Everyone is on a Diet

I can still hear my nutrition teacher say what she said many times when I was studying nutrition in college.  She said, "Remember, everyone's on a diet."  It's true.  Look up the definition of diet.

So I'm always on a diet.  I'm continuing my juicing diet.  I have lost about 7 pounds so far.  It's not that tough either.  Today, I prepared carrot and spinach juice for breakfast.  For lunch, I made a strawberry, banana, and mango smoothie.  Between lunch and dinner, I snacked on almonds and pretzels.  For dinner, I am preparing a couple of artichokes.

It's late because I worked late and had to get gas and go to the store.  I bought more produce to make some homemade salsa.  I'll try to make two types --  pico de gallo and salsa ranchera.  I bought the corn chips as well.  I'll be bringing these to the potluck tomorrow in celebrating my dad's life.

So tomorrow we will gather and eat, and it will be a cheat day for me.  I'll cheat on my juicing diet, but I'll still be on a diet.  Everyone's on a diet.

#babymode

So many people are having babies.  At work, Leo just had a child.  Phil's is due in August. CJ's friends Tony and Akiyo just had a baby too.

Then my niece Naomi and her husband James announced her pregnancy.  After that, my friend Veronica and her husband Declan from New York City announced her pregnancy.

I wonder who will be next.

I love babies and everything about them.  They are cute, and they smell good.  They are innocent and playful.

They are hard work, however.  I can't even remember when CJ was a baby.  I was very young and had so much energy back then.  It was easy to take care of a baby.  When I turned 33, I completely lost any desire to have kids.

I still love babies, but it's easy to do that and give the baby back to its parents.  I might not, however, give CJ's child (my grandchild) back when CJ gets around to having a child.  I'll continue this baby mode and keep bugging him about it.

Intense Days

The days that I run payroll are usually intense.  Today was not that different, but I have found that if I really spread my work out, it doesn't become as intense.  That is, I do most of the prep work in advance as much as I can when I can.

It was still intense, however, even though I had done much of the work last week and earlier this week.  I was waiting for information, and it was nearing the deadline.  Missing the deadline means that nobody gets paid.  That's quite the punishment.

I've been doing payroll for more than a decade.  It's not as easy as some people make it out to be.  It's not as automated as some people think it is.  Every payroll has a change, a nuance, new things to add.  Complexity is added in payroll just like complexity is added in the dynamics among personnel at a company as it grows.

To keep my sanity, I just roll with the punches.  In this case, I just "payroll" with the punches.  Ha!

My Birthday Continues

It's still my birthday month.  I collected another gift yesterday.  My birthday club friends and I had lunch at Masa Sushi in Mountain View on San Antonio Road.  Love that place.  It's good stuff.

We've been getting together for years, close to two decades.  There's Silvia, Edward, Marina, Robert, and Ron. Sometimes in this busy and chaotic life I lead, I appreciate the constants such as this birthday club.  I can count on having my birthday lunch at Masa with them every year.

This is how constant they are - they still work at the City of Palo Alto where I met them.  Well Ron has retired from there.  But for me, after working at the City of Palo Alto, I moved on to Cooley Godward, Preston Gates, Cuica, Valdero, Hotchalk, and now Egnyte. I lived in San Jose, Sunnyvale, Modesto, Santa Clara, Daly City, back to San Jose, New York City, Milpitas, and back to San Jose again.  I don't think they've changed residences, not at least as much as I have. Whew!

So it's nice to know that I can count on them every year, constant bureaucrats, eating the Bento Box specials at Masa Sushi, drinking endless green tea, Silvia ordering extra dressing for her salad or extra Teriyaki sauce for her salmon, exchanging stories and news since last seeing each other, witnessing our kids grow up, etc.  Life is definitely good.  Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me!

Five Years Ago Today

My dad passed away five years ago today.  I still miss him.  Once in awhile I talk to him and tell him my thoughts and wishes and dreams.  Once in awhile, I wish deeply that he were still here giving me advice, encouraging me.

My dad lost his memory and didn't remember us most of the time. Soon he lost other faculties, and we really couldn't communicate with him anymore.  When I remember these moments of struggle, I cry.

I was in between jobs when time neared.  The doctors had given him six months, and they were fairly exact.  I didn't want to take another job so that I could help my mom.  She was his main caretaker, and so my presence and my help with the funeral arrangements and expenses eased her burden.

There's a big hole in my heart that I always feel around this time, especially right after Father's Day.  It's a brief period of time when I stop and reflect.  I reflect and understand again that the best way I can continue to honor my father is to keep going, work hard, live on the straight and narrow, and "Take It Easy."

