cindy's world

It’s cold out there, I have cramps, I’m fatigued, I got off of work late. I’m skipping jujitsu. But I’ll think about going to the gym. I was going to finally catch up on my Cancun entries, but now that I’ve logged on to everything and made myself available to people’s cyber arrows, I’m in a foul mood and I don’t feel like it anymore. I think I’m gonna just sit around in my bathrobe and read, or watch TV.
*smolder*
I love it when people start crap just so they can pin it on you. Real mature.

** Update 7:46pm **
I just had a very nice IM conversation with my godbrother. I haven’t talked to him in a while, and it wasn’t like we talked a lot before. But it’s really nice to find that you’re related, even if not by blood, to someone who makes you laugh so hard you cry, and who has the depth to be a good friend and tell you in a dark moment that he loves you instead of lecturing at you. That makes my whole logging on worthwhile. That and my other IM conversations with good friends. =)

I went back and forth about whether to post this for fear that Mr. W will get mad at me (or at the very least, be uncomfortable about it), but I figure heck, Diana recently posted her first and only photo on her blog and wrote something about the cute boy in her photo…

On Friday, I found myself alone across our hotel lobby bar from a cute guy. I figured there’s no harm in taking a photo, you know, for the women who read my blog, so I did. Unfortunately, the photo does not do the guy justice. Oh well. I tried, girls.

It occurred to me that as the flight back from SF lands at 2:55p, I could totally still make my usual visit to my parents’ house Sunday evening and they didn’t even have to know I was out of town all weekend. So I didn’t tell them. When I arrived, both parents were knocked out on various couches in the living room. We had dinner, then again, I fell asleep at their house in the living room and did not leave to go back to my house until about 1:30a. What is it about that place?! I should have the air checked.

I got home about 2a, took a shower, and since I was wide awake, I unpacked and downloaded my photos into my desktop and chose a few to put into my image hosting site online. Then at 3:30a, I finally felt sleepy enough to go to bed. I laid in my own bed for the first time in what felt like forever. But it made me smile to be back. I even let Dodo sleep on the ground next to my bed, since he seemed concerned that I’d be leaving again and wanted to be underfoot.

Today, back at work, same ol’ car accident trial. Spacey attorneys, awkward witnesses, irrate judge. Ah, home sweet home.

We wandered around the civic center location around the hotel in the morning (City Hall, courthouse, Asian Art Museum) and explored the Farmer’s Market across the street. The above photo depicts a bird picking up human trash in front of carved quote “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” This fountain was next to the Farmer’s Market across from our hotel. I liked the irony.

We had breakfast in our hotel lobby restaurant, checked out, missed our shuttle, hailed a cab, and got to the airport without further ado. In the security line, a guy about my age in front of me turned and asked if we were there to attend the USC-Cal game. I said we weren’t, and then said I’m a Bruin. He stopped talking to me and turned his back to me abruptly, rather snobbily. We all laughed, and then he said he was attending the UCLA-USC game in December. The rest of the overheard conversation at the airport was seemingly a bunch of Trojans talking trash about the game, we won, blah blah, we’re awesome, blah blah, we showed them, blah blah, we’re overprivileged and undereducated, blah blah.

Oh yeah. I did remember to give Mr. W the window seat on the flight back. I got to sit in the middle of the section next to a mother holding an infant with very healthy lungs. No, actually, the little baby girl was very cute. She was only loud for a couple of minutes.

Saturday started at like 7am. We were going to take the trolley ride to Pier 39/Fisherman’s Wharf, and see how we could fit Alcatraz into our day. The line at the trolley was way too long due to the SEA OF CRIMSON all over the freaking place. Yup. USC at Cal Saturday around noon. I could not believe the number of Trojan fans in SF for the game. No wonder the flights were booked, hotels were booked, and the traffic was horrendous. We ended up walking to the edge of Chinatown and grabbing a taxi to Pier 32. The line for Alcatraz was hideous, too. They were booked up all the way thru Monday, despite the fact that a ferry leaves for Alcatraz every half an hour. But here’s what we discovered. We can get a stand-by ticket, get in the very short stand-by line, and be on the very next ferry. Must be a well-kept secret. Of course, there were the usual disclaimers of “seating is not guaranteed,” etc.

