weekend wonderland

the weekend began as early as friday when i had to slip out for a couple of hours to take my mom and nephew to sm bicutan for some halloween costume shopping. mom was bringing jacob to a trick or treat event at her past office - its nice that she still gets invited even after she has retired already. we quickly snag jacob a sort of roman soldier costume but for some reason, he didn't want to try it on. later on, we'd realize that he's not going to put it on despite our prodding. after a quick bite at wendy's, jacob was pulling us to go where the carousel was and we ended up giving him a ride on the carousel and on the moving animals. i'm really amazed how fast my nephew is growing up and how he can form all of these sentences already. he still gets "bulol" at times but he is able to recognize a lot of things and signs and symbols and associate them. i always feel happy whenever i see my nephew's eyes light up because of excitement and sheer joy. it would be good to feel that way - to feel happy with the small things and small joys in life but as we grow older, we tend to make things (and life) more complicated.

i was not really up to partying friday night but since juan and phil was in town, i felt that it would not be proper to not spend time with them. we dined at cafe havana where the food, that was just so-so, was overpriced. i took a mental note never to dine in that yuck restaurant again - ever. we sat down at absinth right after, had better bottled san mig light, some sisig and when trixy got there, we both ordered the green fairy which was a mixture of absinthe and something. yeah, absinthe was the drink in the movie "moulin rouge." it didn't really tasted as good as we expected and it must have been the light but it was more blue than green. we both didn't really feel it that quickly but i think that was what kept my head spinning on the way home. i had to leave sometime past midnight since i had been awake for 23 hours already and had whole-day school the next day. mental note #2 - try not to drive again when uber groggy.

nothing much on a saturday. school was uber boring. i missed out on jesse's wedding (bummer!). bought a lot of dvd's which shoots up my backlog to like 150+ hours (series' included). managed to download a good copy of "superman returns" and load it up my ipod. did i say i love my ipod? ok, i love my ipod. hahaha

i was planning on spending sunday doing some ems work but friend d called up from the airport (just got back from hk) and invited me to watch a movie. we ended up seeing "the prestige" at rockwell. the movie was dark and twisty but both hugh jackman and christian bale delivered very good performances as battling magicians. i would have preferred to seeing a lighter film that didn't require so much attention but this film was satisfyingly enjoyable. i can't wait for hugh jackman's "wolverine" movie and while i enjoyed the x-men movies, i have to say i am fairly disappointed how far they have taken the story away from the comic books. and having been an avid fan of the x-men for a good number of years, i must say i hated it. christian bale is also set to reprise his role as the dark knight in the sequel to "batman." i actually liked christian way back when he starred in "newsies" which was a really good film by the way, and in "swing kids" opposite robert sean leonard (who's now seen in house m.d.). he was a very good actor since then and has been in a few more movies (american psycho, the machinist) that i can't really recall.

surprisingly, a lot of people are already going to the cemetery as early as sunday (see pic). traffic has been moving quite slow already that i can't decide whether to visit my dentist (to get the fracking wires cut off and adjusted) or go to the gym tonight. i guess considering that the holiday this week is only on nov 1 (wednesday) itself, people do not want to tire themselves so much and come back to work immediately the next day. i need to go and visit abet since i my plans got sidetracked to visit him during his death anniversary when i had to bring my nephew to the hospital. i owe him a visit - i just need to figure out how to weather through the traffic since i'm not a very patient guy. maybe i can just bike my way through on wednesday.

i still haven't adjusted going back from my US trip. 7pm still feels like bedtime and 12MN wake-up time. i thought the friday night partying will reset my body clock but i guess i was wrong. i probably will take some sleeping pills on tuesday night - after my group meeting.

sidebar : update on the gift buying plans - so far the US trip screwed up my plans on visiting the bazaars. i have some catching up to do except that the next two weeks is going to be uber busy with both work and school (yeah, dam'it!).