Treasured Award

A tag and award from Berry. 

Let me share this Irish Blessings’ friendship proverb:

“May there always be work for your hands to do, may your purse always hold a coin or two. May the sun always shine on your windowpane, may a rainbow be certain to follow each rain. May the hand of a friend always be near you, may God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.”

Am giving this award to all my readers, hope that this post fills you with joy and blessings :)

Swine Flu

So mom calls me up, panicking, and ask that I get some N95 masks for hubby and me to protect ourselves from the swine flu or the disease that's more appropriately known as H1N1.

And my response was, "what? walk around with a mask? And look crazy & paranoid ? No way."

Unbeknownst to my mom, I had already asked around my circle of friends to see if anyone was buying or wearing masks. Two families admitted to having N95 masks still stocked up (from the time that the SARS virus first came out) but no one has started wearing them yet.

Anyway, so Mom pressures me into getting masks at the very least. And again, I respond by saying that masks can only do you good if you wear them. If I had no intention of going out in a mask, why should I even buy?

And this is the link that she sends me from www.flufashion.net :  Click here to view mask designs

Apparently, there are now N95- rated masks which are designed to be fashionable. What more could I say ? I had no more excuses.

Check out their designs:

Eyebrows

I found myself a wonderful new product a few weeks ago.

Having (proudly) maintained a one-car household for more than a year now, I find it so tedious to have to squeeze in errands and trips to the salon during weekends because that's the only time that the car is free.

My eyebrows have been sorely neglegted - I have to admit that I never used to pay attention before my sister brought me to her eyebrow-waxing place during my visit in California last Christmas, so drama lang to, haha! - because I've had a hard time plucking out stray hairs one by one.

Aliw lang when I found this hair gel wand for $9.99 and the tip is perfectly shaped and it's so easy to spread the waxing gel over the areas that you want to target. So last night, I waxed my own eyebrows.

Charing! --> I've been wanting to use this word for a long time, I don't even know what this means, but it just seems appropriate to use right now.

In fairness, my eyebrows look even.

And no bald patches... uh, except for the tip of my left one. Tolerable.

The middle area of my brow (between my eyebrows) is clean. Nice.

Scary at first, but really aliw in the end when you start seeing the results. Of course, nothing beats the feeling of primping and getting dolled up at the salon but if you can't ? This is the next best thing.

Which reminds me, I used up most of the 10 strips that came with the package. Apparently, you can buy 100 small muslin strips for $2.99 pala. Not bad.

University

It's been raining a lot these past few days and I can't help but relive my days as a student. I remember wishing for a typhoon just so classes would get cancelled and we'd get the day off from school. 

Haha, those days are long past now and I'm really amazed at how grown-up my younger cousins are. A couple of cousins graduated from high school this April and one is looking into going to university in the US. I believe that he has already been offered a scholarship to a private college somewhere in Massachusetts but his parents are having second thoughts about letting him go there because they found out from college review sites that this particular school had liberal policies.

Now, I hear that he's seriously looking at another Ivy-league university but since he has no scholarship offer for that school, he's thinking about looking at student loans to see if he can afford to go to school. When I first heard my cousin talking about student loans, I was like - DUH? His parents can certainly afford to send him there. Apparently, there's been some issue about this because my aunt is having second thoughts about letting him attend school in another country.

Sigh.

Anyway, I'm hoping that 

(a) he gets to go, it'll be great to see him spread his wings and try to be independent.

and ...

(b) that if does need to get a loan for his tuition, that he gets a good one with good terms and rates. 

6 unimportant things that make me happy

The rules are:
1. Mention the person who nominated you.
2. List 6 unimportant things that make you happy.
3. Tag 6 blogs, state the rules, and notify them with a teeny comment on their blog.

This is a tag from Berry. I had to think hard to come up with things that I can live without (unimportant nga eh) but give me so much pleasure and here they are:

1. Coffee - I'm not a regular coffee drinker but I do adore flavored lattes (especially caramel ones, iced coffees and fraps.

2. Library books - books that you can read for free, can't go wrong with that.

3. Wireless Internet Access - Free wifi from a local cafe, from the hotel, or even if you subscribe to a cellphone carrier's Wireless Internet Access or data plan. Gotta love them.

4. Discounts and/or coupons - need I say more?

5. Ice-cold Coke - I can go without soda for a long time but there are times when nothing quenches your thirst like an ice cold Coke.

6. Personal blogs, websites, and online photo albums - easy to share and easy to maintain, helps me keep updated with what's going on with my friends' lives.

