A nice Stereogram

Crazy times at school/work right now - it's late April. ACT, students out for field trips, camp trips, sports, awards, concerts, road trips, contests, programs, suspensions, counselor appointments, elections, newspaper, yearbook.... Everything up in the air about hiring/firing, placements, schedules, room assignments, building assignments, expectations, disappointments, what you want to do with your life when you grow up....

I have an interview for a building transfer tomorrow. One day I really want it, the next I feel like I can't leave where I am. All in God's hands, but I may have to make a tough decision at some point, we'll see.

I hope you all are doing well!



The above is a video of an interview with Imam Siraj Wahhaj. He is a Sunni convert, one of the passing old guard of the strong African American Muslim leaders that came to Islam through the Nation of Islam movement during the Civil Rights era. Two things I admire in these men like Wahhaj and the late Warith Deen Muhammed is that they did incredible work in the arena of dawah and building legitimacy and standing for Muslims in America as part of the political and societal structures, and that they did hard and dangerous work for their congregations without adopting elitist standings for themselves - such as taking to the streets and driving out drug lords from their neighborhoods - very practical, necessary religious work that in other communities rarely gets done.

Which Way is the Horse Looking and Facing? You can see it two ways.

Just finished Black Friday shopping. Got some very good deals on a few things I specifically wanted, and finished Christmas shopping (I think.) I also bought my fabric and supplied for my next sewing project at Joann's. I "saved" a ton of money there - nearly $170 off everything there altogether. I hesitate to use the word saved, because if you're spending, you're not saving, in my book. But I got cheaper prices by a lot then if I had bought the stuff at another time. Mom finished her shopping, too.

Wednesday night we had some very strong wind come through. I had gone to bed late, at midnight, for the second night in a row, but I was woken at 2am to what sounded like an animal running around in my attic. It freaked me out. I listened to it on and off until after 4am and almost got out a ladder and crawled up in the attic to try to find the animal but I decided I didn't want an animal jumping on me in the middle of the night. As I listened to it more, I found the animal scurried the most when the wind was strongest, so it could be something blowing around in the attic a lot, although I couldn't imagine how anything would blow like that in there unless my roof was seriously damaged. In the morning I went out and checked the roof and found it fully intact but covered in these big seed pods from a tree in my yard. So I decided the mystery animal was actually the sound of these seed pods being forcefully dragged across the roof back and forth by the wind and then hitting the metal gutters really hard. I didn't hear the animal last night so hopefully that is really what it was.

We had snow tonight - yay! Forecasters say we may get more this evening. I am so happy to have snow! But at 4-something a.m. we did encounter scary roads on the way shopping.