And...here we go!

1. My car may be 10 years old, but it still feels new to me.

2. The weather has been so strange recently that it's hard to tell what is coming up next.

3. Lately, things seem to pile up around me faster than I can get rid of them.

4. Telling you that a certain location is one of my favorite 'hiding' places defeats the whole purpose of having a hiding place.

5. What happened to people having basic manners and treating one another with respect?

6. I can't believe it when people tell me that conquering Mount Laundry is not impossible!

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to playing games online with my sister, tomorrow my plans include an attempt to scale Mount Laundry and Sunday, I want to enjoy the Eid celebrations with my family!

Jientje from Heaven Is in Belgium, the creator of this meme, writes: "As long as people have been around, they have tried to communicate with each other. As a means of getting the message across as clearly as possible, idioms and sayings have found their way into our language. Now, because "a picture paints a thousand words", I thought it would be nice to make this a new photo challenge. The idea is to choose an idiom, or a saying, ( even slang is allowed) and illustrate it with a picture.

My theme for this week is apples.

Here we go!

When someone is the apple of your eye, he or she is your favorite person, the one you desire the most. This "apple" is The Amazing Egyptian Dude showing off the refrigerator he chose for us a few months ago.

To see entries from other participants or to play along, click here.

With the computer goblins getting my week off to really bad start, I was genuinely hard pressed to come up with five positive things to write about for this week's post. But once I remembered about the first one, it provided just enough inspiration that the others kind of fell into place. That's the power of music and a good story.


1. The power of music and story. My best friend sent me an email with a link to an Il Divo video. Thinking that I'd like to use it for a future Music Monday post, I tabbed over to You Tube and began to search for it there. "Amazing Grace" is such a popular song that finding versions of it by singers from Willie Nelson to Elvis Presley was quite easy to do. But one video in particular caught my attention for a few reasons: (1) I did not recognize the name of the artist, (2) the performance was at Carnegie Hall, so I knew he was not a nobody despite my ignorance, and (3) the video is three times as long as all the others for the same song. Curiosity piqued, I had to check it out. I am soooooooo glad that I did! Not only does Wintley Phipps have an astonishingly powerful voice, but he has the uncanny talent to tell a story in such a powerful way as to captivate an audience with the magic of his words. My only complaint about the video is that he doesn't sing as much as he tells the story behind the song. I do hope you'll take a moment to be spellbound like me!





2. Feline friends. When everything else in the world seems to be going wrong, I can always count on my cats to lift my spirits. They don't have to "do" anything, really -- they just need to "be." Like Maggie stealing my napping spot on the couch for her own nap.


3. Simple meals shared with special people. It's always a pleasure to have the kids over to just hang out with the old folks. On Sunday, we had a girls' day at my house with me, Basma, and Iman. The Amazing Egyptian Dude had things to do at the business and the Awesome Egyptian Dude was meeting up with a friend he hadn't seen in eight years, so we girls just hung around the house, watching movies and playing dominoes. When Magdy came back in the evening, he brought dinner with him -- the most amazingly huge pizza that I have ever seen in my entire life! When he put the box on the dining table, it quickly swallowed up half of it.


In addition the ginormous pizza, he brought a smaller one. Just to give you some perspective on the size here, the smaller pizza, which is a LARGE according to the pizza shop, a Pizza Hut large pan pizza is only half its size! The kids took home half the leftovers and we kept half. We ate pizza for lunch the next day at the office.

4. Tolerable weather. The temperature hasn't climbed much higher than 85 or 86 degrees all week here in the OC, and for that I am genuinely grateful. It has meant that while the power company won't love me, the Amazing Egyptian Dude and our bank account will because the need to use the a/c has significantly diminished.

5. Computer humor. Because even in the middle of a meltdown, crash, crisis, whatever you want to call it, laughter is the best medicine.


A Spanish Teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.

House for instance, is feminine: la casa.
Pencil however, is masculine: el lapiz.

