da tomāto

the kindle cover we saw at best buy was for paperwhite, without a magnetic snap to keep it closed; it was $34 -- mahal, di na . don't know if the difference in dimensions of a paperwhite and touch (wi-fi) were insignificant that a cover for one would fit the other. anyway, got one off amazon for less than $10 AND it has a magnetic snap to keep it closed (around $15 with standard shipping). this kindle cover is by Acase and so far, it's holding up. it's affordable, fits the kindle touch (wi-fi) OK and it does its job. can't beat that.

i mentioned we went camping at marco island last easter. one sleepy afternoon, too early make dinner, we drove maybe 30 minutes to naples pier to watch the sun go down -- it was beautiful. naples beach was nice but was full of people that day. we walked to the end of the pier to soak it all in. lots of people on the pier too. many were there for the famous naples sunset just like us; some were fishing along the sides. you could tell there were lots of fish from tiny air bubbles bubbling on the water; saw more than one seagull dive and come up with their dinner. there were many dolphins too. the sun went down, slowly. we started to walk back. we stopped and looked at it again once in a while. then the sun was gone. people clapped and cheered. it was infectious. we clapped too.

still talking about my recent vacation... most shops were open till 9 p.m. from monday to saturday (on sundays, they're only open until 6 p.m.). one night, after a 7 p.m. dinner (i still noticed that there's light out at 7), we went to best buy and bought a few stuff (just a few, other things i needed i got off cheaper at amazon). we stopped at a 24-hour steak 'n shake before heading back. they ordered their 'originals' - medium well, no pickle, with pickle, lettuce, tomato, and so on - and strawberry milk shakes. i had a bowl of their 'genuine chili'. we took home most of the chili. umay. nice lady server put extra crackers. i should have ordered a cup because i only wanted to try it. the leftover? we made chili cheese dogs later that week. still umay.

We went camping at Marco Island, Easter weekend. Most of our group slept at the campgrounds while a few of us - literally unable to sleep on anything below knee-level - slept at a hotel, at Red Roof Inn. I'm glad we did that because during the two nights we were there, temps dropped to 50°F ( 10°C)... brrr! We had breakfast at the IHOP next door. My eggs benedict-- Biscuits and gravy (with eggs and hash browns on the side) -- The "Senior Rise ‘N Shine"-- I love breakfast.

we recently had a short but fun vacation. the weather in southeast florida was nice while we were there. i could sun-bathe any time and not break a sweat. i only did that three times though and yes, i quickly got a tan line and suffered a little sunburn. it was even cold out on several occasions, like when we went to this park in the middle of the afternoon. cold winds with warm sunshine felt good on the skin.

Traveling with a physical mobility issue is very challenging. When we made arrangements for international flights, one of the first things we made sure of was putting in a wheelchair request. Flying from Manila to Florida with two stop-overs (it was cheaper that way!) allowed me to assess how different airport assistance was in three countries. So, I'm just going to write those down now so I don't forget 'em next time we travel. MANILA to FLORIDA At NAIA, Manila, I had to walk from the drop-off area to the check-in counter inside because they said that the room where the chair was coming from was closed pa. Good thing we brought my walker/rollator too. A rep came with the wheels and when he saw us, he apologized. He said that it should have been taken out when we asked for one. Apparently, the guard outside didn't know how to follow up on that. The rep assisted us all the way to the boarding area. I was surprised to see a lot of travelers on wheels. It was assuring, in

Turns out, my bro-in-law had a photo of the bread we had at the Cheesecake Factory - what kind is it kaya??? I even went to the place's website and it didn't show the breads they serve on the menu, sayang. Speaking of bread, I find that I like brown breads more than the white ones. The worst I've had was butter bread from the grocery - blech! I don't think it goes well with anything and it wasn't any good eaten with anything too. Possibly, there's better butter bread out there... Not being a fan of chips and dips, I was very happy to find that I love tostitos dipped in sour cream and then, tomato salsa - that's consecutively, lol!

