ive been on a streak of bad haircuts and things get urgent tonight.  i probably get a haircut about once every 4-5 weeks or so.  id say the last six months have been annoying since each cut has been sub par.  and now im pretty sure my hair is just starting to thin...at least a little...which is not unexpected when ur 30+ but at this point i cant wait around for another crappy haircut.  anyway i will try regis at the mall and time is of the essence!  better be done right!

after that i can look forward to buzz cuts.

This is my long and mostly unawaited return to my blog.  Probably more because I have little to say since life takes a boring turn when you get old and work all the time.  Anyway, it's interesting to return here at such an odd time of day.  It's post fajr but I have so much to say. 

Like many people (at least I assume many) I occasionally find myself searching for proof of God and today is one of those days that I found it.  I woke up after a horribly sad dream which included my father whose brain continues to whither away slowly.  It's not something you can see with your eyes but something you realize only when you interact with him.  Unless you are his son.  Then you feel it with your heart. In the dream I was in a room of my parent's home looking for a set of keys hidden in their living room.  Suddenly, someone was walking into the room and I turned to see who it was and it was my father carrying a janamaz but crying loudly.  Of course, it is surprising considering his dementia makes it difficult to express certain emotions.  I ran over to him and sat him down and he started to say something about one of my uncles being sick (he didn't tell me he was sick but it was inferred by his repeating my uncles name since he cannot speak anymore).  Then it hit me that he is confusing his own deterioration for something being wrong with my uncle. At that point I called over my uncle and decided to pour my heart out to my father. I wanted to explain to him what was wrong with him and how it made me feel.  The moment I started, I woke up.  It was the equivalent of a free fall in a dream when you are so shaken in your sleep you wake up.  So here I am recounting it all.  Trying to explain how it makes me feel.  How my father's sick brain makes me feel. The only problem is I can never put it into words.  I want to say its sadness but its more than that...it's just something I know and feel. 

I started this post saying how I found proof of God.  An obvious way is that Islamically we remember that we will start life as infants and end our lives in old age the same way.  If you know my dad, then you know this to be true.  But for me the real proof is in my heart where I feel my father's sickness.  I was praying fajr but the incredible emotion that was still echoing inside me from the end of that dream was my proof.  It is impossible for me to believe that so much heartache and love could simply be a natural occurrence   It has to be a creation of God.

Like most people my brain tells me to do one thing and my heart another, but they seem to working together just fine right now.  This morning I can feel the connection of my brain to my heart.  That's probably why I'm sitting here trying to figure this out by writing.  Maybe my mind is trying to soothe my heart in written words Whatever is going on I know there is an inexplicable connection between the two.  This connection is also my proof.

I feel bad sometimes talking about my dad when I know so many others who have lost their mother and father in far more tragic ways and at a much younger age.  Still its hard not to be selfish and feel sad....

Anyway, not only is my wife calling me back to bed but oddly enough, I feel better.

Good job brain.  This time you knew exactly what to do. 

who gets a cold in late june just before the start of a heat wave?  me. 

just in time for the wedding.  awesome.

thermodynamics

picking up where i last left off.  spain was a lot of fun.  trying to get around with minimal spanish and a gps that was not working kept things interesting.

i am currently suffering through some sort of stomach problems.  story of my life.  i must have eaten something that caused trouble while at some of the wedding festivities.  and that would be haroons wedding festivities including maiyons, dholki, mehndi...and next week the wedding and walima.  lets just say a lot of song and dance is going down. 

other than that i am chillin at work.  eating some pretzels and iced tea.  waiting for my next patients to come in.  i need to make some phone calls too but i am so tired from this weekend that i just dont care. 

ramadan is on the way.  late night taraweehs should be fun but lets hope that the people at the masjid turn the ACs on this year.  someone a few years back explained to the management about the physics of hot air rising and so they only turn fans on thinking that will cool the hot air above and thus cool the entire place.  whoever that person was needs to be smacked down and given a lesson in thermodynamics. 

i like to throw around the word thermodynamics.  makes me seem smart.  you can be talking about anything and mix in the word thermodynamics and people are like, damn he smart as shit.

This is just an update on life for continuity of my blog.  im mostly just too busy to keep this updated but one day i will be more consistent. 

yesterday was hals 1 yr anniversary.  amazing how quickly that went by and that also means my 1 yr is coming up in a few weeks.  thats exciting.  considering yusras and my birthday are so close to our anniversary we decided to make it a vacation too.  so we will be going to spain over that week.  im excited but as usual i dont get overly excited about that much. married life has been good alhamdulillah and i am grateful for my wife.  in july we will be traveling again but this time to california.  sadly ive never been there before and this time will be for a wedding of one of my good friends.  i took a few extra days off so that i could explore a little bit too. 

work wise ive had some relief from my normally insane work schedule and that was due to apa coming back after having inaya.  and that will last until june when she takes off for another baby on the way, inshaAllah.  I love being a maamu.  probably when apa moves i will need to explore the possibility of bringing on an associate. 

i dont normally bring up my dad here but i will today.  he is doing fine in the way of general health but his dementia continues to worsen.  i catch small changes every few weeks that signal a decline.  at this point ive come to accept where this is headed.  i havent been able to talk and have a serious conversation in 2 years with him.  but he is still here and i am happy for that.  i read a comment someone left on facebook about the disease saying that frontotemporal degeneration leaves a family in a twilight zone and thats exactly right.  i suppose it is similar to most dementias but this one does occur at a younger age and that is hard to cope with.  i can go on and on about this but i think id rather not.

sports wise its all the same in philly.  decent teams.  no champions.  thats sad.  here too i could go on and on but id rather not.  it can get ugly.  outside of philly i will add that it is going to disturbing seeing peyton manning in another uniform but seriously, why did he pick denver over sanfran?  he could probably easily have won another ring there.  let's see how the season plays out.

oh we did buy a small charcoal grill.  damn i love them.  makes some awesome burgers.  and i got it for $5...dont hate.  well its small and it was on clearance at home depot.  who knew they had a clearance section? 

and finally chumchum is doing well.  outside of her accidentally peeing on our bed when she got locked inside, shes been great.  i think she is getting less aggresive with age.  she is 6 years old this month i believe.  weve been through a lot in 6 years.  thats my pal. 

back from the subcontinent

so fantasy football ended up not ending well for me.  usual 3rd or 4th place.  oh well.

on the other hand...my trip to bangladesh and india were pretty awesome.  and thats coming from a paki so it must have been good.  i was surprised at how modernized and still behind mumbai was.  slums and beggars are still there but then there is so much commercialization and development.  id imagine compared to pakistan there is a much higher optimism as well.  perhaps the product of a stable government.  of course its been a long time since ive been to pakistan so comparisons are tough.  of all the interseting things i saw or did id say getting a facial was up there.  yeah i said it.  i think i almost died 3 times during it.  some parts burned or hurt.  at other points i couldnt breathe (steam in your face anyone?).  but damn did i feel good afterward.  but still im not sure it was worth all the near death and nervous moments.  

It's amazing how satisfying it feels to be doing well in fantasy football.  Obviously, I'm in the playoffs and I moved into the 2nd round in both my leagues.  Feeling pretty good despite having a headache and never ending cough.