1) closet reorg
the plan: install a closet organizer for more "hanging" space in the closet
the closet dimensions: 3' 10.5" x 2' 5.5" x 8' (width x depth x height) - yes, this is ALL i have to work with =P

it's a good thing i got off work early on friday because it gave time for me and dad to run over to home depot right quick to shop for the necessary parts in the shelving department. when we got home, we took a look again at kuya and vogie's closet (since we were using it as a model for my closet -- they had installed shelving in there previously) to see if we forgot any pieces to the shelvling. and of course we did. so back we went to home depot for a horizontal bar and some screws.

the project took most of the evening, and i felt like the tool time girl, handing my dad the appropriate hardware for what task was at hand. almost like a doctor and nurse scenario in the OR. hehe. it was fun spending time w. dad, esp since i dont see him when he comes home... (on the go girl, busy bee, yadda yadda...;) ) we must have finished at around 9pm.

the result: i now have a "closet and a half" since we put a full bar on top, and half of one on the bottom -- i can hang more clothes.

now for purging. that's another weekend. another project. =P

2) shop snowboard
the plan: go to tricity to shop for the snowboarding outfit

ive been debating all week whether or not to get gear. why?

1. it's the end of the season and i would not have time to go boarding again unless i call in sick on the weekday.
2. it's an expensive sport, and i probably wont have a job in july. do i really want to drop the cash for something i might not be using til fall?
3. i want to take trips. need to save $$

so i figured i might as well just buy a new snowboarding outfit, since it's half off at tricity. i will buy my board/boot/bindings later on.

so that was the idea.

i went to tri city with bev and gary on saturday, and they helped me choose a cool snowboarding outfit (thanks guys!). it was a little difficult finding the right pants size, because most of the smalls were gone. afterwards i decided to "just look" (as sheri says) at the snowboards.

note to you: "just look" to me ususally means, "i'm going to end up buying something anyways"

i looked and looked. and debated.... hmmm... originally i wanted my whole boarding gear to match (yes, i'm prissy like dat ;)), but since i resigned to just getting the outfit first, it didnt really matter if the board/boots/bindings matched anymore, just as long as it didnt clash. hehe, funny i should mention "clash" because that's the kind of burton board i was looking at...

it was between either the clash 147 (black/yellow -- i wanted to be a "bee" ;)) or the clash 143 (grey/blue/black). i ended up getting the 143. it was the last one (well, there was another one w. a ding on it, and then another one on display that was hard to reach....), and it MATCHED my outfit, AND it was HALF OFF!!!! SCORE! (had to follow the meesh theory on shopping).

the result: i bought my snowboard outfit and my board. bev bought her gloves. gary bought his board too. ;) yay!

now for the boots and bindings. which will be another project. another weekend. unless....
we go snowboarding now. you down?!?

on our tri-city excursion, i decided to pack a ziplock bag of ritz bits cheese sandwiches, in case i got the munchies on the drive down to fremont. when we got there, gary said "oooh, ritz bits!!!" and i said "want some? go get it..." he took the bag. we went in to go shopping.

note to self: never give gary a bag of food if you think that you will want some later.

needless to say, after shopping, just as we were turning out of the lot of tri city, i was hungry for some ritz bits:

"uh, i ate it all"

"what??!?!? you're kidding, right?" i didnt even have any!!

"no, im not. i didnt want to hold it in there, so i ate it all"

"gee, thanks" i was sad.

at this point, bev saves the day. "want a riesen?" a riesen is a caramel covered piece of candy which bev and i were eating earlier at her house. apparrently she had packed some in her bag.

"oh cool, i'll have one" i said. bev then decided to have one too. she recently got retainers, and she couldnt eat with them on, so she searched her bag for the case so she could store them for later use....

"my case isnt here!" she exclaimed. gary and i remembered that she had it before we went to tri city. and while i was trying on some snowboarding gear, they were playing w. gary's penlight laser, and he remembered seeing her case in her purse.

"maybe you dropped it in the store! let's go back..." i flipped a bitch and headed back to the store...

we scoured the store, and bev found her case where we last saw it.... on the bench by the fitting rooms.

