blizzard valentine

so how was your valentine's day? kami, stayed indoors, watched the departed on dvd, munched on some popcorns and licked some häagen-dazs :P

why? how can you get out in a weather like this? this pic was taken around 2pm yesterday and our patio is unpassable na. wun chong was trying to shovel the snow with butchok but to no avail.

and so i went out from the garage and joined them at the driveway for a little memento of our first ever valentine blizzard :D i went back inside immediately coz i can't find my gloves and it's f---in cold my hands hurt like hell!

at around 6-7pm our kitchen window's almost covered in snow. this morning talagang natakpan na yung window and door namin. we can still get out from the garage but the driveway wasn't plowed in time by the association sa sobrang dami ng ipo-plow.

ok lang din, cancelled yung plan namin on having a valentine dinner at nico's cucina like last year. we exchanged valentine cards na lang. pass muna ang mga gifts nyehehe :D

baskets and containers

hay kaka-adik ang mga baskets! and i've been to a lot of stores looking for something that i would like and not to mention i could afford. i've been to LNT, BB&B, WM etc... visited online & checked out in stores. what i hated online sometimes is that they would really look lovely in pics but not so in store shelves. buti na lang we tried the christmas tree shops . it's been there in taft's corner since we got here in vt but it was just this time that we scoured the store. and voila it's really a bargain inside! i got the seagrass baskets for $3.99 each and the pink containers for $1.99 to $2.99 each. di ko na lang sasabihan ilan binili ko baka ma-audit ako ni wun chong nyahaha. eh kasi naman christmas tree shop ang name ng store so we thought christmas decors lang meron sila nyahaha... yun pala they sell some other stuff na super cheap so almost every week we visit the store na :) checked out their flyers online and looks like they're an affiliate of BB&B.

Goodbye Sidney

Sidney Sheldon - my favorite novelist passed away. it's so sad, mi texted me the other day that he's gone. most of my girl friends adore sidney. he's been a big part of our friendship from the booksale hunting of his novels to the book passing from one friend to another. i have all his novels back home in manila, i still buy whenever i see them on sale here and give them to some collector friends. mi have a complete collection na, meh is almost complete, gie and sang are still collecting. i think i'll collect hardbound copies here in vt.

here's the article of his passing away from nytimes.

Sidney Sheldon, an Oscar- and Tony-winning writer of squeaky-clean fare for stage and screen who became world famous for his later career as a writer of steamy, best-selling novels, died on Tuesday in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He was 89 and had homes in Malibu and Palm Springs, Calif.

The cause was complications of pneumonia, his publicist, Warren Cowan, said yesterday.
The elder statesman of commercial fiction, Mr. Sheldon wrote more than two dozen novels, which for the last three and half decades have been mainstays of airports, drugstores and bedside tables around the globe. His books have sold more than 300 million copies, Variety reported last year. In the same issue, Variety estimated Mr. Sheldon’s net worth, including his earnings from his film and television ventures, at $3 billion.

Mr. Sheldon’s books have been published in 51 languages, making him, by many accounts, the most widely translated author in the world. His best-known titles, all published by William Morrow, include “The Other Side of Midnight” (1974); “A Stranger in the Mirror” (1976); “Master of the Game” (1982); “If Tomorrow Comes” (1985); and “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” (2004).

Several of Mr. Sheldon’s books became television miniseries, among them “Rage of Angels” (broadcast in 1983), “Memories of Midnight” (1991) and “The Sands of Time” (1992). “The Other Side of Midnight” was made into a 1977 feature film starring Marie-France Pisier, John Beck and Susan Sarandon.

Though nearly everyone knows of Mr. Sheldon’s literary life, fewer know of his early background, which had all the drama of one of his novels. There was the impoverished childhood followed by success in Hollywood. (Mr. Sheldon won an Oscar for best screenplay for the 1947 film “The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer,” starring Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple.)

There were the triumphs on Broadway, culminating, in 1959, with a shared Tony Award for best musical for “Redhead,” starring Gwen Verdon.

There were his years as a television writer, notably for “The Patty Duke Show”; “I Dream of Jeannie,” which Mr. Sheldon also produced; and “Hart to Hart,” which he created.
And there was his lifelong battle with manic depression, which Mr. Sheldon recounted candidly in his memoir, “The Other Side of Me” (Warner Books), published in 2005.

At his best, Mr. Sheldon was considered a master storyteller whose novels were known for their meticulous research, swift pacing, lush settings and cliffhanging chapters.

