in remembrance

About my post the other day regarding intentions ... joey called me last night when i was at work and told me that Grandpa past away last night - he was at home with his family and took his last breath - the cancer had just taken over his body. We were supposed to have a big birthday party for him this upcoming weekend because Grandma Spot wanted to plan a big party for Grandpa, she already started buying all of the drinks and decorations and stuff. how sad. but please keep joey's grandpa, grandma and family in your prayers. thanks.

happy father's day

Happy Father's Day to all the papa's out there! Here's me and my pa! Have a good day all daddies!

cheap date and intentions

so yesterday, joey and i took his cousin, paul, out to dinner. paul has been in korea for the past couple of years serving in the air force and has now come back to the u.s. so i had work on wed night to thurs morning. i needed to drop off a check to my godfather's church and also booked him for Saturday Mass for the retreat and then I went over to Joey's to sleep. I didn't get there til almost 11 and then woke up at 1800. So then we got ready to go to dinner - hence I haven't eaten since 2200 the previous day. we go to Johnny Carino's in Downey and we decide to get a drink at the bar. I get their bellini - it's like a frozen peach thing mixed with champagne and rum with a sangria swirl somewhere in there. by the end of dinner, i was totally buzzed! how sad! we think it was because I hadn't eaten anything for almost 24 hours, but still! I can now get buzzed for less than $10! what a steal!

PS. I've got a small list of intentions. Please pray for Joey's grandpa - he's got lung cancer and has had a really bad week this week, having shortness of breath, difficulty getting up, pain and changing his medications. he's using his oxygen tank but it's getting harder to move. and pray for his grandma, too. she's having a hard time because she's taking care of him.
and please pray for my nephew, Lucas. he has some sort of infection and my sis-in-law took him to the doctor today and they don't know what it is. he's getting red blotchy patches all over his neck, back and legs, and he's running a fever and he's getting blisters in his throat. he's not having any pain really and he doesn't have any blisters on his hands and feet (that's good) but they think it's something viral but they're not sure. they gave him some benadryl and tylenol but that's it. so please pray that that's all it is. thanks guys.

happy birthday

danny took this of himself. it's very centered. anyway, happy birthday mr. daniel calmelat! hopefully we'll see you some time this weekend - it's my's 10 year high school reunion. geez. they're old. jk

a graduation

my five-year-old nephew, Lucas, graduated from kindergarten today. kindergarten? how time flies! i guess there was a shortage of michaelas in 2000 because there were 5 michaelas in his class! my sister-in-law told me a short story that was kind of weird. lucas is now going to go to a public school right by their house for first grade. it's brand new, just built. the school that he goes to right now is $4000. a year! that's a lot of money. but anyway, lucas's little girlfriend, ireland was talking to her mom.
ireland: mom, lucas isn't going to a school where they praise God next year
Ireland's mom: neither are you, honey
I guess she's not going to school there next year either.

weird how they learn so early that there's a difference as to when and where they can praise God - they're 5!!! that's amazing work though.

this is Lucas getting getting his diploma ... they get to do the handshake
this is Mrs. Croyt, his teacher
this is my brother and sister-in-law, Grandma Esther and Jayden. Big sister Annie was at school but her graduation is next week!
that's me and my sister and the boys
and there's the graduate: Lucas Anthony Anotado! congratulations my dear!

where a kid can be a kid

so i've been neglected lately. just kidding cristina. anyway, i hadn't seen cristina in a while so i butt my head into her business and called her on saturday night.
me: are you playing at noon Mass tomorrow?
cristina: yeah
me: ok, i'll be there so i can finally see you
cristina: ok, that's cool. we're going to chuck e. cheese afterwards. do you want to come with us?
in my head i was like, hmmmmmmmmmmm ... but then i decided, sure, why the heck not? and this is what i got. i got my ct. this usually refers to cuddle time, but in this instance, i got my cristina time. hehe

this is supposedly the hardest game. it just looks too confining to me. blah.
this is ang as she won her 100 tickets!! woohoo!!! she was so excited. i wonder what she's like in vegas
the look of pure delight
this poor ride got so much action that day. talk about weird body rolling. whoa
talk about feeling old. yes i am. i try to blend in but the bags under my eyes are so heavy.
cristina and janice - thanks for being mom and organizing everything janice!
these two fit on the screen somehow. quite entertaining
the roomies with chuck
they attacked chuck before he got back inside. that poor rachel's birthday must hate us.
out of all the winnings, everyone got a kazoo. i think gp's was broken.
there's the final group pix - go noon Mass!
yay - i'm not a homewrecker! jk. but you know i had to put it in.
thanks for a fun Sunday afternoon guys! i'll be back at chuck e. cheese next weekend with my nephews (who are 3 and 5).

