03:04: sick on my favorite holiday! bugger. i seem to have my cough under control, although the headaches are still bad. the rest of me hurts, too. i'm hoping if i stay in and rest all day (i don't think i have ever not gone out on halloween before!), i might be well enough to make it to e.k. with my family on monday.

lookee, i've got a hundred hugs! to whoever has been giving me hugs, many, many thanks. they do make me feel better. :)

suddenly e.k. day seems like less of a thrill knowing my sister will be watching wicked with her hubby. i'm so excited for you! you lucky biatch... hehe. love you, sis! will be looking forward to your kuwentos.

brewed by lifecafe  

 
03:03: bitter little girl is moving to a new place in their same neighborhood. whiny little girl and i helped them move their stuff in to the new house yesterday. i'm gonna miss that old house. from age 11, it had been my home away from home. i've got a whole lot of good memories of that place. milk and cookies. ice cream. way too much soda. sleepovers. unsupervised drinking. idiotic attempts at trying to watch a sunrise on an overcast morning in the middle of a street surrounded by tall condos. waking up to that monster of an alarm clock and thinking there's a fire. waking up with half of me squished under the bed. a ref which seemed perpetually stuffed with just about every bad thing that both kids and grown-ups loved. whiny little girl with bitter little girl's cousin. me and the ex. the yaj incident.
it's probably fitting that we say goodbye to the old house with our dumbest misadventure yet.

see, the plan was to move stuff, go home. if whiny little girl hadn't locked the car with both the car keys and the spare key in it, we wouldn't have had to walk around the village, borrowing keys to a mazda pick-up truck (or anything, really) that might have notches similar enough to unlock her car. and we wouldn't have had to wait 2 or 3 hours for her sister to arrive with the other duplicate. and her sister wouldn't have been there to bring home my young hijada, leaving the rest of the night free for us to do as we pleased. and although the plan was for whiny little girl to take me right home, bitter little girl decided to come with us for a ride. with her daughter on her way home in the other car and bitter there with us, whiny felt a little braver about driving by to see her ex. now, this guy has been gone for years. despite him being bitter's cousin, we don't hear much from him. he's treated like a ghost during family gatherings. he hasn't seen his 8-year old daughter since she was a baby, i think. but ever since he and whiny ran into each other at the old house a few months back, he's been calling her again. now, the drive-by had something to do with his calls. i just don't know what exactly. so although we really shouldn't have, we went to his place. just a drive-by, that was my understanding. (yeah, like a drive-by shooting. i'd have been ok with that.) she didn't need to call him and let him know we were coming, but for whatever reason, she did. and i really don't know why, but when we stopped at the corner, she unlocked the car door and he got in.
no one said anything to him. it was like picking up a can of tuna and putting it in your shopping cart. i think i asked "why is he here?" and bitter little girl answered "because whiny unlocked the door."

not two minutes with him in the truck and the madness started. we were doing a u-turn at this open space off the road, about a block away from his place, when the clutch stuck. we went to the gas station to have someone see what was wrong, but it was doing ok by then. they said that it could still get us home, have it fixed the next day. so we were back at the corner, dropping off whiny's ex at his place, but he says he'll get off after we make the u-turn. same spot of open space off the road to do a u-turn and the clutch sticks again before we can get the car in gear. 15 or 20 minutes of trying harder to get the car in gear gets us nowhere and burns out the clutch. it is now 10:47pm. whiny calls her mechanic, who says park it and go home. and i know i'm an f1 fan, but i'm completely useless in these situations. what the hell do i know about troubleshooting car problems? but i know enough not to leave your car in the shady part of town.

whiny and her ex go out to find a mechanic and prepaid credit for her maxed-out phone. an hour later, we conclude that having a car towed twice in one week is too much for one wallet, and leaving the car there till it can get fixed in the morning is too risky. whiny decided to hire a jeep, driven by one of the neighborhood guys, the delinquent absentee father's friend, to pull the pick-up truck to her mechanic. i get into a cab and head home.

while whiny and her ex were away, bitter and i got to thinking... why did this have to happen? it was as if something pushed us there. the delay with getting the keys locked in... our hijada leaving us free to see her father... the jerk not getting off the car when he could have... what for? maybe those two really needed to talk. i know i need closure from a recently revived ghost. whiny's need is greater, i'd say. maybe i was wrong to have called this a misadventure. a serendipitous incident? maybe. but i wouldn't push it.

on my way home, i sent a message to my ex, upon bitter little girl's request, to let him know that his sister is on his way home and for him to wait up for her. he sent a message saying: he's home, goodnight, love you, miss you ... in baby talk. what the---?? i replied, editing the message to add a "-eeeeww" at the end. that had to have been meant for his girlfriend and sent to me by mistake. or he's trying to freak me out. right. you win. i'm freaked.

brewed by lifecafe  

 
06:15: found this quiz on my niece's blog.


