so i swore to myself that i'll never be swayed by the donut craze. i mean, after all, i didn't understand what all the hype was over gonuts donuts when it first came out.

and come on, i never really liked donuts in the first place. it's not like we're talking about fruitcake or dark chocolate with mint or something here. it's just a donut. it's something that american policemen eat while they're on duty.

and scratch the fact that i've been channelling sex and the city for most of my adult life and the fact that one episode of satc specifically talks about how miranda struggled with donuts together with this hot person.

i keep telling myself it's just a donut and i will never fall in line to buy donuts.

so when i finally fell in line at krispy kreme, i told myself, you're doing this for your favorite aunt. she had missed out on krispy kremes while she was in the US and was deathly curious about how they tasted like. i also told myself, okay, you love your cousins and they really love donuts.

so we braved the snaking line at sm megamall and ordered a dozen of their original glazed. and while we were in line, they gave each of us a whole donut each. i resisted biting into mine until we had cleared the line and paid for our donuts.

and when i bit into that piece of heaven, i knew i had to eat not only my donut but my words.

screw dieting, screw pride, screw shelling out 265 bucks for a dozen donuts that aren't even in my favorite flavor (which happens to be chocolate). i must buy my own dozen. soon.

update! someone promised to get me a dozen donuts this weekend. YIPEE!

christmas is officially over.

since i've been here at my aunt's house since friday evening, i have yet to open the presents i received which i forgot at home. i have, however, received two amazing presents so far - a 512MB card for my camera from my aunt and an SM gift cheque from my grand-aunt. the memory card is a huge deal for me as i've had my digicam for three years now but i've been taking pathetic pics since i've got a paltry memory card loaded and the SM gift cheque, well, we all know how much i love SM, right?

today, i plan to brave the traffic caused by the simultaneous sales that the malls decided to hold post christmas and get a much-needed haircut from gilbert the stylist. i'm also planning on finally purchasing my brother's christmas gift to me - a brand-new cellphone! ok, half of a cellphone, but still, not bad, huh? thank god for baby brothers who earn more than you do. hopefully, with all the mark downs, i will be able to buy the other people on my list their presents too. maybe then i can focus on finally preparing myself for the new year.

incidentally, i decided to give my starbucks planner to my aunt/pseudo-mom. she's expressed how much she likes it and even contemplated on completing the stickers ASAP so she can get her own. knowing how much she loves it, and believing that she'll appreciate it more than me, i decided to give it to her. she sort of doesn't want to accept it yet, claiming that i have spent a better part of the last two months drinking huge amounts of coffee in order to get it but i've insisted. after all, isn't christmas giving up what you love the most for a person you love?

enough mush.

mall. now. i am, after all, still a kid at heart and getting a new phone, well, that's big.

merry christmas!

with whatever energy i had left over, i attempted to buy everyone in my list presents yesterday. my aunt and i made our way to the podium with the resolve to finish our respective lists by visiting the three malls in the area -- on foot -- as parking would cause us more woe than anything.

so far i got most of the people presents, thanks in part to creative shopping and in part to just buying everyone the exact same thing. while doing that goes against everything i believe in, i must admit that if you've got 7 people in your list that you hardly know and might cause controversy if you got them different stuff, buying the exact same thing for everyone would leave you not only relieved that your shopping is done but likewise appease everyone that you love them in equal amounts.

oh well.

by the way, along with the rest of the population, i've also gotten my starbucks planner. it's a bit anti-climactic, IMHO, as everyone else is also toting one around. add to that the fact that it's crazy heavy to carry it on a regular basis and you come up with a girl who wants to appropriate for herself a planner that was bought as a gift for a cousin.

