Out and about.

You have to say the post title with a Canadian accent—'oot and aboot'. Please.

Anyway, I was running around all day, dodging detours of 94E left and right, going from Arabic to a friend's house for dinner and back to St. Paul to get last minute deets on my new place (I have a key now!!). These excursions may or may not have included a trip to the ice cream shop across the street from my new home. I won't say whether or not I got a single scoop [read: gigantic pile] of "Mack Daddy" which is a pralines n' cream base with Oreos mixed in. Dude.

There's no way this ends well.

If anyone is keeping track of the food I mention on this blog compared to the tiny amount of exercise I do, they are probably coming to the conclusion that I'll never get anywhere. But remember folks, I ate like this BEFORE I started moving it for 30 minutes a day so, you know. I mean. Right?

More lame excuses coming up.




EXERCISE
Fooled ya! I don't have a lame excuse today. I actually fit in my 20 minutes of exercise WHILE at a friend's house for dinner. Because when you get comfy with people, you can just mosey on down to their guest room and walk (briskly, at an incline) on the treadmill while the three year-old makes up words in Arabic for you. He pretends he knows the words so well, you almost want to believe him. Now I wonder if the Urdu words (his other home language besides English) are made-up too. Probably.

Health Tip of the Day: Being away from home is no excuse to slack on your exermacise. Probably half of mine happens outside the house—whether I am riding those rental bikes, or walking with friends at lunch, or on someone's treadmill after eating a bunch of chicken pilau (it was really good).

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ISLAM
We had Arabic class today and in the Quran section we read the next 3 ayat in Surah Al-Baqarah. I thought I would share these here since they continue the story of the three from yesterday's post. Allah is still showing the Children of Israel mercy here, but they are just ridiculously stubborn:

And [recall] when Moses said to his people, "O my people, indeed you have wronged yourselves by your taking of the calf [for worship]. So repent to your Creator and kill yourselves. That is best for [all of] you in the sight of your Creator." Then He accepted your repentance; indeed, He is the Accepting of repentance, the Merciful.

And [recall] when you said, "O Moses, we will never believe you until we see Allah outright"; so the thunderbolt took you while you were looking on.

Then We revived you after your death that perhaps you would be grateful.

Seriously? What more did they want from Him?? If you read on in the next verses (2:57+) it gets worse. I know I wouldn't want to deal with them the way they acted, like petulant, spoiled children. The story is actually very similar to what is in the Bible about the Exodus from Egypt. It would be interesting to hear from anyone who has studied that version in-depth since I have not—please comment at will!