This month’s winner for Yanowhatimean Trivia will go to Redpac, with the rest of the top ten looking like this:

1. Redpac
2. Yano
3. noelle
4. badger
5. denise
6. zebedest
7. arthurloewenkamp
8. sam
9. masela
10. Linda
(I don’t know if the rest of you have links, just tell me and I’ll link you up!)

Congrats to Redpac for being this month’s Big Brain, and as you can see on the tagboard, he’s being pretty humble about it, that big headed bastard.

Tonight at 11pm CT starts a new month of trivia. The slate is wiped clean and anyone can win the month! Keep those topic suggestions coming - I change it pretty much every day, so you’re topic will be used eventually.

Here’s a couple tips to enhance your score:

1) Make sure you answer all the questions. If you scroll down using your mouse scroll feature, you’ll see all the questions. However, if you just click on the sidebar, sometimes the question at the bottom gets skipped.

2) There are times when the FunTrivia server is overloaded, and the quiz takes a while to come up. Unfortunately, the clock starts as soon as you click the link to play, no matter how long the screen takes to come up. So if you go to the site and it takes a while to load the main page, that’s a good indication that the quiz will take a while to come up as well. You should probably wait it out and try again later!

3) The questions are random - everyone doesn’t see the same questions. This is to prevent someone from logging in twice under the same name and getting all the answers right the second time.

4) At 11pm CT a new trivia cycle begins. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I’ve changed the topic - I change the topics manually. So if I should fall asleep at 10:30, then the topic won’t be changed until the day after. You might want to wait until I change the topic, or you can answer yesterday’s topic. It’s your choice. I’m pretty good at changing the topics in that hour, though.

5) …unless it’s the weekend. Usually I have stuff going on in the weekend, so I just leave a generic category up there, like ‘General Trivia’ or ‘Movies’ or something easy. That’s the best time to boost up your score. Not everyone plays on the weekend and the questions are easiest during the weekend.

So good luck this month! Beat that Redpac!

Tags: Daily by Yano
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Terry Shiavo died this morning, finally putting to end the battle between her husband and her parents on whether she should remain on a feeding tube or not. Not only was this something that was battled between her family, but also through the legal system, Congress, the white house, and water coolers everywhere.

I’m glad that she’s finally at peace. I’m glad that we can stop talking about her, that our country can focus on other things, like how every day there are people dying in a war - a war that our country sent them to. But I don’t want to get into that.

The good thing that came out of this whole incident is that people are aware that they need to be prepared in case something like this happened to them. Terri did not have a living will - the legal document that says what would happen should you be in a state that you cannot make those decisions. Why would she have needed one? She was young when she had her heart attack - only 26, too young to think about death or anything related to it.

I haven’t made one yet. But with all of this happening with Terry, I’ve told my family what I want done, so there are no questions about it. I’ll make my way eventually to get a living will made, because there are so many other things that it covers - what to do if I’m on life support, who would take care of my kids (that I don’t have yet, but they’ll come soon enough) etc.

I don’t want to be a burden to my family - financially and emotionally. I wouldn’t want to live like Terry did for the last 15 years of her life, to me, that isn’t living. To ask to maintain my body’s function for that amount of time would just be selfish of me, and I would think that it would be selfish of myself to want someone I loved to ‘live’ that way, too. As I was telling my cousins the other day, with the morbid humor that I have sometimes, ‘I don’t like vegetables, I don’t want to BE a vegetable. Just let me go.’

Sure, you can say that it’s easier said than done. I’ve read debates on message boards on the whole subject. But I think that a lot of people who’ve done the debate haven’t been through this themselves.

But I’ve been through it, when my mother passed away. The last weeks of my mother’s life, when she was still able to speak with us and coherent, she created a living will. We knew her wishes and what she wanted to happen. She was suffering, but even more so, she didn’t want us to suffer anymore. She saw the toll it was taking on my father, who was by her bedside night and day for the last months of her life. She made the choice that she knew would break our hearts to make. She fought against the cancer valiantly, but she knew when it was time to stop, when her body just couldn’t go on anymore.

It killed us to let her go, but we knew that’s what she wanted.

If anything was to happen to me, I’d want to go the same way. I wouldn’t want to draw it out. At my aunt’s funeral last weekend, I was in the car with my cousin, talking about it. We were discussing what we’d want to happen, and I mentioned that I’m not afraid of death. I’ve seen so much of it in my life that I’m not scared that it will happen to me. I think that people are afraid of death because they feel that there is so much of their life that they have to live, so much that they need to accomplish and do. For me, I’m happy with the life that I’ve lived, the things that I’ve accomplished so far. I know that I am loved by all the people that matter, and that I love so many people that my heart is overflowing. My only regret would be that I haven’t had kids yet. But I don’t think that death is something to be scared of - it’ll come for you whether you’re afraid of it or not.

Wait, let me make a footnote to that last statement. I’m not afraid to die, unless it was something supernatural like the corpse of a dead girl that’s fallen into a well coming to kill me with her demon powers. Yeah, I’d be scared to die like that.

Wow. This is a pretty morbid post, isn’t it?

