House Atrium

In a recent entry, I mentioned our breakfast nook. Maybe it's time I post entries about some things in our new house that seem a bit unique.

This is a photo of our kitchen where you can see the kitchen table at the lower right. But with the door open, you will notice the outside flooded with light.

Outside the door is our dirty kitchen. (It's not dirty as in "dirty". We simply call the secondary kitchen outside the house as "dirty kitchen".)

So where does the radiant light come from?

Renz's Insects

It's funny how Renz is getting fascinated with all sorts of insects. I suppose her sisters mostly had the same interests growing up like barbies, stickers, stuff toys and the like. So it's a bit remarkable when Renz starts doing these "weird" stuff.

Renz wants to put insects in bottles. I guess it started when he caught a beetle and had no qualms holding and coddling it much to the horror of the three sisters. Here, he has another beetle (gray uwang) crawling on top of his head.


Thus far, he has put grasshoppers, praying mantis, dragonflies and other bugs in jars to observe and play with.



Our Breakfast Nook

In a recent entry, there was a pic showing a part of the kitchen and I remembered some pics I took 3 months ago where the kids and DH having breakfast at our breakfast nook. The concept of this breakfast nook came from our architect.

DH and I visited his house and we found a small table by the kitchen wall. That's what he and wife use for meals now that their kids are all grown. That, according to him is the "breakfast nook". What a fancy name for something practical which DH and I would probably be using one day.

What we had made though we called a "kitchen island" or kitchen table. The kitchen had a blank floor space in the middle. We asked the architect to reserve for us a piece of the granite slab used for the kitchen counter.

Pampanga Hospital Visit

DH and I visited Mommy last Tuesday at the Mother Theresa of Calcutta Hospital. She had a mild heart attack last Sunday and was finally discharged yesterday morning.

She was on IV for the meds that were administered. That's my sister Divine on the right. She and husband Jess have been taking care of Mom.

Browsing this Blog

From recent developments, I realized that this blog is best viewed using a browser OTHER than Internet Explorer Version 8. Version 8 is the latest version of IE (Internet Explorer) as of this writing.

You will not receive any errors when using IE8 to view this blog but you will not see the blog displayed correctly. The blog's sidebars don't appear on the main page and the posts are incomplete when browsing with IE8.

I've used Mozilla Firefox and have never had problems with it thus far. There are other browsers like Apple Safari and Google Chrome which I haven't tried. But for now, I would strongly suggest to avoid using Internet Explorer when viewing this blog.

If you're unsure, shown below are the icons of the above mentioned browsers:





Humongous Backyard Trees

There is this penchant for some Pinoys to plant a fruit-bearing tree or plant somewhere in the backyard. They'd rather have the tree in the backyard than the front lest it becomes the "mangga ng bayan" or the "calamansi ng bayan".

Something that irks me though is when homeowners just don't prune or cut their trees regularly and you suddenly realize they've created a monster.

Aquaman at the Height of Isang

It was a wet a rainy day yesterday and the day before with typhoon Isang around. Everything outside was just wet so there was no gardening for me. With classes suspended, Renz was busy looking for Aquaman pictures on the 'net.

Aquaman's no longer in vogue so I find this preoccupation a bit strange. Although I believe it has something to do with a question I gave the kids on who among the superheroes wore a seahorse pendant.

Scooter Man

When we were having our house built, I didn't expect our family hall would be used for a cornucopia of activities. These activities would include tv-watching, working on the computer, ironing (while tv-watching), etc.

First Rainy Season Swim at Metro

It's been a while since I last swam. It think it was at Renz and Sandra's Swim Graduation. Anyway, Violet and I decided to go swim first before going to our July 9 Toastmasters Meeting.

Imagine my surprise when a group of 13 folks "paid" for my entrance fee to the pool! See, when I got there, there was this group of teenagers looking bored and sitting idly outside of the pool premises.

Apparently their guardian's becoming frustrated thinking that the pool was closed since there were no attendants. I sort of reassured her and so I went to the pool's ticket booth but it was closed.

Toastmasters Slideshow

For a couple of days, I was busy creating a slideshow that was presented at our Toastmasters Club's 5th Anniversary celebration. I thought it'll be a breeze until I discovered that the Movie Maker software I had had some audio filter issues. At playback, audio would be sometimes on or off. Eventually, I found a workaround, but it was tedious to do.