Burning Rubber

I'm back on the court! After missing the past couple of weeks because of an injury and because of the regional athletic meet the sports complex was reopened to the public. I was raring to go because I knew I had to catch up on a lot of things. Luckily after a 15-minute warm up I took my first jump shot and it went sswiissshh! straight away!hehe I went on to shoot more for the next hour or so and before I knew it I was getting back into groove again. The only thing that really hasn’t gotten back to my game was my stamina, way down. Back then I can keep running up and down the court for about four or five possessions, now I could barely catch my breath after hitting the first two baskets of the game. A couple more laps at the tracks would probably do wonders.

The perfect getaway

I went home to my hometown last weekend just to be away from the bustling city life for a while. I headed to the beach that afternoon at around 5:30pm and just let the ambiance take over, the scene was great, all calm and quiet and who wouldn’t feel that way when you have the breezing summer air and the waning sunset at the same time. I had some rare moments too; there was this shipwreck not far along the coastline. The natives there said the ship during a night time journey mistakenly identified a light tower as the port tower which in fact was actually a cellular site so they accidentally navigated to shallow waters, into a sandbar and got stuck. Now that’s something you don’t see every time you go to the beach.

A freaks?

It just sounded like that.hehe Anyway the whole family went to this place that looks just like a small house on the side of the road, it has a small entrance heading into the main dining area. It has a nice cozy Italian household touch, with matching antiques and lightings and all that, they even have that old round dinner table, the only thing that was missing was the lazy susan on top of it (I figured they intentionally took it off to be less Filipino-ish). The food was good, they serve mostly Italian dishes, you know, cordon bleu, carbonara, fettuccini salads and ofcourse pizza! I had to give up after the carbonara though, I could barely take more because the chicken and the pizza were heavy to the tummy.

I don't mean to advertise the place but if you happen to be in Iloilo City or just passing by, I recommend you check this place out. The place is called Afrique's and they have branches at Brgy. Desamparados at the back of the Jaro Cathedral and another one at Gen. Hughes St. near the Sagrado school. You can't miss the latter, just look for a two-storey ancestral house near the gasoline station or you can just ask the locals I'm pretty sure they know. Bon Apetite!

Rise after every fall

I suffered a bad fall while I was playing basketball this afternoon. It was bad that I couldn’t stand up after that, my teammates had to help me off the floor. But luckily there was no major bone that got misplaced in my body, just a couple of bruises here and there. I even managed to play a few more games after that but my mobility was obviously impaired coz I couldn’t put much weight on my left leg the reason why I went home rather early.

Then as I got home I was surprised a little kid was playing at the door. Yes I have a younger brother but this one's way too cute, he looks like jack-jack from The Incredibles movie. Anyway, as I walked by him he kept pointing at the basketball that I was holding, and garbled something like ball or bounce (smart kid). So I gave him the ball and he just bounced and chased it around the living room. The kid was, by the way, a family friend’s who stopped over for a visit. So for the rest of the evening I spent time with lil’ jay-ar (her mom says that’s his nickname) until it was his time for a wash and eventually bedtime. He still managed to wave goodbye and goodnight before he left our unofficial playing court. Now about that pain I had earlier… actually I forgot about it a while there. I only realized I’m having a hard time walking straight after I stood up to eat dinner. So I had it iced, updated my blogs, then went straight to bed.

Surviving the blue screen of death!

I like cleaning up; Aside from the usual daily routine, my PC inherits that habit too. In fact I run cleanup utilities everyday at startup and before shutdown. And that’s not just it, I have more than 5 cleanup utilities installed so you could just imagine how squeaky clean this big chunk of hardware is. But this morning things got a little off hand, I was searching for stray .dll files (critical files needed to run certain WinXP applications) that were taking up space in my hard drive. These stray .dll files were supposed to be remnants of previous uninstalled applications but unfortunately there are circumstances when Windows fails to cleanup its own mess. So as my cleanup program showed a list of suspected stray and unused files, I accidentally deleted a critical file still in use. But I was thinking “hey I have the Windows XP CD so if I deleted a windows-dependent file I could always copy it from there anytime, easy.” Or I thought it was. So I chose to let the program “archive all” (not delete) and move the files to a single compressed folder where it will be taking up lesser space like the Recycle Bin. Just as I suspected, after the deletion Windows prompted me to insert the Windows XP CD because I accidentally deleted an important system file. And then it happened, what every PC user feared, before I could reach for my Windows CD, the blue screen! Meaning Windows crashed, Arggh! Fast forward, a couple of hours later after I ran a couple of disc diagnostics and attempting to recopy the system files from the CD without luck, I decided to run it on safe mode, which should have been any PC user’s first instinct after a Windows failure. So I cringed from the boot screen to the log on screen while crossing my fingers and impatiently waited. As I began to peek through my narrowing eyelids I noticed that all my startup programs were loaded, almost there… and then… No blue screen!! Phew! I ran that utility program right away and restored all the previously archived files, I was safe for now but I'm never going to be too careless with those Windows directory files again.

Sometimes paying too much attention to detail could be troublesome; start with the simple steps then build up to the more complicated ones, its much easier that was. =)