Ugh. I have been sick the past several days with a cold (or flu? not sure)... I'm feeling *much* better now, but on Saturday and Sunday I was stuck at home with fever, aches, congestion, coughing (I sound like a Nyquil commercial). And so, I couldn't attend Abraham's wedding. :(

I learned this week that my grade school pal Mitch is very ill with cancer. He has been sick for quite some time, but he has recently developed more tumors and can no longer tolerate chemo. So basically it is now just a matter of keeping him comfortable. :( It's so sad. He has a wife and twin baby daughters. And he's been so positive and upbeat even through such a difficult ordeal. Heartbreaking.

On a brighter note, I'll be having my first "party" at my new home tonight, for New Year's Eve. It will be a small gathering of family and a few friends. Should be fun. Hopefully no one will spill wine or champagne on the furniture. ;)

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate the holiday :)

It's been a pretty busy couple of days, filled with family activities. Yesterday for Christmas Eve dinner my parents, Lori, and Lola went to Tita Marie's. Then Greg stopped by to meet Mocha (who we learned is 1/5 the weight of Greg's dog!!). My family then went to Midnight Mass. Christmas Day lunch was spent at Tita Cora's, where I got to play with a happy and silly Sebastian. Finally Lori and I hung out at Tita Rose's for a little while and played with some of the kidlets. Tiring! But fun. And I gave and received some nice presents (as always :)).

Looking forward to a day of rest on Friday, then my BCBS pal Abraham's wedding on Saturday (in Troy, MI). Crossing my fingers for good driving weather on Saturday!

Sheesh! As soon as I arrived on the "bench" at our Oak Brook office, I got pulled into an actual project being worked on at the office. So much for downtime. :P Well, it's better than being bored of course!

I finished wrapping my Christmas presents tonight. I feel bad that I didn't find anything to get for Lola, but I will probably give her some $ to buy a new bedding set (or something else for her bedroom). Tomorrow I will be dining w/the fam, then going to Midnight Mass, and on Christmas Day we are going to a party at Tita Cora's. Should be fun!

Happy Birthday Jim! And thanks for inviting me to your b-day dinner, I had fun and the food was great.

So, I rolled off of my project today. :( It was almost sad packing up my desk. It was overall a pretty good project. Even though I was there for 14 months it didn't seem that long, which is a good thing I think. :) Hopefully I will be able to stay in touch and/or hang out with some of my co-workers.

My Coolpix 5400 has arrived! Yay. I've taken a few pics with it and they look nice and sharp, noticeably better than my Coolpix 775.

Simbang Gabi at St. Julian's went well last night. I arrived a couple minutes late (problems picking up the food from the Filipino store) but otherwise it was a very nice event. Good job organizing it, Mom :)

As it turns out, Mom & Dad did decide to go out to dinner to celebrate Mom's 60th anyway. :) We went to Koreana instead of Olive Garden though, because the wait at the latter was too long. We ordered too much food as usual, so I got to take home some yummy bulgogie!

Oh my goodness, Mocha is such an excitable little dog. More accurately, he switches quickly between super-hyper (run run run! jump jump! run run!) to wanting to be cuddled. He's still bite-y but seems to be responding to "no bite!" commands a bit better now.

Congrats to Lori on her first performance with Indiana Dance Theater! Woohoo! Too bad we couldn't make it down to IU for the show :( but hopefully she can get a video of it!

It's been coooold in Chicago this week!

Today at lunch Justin mentioned a "blog" and Mark and Kathy didn't know what it was, so we explained. If one of you happens to find my blog, "hi!" :)

Apparently, Mom & Dad had an argument last night (not so much an argument as a panicked reaction to being locked out [note to Dad - bring your house keys with you at all times in case the garage door doesn't open!] and frustration that people inside were asleep and didn't hear the doorbell right away :P) ... Anyhow, not a biggie, except that it happened on Mom's b-day, so now she's grumpy and doesn't want to do dinner on Saturday nite as planned. Oh well. Maybe she will change her mind. I was kind of looking forward to Olive Garden... heh.

Speaking of Mom's b-day, Lori and I got her the "Law & Order SVU" DVD set. Finally she'll have something to watch that wasn't pirated, hahaha.

Started Christmas cards the other day. Six down, ten or so to go...

I hate canker sores. :P

Kind of a stress-less week at work for a change. Yesterday we had our "celebration" for end of development, at North Beach in Chicago. It was a good time. Even though Patrick beat me at air hockey. :)

I ended up buying that Nikon Coolpix 5400 camera. Yikes. I have no willpower when it comes to these things. :\ But hopefully I will love it. :) Amazon had a sale on digicams, and the 5400 was highly discounted, so I jumped at the opportunity.

And to mfgf - whatever. I don't respond well to bitter and preachy rantings.