First, a very Happy Birthday to one half of the Bunnies - Fire! Happy, Happy Birthday, Fire! Glad we got to bump into one another at the Pride March - hope I get to see you two again very soon.

Today was totally whoa. Tiring, fulfilling - in other words great.

The day started with me rushing home from work to wake up Tobie so we could get to SM Mall of Asia bright and early to get tickets for the 10:45am screening of Avatar at the IMAX theater. We had to go all the way South since SM North Edsa's IMAX theater is a LOT smaller than it should be plus I was hoping to get a little Christmas shopping in. We left around 09:00am and got there before the mall opened, so it was just a matter of bumming around for about 10 minutes before the ticket booth opened.

Of course our window shopping had us arriving at the ticket booth after a fair number of people had rushed into the IMAX theater upon opening. I was nervous about what tickets would be available since there were people buying tickets for the last 2 shows tonight, but then I guess I was just being paranoid. P800 later, Tobie and I had tickets with about 15 minutes spare. Given we both hadn't eaten anything that morning, we grabbed popcorn, hotdogs and those Mister Donut Smidgets and then we were all set. The movie was scheduled to start at 10:45am. Given the local theater administration and how late people arrive for such things, we started past 11:00am.

Avatar was a well-done movie for sure, but in terms of story plot it wasn't all that amazing to me. I mean seriously - this is clearly a rehash of Pocahontas and Ferngully and yet it also combines elements from Cameron's previous movies like those power loader style battle suits. Watching it in IMAX 3D was certainly worth it - it was a constant visual feast them teaches you that the purpose of plants, insects and floating seed pods is to remind you that this is a 3D movie by trying to pop out of the screen. Major kudos needs to go out to Sigourney Weaver for reminding us of how kick ass she really is. Tobie and I emerged from the theater a bit dizzy from the nearly 3-hour IMAX 3D bombardment, but it was still all good

After that we started scrambling around the mall to do some last-minute Christmas gift shopping. Given that once again we both had no idea what to buy as gifts for our families, I think we managed things well enough. We also picked up a few things for ourselves, one of the best being a limited edition version of Jason Mraz's We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things that consists of 2 CDs and a DVD! Whee! I was very tempted to get a Transformers ROTF Bludgeon but I decided against it given the crowds at Toy Kingdom at the time. I do have to go on record to say that OMG - Masterpiece Edition Skywarp is SOOO worth the P5,000 they're selling it for! *dies*

After all that got accomplished, we sat down for a very late lunch at TGI Friday's - a sort of early Christmas dinner since we're both going home to our respective families this week for the holidays. We had the Caesar salad and the Mushrooms, Chicken and Mushrooms, which still tasted as good as I remember it but it was clearly not as plentiful as it used to be.

I slept the rest of the day away so here I am, just about to start my day. Sweet, hahaha!

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With luck, I won't be perceived as some of the more extreme gift givers here, hehehe...

Sunday was a recovery day, as is often the case after a massive party night at Bed. Tobie and I woke up closer to 04:00pm and he already had to prep for his company Christmas party in the South. I couldn't go along, which is understandable since it's still technically a work function, so I opted to make the most of my time at home by catching up on missed internet posts from the past week. Given how busy things were with Jayson's funeral proceedings, we're talking about a LOT of missed internet activity.

So Tobie went off to his party and I started sorting through about three days' worth Facebook posts, and maybe around 2 days of Twitter and Plurk updates as well. I was also organizing a lot of missed downloads from the week in order to bring myself back up to speed, although this only refers to having copies of everything that I was looking for, not necessarily having read and/or watched them. Oh joy. It actually took a better part of the night for me to get through everything and yet I still managed time to (1) cook a pot of munggo so I'd have something to eat and (2) write an LJ entry trying to summarize the wild events of Saturday night. Believe me, it was a LOT harder than it looked to get everything into a post that shared enough detail without becoming scandalous, hahaha!

By the time Tobie had come home, I had fallen asleep in what was originally meant to be a power nap of sorts. Original plans included going out to O Bar to bring Keith there but (1) Keith never answered our calls and (2) Tobie was unable to wake me in turn. So somewhere closer to 02:00am, I finally woke up, far too late to really make our way anyway. Damn you alcohol, you REALLY mess up the day after the drinking, don't you? But don't worry, I still love you!

