// Guitarchic Dot Net* My Life, One Strum at a Time

..even though I have a ring-side ticket.

Image from Tina’s Switchfoot In Manila site

I mean, seriously. That was really lousy of me to pick this day, of all days, to be all lethargic and (errr) to waste precious hours over Facebook. Yep, ladies and gents, I spent the whole day superpoking people, and flooding my Facebook friends’ inboxes with spam-ish invites, and nominating friends at Superlatives, and adding Facebook apps, and sending virtual gifts, drinks, and pastries. When I could have spent the night watching Switchfoot with some friends.

I. Don’t. Have. A. Life.

So don’t you dare rub it in and tell me how much you all enjoyed the concert. And Paolo Valenciano’s, my forever-and-ever-amen crush since way back I-can’t-remember-when (but of course that’s before I found you), and his band, Salamin’s front act. And the Balut dare. And all the fun stories you had tonight. No. I don’t want to hear them, thankyouverymuch.

Meanwhile, I’m going to frame my unused ticket to remind me how much of a loser I’ve become. And, well, beg all of you to add me at Facebook, you know, just to make me feel a bit better about wasting away 800 bucks for a concert that I missed because of Facebook, and of sheer laziness.

P.S. But of course I didn’t Facebook-ed the whole day. And that wasn’t the real reason why I got lazy to go. But let’s not talk about that.

Well, not really. A lot of my things are still out, and I still don’t know how to jam them all in these moving boxes.

After almost two years of staying under the same roof, we’re parting from some of our (soon-to-be-former) housemates and leaving this place we once called “home”. But it’s all good. Change is good, after all. And it’s not like I won’t be seeing Normi and Jen anymore. I’d still be staying with Aster anyway, and Ivy, a friend from way-back-diaper-days, will be joining us too. Plus we found the perfect apartment also, after a whole month of trying to look for one. It’ll be fun. And I’m excited and nostalgic and uhm, sleepy (right). But it’s all good. :)

So hey, I’m in the middle of a pile of clothes and boxes and shoes and dirty laundry right now, taking a break from all the packing, and trying my best to capture the moment and how it feels.

(Note worthy: This post is not brought to you by Tortillos or Merell.)

Now is the time to feel stressed, and to think of a nice long bath, but there’s still a lot to do. However, on top of the adrenalin rush, I can sense this teeny weeny bit of nostalgia in the air — which I think is inevitable, especially if you’re leaving a place you’ve spent some of the best months of your life in, and you’d most likely never set foot in that place again.

I mean, how can I forget all those nights I entered that door to find sanctuary in the four corners of this room after a long day at work?

Or that bulletin board that once was a collage of bills, and photos, and notes, and star-shaped pushpins?

And how can I forget that view from my favorite spot in the veranda — the same view where I last saw my Dad’s smile, (and the same place where I last felt your arms around me)?

Hay. Priceless moments in this place. I shall always remember.

I would have taken more pictures, but my mess awaits. This nagging voice inside my head keeps on reminding me that I’m no longer a little girl, and there’s no more yaya to pack my things and do the tasks that are supposed to be mine. Gah. It’s tiring to be an adult.

Tomorrow, we’ll be leaving this apartment, and will start filling a new one with new memories.

And it’s really not that big of a deal for me to be blogging about it.

Except that it once again made me think about how time flies so fast, and that life involves a lot of moving on.

It’s been more than a week since I blogged something here, which is quite unusual for a professing blogaholic that I am. The whole week passed, and the whole weekend too, and not a single post from yours truly. Yay me.

So what am I doing now blogging while my brother drives me to work? For one, I’ve always wanted to try out doing this — to blog on a moving vehicle in the middle of the cruel cruel EDSA traffic just to prove how blogaholic I am. For another (and this is mostly why), it just dawned on me that the whole weekend passed and I wasn’t able to accomplish anything. Yay me.

I mean, take a look at my feed aggregator. See all the stuff I missed on reading? And I wouldn’t even begin to talk about the two design projects I committed myself into which I have to accomplish within this month, and the usual gunk of SEO stuff I need to do, and that blog post that I owe Eric (I know you’re lurking dude). I got a lot of reading and blogging and coding to do, and I didn’t touch any of them this weekend. Yay me.

Instead, I overslept, watched Harry Potter, modified my friendster template, uploaded stuff on my multiply account, twittered, jumped from one video to another over at YouTube, screamed my heart out on my, ehem, secret blog (don’t you dare look for it because you won’t find it), spent hours over the phone, and talked endlessly with my Mom to the wee hours of the night. If the weekend was longer, I probably would have watched those Prison Break, Grey’s Anatomy, and One Tree Hill DVDs I bought last week. YAY. ME.

