Thanksgiving weekend in Boston

Hubby and I drove to Boston, MA during the Thanksgiving weekend. We figured that it was the best time to go back to Boston to use the Go-Boston cards that we had purchased long ago.

The first stop of the day was 5 Wits, a wonderful hands-on museum that has an egyptian tomb theme. The entire tour lasted around 45 minutes. The goal is to solve puzzles to move on to the next chamber. There were 3 chambers all in all. If you ever have a chance to drop by Boston, this would be a fun place to check out - lalo na if you have kids. :) Note that it does get pitch dark in some places so if you get scared in the dark, keep away.

One of the highlights of our trip was our visit to the New England Aquarium. Hubby - and I think I've mentioned this before - is a great fan of aquariums and this was no exception. We were in awe of the great tank in the middle of the building and used up a lot of our SD cards filming the sea creatures in the tank - I got on the internet and ordered new SD cards when we got back to the hotel. We really need bigger capacity ones.

We've visited a lot of aquariums in the past and we still saw some new varieties here in the New England Aquarium. It was a fun and satisfying finish to day 1 of our trip.

We wanted to do the Freedom trail on day 2. I've walked it way back in 99 (or 2000?) and hubby saw parts of it last year with another friend and this time, we wanted to do it together.

It wasn't comfortable walking the 2.5 miles in 30 degree weather but we did it anyway and finished the trail. I swear, my muscles were so sore the next day. Hubby was tired too but he complained a lot less than I did :)

Considering that it was Black Friday - probably the biggest shopping day in the US - we didn't get to buy anything at all. Given that my uncle serves with the LAPD, it might be nice to get him something that he can use on a daily basis. My search has led me to the LA Police Gear site where I'm thinking of getting him one of these Blackhawk CQC Holsters. He'll surely love this and hopefully, this will remind him that his family loves him and wants him to be stay safe.

Fun with high school friends

We were able to convince Elijah to make one more trip to NY with us. Aliw rin because his (supposedly) short term project was extended another few weeks. Hubby has always been a fan of sea creatures and has been looking forward to the NY Aquarium visit since last year so we took advantage of Elijah's project extension ;).
On the left is a picture that we asked someone to take of us on the boardwalk. We look like an AT&T commercial here, "more bars in more places", kasi naman, in order of height pa. Haha! I love this picture, except for the fact that we look so much chubbier standing next to Elijah, he's so tall and thin kasi. Yeah, blame it on the other guy.

We then made our way to the MET after the aquarium, met up with yet another high school friend, Steven. Sayang lang that it was already late when we got there. We would've loved to walk around some more, we only got to see a few sections during our visit.

We had our picture taken at the indoor Chinese garden on the 2nd floor. We were so tired by then and just wanted to relax and catch up with each other. It wasn't such a nice picture because I was so concerned about the camera falling off of my purse (I propped it on top of my purse because I forgot to bring our Gorillapod) that I forgot to set the flash.

Dinner at Brother Jimmy's was great too, it was a bit noisy but we were still able to reminisce - tell high school stories - and exchange chismis ... este... updates about other batchmates. I hope that we can meet up with old friends more often.

CA Vacation Recap 2008

Weeks have come and gone since I last posted, those days went by really fast and I've been busy all day (and night) until right this minute.

I had a hectic week at work before I left to go on vacation, with a potential client asking for a presentation of one of our products. Vacationing with my family wasn't stress-free either. I've noticed that since I've gotten married, I've been using hubby as a buffer against everything that bothers me - even my family :-P - so being away from him was stressful as well.

Between regular school, kumon, Chinese lessons, karate-classes and playtime at home, my nephews have a very busy schedule and we all pitched in to help relieve my sister and brother-in-law who have to juggle all these activities for the kids in addition to their full work schedules.

I had quite a few amusing conversations with the little one - the 4 year old - and I'll be posting them in the next few days so I can keep a record. Will probably show these to him when he grows up so he'll see how he was when he was a kid.

On my last day in California, I got to attend a good friend's wedding. This is the only picture I have, courtesy of Edson (a high school friend, hubby's barkada). This was taken while we were relaxing outside in one of the hotel shops just before we went in for cocktails.

Aliw rin. I wish I could've taken pictures of my hair, my sister gifted me with really nice (and medyo expensive) hair pins. I practiced for 2 days prior to the wedding and I can now do a very nice & clean french twist all by myself.

My only regret is that I wish I could've spent more time in California. I have 2 other good friends who've settled there and I haven't visited them for the longest time.