Working in the office of his Palm Springs compound, he composed his books orally, dictating page after page — as many as 50 a day — to his secretary. Like traditional oral epic, Mr. Sheldon’s work depended crucially on formulaic construction, relying on stock characters and narrative boilerplate to keep the plot humming.

A Sidney Sheldon novel typically contains one or more — usually many more — of these ingredients: shockingly beautiful women, square-jawed heroes and fiendish villains; fame, fortune and intrigue; penthouses, villas and the jet travel these entail; plutonium, diamonds and a touch of botulism; rape, sodomy, murder and suicide; mysterious accidents and mysterious disappearances; an heiress or two; skeletons in lavishly appointed closets; shadowy international cartels, communists and lawyers; globe-trotting ambassadors, supermodels and very bad dogs; forced marriages and amnesia; naked ambition and nakedness in general; a great deal of vengeance; and as The New York Times Book Review described it in 1989, “a pastoral coed nude rubdown with dry leaves.”

Though most critics were united in their dismissal of Mr. Sheldon, a few conceded, grudgingly, that his work could be hard to put down. Take, for example, the opening passage of his memoir:
“At the age of 17, working as a delivery boy at Afremow’s drugstore in Chicago was the perfect job, because it made it possible for me to steal enough sleeping pills to commit suicide.”
Sidney Sheldon was born in Chicago on Feb. 11, 1917; his father was a salesman. Sidney grew up bookish, an anomaly in the household. (His parents had not been educated past the third grade.) He entered Northwestern University on a scholarship, but was forced by the Depression to drop out before earning a degree.

He held a series of odd jobs — factory worker, shoe salesman, cloakroom attendant, radio announcer — before striking out for New York in 1936 in the hope of making it as a songwriter. But his crushing mood swings, euphoria alternating with despair, cut his career short. (In later years, Mr. Sheldon’s bipolar disorder was treated successfully with medication.)

Young Mr. Sheldon headed for Hollywood, where he was eventually hired by Universal Studios as a $22-a-week script reader. By the early 1940s he had made his way into screenwriting. Among his notable screenplays are “Easter Parade” (1948, written with Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett); “The Barkleys of Broadway” (1949, with Betty Comden and Adolph Green); and “Annie Get Your Gun” (1950, with the siblings Dorothy and Herbert Fields).

During the mid-1940s and afterward, Mr. Sheldon also had success in the theater. In 1943 and 1944, three of his musicals opened on Broadway: a revival of Franz Lehar’s “Merry Widow” (Mr. Sheldon wrote the book with Ben Roberts); “Jackpot” (an original musical he wrote with Guy Bolton and Mr. Roberts); and “Dream With Music” (an original musical written with Dorothy Kilgallen and Mr. Roberts).

Mr. Sheldon turned to fiction only in his 50s, after having an idea for a thriller he felt was too psychologically nuanced for film, TV or the stage. He sold this book, his first novel, to Morrow for $1,000. The story of a handsome psychoanalyst accused of murder, it was published as “The Naked Face” in 1970.

After an impulsive early marriage that ended in divorce, Mr. Sheldon married Jorja Curtright in 1951; she died in 1985. In 1989 he married Alexandra Kostoff. She survives him, along with a daughter from his marriage to Ms. Curtright, Mary Sheldon; a brother, Richard; and two grandchildren.

Though Mr. Sheldon jetted to exotic locales to research his books and lived in homes brimming with art and antiques, his life had little in common with those of his characters — at least, to hear him tell it, in one crucial respect. In an interview with W magazine in 2004, Mr. Sheldon impishly described his forthcoming memoir:

“About my sex life,” he elaborated. “It’s one page long.”

congrats ilan hall - season 2's top chef!

so i did watch the top chef finale. but just because ilan and marcel had to pick 2 sous chef from the other cheftestants. ilan picked betty and elia and marcel picked mike and sam. good thing he picked sam otherwise i'm not going to watch. and see even as marcel's sous chef that night, sam even came up with the idea on marcel's reworked dish of sea beans, hearts of palm and kefir lime sauce coz he left his fish in the prep kitchen. he was supposed to make kampachi with hearts of palm. and it turned out the reworked dish was his strongest dish pa ha! hay naku he must have forgotten the fish coz he was focused on his science experiments like the encapsulated yuzu vinaigrette and coffee caviar. but in the end the better tasting meal won. it was ilan's of course. but sometimes naawa din ako kay marcel lalo na when the other chefs ganged up on him. pero kairita naman din kasi sha.

sam, ilan and marcel's bios from bravotv

and gail simmon's photo nga pala from bravotv din. i love love her face!