Paper cuts

<-- How cool is that ??? Check out Peter Callesen's artworks.

This puts a very different edge to the art of papercutting, doesn't it ?

Galeng, no ?

Are you smarter than a 5th grader ?

Hubby loves watching this show and the questions are quite intriguing too. Sometimes, this even kind of makes me want to go back to my old textbooks and go through them again.

Lately, I've realized that watching quiz shows has also helped me discover a few more things about my hubby - things about him that I didn't learn about in the 20 years that we've been friends and bf-gf. First of which was that he likes maps. Magaling pala si S sa geography and I didn't even know until I'd see him answer geography questions easily.

As for me, I can easily answer the grammar, English and Spelling question and while I'd consider myself to be good in math & measurements, I'm only realizing that I really am not. How many pints is in a quart again ? and how many milliliters are there in an ounce ?

This blog is really inspired by the show that I saw last night (we have Tivo so I have no idea when this was actually shown), the contestant was the girl whose grandfather invented mood rings. One question for 1st grade spelling asked how many consonants were in the word "vowel". So she talked through her thought process...

V-O-U-L, and I know that vowels are A-E-I-O and U and sometimes Y. So the O and U in "vowel" are not consonants, so there are 2 consonants in "vowel". My answer is 2 and I'm gonna lock that in. *pushes the button*

Wrong! Okay, how can anybody not know how to spell vowel ? Pwede ba yun ? And she was like " Ohh V-O-W-E-L, like as in Bowels!!!" Hay nako. *roll eyes* Where did she go to school again ? I am so avoiding that school like the plague.

Fortunately, she was saved by her classmate, a fifth grader.

Dust allergies

I've been nursing a cough and a cold for more than 2 weeks now, it started off as a sore throat at first and later came out with the other symptoms.

My throat has gotten better after a week but my cough is still lingering. Every now and then I'd get a coughing fit that lasts for minutes and that scares the hubby - and frankly, it even scares me. I sound like somebody with TB or asthma.

We're thinking now that this might be an allergy. We keep cleaning and cleaning, but it still hasn't gone away, so hubby has taken apart our bed (and the bedframe) and is cleaning the nook & crannies of our bedroom. The thing with having wall to wall carpeting is that while it makes life more comfortable, it's also very attractive to dirt and dust. And how often do you clean under the bed, anyway ? We have this very cumbersome bedframe that is very difficult to move so the area under the bed very seldom gets vacuumed thoroughly. We do let our faithful Roomba go at it every so often, but unfortunately, Roomba - the tiny robot that it is - can only do so much. We've also thrown out dried flower arrangement we have hanging over our bed - while it was very nice, it was certainly a huge dust collector.

I'm also finding out that this dust mask that I picked up at the local dollar store is helping me breathe more comfortably. I've had this on for an hour now and I haven't coughed since. Hopefully, I get to shake off this cough when hubby is done with the fall-cleaning. I'm tired.

Salad = Freezer, not a match

Having been carnivorous for most of my life, I've been trying to incorporate more vegetables in our diets recently. We started buying these packaged, pre-washed salad greens from the grocery, we serve these with creamy Ceasar salad dressing, croutons and parmesan cheese.

The thing is, these packaged greens aren't really cheap and each pack lasts us 2 to 3 meals. So last Sunday night, we opened up a fresh pack and put the remains back in the refrigerator. On Monday afternoon, I saw the package again and decided to stick it in the freezer so that they'd last longer. Who knows when we'd get a hankering for salad again ? Right ?

Last night, we decided to eat the remainder of the salad,... ewww! Turns out that freezing salad greens wasn't such a good idea after all. I wish I'd taken a picture before we chucked it out to the trash. The veggies were all soggy and reddish - not all nice.

And now, we know. (... and knowing is half the battle, GI JOEEEE!)

Walking with Dinosaurs

Hubby and I got ourselves some tickets to the Walking with Dinosaurs show at the Continental Arena a few months ago. We were very excited, come on... dinosaurs walking around the stage ? Our tickets were for the 10:30a show so we had to wake up extra early last Saturday to make sure that we had time to grab breakfast and still make it in time.

Getting there was a breeze, given that we lived only 10 miles away from the arena, but we've had to pay $10 for parking. Inside, t-shirts were being sold for $25, programs for $15 - I wanted to get some souvenirs but these prices were outrageous! I was so glad that we had already had breakfast before leaving home. If we had to eat there, we'd have spent another $20 easily and still not be satisfied.

Anyway, as we got into our seats, we looked around and started cringing when we saw that allthe groups there had kids. Hubby & I were the only all-adult group that we could find. We probably should've gone with friends who had kids.

The show was around 2 hrs in length and had a 20 minute intermission in the middle. I dozed off for most of it, it was so so boring! There were some amusing moments - where there was a mother & baby T-Rex - but I expected a lot more action, maybe like those I saw in Jurassic Park (the movie). The kids did seem to enjoy it though as there were a lot of them growling, roaring and imitating dinosaur sounds as they were walking back to the parking area.

Seemed boneless ?

Hubby and I were grocery shopping when I saw this at the meat section:

Beef Round Eye Round Roast
Seemed Boneless

er.... I did not see any bones sticking out of the meat either. so yeah, it seemed boneless to me too. Needless to say, we didn't buy this because if the store weren't sure about this being boneless, I wasn't too sure either.

Looking back

Life assessments are usually done at around New Year's time - it's usually the time when one looks back at the things that were accomplished the past year and start planning goals for the following year. It seems too early to make one now but I can't help but feel that I'm due for one since a whole lot of events have transpired in my life since 2007 started.

2007 has been a roller coaster for me. Got married to hubby in early 2007, honeymooned - our very first trip as a couple (what can I say ? we're old-fashioned *smile*) - in Singapore, and flew off to New Jersey, USA to start our married life together.

Q2 2007 saw us getting the announcement from our company that they're closing the NJ offices and the request that we relocate to headquarters in MA. This time also showed us some advancement in our GC applications and gave us our EADs.

Q3 2007 was pretty much spent entertaining potential buyers for our home and the occasional goodbye-but-we'll-see-each-other-again-dinners with friends and colleagues who, unfortunately, cannot relocate. A good friend from high school also came by and stayed with us while he toured NY / NJ - our very first houseguest. Oh yes, Q3 also gave us a bit of a shock when we heard that our real estate company was shutting down (and that our agent was among the 350 staff that were laid off). The best thing about Q3, however, was being able to work from home on a daily basis - a huge blessing!

We are now one week into Q4 of 2007 and I'm looking forward to receiving good news - did I mention how much of an optimist I am ? The way I see it, there's really no way for us to go but up, right ? And we do have a lot of things that we're waiting on - our GC, job for hubby, house on the market, relocation to MA - I'd be happy to get a few of these checked off of our list so we can go ahead and get started on the baby project.