Full House
Okay, living in a 2-bedroom condo is taking its toll. It's my grandmother's 80th birthday celebration on Saturday, and more and more people are starting to fly in. I'm going to find out how a canned sardine must feel, pretty soon. You do the math: 2 bedrooms, with my uncle, me, my mom, my dad, my grandmother, my brother, my other uncle and other aunt from Chicago, and
then another aunt. Whew! Talk about maximizing the space!
And for some reason, everyone lines up to use
my bathroom instead of my uncle's. In the morning, my grandmother, father and mother all start calling out to each other.
"Hurry up and get in the shower, 'cause I'm next!"
"No, you go first!"
"No, you go first, because I'm still doing this."
"Okay, you two won't go? I will."
"Okay, hurry up, I'm next."
And then of course at night when it's time to go to sleep and I'm already in bed, the door creeps open, and one by one, they come in to brush their teeth and change into their bedclothes. And they really do try to keep it down....
"I'm just going to change too."
"Shh! Keep it down! She's sleeping."
"Did I wake you? Sorry. I'm just going to change."
That's my family. Sigh. :P
Weekend Recap
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This weekend was all about eating. On Saturday, Tito Gary had his housewarming party, with the food as swanky as his new place. Stuffed chicken, salmon and pasta, pizza, sushi rolls, and of course, drinks (which I bartended mostly, hahaha).
Then on Sunday, Marc and I went to the Taste of Santa Monica (Tito Gary had given me tickets to it for my birthday). It's a good thing I didn't eat breakfast - I think I ate enough for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Thank you, Tito Gary, for all the food - on both days!
Oh, here's a picture of Marc trying out the hoops on the pier, desperate to get a workout after all that food. This was his second try on it, and another guy jumped in with him. Should have taken the shot on his first try. Oh well, regrets.
Songs That Make Me Smile :)
1. Happy Birthday (especially when it's being sung for me)
2. Stevie Wonder's
You Are The Sunshine Of My Life3. The song that goes,
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are blue....4. Purefoods Tender Juicy Hotdog jingle (
Oh, it's more tender, it's more juicy, it's meatier, so tastier, the one we love.... more tender and juicy too, we thank you Mom, for Purefoods hotdog that we love so true!)
5. Sarah Mclachlan's
Ice Cream6. Theme from Perfect Strangers (
Nothing's Gonna Stop Me Now)
7. most Christmas carols
Duh....
I'm having kind of a slow day today -- and no, it isn't the
day that is slow, it's actually me. I don't know why, it just seems like when I woke up today, parts of my brain were left sleeping in my bed. I'm clumsy, and my attention span is short. Today, I even had to call a guy twice just to confirm the same damn thing.
Hopefully, tomorrow will be better. I'm helping out my cousin right now with his project (and hopefully, I don't mess this up for him), but I'll be turning in early. It's not safe for me to be out in the world when I'm this way.
Weekend Recap - Haaaappy Birthday to Meeee!
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Yup, I'm a year older. Don't ask how old though. It doesn't matter - I feel young! I do. Really. Okay, I'll stop trying to convince myself now.
Anyway, to celebrate, I invited a few friends over for dinner Saturday night, and we had the best time. We really didn't do anything extraordinary, but it was fun to just sit around and chat. I'm glad though because I think I did a pretty good job with the guest list, and everyone enjoyed themselves, even though some of them met for the first time that night. So it was a success.
Sunday, my actual birthday, my family and I headed to the LA Cathedral to celebrate Sunday mass. We then put in some sightseeing. I looked like a complete tourist, asking my parents to pose in front of the stained glass windows and the alter and the tapestries. My uncle refused to pose in the pictures! Haha! :P
Here's a picture from the party Saturday night. We had a group pic as well, but when I started "censoring" the shots, that one didn't make the cut. Sorry!
Bradford, oh Bradford
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It was noble of him to revoke his immunity, but that
was stupid in retrospect.
Why did he do that? I guess this is a classic case of talking without thinking. But it did show that he was confident about his performance, and he
did out-perform everyone else who was in the boardroom with him. My personal preference would have been to fire
Ivana or
Stacie J - performance-wise, Ivana was a flop, and team effort-wise, Stacie J didn't deliver. But oh well. What's done is done.
Joey and The Apprentice 2
This is a little late in coming but....
Must-see Thursdays are back! Well, hopefully. The first episode of
Joey was funny enough, and I'm really hoping that it takes off. I'm a little worried for the show because how can you draw out so many episodes from just one character? I think one of the reasons why
Friends remained interesting for the most part is because there were 6 different lives to keep track of. In some episodes, other people take the backseat; in some cases, the episode is mostly about them. But with
Joey... well, there's just one person to concentrate on. Won't that be boring after awhile?
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As usual, I'm hooked on
The Apprentice 2. I don't know the contestants well enough yet, because there has only been one episode so far, but the first task was a lot tougher than the first task for last season. Selling lemonade vs. creating a toy for young boys for Mattel? No competition! It hasn't progressed far enough yet for me to have an opinion on who I think would be a great Apprentice, but I did agree with Donald Trump's decision at the end of the show. Good job!
