Things Are Looking UP!

It pretty much sucks getting older... we fight the battle of the bulge, we fight the cholesterol and the triglycerides, and we lose our hair -- all over! Damnit, that really does a number on the ego. Seriously.

Asians tend to have very sparse or almost non-existent eyebrows and their eyelashes are rather short. Caucasians on the other hand, mostly have eyebrows and eyelashes, but we lose them as we get older.

My friend Jing and I went to get our eyebrows tattooed last month, and I was very pleased with the results. Jimbo and I were talking on Skype the other day, and he said he thought I looked younger. WOO-HOO! Such a good son he is.

I went for a touch-up this past Friday because the tattoos fade after a bit. They're only semi-permanent, unlike regular tattoos. The eyebrows don't hurt that much, but the eyeliner did -- especially the lower lids even though she applied a numbing gel. My eye was twitching so much that Emily (the artist) had to press on my eyes to keep them from twitching! Owww! By the time I left the place, both eyes were completely numb and my vision was blurry. The price we pay, right?

Yeah, well, I'm happy with the results and also happy not to have to draw eyebrows everyday to keep from looking sick. I hate that. They're a bit dark now, but they'll lighten and look more natural in a few days. They also will "do" lips, but since I'm addicted to lipgloss there's really not much reason for me to have mine done.

Everyone at the center is friendly and helpful. The facility is spotlessly clean, the treatment rooms have "spa" music playing. and are quite comfortable. and it smells really nice, too. If you're interested in finding out more...

Derma-Aesthetics Centre
3 Killiney Road #01-03 Winsland House
6836-8388
www.erabelle.com

Saturday evening we met up with Nabil and Shyanne at Pete's Place for dinner, but the first order of the evening was my purchase of a brand new Macbook from Shyanne. Yeah! I'm so pumped. After we gabbed about how much I'm going to love my Mac, we ate dinner which was definitely not on my diet (spaghetti and meatballs), but damn it was yummeh! I ate every bit of it! We went upstairs to mezza9 for drinks and had the best time chatting and laughing. They definitely know how to make a great martini, and Shyanne and Nabil are so nice to hang out with a couple of old people.

My Macbook is simple to use, it's incredible! We just took it out of the box and turned it on. I plugged my mouse in, and it worked without having some pop-up saying that it "Found New Hardware". I.LOVE.IT!

The plans for our repatriation are starting to come together. We're going to move into a service apartment April 1. The packers will start packing our stuff April 5 and we'll hand over this apartment on the 15th. We will take the direct flight from Singapore to Newark April 30 (we leave 4/30 and arrive 4/30 cool, huh?). Then we'll rent a car and drive down to Philadelphia for TequilaCon '08! I've booked a room for us at the Holiday Inn in the Historic District, for May 2 and 3. Unfortunately, we'll have to leave early on the 4th because of our flight to Atlanta. We don't feel like arriving late at night. It's an hour's drive from the airport to the hotel where we'll be staying until our "stuff" arrives.

I am so excited about getting to meet Dave (HAPPY BIRTHDAY!), Jenny, Mr. Fabulous, Shelli, Lisa, Karl, Avitable, Miss Britt, plus a whole bunch of other bloggers I haven't read yet, and with the help and generosity of Avi and Miss Britt.....

Hilly!

If you've got a Paypal account, it would be so nice of you to give 1, 5, or $10. All of us bloggers would appreciate it because it wouldn't be a good TequilaCon without her (as you can see from this photo)

(Photo courtesy Hilly's camera)

I've been reading all of these bloggers for over a year now, and they are friends to me. I am so grateful that my WHH is willing to do this for me. Our 30th wedding anniversary is April 1... his gift to me is to fly us home in Business Class (rather than the back of the bus deal as we're accustomed) and attending TequilaCon '08 in Philly.

With all of the travel I've done over the years, I've never been to Philadelphia before! This trip is going to be a great incentive for me to do the inventory, move to the service apartment, box up all of our important documents and bills, give away appliances we can't use in the U.S., etc. Moving is always a huge disruption in our lives, but moving overseas is even more complicated. It's worth it, but it still takes a toll.