the brown memo

so saturday night joey and i went out to our friend, john's, party ... i had gone shopping the week before when we were in vegas at the br outlet. now, joey's a simple guy. i don't think stripes are in his wardrobe. but, cel and i thought that it would look good on him. so we took a chance and got the brown striped shirt. we originally wanted the rust-colored polo but there was none in XL. anyway, i always pictured it with brown sandals too ... i didn't know he was going to wear it because i didn't think he would wear it so when i got dressed to go meet up with them, i was wearing a brown shirt as well. he smirks at the thought of the brown striped shirt, but deep down, he liked it. ...
this is the scratcher game that we played. joey, vincent and i did each had a crossword one. vincent got 5 words and the bonus and ended up with a $50.00 winning ticket. joey pretends to win with his, but he lost.




this is john's party. this is vincent, rob, john and joey. john was my best friend in the latter years of high school and early years of college. and then we drifted apart. our worlds are very separate now, sometimes he still can't believe that joey and i are together. but joey sees him more often than i do. weird how things happen like that - people can be so close and then kind of separate. not in a bad way but sometimes life really just get busy. but then again it's up to us to invest in the relationships that we really want to work, right? ok. that went on a weird tangent. that was saturday night/sunday morning.

welcome ms. kim!

so i went to visit the kims yesterday at the hospital. i actually went to the wrong hospital. i got the text and it said encino tarzana regional. so i google'd it and went along my merry way. when i was in the parking lot, i called fil and he said to come on in, to go to the women's pavillon. when i got there, there was no women's pavillion so i asked at the gift shop. they said that there were no babies there, i had to go to the tarzana campus. apparently it happens a lot because they had a printout of directions on how to get to the other campus. so anyway, i went to the tarzana location and got to see the kims. here they are ...
look at the happy family ... cute huh?
yes, she's a girl. it's so cool. they keep her at the bedside the whole time.
here are her prints. they look so itty bitty.
here's her lojack system so that she won't get snatched away. i now feel secure.
here's fil changing poopy diapers.
lara doesn't like it so much
there. her eyes are open. ms. lara aline gopez kim.
doesn't she look like an anne geddes picture?
here's the happy cousin, carelle.
mia was very scared to hold her. look how tense her shoulder is.
here's lara's ate denise ready to take care of her.
that's me. lovette has now introduced me to lara as tita paparazzi. so that's my new name. anyway, there were no babies that we saw born that day. everybody seemed to have been induced to have their babies early or held off until today. as long as they didn't name their kids damian i think they would be ok. ok, off to work

birthday wishes

i already know what i want for my birthday. and it's only june. grey's anatomy season 2 comes out on september 12 - 2 days after my birthday. i am soooooooooo there. woohoo!

libo, libo

and so another vegas trip ends. it was a different one of sorts. a few months ago i posted about a bet that i had won - my friend, cel, and i bet a vegas trip that she couldn't talk to her ex-bf for at least six months and within 2 weeks she lost the bet. so we planned for a vegas trip in june. lo, and behold, it's june already. but joey's cousin, vince, and his familia were heading out to state line this weekend so we decided to combo the trip. i had work friday night so when i finished at 7:45 AM saturday morning, i drove straight to cel's place and then we headed out to state line at 8:30. joey and vince left on friday during the day. we made good time and got to state line by 11:30. we called the boys and decided to eat lunch before i went to sleep - mind you i had no sleep on the way there either. so i finally went to bed at 2:30 saturday afternoon (that's literally 24 hours after i woke up the previous day!) and trust me, i was delirious by then. so i napped until 7:30 and then got ready to go out to the strip. here are some highlights ...