Because I Am a Control Freak

My Skype handle is ycc,ccf.  My Youtube handle is yccccf.  It means "Yolanda Celi, Certified Control Freak."

Oh I don't control other people.  That's just bad practice.  I control myself, especially when I need self-control.  I then go into hyper mode.  I'm finally going hyper mode with my weight control.

Over the past year or two, I have felt tired and downright sluggish.  I couldn't pinpoint the problem and tried to attribute it to working a lot and being oversubscribed.  But I realized finally what the cause is.  When we started a fitness challenge at work a couple of months ago, I remembered that I am supposed to weigh about 110 pounds but I was nearing 120 pounds.  That extra 10 pounds is what was contributing to the fatigue.  It just does not naturally fit my frame, and my body was telling me that in so many ways.

So I changed my diet almost at a drastic pace.  But it's healthy.  I've done this before when the weight came off quickly but it was too quick.  This time, I am combining a sensible diet and sensible exercise.  I cut coffee out and I juice daily.  It's working because I have lost 5 pounds in just 2 weeks.  My goal is to lose 10 pounds and maintain the 110.

How do I feel?  I feel great!  I don't have the caffeine crashes, and I feel lighter when I run.  I throw in a cheat day so that I don't completely give up my social life.  For example, I had a smidgen of white wine at our beer bash last Thursday.  And I had mango, blackberries, canteloupe, pancit, spam musubi, and bilo bilo at Naomi's graduation party last night.  I also had a mojito, a shot of Patron, and a shot of Jack Daniels Honey.  That all set me back a pound.

But I'm back at it today.  I'm also preparing for the Wharf to Wharf.  It's time to juice and go out for a run.  YCCCCF!

Meet My Guardian Angels

I don't know their names, but I know they are there.  How else can I explain my luck?

I thought about them when I came upon an accident the other day on Highway 101. It was a multi-car collision, which must have just happened because emergency vehicles were not there yet.  I thanked the stars and my guardian angels for keeping me delayed from my destination that day or else I'm sure I would have been involved.  Have you had that happen to you before?  With respect to car accidents, missing them by minutes has happened to me many times when I know that if I had left sooner, I would have been part of the wreckage.

There were many stories like that when 9/11 happened.  These included folks who missed the doomed flights.  There were others who rescheduled later flights or earlier flights because plans changed at the last minute.  It truly wasn't their time, and I'm fairly sure their guardian angels had something to do with that.

The one time I will never forget when my guardian angels showed up was when I was living in New York City.  Although I don't remember the exact date when it happened, I still remember the circumstances vividly.  I know it was a weekday because my routine was to work late, and I usually had a Fedex package to send daily.  I didn't worry about missing pickup times because I would usually go to the Fedex store on 7th Avenue that closed at 9:00 p.m.  It was about a 10-minute walk from my apartment.  I lived in West Village on Sullivan Street at Bleecker Street a couple of blocks from Washington Square Park in the New York University vicinity.  My routine was to go to Fedex around 8:45 p.m. before it closed.  On my way back, I would pick up dinner from one of so many places along the way.  It was NYC, and that was such a luxury.

On this particular night, I decided to leave earlier because I wanted to go to the card store around the corner from where I lived.  I knew the card store closed at 8:00 p.m.  And I knew that card store well because I frequented the place but usually only during the day.  Something, however, made me go there that night.  I will insist it was my guardian angels.

So after the card store, I went to Fedex.  Then I picked up dinner but don't remember from which place exactly.  My favorite place was this taqueria on my street block that was run by Asians.  I believe they were Burmese or Laotian.  That was different - best Mexican food I had while I was living in NYC - made by Asians.  It reminded me constantly of this sushi restaurant in Brisbane run by Filipinos.  It's one of the best sushi places, and I frequented it while I lived in Daly City.  I still go there on rare occasions.

Moving on, at my apartment at 207 Sullivan Street, Apartment 8, 4th floor, I was eating and watching television when I heard gunfire, lots of it.  The gunshots were so loud that they frightened me to shut all my lights off and hide in my bedroom closet.  Then I heard someone yell, "Put the guns down!" Right after that, there was a series of pop pop pop pop pop pop, like a fireworks finale when a fireworks show culminates in a rapid fire, bright, multi-colored spectacle.  At least that's what I pictured at that moment, or wanted to picture at that moment.  Then there was eerie silence.  And then sirens.

