give thanks

“One of life's gifts is that each of us, no matter how tired and downtrodden, finds reasons for thankfulness: for the crops carried in from the fields and the grapes from the vineyard.”--- J. Robert Moskin

you and i have a lot of things to be thankful about and being a pinoy here in america who has never celebrated thanksgiving for the first 26 years of her life i am not exempted. i've been here for three years now and i have yet to celebrate thanksgiving with a dinner with family and friends and the much celebrated turkey. i've always been working on thanksgiving night and tonight is no different. so while you and your family celebrate thanksgiving tonight and i am with my pediatric patients, let me greet you a happy thanksgiving!

ready for winter

i spent most of my day today at home only going out for an hour and a half to go to the gym and the rest i spent puttering around the apartment. the weather was pretty blah anyway to really enjoy it outside. there was a wintry mix of rain and flurries that makes one not care about going outdoors.

so i did something productive. i cooked, sorted my laundry, checked my emails, made sense of the mess that is my desk and waited until my roommate left for work so that i can dig in through my closet and boxes of clothes and say goodbye to summer and fall. i had been putting this off for a while now, hoping that winter wouldn't be here for a couple of weeks more. that, and i really didn't have time to be alone at home. it took me almost three hours to sort through my clothes contained in two extra large plastic boxes and one big luggage. in a way it's a pain to have to go through this task every year but it's also one of the things that i look forward to come winter time. to gear up and accessorize for the cold weather which i don't have the luxury of doing when i was still in tropical pinas.

yes, the perks of living in the northeastern. please remind me to read this when i'm shivering outdoors in below zero temperature trying to dig my car out of waist deep snow. 'coz i'd be really too pissed and frustrated to remember.

today

the sun is shining brightly outside. temperature is on the high 60's and i actually drove with my windows down, can you believe that? i went out for a quick trip to the post office a while ago and dropped by borders to get a little bookstore therapy for myself. before heading home, i stopped by my favorite bakery to buy something that i have been craving for for several days now. something that is sinfully good which is gonna make me pay big time on the elliptical and treadmill this week.

i bought this.

(my favorite brown derby cake. a chocolate cake filled with strawberry and banana custard filling.)

anyways, i got three new books from my short trip to the bookstore
which is reason why i shouldn't be going out of the apartment at all. i step out and i end up buying stuff. come to think of it, i shouldn't be allowed to have web access too because shopping is also as easy as clicking a button. hopefully those books will tide me over the days that i plan to just bum around at home. so on my "to be read" pile of books is nick hornby's newest fiction SLAM, murakami's collection of stories blind willow, sleeping woman and david sedaris' barrel fever. i'm so excited, i can't wait to start reading them.

last time i wrote about an NBA game that we were planning on going this december right? well, just the other day i got a normal looking envelope from the mailbox and guess what's inside? seven tickets to the knicks vs. nets game! woohoo! it's official... we are going to be at madison square garden on the night of the 15th of december. he he he... super excited! i know it's still a month away but its reason enough for me to behave myself and be a good girl at work.

thank you mario, but our princess is in another castle!

i downloaded the old school super mario brothers game on my wii and have been playing a bit of that for a couple of days. i can't believe i still remember some of the cheats on the game, like where to get the 1up mushrooms, the shortcuts, those kind of stuff. anyway, i stumbled upon this video on google and i was doubling over in giggles because i could relate on the guy's frustration.

so what does it sound like to play the hardest mario levels of all time? watch this.

gym drag

i went back to my gym today.... yay for me!

after not waking up for our 9 am step class and having stood up hannie (to which she's probably mad because she hasn't replied to my sorry text yet) yesterday, i dragged my lazy ass to the gym after work. it took a lot of determination to drive to the gym on a cold, rainy morning after a 12 hour shift at the hospital but i did it anyway.

on my way there, i kept thinking of stupid reasons not to go to the gym. visions of my unmade bed, my comforter and my pillows kept popping in my mind. i was really tempted to go back to the apartment when i stopped at a red light, but i was already halfway there so i kept on driving.
despite the muggy weather, there were still a lot of people sweating it out at the gym. the regular old ladies who works out in groups and who i have a high respect for were already doing warm ups. i mean, here i am, a strong energetic girl who just turned 30, thinking about cutting my usual 1 hour gym time to 45 minutes and these grannies are practically at the gym every morning and seems to be enjoying it.

