Gimme A Break

I can’t imagine where the time has gone. I’ve been so busy the past few days that everything’s been a blur. We’ve been out buying Chinese New Year gifts, preparing dinners and visiting relatives.

The economy is bad as everyone knows by now, so I was having to be extra careful with keeping to my budget. I notice too at the houses that we visited, everyone has scaled down on the goodies and the hot topic of conversation seems to be about the state of the economy. Duh!

I wish people would just not keep talking about the economy. It sure dampens the festive mood.

• 5 ways to reduce festive stress
• got my house plan picked out but…
• jackets in the mall
• a small price for peace of mind
• surviving the zonk

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The thing about the beginning of the school year that really gets to me is that we are required to resubmit documents of certificates and other stuff all over again.

I can’t imagine what the school does with the copies we submitted last year and the year before. But they always ask for fresh copies of those same documents to be submitted year after year.

So there’s this frenzy to make several trips to the print shop to get the copies made. We used to have a printer at home that we could use for small quantities of print, but it doesn’t work any more.

Right now, we can’t afford to buy another multifunction printer. Even if we did, we wouldn’t use it very often since we’ve got a couple of other printers already.

• out of ink
• home-made vs commercial
• the print fanatics
• lost
• Blogathon 2007: Sponsor me pretty please!

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Yep, I’m crazy about lions. This is my favorite thing about Chinese New Year, the dazzling lion dance. Isn’t this lion just gorgeous as he balances ever so majestically on stilts raised several feet above the floor?

Here he is again but this time, he’s airborne as he leaps and lands ever so gracefully on the next set of stilts. A lion that’s not afraid of heights, now that’s my kinda beast .

• crazy ’bout lions
• five things i love most about cny
• mirage
• festive food prices
• my two left feet

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We have this hand-me-down tradition in our family where when dh or I get a new cell phone, we pass ours along to one of the kids. My kids have never gotten brand new cell phones, they’re just ‘inherit’ our old ones.

My pda phone has just been ‘inherited’ by my daughter. It’s still fairly new but since she wants to listen to her beloved MP3 and watch movies on it, she’s been hounding us about getting the memory upgraded.

Well, that’s not too bad considering that it didn’t cost us too much to find the memory upgrades at the PC fair where we can get some good discounts. Do your kids get new cell phones or hand-me-downs?

• compare free cell phones
• buh-bye, cell phone
• don’t you just hate phone spam?
• madwoman
• buh-bye, brand new car

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One of the recommended ways to save money is to reduce your electricity usage. That said, even before the economic downturn, it’s always been the practice in our household to turn off electrical appliances when not in use.

Recently the weather has been helping somewhat. It’s been very cool at night, sometimes with rain, so we haven’t had to turn on the air-conditioning at all. I used to set the timer to switch off after a couple of hours after the room cools down.

Now I don’t even have to do that. It gets so chilly in the early morning hours that I may need an electric blanket instead. But then it gets unbearably hot in the late morning and afternoons. The weather’s gone whacko so a lot of people are sick with the flu.

• layer of smog
• brrrrr!
• my home sauna
• it isn’t cool to be hot
• bedtime

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I’m thinking of going grocery shopping today. But when I look at the sky outside,

I have to think twice. Looks like the storm clouds are rolling in… fast and I don’t want to have to dash out in the rain with my groceries when I’m done shopping.

• wierd weather day
• wierd weather phenomenon
• a bit of rain
• home more
• keep right on dancing

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These days, I’ve given up asking for help with finding stuff at the store. It’s becoming increasingly obvious to me that stores hire people who either can’t understand simple English or are too dumb to try or are just plain lazy.

When you ask them something, they simply stare at you in wide-eyed wonder. It’s not like we’re trying to ask you to explain what vaginal dryness means. We just need to know where to find an item.

And they’ll either tell you they don’t know or worse, send you on a wild goose chase till you’re completely lost walking up one aisle and down the other and not seeing anything even remotely close to what you’re looking for.

These days, I’d much rather wander around than ask the staff for help, even when I’m in a hurry.

• buying in bulk
• the sweet sound of Prada
• walking into over-indulgence
• gotta keep talkin’
• fried battery

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Woo-hoo, the internet is back to its normal speed and I hope it stays that way. Two, three weeks of the crawl is enough to drive anyone crazy. I’m really glad our broadband is back to flying as it should.

Now that we’ve gotten the kids settled back in school, I should have more time to bake some cookies and blog and catch up with my sleep. I was up at 5 this morning to prepare a lunchbox for my girls to take to school for recess. They don’t like canteen food so it’s a bit more work for me.

• floating off to slumberland
• frenzy weekend ahead
• trawling the newest mall
• da haze is back
• starting over at the gym

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