life as we make it

how we spent and unusually warm, eighty-degree weekend in april in boston:

1. watch a comedy show: improv asylum at the north end was such a good choice. 

2. eat raw oysters, and where else but at the  Union Oyster House

3.  eat  mcdonald’s quarter pounder for a midnight snack! (can’t decide if that was better than chinese at Chau-chau City)

4. walk around Salem and it’s witch-themed stores and museums

5. sit by the wharf bask in the sun and watch people walk by

6. eat fried clams and roast beef at kelly’s in revere beach

7. walk along the shore and dip our feet in numbing cold water of the atlantic 

8. and finally come home, relax and have burgers on the grill

On our sixth wedding anniversary, Tom and I are not in some exotic place in the Caribbean, unlike most of our other anniversary celebrations, but it wasn’t any less special.

We started our Saturday morning with a hefty breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast and fried rice. Of course, by then, Tom has already raked our tulip garden plot (hey i take some credit in the design and the planting that we did in the fall). They are all happily budding. By lunchtime, we have productively re-organized our basement with our newly built shelves.

Not planning a road trip, we hopped from one-town to another as we try to enjoy a sunny Saturday afternoon: lunch at Upper Crust at Moody Street in Waltham; window shopping at Bloomingdale’s at Chestnut Hill and finally, a dinner take-out at Viva Mi Arepa in West Roxbury. Their beef empanadas and the slow-cooked melt-in-your-mouth roast pork was well worth the travel.

We ate our candle-lit dinner as we celebrate earth-hour, with red wine and table-talk. We were even joined in by my family in the celebration on an overseas phone call.

Finally on the day of our anniversary, after mass, we treated ourselves to an IHOP breakfast. (no cooking, no cleaning-up! just the way i like it)

in the past winters, i always had the tendency to hibernate. but this winter did not afford me any opportunity to curl up in bed, and sleep the cold days away. i blame and hate my work for it. 

the groundhog has come out. and winter will be over in a few weeks. the temperatures are slowly climbing up and the 50’s are feeling like a heat wave. 

all i got to remember the season by are a few snap shots of how it was.

Year after year, tom and i decide that we are not going back to the Philippines for Christmas. But then, we always seem to find a reason to go. And by the middle of the year, our trip is all booked and scheduled. For now, I will be content to mull over my 2008 Pinas trip. Besides, I have three months worth of winter hibernation. 

So last Christmas, there wasn’t really a major reason to go home; no weddings, no newborns, no christening. But how hard was it to find excuses, say, it was Tom’s and my w

ell deserved break after a grueling year (sure, sure).

In retrospect, I think there are just some things I

 can’t have Christmas without….

…I can’t imagine not being in the family picture on Christmas eve.

…I can’t not anticipate seeing the yearly theme of my mom’s christmas decoration (this year it was green and gold)

…I can’t imagine going to the Christmas Eve mass without the entire family.

…I still can’t get used to the idea that someday I might be spending Christmas without them.

I don’t think I need any bigger excuses than  these.

there’s nothing like coming home to winter wonderland after a 90-degree temperature weather for the last three or so weeks. 

yes, our first day back in new england was greeted by a white-out winter storm, 8-inch snow and bitter cold 10 degree temperatures with a windchill of -11.  it was my first time to drive on the snow this winter and it was a battle driving on the powdery snow. 

suffice to say, it was the perfect setting to succumb to jetlag and sleep the day away. gone are our plans to drive into boston to watch the 7 p.m. fireworks and the ice sculptures, (new year’s eve 12 midnight fireworks was cancelled!)   so we settled instead with a feast of Chinese food, which is what Americans traditionally do.

can’t say its much of a celebration,  but with New England winter, anything goes. welcome back…

This is a James Bond spoiler.  So.. for those who haven’t seen the new Quantum of Solace movie and are still planning on seeing it. Stop right here.

The last bond movie was such a disappointment.

Maybe I am experiencing a generational disenchantment. But it seemed to me that the present James Bond has lost the charm that the likes of Roger Moore, Tim Dalton, Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan brought into the character.

Where is the witty dialogue and the quick comebacks?  Where is the charm and the savvy of the bow tie wearing double-0-7?  Where are the scantily clothed women that used to “decorate” the movie with minute roles? Where are the gadgets????  Where is Q?????

I guess time has come for the rebooted  Bond, where Bond simply wears khaki’s and blue shirt the entire movie; where senseless action shots dominate; where Bond uses his fist and not his wit, nor his gadgets.

Sad,  James Bond is no longer its own genre.  Just another action-packed movie.

when i was 19, my bestfriend died of cancer. this is the person i ate recess with everyday since 2nd grade;  hang-out with every weekend for 12 years. she was the friend i looked forward to growing old with.  her own brother mistook me to be her at one point because we were inseparable.  her passing was such a numbing experience.  but time helped make it fade away.

i have experienced many deaths since then: great-grandmothers, grandmothers, grandfather.  each one left a void.

with each passing , there’s the loss, the hurt and the regret that you didn’t do as much with them as you could have.  and you will never get the chance again.

my mother-in-law is now succumbing to cancer. she is deteriorating before my eyes. the doctor said she had a few weeks to live. i have recently spent more time with her than I have in five years.  unfortunately, they were not the best of times.

i had thought knowing about the inevitability of passing would make it easier. it doesn’t.