Anyway, rest in peace, Terry. My prayers go to your family that they will finally be able to let you go, but live on in their hearts.

Tags: Daily by Yano
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Thursday Challenge : Food

Croquetas de Pollo - Chicago, IL : October 2004

Tags: Pictures by Yano
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I wanted to share this tip with you, in case you run into it.

I’m using Firefox as my primary browser right now (who can’t love a tabbed browser and popup blocker?) I’ve been loving it so far, because it makes browsing the web just a little bit easier. Of course, I run into a good amount of sites (mostly personal sites/blogs) that still have layout issues with Firefox which irks me a little (but who am I to talk? I haven’t checked my other sites for compatibility either). Fifteen percent of my readers are currently using Mozilla, which is a good amount of people.

Anyway, the one BIG thing that has bothered me with my Firefox switch has been when I’ve been creating my blog posts in Movable Type. For some reason, in Firefox the quick buttons at the top of the post box are not available (for bold, italic, underline and to create a hyperlink). I never realized how much I relied on these quick buttons until they were gone. For the last several months I’ve been manually typing the code for everything, where before, in Internet Explorer, all I needed was to click a quick button.

I got fed up with it today and decided to search on it, and it ended up to be a fruitless search. Finally, Dan found a link for me to be able to once again get my MT buttons back.

So I’m sharing this link with you all, in case you’re using Firefox to access MT and know that the buttons are no longer there. Blogzilla has created a new file that will create the buttons for you.

–click here for tutorial–

Thank you blogzilla!

Hope this helps!

Tags: Tips & Tricks by Yano
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Yesterday I was watching ‘Scrubs’, which I haven’t seen in a while. One of the subplots in the episode was how Carla and Turk were having marital problems. Carla was telling **Elliott** about how she missed her deceased mother, and to cheer her up, Elliott played some old answering messages saved on an unused answering machine (of course, with humorous results). Even with that, Carla couldn’t get out of her funk. Elliott brought Carla to the cemetary, telling her that there’s nothing wrong with speaking to the dead, that it’s actually quite healing. Carla thought it was weird, and felt uncomfortable being there, but as soon as she was in front of her mother’s grave, she found some solace and some relief. She was able to explain how much she missed her and needed her in her life.

I feel like that all the time. Sadly, I haven’t gone to the cemetary much to visit my mother’s grave. Even though I’ve been there multiple times, that little piece of reality is still hard to bear. But I do talk to my mom all the time, in my head. Yes, after looking at that sentence I think it sounds a little cuckoo (as I make little circle ‘cuckoo’ motions around my ears with my fingers) but it’s true. There have been so many challenges in my life in the last year, some you know, some I’ve chosen not to tell you. Hardships in my own life, drama in the lives of those that I love, things that sometimes feel so hard to take. During those times, I find myself talking to my mother, asking her for her help, her intervention, for her to look out for us. When I say these little prayers in my head, the selfish part of me always brings up the fact that if she was still here, these challenges wouldn’t be as hard. Just by her being alive on this earth, everything would be ok.

I wasn’t close with my mother, not close as some people are with their parents. We never really had long talks, she didn’t really know what was going on in my head, in my life. I believe that one of the nicknames I had for her in my head was ‘The Biggest Nag Ever on the Earth’. Of course, I’m sure every kid gives their mom that nickname every now and then. Yet looking back on her life, looking back on the person that she was, I realized that she was a person that everyone respected, that everyone loved. People cared what she had to say, and she never held back her opinion (to us, anyway).

I know it’s a little silly thinking that one person’s presence would solve all my problems, and I know that if she was still alive, these same things would probably happen. However, there’s a part of me that feels that we’d feel a little more comfort knowing that she was around, loving us when we shouldn’t be loved, telling us what to do, taking care of us when things went bad. Problems wouldn’t be as bad, knowing that she’s around. But she’s not.

So now, we just have to be content with the fact that she’s up there, watching us, still loving us no matter what we do.

Which isn’t what I really want, but hey, I’ll take what I can get!

Tags: Daily by Yano
1 Comment »

Got this from Mel’s site. Good stuff!

————————————–

The 10 Commandments, Ebonics Style

1. I’m God. Don’t play me.
(I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have any other gods before me.)

2. Don’t be makin no hood ornaments and charms outta me, or like me.
(Thou shalt not have any graven images)

3. Don’t be callin’ me for no reason.
(Thou shalt not use the name of the Lord thy God in vain)

4. Y’all betta be in church on Sunday, and not just the Sundays when it’s Mother’s day, Easter and Christmas
(Remember to keep the Sabbath day holy)

5. Don’t dis or cuss out yo momma… and if you know who ya daddy is, don’t dis him neither.
(Honor thy father and thy mother)

6. Don’t be goin’ on no drive bys.
(Thou shalt not kill)

7. Stick to ya own Boo.
(Thou shalt not commit adultery)

8. Don’t be borrow’n stuff and don’t give it back.
(Thou shalt not steal)

9. Don’t be snitchin’ on the otha’ man to save your behind.
(Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy brother)

10. Don’t be eyein’ (skeeming) yo homie’s crib, ride, woman, or nuffin.
(Thou shalt not covet anything that belongs to thy brother).

