the weeks in bullet points

If the past few weeks can be bullet pointed, they would appear as follows:

• turned 33 last February 24 and for a change of things, my wife decided that we would celebrate it with a small feast :)

• my birthday came and went and gone without moi not feeling any older nor wiser at that. In fact, aside from the small feast, nothing earth-shattering happened and I didn't feel any different.

• finished driving lessons yesterday and "passed". Now just need to wait until after March 20 to get a license.

• what would've been a week-long birthday vacation (in context of using vacation credits that would've otherwise been forfeited) turned out to be one busy week -- what with my father getting hospitalized, driving lessons, and a continuous effort to find time for enough rest and sleep.

• been facebooking a lot, have been online for most of the weekdays but I am visibly absent on weekends as those days are reserved as much as possible for "family time".

• this week, my hopefully-will-earn gaming blog gets reactivated and I am now back to fully writing news stories related to the "adult" gaming scene; hence the lack of time to update this blog.

• more books secured and filling up nooks and crannies in the little apartment -- shelf space is badly needed. A trip to Paco or Puregold needs to be scheduled so that I can finally say "Mission Complete".

• among the latest books (which came with my sister's balikbayan pasalubongs over the weekend) was a hardbound copy of "The Children of Turin" which I blogged about last year. I finally have it along with an illustrated/picture-filled Guide to LOTR battles, peoples, armor and stuff.

• not much headway (in fact, none at all) in terms of spec-fic writing projects as I am instead turning attention to income-generating writing. Yes, that's how badly I need the moolah.

• missed the E-heads Final Set concert after a little fiasco with the free tickets my cousin earned but I would've not enjoyed it anyway I think. That's because we only got the bronze tickets and based on a friend's pictures taken from the "gold" ticket area, being in the bronze area would've been similar to watching ants parade along (or similar to the P500 Mariah Carey tickets whereby Mariah Carey was a mere match-head in size from our are in the Fort). I used to watch the E-heads up close (Club Dredd days and during concerts in Peyups) so to watch them from an acre away would not have elicited the same experience. I'm now waiting for the DVD of the final concert to be available. For the meantime, MP3s of the concert sourced online courtesy of blogger Azrael Coladilla who got up close and personal with the E-heads in their Final Set concert.

• while visiting Glorietta last Saturday evening, Elvie and I catched a few minutes of watching the performance of a rock band whose presence electrified the crowd. And for the life of me, I didn't know the foreign band nor any of their songs but the rather youthful crowd. And then it hit me that I was growing old. Geesh, I had no idea who this rock band was and I had to go around the Glorietta Activity Center just to see the tarp banner that proudly displayed the band's name -- Red Jumpsuit Apparatus.

• sleep has been disturbed since summer officially came late last month (during my birthday week at that). I wake up several times during the night just to adjust positions or wipe a moistened body part. And equally disturbed as well in her sleep is little Ikai who also wakes up several times during the entire night every time she feels the sweltering heat. That was the reason for the Glorietta trip last weekend -- a canvass of possible alternatives for cooling the room :)

• acquiring a new skill is always a welcome thing for me. There are some skills that I wouldn't mind not learning but there are essential skills like knowing how to drive that you only learn to appreciate and actually see the relevance once you start learning. Thus, the five days (2 hours per session) driving lessons were very enriching and I am now a proud to say driving is part of my skill sets. Now, swimming is next on the list :P

• if all goes well, a big change will be happening to me on a professional note ... keep your fingers crossed!

• during one of those early wee mornings when I finally admitted I could sleep no more, I instead plugged in the laptop and watched me a new series -- Chuck! Still too early to say whether the entire series is going to be put on my fave list but so far, the episodes I've watched have been entertaining and not a few times did it make me smile with its humor. Hoping to find time to get to watch more of this TV series.