Catching up

I really ought to post here more often.

Lots of things have been happening lately. Not having posted for more than a year, that’s hardly surprising. But the last two weeks have been packed with things going on.

Mom is here in Manila for a visit after having left for the US nearly five years ago. She needed to have an unexpected operation and is recuperating nicely. She’ll be flying back to LA on Monday and has been staying with Eyts for the past week after she checked out from the hotel last Sunday. Because of the surgery, she wasn’t able to go around much. But I hope she enjoyed herself.

My work notebook has been upgraded into a slimmer, lighter, core 2 duo subnotebook. It’s still a Dell, so the display isn’t anything to write home about, but at least it’s more powerful than my previous machine and has more harddisk space.

I’m currently drooling over a newly released Samsung phone. It’s a clamshell (because I’m obsessed with clamshells). But the best part is, it’s got a fully touchable external display. I so want it, I so want it, I so want it. But hubby and I’ve just been talking about needing to save up so we could start our business. Oh, I hope I could resist snapping it up when we pick up hubby’s PS3 tomorrow. 

Getting the PS3 was a planned expense. The new Samsung phone isn’t. Grrrrr! But I think I’ll be staying up nights thinking about it. Grrrrrr!!

Siopao’s turning two years old this month! He still wears a kittenish face every once in a while (most often when he wants his neck skritch or catnip pinch), but he’s generally more laid back and subdued now (haha! I couldn’t bring myself to say “regal” because he’s really such a goofy cat). 

That’s it for me on catching up. I do hope to update this bloggie more often.

siopao

Though still quite far from becoming actual parents, domestic life has had some interesting changes lately after we've brought the new meowler home. This is Siopao, our six-month-old furball. The pet store called him a Persian, but for a shop that deals mainly in reptiles, I think that ranks them low in the credibility department — especially when you kind of get an inkling that the owner thinks cats are just a smaller breed of dog.

The idea of getting a cat started out with a joke of a name. Siopao is a local meat bun that was rumored to have been filled with cat meat a few years back. So see, white and fluffy on the outside, meaty on the inside, and a dot that marks it as bola-bola.

I think he looks like a ragamuffin, but he doesn't go limp when you pick him up (one of the striking characteristics of ragamuffins). In fact, most times he goes all sorts of puppy: follows you around, plays catch, pants and lolls his tongue when he gets excited over a game. Whatever breed he actually is, he's gorgeous and knows it.

thankful

I haven't updated in the last month. Doesn't mean though that life's been dull, in fact things have been quite the opposite.

Right now, I've a lot to be thankful for - there's Sulley, who happily putters about in the kitchen and never runs out of patience with me; our comfy home, where we gather with friends; mom, who sent unexpected help when we badly needed it; and at long last, a great workplace, where I think I'd finally like to take root.

Just one or two of those is already a lot to be thankful for, and yet here I have so much.

thank you

take the pliers away!

This'll be all about a rotten tooth, but I just have to rant.

I had a tiny cavity on the far corner of my upper molar, it started about ten years ago. When I showed it to my dentist, she promptly dived for her pliers and said the tooth had to come off or else it'll cause me a lot of trouble in the future. The spot was too far back that not even the smallest drill could get to it, she said.

Since the very idea was trouble enough for me right then, I decided to make a run for it and see if my will-power was enough to make the inevitable go away. I'd have succeeded too , I think, if only the tooth didn't slowly get chipped off while the years trudged on, so that up until last night, there was only just a small, harmless stub of bone left where the molar used to be.

Right now, the same little stub is still there, but it has gone from harmless to stark raving lunatic with an army of furious hornets shooting up my brain. Occassionally, when it's feeling charitable, it just throbs, like a bashed thumb on steroids.

The inevitable has caught up with me. But now the pliers will have less real estate to latch on to, so I'll have to be strapped down for dental surgery.

Makes me want to curse practically everything sweet that has, incidentally, been my primary source of brain juice for the past ten years.

But the next saccharine thing I lay my hands on, I know I'll still want to eat anyway.

budget management

This evil pacman gobbles measly cheese is a product of putting my newly acquired spreadsheet tricks to work on our monthly budget at home.

Just last year, I'd have looked at this, said work hard, party hard, and left that sorry bit of left over cheese to its fate. But after this year's blunt and brutal reality check, I don't think Sulley and I could ever go back to spending obscene amounts of money each month on incidental dine outs and pizza deliveries just because we're too lazy to wash a few pots and cook ourselves a proper meal.

It's somewhat frightening how, even after five years of married life, we still spend like singles who live with their old folks and have no financial responsibilities whatsoever. In our case, since Sulley and I are both busy on weekdays, it's a hassle to have to cook dinner after a long, tiring day at work.

But when we sat down to add up our expenses and found that we were spending practically P15,000 a month on food deliveries alone (excluding our daily lunch money and the usual weekly grocery), it was like a hammer in the head.

Yes we both work hard and deserve to pamper ourselves some, but P15k is almost double the government mandated minimum monthly wage. You could hire four maids with it who'll cook and keep house so you could eat off your shiny, clean floors if you really feel like it. But the thing is, I like our nice and quiet, good-for-two-people setup. Besides, with no regular TV channels and no one else to talk to, any household help we hire might start clawing the walls within 48 hours out of sheer boredom.

At least now we know where the money pit is. And starting this month, I think things will improve. Even without the pie chart to look at, we've both been putting in a lot of effort lately into spending smarter.

Frugality does build character, I guess, true as the saying goes.