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Last night, they had
The Benefactor. I wasn't able to watch much of it, but it seems like a cross between
The Bachelor and
The Apprentice, but with some twists added to spice things up. I don't know if it's really something I'd like. Maybe I'll try to catch it next week to see if it's something worth watching for me.
Weekend Recap
The past weekend was pretty mellow. Just hung out with family, went to visit a relative who recently had an operation, then had lunch at a Filipino restaurant (bad for diet!). In the afternoon, I got really antsy, but everyone was either busy, sleeping or too hot to move. I wanted to go to the beach, or ride my bike to the ocean. Well, finally, my dad woke up and I was able to convince him to ride with me to the beach. When we got back, we had a simple dinner and then I had to get ready to go out with friends that I hadn't seen in a long time.
Lesson #1 for that night: If the club isn't where they said it was going to be, then you must be on the wrong street!
Lesson #2: Hang out with Anami and Andoni more. It was so much fun! I guess I have this habit of just drifting along, hanging out with the same bunch of people and resisting the "social butterfly" scene, but it's really refreshing to spend time with different sets of friends. I should do that more often.
Sunday was just beach day. My grandmother said, "Ang itim-itim mo na! (You're so dark already!)" But as I see it, this is the only season I can really be outside a lot. When fall comes, then winter, then spring, I'll lose the color I got during summer. So my color changes with the season. They'll all just have to come visit me in the winter then, if they want to see me with fairer skin. ;)
Whirlwind
I'm getting caught up in so many things. My father and my grandmother are in town, so I'm busy spending time with them, seeing to it that they're comfortable and that they're having a good time. It's hard though because I work during the week, and they have nothing to do back home. I try to coax my dad out after work sometimes to ride our bikes, but he's usually too busy watching TV or doing cryptograms. Oh well. Maybe on Saturday we can go down to the beach.
On top of that, I don't get to hang out with other people as much as I'd like to. I haven't seen Marc since Monday, and that's a long time, considering how often we would spend time with each other before.
Also, I haven't been able to plan anything with friends, and even when I start to plan something, I immediately feel bad for thinking of spending time away from my family while they're here visiting.
After my birthday though, they plan to fly off somewhere, so I'll probably be able to get some alone time. Don't get me wrong, I love having them here -- sometimes it just feels like too much of my life is on pause while they are.
Weekend Recap - Sequoia
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All I can say about Sequoia is that it was beautiful.
Lessons Learned from Camping
1. GU can save your life.
2. Each person should bring their own bar of soap, so everyone can shower at the same time and not one after the other.
3. Buying those freeze-dried, prepackaged meals made especially for camping pays off.
4. Find a backpack that actually fits.
5. Rice in a bag also pays off.
6. Always bring warm clothes, in case of unexpected drops in temperature.
Aster Lake
Watching the Clock
It's approximately 22 minutes before the start of the weekend, and I can't wait. This weekend is the big trip to Sequoia, the supposed culmination of all the camping trips we had before. Yeah, yeah, this will probably sound pathetic to someone who's "been there, done that", but I'm not one of those people. I don't think I'll be able to sleep so much tonight. I've always been this way, when it's the eve of a big out-of-town trip. Come to think of it, it doesn't really matter what kind of trip it is; as long as I'm going out of town to a "major" destination, I cannot wait for it to be the next day. I'm always restless until the trip starts. And then....
Me: "Are we having fun yet?"
This is my last free weekend before my parents get here. Then I'll be busy taking them around and visiting relatives and all that. Come October, I'll probably be raring to go someplace else.
Kikay Entry
Out of boredom, I'm going to list down the beauty products that I love:
Origins Clear Improvement Charcoal Mask
Cetaphil Facial Cleanser
Phisoderm Facial Wash
Hairobics Hair & Scalp Booster (new addition!)
Dove Shampoo and Conditioner
petroleum jelly (for the lips!)
Dove cleansing pillows
The Body Shop's peppermint foot scrub
H2O's mint body wash ("orgasm in a bottle", according to one review)
Banana Boat Aloe Vera Gel
The Body Shop's Tea Tree Oil
Hawaiian Tropic sunblock (just for the yummy smell)
Gmail
These invites seem to be hot commodities right now. I look at craigslist postings everyday, and each time, I see someone begging for one. I successfully registered for an account, but have yet to try it out. The browser here at work seems to slow down when I try to log on to the site. Or is it just Gmail? Or did I get a bogus invite? I don't know. But we'll see. I'm getting excited about this, and I hope it's as good as it's hyped up to be.
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Bit of a long night last night. I was up till 11 pm staring at numbers that I needed to reconcile and balance. Of course it didn't balance, but that was what we wanted anyway. Whew. But it seemed that every time I would check my work, a different total would come up. So I did a last check this morning, and hopefully this is the most accurate of all. It's hard working in a field you didn't study for.