Tags: Lists by Yano
3 Comments »

This guy is going to eat his poor bunny if you don’t give him money.

Save Toby!

This would be really funny if it wasn’t so cruel.

What are you going to do about it, Fatabird?

Tags: Daily by Yano
5 Comments »

My apologies if you don’t get the song reference in the subject line of this post.

Anyway, I think I promised you all (about a million months ago) pictures of my new place. I think there have been glimpses of it in various posts, but here are some pictures that I had taken last October after we had gotten the furniture in. I’ve got a backlog of pics to post (Alaska, Philly, Wrigley Field), so I’m starting off with these!

The upstairs living room. All the couches recline and it’s made of a fabric that is resistant to the constant licking and digging of my dad’s dog. Ten points if you figure out what show is on the TV in this picture.

My kitchen. Stainless steel stove, fridge and microwave. I was thinking that this place would never be used but I’m in it quite often. Who’d have thought? I have become a domestic goddess! Wait, does hamburger helper count towards being a culinary master?

The guest room, which is also called ‘the blue room’ or ‘the hippo room’, where I house my collection of hippos. Currently the windows have paper blinds on them. We may just keep it that way, because we’re cheap like that.

The office. Even though there’s a computer in there, it’s about 5 years old and on its last legs, so I never use it, except to store my digital pictures on it. Dave spends his non-Sports Center time here studying medical mumbo jumbo.

This is where the magic happens, people! This sturdy king sized bed fits four people comfortably (as we tested during our Christmas sleepover) and the people who moved out left us the curtains.

What I don’t have pictured is the basement living room (which just has an old futon and stereo speakers right now), the wet bar (we’ve emptied the keg and need to get a new one), the fish tank (but you’ve already seen the fishies, right?) and the pool table. But I think there’s pics of that somewhere - probably Halloween. There are exterior shots of the house there, too.

Tags: Pictures by Yano
16 Comments »

I realized yesterday that I’m back to my old self again. I don’t feel the weight on my shoulders as I had in the last couple months. I’m breathing a little easier, a little more carefree and more like the person that I enjoyed being. I guess this break from the hectic work lifestyle has been good for me. Being around family and friends, relaxing and enjoying life has really helped out. I just needed to recharge!

So I’m ready to travel again. I get a little fidgety if I haven’t traveled for a while. It’s a no win situation - I get crabby when I travel too much and I get antsy when I haven’t traveled in a while.

Next step - losing the 10 million pounds I gained during my funk.

——————-

It was a busy weekend for me. My aunt’s funeral was on Saturday, and as much as I didn’t think I’d cry, as soon as I saw my cousins and sisters crying, the waterworks started. In a way, we were crying more for our uncle than for our aunt. We felt so sad for him because he was all alone - they didn’t have kids and they pretty much had each other.
Saturday night was going to be a chill out night with the cousins but turned into an all out party with the aunts and uncles stopping by, complete with mah jong tables! I was a bit stressed at first, because I felt the pressure to entertain and make sure that everyone was fed. I don’t do too well under pressure and when people are watching everything I do.

Everything was forgotten once I started getting into the game (see the post below). What an awesome game! Even the aunts who never watch basketball were getting into it!

After that was done, we watched a couple movies - Napoleon Dynamite, Eurotrip and Anchorman. It was a night of laughs! People crashed wherever, Claudine brought out the inflatable bed, and we just chilled out. The cousins (and sisters) were awesome in helping me clean up. That’s the hardest thing about having a party - trying to figure out what to do with the mess afterwards.

Jefferrarrr, Michael and Lu came back at around 3am from a night out, and Mike was TRASHED! I was worried he’d puke on my floor. But he held it in pretty well and had enough presence of mind to go to the bathroom whenever he felt it coming back up. Of course, it made for a couple good photo ops for us:

Passed out next to his really annoyed sister, Marian

Marilyn enjoys making fun of her big brother

Are you sober? The glassy eyes and empty stare say NO!

Yesterday was Easter, and we started the day off (since about 10 people slept over and Maui had just gotten off work and was hungry) with a big breakfast of pancakes, eggs and sausage. Claudine and I were in charge of the preparations, and it was a warmup for our ‘BIG PANCAKE COOKOFF’ - the competition where we decide once and for all who makes the better pancakes. But there wasn’t time for a competition. We needed to eat! The troops pigged out and we headed out to church.

We spent Easter at my uncles place, because it was the 9th day of my aunt’s death (that has some significance in the Filipino culture). Didn’t spend too much time there since we were exhausted and had to go back and clean up the house.

Came back and watched the AWESOME MSU vs. Kentucky game. That totally rocked!

And now, I’m back at work.

Yuck!

Tags: Daily by Yano
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I woke up this morning to find several bodies sleeping in my living room, two more bodies in my kitchen playing chess, and my dad washing my dishes. There were also others sleeping in the basement. Good times!

More of a report later.

Real quick, Happy Birthday Michael! Thanks for not puking on my floor! (pictures to come later)

Hope the Easter Bunny brings you lots of peeps and chocolate bunnies.

Tags: Daily by Yano
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