nephew

nephew
Originally uploaded by wayfarer.

This is the wonderful guy I've been spending the last few days with. What a sweetheart and happy baby. I can watch him for hours and hours. He never stops smiling and never cries. I've never in my life seen such a fuss free baby.

Colorado

Canyon Park
Originally uploaded by wayfarer.

This is a great park in Colorado where the wonderful sisters i know in Denver threw a little "party" for my visit. Thank you sisters! I had a great time. :-) Great to see them. I can't believe how green it is this year in Colorado...especially since there was snow here just a week ago!

Quote

"How rare and wonderful is that flash of a moment when we realize we have discovered a friend." - William Rostler

HELP EDUCATE YOUR NEIGHBORS ABOUT THE QURAN

CAIR urges Muslims to sponsor its "Explore the Quran" campaign

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 5/17/05) - CAIR today announced that it would offer free copies of the Quran to the American public in response to the recent controversy generated by a Newsweek article alleging that Islam's holy text was flushed down a toilet.

An item in the May 9 issue of Newsweek reported that investigators probing interrogation abuses at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay have confirmed that interrogators, in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur'an down a toilet and led a detainee around with a collar and dog leash.

Subsequently, the report of the Quran desecration sparked protests in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Gaza, where 16 people were killed and more than 100 injured, according to news reports.

Although Newsweek has since then retracted its statement and offered an apology, other news reports show that allegations of religious desecration at Guantanamo are common among ex-prisoners and have been widely reported outside the United States. SEE: http://rawstory.com/exclusives/newsweek_koran_report_516.htm

In response, CAIR is urging Muslims to help promote a better appreciation and understanding of their faith by donating to the "Explore the Quran" project. CAIR's "Explore the Quran" campaign encourages Muslim individuals, mosques and Islamic organizations to sponsor copies of the Quran, which will then be distributed to interested individuals nationwide.

The $25 packages include a copy of the Quran with Yusaf Ali's English translation and guidelines on how to handle the Quran.

"In today's climate of heightened religious sensitivities and cultural clashes, now is the time for people of all faiths to better acquaint themselves with Islam's sacred text, the Holy Qur'an," said CAIR Executive Director Nihad wad. "The 'Explore the Qur'an' campaign allows the book to speak for itself and educate those of other faith traditions about the beautiful religion of Islam."

Muslim communities and individuals can donate to the project by visiting CAIR's "Explore the Quran" web site at http://www.cair-net.org/explorethequran/.

Those who wish to obtain a free copy of the Quran, can also submit a request on the same website or call 1-800-78-ISLAM (47526).

Interesting... I didn't think my results would look anything like this. I do like the small percentage for materialism... But what is weird is the lack of belief in anything. I don't think that's true. I don't have many truths but the ones i do have are not flexable. There are three things that i have complete truths for...

You scored as Postmodernist. Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis. Fundamentalist 63% Idealist 63% Postmodernist 63% Romanticist 56% Cultural Creative 50% Existentialist 50% Modernist 31% Materialist 13% What is Your World View? (corrected...again) created with QuizFarm.com

Home

Last week was nice. My inlaws are good to be around. The days just go by. I have breakfast which does contain every food group (cereal with almonds and honey, boiled egg, toast with different cheeses and jams, fruit, and then tea. After breakfast we all talk and then my father in law and i will talk some more and have tea. Then my mother in law and i will begin prepping for lunch and father in law will go to the market if needed (markets are much better in canada by the way). Then we make lunch, pray, and then go visiting. We then make dinner, dh comes home from work, and we all eat and talk then have a yummy dessert and stay up late talking. They are good days....especially the ones where we fit in a nap.

Highlights of the week:

* The poetry reading (in Urdu) lunches. Didn't understand but a word or two but from the energy i can tell it was great. A few were read in English and they were awesome but the Urdu ones seemed to get more praise from the others. I guess i should mention that there are famous artists and poets in the family so it's a small intimate group of great talent and all family.

* DH, his friend from his days as a boy, and me went to see the movie Kingdom of Heaven. It was surprisingly good for being about the crusades and pretty fair with the history.

* When my mother in law suggested i make dinner for guests one night. To me this was big. It meant she trusted me to serve food to her friends and for it to be good. I was happy to do it.

* When father in law showed me pictures of DH when he was a baby.....aw.....

* When i was working on a book review there that i had to turn in and father in law kept checking on me making sure i didn't need anything. Tea? Pani? Is that chair comfortable? :-) I'm so spoiled there.

There's much more but that's the majority of my week. Now we are back home and it's hot and humid....and the air conditioner is not working. It's miserable. I know just a week and a half ago i was saying how i couldn't wait for the heat....well i forgot exactly how hot it got.

Good to be back home though...went for a little dessert and coffee thing yesterday at a neighborhood friends. We actually met them on the street strolling their daughter around. It's funny how we keep meeting people. A house sure does make life more sociable...loving it. We still need to invite friends over. We just haven't been motivated enough to finish getting the house in order...hanging pictures etc. I guess we need to stay home more often to get stuff done. A house, we are realizing, requires constant maintenance and not much time for other stuff. I can't remember the last time we actually watched a movie or played Scrabble or even went for a walk. :-(

Gone Fishing...

