apropos of anything

Tonight I upgraded to WordPress 2.6 beta, which decimated my existing database structure (at least so far as the categories are concerned). That’s why some of the posts are floating around without any particular association.

Tonight I also decided it would be nice to switch out my old pre-Web 2.0 layout to a bright shiny new one, but because the upgrade went… flawfully and because I got started late since I spent the earlier part of my evening addressing invitations for Aamir’s valima, we are still in progress. Significantly.

I’m hoping to get everything cleaned up by Monday. See you on the other side!

…you know who you are.

Obviously, it doesn’t take much to make me happy.

I’ve locked the previous post because it seems wrong to devote several paragraphs to my hair if I generally wear hijab in public. Please email me if you’d like to read it. For the record, this one’s probably only open to girls, though.

And speaking of locked posts: I’ve had a couple people tell me, “I figured if you wanted me to read it, you’d email me the password.” So we’re clear — I don’t usually lock posts to keep regular readers out but instead because I don’t want Random Guy Who Arrives By Google Search (or Creepy Stalker Who Arrives By Google Search) to read them. If you’re a regular, and you’d like to read a locked post — please email me.

I know there was a speech yesterday. If you’ve only heard the sound bytes, you should read it or watch it for yourself. I thought it was honest and intelligent and awesome, but I don’t want to write about it just yet. All my words on this subject are so scattered the only way I could write about it right now is with abstract poetry.

Me, not a poet so much. In the meantime, let’s talk about other things! Scattered things, but in prose.

I made the world peace cookies today. They’re yummy as always, but I think I am still a little scared of overworking the batter. I didn’t make the logs as tightly as I should have, so the cookies crumbled a little upon slicing. I haphazardly patched them back together, but they still made the ugliest cookies I have ever seen in my life, and that includes the time I watched somebody make chewy cocoa cookies with non-fat yogurt. I’m going to have to serve these with the lights dimmed.

There was a tornado on Friday. It looked like this:

After it was done, my office building looked like this:

By Monday, they’d boarded up all the broken windows as well as the holes in the roof. My desk is on another side of the building, so I didn’t get affected at all (except for the still spottily functioning elevators). In those first few post-tornado hours Friday night, I worried mostly for the people who worked the overnight shift and partly for the building itself. If I am perfectly honest, I probably spend more time in that building than in any other, and as much as we joke about business continuity, I never thought I’d actually see it with its windows blown out.

We got several hours of wind and rain today (which probably barely made a dent in our overall water shortage, which means our esteemed state government may be continuing with its plans to annex Tennessee and eventually steal its Jack Daniels). The APD blocked off all the streets surrounding the affected buildings so pedestrians wouldn’t get knocked unconscious by falling windowpanes. And inside our building… well, they did this:

It was raining outside… and inside, too. I am ready for my office to be whole again now. Also for my front window to stop leaking. I wonder whether the HOA would actually make fixing it a priority if I followed Alicia’s suggestion and borrowed one of those tarps to tackily cover the leaky window.

If not, I suppose I always have ugly cookies as a consolation prize.

Just busy, and a wee bit obsessed (with many things: my leaky front window, the drought, tomorrow’s severe weather forecast, the Texas and Ohio primaries, the growing food price crisis, the falling dollar, and a certain television show, to name a few).

But I promise, new post tonight, possibly even about none of those things, because obsessions shouldn’t really be encouraged (except of course if you are my DVD supplier because as much as I hold your enabling entirely responsible, if you cut me off cold turkey, I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE).

Eeks, y’all. I’m tired. It’s December 19th, which means I’ve gone twelve whole days without a post. I can’t believe it’s been so long. Also, it’s Eid — happy, happy Eid to everyone, and especially the lucky hajjis in Saudi, who I hope are praying for me, particularly as I am doing my best not to be overwhelmingly jealous that they are there and I am not. That’s actually a post I’ll be writing in the morning (also known as later today) when I’m not facing the prospect of being up at 6 for prayer at 8 (because if you are late, you miss the takbeers, and the takbeers are the best part, especially when Mansoor and Nadeem are doing them).

I’ve been working, and making cookies, and working some more. How have you been?

So I’m wondering, does it make me a bad person that I read the 2008 hurricane forecast — seven hurricanes, three of them “major” — and thought, “Halleleujah”?