I'm glad that I'll get to meet everyone at TequilaCon AND get to see our family and friends. That's what life is all about!

Can I Reformat My Colon Too?

Since the WHH returned home early Sunday morning, he volunteered to hit the enter button to reformat my hard drive. As it was deleting everything, I remembered that when he bought this laptop for me it had Windows 98 on it. I went through hell upgrading to Windows XP. I started to panic.

Fortunately, reformatting didn't effect the OS. Hallelujah! I'm still reinstalling my favorite programs and configuring them the way I want them. Can I uninstall Internet Explorer? I hate it, and Norton 360 is only monitoring it, rather than Firefox which is my default browser. I downloaded the IE Tab as SJ suggested, but haven't had time to figure it out yet.

I've looked through all of the settings for Norton 360, and still can't figure out how to get it to monitor Firefox. The other thing that's pissing me off about Norton is that I had all of my bookmarks backed-up, I tried to restore them. It says it did, but I sure as hell don't see them anywhere. Now I'm forced to Google everything and trying to remember to bookmark the pages.

By Sunday evening I was tired of working on the computer. We ate dinner and then went to bed around 10. At 3 am, I was awakened by the most horrendous abdominal pain. I didn't want to risk a shart in bed, so I quietly made haste to the toilet. Nothing happened, just severe pain. I went into "Lamaze-mode" taking deep breaths and massaging my abdomen. It only helped a little. The pain was so bad that I was trembling and dripping sweat. I got up and walked around a bit, got a cool washcloth to wipe my face, and then the pain would begin again. The next 9 hours hurt like the pain of a thousand swords, seriously.

Around noon, I started to feel human again and made my way to the pharmacy to buy more Immodium. It's only S$3.60 for 6 pills. Why is it so much more expensive in the U.S.? Anyway, the pharmacist told me that I should also take a charcoal tablet to absorb the toxins. Hmmm...? I'd never heard of that before, but it makes sense. I bought them and took one two hours after the Immodium. It really seemed to help, but I was warned that my poop's going to be black. Since my poop-cycle is completely off, I'm not sure when the next *ahem* movement will be, but I am much better today.

Maybe the stress of having my computer reformatted caused the IBS to flare up suddenly? I hate IBS and I want to STAB.IT.TO.DEATH!

All of this crap made me miss calling Dad for his 72nd birthday. I hope you had a very happy birthday, Dad, and I'm sorry to have missed talking to you. I love you!

A Kentucky Girl's 24-Hour Tour of Singapore**

The other day, Kentucky Girl posed this question, "Where you would take a person if they were only going to visit your city for one day?"

I've pondered this for a few days, actually and have come up with the following itinerary:

Since you live in CA, the time change won't be as hard as it would be if you were flying out of Newark. You can fly to "How-a-ya" and spend a few days there to have a bit of sun and fun and get lei-ed. Then you'll stop in Taiwan or Tokyo. It doesn't really matter because you'll be in the rich-bitch section of the plane (I've never been up there dammit) because you're cool that way.

So, I'll be waiting at Changi Airport for your flight to arrive --anxiously so, because I know you're "hostess gift" will be the requisite Big-Ass Bottle of Absolut that you had to stop to buy at one of the duty-free shops before you left the terminal! What? You thought you were staying here for free??

Once we have the Big-Ass Bottle and your luggage safely in hand, we'll get into the taxi queue, load your one empty suitcase and the overstuffed one into the taxi. We'll venture on over to our place. After our arrival, I'll show you your room and then show you where the shower is because, you know, it's been more than a day since you showered! Whew!

After you've taken care of your personal hygiene, we will sit down to one of my husband's famous meals. It depends on what kinds of foods you like,but you can count on bacon being on the menu. I'll also be sure to have plenty of sweet or unsweet tea, booze, and beer.

Once we're all thoroughly over-sated... you're going to need to sleep about 3 hours, not much longer though because you've got to get into this time zone.

Now the fun begins. We only have to walk around the corner to get to Orchard Road. Singapore is about shopping, and Orchard Road is where it's happening!

