'twas the night before Purim...

yep, Purim is definitely tomorrow night.

the haman men are hanging from the chandelier (although most of them missing arms and legs already, since a certain uncle has graced us with his presence and started the feeding frenzy)

sister2, brother2, and myself are doing last minute costume preparation. although in my case, i started working on my costume at three this afternoon. i was toying with a few ideas, but as a backup, i was just going to leave my uniform on, since i have clinical Purim morning. but at a fabric shop this afternoon, an idea came to me, and at ten thirty pm, my costume was finished.

my dad is practicing his Megillah writing skills, but somehow i doubt he'll finish by tomorrow night. maybe next year...

my mother is working on the shul's chagiga for tomorrow night. am i surprised that people can be so unaccommodating? the deadline was Thursday. and then Thursday night. and then Friday morning. and then Friday afternoon. and then motzai shabbos. and still people are calling to make reservations, or have not yet paid.

brother1 is in yeshiva, but he came home today to collect some odds and ends for his costume. wonder if he'll grace us with his presence this year...

my favorite part of sleeping is the part right before falling asleep, when I'm floating in and out of consciousness, unable to talk, but able to hear what's going on around me. if you ask me what my favorite activity is, I'll say sleeping. of course, i like other things too. like poetry. and walking on the beach. and poking dead things with a stick. but sleeping is pretty high on the list. maybe it's because I'm always at a sleep deficit.

but i got woken up too many times over the weekend when i was just falling asleep.

on Friday i was so exhausted, having just finished a very full week, and decided to nap. just as i was settling in to my 'happy place', my phone buzzed. i got a text from my cousin who said she would be arriving at 4:30. i had no clue she was coming. and when i told my mom about it, she didn't either. i think my cousin had wanted to come last week but it didn't work out so my mom suggested this past week. it was just weird because she never touched base with my mom to confirm. so i hopped out of bed to go find linen to put on the bed in the guest room, and went back to sleep.

about half hour later when i was just drifting off, my phone buzzed. my cousin had arrived and i had to go pick her up from the bus.

shabbos afternoon i tried to study a bit, but memorizing drug names made me sleepy. i had just settle down when sister1 came to wake me up for seudah shlishit.

and this morning my mom came into my room at like 8:30 to tell sister1 that her boss was ready to go to work (She's an accountant so she works on Sundays during tax season)

all together, it's been a very frustrating weekend in the sleep department.

so why are people so anti-facebook?

OK, i take that back, i know why people are against it.

at a wedding recently, when the conversation turned to facebook, one girl told me,
"my mom doesn't want me to have facebook, 'cuz this whole thing happened to a cousin of mine, she was on facebook and she met this guy, whatever, she was like sort of off the derech anyway, but now she's totally not frum"

i understand the dangers, but i think at some point you gotta give people credit to be able to make the right choices.

for me, the real danger would be an addiction. i don't waste time sending flowers, or free gifts, or throwing cheesecake at my friends. in fact, the only applications i have are the Harry Potter Trivia (so my friends and i can vie for the spot of top Harry Potter junkie) and Pieces of Flair (so my friends can send me buttons that talk about how Harry Potter is better than Twilight, women are greater than men, and nurses are greater than everyone else. oh, and they try to tempt me with teasers about Twilight so I'll finish the series ) aside from that, i just love the easiness it is to keep in touch with everyone. it's having email, flickr, YouTube, and AIM all on one page.

and it's convenient too. when i had a test on electrolyte imbalance, and i was desperate, i put up my status about wanting to learn about it, and a friend emailed some recorded lectures she had from class. and when my aunt saw her brother-in-law's status about wanting to send something from England to the US, she told him that sister1 was actually in England.

you've just gotta weigh the good and bad and make a decision for yourself.

and on a totally different, but slightly related topic; it bugs me when people don't spell things correctly. facebook has spell check, people! in case you didn't realize, you can right click on the words that have a red squiggly line underneath them, and there are suggestions for the correctly spelled word. and why do people always ask me if I'm going for speech when i correct their grammar? is it so crazy to want to speak correctly?

