(no subject)
Bismillah.
Once upon a time I got a livejournal. It seemed like all my friends had one, and I wanted to blather weird wisdom and observational observations too. This was in 2001 I believe, which was before youtube or lolcats but after all your base. After using that first one, sepiamind, until I got sick of the name, I made another one with my own name (since deleted), then later another one with my name coded for secret-y (ywns is the Arabic consonantal skeleton: add vowels and you get yuwnus which -> Yūnus). Long not having been one for sermonizing or detailing my opinions for an audience (not since various things knocked it out of my pontificating teenage brain), this never became one of those blog dealies, and I definitely gave up on any ghost of that when my wife & I became friends with (hushed silence please) an AWARD-WINNING BLOGGER...
I started using Facebook, first to spy on er um get to know my students better, which didn't work, then, after a hiatus, to goof off with other grads. Now all these people from high school whom I didn't know then & haven't thought of for years are on it and I see status updates about their kids getting sick. Weird. Plus my collection of fellow "wacky white Muslim converts I know online" has grown and grown. They're all wacky somehow, unlike most non-converts outside of Tariqah, which is an institution basically designed to serve and contain oddballs. Bless 'em.
Grad school is hard and rocks. I'll be able to do more (have more on my plate) insha'allah in the spring because I'll just pile on the material at the beginning instead of adding incrementally. Bakhtin study group. Working through my great-grand-shaykh's hagiography. We'll see what else. Next year I'm to be a teaching assistant after a blessed year off --seriously, I can't imagine doing what I do now AND grading-- and need to get my French reading butt in gear. Auwghrhgh. Okay, breathe.
Once upon a time I got a livejournal. It seemed like all my friends had one, and I wanted to blather weird wisdom and observational observations too. This was in 2001 I believe, which was before youtube or lolcats but after all your base. After using that first one, sepiamind, until I got sick of the name, I made another one with my own name (since deleted), then later another one with my name coded for secret-y (ywns is the Arabic consonantal skeleton: add vowels and you get yuwnus which -> Yūnus). Long not having been one for sermonizing or detailing my opinions for an audience (not since various things knocked it out of my pontificating teenage brain), this never became one of those blog dealies, and I definitely gave up on any ghost of that when my wife & I became friends with (hushed silence please) an AWARD-WINNING BLOGGER...
I started using Facebook, first to spy on er um get to know my students better, which didn't work, then, after a hiatus, to goof off with other grads. Now all these people from high school whom I didn't know then & haven't thought of for years are on it and I see status updates about their kids getting sick. Weird. Plus my collection of fellow "wacky white Muslim converts I know online" has grown and grown. They're all wacky somehow, unlike most non-converts outside of Tariqah, which is an institution basically designed to serve and contain oddballs. Bless 'em.
Grad school is hard and rocks. I'll be able to do more (have more on my plate) insha'allah in the spring because I'll just pile on the material at the beginning instead of adding incrementally. Bakhtin study group. Working through my great-grand-shaykh's hagiography. We'll see what else. Next year I'm to be a teaching assistant after a blessed year off --seriously, I can't imagine doing what I do now AND grading-- and need to get my French reading butt in gear. Auwghrhgh. Okay, breathe.