veiled4allah

this one's for you, Mom

In honor of Mother's Day, Mothers in Islamic Teaching, an article I wrote back in 2001. Because we can never repay our mothers for everything they do for us. :)

ups and downs

Good: American Muslims may raise as much money for earthquake relief as the U.S. government has pledged for the entire country Abhorrent: Iranian leader calls for Israel to be wiped off the map. Istighfirullah (seek forgiveness of God for wrongdoing). More on anti-Semitism. Muslims, let's do a lot more of the first and leave off the second, huh?

back again

Returned from my vacation yesterday evening. I had a great time. My sister's wedding was wonderful. Best of luck to her and her husband in their new life together :) We also had a great time at Yosemite National Park, which is a beautiful place. Luckily, we just missed the flooding in Yosemite Valley that closed that part of the park a couple days before we got there. In other notes, I turned 32 during the week. The three-year anniversary of Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs is coming up in just a few days (on May 24). Hard to believe I've been blogging that long.

vacation

I'll be gone on vacation during the coming week. I'm attending my sister's wedding, then am visiting Yosemite National Park with my family. It should be fun, inshallah. I'll be back late on Friday.

on the personal front

My sister is getting married this spring. :D My parents and I have suspected for awhile that this day would come ;) Congratulations, sis! :blob: In other news, and a bit late, it's been just over six months since I first started doing some work for Six Apart (the actual anniversary was in late January; I started in late July). At that time I was an independent contractor doing "piecework" for them, getting paid by each job that I completed. On September 1, I started working full time in another area for them, and on November 1, I was converted to be a regular employee. This is one of the best jobs I've ever had and I love the convenience of working from home, al-hamdulillah. Thank you, Six Apart. Plus, you make the great software that powers this and all my other blogs ;)

home again

I'm back home again. I actually arrived yesterday but was too tired to blog until today. I have a backlog of articles and stuff that I found, mostly for my clip blog, that I didn't have time to post during my trip. I wasn't planning to post to veiled4allah either but that thing about 27% of people thinking that all Muslim Americans should register their locations with the government - that is so disturbing that I couldn't wait so I blogged it immediately after I saw it. I was thinking about it a lot because of being on a business trip. If I had to register my location with the government, that means that I would have to get permission from the government to go on a business trip, inform the local office in Seattle that I'm going to be gone, check in with another local office in San Mateo to let them know I'm there, inform them again when I'm leaving, and then check in with the Seattle office again when I get back home. And all of this not because I've been proved to be a dangerous criminal but because of my religion. What makes me especially upset is that the same people who support something that violates American ideals and American law so much are the ones who say that I'm anti-American or un-American for being a Muslim or for having liberal political beliefs. And 27% of Americans think this? There is something that is very disturbingly wrong in this country today and it scares me to death when I think about it too much. As some of you might guess from the mention of San Mateo, as well as the fact that I would only be going on a business trip for my employer, I was going to the Six Apart office, which is currently located in San Mateo, California. It was a chance to meet the rest of the support team in person since all of us work remotely, including my manager. I also got to meet everybody who works at the office (except for one guy who was out sick). So we had support team meetings, a very productive meeting of the TypePad product team (I work in TypePad support), a full staff meeting, and a meeting of the support team with our direct supervisors the VP of Product and the CEO. Finally, there was a holiday party where I mostly hung out with some other people who, like me, don't drink and don't really like parties. I didn't have any problems with airport security on either leg of the trip (in case it's not clear, I don't wear my face veil when traveling because Muslim women are required to unveil their faces when it's needed to verify their identity and in any case I believe face veiling is religiously recommended rather than religiously obligatory, so I wear it when I can and don't when I can't). Despite the new security regulations, things went much more smoothly than when I last travelled two years ago. It's a bit more of a hassle that only passengers with boarding passes can go to the gates now; when you're meeting someone you've never seen in person before, it's easier to find them in the smaller crowd at the gate than in the huge crowds at baggage claim. But overall, everything went smoothly, al-hamdulillah.

out of town

I'll be in California on a business trip from Wednesday to Saturday. I'm taking along my laptop and will have internet access at the hotel, but I'm not sure how much time I'll have for posting to the blog.

salam

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I've been very busy at work - put in about 55 hours this week - because of the latest upgrade to TypePad. Add that to the Ramadan fast, and I've been too tired to think of anything creative to post here.

yeah, I'm still here

I haven't been posting to this blog lately, but I've posted several articles to my clip blog in the last few days so you might want to check it out, inshallah. My sister recently spent her two-week vacation staying with my parents, who live not far from me. She's been working on her doctoral degree while working full time and by the time the academic year was over she was pretty burned out so she decided to come home and let Mom pamper her. It seems to have done the trick as she's now back at work and doing great. It was good to see her again. Now that she lives and works in California I only see her maybe once a year or less often than that. My sister and I are very different and we haven't always gotten along but we're family and we love each other. I've always felt very blessed in having a family that loves me and supports and respects my choices. I'm still keeping comments closed on the blog for the time being even though I miss getting the feedback. After I contacted Juno.com's abuse center about the email harassment I was receiving, they took action and I haven't had any trouble with that since then. However, there isn't any real way to block comment harassment. I'm hoping that that jerk finally gave up and went away but I'm kind of burned out on the internet right now and I don't feel like dealing with it. Maybe later on, inshallah. Thanks to everybody who's still reading (if anybody is). I'm really suprised at all the people out there who seem to be able to blog consistently over long periods of time, I guess they don't go through phases where they don't have the motivation or something. Props to them.

yes, I'm still alive

I thought I'd best post just to check in and let you know this blog hasn't been abandoned, LOL. The weather here is lovely this week, after having rained most of Memorial Day weekend (go figure). My parents are leaving soon for their summer vacation; they're doing a cruise on the Danube river and will be stopping in Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania. My mom's family is originally from Slovenia; they won't be visiting Slovenia but will be in that general vicinity. My mom hopes to visit Slovenia some time to see where her ancestors lived. At one time, my dad's security clearance at work prevented anybody in the family from going to Eastern Europe and the first thing that came to mind when I heard about this vacation was that I was glad they're finally letting my dad go, LOL.