A student asked, "What gender is computer?"

Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether computer should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.

The men's group decided that computer should definitely be of the feminine gender (la computadora), because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;

2 The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;

3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and

4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.


The women's group, however, concluded that computer should be Masculine (el computador), because:

1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;

2. They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves;

3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and

4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.


The women won.


Happy Friday, everyone! And don't forget tomorrow's Small World Saturday theme is SCHOOL.

When you've got a name like Carleen, finding it on things like coffee cups, keychains, t-shirts, and the like is impossible. As a kid, I remember scouring gift shops along Route 66 hoping to find something -- anything -- that had Carleen written on it. I never had any luck. My sisters didn't have problems finding kitchy little tourist gifts with their names emblazoned on them. As much as I have always loved my name, it has always been a problem.

For starters, my own grandmother consistently spelled it wrong! There aren't a whole lot of Carleens in the world to begin with and if the info that I found online is accurate, the total is 24,567. Of that number, only 6,142 of us spell our name C-A-R-L-E-E-N; the most common spelling of the name is to change the last three letters to E-N-E. So I don't really blame my grandmother for spelling my name that way; she probably figured that my mom had gotten it wrong!

Pronunciation has always been an issue with my name. In fact, it got so bad that as a kid, if I heard an authority figure call a name that ended with an "een" sound, I responded just in case they meant me. Charlene and Colleen were the two most common mistakes made with my name, but I was also called Darlene quite frequently.

Shakespeare wrote that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. It was my own sweet rose that inspired this week's Thursday Thirteen -- songs that have the names of family members in the title. But even better, there's a bit of poetic justice here. Even though I still can't find a coffee cup with my name on it, the Amazing Egyptian Dude now has a ringtone on his phone that sings my name -- yes, you heard me correctly -- whenever I call him! I can't embed the video here as that feature has been disabled, but I am thrilled to report that at last, at long, long last, my name has been given some awesome recognition, even if it is spelled wrong: Phil Vassar's Carlene.

Enjoy!




1. Ode to Billy Joe: My dad's name is Billy Joe



2. My Melody of Love: My youngest sister is named Melody



3. Sherry: My middle sister is named Sherri



4. Help Me Rhonda: I have a cousin and a niece named Ronda and Randa (different spellings, same name)



5. Nola: This is the name of my very favorite aunt in the whole wide world



6. I'm Not Lisa: My step-sister is named Lisa (well, actually it's a shortened version of her name, but it's what everyone calls her)



7. Johnny Angel: Uncle Johnny is Aunt Nola's husband



8. Bette Davis Eyes: I have an aunt (by marriage) named Betty and a crazy funny mother-in-law (not mine, my sister Melody's) named Betty



9. Christine Sixteen: My mom's youngest sister is named Christine



10. Annie's Song: I have a cousin named Anne



11. Juanita: Aunt Juanita is the woman who stole my Uncle Jerry away from me when I was five



12. Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter: Mrs. Brown was my father's grandmother, my great-grandmother



13. Suzie Q: Susan is my cousin

Jientje from Heaven Is in Belgium, the creator of this meme, writes: "As long as people have been around, they have tried to communicate with each other. As a means of getting the message across as clearly as possible, idioms and sayings have found their way into our language. Now, because "a picture paints a thousand words", I thought it would be nice to make this a new photo challenge. The idea is to choose an idiom, or a saying, ( even slang is allowed) and illustrate it with a picture. Each week we'll cover two letters of the alphabet, okay?"

To play along, click here.

Here we go!


Y is for Young Turk


"A Young Turk is a young person who is rebellious and difficult to control in a company, team or organisation" (source). Nothing could describe my maternal grandfather, Hugh Van Cise, better! Look at that man's hair! Even when it turned absolutely white as cotton when he was very young, he never ever lost it. When he died at nearly 70, he had every bit as much hair then as he does in this photo taken when he was just 17 or 18.