*sigh* how come i wasn't told christmas was going to be this complicated?

but it is christmas eve and i've got family around me. i've shoved aside the thought of doing some last minute christmas shopping this morning and just promised myself that i will finish it after the entire hullaballoo is over.

and, now that i've finally found gilbert the stylist once more and have scheduled a much-needed haircut for tuesday, new year shouldn't be a problem.

merry christmas, world!

i was ready with a long post detailing every single minute of "the date" with the boy.

and then i realized, no matter how i put it, it's going to say the same thing.

i'm horribly disappointed.

now excuse me as i cry myself to sleep.

why it's even brownout at 9 in the morning with the sun shining brightly outside like it's the middle of summer is beyond me.

i'm supposed to be doing my laundry, but i can't do that now since the washing machine needs electricity to run. can't go to the mall either since all my jeans are in the wash - nothing to wear. i could go boxing but i lost a contact lens last night as i attempted to remove it while balancing a cordless phone between my shoulder and ear. no contact lens - no vision.

and don't even begin to tell me to wear my glasses na lang. sometime in the middle of bar season, i left them on my bed and inadvertently squashed them into oblivion. it's all taped up now and serviceable when i'm at home. in public, i wouldn't be able to stand the humiliation.

anyway, ilang tulog na lang and it's thursday already and it's my cousin's wedding na and i'll be wearing my v. v. gown and hopefully will be with v. v. cute crush with whom i haven't finalized plans regarding thursday yet. he works in makati, i work in manila, we both live in las pinas, and it's a working day. how it's going to happen (half day kami and he picks me up? whole day kami and he just picks me up from work? whole day kami and we just meet at the church?) is still beyond me. right now, i'm just hoping he really put it in his calendar and he hasn't forgotten about it yet.

and hoping that he's not pretending he's forgotten about it so he could skip going to the wedding with me cause he doesn't really want to go now that he's thought about it.

dang.

i have to calm down and chant to myself "the brownout is making you crazy. the brownout is making you crazy."

fell in love with this lovely, slinky, i-feel-so-effing-thin gown last sunday. the price tag was a bit off my budget but at the rate it made me feel, i was willing to break the bank in order to get it. perfect, i told myself, especially since i have two events this december alone where i'd be required to wear a gown.

there was one tiny problem. it's black, and i've always steered away from black at weddings. and since the vizconde massacre thing, i've stayed away from black at big birthday bashes too. considering that one event is my cousin's wedding and the other one is my boss' mom's 80th birthday, the gown is a definite no-no.

it being so pretty, the thought of the pretty gown bugged me for days until i told my boss' assistant about it and my boss' assistant actually asked my boss if it would be ok that i wear black to her mom's event which i would be hosting and she said yes. one event down. one to go.

since everyone over at kikay exchange kept telling me to just get it over with and ask the bride if it would be ok to wear black to her wedding, i did it and guess what, she said yes.

so i rushed (as much as i could in december traffic!) to ATC to check the gown out again and it was every bit as pretty as when i tried it on the first time. but then shelling out that much money means i have to make sure i really, really want it. so i went around. there was this pretty lulu castangette cocktail dress that i loved but they (1) didn't have it in the color i wanted and (2) the bust area wasn't as generous as i needed it to be. so i took that as a sign.

i now have the gown hanging inside my closet. and since it's black, it's going to go perfect with the kate spade satin shoes i've had for two years now and haven't worn yet.

perfect.

(a bit of a problem with the shoes though. every single event that i've planned to wear them on didn't push through for me. what if something happens to this wedding like what if i get sick or what if the boy can't take me? dang. enough superstition. bahala na si batman)

as if the pilot calling me isn't enough, now barista boy has to call too!

i mean, come on.

the pilot calls me at the oddest hours and from the oddest places, with the oddest of requests. the most recent one was at 7:45 a.m. with me rushing to prepare for work, with him calling me from the airport as he was catching a flight to laoag, asking me, pretty please, if i can draft RIGHT THAT VERY MOMENT a letter requesting for a franchise. i mean, come on. what am i? your personal secretary?

uhm, if i may digress, the sad part is that i actually did it.