I waited until I felt it was safe to peek out my window.  This was probably a 5-minute lapse.  I left the lights off and walked over to the window.  When I looked down at the street below, I saw what looked like a police officer lying on the ground surrounded by people.  He was on the sidewalk across the street, not moving.  I surmised he was dead.  I didn't leave my apartment after that, not even for a mini Cherries Garcia Ben & Jerry's ice cream snack at the bodega right on the corner of Bleecker & Sullivan.  I normally would walk across the street in my pajamas for that particular midnight treat, but not that night.  I didn't want any part of the NYC streets that night.

I turned on the news and learned about what happened.  Through the night and into the next day, the story of a crazy gunman unfolded.  He was angry at a manager of a pizza parlor on MacDougal Street, several blocks from my apartment.  That day, he plotted and carried with him two guns and hundreds of bullets.  When he was at the pizza parlor, he executed the manager in the back and then took off.  A couple of auxiliary police officers, who are more like unarmed volunteer cadets, decided to follow him.  The gunman turned right on Bleecker and then turned left on Sullivan.  He became aware that the auxiliary police officers were following him, and he shot one.  He knew the other one was trying to hide behind a car.  Coldly, the gunman approached and shot him at almost point blank range.  This was captured on a school surveillance camera, which was focused on Sullivan Street on the very block where my apartment was located.   (I almost forgot there was a school on my block.  It was a long block.)  The gunman then started to backtrack to Bleecker.  Police officers were already alerted, including off-duty officers who were in the area, and they surrounded an accessories store next to my favorite bodega.  The store is where the gunman fled into.  He then came out, with his readied guns.  A police officer yelled, "Put the guns down!"  When he didn't, they fired a series of pop pop pop pop pop pop, like a fireworks finale when a fireworks show culminates in a rapid fire, bright, multi-colored spectacle.  The storefront glass shattered, and the gunman was killed.

If my guardian angels had not pushed me out the door early to get to the card store before it closed, I know I would have run into the crazy gunman on Sullivan Street.  I probably would have been wasted or at least witnessed the execution of the second auxiliary police officer.  But it wasn't my time.

The sad part was that the auxiliary officers were so young and so eager to work toward a career in law enforcement.  They probably helped tremendously with putting a stop to the gunman because it was reported that with the amount of ammunition he carried, he probably wanted to do much more damage.

I didn't know the news spread clear across the country.  When my brother Zaldy and his wife Lien came to visit me, Zaldy mentioned the incident that he heard on the news.  I told him it happened right on Sullivan.  I told him to look across the street and see the flowers left at the very spot where one of the auxiliary officers had died.

Today, my guardian angels continue to protect me.  God sent them.

Don't Be a Moron, an Oxymoron

I was watching an episode of 48 Hours the other day, and something that one of the reality people said stuck in my mind.  She said, "Just because you quote the Bible does not mean you are a man of God."

I keep hearing that sentence over and over again.  It is such a powerful observation.  It describes an instance of a walking contradiction.  I bet you know at least one person who is just that -- an oxymoron, a hypocrite, an irony.  You might also notice that their stress levels are higher than others.  That's because they continue to try to reconcile what they believe how life should be led and how they are actually living it.

Or maybe you don't know.  The twisted lives of such people are usually hidden under a facade.  What you see on the surface can be deceiving.  Maybe I've been watching too many true crime television shows, but it is true and fascinating.  Those who are driven to murder, mental instability aside, usually do so as a result of living a life in contradiction.

Going back to the episode of 48 Hours that I watched, the murder victim's friend said, "Just because you quote the Bible does not mean you are a man of God."  She was talking about the suspect who was accused of murdering his girlfriend.  The suspect was a youth minister and quoted the bible.  His girlfriend was murdered. He was accused of course because he was there when she was alive the night before, had sex with her, woke up and found her in the bathroom dead, had called 911, had tried to revive her, etc.  He was later acquitted because the evidence pointed more toward an unfortunate, drug-induced episode.  This episode involved a minister, sex, drugs, and murder.  Hmmmmm.  The victim's friend was so right.

There was another episode that involved a pastor and his wife.  She was murdered.  He was accused. In this case, the motive was another woman.  He was having an affair.  He wanted to be with another woman.  But he could not divorce his wife.  So instead, he murdered her.  For a very long time, he denied having an affair, and so did his mistress.  When she tired of him, he told her, "I killed my wife for you, and now you're leaving?" or something to that effect.  Creepy.  The episode involved a pastor, sex, lies, and murder.  The facade of pastoral position and family man was just that, a facade.  He was driven to murder because a divorce would have looked bad on him.

