south park studio

this is my sister, roxanne. excuse me, i should say...this is my interpretation of roxanne as a south park character. care to create your own?

Added a few hours later:
To appease Soraya, here is a variation on my "South Park Roxanne":

whatever

first of all, please get advice about how to get along with our global community from a wombat.

okay now onto my real subject. a few days ago, i turned on my computer to find that my speakers are no longer working. and it's completely random. i didn't install any new programs or download anything..i haven't done anything that i can imagine would have caused this. so i have no sound coming from my speakers. and not only that, but there is a little red light coming out from my headphone port. strange, i thought. so then when i try changing the volume, my computer starts saying, "No, no! Don't do that! Not allowed!!!!" You don't believe me? Here, i'll prove it:


I actually have my computer telling me not to change the volume. What a moody piece of technology.

Okay so then when I open system preferences I find out that my computer thinks I am somehow connected to digital speakers. I don't even have the option to switch to internal speakers. However, when I plug in my headphones, the sound works perfectly fine! like i said...moody.

So roxanne and i searched and searched all over the apple support site (p.s. i really want the iphone) and couldn't find a solution. we searched google, and i found a couple message board threads with some people who had the same problem, but none of them figured out how to fix it. oh well, who needs sound anyway, right?

luis helped me out a lot yesterday. but he still couldn't figure out what the problem was, so he suggested that i call apple. i'm in israel, so that's not the most convenient thing to do. but luis was very helpful in letting me use his computer to use skype to call while i could talk through the problem and do some troubleshooting on my own computer. the guy i talked to had me do all these complicated things i was sure would help. for example, i had to turn off my computer, disconnect the power, take out the battery, and then hold down the power button for seven seconds. okay.....that didn't help. various other tactics of this sort proved to be useless.

luis and i did one last google search and found a guy with the same problem who did actually fix it! hooray! i guess somehow he stuck a matchstick in his headphone port and tickled the inside and it fixed his problem. here, read what he said:


whatever.

meanwhile my speakers still don't work. i'm going to have to send it in for repair. great.

i am literally speechless

wow i'm not even sure where to begin. i've been in haifa, israel for two weeks, visiting my sister roxanne. so much has happened...

i arrived on december 26th, and a bunch of my extended family members were already here. if you'd like a detailed description on each one of them, visit soraya's blog. she somehow forgot to include my uncle in her description. he's not in her picture. he was probably checking to see if the restaurant we were in had wifi.

we spent a good bit of time with my family here, as well as with a bunch of groupies. i have a cousin who looks like bono, so he developed quite a fanbase here. it was great.

both my sisters, my mom, and 8 of my extended family members were all here for the new year. we had a fun little celebration at a place on the top of mount carmel called arcaffe.

the family left on january 2nd. it was a sad night for all of us. then solange left on the 4th. my mom left tonight, the 6th. so now it's just me here. i'm the last of the clan, and i get to stay until january 14th! and seriously who wouldn't want to with a view like this:

oh, and i also performed at the open mic friday night. you can watch the video here.

i must have angels

i had my last exam today! i'm done for the semester! yipeeeeeeee! funny story about my exam, though:

my exam was scheduled to be 12:20-2:20 today. so i scheduled everything around having my exam at that time. i planned my flight, i turned down lunch offers, i planned all my packing and everything around the fact that my exam was at that time.

this morning i got up at about 9:20 to get some packing and cleaning done, and i was also hoping to review a bit for my exam. but since i had so much time, i decided to take a bath. i get in the tub. it's about 9:40--when all of a sudden a thought comes to my head:

"I should get out of the tub, go to my computer, and check what time my exam is. Just in case."





















Yes, it occured to me that this was a strange thought. Why would I interrupt my lovely hot relaxing bath to check on something trivial that I already know the answer to? Still, for SOME reason, I decided to follow my instincts. So I got out of the tub, sopping wet, and I went to my computer to check my exam time. Lo and behold.....

MY EXAM IS SCHEDULED FOR 10:20-12:20!

What in the world possessed me to GET OUT OF THE TUB and check on that? I will never know! All I can say is, someone up there is watching out for me. Because there is no logical reason I should have done that. Period.

Thank God I did. Ya-Baha'u'l-Abha!

And actually, my exam went really well. I was pleasantly surprised at how well it went, especially considering the fact that I didn't review at all for it this morning. Seriously, someone up there is watching out for me.

"mom, the statue of liberty isn't silver, it's greeeeen."

i'm way too tired to try to write anything worth reading, so i will give you a photo of a halloween long ago and let you draw from it whatever conclusions you wish. enjoy.

the place 2 b

three years ago, i couldn't have named even one person i knew who lived in haifa and served at the Baha'i World Center. the story is now rapidly changing. slowly but surely, everyone i know is moving there.

okay, maybe *everyone* is a bit of an exaggeration. but it's really a lot. it is a really good thing in this case that my sister lives there. not only do i get to go for a month to see her, but i can also see all these other friends of mine who are moving there. and it truly is a magnificent place...i don't blame them for going. for more information on the Baha'i World Center or the Baha'i Faith visit this site.

i would elaborate on the whole topic, but i'm exhausted and i have piles of statistics homework to do.

better know a district

in case any of you wanted more information about where i live, you can always trust stephen colbert....