I woke up this morning taking my time to not do anything. I had work at 4 and was too lazy to make myself anything to eat. Eventually I get up, eat two bowls of cereal and start watching Paris Je'Taime on Netflix. Lily calls me up, I answer. She asks if I knew I was working today. I say yeah at 4pm. She says no. I'm supposed to be in by 11:30. It's already 12:30. I panic, apologize, hang up, sit up and stare at my wall for 10 seconds in shock before my body realizes it needed to start moving.

When I got out of the train, I briskly walk to the restaurant. Running is no good for me. My lungs can't take it. I quickly turn around the corner to Bleecker st, almost running into someone before I quickly step out of the way, but not before looking up. The man I almost ran into was Aaron Eckhart. He was wearing ordinary clothes and a baseball cap and I only had about 3 seconds to get a good hard look but I knew it was him. I was in such a rush that by the time I realized who it was I was already several paces past him and I didn't bother getting a second glance. Basta. Sya yun. Crush ko pa naman sya sa Thank You For Not Smoking.

yun lang. gusto ko lang-ishare.

Bea sent me this MMS photo today.

Georgie has gotten HUGE. I miss him.

Bleecker St during my break.

Carmine and Bleecker across Father Demo Square.

Father Demo Square during my break. I sat in the sun and read Neverwhere while snacking on expensive espresso/pistachio gelato from Grom ($7 for a "supposedly" large cup!!!). When I noticed tan lines under my skirt, I moved to the shade where this photo was taken. Empire State Building can be seen in the background. This will be the most sun-baked I can get for a while. Spending an hour sitting here on my breaks.

Finally took the time to check out Bleecker Street Records where they sold cd's, vinyl and posters. I came to look for an Empire Strikes Back movie poster (my favorite Star Wars movie) and found none but I got this poster for $10.

By mid afternoon, I was feeling a litle drowsy and needed my second dose of caffeine for the day. I work in the village and had the strong desire to sit and read in a proper cafe rather than sip a machiatto in Starbucks. I googled west village cafes and found one nearby, The Grey Dog. It wasn't difficult to find and I walked in. It was just what I wanted, a small dim cafe with brick walls, a large chalkboard menu above a counter bordered by a wooden picket fence. It had plants hanging above the front windows and Christmas lights glittered around. It was peppered with the sort of folk you probably wouldn't see in starbucks. I loved it. In my head, all it needed was a big red couch and a platinum blonde Barista named Gunther. I ordered a latte and a brownie and sat along the distressed wooden benches that lined the walls. I skimmed through their menu and found items like turkey sandwiches with apple slices and Brie and I knew I had to come back and try them sometime.

On my way out, I grabbed a cigarette and tucked it behind my ear (a habit I picked up from a man I used to know) and hoped to find someone with a lighter as I seem to have misplaced mine. One of the servers was sweeping out in front and was smoking as he did so, so I asked him for a light. He began digging into his pockets and I pulled my cigarrette from behind my ear.

"Did you just pull that out of your hair?"
I smile. "No, I had it behind my ear."
"Oh, I was going to say that was so bad ass."

Yeah, that would have been.

Mine wasn't mind-numbingly exciting as you would think seeing that I was in New York and all. I guess I'm getting too old for the whole "YEEEAAAAHHHH!!!! PARTEEEYYY IN NEW YORK CITY BITCHEZZZ!" Haha. So I decided to dress up a little bit and went out as a hippie after getting the idea from Leng's multiply. It was nothing fancy. I wore my thrift store dress from Vegas, put a scarf on my head and wore my frilly suede boots. I walked around with Omar trick or treating around the houses and commercial establishments in Astoria. It was great that stores join in the fun and gave away free goodies. We got free pizza from the pizza place, cookies and cupcakes from the bakeries and I heard McDonalds was giving away free cheesburgers too. Omar got fortune cookies from the Chinese restaurant! hahaha!

Skullzor says "Peace Out!"

