I can't believe I still have this blog. the ex created this a few year's back and titled it "the sexiest man alive", which at the time, I guess was true for her! so as most of my family and friends know, I got a divorce last year. it's been a difficult year for me, to say the least, but a very fulfilling and hopeful one. from making the decision to get a divorce, to uprooting our home, to moving back home with the folks, and missing quality time with my daughters, it's been a tough adjustment period. now, a good 10 months later, everything is starting to fall in place.

got an apartment in oakland which I love. near the alameda border and the oakland marina, it's so close to everything I need: peet's coffee, tucker's ice cream and a nob hills grocery store. I'm hitting my stride at work, which meant taking on an additional overnight shift at the group home and supervising naturalists during summer camp and preparing for the upcoming 10K and coastal clean-up. also helping to green our group homes by taking our kids on trips and activities that focuses on green practices. this is incredibly satisfying since I've felt like the only environmentally conscious overnight at the agency.

the gals are doing great in preschool and my ex-wife and I are finding a happy medium of making sure the girls are happy and keeping our relationship completely focused on their needs. they'll be going to disneyland in the fall with their mom and stepdad, and will be taking a gymnastics class on the weekends with their mom and dads. being a part of a mixed family is gonna take some getting used to, but we're off to a good start.

been working out and losing weight, taking the dogs out on more walks and hikes, and eating exceptionally well. been hitting the bag and doing yoga and y-dan. looking to buy a kayak and take it out on the water. playing ball with my boys consistently every week.

speaking of my boys, not being married has been great. it's literally been 15 years (8 years of marriage, 7 years of courtship) since I had the proper time to devote to my friends. in the past two days, I had lunch with alvin, my best friend since childhood, on my day off. usually, I'm fixing up my place or catching up on some sleep on my day off, but I've finally got some time to spend it with friends. alvin works in the emergency room at kaiser in oakland, so we went to a place in piedmont I've been wanting to try out, ninna.

played ball with my boys last night and then went and watched stepbrothers with my boy, ron. ron and I fixed up our bikes and got them ready for commuting. I'm lucky to have the BART station only a mile away from ny place. then he took me and my other boy, bob, to his work to hang out. he works at EA (electronic arts) and after touring the campus, I'm ready to switch jobs...j/k. 3 full court basketball courts, a sand volleyball court, a daycare, tons of game rooms filled with foosball, air hockey, shuffleboard, etc. and a top-notch gym, and I was convinced that I got into the wrong field.

then bob, ron and I went out to get our customary beers and watched olympic synchronized diving on the big screen. wtf? now, I'm watching the woman's gymnastics final at 4:30 in the morning, and about to take the dogs out. got the gals for the next few days, so I'm looking to spend some quality time with them. too bad it's a bit cold on the coast, because I was gonna pull them early from school and take them to the beach. oh well, the park will do.

finally hitting my stride feels good; now all I need is a girlfriend...hahhaahah

Christmas time is here again.....oh shit

Ever since I was a kid, I never liked christmas. I asked my parents for a dog when I was 9, and sure enough, they got me a fake plush toy dog with a little button that mad it go "woof". Little did they know that my pre-pubescent years were spent violating that poor dog, as I discovered self-stimulation. Sounds gross, but turst me, all boys do it.

Then came our Christmas move of 1995 when my parents decided to up and move us within a couple of weeks' time to another house. Moving is a strenuous ordeal, and even moreso when you have parents who are packrats. I kept asking suring the move, "and we need this for what?" as I took an atrocious lamp out of the moving boxes or favors from parties going back to the 70's. It was also the time when I had to emcee my parent's anniversary party. My girlfriend and I had been together for 2 years and this is when I started to see the warning signs that mahybe we just didn't belong together. I worked hard to make sure that everyone at the party were greeted and taken care of, from my lolas to my little cousins, along with my girlfriend. But later, she came up to me bawling that I had purposefully ignored her and didn't attend to her. Between the move and my gf's emotional breakdown, I didn't have a very good christmas.

