Sherlock season 2!

Soooo freakin excited... Season 2 of Sherlock is coming out in early 2012!!!! Yes! i cannot wait. at all. its supposed to have a Hound of the Baskervilles episode.. O.o and that's just the hints they release.. Best TV series ev-er. I am so addicted to bbc tv.. But this series is just beginning. Stay tuned for secrets! Season 2!

Irene, Nestle & Eid!

Lots of different things.. Let's see, we had an earthquake and a hurricane here (Irene), the latter being quite destructive with flooding and the such.. Nestle is a little house sparrow baby my sister and mom found when they went for a walk, s/he is with us now, chirping away and constantly hungry! And finally, Eid! Ramadan is over :( wow, that was waaaay too short to be a month, aint? Ikr.. So it now is Eid, we get to eat in the daytime now! Speaking of which, I have a bag of sour gummi string stuff here, but really I should save myself for lunch.. whatever.
Lots of things, and mt meetings starting next week! woot for fall! :D

Fasting, once more

Hey, hello. I need something to do. That's interesting. This is the only possibility that came up. Blah. Ok. I actually do have something interesting to say for once! I invented the BEST recipe for a greek chicken sandwich ever. Ok, so remind me why I'm talking about food AGAIN?!
Sorry, not going to share the recipe, unless I am personally requested ;)
I cannot get my mind off of food.. Oh well.
How do I get my mind off of food? Well, two main strategies these days:
1. Watching marathon episodes of Horatio Hornblower
2. Playing a 3-4 hour long Monopoly game
Yes, they both eat up time and yes they are entertaining. As opposed to reading the hundreds of pages long World History AP prep manual, which has also been what I'm doing..
Oh look my bunny is keeled over on her side and is sleeping, she looks totally dead. lol
I feel sleepy now. Ok
bYE

رمضان مبارك - Happy Ramadan!

Hi once more :) lol aaaaneyway.. it's believe it or not, AUGUST! and it's Ramadan! This is the month of mercy, but not only that, boundless, endless mercy to others around you, your family, even other animals living with you on the Earth! Isn't that wonderful and just a blessing to have a month dedicated to being merciful? Well, I think so. Agh, a quarter to two in the afternoon, the first day of Ramadan and I'm fasting as usual. You might ask so what did I eat for breakfast, well I ate at (let's see..) about 4 something in the morning, I had a quiche thing and a half slice of vanilla bean cheesecake. And I'm not AS hungry as I expected right now, despite the fact that I barely got to finish my water and I'm probably overly-dehydrated.. Well, it feels great to have made it this far, and I have to go over relatives for breaking our fast, إفطار or iftar.
Well, I'll write again later at some other time when I'm trying to tackle my hunger! Until next time

Pictures from our trip to North Carolina

Hi once more, this time I got some cool more exciting sort of stuff, even though I know barely anyone reads this to begin with.. (It's more to keep me occupied :P)
Annnyway.. so here are some pictures I took in the Lysol-label-perfect scenery of North Carolina. We went canoeing in a huge, glassy lake, it was so awesome.. Everything was intensely hilly, I mean real cliff-like driveways and everything.. My dad was trying to pull into this driveway of a friend we were visiting, the driveway no kidding was like a precipice! We all were like "No! Don't do it!" But we parked there anyway. In the end.

Babysitting!

Hey again. Yesterday me and my sisters babysat at a Rutgers Muslim Alumni Association Reunion Dinner! We did little paper plate creature crafts and Father's Day cards with the kids and we even made twisty balloons into swords, flowers, swans, and ducks for them, it was so cool and lots of fun (but a little tiring an exhausting at the same time). It's like imagine seven little hyper kids running around you and shouting "No I want a PINK sword, SHE wants the flower" and "I want TWO swords and one for him" and even "Make me a balloon NOW!". Aaaah one moment one dilemma and the next moment when you turn around some kid is trying to pull out the hair of the other because they said that "I'm not the best!".
And then there were the older second and first grade boys walking around like the ruled the world and fighting with swords and paper airplanes. So it's like "Hey you can't open that door it's the emergency exit. Wait, stop, you have to listen, I'm the babysitter."
Then they go, "You're my babysitter? Feed me porridge." ?!?! I know right... Kids totally do not make sense sometimes.
Yeah, just sometimes.