"Rent"


Which Broadway Musical Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

ha! go figure.

brewed by lifecafe  

 
01:12: ghosts again. he's back. and he's back, too.
someone, please, hand me a cig. or two. or four.

since our fight over a year and a half ago, my friend and i have been estranged. sort of. it probably doesn't help that neither of us really know what the fight was about. but hey, he broke my heart. oh, allow me to correct myself: I broke my own heart, he just ruined our friendship.
outside of the little gatherings we have with our other friends from college, i didn't think we'd ever speak again. admittedly, i miss talking with him. ...but let it go, right?
in comes a message from him, and there follows the chit chat. like nothing happened. huh. hello again. i hear from someone else that he and his girlfriend broke up more than a year ago and haven't gotten back together since. big surprise (and this time i'm not being sarcastic). it's great that we're talking. it's great that we're friends. but i'm keeping my distance.

about an hour later, my brother answers a call for me. i pick up the receiver, expecting the bitter little girl or the whiny little girl. male voice greeting me on the other end. stunned silence from my end. he gives his name, just to be sure. another half-second of shock before i speak. fox. i should have hung up, but noooo. was too dumbfounded, i guess. we speak for an hour. he's been sending me messages, he says. lucky my line is dead. in catching up, we find out that we work in the same building. the same fucking building! i'm quitting that damned job. been thinking about it anyway, but this seals it. i've got other options, all just as good and all very far away from him.

brewed by lifecafe  

 
22:52: i was half-asleep when i started to feel myself rocking back and forth in bed. i thought my cat was nudging me or something. the rocking got stronger. considerably stronger. i opened one eye. my cat wasn't even on the bed. earthquake!!

funny thing about earthquakes. when you're in the middle of one, you're not quite sure if there truly is one or you're just imagining things. after that split-second of hesitation, you tell yourself that yes, it's an earthquake and you should get out of the house or the building and head for open air. but then your balance is all goofy, so you wait a moment to get your footing right. then it's over.

about two seconds after the shaking stopped, i heard my brother call out for me. protective instinct. how cute. but one wonders why he didn't check on his wife and daughter first. lol! we ran to the other house, not really out of worry, but just to see if the chandeliers were still swinging. hehe.

ok, that was nervous laughter.

brewed by lifecafe  

 
03:50: got to hear the whole soundtrack of wicked. wow. the music gave me goosebumps. the story made me cry. idina menzel is my goddess. i MUST see it. and i MUST see her, if not in this show, then in some other show. doesn't matter. it's on the list of things i must do before i die.

i have the urge to be green skinned this halloween. except not very many people will get it, unless i'm actually flying while singing the whole time. they'll think i'm just an old cliche witch. or princess fiona from shrek.

reading some entries in the guestbook of the show's website, i see accounts of how it inspired a lot of young thespians. i know what it's like to be in the audience and come out of the theater a different person. i also know what it's like to be part of a show that does that to the audience. no amount of money in a lame-ass job can ever compare to what we do.

brewed by lifecafe  

 
04:39: still sick and still haven't gone back to work. that brings me back to square one in training. dammit. my fever's down, i think. but i'm still getting bad migraines. mom thinks it's a sign that i may need new glasses. my friend thinks it may be radiation from the computer. hmm. i used the mac every night in the theater, the pc every night when i'm home, and the work pc every night at the office. my eyes are doomed.

regardless of my body temp and headache, no one was home to bring rian, my niece, to the studio. i had to grab a cab and take her to rehearsals at pipeline. she and the bass whore's son will be performing with a bunch of silly grown-up rockstars for a nickelodeon show on saturday. they're doing the song from school of rock. she was still a bit shy and i could really see her tension while she was holding the mic, but she loosened up after a while. she did great and i am so proud of her! love that kid to pieces.

here are a couple of before and after pics of the kids during the one hour rehearsal. i apologize for the fuzziness of the focus. i'm used to taking pics with the digicam during noisy, crowded gigs, when fuzzy is cool. hehe.



a 10 year-old on a warwick... it's insane!


thinks tito j should stagedive like jack black


the bass whore and his horse-loving son


rian and jesus ready to "kick some ass!"

brewed by lifecafe