this is me and joey after i napped, showered and changed. we actually got lost exiting the parking lot from buffalo bill's and were running parallel to the freeway before we realized there was no freeway access. joey then made a song similar to gilligan's island about how we had gotten lost ... i don't think he could repeat it though


i found this cool huge-antic bench in front of the buffet line at aladdin. i couldn't resist, i had to lie down.

look who we found at mgm! it's my and danny ... hello calmelats! joey was on a mission to find the long drink things so we walked from bally's to mgm to find the drinks. we saw some interesting things along the way including one guy sitting on the sidewalk getting his car searched and the other guy getting searched, with an open beer case in his car and then we saw him getting cuffed on the strip! the crowd watched as the cops cuffed and arrested him. don't worry, cel was our dd!

here are the drinks that we finally found ... my and i shared two of these things - they were red white and blue - strawberry margarita, pina colada and blue something or other. we only had the yardstick - that's why we had 2! and the boys had the mad dog thing (46 oz) of 190 octane with an extra shot! boy, did that make a difference!


here's us after a few sips of our drinks! actually, that's us pretty normal, my jumped in on purpose.
you ask what joey is doing? he started talking to these two filipina women at the wheel of fortune slots. he asked us how to say "thousand" in tagalog. and we told him "libo." so every time they got a spin on the wheel of fortune, he started chanting "libo, libo" the one lady (in the orange) looked at him at first, and then started chanting with him. so for the rest of the night - and weekend - he kept chanting "libo, libo!)


these are our good night pictures to my and danny - i think it's about 3 AM by this point in time.

just switched places with danny and we got a girl picture in ... go scrapbooking!
we found this empty thing at the end of the night and thought that we would frame ourselves so that it looked like a picture! do you think it worked?

anyway, this is how we ended our night. we were too tired to get steak and eggs so we wanted to go to jack in the box, but they were closed because their computers were down. we finally went to bed at 5 AM. tired but good times for all. when we were going to pay on sunday, vince had a voucher for one free night, but they said that someone had already paid cash for the room and that he would be refunded his voucher. so we ended up with a free room! we think his family paid for it before we left - how cool is that? anyway, good times for all.

she's here

look! ms. lara kim is here! welcome little one! you've long been awaited! can't wait to meet you - we're super excited!

it's all in the numbers

there's this whole article on the LA Times sports page about numbers. it's kinda cool. the NFL won't let Reggie Bush wear his beloved No. 5 because running backs must wear a number between 20 - 49. how retarded is that? so then he had to "buy" the number 25 from a teammate who has worn that number for 8 seasons. Reggie is donating 25% of the his jersey royalties to Hurricane Katrina victims and then half of those funds go to the charity of the other guy's choice. that was a nice exchange but apparently people have had to pay for family vacations, new kitchen sets or lump sums of $40,000. to have a certain number. that's crazy. talk about superstition. i didn't realize that all NHL clubs retired the number 99 for gretzky - all clubs - wow - what an honor! thus, mario lemiuex picked the number 66 because it's 99 backwards.

celosa

so i once told one of the nurses i used to work with that my favorite color was yellow. she looked at me, straight-faced and said "are you celosa? (is that even the right spelling?) anyway, she asked me if i was the jealous-type. i had to stop and think about it because i wasn't sure. but as i have moved on from that conversation (which was over 4 years ago), i have come to realize that i am. how sad.
last night i had a dream that still proves that i am. well, it was a pretty upsetting dream. anyway, all of my high school friends were hanging out - which isn't unusual - in a place similar to central perk in friends, but there were couches where people could lay down as well. what was unusual was that jenn - joey's ex - came with her bf. our godfather has told her that she has to hang out with us so that everyone is aware that she is ok with me and joey being together and that she's over him because for a long time, he believed that she wasn't. anyway, so we're all hanging out and joey says about 2 words to her throughout the night. we all went to sleep (in the dream) and when i woke up, joey wasn't on the bed with me, but lying on the couch with her. they were sitting opposite of each other so that their faces were about 2 inches apart - that's some close space. and her bf was nowhere to be found. our other friend, joan, was there and she saw me wake up and see this. she said for me to calm down. well, i wasn't so calm. they told me they were all going outside to play football. i said, why don't you guys just leave - now? and i kicked them out of the house. no questions asked. and they left - together.
needless to say, i woke up from my dream after that. what's wrong with me?