It had to be the Jager shots. Jager does funny things to your head while assaulting your taste buds. Oh yes, Jager is deliciously evil.

Once awake, Tobie took the time to share all the crazy prizes he got from the party, the best of which (in my opinion) was this cute little piggy planter. It comes with seeds already and it's supposed to grow fairly decently, but quite frankly its appearance alone (plus the insanely funny Chinese-English instructions on the box) made it more than worth it. He had brought home some palabok for me and so I ate that while we finally got around to watching SyFy's Alice.

It was pretty bad though. Tobie thinks it was like Push levels of bad (which is really, really bad) but I'd like to think it was a little better than that. It was just very confused about what it wanted to do and how it wanted its actors to act and how it wanted to related to the original Alice in Wonderland story and possibly confused about whether or not it had a definitely story. Um. Okay, maybe it really was that bad.

By then it was nearly morning and so I set about cooking a major batch of Mexican Relish that will hopefully last the whole day. I normally work with about half a kilo of meat and this time around it was a full kilo, but things started to go bad once I started. First, we finally ran out of gas as I was trying to cook the meat and so I had to stop and wait for the gas delivery to come. When I was finally able to resume cooking, it was only then that I realized that I had accidentally purchased a kilo of Filipino-style tomato sauce, which turns out to not only be sweeter but is also a lot more watery. Ugh. So I was constantly adjusting my ingredients to make up for these shortfalls plus the fact it was the first time I was cooking a batch this big. Thankfully, I managed to pull through despite insufficient green bell peppers to boot and things turned out fairly decently. It wasn't quite my normal relish in terms of consistency, but I think I more or less managed to capture the taste I wanted.

This time around, we watched a better TV movie - Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, which Tobie had yet to watch. I'm glad he enjoyed it despite not necessarily being a fan of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books (yet? *grins*) and it made for a very lovely morning. We were supposed to go to sleep immediately after since it was already past 01:00pm however I realized that I had forgotten that I had brewed a pot of coffee before watching Hogfather. So now I'm here drinking my coffee and got Tobie to join me so he could drink his cup as well and we'll hit up the bank before bed since we're awake anyway.

But I still have work tonight, so boo. This was the reason I was trying to stay up all night as much as possible - the pressures of working the night shift. Oy vei.

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I don't think this will help me figure out what to get my family for Christmas, LOL!

Oooh - Google Chrome now has extensions! Shiny! So far, My favorite extensions are Google Alerter, which is a multi-app notification gadget for Gmail, Reader, Wave and Voice, Chromed Bird, which is a Twitter client similar to how TwitterFox was in the beginning before Echofon and ChromeMilk, which is a handy way to get your Remember the Milk to-do list in a drop-down menu near the address bar. I also have Xmarks for syncing bookmarks but this is the alpha release of the extension and it has some sync issues here and there. Overall, the extensions are definitely in a very early stage and lack many customizable options, but then that might be a good thing if they help ensure the continued speed of Chrome. With this addition, I'm pretty much a Chrome user but I'll still need Firefox for Zemanta...unless they have an extension for that too. Time to check...OMG! There is one! Must test it now!

Sorry, I probably shouldn't have started this entry with Google geekery. So for the rest of you that are still reading this entry, let's move on right along, shall we?

I currently have Alice on my mind. SyFy recently released a new mini-series called Alice, as based on the Lewis Carroll books. However they opted to give the fantasy story a more science fiction edge, thus telling the classic tale with a slightly different spin on things. I can't wait to watch it, but then given how long it is, I probably have to wait for the weekend. Now add in the fact that Tobie never got to see the Alice and Wonderland mini-series that Hallmark released a few years back, it only made sense to download that version as well. That one was a lot more faithful to the original book in terms of a lot of the imagery and perhaps the general insanity of the population. So now I find myself needing to schedule out an Alice day (or night) of sorts when Tobie and enjoy both versions of the series. If I get bonkers enough, we can always add the Disney version to the viewing queue. Oh what fun.