Z is for Zero Tolerance
**Note: This photo comes from an email I received.


Zero tolerance means that you won't overlook something, no matter how small. In this case, the zero tolerance is for waste. The photo shows a Boeing 727 that has been converted into a home. This creative "condo" cost its owner $2000 to purchase, $4000 to move, and $24,000 to renovate. Not bad for a total $30,000 investment!

My dad scanned and sent this photo of my mom to me a couple of days ago. She must have been about 5 or 6 years old, so that puts the year at about 1944 or 1945. My mom grew up in a hamlet, yes we still have them in the United States!, called Freeman in upstate New York.





Wikipedia notes that

Freeman – A hamlet in the north part of the town [of Addison] on County Road 85.

The only road in the town is the highway that runs through it. The entirety of the town consists of my great-grandmother's small farm, which now belongs to my great-uncle, his wife's family dairy farm, a Baptist Church, an old one room school house that doubled as the volunteer fire department after the kids were bussed to school in Addison, and a couple of random houses here and there.

Across the road from my Grandma Taft's house is a crick (that's a creek for anyone who doesn't speak upstatese) and when we spent summers there, that crick was our swimming hole. One of my favorite memories as a kid was swimming with the minnows, except when there were so many of them that they filled our underwear! Eeeeewww!

It's been quite a few years since I visited my mom's hometown, but I get updates from family who still live there. It hasn't changed much at all since the time this photo was taken.

Just a few things I've been thinking about . . .

Where do dirty glasses come from? I am a coffee drinker. Period. Aside from the occasional glass of iced tea, I drink coffee. Coffee requires a cup -- just one cup. I start with a clean one every morning and as I finish one cup of coffee and get ready to make another, I wash the same cup that I began the day with. The Amazing Egyptian Dude drinks a cup of coffee in the morning before he leaves for the office, and a glass of hot tea (Egyptians drink hot tea in glasses instead of cups) in the evening before he goes to bed. If he has iced tea, too, then he has used a total of 2 glasses and 1 cup. Add to this my 1 cup, and I should be washing 4 drinking vessels daily. So how come my sink is perpetually filled with dirty glasses? Where do they come from?

Ok, we do have a guest now. And the past three or four weekends, Iman, Magdy, and Basma have been here. But still, that doesn't explain how a well-stocked cupboard can go bare in a matter of minutes and my sink fill up in record time! Unless . . .

. . . is it possible that everyone but me is using a different glass or cup each time they get a drink? And if they are, why is that I'm the only one washing all of them?



Who said picnics are outdoor events? On Saturday, we went to see the opening performance of the Long Beach Shakespeare Company's production of Julius Caesar. When we've attended performances in the past, they've always been held in a park where we could bring along a picnic. So when I invited the usual group of suspects -- er, friends -- to join us, I suggested that we just continue the established pattern of everyone bringing a dish for all to share. I fried about 40 pieces of chicken, made a gigantic bowl of macaroni salad, and the Amazing Egyptian Dude filled the ice chest with water, soda, and ice.

Imagine my surprise when, as we were approaching the freeway exit, I get a call from Diana, the 4th grade BFF who joined us for the first time this year, telling me that the address from the company's website was actually a furniture building of some sort. What?! Sure enough, the performance was being held indoors at an empty furniture expo that the city of Long Beach owns. Despite the change of venue, our picnic was still on.

Although the acoustics in the building left a lot to be desired, the performance was quite good. Each member of the richly diverse cast performed his or her heart out and played as if to a full house. The dance at the Lupercalia was a bit unusual because the ancient Roman festival was celebrated to honor shepherds and this production's director turned it into a visual orgy better fitting the Bacchanalia. It is strange turns in the interpretation of the plays, like this one, that make me genuinely enjoy watching performances by local theater companies.


