Good weekends

I like the first week of school, because you can have plenty of fun on the weekends since the work hasn't really begun! Last night included coffee with some of my first year girls, followed by star gazing on Libe Slope. I finally saw the Big Dipper!! Plus, we saw Cassiopeia, Orion (of course), Taurus, Mars, and others. Today was Kristine's birthday pampering day. We both got our haircut, lunch at Moe's, followed by a round of dominoes in which I lost hilariously badly, and then off to Syracuse to see "27 Dresses" and then dinner at Carrabba's. The movie was fun, very sweet of course, with lots of amusingly hideous dresses of course. Dinner was delicious, especially since I had a gluten-free baguette to eat while everyone else was eating bread too! Yay for the wonderfulness that is Wegmans for being close to the restaurant, having gluten-free bread, and having a microwave (it was "par baked") to finish cooking it and making it warm and soft. Plus, the snow falling was beautiful! Huge clumps of snow flakes falling together. When looking up, I first thought, "It looks like I'm in a snow globe!" because the flakes were so perfectly space and round, etc. Then, for some reason, I thought, "This is what those crystalline structures looked like in chemistry class when they drew the molecule view of ice!" For some reason, that's what the snow looked like :). Caught a few on my tongue, and overall it was just beautiful.

Tonight as I was looking for a card that I bought at Green Acre a long time ago with the poem "This is faith" by Ruhiyyih Khanum, I generated a new reading list for myself. It includes the compilations "Question Time at the Italian Summer School", "The Power of Divine Assistance", and "The Forces of Our Time". I'm especially excited about remembering that last one, since I haven't read it yet and brought it back from my year of service. One of those that got put on the bookshelf and forgotten. Plus, I'm looking for The Geography of Bliss, Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress (thanks for the suggestions Erin), and PS, I Love You. I'm currently re-reading Eat, Pray, Love because I didn't have anything to read when I finished the Outlander series (loved, loved, loved it.... LOVED the main characters like I've never loved book characters before... I really felt like I knew them and they were friends of mine.). Eat, Pray, Love is so well-written, it's impressive to have a book make you smile, laugh, ponder, meditate, cry, and think, "Of course, that's exactly how I feel sometimes!" all in a few pages.

In just four days, the Baha'i community here will change dramatically yet again. This community has seen so many goodbyes in the last 2 years and only 2 hellos (one of which was me!). Well, 4 hellos... two new babies, two new students. I cannot imagine finishing my doctoral dissertation and moving across the world all within a week and a half. It does make you realize how much stuff we have to lead our lives.

I'm still loving the music I acquired at the DC Congress. I'll leave you with some of my favorite lines:

"All I wanted was your sincerity, and all I needed was for you to be true to me. Let's let it go now, let it go now. I didn't know what I wanted, you needed someone who did." - Martin Kerr, "Sincerity"

"Sprawled on the sofa, just want to be alone, to hide from the sadness of being on my own. Just like the drunkard so ashamed of his vice, he drinks all day long to forget it." -Martin Kerr, "Chicken's Feet"

"Never knew I'd lost what it is I found, and with all this love within, can't tell where I end, don't know where you begin. Staring up beneath the stars, realizing who you are, I will even make my plea, though the world may not believe. Still I'll be holding on, and when my strength is gone, these photos of your face will remind me of this place... I have seen the inside, there's no way I could hide. To the world I must die, but you'll be by my side." -Kelsey Bulkin, "Whirlpool"

Sick and tired

This is just a venting post. I'm very sick of getting sick for absolutely no reason. For example, today was a good day. I got home, thinking about going to a Ruhi book 3, and then I am all of a sudden completely nauseous. I'm a good little experimental patient, start taking notes, and take the medicine we're trying out again. Half an hour later, I'm sicker. Yes, that's right, I get sicker. I am so tired of having random, horrible stomach nausea and pain of pretty much any sort. I'm also tired of having doctors tell me, "Well it looks like to me that, besides the celiac, you're a very healthy person." If I'm a healthy person, why is it that every few weeks, I get a nasty illness that puts me on the couch for as little as half a day and as much as almost a week! Does that sound healthy to you? I don't think so. And I must say, it's not so much fun having a large chunks of time unexpectedly taken away. Not to mention the almost daily somewhat dull, sometimes more sharp, stomach pain that likes to pop up randomly and stay with me for a few hours or days. Being sick used to mean I got to relax and take it easy. The only problem is when I'm sick all the time, and I still want to lead my life!!!! I'm hoping that the pain has subsided long enough that I can get some sleep tonight. Please, all of you out there, pray for me to get better and/or for the doctors to figure out something so that they can help me feel better. I got a good couple years of healthy life, and I want that back.

Who knows me best?

This morning I held devotions by myself, as no one was able to join me in person (though another person did join me in spirit by saying prayers at her own home). It was a very sweet prayer experience. I picked up Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, just to read a passage, and came across this quote:

"Ye are better known to the inmates of the Kingdom on high than ye are known to your own selves. Think ye these words to be vain and empty? Would that ye had the power to perceive the things your Lord, the All-Merciful, doth see -- things that attest the excellence of your rank, that bear witness to the greatness of your worth, that proclaim the sublimity of your station! God grant that your desires and unmortified passions may not hinder you from that which hath been ordained for you." Baha'u'llah

This quote humbled and comforted me and made me want to work so much harder at the same time. God has created us with such incredible purpose and capacity, and it's so easy for us to forget that. But we always have the help of those souls who have passed away, who dwell in the Kingdom on high (one of the Baha'i terms for "heaven" or the place that our souls go when we die), and they are with us every step of the way. Those souls that we love are still there with us, and know us better than we know ourselves, even ones that we never knew in this physical world! We can draw on that love and assistance whenever we need it, as long as we remember that they are there.

"Friends" + math = laughter

In an episode of "Friends", Chandler and Ross are arguing as to who is stronger. Ross is arguing that he is stronger, and the dialogue follows:

Chandler: Prove it!
Ross: Oh I'll prove it, I'll prove it like a theorem!

It's the first time I've heard the word theorem used on an average sitcom, it made me appreciate the writers of Friends so much more!