Monthly Archives: January 2009

Sixth Anniversary of my Tatay’s Passing Away

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I don’t recall if I ever wrote about the reason why I live at home with my Mom…

Six years ago on this day, Tatay (father in Tagalog) passed away. Since then, seems like my life has drastically changed. I moved back home to Vallejo so I can live with my Mom. My brother, who is divorced, currently lives here, but he works nights, so there would be no one here in the evenings with my Mom… and I could not let that happened, so I gave up living on my own in my apartment in Alameda and came back to Vallejo.

Looking back, I love living back here. I do miss going out several times a week after work, but once in a while I do hang out with my friends, such as last weekend. I also gained a vegetable garden which I love and I get home cooked Filipino food. Yummy… (and I gained weight because of this… hehe)

The first few years were difficult, because I had to adjust to a 1.5 hour commute instead of 30-40 minutes or so. I also had to take care of many paperwork and legal stuff that involved my Dad, which I hated doing, because I didn’t understand all that stuff… Luckily, me and my brother were able to slowly take care of stuff little by little, until most to all things were completed… I also was able to save buku money and pay all my credit card debts. Things have kinda settled though the years and things are much less stressful.

I miss Tatay and sometimes I feel like we didn’t have enough time together… in reality, we did do many things when I was a kid.

I took a half day off at work and left early to visit Tatay at the cemetery. I got some flowers and placed it on his headstone and spent a little time remembering him.

Afterwards, I went home and helped Nanay (my Mom) water some plants in the back yard. Nanay went to visit Tatay earlier today with my brother. My brother and I also finally put away the Christmas decorations, lights, ornaments, parol and other things back to the attic… I already took them down about a week ago, but they were in the living room waiting to be placed away.

Still Light Outside + Warm + New Glasses

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Today, as I was walking out of work, I noticed that there was still a little bit of daylight outside (I get out of work at 5:30pm) This is good news for me because it means that soon it’ll still be bright when I get home (I usually get home about 7:15pm)… Which means I can still garden (outside) a little bit when I get home… Yeah!!!

I also noticed that it is warm outside. Today’s high in San Francisco was 71 degrees F.

Earlier today, I picked up my new pair of glasses. They are a little squarer than my old pair… but I like how they look. A few of my coworkers said I look smart. Thanks (I think)

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Dave and Joel’s Birthday Get Together…

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On Sunday, some of my friends got together to celebrate me and my friend, Dave’s, birthdays. We first had brunch at Boulevard Cafe in Daly City, where we open some of our gifts. Howard and Bill got me more of the blue glass stones from Ikea. I also got some gift cards from Lutz and Dave and a picture frame from Wincy and Jeremy. Thanks everyone!

Afterwards, we went over to Color Me Mine and painted some pottery. I didn’t even know that this kind of shop existed. I choose a penguin container and a pot to paint. This was my first time doing this, so it took me a while to finish… I think it took me more than three hours to paint them. As I was painting, Wendy helped me take some photos.

Painting My Pengiun   My Paint Pallet and Penguin

( More photos on my Flickr set "Dave & Joel’s Birthday Get Together," )

Later that evening, we stopped over at KFC and got some chicken for dinner and brought it over to Dave’s house and watched some SNL and part of the Golden Globe Awards. We finished it off with a yummy chocolate chip and butterscotch cake that Lutz made… Yummy! Thanks Lutz…

Dave & Joel's Birthday Cake

Riveter of the Year + FlipVideo MinoHD

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This morning at work, we had a 2009 kickoff meeting to review our work in 2008 and discuss what to expect in 2009. The president and the senior staff cooked some bacon and pancakes, and we also had some donut holes, orange juice and coffee. Towards the end of the meeting, they announced the employee of the year (Riveter of the Year)… and it was me.

I was kinda surprised and embarrassed, cuz for one thing, I wasn’t expecting it., and the second thing… i don’t really like being the focus of attention (in meetings). I was honored though, and they gave me a FlipVideo MinoHD, a tiny HD video recorder, as a gift… which is really cool. I’ve seen some YouTube bloggers using it and seen it around, but never considered getting one since I’m not really into video… but I guess it’s something to learn and play with. I gave it a test run in the office and the quality was pretty sharp at 1280 x 720 resolution, 16:9 widescreen and it can record 60 minutes. Dang!

LiveJournal.app for iPhone

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I’m laying here in bed playing with my iPhone since I can’t sleep (since I took a nap once I got home). I discovered free program called LiveJournal.app which allows me to easily type in mobile entries… So I’m testing it out now.

I think this may help me be a little more diligent about posting, since I don’t need to be on a computer.

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Back to Work…

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Today was my first day back to work and I already broke one of my New Years resolution (to get to work on time). I don’t believe I slept through all three of my alarm clocks for two hours. Luckily, it wasn’t a busy day. Just recapping various projects, meetings and just trying to get back to the swing of things after our long vacation.

I got a call from my friend Darwin. He asked if I drove to work, which I did since I was late. He invited me to go to dinner after work for my birthday… So after work, we drove to Alameda for some yummy sushi at Sushi House. Thank you Darwin :)

Afterwards, we just hung out at his place for a little bit before I returned home…

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Happy New Year! + Bye Bye Eric + Back on LiveJournal

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Happy New Year!!!

I hope everyone had a great holiday season as I did… I did many of the things on my To Do list, but not all. I got a bit of gardening done, which I will write about later on post dated entries.

My loooong holiday break (since December 24th) is coming to a close and I have to get back to work tomorrow (Monday). Argh!!!

Bye Bye Eric

Earlier today, Me and my Mom took my nephew, Eric, to the airport, as his vacation here is coming to an end and he is flying back to Hawaii. He has been here since December 20th and I really enjoyed his stay with us. We grew up together and he seems more like my little brother than my nephew.

After dropping Eric off… I asked my Mom if she wanted to go anywhere… and she wanted to go to Trader Joe’s and Ikea… so we spent some time together shopping. My Mom found a bed at Ikea that she wanted called ASPELUND, but they were sold out, so I have to check later to see if they have it available. I found more MÄNGD blue glass rocks (which I bought previously) and they were on sale for only $2.99 (pack of 6).

Back on LiveJournal

If you are a old LiveJournal friend of mine, you may be surprised to see this post. Well… during my break, I was thinking how I miss blogging and I wasn’t really keeping up… especially on BlogSpot/Blogger which I moved to a while also. I wasn’t that satisfied with it and didn’t like how entries were divided by months. I like how LiveJournal entries are just a continuous stream… kinda like how Flickr is a continuous stream of my photos.

I happen to check up on some LiveJournal friends and noticed that some LiveJournal blogs had different themes similar to Blogger or MovableType and some other blog sites, so did some research and found that LiveJournal has a slew of new features (well they are new to me), including this nifty post and entry editor and a new theme… so I decided to come back…

As I have more time, I will port my past BlogSpot/Blogger entries back here (I don’t have too much), just for consistence sakes and post new entries of my gardening during my holiday break… cuz I’m still gardening during the winter :)