Fast-forward to this Christmas season...the past three months have been nothing short of hellish. First, my wife and kids move out because we've got mice in the house. Here I was setting out traps to catch these little fuckers, and they got all the way upstairs from the garage. Even with my two dogs, they got up there. Every day was like a safari hunt, looking for their droppings and trying to stomp them out. I finally got sick of fucking around, so I moved all the furniture out and set out nearly 50 traps in the house, with the help of my good buddies (damn, I love that those guys would spend their evenings setting traps with me). Needless to say, there are no more mice in the house.

A week after my wife moves out, she leaves a message telling me that she's leaving me. Holy shit. My jaw dropped, and after the inital shock, I just hid in a hole for nearly a month. Here I was in an empty house, I hadn't seen my kids in days, my wife is divorcing me, and I have no fucking clue what to do next. Evne more painful than the uncertainty of my future was the fact that my wife had given up on me. I truly thought that love was unconditional, but that kind of fairy tale thinking will just get you hosed hard. I sure did.

So now, my wife and I have decided to make sure that the kids are our #1 priority. We forgave each other for all of the things we did during our marriage, and now were truly committed to making our family work. She'll take them for half the week, I'll take them for the other half. I've been slaving away on the house to get it ready to be sold, which unfortunately will not get too much in today's real estate market. And now I'm thinking that love can be unconditional, especially if I find the right person for me. Who knows when this will be, but the future seems hopeful.

waiting for my pata

damn, I hate filipino restaurants. in searching for a place to eat my dinner, I found a coupon for a crispy pata, a deep fried piece of hamhock, and quickly made my way to this filipino restaurant in san lorenzo. now, pinoy establishments are not known for their service, hospitality, and sad to say, their food. but I had gotten the same thing a few months ago, and it was damn tasty. after cleaning the garage and backyard all day, I needed something damn tasty.

so I walk in to the sound of a blaring middle-aged filipina singing show tunes and some old manong pounding away at the keyboards. if stereotypes were to persist, their should have been a dog soup at each table, rice on each plate, and the sound of popcorn-like staccato from the mouths of each pinoy. so I order my food, and expect to wait, at them most, 15 minutes. how hard was it to cut up a piece of pig thigh, prep it, and fry it? judging by how long I actually waited, about as hard as the US pulling out of Iraq, or maybe as hard as a prepubescent boy pulling out of his girlfriend when having sex for the first time.

35 minutes of pure hell - karaoke blaring, fat ladies in jogging suits dancing, some fat 20-yeard old fob trying to give me the googly eyes while I mustered every ounce of strength to avoid vomiting on the floor, and my favorite tv shows (the office and 30 rock) up on the big screen with no sound. I felt like a fat kid eyeing a slice of cake through the looking glass, but being completely broke, couldn't do shit.

when I finally got home, I opened a nice cold guinny, watched the last part of the office, and munched away on my pig leg

what's in a name?

over the years, I've been called many things (among them, dickhead and asshole by the wifey). Here are a few of my aliases and the etymology behind them:

francois - my lesbian buddy from seneca used to call me that in her fake french accent. her name was gina, but I liked to pronounce it "ginah" as in vagina, a la 40-year old virgin.

frankie - my good buddy from the shoreline loved calling me that, maybe after frankie and johnny; he was a bear of a man with a good soul

franchise - modeled after the basketball player, stevie "the franchise" francis, this became my handle when I used to post on friendster forums and it stuck

franchizzle, chizzle, cheezy, french fries, frenchie, da franchise, franchise player, et al. - all derived from "the franchise"

frank n' beans - an allusion to a man's genitals and made popular by "there's something about mary"

fran - a shortened version of francis

franny - a feminine version of francis, that I adopted during college

franny the tranny - a convenient moniker alluding to my propensity to be gay as a motherfuck

st. francis - of assisi, especially considering my love for animals and po' folk(although the story goes that st. francis actually didn't like animals so much; he was just seen by someone praying out loud in the grotto and he/she thought he was talking to the animals; he actually went on record later saying that he didn't muck like animals)

call me whatever the fuck you want, just don't call me frank; frank the tank maybe, but not frank

paradigm shift part. 2

I'm well on my way and won't even let a few stumbles along the way stop me. Thank you, God, for your guidance and strength.