Of Pinay Best-Seller and Sugar-Coated Pastries

It is hard to muster any strength or inspiration to do anything else other than crash on the couch after a 12-hour workday. It was sheer miracle (or disgust that usually goes with a fat day) that made me hit the treadmill at the gym and pound 45 minute long of run/walk on it today. We could only stay an hour at the gym since it was already 9 pm and the kids were starving, so right after sweating, we went eating! Suffice to say that whatever calories I slowly burned were promptly replaced by the two masaladas I inhaled like crack. These yummy Hawaiaan but Portuguese-inspired donuts - coated in granulated sugar and clearly deep fried- took me out for the night. I am so hopeless!

To help digest the food, we went browsing at Borders Books where my attention was caught by a Filipino-sounding author's name on the bestseller's list. True enough, upon closer inspection, the woman was a Pinay. Her book Love Walked In - her first, mind you - made it to the New York's best seller lists and many bookstores' fave lists. In my subsequent research - right after coming home - I found that the book already has movie rights and no less than Sarah Jessica Parker is to star in it. Also, I found out that the book has been translated to about 7 languages - no Tagalog though -! Needless to say, I am deathly jealous!

I tried to read the first few pages of the book waiting to be completely enamored, but.... There were simply too many information even in all 6 pages of the first chapter. She managed to insert everything she knew and liked in the opening pages while describing how the girl met the guy. I was bored despite the eager prattle. I think it was just not my genre - can't read love stories. It'll probably be better in the movies, although, I heard that Nanny Diaries was tore up by the critics.

Falling for Fall

I woke up to a dreary, cloudy, cold morning today. I was happy. Fall is my season. I'll take being cold anytime. Love the scarves, sweaters, coats, boots and warm and heavy comfort food. Make my coffee drinking far more reasonable. My wish is to experience fall in New England - leaf peeping at Vermont? I don't quite know what that really entails - but I can only imagine that it'd involve looking like a Ralph Lauren commercial - not bad at all. Of course, this being the real life, I wasted the whole morning holed up in a cubicle reviewing a lonnnnnngg chart for a project. My original plan was to do some planting in our front yard - did not happen. The gray afternoon found me oblivious inside our store adding pictures to our website. Drank coffee like a fish though. In my mind however, I thought of brown and yellow leaves, wooded lanes, and other fall-like scenes.

Someone else's pictures of trees in fall as they should be.

This was actually taken in January, about 3 years ago, at Pismo Beach along Hwy 1. It was during sunset. The sand looked and felt like soft cement and the water was so calm as if hypnotized by the setting sun. I think the winter sun was imagining fall too.

Bogusy Night

Our Alaia joined her school's dance company this year and this is what her life is all about lately. To raise funds, the company sells things, throw parties, and just give kids excuse to act out their fantasies (that's what I think!). Hence, the Bogus Ball... note Alaia's attire - the result of wearing all the clothes in her closet all at once. Mel and I decided to wear black and jeans as antidote to her costume. Mel helped out with the dessert bar (as if these kids need any more sugar.) where my Betty Crocker strawberry cake was an early sell-out - whoohoo!

Alaia's same-dressed friends. The boy wore those Kapre Tsinelas and check out the b-boy doing his thing. I always worry about these people's cervical spines.


And here's Alaia doing her thing - dancing with her company.

Old Friends Always

You know how days start off quite innocently - perhaps with a starch, like these hot pan de sal we tasted at a bakery in Vallejo. It was piping hot, but otherwise not memorable. We drove down to Danville, a pretty little town in the East Bay where the downtown was so walkable but everyone was driving. We stopped by Vallejo on our way there, and we kind of OD'd on Filipino food shops, including the one where we bought the dissapointing pan de sal.

Then, we decided to hook up with old, old friends from way back when back in San Jose. We stopped by the so-wanna-be-Rodeo Drive - Santana Row in Santa Clara for last minute for visiting gift. I managed to snap a shot of the pretentious Valencia hotel right across from my favorite Anthropologie store. The palm trees were impressive.

I left Mel to take a nap in the car while I walked the sidewalks of the Row. I did not get anything. I did not even window shopped - I feel intimated when the stores are deserted and the sales staff is forced to smother you with superflous niceties. I ended up getting an Italian looking bowl for our friends - which turned out to match the rest of their dinner plates - very uncanny!

Our friends now lived in a new house sans the once ubiquitous Capo Di Monte stuff - looks so much nicer and modern, I told them. The living room felt and looked like a hotel lobby - a very chic one. We took a lot of pictures. Another old friend, upon knowing that we were there, drove to the house and joined the impromptu reunion. We marveled at each other's kids growth and talked about how old we were all getting. But as you can see from the photos - not bad looking at all. Fun and sentimental day over-all.

Losing to the Couch

I read somewhere that it is at 30's when you lose the last of your stubborn "baby fat" and actually leaned down to a svelte middle age figure. YIKES! Not happening here! Sigh.
Anyway, exercise had been such a pain lately. More and more, going to the gym after 12 hours of work (or any other excuse I can think of) is becoming quite a moral question that I'd mull over while vegging on the couch from which I'd drag myself to the dinner table to stuff my face. It is disheartening to say the least. Today, however, I forced myself to walk with Mel for 30 minutes around my neighborhood to the park although it was already quite dark and everyone else seemed to have succumbed to his or her own morality debate on the couch. I tried to drag Mel into brisk walking with me, but the sound of his espadrilles pounding against the pavement so distracted me that I was forced to stroll!
Well, we did clock in at over 30 minutes, so at least, I feel somehow productive and not totally a slob. I then wanted to do some work - like work on our store website, open the mail (mostly bills, so not particularly inspiring, or blog - which I am doing - but I am getting increasingly sleepy at only half past 10 which is uncharacteristically early for me, so I don't know what's up. I am trying to think of a photo to add to this entry but cannot think of any. Maybe, I will end this with thoughts of toned arms someday.

Fall Out Boys and Girls

I am a cold-weather kind of girl. I love cold, dappled sunlight, even gray and gloomy kind of days. Love sweaters, coats, and comfort food. I think I love the fact that cold days give me an excuse to drink coffee all day. Can hardly wait for rain to come too. That is why I get excited when September comes. On Labor Day weekend, my family greeted the 'ber month with a day trip to Pescadero where the temp would be at least 20 degrees cooler. We went down the beach to do the California thing - which is to walk, play tag with the waves, watch the crazy body boarders hurl themselves at the cold and angry waves, stare at the gulls, and lounge on the sand to eat. After the beach, we ate lunch at a Taqueria inside a gas station store, scored a shirt and a Forever 21 jacket from a Thrift Shop, browsed at a gallery that sells handpainted tiles and woven plastic gas from Madras Island, played with an old typewriter at an antique shop, and drank coffee, ate ice cream and croissant at a General Store/Bakery. We visited an 1871 light house at the end of the day and then drove home with the sunset. It was a fall kind of day.