Today was quite the cooking morning. As a change of pace from all the red meat that we've been having, I decided to finally try my hand at cooking these dried squid thingies we bought at the grocery last time. Tobie had managed to get some instructions from his mom about cooking them, so it was just up to me to translate those instructions into action. To go along with the squid, I l also opted to fry some danggit given the similarity of their cooking approaches. And so it began as a simple experiment in cooking and ended up being pretty good if I do say so myself. The only challenge was just how quick both the squid and the danggit get overcooked in a hot pan of oil. As much as I did my best to watch all of them fry, the speed of some of the pieces of fish and squid got in the way and so I ended up focusing on that. The Sietch got pretty smoky after that but it wasn't enough to trigger the fire alarm or something. Yay for ventilation!

I'm also getting a lot better at cooking a scrambled egg / omelet. I still get bits and pieces remaining on the pan or even total egg collapse when it can't support its own weight. I've also learned to grate quick melt cheese over the eggs, giving them a nice cheesy taste underneath it all. Again, yay for experimentation!

Oh, and yesterday was National Lesbian Day. Gotta mark that, too!

This entry was definitely not one of my more coherent ones. It has gotten a bit too stream-of-consciousness at the end of things, hehe. I blame the weather and my general feelings of unwellness that I'm still experiencing. My throat still feels all gummy - yech!

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You should always listen to the warnings of adults, hehe

Yesterday was definitely a much-needed recovery day. After all of the events of Saturday, rest was certainly more than just called for and Tobie and I embraced that reality whole-heartedly. I know we woke up sometime in the afternoon after somehow finishing a quick McDonald's breakfast and barely getting out of our party clothes. My head was still a tad woozy but at least I didn't feel the urge to through up or anything like that. It wasn't anything that lots of water and some coffee on the side couldn't fix, that's for sure. Well that and a sizable pot of Mexican Relish that Tobie and I devoured for lunch.

We spent the rest of the day pretty much just goofing off online, watching the occasional TV series or movie and getting some Torchlight time in. I finally got around to testing it on Blacktron, my netbook, and fair enough the game was in fact able to work. Performance was rather decent and I felt the lagging between clicks was a tad significant so in the end I returned to the desktop to play Torchlight in its fully-featured glory. It's quite the pretty game, that's for sure and it's something that any Diablo fan should play in order not to go crazy waiting for Diablo III to come out sometime next year...hopefully.

Other than that, I was able to get a lot of DVDs burned, mainly back-ups of Justice League (Unlimited), Spiral Zone, Being Human, The Black Adder, Neverwhere, The Storyteller, The Crystal Maze and The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. I would have burned a lot more but our installation of Nero seems to be acting up and kept erroring out at the end of each disc. I've wasted about 10 DVDs already so Tobie switched tracks and looked for another burning program. It worked decently enough although not necessarily as fast.

Yesterday we finally got around to watching Fido, which was disturbing yet hilarious at the same time. We also watched the first part of Children of Dune (yay James McAvoy!)

Yeah, it was a nice, simple end to the weekend.

My minor achievements today: cooking a decent mushroom and cheese omelet that didn't collapse on me when I tried to flip it and the fact that I finally managed to mend the seam of my pants. Yay domestication!

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Awww, gamer geek wedding vows! One day it'll be my turn...I hope.

Current NaNoWriMo Word Count: 34,587 words. It's the home stretch my friends, and of course I'm getting nervous as heck about whether or not I'm going to make it all the way to the finish line in time. I'm still behind in terms of the estimate daily quota by at least another 3,000 words and given the work week is already starting, I know that I'm going to have some challenges with squeezing in enough writing time before the month (and thus he "competition") ultimately ends.

Gaming day was good, as always. It also helped that Adrian and Nabs were okay to stay a bit longer this time around so even if we started yesterday's session rather late, we still covered a lot of ground and got a fair amount of gaming done. Plus Mahar had come from a wedding and brought along some fortune cookies and buko pie to help make the game day a lot more...flavorful. Or something - I'm sure there's a better word for it, but it fails to come to me right now.

Today has been largely light. Tobie and I woke up in the afternoon and that gave us time to check on online stuff, prepare some more for the upcoming Trinity game that we'll be starting soon with other gaming group and eventually a nice dinner of munggo while watching George Lucas' THX 1138. It was a pretty impressive movie that had me thinking about similar films like A Clockwork Orange and even Equilibrium but with an entirely different level of mind-fucking. And here's me thinking that Lucas was just a good conventional storyteller who sticks to movies with more mass market appeal. It now almost seems like a disappointment that he doesn't make more movies similar to THX.