"see, if i didnt eat the ritz bits, we would not have discovered bev's case was missing...".

for once gary's sometimes skewed philosophy made sense.

everything happens for a riesen. ;) hehe.

a cold cold easter picnic
spent easter sunday with the family at lake merced in san francisco. it was also my ate doris' birthday. it was a nice day up until we got to the lake, where it was c-c-c-c-c-o-o-o-l-l-l-l-d-d-d-d and overcast. luckily, kuya brought his digital camera, so we took pictures from the day's egg hunt festivities.

another easter birthday
and how can i forget:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAWN!

dont party too hard, now.... ;)

* 10:38 PM * bernadette * *

two degrees of separation
dawn and derrick had an impromptu get-together dinner for their birthdays on wednesday night. i had all these errands to run, so i wasnt sure i was going to make it, but since i completed them in time, i decided to head over to the ice chalet, scores, in foster city. i tagged sheri along.

the old school gang was there, in addition to a few new faces... and the funny thing about the dinner was finding out how small this world is -- the new ppl i met either knew someone i already knew, or i had met them online previously. it's kinda funny meeting ppl in person who you only know by their screenname. hehehe...

"fortune cookie" garage
i hung out w. voodoo last night in north beach for some angel hair pasta (#30) at calzone's. hockey guy trickled in some time after we ordered our meal. she showed us her albums from her paris and barcelona trips. pretty nifty albums, voodoo! (mental note: i must use the panoramic option on my camera more often!) makes me contemplate my european trip even more... hm... paris? london? rome? oh, the possibilities are endless....

the highlight of our evening was searching for parking... well, of course it was a big ol pain driving up and down the streets around the north beach area (no parking dammit), so voodoo decided to pull into this new garage on vallejo and stockton streets. it wasnt too expensive, but damn it wasnt cheap either... and we realized later why..

each stall had a little piece of wisdom stenciled across on the floor. cute! some were really profound like:

"it is never wrong to ask a question. it is always wrong to be ignorant"
"simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought"

and some of them were really funny like:

"you can't have everything. where would you put it?"
"the best throw of the dice is to throw them away"

or just grammatically incorrect like fortune cookies usually are:

"people regard you as a friendly"

uh. yeah.

but our personal favorite:

"no parking"

LOL!

time machine
friday night -- i watched the movie time machine w. gary, bev, kuya, vogie, rob, phuong, phuong's sister, and phuong's sister's boyfriend. i believe it was a remake. what an interesting movie. confusing, yet entertaining, and it makes you think... there were a lot of things left out, i think, like the whole idea of going back to the past, and quite possibly meeting up w. your past self... (you know, that whole star trekkie temporal mechanics thing...) but the main character mostly traveled forward in time and the future that was portrayed was none that i'd have ever imagined. i vaguely remember watching the older version of this movie, so i might have to go check that out... but if you get a chance, you should catch this version at a theater near you.....

lunch w. WGJ
saturday lunch -- i had lunch w. some girlfriends (and one of their boyfriends) at harbor village in embarcadero (yum, dim sum!!! =)). we got together because white girl jen was in town from virginia. i know that sounds bad that we call her "white girl jen" but it's kind of an endearing nickname that we give her, cuz she's so down. ;) melanie, mm, joy, white girl jen, her new beau, drew, and i had our fill of the dishes that just kept on coming to our table.... damn i ate too much! in addition to screening the new beau (you guys are so cute!), we updated jen on the past weddings that she missed. but alas, she will be returning to virginia in the next week to start her new job. jen used to live in the bay area, until she had to move back to virginia because her mom had fallen ill. but it was cool to see her after she moved back last summer. yay for wgj! =)

cleaning my room..... the continuing saga
saturday afternoon -- yes i did it!! i can see your jaw drop, it is an unbelieveable event, i know! i cleaned out my room!! no, gcdc, it's not the "i'll just move things here and there" kind of clean out, i actually cleaned out. i moved everything out of my room, vacuumed, dusted -- dumped all these papers, and weeded out all the shoes, bags, and clothes, that i didnt use/need/want. and even though i did all that i realized -- 1) i still had a lot of stuff that i wanted to keep 2) my room and closet are too small for me (hmmm, move out??... nah!). so what is it that i can't get rid of? i'll tell you:

pictures
i have a ton of them... and photo albums. i have too many. you cant just throw those away, it's like... well, pictures!!! i'll have to reorganize them so that they are all in one bin (or maybe two or three) for storage.