Too much room

My company booked us into one of these suites, kinda fun because I do hate those tiny hotel rooms that feel so cramped so this is a nice change since I'm staying several nights so i do need room to spread around :)

Below are some panoramic shots that I've taken, a third of the room is occupied by the queen bed, in front of which is a divider with chest of drawers that also serves as a tv stand. The area (left hand side of the picture) has a stove, microwave, mini refrigerator and a kitchen sink - it's on the other side of that wall behind the TV.

I also have a work desk, a separate dining table for two, an armchair and a sofa for entertaining.

Now, I find myself too lazy to walk from one end of the room to the other. The first 2 nights, I plugged in my cellphone to charge near the work desk area and each time the phone rang (my mom and sister calls a lot), I've had to run to chase after the phone. This makes the room feel so much more bigger, haha!

Christmas Weekend

I'm not really sure if I've mentioned it before or not, but the Christmas party last 12/15 was really the highlight of my Christmas season. We didn't really make any definite plans for Christmas eve and Christmas day but we did make plans for going out the weekend prior to that.

Friday night, we went out to Willowbrook mall to do some window shopping. This must be the first time Hubby & I are stepping into a mall ever since we got married and moved to NJ. :) We're not really mall-rats and would prefer to avoid the crowds but being cooped up alone at home for the past week has made me want to see more people. I wound up getting a pair of pants for myself and having dinner at TGIF's. We orderd the fried mac & cheese for an appetizer and were thrilled when 2 orders were delivered to us by mistake and the 2nd was just given to us for free.

We had also been talking about taking a trip to NYC and checking out the Macy's holiday window displays, we actually left for NYC last Sunday but decided to cancel the trip because it was raining heavily. Monday, 12/24, turned out to be a very nice and sunny day and we pushed through with the NY trip.

We drove to Journal Sq and took the Path train (we like this better now, compared to taking the bus or driving into the city) to 14th st and walked all the way down to Chinatown. It was quite a long walk but I didn't mind. There were a lot of street vendors along the streets and I had fun checking out their wares. Eventually, we got to Chinatown and did some shopping to stock up on Chinese herbs (for cooking). We gorged ourselves on fried dumplings, black sesame ice cream from the Chinatown Ice Cream factory and some taro milk boba tea.

While walking, we saw Washington Square and decided to take a photo of ourselves, this is our picture and a snapshop of the Gorillapod (& our old digicam) in action.

We then took the subway to 34th st and walked to Macy's Herald Square. The window displays were nice and there were a lot of parents with their children reading the text. Here are some pictures of the window displays.

NYC with Edson

August 18, 2007

New York

American Museum of Natural History, Rose Center, Chinatown

(click photo to view album)

It was a Saturday so I get to join the boys' outing. We had planned to meet up with Steven for brunch at a dimsum place in Chinatown but we ran late (waiting for a realtor & her client) so we decided to cancel brunch and go straight to AMNH.

I don't even remember how many times I've been to the AMNH but I can definitely say that I only saw a few sections during each of my previous trips. After today, I remember why I never get to see the entire thing in one day. There really was a lot - too much for a day - and in fact, after a couple of hours going through 2 floors, we were pooped. We then just walked briskly through the rest of the exhibits and the Rose Center so that our entrance fee is sulit.

It was almost 6 when we got to Chinatown and I asked the boys to just hear mass first before having dinner. By 7, we were famished and our Hop Kee dinner tasted even better than usual. We got to see some sort of Festival in Little Italy. Apparently, the streets get barricaded and are off limits to vehicles on Saturday nights.

Boston, MA

Hubby and I drove up to MA (Boston suburbs) last weekend to do some sight-seeing and apartment hunting.

We didn't have any luck apartment-wise, all the units that we've seen are tiny compared to the space that we have now - and mind you, we live in a condo so there isn't really a lot of space to start with. Some are also downright depressing... it didn't help that the temperature was around 90 degrees out there and that the airconditioning wasn't turned on in the model units. We felt that we were in purgatory (we first thought that it felt like hell, but we decided to be kind and take this down a notch).

Oh, there were also some beautiful apartments. The thing is, the price was beautiful too. You really get what you pay for Hubby and I fell in love with a complex that even had a private theater in the clubhouse, you can use that and even have it reserved for private parties - for free. How cool is that ? Unfortunately, we both weren't willing to pay extra for the luxury. Looks like we're gonna have to schedule more trips out sometime and look for more options.

Of course, the trip wasn't entirely for business purposes... we took a detour into downtown Boston and enjoyed the sights. We got to go to the Museum of Science - which we both enjoyed... and later on to MIT to check out robotics-related stuff in their museum.

<-- Museum of Science We also got to have lunch at Quincy Market, hubby didn't really relish the fact that after waiting in line for our food, we also had to scout around and aggressively look for a table.