During the intermission, the company's Co-Artistic Director, Denis McCourt, introduced himself to us and engaged us in a friendly conversation. A very personable fellow, Denis was genuinely interested in feedback from the audience as well as ideas for future productions. It was from Denis that we learned why the venue had changed. The Furniture Expo is an empty building that belongs to the city of Long Beach. Someone, somewhere, somehow was able to convince the city to allow the building to be used for a Center for the Arts and with the city's agreement, the company is allowed to use the facility at no cost. For small theater groups such as the Long Beach Shakespeare Company, find a free venue is a godsend.

In these trying economic times, families look for things to do that cost very little. Check your city to see if they have a theater company and if the do, go see a play! It is very often free or very low cost if a fee is involved.

Here's wishing everyone the start of a great week!

Post about 5 favorite things from the past week. It can be anything that tickled your fancy: favorite quotes, posts, happenings, scriptures, recipes, pictures, great internet finds, etc., etc. Be as detailed as you like, the more detail the more fun for those of us visiting. Susanne, the hostess, just asks that it be kept family friendly. Click here to play along with us.


1. This week, I'm grateful for my baby sister and America's Got Talent. I've had a week full of seizures, most of them worse than normal, so I haven't been feeling as optimistic as I usually do. In fact, I slept away much of the week as always happens when The Brain takes charge. My sister called me yesterday to check in and knowing how much I enjoyed Britain's Got Talent, she asked what I thought of this season of America's Got Talent. Well, D-U-H, I didn't even know that it was on! After we finished chatting, I visited the NBC website and got caught up with the show. I have two favorites so far: Barbara Padilla, whose YouTube videos have the embed feature disabled, and




2. When the Amazing Egyptian Dude was acid washing, cleaning, then refilling our swimming pool on Sunday, he sent me to Home Depot for some additional supplies. Since the pool supplies are in the garden center, it provided me with the perfect opportunity to look at house plants. I was thrilled to find a new orchid plant for just $6.98!



3. Camry has fully recovered from her spay surgery and is back to her old tricks. Having had cats all my life, I know that they are fascinated by bags and boxes. Camry takes this fascination to the level of an obsessive-compulsive disorder, though! No box, no bag is safe when Camry is around.


Typically, we reuse the plastic shopping bags for the trash cans in the bathrooms and bedrooms. But after seeing Camry's latest misadventure, I'll have to remember to cut the handles so that if she grabs one, she doesn't become entangled in it.

4. My brother-in-law makes some mean felafel so when he made a huge batch on Wednesday and shared a freezer bag full of the raw mix with us, I was a quite the happy camper. Egyptians eat felafel any time, but it's especially popular as a breakfast food, like this:


Clockwise on the plate, starting at 9 o'clock is felafel, tomato, gargeer (I think this is watercress in English, but I'm not sure), parsley (beneath the gargeer), pickled turnip, and chili peppers. A dish of tahini sits at the center of the plate.

5. I am really looking forward to tomorrow! A local Shakespeare Company has a summer stock type show season at a park on the beach. Attendance is free, and the park has a picnic area. Ever since I had the brain surgery, we haven't gone. I decided that we will go this year and invited one of the Third Grade BFFs and spouse, along with some other friends and family to join us. I'll do my best to remember to take the camera along with me and get some shots of us as we picnic and enjoy Julius Caesar.

Jientje from Heaven Is in Belgium, the creator of this meme, writes: "As long as people have been around, they have tried to communicate with each other. As a means of getting the message across as clearly as possible, idioms and sayings have found their way into our language. Now, because "a picture paints a thousand words", I thought it would be nice to make this a new photo challenge. The idea is to choose an idiom, or a saying, ( even slang is allowed) and illustrate it with a picture. Each week we'll cover two letters of the alphabet, okay?"

To play along, click here.

Here we go!

