Archive for October, 2009
My new career!
It has been 2 weeks already since my last day at work for an IT company. I have a new job now. A job that I was, I mean my husband and I are both apprehensive to take at first but in the end were both whole-hearted and excited by the choice we made.
I am talking about my being a stay-at-home Mom. We had yaya troubles for some time and so we decided for me to take a break from the corporate world and be the one to take care of the kids and my husband and the house too.
I have been posting about my random thoughts in Facebook. I will also posting them here plus some other stuff too like my very own recipes! I already have a line-up of my Recipe posts, so please watch out. I hope to include pictures of me actually doing the cooking. 
That’s it for now, it’s kids merienda time. I will be posting about this too.
The wife takes over…
Today I am changing this blog’s theme again for the nth time. I hate that cliche but it’s the first to come out of my brains. Anyway, the main reason behind this is that I want this blog to look ‘girl-esque‘ since my wife will take over soon on updating this blog. That’s what I hope. She just recently resigned from her IT job and decided to take a more challenging and tiring job that is to take care of our lovely daughters. She will also do extra jobs on the side which includes taking care of the house, washing the clothes and of course, take care of herself and me. So, she might probably not update this still.
But, we still have not come up with a strong plan for this blog to return some income for us. My wife loves cooking so we are considering to make this a food blog. I think she’s also wants to become a fitness instructor so maybe she gives health tips as well. She will focus mainly on the kids, so this blog might discuss ‘Parenting’ topics as well. I’m also teaching her how to take good photos from our SLR (super-low-res) camera so it might be a photoblog as well.
This new theme I am using is called Atpeace 1.0 by Make Quick. This, I think, looks girl-esque enough for my wife and it looks very simple. We like to keep its brown color, but soon I will try to incorporate some touches of pink and green too. This theme is pretty easy to customize to suit your taste, like what I did to the header. As of the moment, I can’t think of the best thing to do with that huge real estate right above the blog title. But soon I will figure out. (it’s only a matter of creating new AdSense unit)
Changing WordPress themes is somehow challenging too. Most of the times, after you chose the theme you liked that you thought would perfectly look good, it might not. Specially if you have previous blog posts that have images on, if they are too wide, most of the times it messes up the alignment of your theme. (Like this one) You may set the maximum image width on your CSS, but for the “Caption” feature of WordPress, I’m not sure if it will work. So to at least give some credits to my effort of maintaining this blog, I ask my wife to at least post once a week for the new start.
Engine Overhauled, Shock absorbers and more parts replaced
Toyota Corolla, 2E engine
Looks like the price I paid for a cheap second hand car will get tripled little by little. So far, it has undergone a number of surgeries already including top overhaul, cross member replacement, under chassis repair, tire replacement, a/c replacement, alternator and battery replacement, and countless number of car wash services. This time, its engine was overhauled and shock absorbers were replaced.
For several months, I’ve been taking all the risks of driving a car that feeds not only on gas but on oil as well and could stall on the road any time. It actually did for at least ten times. I’m just thankful that somehow, there’s a grease monkey residing in me and I was able to fix minor problems myself as long as there’s no detached parts that can’t be done by screw drivers and pliers.
Since it’s getting worse, I decided to bring my car out and looked for shops that does engine overhauling in Dasmarinas, Cavite. I went to a Shell Helix and they gave me ballpark figures of 10K for parts, 12K for machine shop services and 5K for labor. That only includes engine overhaul. I collapsed right after I saw it and brought to nearby hospital.
Right across Shell was a Toyota Center but I did not bother inquiring because I knew right then that that estimate will only cost me a left shock absorber.
I then went to a shop I know that sells Toyota car parts somewhere up north, and learned they also offer the service my car needs. They gave me a fixed amount of 8K for service labor and parts needed for engine overhaul. Of course, I took the offer since it’s way cheaper than the first one. They also gave me four shock absorbers for 1K each. While we dissect the engine, we also found more parts that need replacement. The package went up to 15K all in all. So compared to the first estimate I got, it’s way better. I did not inquire in other shops so I don’t have any idea if there’s cheaper price somewhere.
I saved 12K on that, but again, if I will sum up all the expenses I’ve incurred since I bought the car, I think it’s already more than double. So I pray that no more problems occur soon. Though I know right then what to expect when I bought the car for 90K.