For the last week of June and all of July, my sister and I are staying in New York City to make it easier for us to travel to and from her radiation treatments uptown. It's a pretty daunting experience, because I've never stayed in the city for more than, oh, a day, and also because, though born in a big city, I consider myself a small-town girl at heart and the city a huge, grubby beast. It should be interesting, though--Kinokuniya, which we explored just today, Bryant Park, which we intend to visit quite often (There's a talk on Thursday evening in which I'm interested, but will probably never use in life. Why, Miley Cyrus is even performing there next month! Mwahaha.), and a bunch of other places are ridiculously near where we're staying.

Right now, we're faced with the matter of procuring meals. So far, we've been eating out, and this can't go on if we are to be careful with our budget. We intend to take our sister Cez up on her offer to cook a week's worth of meals for us while we're here--for a modest fee. I'm already calling her our very own Nutrisystem.

Anyhoo, my sister's radiation treatments take place early in the morning, so we have a whole day to kill. We're planning on using this time to get more exercise and walking done. Let's go, 15 pounds! No, no, not on. I mean off. Let me rephrase that then: Go away, 15 pounds!

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My mother arrived in Manila yesterday and she was already greeted by an inconvenience. Apparently, the police called and said her car figured in a computer store robbery somewhere--same model and license plate and everything! But apparently, a different color. Looks like someone's been faking plates, or else the car is really an evil robot gone wild.

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RIP, George Carlin.