maybe next time

Because of the upcoming long weekends, the office higher-ups have decided no one can go on leave next week unless we give them compelling reason why we deserve to be gone from work for five straight days. Since I won't be able to justify four days of mountain climbing, I've decided to skip Mt. Halcon.

But I'm not so disappointed as a bit relieved. With it's own rain-soaked weather and abundance of miniature bloodsuckers called limatiks, Halcon is one bad ass mountain. It posed to me such an intimidating challenge that, truthfully, I'm not so regretful to have missed the chance to conquer it.

It remains though as the mountain to beat. But the time to do that is not now. In the summer, maybe.

Videoke

Friday night, after a really good tuna, salmon, tofu and salad dinner at Soul Food and my first ever DOTA session (tons of fun!), I went to videoke with Che, Ades, and Jorel. It was around 12:30 am. When we decided to call it quits almost four hours later, Jorel had already dozed off and I had run out of voice that I was actually whispering already through the last couple of songs. But, I was still singing! Or trying to. Heheh. What can I say, I love videoke.

Doubt

I know I've signed up for the climb and I'm fully aware that this one's definitely not going to be a walk in the park. But with preparation and good weather, I know i can do it.

However, if the weather gets bad, I'm out.

Goal

Now I have more reason to jog and climb stairs. It's because i've signed up for a climb which will happen at the end of this month. I'm going mountain climbing! This time it's not just to any mountain though, but the treacherous Mt. Halcon, 3rd highest in the country and they say the most difficult. Undoubtedly it's going to be challenging as hell so I need to be fully prepared. And right now, I need to go jogging. So hopefully the rain outside lets up soon so i can head to the acad oval and jog already.

got milk

Today I learned that skim milk is equivalent to fat free milk, which is calcium-rich milk with less than 0.5 g of fat per 8 oz serving.

And it's very useful news because last week I decided to incorporate milk into my diet, but found myself a bit lost at the grocery store when choosing what milk to buy. There were whole milk, soya, reduced fat, lite, 98% free, fat free, skim. I wanted the not fattening and least-damaging-to-the-wallet kind. (The latter rule was a bit more challenging because the price tags were missing.) Finally I settled for Cowhead fat free. (Earlier today I learned that the fat free kind was a good choice but the Cowhead brand was too pricey.) I didn't touch the skim milk labeled varieties because I didn't yet understand what they really were. But now I know -- skim milk is good. And that's great news because it has opened up more options, and cheaper ones too.

Another healthy option: reduced fat soya milk with no sugar added. Sounds expensive, though.