Simple Things

At the 9am Family/Children's Mass on Sunday, Fr. Al asked the kids to join him at the altar for homily.  They normally do that with the kids during the Children's mass.

When asked what was the most exciting thing that happened to them that week, one of the kids said, "It's my dad's birthday!"

A little girl said, "I saw my friend", and a little boy said, "We went to Santa Cruz".  Santa Cruz is a city by the ocean, 70 miles south of San Francisco.

Another kid said, "My mom got me crayons", while another said, "my mom allowed me to stay up late".

Sometimes I envy.  I envy children who find so much joy in the simplest of things!  And how they appreciate the small yet kind gestures of others that oftentimes we would have hardly noticed.

And I am guilty.  Guilty for every now and then I want so much that at times, I tend to leave out the things that really matter.

Aren't we blessed to have these little ones who constantly remind us that it is the simple things that actually make life great?

I'm Dancing!

It's been 5 weeks since this blog, but until now I haven't done much progress on my resolution for a healthy  lifestyle.  I've made a lot of changes to my eating habits--mostly reducing the amount of food I take, sometimes starving myself and so far, it has been making me miserable!

You see, I love food!  I love to cook and I love to eat!  Food is my comfort.  Food makes me happy and so eating less is, to me, is a little more than just sacrifice.  It would be torment!

So instead of starving myself, I decided to do a lot more exercise.  As one of my colleagues said, "it's not about eating less, it's about doing more!"  I bet he's right!

Honestly though, I don't enjoy the usual forms of exercise.  I hate running!  I don't like going to the gym.  I sometimes do Pilates at home, but only when I really force myself to do it.  Hence, the word "sometimes".

I love sports but it's probably the hardest to commit to.  And with sports, you often have to engage other people.  So I thought...dancing!  I love dancing and this is probably the only form of exercise that I can commit myself into because I know I will enjoy doing it.

So I started dancing this weekend.  I enrolled myself to a few dancing classes--Brazilian Samba on Tuesdays, Salsa on Saturdays, Zumba and Latin Aerobics on Sundays.  You can tell I love Latin dances--they're my favorite!

Salsa was great yesterday and so was Zumba today.  But so far, I liked Latin Aerobics the most--it's like a combination of Zumba and Yoga.  There's a lot of stretching and walking involved, and tons of hip action.

I hope I can follow through with this.  I think I can commit myself to something I enjoy doing.  And hopefully, someday, I can shed all those unwanted pounds and really get myself back into shape!

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Photo:  Not a dancing shoes--just one of my favorite pairs.  

PhotoSHOPPING

I've tried to live without Photoshop for several weeks now.  I thought I would be OK without it because I don't do a lot of photo post-processing.  But as the days go by, I am starting to feel miserable without my Photoshop.

I actually do love post-processing photos and learning new processing techniques, but sadly I just don't have time for it.  I do edit and make corrections to most of my photos and iPhoto does that well for me.  But I can't seem to find enough time to do photo post-processing, even if I want to.  When I had Photoshop, I used it more for attaching watermarks to my photos.  When I had time to process photos, I'd do a few and really enjoyed it.  Now I can't because I got no tool to use.

I used to have Photoshop for Windows.  I was running Windows parallel to Mac OS in my iMac.  It worked seamlessly until I had to reformat my machine and upgrade my Mac OS.  For some reasons, I could not get Windows to run either by parallel or bootcamp.

So now I'm shopping for a Photoshop CS4 for Mac, only I can't find anything below retail anywhere.  Thing is, I really don't want to spend $700 on a software--especially if it's something I use for a hobby (funny that I'd be willing to spend this much on a pair of shoes that I'd use occasionally and not on Photoshop that I'll probably end up using more often).  I'm looking for cheaper alternatives and I'm considering Adobe Photoshop Lightroom instead.  Haven't used this before but I was told this would be adequate for photo editing.  Maybe I'll try Gimp too, but then again, if it's for photo editing I can just stick with iPhoto.

I miss Photoshop!  I would totally settle for an older version--it's better than not having it at all.  I feel paralyzed!

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Photo:  Grilled Tiger Prawns--one of our favorite quick meals.

Dream

A dream is a heavy burden to carry

But those persistent enough

will carry their dream to reality!

I've been watching the Winter Olympics and this is just one of the many lessons I've learned from them persistent athletes.

I watch these games not because I know how they're played, not because I know who the athletes are nor am I cheering for any of them.  I watch these games because seeing people celebrate their victories make me so emotional, and hearing their stories--of what they had to go through to get to where they are--is nothing short of inspiring!

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Photo:  One day, I woke up to this beautiful early morning.