They dropped me off at the subway station around 7:30pm and I headed to the Village to check out the Halloween Parade. I think the highlight of my night was riding the subway (specially going home, more on that later) because I rode with an assortment of characters. Going into the city I rode with a fellow hippie chick, devil and she-devil, a bee, (where's) Waldo, catwoman, a witch and another group of cats. Did I mention these were all adults?

I got off at 4th st in Washington Square park and was greeted with a whole crowd of people trying to exit. We all had to go through this long tiled tunnel leading out to the street. That moment reminded me of a scene from Schindler's List where the Natzis stuff this room full of naked jews then they turned the turned the acid showers on which killed everyone in the room. I started imagining nozzles coming out of the corners and killing us all. Haha...yeah, yeah, bad joke. Pfft.

I could hear the music blaring from outside. Sixth Ave was teeming with people and police officers were positioned on every corner trying to direct the human traffic. I was supposed to meet my friends at 6th and Waverly but when I got there I saw that they were on the other side of the street but seeing that the parade was going on, it was impossible for me to cross. Good thing one of Baby's friends, Fervic, also got on the wrong side and saw me walking around. He got me a good spot for taking photos but my cheapo lens failed to capture any good night shots. The parade was exactly like the Gay Pride Parade except for the fact that the crowds were in costume too. I can't count how many of them men dressed up as the Joker, there were so many of them I felt like I was in Gotham City.

The way V was dancing made me laugh so hard because I was imagining Hugo Weaving underneath the mask.

Left stormtrooper: Where did you park the star destroyer?
Right stormtrooper: It's hovering above Brooklyn's atmosphere.
I have a speeder bike that will take us to transport.
Dude behind Left ST: Dude, that flag is so gay.

Grandma struggling to work the digital camera.

This girl took my photo so I took hers. I saw my image on her LCD and she took a better one of me, though.

As the parade wound down, Fervic got a call from the others to meet up for dinner at Canal St. We rode the subway down to Chinatown and walked several blocks to Wonton Garden.

Baby and JP

I've known this lady since I was 12.
She was my first friend when I transferred schools.
ang ganda ng buhok ko dito, haha

Fervic and Bing

Charles and Tere

Ryan and Fervic
halata bang ako lang kumareer ng halloween?

More photos from last night here.

We parted ways going home after dinner and I started my exhausting two hour (it felt longer) trip home. On a normal day, it usually takes me about 30 minutes to commute to/from the city. I needed to take the N or W train to Ditmars so I stood on the designated N area, two platforms down and waited. After about 30 minutes and three Q trains passed by, I started to wonder when my train was coming. Then I saw a sign detailing service changes for the N train starting midnight of Nov. 1. I glanced at my watch and saw it was close to midnight so I went back up to the platform I passed by on the way down and waited with the rest of the costumed crowd. Soon, the 4 train came and everybody gets on it, leaving me alone on the empty platform...at midnight. I sort of freaked out and walked to the ticket counter and asked the guy where the N train stopped. He directed me to go back down from where I originally came from and walk all the way to the back of the platform. I did as he instructed and saw that at the end of where I was standing earlier, I had to go up a flight of stairs, turn and walk through a small tunnel, and go down again. There I saw a buffet of characters who obviously knew about the service changes. My train finally came and it was sardine-packed with an assortment of people dressed in their best halloween garb. I rode beside an irish pirate, a mermaid, Jessica Rabbit, Batman, a slutty nurse, catwoman, a gingerbread man and a black guy with long purplish green tentacles coming out of his jumpsuit. He was insterting his tentacles in jessica rabbit's bag and running them on people's legs (including mine) while the pirate yelled pirate lines in his thick irish accent for everyone's amusement.

By the time I got to my stop, it was another long wait for the bus to come. It was a little past 1am and it had gotten windy and cold. Good thing I had leg warmers. I was too tired to post anything when I got home and passed out...but not before taking this photo.

Next holiday...my birthday!

*On another note,
Just saw my image stats on pbase and saw that the photo with the most number of hits was this. Hahaha! Niki ayus ka ah!