busy having a life :D

(happy nephew with his Narnia set, thanks to Auntie Ruth from the UK :D)

numero uno: hurrah for the destruction of the great book blockade of 2009!
if predictions are correct and Customs attempts once more to extort moolah from non-taxable cultural items in another 50 years, i hope i'll still be around to picket those douchebags.


(yes, it's Manny from "Black Books" with his very own CD, found at National Superbookstore in Cubao --one of those mega structures which was a mecca for books till Fully Booked High Street came along...but you still can't beat NBS Cubao for accessibility and the top floor chock-full of bargain books. Estela Sales should try shopping here for cheap thrills, but then again, if i were Nanay Soccoro Ramos, I'd charge her full price plus tax...hang on, Mrs. Ramos is too nice to do that...hmm, how about i wax off her upper lip and eyebrows in the most painful way possible? Does the "so sue us" challenge still hold?)

completed enrolling the sprout at school...he has yet to finish wrapping his books/notebooks in plastic :P his grandma went all out and bought him what i'd call the "pang-eskwela showcase" that had him grinning from ear to ear --i'm just praying nothing falls apart within the first three months.


the sprout got to watch Night at the Museum 2 at SM Mall of Asia (read: the portal to the black hole of retail, where you may possibly never see your hard-earned cash again, as there are too many damn tempting things to buy), did the review for his editor (thank God he didn't have to prompted or didn't do as much ass-dragging) and we even caught JJ Abrams' Star Trek (despite the unwanted annotator who liked to declared obvious stuff like "ayan, patay na ang tatay ni Kirk" or "si Spock yan, o ayan" --our friend Aina turned around to make sure his companion wasn't blind, nope she wasn't, her only handicap was that she married a doofus). yo dorko, save the commentary when you watch pirated dvds at home, wilya?

i miss the days you could just pay and walk into a movie theater and stay there all day if you wanted to. of course it was just a matter of time theater owners wised up and booted everyone out after one showing. sigh.

saturday in the city

i finally got my foot out of the cast because there's only so much immobility that i can take. of course, after a few days of driving a bit, i finally got the confidence to drive downtown and do a few errands. after part 1 of said errands were accomplished, i decided to see what was new around the area. and not too far from a regional/tourism exhibit, there was this (by pilipinas street plan, i believe?):
this stuff was more interesting than the exhibit (which at 10.30am was still not open and the guard couldn't tell me how long it would take before the gates would open for visitors). thankfully the wait was short (enough time to play a canned version of the Philippine National Anthem), and so was the visit because there were very few exhibitors who bothered to show up and open early.


so i bought a few things that i knew would be appreciated at home: a small container of puto (mini rice cakes in white and orange-red colors), a humongous bag of ultra-light chicacorn (tasty, lightly seasoned with garlic and best of all not stressful on the teeth) and a bottle of adobong mani.


next stop: a short walk to pick up a magazine from carlos celdran's shop, la monja loca, a little place packed to the gills with fantastic stuff.


my favorite hatbox bag --except i don't have a hat and the bag itself is really heavy. so i'll just be happy to admire it, hahaha.

(this should've been my #teapix for my "tea & armageddon" entry on twitter, hahaha --shot at the home of a chef who had too many favorite gadgets...and we managed to not shoot one item, a pan that keeps food warm for 4-5 hours. of course that meant i had to hunt down the thing and shoot it at a shop.)

after heading home and picking up the sprout for his appointment with the doc, i decided not to tell him about my plans to go to rockwell mall to see a friend and get a few other things done. (i did warn the husband that i'd be home around 7pm). suffice it to say he was wondering where we were going till he saw the building...and then he was bouncing in his seat, chanting "fully booked! fully booked!"(said bookshop was on sale and he was dying to get the latest artemis fowl book)

i should be happy he wasn't chanting the name of the toy shop. so after a little dawdling around the mall (had to explain the faint acrid smell was left over from a fire that happened a week before at sumo sam), we scored the book at 20% off (yay!). and i managed to spot, then quickly chat up my old photography instructor from ccp (there for the sale and to watch wolverine) and introduce him to the sprout.

while waiting for my friends to drive over, we snuck out to defrost (cold mall aircon + really cold Lulubelle smoothie made of yogurt and six scoops of FIC) and went to the deli to snap pictures of the pan. mission accomplished, and food purchases were made: corn muffins (a hit), biscotti (more of a miss in my opinion...it's gonna be a chore finishing them off this week) and pretzels.

all in all, a pretty busy saturday. i'm amazed the drive wasn't terrible (except for a couple of jeepneys and buses that wanted to pick upand and let off passengers in the middle of the avenue)...must be the long weekend (less cars on city roads since people are vacationing?).