I've been wanting to eat at the Cheesecake Factory since I've seen its outlet at Disney World - seeing people leaving the place with the trademark striped boxes and plastic bags... yeah. Anyway, we've been shopping for almost half the day at Sawgrass Mills when we stopped and rested on a bench right in front of - yeah, you guessed it - this place. At first, we thought about having just dessert like a cheesecake slice and coffee but shopping does make time go fast so we ended up having dinner here in stead. I ordered one of the day's specials - the cream of chicken soup. It was either that or the fish which was whole (assuming that it was what the other table ordered, which was too big, as usual). I've learned that I could not eat all of a single serving meal at a restaurant here so I ordered something that I knew I could finish. It was a good and hearty dish!!! It went well with the brown bread that they served - yeah, I still don't know what kind of b

It's a good-looking dsc-w90 sony cybershot and I've yet to make effective use of it. Now that I've got a digicam, I don't know what to do! There wouldn't be a problem if I wanted to post photos of my darling nieces on here though. lol! So far, I've played around with its settings - nice options there. I've also noticed that I'll need to use a memory stick adaptor to upload shots. That is, there's no usb cable option??? I'm not sure about this yet. I've got the box but I didn't really notice if there's supposed to be a cable accessory with it - I had it put up somewhere (where my niece couldn't reach it - neither could I!) before I really took a good look at it. We are going out this weekend and I'll see if I can take shots worth talking about then. I've got someone hooked on mturk after they saw what I got out of it -- used books, kitchen container, usb flash disk (yeah! that's new!). It's great that I'm here i

I took an online survey from Global Test Market today. I registered last year (it's free) and I received a couple of invitations between then and now. It's just that this was the first survey where I met all their classification requirements. It's not that often that organizations would include international survey-takers like moi so it's a nice surprise. There's like a minimum of a 1000 points that one should get before they get paid and I am so far from that, lol! I guess US residents are most targeted so... Well, it's a nice side-thing for other WAH moolah, I guess. Most survey sites I've seen were restricted to US or Canada residents too. I would've loved to get a piece of that. Hopefully, soon, there'll be more that'll want to know what we (non-US, non-Canadian) residents think. Here's to hoping...!

It was my sister and bro-in-law's sony point-and-shoot and I love it!!! It's my first digicam and it's got nice features... the only thing better would be if they gave me a pink one! lol! But it's like dark blue black so that's good since I don't like the same old silver ones that you see everywhere. See, they're planning to get a fancy SLR one so they gave me their old camera... they're so nice. :) We had relatives here last week for their vacation and they treated me to Walt Disney World. Wow, I didn't know that tickets were that expensive - it was $75 for one person, one park (no park-hopping). We went to disney's hollywood studios and it was fun. It was hot, then it rained... it was an experience! lol! My niece enjoyed Beauty and the Beast -- me too!!! Yeah, it took me back to my childhood. Me, memorizing songs from the movie by playing the cassette tape that we had back then... So, that's like two or three more parks of disney's to

Yes, we did do something nice for my birthday (yey!). I blew candles, err, a candle - because I took too long to come out of the shower - on a choco fudge cake with the sweetest thing written on it with piped icing. Yeah, it's the regular HBD but I LIKE... no, I love it!!! lol! So, they sang me a "Happy Birthday" and we went out to dinner. We had dinner at a place that closes at 10pm, ergo, we were the last ones out. It's just that we drove out at 9pm and the place where we're supposed to eat was closed already. Being late just meant that I had more time to guss up which I like very much. lol! My stomach's stretched out with all the food... aagghhh!!! I'm sleepy but I don't want to go to bed yet. I don't want to have any nightmares, you know, that thing about sleeping when you're full? Anyway, we could've had cake when we got back from dinner but because of an accident, we only managed to salvage a quarter of that lovely choco fudge with t

We lost power last night at around midnight and it came back up an hour later. The winds were really strong and we saw rain fall like sheets from inside the house. The effects of Fay were worse in other parts of the state like in the Keys and the west side. There were news of twisters in some towns too. We also heard about a storm that's hitting Manila right now (we have TFC kasi). I guess we have the same storm season in Florida and the Philippines. I hope the weather will be fair when we come home from this hiatus. I helped a little (What's smaller than "a little"? That would be how much I helped!) with painting the family room and kitchen here. It's now a "sable hay" color with a maroon-like accent wall -- very nice. They put primer where they were going to put a much lighter new color so that the old color wouldn't affect the end result. I did some priming on one side of a wall, like a fourth of the wall to be exact. lol!

It's said to be a tropical storm as of now but so far, so... fair - the weather, that is. Yup, I've been here in Florida for a couple of months now and Fay is all over the local news today. It's forecasted to pass by tomorrow and over the next few days. Hope it doesn't evolve into a hurricane. There's no rain here right now but earlier this afternoon, there was some heavy rain, wind and thunder. News said that classes are good to go tomorrow... that's good to hear. We're pretty far from the Keys (where it's reported to hit first) so I hope it doesn't get too harsh here. The weekend's almost over and an important occasion's coming up this week -- my birthday! lol! Okay, I am excited but I highly doubt it that we'd be doing anything special. Okay, I'm going to watch the Olympics now...

