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Showing posts from July, 2013

The Aches of Weeding

The past weekend was productive for me...sort of. I was able to do the weeding that I was talking about here on Friday. Hubby went to work bright and early so I pushed through with my weeding partay! I wanted to do it before it got too hot outside so instead of doing household chores first, I decided to head out in the backyard to start pulling about 9:30 AM. I have this weed puller which is a roller. I used it a lot a couple of years ago on the flower beds in front when they were still bare. It actually served as my morning exercise then because rolling that thing requires a lot of effort. I've forgotten how much exercise I can get out of it...until last Saturday. I was able to "conquer" the surrounding areas of the lilies on the back, one small plot where the gardenia and hydrangea as well as the gold mounds are planted, the line of box woods by the back porch and around one of the big trees. I was also able to pull out the weeds on the flower beds in front. I was outsi

No Rain?

Well, it doesn't seem like it anyway. Maybe it will happen tonight just like yesterday. TGIF! The little one got very excited earlier when she realized it's already Friday. She said that it felt like the week went by really fast. I guess it did. She likes the weekend a lot because she can 'usually' do the things she wants to do during these 2 days. We haven't been going anywhere much the past couple of weekends because our driver has to work. Yep, our chauffeur has a day job. Tee hee... So what are you up to this weekend? I'm up to something....weeding, maybe? I have these lilies in the back of the house that I planted a couple of years ago. We were about to throw them away because they weren't thriving where we originally planted them but instead I decided to transplant them. Well now they're thriving. They hibernate during the cold months and come back in spring. Right now they're starting to have leaves. I have to weed around them before the &

Reconnecting

I am always happy to hear from friends I haven't heard from in ages. This is why I was ecstatic when a high school friend called me out of the blue a few months ago. This girl was like my 'junior' in high school. What I did. She did. We connected so to speak. We even went to the same college so we got even closer. But we somehow lost contact when we started working because we went on different fields. I taught. She did mostly marketing and advertising. Well, now we've reconnected. She just got married to a guy in the West Coast and came here not too long ago. Her husband owns a lumber hardware store and she's doing what loved best which is advertising/marketing the store. When I spoke with her she was busy looking for a place that does wholesale brochure printing . Her husband never thought about doing brochures to promote his business. Well, my friend is well aware of the benefits of the different advertising techniques especially now. She's optimistic she can

Back to Normal

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My page views is now back to normal. I posted about the sudden spike of page views  in this blog in the past couple of months a few days ago. I had a feeling it's something temporary so I said I would update here as soon as I see any change. I've seen it change gradually in the last several days so I took a snap shot of the stats overview of the last seven days. I still don't understand what the reason was for that spike and why it lasted for as long as it did. This is more like a personal blog for me so I don't really expect a lot of people reading it but that doesn't mean I don't check the stats. Do I care about the stats? Maybe not. It doesn't seem to help in any way so...

Guitar Enthusiast

That would be my youngest brother. Actually, I've only known about it about a year or two ago. He sent me a video of his band jamming. I didn't even know he plays the guitar until that time. Anyway, I am no his go to person everytime he or his band needs to research something related to their music, instruments, etc. I've been to a few local music stores around here looking for stuff for them, mostly researching and comparing prices so they know if they're getting the best deals. Aside from visiting local music stores, I also look online. It's during one of these searches that I saw this great prs p22 at musicians friend . I think I was looking for something else when I saw this but I told my brother about it. He of course got interested since guitar is his instrument of choice. He has a few guitars already but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't mind adding this to his collection. I wonder when that's going to happen.

Rainy Mornings

It's pouring as I'm typing this. It was the same yesterday. Lights are on because it's quite dark right now. Our weather people already warned us that it's going to be this way probably for the rest of the week. At least the little one and I can still do our afternoon 30-minute badminton 'face-off'. Ha! Last week it was a different story because the rain came late in the afternoon...just in time for our 'game' so she wasn't a happy camper for a couple of days. I had to adjust the game time and played in the morning instead. Speaking of our newfound hobby badminton, the man of the house is not very happy with the damage we're doing with his beloved grass, mostly weeds actually, as a result of our daily games. Tee hee. We've been staying on one spot when we play so the grass we've been stepping on is on life support at the moment. Oops. He already told us to move to a different spot so as not to further the damage. Yesterday, that's w

Backtracking

Or reviewing? Partly reminiscing? Anyway, I like to check the most viewed/read pages/posts on this blog when I get the chance. Also on the live traffic feed, I sometimes click on the links [of my old posts] that visitors read. With more than 3,000 posts I certainly don't remember the contents of my posts, especially the ones from 5 years back. It's like reading a diary actually. Some of the posts make me chuckle and some make me smile. A few days ago I read a post I wrote titled: And She Sings ... It was during the time when the little one was just starting to like Taylor Swift and her songs. She would sing Taylor's songs a lot but she wouldn't let me record/video her singing them. I so wanted to record her singing because I knew she won't be doing that forever. So I did the next best thing...I set up the video camera on the table and settled with just recording her voice without her knowing it of course. I was able to catch most of it on 'tape' and blogge

Wake Me Up!

