allow me to tell you a little about the last 10 days of my life. there was moving, there was working out, there was working, there was reading, there was guitar playing, and there was the doing of nothing.

there was the wishing that i had a car so i could get my summer started but then the feeling of well-maybe-getting-stuck-here-for-awhile-is-okay-because-i-get-to-spend-more-time-with-people-i-love.

last friday i had to bid farewell to ara as he left for cali to attend his cousin's engagement party. that was sad. he dropped me off at my place and i think we both wiped away a few tears as he walked back to his car, which was silly but endearing. he comes back today, and i have the pleasure of picking him up from the airport. stay tuned for an addition to stephanie's top ten airport moments list.

there was working. i had to work at another starbucks last weekend and let me tell you that sucked goats. i had to close twice at this other store and the chick with whom i closed on both occasions made me want to stab myself with a milk thermometer. really i'm not masochistic. i promise. it's just that every time she took it upon herself to perform a task, that duty was like the end-all task of the night, and anything else that any other employee had to do paled in importance. i mean it was just an exemplary case of good old fashioned self-centeredness, which i'm sure we've all been the culprit of, but her behavior was just freaking ridiculous. i recall a time when i made a suggestion that would help us be more expedient in the making of frappuccinos, and she said, and i quote,

"hey that's a good idea! but i would have thought of it sooner or later."

i'm not making this up. she actually said that. okay i'm done complaining.

helen and i spent two lovely nights together watching the third season of sex and the city on dvd. there you go. yes i watched it. don't worry. we closed our eyes during the bad parts.

monday i moved out of my old place and temporarily into the "dorms" at my "school." which is actually a fairly large two story house. that was fun for about a day until the staff at my college decided they were going to come in unannounced to paint and fix up the entire place so they can put the house on the market next week. i think the most traumatic part of this project for me was when i had to straddle the student services supervisor (SSS - stephanie's stalker service owns the rites on the acronym) to get to my room without getting white paint on myself. gross. really gross. if that is not worth a cut in rent, i don't know what is.

tuesday helen and i went to a funeral. well, it wasn't really a funeral. more like a wake, but the family was islamic so they might call it something different. helen got the call on monday evening that a 24-year-old gay muslim friend of hers from school had committed suicide. one of his friends was going through the guy's cell phone numbers and calling everyone to tell them the news. so she and i made the trek to elgin to go to the service. which i'm sort of still processing. we walked into a room of distraught, sweaty muslim women, and all i could think was, "i wish you knew the truth." and then i saw the mother of the deceased and my heart just broke at the thought of her having found her son with a bullet through his head in his own bed. they shuffled us into a room to view the body. it wasn't really in a casket, more like a cardboard box. they don't really do anything to the body after it dies-- no embalming, no makeup. they just clean it up a little bit and wrap it in white sheets. for the third time in my life i saw a dead body. except this one didn't get to live a long and full life like the others. this one had a hole in his right temple for all the onlookers to see. this is what can happen when someone doesn't feel loved. when they become the butt of a joke. the mother stood at her son's head, hugging all the women passing through, whispering, "you're forgiven" to many of them, which i didn't understand. she said something about her son being with Someone who loved him more than she did. and i wondered if she actually believed what she said. i mean of course you'd like to think that... but even she did not approve of his lifestyle. and from what i understand of islam, salvation is a pretty hard thing to attain. i wish you knew the truth. it's so much more cut and dry than what you think. i wish you knew the truth.