Giggles

*Takes a deep breath

Praise God for a great harvest because God sent rains; that my brothers passed all their subjects(Cheers bros!); my D-Group at CCF and how they've welcomed me and shocked me with their prayers; the Honest Sex series at CCF, Tony Wood, Paul Tanchi and all the other speakers who were really great at taking all these issues apart in the Light of God's Word; Kuya Butch and all his fatherly advice and for laying out a gameplan ten thousand years ago; Ate Jojee and her being there to assure me I am not the most EQ-less, hopeless gal on the block; my friends Nellie and Joy and their tough gentle love and admonitions and for their knack of neatly summarizing what is really going on in my life; 100 placed interviews for my widdle project Ferdinand; a new contract in my drawer and all the allowances that come with being a full-fledged Research Associate; for Pastor Jonathan and his talk on DTRs and guy-girl friendships even if I went home battered and bruised dahil sa dami ng tumama sa akin; for God's provision for my dental emergencies (Mwah Joyce and Joy!); for the good strong immune system so I haven't been sick despite being surrounded in the office by sick people; for my Dad getting better from his asthma and his great blood test results; and for Mom who I can tell everything (well, almost everything) to and who is so cool as to finish reading HP 1-5 in two months.

I'm headed home tomorrow!!! So excited! Not too happy about spending my entire day travelling though. I'll travel to Pangasinan and then when I get there, the whole family is driving to Ilocos Sur. It's a little crazy but must make a conscious effort to make it work for the family not be a snobbish brat by plugging on my headphones and listening to my Ipod.

I'm also on this dare thing. I don't know what's going to happen three days from now but hopefully I'll have a clearer head and heart to handle my side of the story with wisdom, grace and love. Good Lord, it's going to be weird but healthy for me to have a look in the mirror and face the facts...

Playlist "Holding Hands" for the next five days:

He will Carry Me - Mark Schultz

Strong Enough - Stacie Orrico

Boston - Augustana

River Constantine - Jars of Clay

I Am - Mark Schultz

Somebody Loved - The Weepies

Empty Days - Augustana

Walking her Home - Mark Schultz

The Eject Button

"Ayoko na!!! I don't want this kind of life anymore. Sarap maging wife na lang... Magpapakasal na ako! Tara na ! Sana mabuntis na ako! Para sa bahay na lang muna ako. Konting linis lang, konting luto... Oh that's the life!!! Sana mabuntis na lang ako!"

--- Harassed Officemate

I never thought of marriage as an eject button to bail me out of a career that was flying out of control. But as I get more and more stressed, I gotta say, it sounds interesting.

Dove "Onslaught" Ad

Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty hits it again with another ad: a 60 second film entitled "Onslaught". Images of different bodies, beauty procedures (including several shots of liposuction which made me squirm) and expanding and shrinking women capture you in the same way the earlier commercial featuring the transformation of a model and the photoshop-ing of her features did

Its finale reads: "Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does"

It's almost difficult to remember that it is a brilliant brand marketing strategy.

Check it out by clicking here.

I wonder who did the market research for this, if any...

Gold the goldfish

Time of death: Late afternoon, October 10,2007
Stipulated cause of death: Constipation

The untimely and tragic death of this lovesick fish was mourned by residents of Chason 3.

Color Me Pathetic

Look at the list of (100) books below.
Bold the ones you’ve read.
Italicize the ones you want to read.
Leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in.
Movies don’t count.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25 . Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho) - the universe DOES NOT conspire with me!!!
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom) - yech!
45. Bible - bold because i've read most but italics because there's work to be done yet
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davies)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) - just select chapters
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding) - oh how embarrassing!
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje) (I have seen the movie, though)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen) - a favorite!!!
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch) - all hail...
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford) - epic
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

40/100? Not bad I guess... I bet Joy would do very well with this list.