had dinner w/ monica at 6. ate mom's khichuri, fish, tikiya, chicken, veggies. offered monica the fish kofta. she liked it. too bad she ate 18 cookies yesterday, wouldve had the whole meal. instead, she ate arigula & spinach and strawberries. talked about what we got out of 508. she said storyboarding. i agree, storyboarding is so cool and efficient. we felt our brains were rotting from not having tests to take and textbooks to read. she was losing her latin. i'm losing my french and arabic. we'd have to start learning all over again. all the way back to see spot run... we decided instead to learn spanish. ive been dying to. love spain. live in a hispanic neighborhood. landlady's from el salvador. monica's mom lives in puerto rico. about time we picked it up. so tomorrow we're going to the bookstore and buying spanish textbooks. we'll meet 3times a week i'A, practice our spanish and invite a spanish speaker to dine with us. awesome plan. hope we can carry it through. i do need to devote my time to other projects though. like raising wads of cash for msn. like making my doc on "muslims in love". like taking my cinematography class. like writing my screenplay for "aliya wears black". like working one day a week. like producing/production designing thesis films. like memorizing juz 'amma. like watching films and reading scripts. like consolidating loans.

i live in the living room. i like it here. spacious and airy, as i said below. yeah. right next to the porch. sometimes i write on the porch, so relaxing alhamdulillah. and stimulating. just what i need.

we had mint tea on the porch after dinner. then she had to run to pick up jon b at the airport. left her arigula & spinach and strawberries and zero calorie dressing in the fridge. should bring them to the bookstore. she invited me to swim but i declined as our society has yet to acknowledge hijabis like to swim in public places fully hijabed. maybe i'll go swimming early in the morning, 6-8am. if i get lucky the lifeguard will have two X chromosomes and no one else will be around. then i'd unhijab and swim to my heart's content. i heart swimming.

commonalities: we both have low blood pressure, were math-science focused in high school, like bizarre, sci-fi-ish comedies, and commitment issues (as in marriage phobia).

she grew up with her grandmother in a rural area. as in forests and barns rural. the kids played hide and seek in the dark. so did the kids in my neighborhood. except we had railroad tracks, cars, yards and porches.