We'll stop at Ngee Ann City because I love Takashimaya, then we'll go across the street to check out Paragon.

By this time our feet are going to be killing us, and we're going to need some refreshments. We'll queue up for a cab at Paragon to go to the Raffles Hotel Long Bar where the famous Singapore Sling was invented. Ooh! They're yummy, and the hotel is gorgeous!

Since we're in the neighborhood, we'll wander over to Little India because you really must get a beautiful henna tattoo. It's an exciting place, bustling with activity.

Next, we need to go to Arab Street so that you can buy loads of silk to take back with you in the empty suitcase.

It's dark now and we're whooped from the heat and all of this walking. We're going to need more food and drink, and I think we should go to Clarke Quay and Boat Quay for that. Clarke Quay underwent a complete tranformation last year. It's all rather glittery, but fun to see and there are some very nice restaurants there. We'll take a bumboat ride to see the Merlion, and then we'll go to Boat Quay to our favorite restaurant, River Quay Seafood. If you like seafood, then you must try chili or black pepper crab. Singapore is famous for both. My favorite meal there is cheese lobster, bok choy, and fried rice. If you don't like seafood, no worries, Madame Irene and her crew will accommodate you. They treat us like royalty. So nice!

We're running out of time! There're a lot more places I'd like to take you, but we need to head in the direction of our condo. You simply must check out the infamous Orchard Towers. There are some interesting clubs, to say the least, but at least two clubs feature exceptional bands and musicians. I have a big band crush on Tania. They've been together since the 70's. Zul and the WHH are the same age. I hadn't been in to see them for quite a while, and on my birthday we went in to Harry's and Zul had buzzed his hair!

It's time for us to go back to our place. We'll get into the taxi queue -- it looks like it will take us forever to get a taxi, but that queue moves quickly and the taxis are lined up quite a ways... almost to Claymore Hill. Oh yeah, and there's the "he/she" who likes to hang around that taxi queue. "She's" the sorriest-looking gal, but she always has on nice clothes and shoes. Somebody's keeping her busy.

Our 24-hours is over. There's a Mercedes-Benz taxi waiting outside the lobby. The taxi driver will help us load your two over-stuffed suitcases into the boot, and then you're off to Changi Airport and your next destination. Hmmm... Let's see, I think you should visit Hong Kong on your way back home. Hey, Curiosity Killer lives there, I'm sure she'd show you a great time!

Thanks for visiting. WHH and I always love to have visitors!


**After spending most of the afternoon backing-up stuff that I'm going to need after reformatting, I decided I needed to finish this for KG. PLUS, WHH doesn't get home until the morning... reformatting can wait until he's sleeping-off the jet-lag.

I Cannot Compute

My computer started acting weird last week, just after I told Kentucky Girl that I hadn't had a bit of trouble with this thing for almost 3 years! The first thing was that it no longer "saw" the DVD/CD-RW drive. I rebooted... not there. I attempted to do a "System Restore", nope.

Last night, I was chatting with my sister on Stickam, when things started getting even stranger. The computer is no longer seeing the USB that I use for my extra keyboard. I rebooted, it's still not there. Then, I noticed this morning that Norton 360 didn't start up. I have always used a virus scanner, and I never open spam emails or suspicious attachments, but I think my laptop has been hit by a virus or worm. I don't know. I just ran a complete scan for viruses, but nothing turned up.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm just going to have to reformat the hard drive. I hate reformatting hard drives. I'll be MIA for a while, just thought you should know. That is all. Thanks.

From Slashdot

A bug in Firefox exposes stored passwords.

zbuffered writes, "Today, Mozilla made public bug #360493, which exposes Firefox's Password Manager on many public sites. The flaw derives from Firefox's willingness to supply the username and password stored on one page on a domain to another page on a domain. For example, username/password input tags on a Myspace user's site will be unhelpfully propagated with the visitor's Myspace.com credentials. It was first discovered in the wild by Netcraft on Oct. 27. Read more....

I, personally, have not stored important passwords on Firefox or IE. I have them stored in a database that I have encrypted and password protected. I'm sure that can be hacked too, but I don't know of any alternatives. If you do, please leave a comment.