There are many other episodes that involve greed.  Money as a motive for murder happens quite a bit.  On the outside, the accused seem comfortable or well off.  To keep that facade going, they kill to collect life insurance money or inheritance.  Money, money, money, money, money.

Statistically, most people (99.9%) don't murder.  But some probably come close.  Instead of killing, a walking contradiction might resort to lying, stealing, or verbally and physically abusing.  Are they putting on pressures on themselves or is society doing it?  It really is about choices.  That minister and that pastor chose drugs and extramarital affairs.  They chose their paths.  They are morons.  Oxymorons.

Tattoos in Moderation

You would be surprised to know that I have a couple of tattoos.  They are hidden. You might also be surprised to know that I had them done about 10 years ago in one session.  I like to think that I had my tattoos done before they became trendy.

I wasn't alone.  My sister Peach and my sister-in-law Lien were with me.  They also had a couple of tattoos done.  You might wonder what possessed us to do  this.  We weren't drunk.  We are a bunch of romantics, though, and watching the movie A Walk to Remember inspired us to do it.  If you haven't seen this movie, I recommend that you Netflix it or Redbox it or buy it.  You could also borrow my DVD if you ask me.

If you've seen it, you will recall the tattoo scene.  The tattoo was a butterfly.  We decided to have a butterfly tattoo in our favorite color done on our left shoulder.  It was a way to remember the scene.  *Sigh*  It was the most romantic part of the story.

While we were at the tattoo parlor in Modesto, we called Rose, our younger sister, and managed to convince her to join us.  She drove the hour and a half distance with reluctance because she has low tolerance for pain.  Being the great sister that she is, Rose not only showed up, but she also had a couple of tattoos done.

The same tattoo artist did all of our tattoos, and so we were at the parlor for a long time.  It was a day well spent.  Ahhhhhh.  Sister bonding.  In a tattoo parlor.  In Modesto.  My sisters and I have been involved in so many shenanigans.  Getting our tattoos done was one of the best times.  Rose might beg to differ, but I'm sure she recalls that time fondly.

Soon after that, my niece Naomi had a butterfly tattoo done on her shoulder.  Our sister-in-law Cecilia also had a butterfly tattoo done.   We are the Butterfly Sisters.

Since that shenanigan, Peach and Lien have both proceeded with additional tattoos.  I've lost count.  Rose understandably cannot take the pain.  She has not had any additional tattoos done.  We chose different locations for our second tattoo.  I'll keep you guessing on where my second tattoo is.  It's a purple crab for my zodiac sign.

Unlike Rose, I didn't think it hurt at all.  My tolerance for pain is high.  But I don't want or need anymore tattoos.  It's an indulgence that, like all other indulgences, should be done in moderation.  I have a two tattoo limit.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Feel free to gift me on my birthday.  You will have a whole month.  That's correct - my birthday is a month long!

My official birthday is July 2, but my real birthday is June 2.  There's a story behind this.  There has to be a story behind this.  And it's a simple one.

When we were born in the remote beach town of Bolinao, Pangasinan, Philippines, it was not in a hospital.  So recording of births happened later.  According to Mom, people in the records department of the town typed up July instead of June on my birth certificate.  They made me an entire month younger.  In my opinion, that was not a mistake.

I learned about my real birthday when I was in elementary school,but it's been more recently within the past decade that I have declared my month long birthday.  I came to this solution because birthdays are so ephemeral.  Some people love birthdays and celebrate through to exhaustion.  Others hide on such an annually marked occasion, especially during milestone years.

I love birthdays and am one who will celebrate until I am unconscious.  Therefore, a 24-hour stretch can be hazardous to my health.  Why pack a true celebration of life in one day when I can do so in one month?  Doesn't this make sense to you?  It makes complete sense to me, and I am no dummy.  I will milk this birthday B.S. for a month.

So let the celebration begin tomorrow!  I wear 6.5 in shoes.  I wear a size 4 or 5 in pants/skirt.  I am a small to medium build in general.  If you dare, I am a 34B.  My favorite color is purple, and any shade will do.  I am a workaholic.  I love to blog.  I love to bowl.  I love fine dining.  Send me a modest gift to my home.  You can find my home address in the White Pages.  Or send it to my work.  Currently, I work at Egnyte, Inc. in Mountain View.  Ha!

All kidding aside, I love birthdays because it's a celebration of life.  It's an awakening and a re-awakening if you will.  Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me!