

I took Dave’s (borrowed) shoes when he went down to the basement for prayer. Some may say that was an unethical shoe stealing, but I prefer to think a savvy groom would have taken the shoes down with him and placed them somewhere among the men where he would know I wouldn’t go. (As a side note, that too may have been futile as I had secret compatriots in the boys, but he didn’t know that, did he?) After prayer, I was upstairs getting some of Sumaiya’s later-arriving friends settled, when I heard him bellow, “Hey! Where’s my shoes?” That was my cue.

The negotiation process was, like the wedding, a little different than the norm in that the girls didn’t crowd around Dave to pressure him into giving up more money. Instead, I wandered around and did my thing — whether it be eating dinner, herding people towards the henna-applying women, or mingling in the crowd — and he came to find me to work on getting his shoes back. The first bid, which was a genuine brand new Abraham Lincoln penny that Dave claimed to be worth $1000, was duly rejected with all the scorn it deserved. I countered with an offer of $250 per shoe. We eventually settled on $260 (plus an additional $40 Dave threw in just for kicks) for both shoes, but not until Dave received much taunting from both sides of the bridal party; his father and uncle in particular seemed to enjoy the whole process quite a lot, even to the point where Dave’s father offered to float him a loan.

My mother and uncle think I shouldn’t have agreed to less than $500. There was so much conversation about the “low price” of the shoes that Dave actually asked me if I was okay with it, which I was. I’d feel bad asking a grad student for too much more. He did offer me $100 protection money so I wouldn’t steal his shoes the rest of the wedding, but a mobster I am not. Yet.

More wedding news to come. There are three days left!