While I insist that Eid is the lamest excuse for a vacation ever, I still managed to have a very good time with the family (that extends to funny degrees), as well as eat more meat than I have eaten in a while :)
Hope your Eid is being as lovely as mine (or Thanksgiving, or weekend, or whatever it is you’re currently celebrating).

A few pictures just to let you know what I mean:

Now that that is said and done, I should be back shortly, as soon as I’m done getting my neurons tangled up with Twilight, as soon as I’m done kissing cheeks.

:)

Via the charming Emmanuel Vivier’s blog.

I have been a reader since I was a very young child. Before I learned to read, I would pester my mom endlessly to read to me. As soon as I learned to read, I read everything that my hands possibly found, often not understanding a single word.

I guess during those early days of book exploring, I discovered vampires. It could have been R. L. Stine, it could have been abridged Bram Stoker, it could have been L. J. Smith, it was probably Christopher Pike, but it also could have been Anne Rice.

The world of vampires lured me into the fantasy genre, and I never got out of it. I’ll always find something entertaining in a book about fantastical creatures, even if its one of the most hyped up books in the world.

Currently, I’m reading Twilight, after I sort of enjoyed the movie when I watched it thanks to the hottness of Pattinson on MBC Max. My awesome friend Lina got me her copies (Lina and I are book soulmates), and I started the first one last night (after reading the entire series on Wikipedia) :)

And I gotta say this, loud and clear: THE BOOK IS ACTUALLY GOOD.

Okay, Mormon mom isn’t a quarter as eloquent as Anne Rice, and is no where near the brilliance of J.K.Rowling, and the plot isn’t even slightly as smart as that of His Dark Materials, but it’s good reading.

Recommended for anyone looking for a super quick, and entertaining, read (the 500 pages took me around 3 hours).

Other book reviews on AndFarAway:

The Mists of Avalon 
All My Friends are Superheroes 
The Lord of the Rings
His Dark Materials
Persepolis

I’m browsing the web.

Obviously.

I’m ALWAYS browsing the web, even when I’m sinking knee-deep in design, or sitting at a relative’s place faking polite interest (sometimes on my phone, other times in my head).

I’m constantly reading online, feeling sorry for myself because I can’t read faster, or remember more of what I read. I skim and scan, often mindlessly, just to close the current tab and go to the next.

I bookmark sites, clip away phrases, and crave my childhood ability to memorize great chapters, great books, great sentences. I still remember the books I memorized when I was 10. I don’t remember the sentence I tried to get myself to memorize last night.

The digital scatterbrain. That is I.

I know everything. Just give me a second to google it. I know nothing. I do know it’s somewhere online.

It’s 12:12, and I’m facing my daily challenge of shutting down. Not before I share this link with you though, which is why I decided to write this post in the first place.

It’s called “Overhearing the Internet“, and it was written in 1993. I was eight years old, a year shy of discovering my addiction to MS Encarta, and four years shy of logging on.

An excerpt:

“Thus the answer to Big Question #4–Will the Net alter the very metaphysics of human existence?–is: not really. The attraction of cyberspace isn’t so much that it radically transforms human interaction as that it leaves the feeling of interaction intact.”

Fifteen years on, the answer to Big Question #4 is a FAIL.

As a bonus, the link also has a much more FAILish article about the digital smiley.

Daily office conversation:

- “I’m hungry.”
- “So am I.”
- “What shall we order?”
- “Let’s order X.”
- “X is too expensive.”
- “How about Y?”
- “Y is too oily.”
- “How about Z?”
- “EWWWWW.”

And it goes on and on. Usually for an hour. I’m sure this happens often with other companies as well, so I’ve created this handy little flow-chart that will hopefully make ordering decisions much easier :)

Enjoy!

Moose: “Roobee, come look, I have a gift for you. I planted you roses in the midst of my corn stock.”

Good thing I prefer digital flowers over real ones, I guess :)