And I actually enjoyed how it felt — to get a break, set aside my obligations even for a while, and just be.. lazy with people I love. There’s something liberating about breaking away from monotony and postponing obligations once in a while. I always thought I needed a break from all this, but I didn’t really plan on getting that break this weekend. Still, it took its course naturally and even though I know I have a lot of backlogs on my hands, I don’t feel the least bit of regret spending this weekend the way I did.

So hey, it’s Tuesday again and it’s back to work (and to the apartment) for me. I know I have a lot of making up to do with my responsibilities but it was all worth it. Then again, family, love, and setting time for myself, are my responsibilities too, right? Right. That being the case, this weekend was the most responsible I’ve ever been in a long while. :)

It’s true what they say. The things you didn’t plan or expect are usually the ones most liberating, and enjoying, and refreshing. This weekend just about proved me that. ♥

A few weeks ago, I posted about our paperclip project, asking you, my dear readers, what you think about paperclips. A week later, I blogged about where that paperclip project brought me.

I never really got around to disclosing how our little paperclip quest came to be. It was merely a dare: I blog, he writes a song. (And yep, we were fully aware that there’s something unfair about that dare, LOL.) Consequently, the helpless random object we thought about was, yup, you got it, a paperclip. The rest was history. Anyway, you can navigate over to that post again to listen to the song my friend, David, made ;)

On another note, look what I found.

I wasn’t really looking for it but spending time in Powerbooks last night unintentionally brought me to the children’s section, and lead me to this.

Yellow Paperclip with Bright Purple Spots by Nikki Dy-Liacco

I’ve read the paperclip story online already (thanks to Jun for pointing me to that direction), but I knew I just had to get myself a copy. For only 65 pesos, I got myself a keepsake. I love it! ♥

Simple joys, that’s what this is about, definitely. :)

Meanwhile, Lots of blogging to do. Up next this weekend, my date with them lovely ladies, and something about the latest gaming thing in the net today. ;)

Edit. Miss Nikki Dy-Liacco just gave us a heads up on her blog, which you can view here. Wee. We’re famous. LOL. :P She’s right, what’s more interesting here is the simple truth that worlds continue to collide. Yup. I couldn’t agree more.

It’s not as bad as it looks you know.

Last June 2, our church had a medical-dental mission at Mambugan, Antipolo. Just a backgrounder, I’ve always avoided assisting in the dental department because I couldn’t stand seeing all the gory action happening inside the (ugh) mouth, the bloodshed, and the tears. This last time, however, it was as if I was called to be there. They needed assistance, and I was there, and while no one really forced me to help out, I took the challenge of being the dentist’s assistant cum makeshift dental chair.

Now to defend myself from a church-full of witnesses, this picture does not (AT ALL) describe how I was the whole day. And Jasper, who arrived just a few hours short to assist with me, can attest to that (right dude?)

With our designated Dentist for the day (and my cousin in law, too), Dr. Jojo.

I can’t believe someone caught this moment in the act. (Good job, Tito Eg!)

Contrary to what this picture shows, I kindof enjoyed it, really. No, not the part where you get to witness anesthesia being injected into the gums, and teeth being extracted, and saliva and blood gushing all over the place. Mostly, I took joy in holding a scared kid’s hand while his mollars were being pulled out, or conversing with mothers about trivial things while they waited for the anesthesia to seep in, or assuring a little girl “na parang kagat lang ng langgam yan” when she’s on the verge of backing out.

There were times when I felt like shutting my eyes off because it’s like I could feel their pain, or times when I’d struggle for the right words of comfort to say. I can’t even remember how many times Jasper and I said “parang kagat lang ng langgam yan“, and then we’d look at each other and silently laugh, knowing that it’s really more painful than that. You know you just had to say it to give them a little push, or to let them know that there are far more painful experiences in the world than an extracted tooth.

“Masakit lang yan sa simula.”

“Sandali lang to, tas tapos na.”

“Anong mas gusto mo, araw-araw syang masakit, o tatanggalin na naten ngayon para tapos na yung sakit?”

It was therapeutic saying those things to kids, and hearing yourself as if you need it too. After some time you get used to the sight of blood, and to the shrieks of pain. After some time you get relieved for them because you know that they’d go back home armed with a pack of pain killers to last a whole week, and the pain would soon be gone. And then you watch them leave and you know that if only for that one moment that God allowed you to be there in their time of pain, the experience was definitely worth it all.

With Nanay Beth Miana, another one of SBC’s very own dedicated doctors.

See, I don’t look scared anymore, do I? c”,)

More pictures here and there.