video tapes and cds
since i do a lot of recording of shows and stuff, i found that i have a lot of video tapes. and dont get me started on the cds, cuz i have a lot of those too. another little project of mine to go through.

papers, bills, etc, etc
why do i keep these, esp receipts from 1997???? ugh, it's just the "i need to save this just in case i want to return this" in me. it's not like i ever really return stuff. i end up keeping it! but another little project is going through this bin of papers that i have. (i swear, if i just had two FULL days, all of this stuff would have been over and done with). hey, little by little, okay?

clothes, shoes, bags
this has to be the second time i've weeded in the last couple of months, and i've found that i like most of the stuff that's still left in my closet. but it's the organization of the closet that's making it hard to fit everything in there!! my plan: dad's coming home this weekend, so while i'm off snowboarding, i'll make sure to empty that 3'x4' closet, so he can install my closet organizer. cool thing, is that most of the stuff i got rid of were either, too big (mom, do you want this?), or i havent worn (vogie, do you want this?), or i wore once and it made my feet hurt... (since vogie and i are the same shoe size, she got these cute strappy shoes that i wore only once). i'm just glad someone will get good use out of them.

upkeep and maintenance
so with all this done (or i should say, when all this is done), i'll have to make a conscious effort not to let things pile up in there... cleaning up every day and such. i believe this happened because i got so busy over the last few months. i figure if i do some upkeep and maintenance over the week, it wont get so damn bad. =P

so if you all are going to inspect, i'm still in the process... but it looks much better!

the happy couple
friday night -- we picked up my sister in law at the airport. kuya was so cute, with a pot of tulips in hand, anxiously waiting for her to appear out of the doors of immigration. once she came out of customs, they were all smiles. my dad and i werent paying attention, we were so engrossed in conversation, but kuya found her as she was walking out. they were so happy. *hugs* *smiles* *kisses* wow, it was a little hard to believe that she was finally here!! "someone pinch me!" she said. i took digital camera pictures of them as they walked, pushing the luggage cart. if it was posted on the web, i'd link you to the sappiness. damn they're so cute..... *BLRARAARGGGHHHHH* *wipe mouth*.... ;)

rondalla practice
saturday morning -- i hadnt been to rondalla in a month, only because bryan was out one week, and we hit the bebe sale the other week, and i forgot what else we missed... but it's been so LONG! and we had a quiz!! the guitars (that's me and bev) had to play desposorio by ourselves in front of everyone! *whew* got through that one, but since it's been so long since i've played, most of my calluses were already healing... now there are new ones! need to practice... okay i still have that song in my head....

welcome party
saturday afternoon -- mom ordered some food and had a nice little spread for vogie. the relatives came to meet/reaquaint themselves w. my sister-in-law, and most of kuya's friends actually made it out to meet his bride. i think a lot of them were curious to see who snagged him up from singlehood (heck, I'D be curious too if i hadnt met her yet!!). she was a little overwhelmed by all the new faces.... i wonder what i would be feeling if i picked up and left everything i knew to move to some foreign country with my spouse. SCARY!! but our family is pretty supportive and welcoming, so hopefully her homesickness wont kick in too early.... she is a nice addition to the family. =)

the gig
saturday night -- the likha philippines group had a gig in fairfield to gain some funds to sponsor the trip. it was a cotillion for a likha member's friend. it would have been cool, but it was FAR. and we got LOST finding the place. the performance was LATE. and they didnt really offer us FOOD. =( we were in and out. performing was okay, and everyone enjoyed our two dances, jovencita and paragua (btw, bev, loved that crazy manton twirl... and weezie & jo, didnt you guys love our circular formations and clunking sapatillas?! hehehe ;)) it was cool tho, cuz we got some dough. we should get more gigs like this to sponsor our trip. it's more fun than selling raffle tickets. =P

long practice
sunday day -- and of course can't forget likha from 12-6pm. there's my workout. =)