Tag Archives: nanay

Shirts + Nanay’s Online Banking

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Hi LiveJournal… Long time no see… Dang, I haven’t posted forever…

Couple of items for today…

I been looking for shirts online, cuz many of mine are getting tighter… I think I may be getting a bit bigger in my old age. Dang it!

I’ve been eyeing some graphic tees on threadless.com but never ordered… So I placed an initial order of two $5 shirts, one medium and one large, to check out their sizes and quality. I’ll get more later.

This evening, I signed my Mom up for online banking… She’s 77 years old and doesn’t use computer (although she loves playing with my iPhone), but I’ll be the “banker” and help her along. In order to create an onine account with her bank, I had to create an email for her, so I set one up on Gmail. Wow! My Mom’s first email account!!! :)

The main reason for setting up online banking for her was so she can do bill pay. She ‘s been asking me about it, because her bills say “pay online”… and she’s tired of writing checks and buyings stamps to mail the payments…

Now I have to try to get her to stop using checks in the store and just use her ATM or credit card… so she can collect reward points too… Baby steps…

Good night :)

Fax Machine plus more…

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My Mom has been wanting to get a fax machine, since ours is pretty old and repeatedly having problems. We use faxes to send letters and documents to and from Philippines, since it’s cheaper than a 5 minute phone call and way faster than postal mail.

We went to out local Best Buy to see what’s available and I saw a great multi-function fax/copier/wireless network printer/photo printer/answering machine/scanner/etc… (Brother MFC790CW) The one problem with it is that the phone is not cordless. I was a little hesitant to immediately purchase it and told my Mom that I will check the internet to see if they have a cheaper and better one with a cordless phone.

Well, she reminded me again this evening that she wants to get a new fax machine, so I searched online and found a big brother to the one above… plus it’s cheaper. (Brother MFC-885CW)

Brand Spanking New Fax Machine...

Some features I really like:
– Cordless phone / Speaker phone / Caller ID / Answer machine
– Auto feed fax machine
– Scanner  to email, image, file, memory card or OCR
– Wireless network printer (802.11b/g)
– USB/Ethernet connection
– 4.2″ LCD touch screen
– Separate 4 color inks
– 4×6 photo prints
– Mac compatible
– plus more…

All this for $140… with a online store coupon for $15, free shipping and tax… My total came to $134. Pretty good deal…

I sounds like a commercial, don’t I?

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.

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 :)

Getting Ready for Planting…

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I’ve been slowly getting ready for this season’s planting.

I’ve already pulled up some old (and bolting) Bok Choy, Daikon and Swiss Chard to make room for Tomatoes, Peppers and Eggplant.

Nanay Harvesting Swiss Chard

I’ve been looking for tomato cages, but can’t seem to find the big ones; I’ve only seen the dinky 3 foot ones which are not tall enough. I did some searching online and found tomato cages made of PVC. That was an idea, but I found a welded wire mesh called Tomato Guard at OSH and thought I would try it. It rolls out to 5 x 20 feet and is enough to make 4 or 5 cages.

I’m going to use my old short Tomato Cages for Eggplants and Pepper.

While reading some forums online, I read about those water retaining crystals. I’ve known about these and seen them, but haven’t thought of getting them to the garden. They seem to be pricey, but I found a company that sells them in large quantities for a good price. I ordered 2 lbs. of medium polymers for $17.95 (includes shipping). I’m going to add these to my veggie beds and Coleus pots, because they then to dry out quickly.

Happy Birthday Nanay!!!… Let’s Garden…

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Today is my Mother’s birthday, so I took the day off to do anything she wants to.

We started the day by going to DMV to getting her ID card renewed. When they gave us forms to fill out, I noticed that out of all the clipboard they had, they gave us one that had yellow flowers drawn on it.

DMV Clipboard

Afterwards, we went to the dollar store (I found out it’s actually a 99¢ store) to see if they had new garden stuff. I bought some bulbs ( photo ) , and terra cotta pot and an Elephant Garlic bulb (from the grocery area). I’m actually going to plant the Elephant Garlic and see if they grow. Not bad for 99¢.

When we got home, we just worked on the garden. The Sunflowers ( photo ) in the front yard are dying, so I chopped them down. I had four piles: stalks, seeds for the bird to eat, seeds for next year and stems and leaves for the compost pile.

Four Piles

My brother then came home with two new plants for my Mom. A variegated Raspberry Ice Bougainvillea and a dual colored Thai Delight Bougainvillea.

Raspberry Ice Bougainvillea   Thai Delight Bougainvillea

I sowed some seed:
– Sweet Peas ‘Streamer Mix’
– Mighty Red Oak Lettuce
– Bloomsdale Savoy Spinach

I planted the Snap Peas seedling from the six pack to veggie bed #1, using the Sunflower stalks that I chopped down earlier as support for these.

I also pulled out the dead Sikkim Cucumbers plants and cut the bottom dead leaves off of the Lemon Cucumber and Tomatoes.

Nanay’s Amaryllis…

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My Mom is so excited that her Amaryllis is finally blooming. Once it opened she told me to whip out my camera and take a photo of it! :)

Amaryllis Bloom   Amaryllis Bloom Closeup

The blossom spans about 7 inches wide and 8 inches heigh.

*Nanay means Mom or Mother in Tagalog.

More sowing…

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I made even more newspaper pots this evening and planted more leafy vegetables: Salad Bowl Lettuce, Grand Rapids Lettuce and Correnta Hybrid Spinach.

My oldest brother and sister-in-law came by and picked up some extra plants that we had, so they can plant it in their new house. They took some Bamboo, a Fig, some Ferns and a Pomegranate. These are plants that we have lots of. My mom takes division and give them away…

Right now I’m looking at some greenhouse plans. I’m just interested of the cost of building one from scratch versus a pre-build one that you just snap together. hmm?… I’m just curious…