On a bit of a side note, I got into an interesting IM conversation last night with a friend of mine about developments with his ex. It's odd to think that I can now more directly relate to such conversations since I've actually been through the transition from one relationship to another. I'll not go into details in terms of what was discussed, but in summary it was more of the usual observations of how people behave after a break-up, especially in a social-networking environment. It's perfectly understandable for the most part but at times it certainly doesn't make things any easier to deal with but that's life and all that. Funny - I've gotten so used to giving relationship advice over things I may not have had direct experience with but at the very least now the post break-up routine is something that I have better insight about.

So there.

Work looms on the horizon and I still want to experiment with this Sew No More fabric glue to see if it's any good. Wish me luck!

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I love the guy with a hat - as far as recurring xkcd characters go, he's a genius!

I haven't made much NaNoWriMo progress since my last LJ entry, but at least I'm up to 5,369 words now. I'll be posting regular updates on my NaNoWriMo progress at the start of every LJ entry from here on, and I'll probably compose at least one entry a week about it on the Geeky Guide. All these little thing to keep me focused. If you're interested in reading the story in-progress, you can read it here: The Interrogation.

I'll be returning tonight after a timely vacation leave last week and my taking advantage of the holiday yesterday. I spent most of my night stressing out over work, however, given I didn't have all the data that I needed for my report due to delays from those who were supposed to send it along. Seriously, why can't people respect deadlines? Timeliness is extremely important, especially in an industry like call centers.

Otherwise, last night was light. I spent a fair amount of time working on my novel, along with taking time to write a few more Geeky Guide entries for this week. This whole NaNoWriMo effort is pretty interesting and I like how it's driving me to write. It's probably helping that my competitive nature is also coming out these days given that Tobie is also making a NaNoWriMo attempt this year. There's nothing like having someone to compare your progress against to push you further and that's pretty much what Tobie's doing for me. I mean come on, I turn around and I see him typing away, adding to his zombie story. How is that supposed to make me feel? But it's friendly competition so far. Naturally I want both of us to "win" NaNoWriMo this year and it's not an actual race.

Although I wouldn't mind finishing my novel first, hehe.

Tonight we're catching the local premiere of Inglorious Basterds right before I head off to work. I was lucky enough to win the tickets via Neworlds.ph. So now I have an official T-shirt (even the tag says Inglourious Basterds!) and a poster (which was slightly beat up, but still works) and of course the actual tickets. I'm hoping I get to juggle my schedule today well enough - I've been awake since around 12, which is a bad thing since it means I may pass out in the middle of my work shift tonight. Oh joy.

Then again, I can always try to stay away by working on my novel some more. Yeah, that's the ticket.

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Them's fighting words! It's on! LOL

A very Happy Birthday goes out today to a good friend, Karen! Hope you had a stellar birthday despite the interesting timing of your birth and the classic religious holiday, All Saint's Day! =D

I'm waiting for photos to upload as I compose this entry. Hurry up you fiends! I have so many other things to do!

Last night was simply awesome, and I'm glad I didn't give in to the temptation to stay home last night! Tobie and I along with Dek joined the rest of the group at O Bar to celebrate Halloween. We didn't have the most amazingly accurate "Bollywood" costumes given the amount of time left to us, but we did manage decently enough. There were only two wigs left at the department store but somehow we justified that pirate braids made one almost look like "The Guru" and a mohawk definitely counted for Sandjaya, so that was Indian enough for the night, LOL. We also had some interesting metallic masks to which we added sequin-ish gems to the forehead like the traditional bindi. Naturally the presence of props amongst so many queers became an instant hit as everyone wanted to take turns trying on the wigs and posing in various ways.

Next year, we are definitely working harder on actual costumes, haha!

Despite it being a major holiday weekend, which normally translates to way too many people at Malate and not enough room in the bars, we were pretty comfortable in the recently-launched VIP area of O Bar, located at the second floor where the Top and Bottom shop used to be. Thus despite the hordes of queers lining the streets trying to get some alcohol and probably some action for the night, we were sitting in relative comfort in the nicely air conditioned VIP area. Kudos to O Bar for making such an area and effectively managing the people such that there weren't too many gatecrashers sneaking into the area.