it's not that i don't enjoy working out. it actually kinda relaxes me and keeps me up and about most of the time. it focuses my mind on becoming healthy. it gives me the drive to stay away from evil, evil chocolates, not to mention that it updates me on the latest about britney spears, lindsay lohan, brangelina etc. while on the treadmill. it's the drive going to the gym that is such a drag for me. i almost always feel like there's a lead weight on my feet while i'm going up the stairs that leads to the locker room. changing into my gym clothes takes a lot of effort on my part. but once i'm up on one of those elliptical machines with my ipod on, trying to ignore the chatty mother of two beside me while browsing the latest copy of us and people magazine, there is no turning back for me.

i hope i could will myself to go to the gym tomorrow. good luck na lang sa akin!

taking a breather from fun

"I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life." Eleanor Roosevelt

i was supposed to go to florida to attend the christening of kyla, my college friend's daughter. dennis was bugging me about my schedule for the longest time. sadly it didn't worked out so i will be stuck here to sort out the stuff that i've been putting off for long. the summer months were hectic and it was definitely one of the most fun i've had, but i should slow things down a bit and take some time off from having too much fun. that is until december comes along and we start the ball rolling again with an NBA game between the knicks and our very own nets.
until then i will be this person who will while away the cold, boring days and nights watching tv, playing wii and accomplishing the important stuff that needs to be done.

damn it...i can't wait for december!

this is me rambling

third week into october and i don't feel like it's fall yet. the sun is happily shining it's bright rays outside and the temperature is well off into the 70's. yesterday, it was raining like it's springtime. the only thing that reminds me that it's autumn are the changing colors of the leaves which looks magnificent and which makes longish drives bearable. i'm not complaining about the nice warm autumn we're having. i'm just worried that this might stretch winter this year. a friend was even joking that we might not get any snowfall until april. i think the guy who's got the controls for the weather is vacationing somewhere in the bahamas. that, or he's got something up his sleeves come winter time. please god...no.

i am pissed right now with the way our schedule for the next 4 weeks came out. everything was messed up. i was given holiday time on a day that i didn't want holiday time and was scheduled to work on thanksgiving when i requested to take time off on that day. it would've been ok if they told me earlier that they couldn't grant me my requested days, but no they kept holding off putting the schedule out for reasons only known to them. those witches! so there goes my plans for black friday shopping spree up in smokes thank you very much.

it's saturday and i am home. lounging around, watching old movies on tv and waiting for kuya erwin to pick up my balikbayan boxes and hoping it will reach davao before christmas. i've done three loads of laundry, folded them and now they're waiting to be put into their proper cabinets and drawers. now this is what kills me with doing laundry. i am ok with loading my clothes on the washers and dryers and i am even good with folding them neatly into a pile. the thing that i am lazy about is clearing them from the top of my bed. i always procrastinate on that part, the reason being i don't know. maybe i'm just a freak that way.

i am excited with a new hobby i found online.... mooching books. mooching what? well it's actually a way of getting rid of my old unwanted books, giving it away to someone who's keen to read it and mooching those that i want from somebody else. cool huh? now how do i do that? well let me direct you to this site ( www.bookmooch.com ) to spare me the task of explaining to you all about bookmooching. i'm actually set to mail out 5 books tomorrow that i'm feeling generosity coursing through my veins. yay! i'm trying to be nice now specially since the holidays are coming.

i'm off to do some errands tomorrow. i'll have two more days off 'til i get back to work. lovely!

so sick

i am sick.

i was on a more than two weeks of hiatus from work. i took some requested days off and used up some of my PTO's so that i could spend some time going away on a long weekend with friends who came from the UK. in between our trip to toronto and driving to and from new jersey, i used up two of those days to renew my expired PALS (pediatric advance life support) certification. luckily i passed the course even without reading any of the course materials those ems guys provided. bringing that manual with me to my toronto vacation proved to be useless, because i never got around to reading it. how i passed the pactical exams, i have no idea.

so anyway, i am battling it out with the colds, a low grade fever and a scratchy throat. post nasal drips are my thing right now. i have gone through two boxes of kleenex in three days and am working on my third box as i type this. i am chugging bottles of water and switching from motrin and tylenol every 4 to 6 hours.

so how the hell did i got sick? well for starters, i didn't get much sleep on those how many days of vacation to canada, i was kinda tired with the drive to and from canada which dennis and i split. i spent the night before my PALS course taking pictures in liberty park not thinking of the very cold weather and then driving back home at 1 in the morning by myself hoping that i'd have a good night's sleep before my class. of course it didn't helped that the weather couldn't make up it's mind. one day it's so sunny and humid and warm, next day it would get so cold. i mean come on... the leaves are turning orange already, just get it on with the autumn weather for god's sake!

so yeah, i'm stuck with my lozenges, nyquils, dayquils and the vitamin c's that i only remember taking whenever i feel like i'm gonna be sick. bad nurse, i know!