Excluding a category when using get_posts

Hi,

I was using the following code: $posts = get_posts('numberposts=8&order=desc&orderby=post_date');
foreach ($posts as $post) : start_wp(); to retrieve 8 latest posts orered by posting date in single.php and on my site’s homepage (not blog).

All was fine till I needed to filter out a certain category, say ’25’. Using if (in_category('25')) continue; wouldn’t work because it would return only 6 entries if there’re 2 category ’25’ posts found as documented in the DOC.

If I use query_posts("cat=-25") before the start of $post, it will return only 2 posts and not 8.

Question is, how do I filter out a certain category while listing out 8 latest posts?

Thanks in advance.