Monday Blues

Last night David Bowie passed away.  I'm so sad about this.  He just celebrated a birthday a few days ago.  I think what surprised me the most was that he was battling cancer for the past 18 months.  The news media said very little of his health condition.  He even released a new album!  The fact that he did this privately shows me how difficult this must have been to keep his condition a secret.  Having a terminal illness puts people in a awkward situation.  They first have to come in terms of their illness and then consult their options with doctors and family.  Who they share this information with afterwards is the hard part.  My heart goes out to Iman and Bowie's family.  This is devastating news to the music industry and to the world.  He was a true visionary. 
For the past 2 months, the holidays came and went, but one thing that never left my mind was making sure my mom felt loved and needed.  She was emotional on Thanksgiving, and on Christmas Eve, she left to go home early after having dinner at my aunt's.  New Year's Eve she did the same thing since she had to get up early to go to work.  Since then things have slowed down at her job, so she's been at home resting.  Unfortunately, now the weather has gone frigid.  I want to make sure she doesn't go crazy being stuck at home.  I know I have!  I stayed in this past weekend because of the weather, too, but having cabin fever is a problem when you have nothing to do.  I downloaded an album off iTunes and blasted away so that helped.  Plus the Golden Globes was on last night and that was pretty entertaining.  Sometimes you have to use these pastimes to not drive yourself crazy. 
Back to last November's events.  After Thanksgiving Thursday, I stayed in for Black Friday.  I knew I might go crazy with all of the sales going on, but I really wanted to focus on finishing up all of my Christmas shopping first.  It's hard to stay on track by budgeting alone, and since I started to focus on my apartment more these past few months, I think it helped me feel at "home" finally.  I have slowly bought a few Christmas pieces to my place.  Instead of a traditional Christmas tree, I bought an LED birch tree to display in front of my fireplace.  I figured it would be easier than to get a tree and having to get ornaments for it.  I also figured out that it DOES take time to get those special Christmas pieces you want to fill up in your home.  You can't just go out and buy everything you want because it takes years to get what you are really looking for.  I'm secretly jealous of what my mom has for her Christmas decorations, but I know for a fact they've been around for over 20 years.  You can't get this stuff anywhere else, plus every year there's always new things being put out to add to your home.  I made it a point to buy things I really love and not get things to "fill up" in the meantime.

That following Saturday my friend invited us to her dad's birthday celebration.  Her parents are well known in the Filipino community, so there were a lot of people at her parents' house.  I loved the fact that so many people showed up despite the cold weather we were having that day.  Plus it was nice seeing my friends since Thanksgiving is the start of the holiday craze.  I also got a chance to see my friend's baby boy.  He was born back in July and the last time I saw him was in September.  We had a good time that day and even stayed out at their place past midnight!  Time flies when you're having fun!


The birthday boy!



HUGE TURNOUT!



He's getting so big!



The money shot!  You don't know how hard it was for us to get him to look at the camera!  lol