Not having much typing to do during this hiatus, I figure that I should keep my fingers "keyboard-ready" for when I go back home and start doing general transcription again (just hope that the job's still there!). I've been playing typer shark online to do just that. I must admit, it's okay and keeps me from getting bored too. Still far off from that 60 WPM goal of mine, playing typing games online can sure keep these fingers warm and toned! lol! "Toned fingers"... that's funny! lol! I wonder what other typing games there are online... Now, I keep away from the typing tutorials because they can be pretty boring. So keyboard games are always a good alternative, yeah. Hope I get a digicam soon so I can write more interesting posts...! When that happens, I'm going to have to think about writing about transcribing with pictures than just talking about food. lol!

Mturk has been my "when I get the chance" thing that I sporadically work on during this hiatus. And when I get more time here on the computer, I've been organizing tax reports that my friend's been sending me since I've been away. I've been using google docs on the latter that, by the way, takes a lot longer than if I were using MS office. Turking is hardly working since I've only been doing polls and image-moderating. Hey, there can only be so many days to go out and go galavanting on a many-months-long vacation. So to keep from getting too bored, turking is a good way to spend the little time when I do get to use the pc here. I did try writing pieces for my writing affiliate - I think I've only managed to send one article since this vacation started - and there's a notepad with some words on it here that I just couldn't get done. Needless to say, I don't (couldn't, is more like it) get to use the computer a whole lot here. Oh well, I

The Grimms book that I ordered on the 15th arrived today. I love the feeling that my mturk earnings are actually materializing. Anyway, the first story that I read was the Cinderella one - the original title's not this Disney name, it's Ashputtle - and oh was it gory! lol! There were toe-cutting and heel-slicing and eyes-pecking... ewww. lol! For a used book, it was in very good condition. It took about a week to get here from when it was shipped. It was shipped on the 16th, by the way. We went to out yesterday - just to the mall in Boca. Got two tops - actually one's a top and the other's a short dress but it could pass off as a top. So, here's the weird part -- I got to shop at the "kids section"! It would've been great to always shop in that size since prices are cheaper when it's the kids' section but most styles are hardly appropriate for my age. It just so happened that I saw a fairly mature-looking top by chance there and it only cost $1

They fixed the pc here a while ago but unfortunately they had to reformat so a few applications were lost - one of which is MS office. My friend sent me their VAT report for June in Excel and I needed to get it ready for the accounting books. What I've started using is the "google docs" spreadsheet to work on it. So far, so good. It keeps the document online or "in the cloud" so I needn't download it (not that I can since MS office's not installed) and it makes it more convenient. My first snag was how I could add more data into the spreadsheet. It's because I couldn't go over the alloted space from the print area in the original document. After a few tries, the solution was to copy/paste the original data into another worksheet that's tabbed in the same file. It also auto-saves so I needn't worry about it getting lost. So far, some limits that I see with this online feature is that I can't undo more than the last action and I'd h

I've just ordered another used book from amazon this evening. See, last week I ordered a complete-collection-brothers-grimm book (with all it's gory-glory! But I forget the title). That first seller contacted me right away and said that it had water damage and asked if I'd prefer a partial refund with the book or a full refund. Given the seller's description of the damage, I asked for the full return of my money. It was all of almost $7 of my penny-per-mturk-work so I got to have it all back! lol! Anyway, I received the full refund yesterday and I've again ordered the same book from another used book seller via amazon. I'll know by tomorrow of my order's status. The pc here is working fine now but it's very unlikely that I can remotely continue my transcription work with my affiliate though. I already figured that that would be the case. I can choose to dread the work that would be waiting when I return from this hiatus/vacation - but I don't. Well,

I've mentioned (more than a few times) that I'm not a big dessert fan. But lately, the highlight of our dinners has been - yup - desserts. I loooove apple pie w/ ice cream. We get pies from the grocery and some have been "blech!" while some have been "oohh yeah!!!". We've been pretty excited for a while there when we'd get a different pie every time we go to the store. But after having the "blech!" ones more than a few times, we've decided to stick to the ones we've come to know and enjoy. Tonight's dessert was banana split. OMG! So yummy. I was supposed to take a picture but I've no way of uploading it from the mobile phone that I'm using right now. Anyway, we had butter and pecan ice cream from - I forget the brand, Dreyer's maybe - and rocky road from Edy's. I had the rocky road with my banana while my sis had both with hers. She also put a scoop of strawberry sorbet in her bowl... I thought, "That wouldn