S is for Shotgun Wedding
"A shotgun marriage, or shotgun wedding, is one that is forced because of pregnancy. It is also used idiomatically for a compromise, agreement or arrangement that is forced upon groups or people by necessity." (source)


T is for The World and His Wife
"If the world and his wife were somewhere, then huge numbers of people were present." (source)

To see other entries or play along, visit here.


1. If you could turn back the hands of time to correct one wrongdoing, what event would you choose and why?

I wouldn't want to turn back the hands of time to correct a wrongdoing because in doing so, I would also erase the lesson that I learned from the mistake. Do I regret some things that I've done? Of course, but I learned and moved on, trying never to repeat them.

2. Are you one for tradition? If so, what traditions do you strongly believe in? If not, what makes tradition hypocritical?

Traditions are the threads that join the panels of our lives together and without them, we're frayed and fragmented. Traditions provide us with continuity and a sense of immortality. I believe in and celebrate traditions wholeheartedly! The types of traditions that I believe most strongly in are those that are unique to every family -- things like eating certain foods only on specific special occasions. As wonderful as I think they are, though, traditions can become hypocritical if nobody knows what they mean, how they started, or why they continue. A really good example of this is found in Shirley Jackson's short story, The Lottery.


3. You were taking part in an event and you had to crossplay, who would you crossplay as and why?

I have no clue what crossplaying is, so I guess I wouldn't do it.


4. If you only had one day left to live, how would you spend your last day? Would you be tempted to live fatally if you knew you were to die the next day, and if so, what extreme measures would you take?

I'd live my last day the same as I would every other one. The only thing that I might do differently is to add an extra prayer or two.


5. What are your top five sinful materialistic items, ones you'd expect from others including those closest to you? Why are each in the position they are in?

I'm not sure what a "sinful materialistic item" is, nor do I get the second half of the first sentence. I was doing okay with this meme until now! I don't think I have any "sinful materialistic items," unless you count my cigarettes. . .


6. I am...tired but can't sleep because I woke up from a bad dream.

7. I feel...inspired to do something remarkable today.

8. I see...my computer screen and a cup of coffee on my desk.

9. I need...very little to make me happy.

10. I love...little baby ducks, clovers filled with luck, slow-moving trains, and rain
I love little country streams, sleep without dreams, flowers that bloom in May, and hay
And i love you too

I love leaves in the wind, pictures of my friends, birds in the world, and squirrels
I love coffee in a cup, little fuzzy kittens, iced tea in a glass, and grass and i love you too

I love honest open smiles, kisses from a child, tomatoes on the vine, and onions
I love winners when they cry, losers when they try, music when it's good, and life
And i love you too

**I borrowed the lyrics for Tom T. Hall's song, "I Love," and changed them up a bit.

11. I wish...that I could control The Brain instead of It controlling me.

12. I think...; therefore, I am.

13. I hear...dead people. No wait, I see dead people. I forgot what I hear.

14. I crave...mangoes in the summer.

15. I fear...bridges more than anything else.

16. I hope…For love, joy and laughter
I hope
We'll have more than we'll ever need
I hope
We'll have more happy ever afters
I hope
We can all live more fearlessly
And we can lose all the pain and misery
I hope, I hope

**I agree with the Dixie Chicks' lyrics for "I Hope."

And...here we go!


1. When I heard that I needed brain surgery, I did lots of research before making a decision to go ahead with it.

2. Prevention is the best medicine.

3. It's late, but I don't sleep much anyway.

4. Even on the worst of days, I try to remain positive always.

5. My eyes have seen beauty in the most unusual of places.

6. "Go ahead, make my day," she said strongly.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to hearing that an elderly friend who was hospitalized last night with pneumonia is doing better, tomorrow my plans include a trip to the hospital to visit my friend and Sunday, I want to recover from Saturday's family gathering at my house!

See what I get for encouraging my dad to start blogging? He's one-upped me with his most recent post for the Fourth because what took me 13 entries to accomplish, he did with a paragraph and an awesome video! Please check it out, and be sure to watch the video -- I hadn't ever heard it until just a few minutes ago.