From there it was just lots of drinking, good music that wasn't too loud for actual conversations to happen and various costumes, drag queens and other antics. It was such a stellar night! I'm really, really, really glad that I went out. The Halloween photos compose the bulk of the photos that I'm trying to upload right now, if only Facebook and Multiply would stop behaving like total idiots.

Today after getting some much-needed sleep, Tobie and I hit up Gateway to watch Astro Boy and The Hurt Locker. Astro Boy was as disappointed as expected (haha!) but I guess it wasn't a total loss. The humor was pretty good but the whole thing didn't really feel like an actual Astro Boy movie. The Hurt Locker was a lot better and very, very intense / stressful. Still, it definitely made up for our first movie and it certainly drove the message home how harsh the situation in Iraq can be.

Oh, and I also managed to fully unbox and transform all my new Transformers! Let's welcome to the family the Transformers Universe Beachcomber and Brawn along with the Transformers Animated Blurr, Shockwave and Ultra Magnus! Yes, those photos are in queue after the Halloween photos, hehe.

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Remind me never to go trick-or-treating in the Sinfest neighborhood, LOL

Today's the birthday of one of the more recent additions to the team of people that I handle at work, Niña! Happy Birthday to you! Hope you enjoy your day off.

I'm awake past 2 in the afternoon on a Monday, which of course is theoretically a bad thing given I work nights. Then again, it seems to happen fairly often enough given that we spend Sunday gaming most of the day and thus end up sleeping Sunday night, all beat from the day.

Yesterday's game was essentially a "season ender" in TV terms given it was our 13th episode for this particular game and the holidays next week prevent us from gaming for that particular weekend. A lot of storylines were tied up fairly neatly while even more were set up and left as cliffhangers, naturally. There are a lot of unanswered questions that we're all going to have to deal with when we finally get around to gaming again, so in the meantime we're left to strategize and attempt to figure out the best course of action moving forward.

Today has been fairly light and thus it still feels like the last moments of the weekend. Tobie and I woke up fairly late (past 10am) and only got out of bed closer to 11am. Given the time and the grumbling of our stomachs, I decided to whip up a quick brunch with the limited ingredients that we had left in the fridge. This resulted in some mushrooms fried in olive oil, oregano, peppers, garlic and onions, some pork steaks seasoned with butter, garlic, onions, salt, pepper, rosemary, oregano and basil, and some steamed okra and sliced tomatoes on the side. It wasn't anything amazing, but it tasted pretty good. It was my first time to experiment with mushrooms in that manner and I was really happy with the results. It's certainly something worth repeating, perhaps in greater quantities in case we ever entertain guests.

Over lunch and a little afterward we watched Proof, which I had never managed to see over the years. Apart from the geeky eye candy that is Jake Gyllenhaal, the movie had a pretty interesting story and I liked it a lot. Plus I can see why Gwyneth was nominated for Golden Globe for her performance in this film since she was pretty stellar. You spend most of the movie wondering whether or not she was starting to go crazy like her father or was just that brilliant. The movie had me feeling the urge to bring out my Calculus book (TC7) and solve some equations for the heck of it. I know, it sounds pretty lame but I do find solving math equations fun at times. It's a nerd thing.

Oh, and there was a nice Archer moment earlier today. Archer and I was just lazing around on the mattress that acts as Sietch Creare's pseudo couch for now and we were just all quiet. As always, the silence was filled with various thoughts running through my head and of all things I started to think about defrosting the fridge since it was looking a little icy, but also somewhat empty and thus defrosting wasn't unrealistic. Just as I was forming the words that I would say in my head, Archer blurts out that he thought we needed to defrost. Seriously. The whole exchange between my thoughts and his words just had me laughing out loud and tearing up at the same time. No matter how many times things like this happen that seem to be too frequent to be coincidence, I don't think I'll ever get totally used to it. The whole thing just reminds me of one of the many, many reasons that I fell in love with Archer.

Ah life.

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Now THAT is truly tactical gaming! LOL