"all day and evening classes are canceled due to the storm"

those words never sounded sweeter. i have no clue who does the recording for my college's emergency notification line, but he should know that he makes alot of people very very happy.

i had a seminary reunion yesterday, and a wedding last night so i took a chance, packed my overnight bag and set out for the more crowded parts of New York. when the wedding was over, the snow was just starting to come down, but i wasn't sure if the roads would be OK. ten minutes after i got into the car and skidded straight through a red light, i was glad i had decided to stay over at a friend. now my friend from out of town is snowed in, and my hostess friend took off from work. and the best part is that her brother was shoveling all the cars out so she shoveled mine out too.

i love snow days :)

i was only reminded that today was Rosh Chodesh when girls from my old high school asked me to "babysit" them while they decorated the school last night. i was going to spend the whole night doing homework anyway, so i dragged my computer and five million textbooks to the office and sat there writing a paper. i thought about Adar, and how important it was for us to play pranks on people (mainly our teachers) on Rosh Chodesh Adar. and then i thought about the last prank i pulled.

it was in seminary.

my friend came to me with a brilliant idea; steal everyone's shoes. every single shoe. belonging to 150 girls. many of whom were classic Brooklyn japs. so at 3 am, we systematically went through every room, in every apartment, in both dorm buildings, and collected every shoe we could find. a few rooms locked their doors at night. and some girls woke up and demanded their shoes back. but for the most part we were able to collect about 98% of all the shoes. we loaded them into wheelbarrows and wheeled them across the campus to our school building where we laid every shoe out on the ground. there were over 900 pairs. the sun was rising by the time we finished. and we smelled so bad. i could practically see the fumes rising from the shoes.

in the meantime, there was pandemonium in the dorms.

my friend woke up and attempted to slide into her slippers, and her feet touched the freezing stone floor, which confused her so much that she stumbled into her netilas yadayim bowl of freezing water, which caused her to shriek and wake up her roommate, who woke up with a start and banged her head. although the reactions in the other room weren't as drastic, people were very confused as to where all the shoes had gone.

until someone noticed that all the members of my class were missing from the dorm.

some girls laughed and applauded our prank.
some girls rolled over in bed and pulled the covers back over their heads.
and some girls got really, really mad.
they came storming up over the hill, wearing fuzzy rabbit slippers, mismatched sneakers, and some wearing no shoes at all.
and there were all their shoes. lying out in all their footful glory.
(ironically enough, my roommate and i who were in the same class, forgot to take all of our third roommate's shoes, leaving her with a pair to wear)
the madrichot thought this was a great prank and refused to listen to anyone who complained.

but the problem came when we left the building to go eat breakfast. while we'd had our first class, the Arab workers had done sponja, and now the shoes were soaked. including one 500 dollar pair of shoes. the owner of that wasn't too happy. and alot of girls swore never to speak to us again. so needless to say we were a little ostracized that day. so we kinda kept to ourselves until it all blew over.

and when i got back to my apartment, my closet was empty. my apartment-mates had taken all of my clothing and hid it. every last shirt. so we were all even.

and then the next day we got to our classroom to find that it was totally empty. some girls had snuck into the building the night before and set up our entire classroom on the roof. so we learned on the roof that day.

it was the best Rosh Chodesh Adar ever.

yesterday i made record time. i was at a vort for three minutes.



as i mentioned previously, sister1's best friend got engaged last week, and my mother insisted that i go to the vort. so i put on a coat, applied makeup, and let down my hair. i walked in, found the kallah and her mom, said mazal tov, acknowledged family members who present, and walked home. it was a total waste, because the only people who even noticed me at the vort were my parent's, sister1, her best friend, and her friend's mom. as if they haven't seen me with curly hair or no makeup. but my mom insisted that i "had to be seen" i hate that expression. it's right up there on the list with "on the market" makes me feel like a slab of meat. I'm getting auctioned off to the highest bidder. maybe we should all get on a platform and prospective mothers-in-law can come inspect us and check out our teeth. or watch us perform demonstrations of dish washing, bed making, diaper-changing and house-cleaning.

but i can't complain. because then it might imply that G-d forbid i don't want to get married.

but then again, anyone who hears me say this and mistakes my tongue-in-cheek for complaining, probably doesn't have a very good sense of humor, and chances are, i don't want to marry any offspring of theirs anyway.

today's my bloggiversary.

I've been blogging for a year.

if there's anyone out there who's been reading my blog for a year, thanks for showing an interest in my writing.

has my writing improved? i doubt it, because i blog more as a creative outlet than to actually work on my writings, but you never know.

but I'm glad to have this outlet, and thanks to Bad4 (who probably has no clue that my blog exists) cuz i read her blog which lead me to make the decision to start my own.

my first real post (it was about cellphones) was actually posted on the 20th but i set up my blog and posted a warning post as a way of introduction on the 19th