Okay not really but was away to see my inlaws for a spell. Will post soon once I recover from all the attention and overeating (astighfurllah) ;-)

Sand storm in Iraq

Sand storm in Iraq
Originally uploaded by wayfarer.

Not my picture but thought it was crazy. This is a sand storm in Iraq taken from the AFB there. Crazy!

Nice Quote

Listen, stand up in prayer during the night*,
for you are a candle,
and at night a candle stands and burns.

*Qur'an: Surah Al-Muzzamil (The Enwrapped One), 73:20

-Mathnawi [IV, 1456]
From "Jewels of Remembrance," by Rumi

You Are Milk Pocky

Your attitude: caring and charming Smooth and silkly... invigorating and natural. You are like comfort food for the soul.

What Flavor Pocky Are You?

Nature Gossip

Around our neighborhood, in the evenings, it is common for the neighbors to talk about what's going on nature wise. It's very active. So i thought i'd share the update. Six beavers have been caught in the last two weeks, a couple of which were living in our yard in a tunnel...their roof caved in and that's how i found out about it. Don't worry, they don't get killed, they are released in a better place.

The gosslings (baby geese) are alive! All six of them too! They have came back to our back yard but are being threatened by six new bachelor geese which all of us in the neighborhood don't like. These guys are amusing though - arrogant and bully's that they are. For instance, they fight with the father of the babies and make a racket. They walk the neighborhood like they own it. Just the other day i was trying to drive out and all six of them had me blocked. Equal distance from one another lined the width of the street. I honked and they still wouldn't move. I thought about running them over - they really do harass the rest of the wildlife here and have kind of taken over the neighborhood. They have kicked the mallards and other ducks out of the lake. Anyhow... the amusing thing they do is fly down the street, low and together along the length of the street which is quite funny to see. Then splash into the water. It's kind surreal.

The white duck that was here - we got the juice on him the other night. He's been missing since we moved in. Story has it that someone dumped him off here and he was a bit of a wimp and didn't know how to fly and stuff. He was big too. Well, i guess story has it that the couple he took up with...the two mallards out here became a family of three. The two little guys taught the big white one how to fly and they cruised the lake together then one day he just came up missing, like a week after we moved in. Gossip of the neighborhood is that he just flew off one day after they taught him how to fly. Typical....lol. Just kidding. But really, some people around here are heartbroken over it. I've been told not to get attached to any of them because the liklihood of them surviving (babies) or sticking around (big white one) will break my heart.

Now the turtles here are crazy big. We have some small ones but we also have some that are a foot and a half to two feet long. They are HUGE. We see them from our window. The association is trying to get rid of them too cause they just get too big.

The birds are awesome. My favorite is the one that spends most his mornings and evenings in our yard. A beautiful red robin. Bluejays were always my favorite and it's even how my favorite became blue but the neighborhood bluejay hangs out in someone elses yard...and the hawk does too. The red robin is just beautiful and his songs aren't half bad. The woodpecker is annoying...he pecks at our trees and isn't half as cute as Woody the Woodpecker. He also attacks our deck trying to get at the carpenter bee eggs (we almost have the bee situation under control - for this year anyhow). We'll see though because the eggs are to hatch in about 3-5 weeks so we'll know for sure.

Hmmm...i'm sure there's more to the wildlife situation but that covers the gossip for this week. Oh, and apparently now there are some muskrats (yuck) and racoons (i think that's who got into our trash a few weeks ago).

Flower wise and garden wise, it's just getting so beautiful around here. Everything is bloomed now, the trees are full of leaves, flowers everywhere, and all my veggies, corriander and flowers are up. I was happy to find today 8 strawberry's had come in. I thought the plants in the backyard were strawberry's and they are. Yum, can't wait till they are ripe.

That's our exciting life here. I sometimes can't believe we are still in city limits and have all this in our backyard. We were so blessed to find such a great place to live. It'll be a fun place for kids once we have them...

Oh, i should talk about the neighbors too. Met some more. One lady was very kind. She saw i needed something and invited me over to her house and gave me a box of stuff that i needed. So sweet. All our neighbors are great. Very active neighborhood. Our neighbors are out of town though - both of them. One set in Africa and the other in Dominican Republic. Oh! And this was shocking to me. One of our neighbors gave them their keys to their house for safekeeping. Okay, now we are the newest to the neighborhood and Muslim (not a popular thing to be here as the one neighbor who gave me the stuff said) - they could have given them to people they knew longer but they gave them to us! How trusting and awesome is that?

Two people in the neighborhood have me amused though. The Jehovah's Witnesses and then another set of neighbors who asked their Baptist Church to pay us a visit. DH says they just go to new residents...i say he was sent to us. The two suit clad guys did say "We heard you were new to the neighborhood..." They did bring cookies - although for homemade they really weren't very good. And when we told them we were Muslim they said "that's okay." Like i needed to be told that my chosen religion is okay. I know that. They did give us a handy dandy neighborhood guide. Funny though cause every Sunday most the neighbors go to church (it's a southern thing...even all the gay people go to church) and we are usually diddle daddling around the house - looking like heathens to the church going folks.