So so sleepy while I'm typing this. I had a very restless night. I just couldn't sleep...and I've got my reasons which I'd keep to myself na lang. Anyway, we had a good weekend. Hubby worked on Saturday like a normal working day...left before the crack of dawn and worked until 5 PM. I did the usual weekend cleaning...and so did the little one. Her 'chores' on the weekend is to make sure to put all her books in order as well as whatever's out of place in her bedroom. She also has to do her own version of "big cleaning" in her bathroom. I still do the major stuff like mopping and deep cleaning. I just want her to do the tidying up, so to speak. Sunday...lawn mowing for the man of the house. As soon as he finished doing that, the little one and I played our latest 'sport'....badminton in the backyard. Yep, I asked the hubby to get us a set last Friday so we can start playing. It's the little one's first time to play it and she had

Summer Nights

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Sounds like a title of a song, yes? But it's not...or maybe it is I'm just not aware of it. Anyway, this post is actually "inspired" by a question posed by a very dear friend [hi Ate Beng !] a few days ago. She wanted to know if 8:30 PM here looks more like 5 PM in the Philippines. The answer is...pretty close. Although it may be a little bit darker. Maybe. But just to give you a glimpse of what 8:45 looks like here, I decided to take a picture of the sky last night. It was a spur of the moment decision...for fun just for you, yes you Ate Beng . Hahaha... Here's that pic...that I took from our back porch. As you can see in the picture, the road is still visible. There are no night lamps there so the light is all coming from mother nature. When I visited my friend in California [a couple of years before I migrated here], I was kind of shocked to see how bright it was when we got out of the airport. Why? Because it was past 8 PM already. I expected to see

A Spike of Page Views

I used to get about 100 to 200 views on this blog daily. Half of those are probably my own page views. Ha! But in the past several weeks, maybe a month or so, the page views went up not just by a few hundreds but a few thousands. It's currently hitting the 5k mark, more or less and I have no idea where all the hits are coming from. I'm not complaining, just wondering. I don't post as much as I used to so I really have no idea what made page views increase. Maybe I did something on the settings that I'm not aware of but I don't really mess with that just because I'm afraid to mess up the whole blog. The thing is the increase in views didn't seem to help with the PR of the blog because it was right around that time when the PR of this blog went from PR2 to zero. Anyway, I'll keep checking and see if this continues. The moment it goes back to normal [hundreds of views instead of thousands], I'll make sure to make a note of it and make a post about it.

Sleepy Monday

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That would me. I slept fine but I don't think it's enough That's probably because I went to bed a bit later than usual. We had a very lazy weekend. We didn't go anywhere. Stayed indoors most of the time and just lazed around the house. We had a couple of moments when we had that urge to go out just because....but we didn't do it. I guess the lack of activities [and maybe that short nap I had] made it hard for me to fall asleep right away. It's all been quiet here in my blog for a full week. My last entry was last Monday. It was an uneventful week that passed even if it was Independence Day week. It was rainy for the most of last week, the 4th included. There were not a lot of fireworks because of the bad weather but it wasn't a complete 'wash out' because there was a short break from the rain at about 6 PM. That made our little one happy because she got the chance to light up the sparklers we got for her. A few minutes after she finished lighting t

Second Half of 2013

It officially starts today, right? Again...how time flies! This is going to be a short work week for those on this side of the globe because it's Independence Day on Thursday. It's going to be a 4-day weekend for most. Some are already on vacation actually...but not us. I don't think we have any plans for July 4th itself. I actually just realized yesterday while we were sitting on a restaurant that it's this week. Duh! What gave it away [to me] are the firework stalls/vendors all over the place. We don't really do anything special on that day so it kind of slipped my mind. Anyhooo...weekend just passed. We were busy over the weekend around here doing our own little thing. We didn't really plan in going anywhere since the weather has been 'moody' lately. One minute it's sunny, then it's raining the next minute. But the little one kept asking since Saturday the same question over and over again: Are we going anywhere this weekend? She kept gett