• Please Turn Back the Years
  

Way to go, Dad!

Jientje from Heaven Is in Belgium, the creator of this meme, writes: "As long as people have been around, they have tried to communicate with each other. As a means of getting the message across as clearly as possible, idioms and sayings have found their way into our language. Now, because "a picture paints a thousand words", I thought it would be nice to make this a new photo challenge. The idea is to choose an idiom, or a saying, ( even slang is allowed) and illustrate it with a picture. Each week we'll cover two letters of the alphabet, okay? "To play along, click here.


O is for On a Dime

When something is done in a small space or in a short distance, it is done on a dime. My dad and stepmom can jitterbug on a dime!


P is for pile-up

When things are stacked on top of one another, or a large number of things appears in the same place, a pile-up occurs.

The only boys in the house are the Amazing Egyptian Dude and Marlowe, the cat. Perhaps because they are so seriously outnumbered by the females in the house (6:2), the two of them share a special bond. Whenever the AED sits on his couch, Marlowe jumps up on the arm and begins to tap him on the chest.


The tapping will continue until the AED first rubs Marlowe's chin and cheeks, then holds him for more of the same. This has become such a routine that the AED remains engrossed in whatever he's watching on TV, while Marlowe revels in the glory and drools blissfully.

Mariposa's Tales is hosting a new weekly meme, Tuesday's Tales! Though everyday here in the BLOGosphere is telling tales, Mariposa feels it would be nice to once in awhile sit back, enjoy good memories and enjoy it more by sharing those little love tales. After all happy times are best when shared with people! Tuesday's Tales is good way for us to get to know each other and share happy thoughts while making memories all at the same time.

Here we go. . .

Road trips have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. With a mom from New York, a dad from Colorado, and us in California, is it any wonder that my family is scattered across the country from coast to coast? Some of my best childhood memories involve the annual summer treks down Route 66 with either my parents and sisters or my maternal grandparents. The Amazing Egyptian Dude, Iman, and I took a 10-day road trip through several western states on our way to Yellowstone National Park some 20 years ago. We had such a great time that I have been itching to repeat the experience ever since. It wasn't until last summer that the opportunity to be "on the road again" presented itself.

The Ibrahim girls (me, Iman, and Basma) drove from California to Texas. We took our time, stopping to see sights along the way, take pictures under each WELCOME TO state sign, and just enjoy the change of scenery. Our ultimate destination was Lake Jackson and Vidor, Texas where my aunt and sister live. Whenever I visit my aunt and uncle, we take a day trip to neighboring Louisiana -- one of my favorite places to go. Last summer's trip was no exception, but this time we had Basma along, and Basma had never been to Louisiana.

To give Basma the whole Louisiana experience, we stopped at a little roadside attraction to see some alligators up close. The welcome center for this place was staffed by a very friendly elderly lady who really liked to chit-chat. While we were talking to her, she gave us all kinds of info about gators -- probably more than we would ever need to know. But the best thing she told us was that she had a baby gator that we could actually hold. I remember holding a baby gator in Florida at a place called Gatorland, but that was way back when I was 14. We decided that we were all up to the challenge, all of us, that is, except Aunt Nola.

Fearless Basma was the first to hold the baby gator. Look at how happy she is with it!

Next came Iman; she wasn't afraid, either, and enjoyed cradling the baby in her hands.

Melody, my baby sister, came next. Melody is normally a coward -- I tease her about it all the time -- but when it comes to animals of any kind, she's a S-U-C-K-E-R!

Then it was my turn. I figured that the gator would feel much like a snake and was right. Its skin was unbelievably smooth.

Finally, Aunt Nola figured that if we weren't scared, she wouldn't be either so long as we didn't make any fast moves to freak her out!


If you ever have the chance to take a road trip, take it; there's no better way to travel or make family vacation memories!