Yet another end-of-the-year shtuff shmooshed into a week

Ya. Wow. It's been.. (looking away calculating on fingers) FOUR MONTHS! *gasp* this is terrible! I've been so busy I've never got time to post :( Well, yay now I can!
End-of-the-year-ness shtuff, end of Latin class (a really hectic test with not a moment where someone wasn't talking, oh geez), end of the year e3 gala (Ted and Nate graduated this time, watermelon!), and I gots summer things in a few weeks too (time flies so fast. One moment it's the middle of winter and mock trial craziness addiction ect and the next moment it's the end of summer and you're saying bye to everyone see ya next yr!)...
Good news, though! Now that it's summer I'm gonna be muuuuch better about posting regularly and stuff ^_^
Finished my high school bio textbook too and my exhibition, and Finding Agnes and my Islamophobia article (that's gonna get PUBLISHED soon!!) and the ezine stuff! I just LOVE finishing off things. It just gives you SUCH a good feeling of fulfillment like you actually did something. Well, I have to get back to my busy life now, but I will pull myself to a stop every so often to write about what is going on. Until next time... adios

North Carolina - April 2011

We are in North Carolina! this is amal. This is maryam. Hi!!! this is Safiyyah!!!!! I love trips!!! YAY!!!!!
sup this is zaynab im in north carolina...ya its pretty awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!:)Zaynab's shorthand is reallllly lame... You should have seen what it looked like before i changed it.... Bye

IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Check this out if you don't actually believe Climate Change is happening!
;) Have fun

My DOT is Shut off the lights when I leave a room!

My DOT is Shut off the lights when I leave a room!

C'mon everyone! It's free! Get a dot NOW! (Do One Thing)

There are 61593 kids who pledged DOTs!!!!!!!!!!! Be the 61594th! :D

The Truth About Red 40

You might be wondering, why would anyone want to write about this?!, but this is how it started. For the past year, every time I have eaten M&Ms or Skittles with my little sister, she has flatly refused to eat only the red colored M&Ms or Skittles, saying there were bugs in the red dye, which, at the time, I thought was just a preposterous childish whim. As this ‘refusal to eat red’ continued however, I reconsidered what might have given her such a far-fetched notion, and that just hyped up my curiousity level, so I did a little research on what exactly Red 40 is. Here’s the real truth about that red dye you see in almost all candy and drinks. Red 40 or FD&C Red Dye #40 can be made of a few different things. The proper name for Red 40 is actually is 6hydroxy52methoxy5methyl4sulfophenyl-azo2naphthalenesulfonic acid, but since that is just a really long word for such a tiny molecule, the Red 40 chemical is often just referred to as an “azo” dye. Red 40 can be either made out of petroleum or coal tar or out of cochineal. Cochineal is actually a red dye derived from dead carcasses of the cochineal beetle (Dactylopius coccus) found in Mexico and South America. These beetles are mainly found on cacti in deserts of these places, and many are used to make Red 40 dye. The way you can distiguish if something red that you’re eating has Red 40 that’s from the cochineal beetles is that you can look in the ingredients. If you find “crimson”, “carmine”, or “cochineal” after Red 40, then you know there are dead carcasses of cochineal beetles in what you are about to eat. I did also find a lot of posts on sites like YahooAnswers from people who said that children have sensitivity to red 40, including temper tantrums, hyperactivity, aggressive behavior, uncontrollable crying and screaming, kicking, nervousness, dizziness, inability to concentrate and sit still among other findings. I am not sure that’s completely true, but many people had posted similar results. There is, however a natural alternative to the Red 40 dye, if cochineal beetles aren’t natural enough already. Beetroot powder has been used in many organic products in place of Red 40, with the same color effects. Well, I don’t know about you, but I sure will glance over that ingredients list before I put some potential cochineal beetle carcasses in my mouth!

As of tonight, January 28, 2011, 8:10 pm

Hi again. Guess who? (ok i know,I am soo out of it..)
Anyway, my life is officially turned upside down topsy turvy a muddle of craziness that I can barely keep up with! Well, too many things are happening/have happened, and the oddest thing is that all of them seem like 'dreams come true'. Not the saying, LITERALLY. I mean first of all, I dream about my cousin's family and my Mock Trial team all in ONE dream, and next, guess what?! No kidding, I have MT eliminations early tomorrow and my family came from faraway?!
MY LIFE IS MESSED UP