Hello!

It's been 2 months and 1 day since my last update. *ducks to avoid the heavy stuff thrown at him* Yes yes, my blogging activities have dropped to zilch in these past 8 weeks.

It's not as if nothing's been happening. On the contrary, too many things have happened in the past 8 weeks -- events in my life, my family, Gail, and my close friends. Since my last update Gail started teaching at CSB; Anjy dropped by for a quick visit; Jay had a birthday party; Ondoy wrecked havoc on the country in general (brought to home by the fact that it also hit Gail's house, Jia's house, and a couple of other close friends of mine); Gail and I celebrated her 27th birthday by flying to Singapore...er, Hong Kong; typhoon Pepeng wrecked havoc on the northern part of the country, including the area of Marvin's family; we celebrated my mom's birthday; my dad and Gail got their new cars respectively; Gail and I started to regularly run in my village; I ran my 1st official 5km run; I got my new rig!

And those are just the major events in the past 2 months...that doesn't include the smaller things in life. Nor does it include the nitty gritty details of my career.

After a particularly jaw-dropping moment last Saturday night which left me speechless for a good 5 minutes (yes, the people who know me well know that making me speechless is nearly impossible - I do take after my mom, aka The Generator!), I told myself in an offhand manner that "life is good." I then stopped and did a mental double-take and realized the absolute truth of that statement: life IS currently good. Very good, to be precise. I wasn't in a good place this time last year - when the new year came, I was determined to get my life back on track...and it seems like it did. In spades!

Don't get me wrong: it's not perfect. It wasn't as if the past 8 weeks was nothing but nirvana. It had its ups and downs of course...but (given that I'm a proctoid), if you were to graph the highs and lows, majority of the events fall on the high side.

And that made me close my eyes and give a short but heartfelt prayer of thanks to God for everything: to my family, who has been there for me every step of the way and supports me in the right things and cajoles me on the wrong things; to Gail, for being the sweetest, most loving, most caring, and most supportive girlfriend in the world; to Gail's family for making me feel so welcome in their home; to my close friends - from the office, from W&C, and from my barkada - who make life better and certainly more interesting; to my previous and current bosses at work who really are hell-bent on pushing my career; and to God, for being patient enough with me as I learn.

So yes, there have been so many things happening in my life that I don't get to sit down and blog about them anymore. It's not as if I don't appreciate them - I take the time to review, reflect, and relive new moments in my life during my downtime (while I'm driving haha!). I guess I've become a little bit more private about my reflections about certain things in life and I pick and choose about what I blog about, so I hope you'll forgive me if my blogging frequency has dropped. :)

There are quite a few things that have happened that I'd like to talk about more:

1. RUNNING! - yes, initially for health reasons (both for weight loss, toning, and back-muscle building) but more so for the endorphines lately, Gail and I have been regularly running (and by regularly I do mean a good month and a half already!) at either the Fort or in my village. We've both been running 5km...nothing compared to the likes of Gloria, Anama, and Cathy of course, but it's progress. :) I like how I can put my mind on auto-pilot and just focus on the simple act of putting one foot ahead of the other - it's a great way to clear my mind. Hopefully I get to improve my time for 5km (I'm average 42 minutes while Gail's kicking my ass at 37 minutes!) and to run longer distances!

2. MARKETING! - I was invited by an organization to conduct a marketing planning and strategy session for them next year, and I'm humbled and very excited about it. Since I haven't had the opportunity to teach yet, I'm super excited that I finally can put my marketing experience to good use outside of my current job, and I can't wait to get to it!

3. GAMING! - yes, after a good 7 years since my last major upgrade, and a good 7 months of agonizing between a desktop and a laptop, I finally went ahead and built my gaming rig! An Intel i7 920 processor, an Intel Extreme DX58SO motherboard, an nVidia 9800GT 1GB video card, a 500GB HDD, 4GB of RAM, and 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium = gaming awesomeness in a package! (WARNING: GEEK MODE) Imagine running Dawn of War 2, CoD: Modern Warfare 2, Dragon Age: Origins, and The Orange Box on ULTRA HIGH SETTINGS. LEGENDARY!

4. CHRISTMAS! - I'm super excited for Christmas! As in I haven't been this excited in my entire life for the holidays. The entire family's going to be home for the 1st time in quite a while and we're all excited! Gail made me excited for Christmas all the more when she gave me a CD of the Chipmunks Christmas CD - I tell you, that brought back great memories of my childhood when my folks would play the LP of that album during Dec 25!

And with that, I close off this post of mine. Hopefully the next one doesn't take another 2 months! :)