anyway, just now, after more than two months of not hearing anything from him at all, the phone rings and surprise, surprise, barista boy is on the phone asking how i've been, yada yada. okay, so i heard he's hooked up with someone and he's now zooming around in a brand new civic but that doesn't (and shouldn't) give him the right to disturb my v. v. nice sunday (oh yes it's a v. v. nice sunday, rain notwithstanding) by calling me and making small talk.

but we all know i'm a wuss and, as i've been accommodating the pilot's odd requests and odd phone calls for more than a year now, so there's nothing new in me turning into my doormat persona, and making small talk with barista boy.

dang.

when am i going to get a life?

if there's one intangible thing i can ask for this christmas, it's that my allergic reaction to chicken goes away.

to say today was a bad day would be an understatement.

bad day at work. plans not pushing through. the tiny heel of my new shoe deciding to fall off.

so i decided, okay, maybe this has something to do with the fact that i haven't boxed in a while. i mean, didn't we all learn from legally blonde that "exercise releases endorphins. endorphins make you happy."

i went to elorde, released all my pent up energy for an hour or so. i was so happy with finally getting the opportunity to exercise again that i even walked to kowloon a few meters away from elorde to get my jumbo pao fix. i got back in the car, imagining myself sitting in front of the television digging into my jumbo pao, when i got the shock of my life.

spike refused to start. it felt like december 22, 2004 all over again, except this time, i knew better.

i picked up my phone, made a call, and it was not long before my saviour arrived. car was pushed, car started, car moved.

but this being bad day and all, every single battery place we went to was either closed or didn't have my battery, except for this one place where the guy insisted on putting a huge battery that clearly does not fit.

good thing it didn't fit. damn thing cost 3,100 and it's not even the kind i think i need.

anyway, spike is now in the garage and as long as he's there, i can deal with the battery issues later.

but this bad day? well it has got to end. hopefully when i wake up, the fates would have decided to give me a day that's worth smiling about.

ok.

fear of fake invite waaay too premature. invite arrived today.

*insert huge sigh of relief here*

i do not have to uninvite pldt boy anymore.

now all i have to figure out is what to wear to the damn thing. the invitation says formal so it means that i can go all out in selecting the prettiest gown i can squeeze my self into. i haven't boxed in almost two weeks, and it seems like i won't be able to box again tomorrow night so the pounds seem to be piling right back on. gasp! a little more than two weeks to go. i have to go to boxing overtime mode.

and when i do the ab exercise, i must motivate myself by repeatedly thinking the following thoughts: MUST.LOSE.WEIGHT.MUST.LOOK.PRETTY.MUST.FIT.IN.NICE.GOWN.MUST.BE.PERFECT.

whether it'll work or not, i don't know. i am keeping my fingers crossed though.

22 days till christmas...

... and less days than that until that fateful wedding. but somehow, i'm not as excited as i was when i first heard about it. see, the aunt who invited me to the wedding isn't as trustworthy as aunts are supposed to be. we saw each other over the weekend and not only did she seem to avoid me and the other members of our family (opting to sit with people she didn't know in another table) but she likewise avoided mentioning anything about having invited us to her daughter's wedding.

while i'm sure i didn't imagine her text message inviting me to the wedding, i've begun to think that she "fake-invited" me and was actually quite surprised i agreed to go to her kid's wedding, considering that she and my mom have had this life-long feud. me, i'm not particularly interested in taking part in the wedding. i just want to get the opportunity to see pldt boy in something other than shirt and jeans.

tsk tsk. seems like those of us who have bad intentions lose out in the end. now, if it turns out it was a fake invitation, i might end up having to un-invite pldt boy.

man. i hate this.

on to better thoughts.

dropped by the coach website and i'm totally lusting after the tote that you can personalize by monogramming it. at more than $300 dollars for the bag plus the service, it's clearly going to take a really generous person to ensure that the bag makes an appearance under my christmas tree this year.

oh well.

at least i've got a new dooney and bourke bag courtesy of my parents and i totally love it. if only for that i'm excited to go to work tomorrow.