Getting organized.

The guys were out of the office today, so that means I totally got my clean on. I absolutely love an excuse to spend half the day reorganizing their mess and making everything "right" with our little world. Some would call it a waste of time, but those are the same people who can sit in a 2.5 hour meeting where nothing is accomplished and feel very good about themselves.

It's going to be okay now.

My justification for my OCD-like behavior comes next.




EXERCISE
I have already established a precedent on this blog for calling cleaning exercise. And my friend Salihah has even given us a "calories burned" figure for cleaning (100/30 min. - thanks Sali!!) so this won't be too hard. I spent about 15 minutes vacuuming, 10 minutes gathering and tossing all of the recycling and trash, 10 minutes wiping everything down and refilling the kitchenette supplies (LOVE). This was all before the 11 heavy boxes of new Annual Reports came from India, which I moved around the storage area about 4 times in total. That's real work right there! I will guesstimate that I burned about 400 calories overall just in those activities and others today. Not too shabby! I am going to go ruin it by eating some fantastic Afghani pizza (please check out their insane website in the link) but hey, I might break close to even.

Health Tip of the Day: Get rid of the messy people for a day and just go to town on your surroundings with a vacuum, some vinegar, water, and whatever towels you got on hand. You will feel better just looking at the results for the rest of the day, regardless of the physical benefits.

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ISLAM
I continued my Seerah study today and we're on Podcast #3. The topic is pre-Islam Arabia with a discussion of the origins of the word "Arab" itself and the geographical, political, and social considerations that are very important to the understanding of the coming of Muhammad's ﷺ message.

One interesting tidbit is that one of the definitions of the word 'Arab' is 'flowing speech' versus the translation of the word they used for non-Arabs which meant "mute". This will tell you how important language is to the people of Arabia, and may also explain why Allah chose this language and these people to receive the Quran in Arabic. And Allah knows best.

It's also interesting to note that the word 'Arab' wasn't used in the Quran to describe the people—it uses other variations, like "Arabi" to describe something in the Arabic language, but not the people. Huh!

Okay Imma go get that pizza I mentioned earlier and see my good friend and future landlord for the evening. A full pizza report will follow. It's that good. Seriously.