During that long commercial break...

1. I lost everything on my hard drive. Everything. Pictures, my writing, everything. They couldn't save anything from the hard drive. I asked for it (the actual hard drive) back but they can't find it. I am so anti-CompUSA at this point. I'm especially sad to lose the novel i had begun. It's a big goal of mine to finally write the "all american novel" and i had finally begun. It's gone and now i don't have the energy to restart. :-/ Frustrating.

2. I got my computer back yesterday and am focusing my energy on killing it completely so that i can get the new one before the warranty runs out. I still can't believe it crashed twice in a month. I'm certain it'll crash on it's own but i'm going to help it along by putting it in "stress positions" as learned from Donald Rumsfield.

3. While offline i got a lot done. Cleaned house, organized, read a few books (The Illustrated Rumi- very good, Living Islam Outloud - also good but i didn't agree with these women's "progressive" islam, and i read a few other books, watched a few movies - the best of which was "Goodbye Lenin" - i absolutely LOVED the movie...so warm and touching. I also organized recipes and tried cooking a lot of new things. Also focusing on eating better and taking more care of myself because of no. 4...

4. Had a serious wake-up call regarding my parents. My relationships with both are a little awkward and bitter. My mom came very close to dying last week from a heart condition and almost heart attack and when she said her parting words to me, i lost it emotionally. I also realized over this last week just how much i love her even if our relationship is way less than perfect. I also realized how much guilt she is carrying with her. She feels bad for everything that happened to me in my youth, similar to what my father goes through these days. They are really repentent about what they did to me. What is strange is that all my life i wanted them to be sorry for things done and now that it's here and both my parents doing it at the same time, i don't know what to do with it. I want to forgive and i think i already have but i think i've become numb. I really need to fix these relationships. I've been trying to but i need to try harder. You never know when you will lose them for good.

5. I found Islamic coloring books and picture books that are mostly non-sectarian and snatched those up. Also found a store that carries more. It's ran by an Ismaeli, which i know they consider themselves shia but i'm still confused of who that dude is that they have hanging everywhere. I need to look up some information on them so i understand them a little better. Real nice guy that ran the store. He's more a sufi i think than ismaeli. He gave me a book which was nice of him. The book is by Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Looks interesting.

6. Used up some of my trade credit at two bookstores and got some interesting books in return:

-Mama Day by Gloria Naylor which people keep recommending to me.
-Kabir the Great Mistic (an old and out of date book)
- The Book of Strangers by Ian Dallas a book written in 1972 by what appears to be a hippie who became a sufi and embraced Islam - sounded out of date and therefore interesting.
-The Gift, Poems by Hafiz. Had to pick this up after Aisha spoke so highly of him.
-Sufi Essays
-Sanskrit of the Body (a book of poems)

7. My little boy is growing up so fast that it's just scary. He even has a favorite book (Chicka Chicka Boom Boom) - it makes him giggle uncontrollably. It's so exciting and sad at the same time to see him change so much in such a short amount of time. In the last week he started doing two new things, well three. One is this screeching sound. He screeches for hours at a time and then laughs. It is very amusing but at six in the morning it's not so cute. He also scoots. I don't know how but he does because every morning he is right next to me when i wake up. I don't know how he does it. He also rolled over for the first time the other day. His hands are now good at grabbing and aiming. He's always grabbed but it wasn't intentional. Now he wants to hold onto everything, and put it in his mouth. I can't believe he is four months old today. MashAllah what a dear blessing he is.

8. Please help me find my old links and perhaps some new ones too. Please see the following post and help me put my Humpty Dumpty computer back together again.