"here’s why everyone else eats better than we (americans) do", Anthony Bourdain says as he digs into the exotic dishes he finds in the ethnic neighborhoods of new york:

1.  fried cowbrain

2. grilled bone marrow

3. yakitori (grilled chicken skin)

4. cow balls

5. grilled yellow fin tuna

and some other jelly-ish delicacy, a texture americans don’t particularly  like

if it was only about exotic,  unusual and weird food, i can add hundreds more to his list.  to name a few, think about chicharon (pig rind or intestines), balut (one-day old chicken embryo), grilled chicken ass and so on and so forth. and these are only some of those found in the Philippines.  

the thing is, every culture has its own to boast of. how else to know, experience and try but to travel (unless one prefers to sit on the couch and watch travel channel)

traveling is stepping out of your boundaries and comfort zone. traveling is immersing in someone’s else’s culture and traditions, and culture is best embodied in their food.

hot, humid, 96 degree weather and tom and i didn’t have a beach day planned! to avert a day of bratty sulking from his wife, tom suggested a shopping day at the wrentham village outlet. (ha, he knows what’s good for him!)

it turned out to be a perferct day to shop. since everyone was probably at the beach, we didn’t have to deal with a big crowd and long lines.  i haven’t really gone shopping since before Christmas. so six months, hence, i was ready to break-out the wallet and start with the Christmas shopping again (what a vicious cycle). 

bags and shoes, here i come. ( this addiction, my sisters and i got from my mom is not helping my budget at all). so first stop, burberry. i am still waiting for the open tote bag i liked so much to go on sale, but i guess i was out of luck. i poured all my energies on shoes, instead.

well, fifty shops and ten shoes later (not all mine, promise), we headed out to Coleman. The real reason we trekked to wrentham was to find a replacement for our 10-year old tent. lo and behold, the coleman store wasn’t there anymore, but it was replaced by a bigger and better Coach store!!!.

The magnet that pulls me to Coach everytime was to be blamed on my dear mother as well!  She got her Coach bag in 1998, and back then I can barely borrow it. (besides they kinda  looked old-ish and mommy-ish to the 23-yo me). How times have changed, who would have thought, 10 years later that: (1) Coach would appeal to everyone, and (2) I would be living in the US and be shopping for her Coach!  I am definetely feeding her addiction since this would be her 3rd one.

Well, the luck I didnt have at Burberry and Coleman I finally found there— racks and racks of purses on sale.

A girl’s gotta indulge a little sometimes.

(Tom was probably thinking, we should have gone to Six Flags instead, hehehe, oh well he took my picture, so it must have not been that bad=)

The weekend turned out be one of those glorious ones when you’d like to do everything outdoors. Sometimes it feels I am in a race against time.  We check the long-range weather at the beginning of the week so we can plan the weekend ahead.  We only a have handful of weekends left to the summer, and its just flying by so fast. There are so many more "to-dos" and "to-go-tos" left in my list.(Whew,  don’t I just sound so dismal!)

The truth is I am really sequeing into how much fun I had this weekend.  And it wasn’t about crossing off things in my list of to-dos.  No big plans, no road trips.

We probably just started the weekend right.  A meal  at PF Changs always makes Tom feel giddy (of course, me too). A weekend that startss off with Asian Pear Mojito, Lettuce Wrap Chicken, Mongolian Beef and Garlic Noodles  is bound to be a good one! No desserts after that, and our night cap was the night lights of Boylston Street as we walked-off the extra calories.

Saturday  was a slow start.  The first order of the day was to sleep in.  Although we initially thought along the lines of spending it either camping or going to the Cape, the miles-long back-up in traffic quickly squashed the idea.  After a leisurely breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast (garlic rice, for me) we packed our beach chairs, and just decided to drive to the Northshore get some lunch and find a spot.

We ended up at Rockport, as usual. We can’t go wrong with the nice sceneries, quaint little shops and our favorite snack shack.

With still a good part of the day remaining, we luckily found a spot at a small, quaint Front Beach near  downtown, just perfect for a quick dip and relaxing nap.(it was definitely more interesting to people-watch all the French speaking beach-combers).   

As if our day in the sun wasnst enough, we ended up our day with a BBQ’d rib dinner at the patio and some summer shots of Tequila with our neighbors/friends through 2am.

We werent about to spend our Sunday at home despite a late night. We were lured back into enjoying the sights under the sunny blue skies. It was just perfect for a lazy Sunday afternoon of walking around Charletown. After so many years, I finally got to see the Bunker HIll Monument and the USS Constitution. There were just not  enough words to describe the picturesque steets of the town that has seen hundreds and hundreds of years of history.

I just turned snap-happy storing them all away in memory.

Where seasons come and go and time flies by so fast, I am learning not to take a lot of things for granted. (hey, i even got my first magnet of boston!)