Cool

There is an art
that you practiced to perfection
in the 7th grade
to flicking your cigarette
just so

that when you do it
at 40, after trying (and
failing)
countless times to quit
you look
so cool it's juvenile

It's the fingers, performing
minor acrobatics
too fast for the amateur
eye to trace
and the butt (still lit at the end)
sailing softly 3 feet away (always
across the curb, and onto the road)
landing
at some diagonal angle
its smoke curling quietly upwards.

Total Disbelief

THEY DID IT! 6-4 and back in 7th place in the East!

****************************************************

Is this actually happening?
Are my Habs actually leading the Rangers 5-2 halfway through the hockey game? According to Boone, they are!

The pessimist in me is still still bracing for a possible loss when it's all over.

Hang in there, Habs Fans!

The realist in me says to let it go...
The optimist in me says they can do it...
The pessimist in me says there's no way (but really this is just the emotionally wounded part of me making sure that I'm not let down in case it doesn't work out)...

Tomorrow, my Habs play their latest "Must win" of the season. Against the red hot New York Rangers. Win, and they could potentially move into 7th; Lose, and they could end up in 11th or 12th...
I'm not watching tomorrow (not the whole game anyway). Too many other things to do, not to mention too painful (I could easily be someone who dies of a heart attack one day, not due to high cholesterol or any of the "regular" ailments, but from the stress watching the Habs try to make the playoffs each year induces. I will, however, be following along on Boone's Blog. The man is utterly hilarious, and I feel like he expresses all the angst we poor fans experience.

Walking Along

Ottawa winter weather is really quite the persevering little thing. This week, it rained several times, washing away what remnants of snow there were left on the streets, sidewalks, and yards, and leaving the threat of car-splashing clothes-ruiners in the form of deep puddles everywhere... Then today the snow was back with a vengeance. There is now a coat of white over Ottawa. I haven't checked the forecast to see whether I should be expecting it all to melt again tomorrow...
Here's a picture from that downtown walk a couple of weeks ago, when the snow was (still) almost all gone...

Bipolar Ideologies Just Don't Cut It

I found this great post on a site called "Mooselim" (for those of you who don't get the pun, they're playing on the Canadian Moose idea, and the Muslim idea in combination) linked from Sajda's blogroll, talking about how Muslims come in all ideological shapes and sizes, if you will, and how we can't just be lumped into "Conservatives" and "Moderates". My favourite line:

Muslims are not all neatly cubbyholed into radical, Sharia-loving, I’ll-impose-my-views-on-you-and-you’ll-like-it Conservatives or secular, freedom-worshipping, enlightened Moderates.

And it's true. Check out the rest of the post here

Downtown Ottawa

Before the last storm we got on Friday, there was a bit of a warm spell in Ottawa, tricking us into believing spring was finally here... I took advantage of this on Wednesday after work to run some errands downtown, and stopped to take a few pics.

Canada's flag, along with those for all the provinces and territories (Near Elgin and Rideau Streets)

The back stairs behind the NAC

The Chateau Laurier; one of the oldest hotels in Ottawa

Check Out The View From Here

If you've been checking this blog for a while, you've seen some of M's photography on here, because I can't resist posting the good pictures he sends me. If you read this post, you'd know that M got me a nice photography book a few months ago explaining techniques for how to take better pictures than the ones I take now… I started reading the book and then got distracted by a whole bunch of things (work, the fact that I needed to dig up my camera's user manual to figure out how to apply the techniques listed in the book, but my user manual was packed away since we were moving, playing with my niece, etc). Inspired by more of M's pics, I picked up the book again yesterday, and this time, I really DO plan on digging up my user manual and figuring out how to do some of this stuff…
In the mean time, M doesn't have a book for photography techniques, but it really doesn't matter, because he's somehow figured out how to take the amazing pics all by himself. And I think that my thievery of his pics (here and here) is what drove him to start his own blog. Now, M posts his pics at The View From Here and I can no longer take all the credit.

There are people (read "me") who love to look at beautiful things, but who are what I like to call "Creatively Challenged" visually. For example, it doesn't help my attempts to draw and paint (or play tennis, for that matter) that I don't have the greatest hand-eye coordination. Word processors have vastly improved my quality of life, because without them, others would still be struggling to make out my handwriting instead of focusing on the content of what I have to say. And let's just say that calligraphy has never been my strong point. That's why I like photography so much; I can just point at beautiful things that are already in front of me, try to capture them and that somehow makes me part of the art.
Then there are people who have a natural knack for drawing, and photography, and interior decoration; they just have a sense for what looks good, and they're able to take that sense and make it into something that's aesthetically pleasing. That's M.
Oh, and hand-eye coordination helps too ;)

The always funny "who will be imam?" dilemna

This hilarious cartoon of two brothers arguing over who will be imam, in a very Chip and Dale "You first" "oh No! You first. I insist" way is just priceless. I'm pretty sure most Muslims see this, or something very much like it, on a regular basis....

To give credit where credit is due, I found this cartoon at Maniac Muslim's website, which I found in Dr. Yaser Haddara's blogroll. If you like it, check out more of Maniac Muslim's quirky sense of humour.

Dream Jeopardy!

Got this idea from Hadeel, who got it from her friend Shane, who got it from Douglas Coupland's book "Microserfs" (Read it, it's hilarious). Sajda's followed up too. It's irresistible: you describe yourself by listing your Dream Jeopardy categories about anything trivial / frivolous:

Noha is 24 years old. She is a public servant for the Canadian federal government in Ottawa, and her dream Jeopardy categories would be:

• Montreal Canadiens current three-months of mediocrity following an amazing (and in hindsight, above their heads) start to the 2006-2007 season
• Various Gollum / Smeagol lines from Lord of the Rings
• All lines from the musical Newsies and Disney songs from the 90's / early 2000's (Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid, Mulan)
• George W. Bush's stupidest quotes
• How make wheat free, dairy free bread that doesn't taste like rocks
• The "double wrap" technique for various headscarves (aka how to put a million pins into your headscarf without a) poking yourself and b) having it look like you've got a million pins in there)
• Cute phrases uttered by my nieces and nephew
  

Very Meta

Gotta give it to Holt Renfrew. Despite their $400 ties and $50 pens, they sure know how to make good window displays... when's the last time you saw a newspaper reading the newspaper?