This is such a late post so I'm not tagging anybody anymore but feel free to snag this if you're interested in sharing your 6 unimportant things that make you happy.

Web Hosting Review

Last weekend, a car salesman - yes, you read it right, a CAR SALESMAN - started talking to hubbby and me about e-commerce websites when he heard that we were both in IT.  He told us - and he sort of winked at us as if we were conspirators - that he'd be calling us over the weekend to talk to us about this web hosting service that he knows of. I get the feeling that he is moonlighting as a web-services reseller.

So with that thought in mind, I decided to do some research and check out web hosting ratings. I was interested to check out the prices too as I wanted to find out if this guy was straight or if was the type to take advantage ( I think it's more of the former because why would he think about trying to pull an IT-based scam on a couple of IT professionals ? )

Not surprisingly, the prices I saw on the web hosting review site differs so much from the prices that he quoted us. He was trying to sell us $200 / year services whereas this website lists web hosting services that cost an average of $10 a month. I also love how they provide articles that help out people who may wish to start their own websites such as How to Avoid the Five Pitfalls of Domain Registration.

Finally!

It's been weeks since I last updated this blog and so much has happened since then.

Our lives have gotten an upheaval in the past few days that it has taken me a while to get a breather and a chance to blog again. I have a couple of tidbits that I would be sharing in the near future and I'll start with one now.

A couple of weeks ago, Mom delivered the happy news that she and Dad have decided to join my sister and her kids for their visit this July. This is good, except that this sent us scrambling around looking for a 7 or an 8 passenger vehicle for our second car, rather than the sedan that we were thinking about.

Considering that my not-so-little younger brother is arriving for his annual visit next week, we thought it would be prudent to just purchase the 2nd family car now rather than later. I didn't want to have to juggle our schedules again.

I've always dreaded car hunting. You see, I get impatient easily and having no idea about prices, I do hate to haggle - especially with car salesmen who try to slip things past you and talk you into signing up for extended warranties and prepaid service contracts that would turn out to be impractical later on.

Thankfully, I did manage to get a few days off of work and I spent the time looking around for price estimates, dealerships and promotions. We thought that we had armed ourselves with enough information and had our hearts set on getting the Mazda CX9. A 7 seater, 3 row full-sized SUV with nice looking interiors and comfortable 3rd row seating. It didn't hurt that Mazda was currently offering 0% APR for the next 3 years for the CX9.

Unfortunately, we discovered during the test drive that the 3rd row does not have AC vents - a big no no because my nephews would be occupying those seats in the summer and they get carsick easily, the AC helps them stay comfortable. And asking around some more, we heard comments that "Mazda's AC has always been weak". Hmm, not good.

This discovery sent us running off to Toyota to check out the Highlander, another SUV. The Highlander, which I remember as being nice from our visit to the dealership last year, was so disappointing. The thing with Toyota is that the base model is really a base model. It's cheap-looking and lacks the bells and whistles that make the other vehicles so desireable.

I'm sure that the more expensive trim would look so much better, but the one we saw at the $32k level (same price level as the CX9 that we looked at earlier) had manual seat adjustments for the driver & passenger seats and really cheap dashboard material. Did I mention that the CX9 had the upgraded Bose sound system w/ 6 cd changers already ?

So while the Toyota's AC was satisfactory, the interior of the vehicle left us very disappointed.

The same day, we also checked out the Honda Pilot and we didn't fall in love with it.

While still not entirely happy with the Mazda CX9, it seemed like it was the more sensible and practical of the two (vs the Toyota Highlander) and in the hopes of sealing our decision, hubby asked to drop by Subaru to check out the Tribeca and I agreed. We wanted to sort of check out and eliminate all the other options before we move forward and buy the CX9.

And so we found this baby. Ours isn't exactly the one in the picture, but it looks like that one in silver (hubby does not like the red). Will post new pictures soon.

I wasn't really expecting to get another Subaru because our current car is already a Subaru and with AWD (All Subarus have AWD), the gas mileage isn't really very good compared to a 2WD vehicle.

But gosh, it handled really well during the test drive. I was mildly surprised to find hubby - who had so many complaints about the gas pedal and the steering during the test drives - smiling. He was actually smiling! and happy!

We switched places and I loved it too! When we got back to the lot, we whispered to each other and agreed that this is it. 

3rd row seat - comfortable.

AC vents for all passengers - yes!

steering - perfect

Two hours later - well past the dealership's closing time - we brought home our 2nd car. Di na ako kulong sa bahay and we're happy :D

Photos taken from www.MazdaUSA.com, www.toyota.com and www.subaru.com