Alcatraz was actually very interesting and pretty. The audio tour of the jails was pretty good. I guess. Except that I still feel “turn left and keep walking” is confusing because “left” is so subjective, and they should’ve stuck to “walk down the aisle toward the clock.” For those who have never done the audio tour or know anything about it, you wear a headset that plays a tape of the tour, and when you get to a particular spot in the jail, you press “play.” The tour begins to play and has really cool interviews with former inmates and sound effects of the jails, with some trivia information as it tells you where to walk and where to look as it introduces the jail to you. I found the escape attempts particularly engaging.

After Alcatraz, we explored Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf. We walked by an oxygen bar place where for $20 you suck up scented oxygen for 10 mins as someone gives you a backrub, head massage and heated shoulder wrap (with props they sell and try to peddle off on you), and 10 minutes in a water massage chamber. I can’t say I felt much different after the oxygen, altho I hear it’s great if you have a hangover (which I still have never had). I didn’t buy any of the products because I have most of the stuff they sell already, or some version thereof.

We walked to a meeting spot outdoors by a giant Xmas tree in an open square closer to our hotel and met up with Diana and The Same Mystery Date from the nite before, but they were wearing different clothes, so I assume nothing inappropriate happened when we left them. =} Mr. W and I got to watch these 2 attorneys bicker about some insignificant thing that they’ve apparently been bickering about for the past 2 days, and then The Date was excused to attend his own dinner as we had dinner with Diana at an outdoor French restaurant called Cafe Bastille. Excargot, more wine, good entrees. Diana then gave us a car tour of the city. Mr. W’s camera snapped away at the Golden Gate Bridge, the Palace of Fine Arts (a gargantuan Greek-inspired structure with lots of pretty Corinthian columns), and we ended up at Diana’s favorite dessert place, a gourmet bakery-restaurant called Citizen Cake. There, the Mystery Date returned and Diana and I shared stories of our years living together, over dessert. Diana and Date shared, again, the same bickering argument they had earlier over the same topic. The bartender and I shared a conversation about how freaking cold it was for me in SF that weekend with the drizzle on Friday that we walked in, and the sunny but clear but cold low 60F weather on Saturday and Sunday. They all laughed at me for monopolizing Mr. W’s giant heavy coat all weekend, and the bartender (who was from Pasadena) said sympathetically that it took him years to adjust to the weather up north, too, altho this weekend was considered “warm and nice.”

(rest mouse pointer over each photo for caption)

We got up Friday morning at the buttcrack of dawn and arrived at the airport by 6:30a to catch our 7:45a flight. Mr. W gave me the window seat. As we descended over San Francisco, he scrambled over my lap and peered excitedly out the window, pointing things out. It was endearing, and it reminded me of a large dog overpowering and standing his front paws on someone in a car seat to look out a car window at a passing car or another dog. I made a note to give Mr. W the window seat on our flight back.

We shuttled over to our hotel near the Civic Center in SF and got there before 10a, when we were told we can’t check in until closer to 3p because the entire hotel was booked solid for the weekend. (We would find out why on Saturday.) We walked around Chinatown, looked at the shops, I relived my childhood in Asia, we grabbed dim sum, walked to and around Embarcadero.

I thought about calling college roommie Diana at 9a to tell her we landed, but I figured she’d either be scrambling to get ready for work, or she’d be at work, so I’ll call her later. I also figured as soon as she settled in at 9:30a or so, she’d call me to check up on us. I had my cell on, and we did our tourist sight-seeing thing. I was a bit surprised when we walked back to our hotel at 2:30p and I hadn’t heard from Diana yet, but Mr. W and I were tired from our hours and hours of walking, so we checked in and took a nap. I figured she’d call me closer to the evening to finalize plans for meeting up with everyone for dinner. At some point the hotel room phone rang, and I remember groggily forcing Mr. W to pick it up even tho he had to reach over me (and he was napping, too), and I remember him writing some number down on a pad of paper and saying, “Call Diana,” but I looked at the clock, figured we had plenty of time before dinner reservations at 6:30p, and went back to sleep. 3:30p-ish, the hotel phone rang again. It was Diana, and she sounded frantic. “Didn’t the hotel give you my message?” she demanded. I didn’t know what she was talking about. She started saying that when she gets to our hotel she was going to totally yell at someone about that. Turned out my cell phone had no reception the entire time it was on and Diana had been wigging out all day not being able to get a hold of us and she checked the flight and it didn’t explode in mid-air, and she checked the hotel and they said we hadn’t checked in but that they’d tell us she called when we did (the 1st phone call).
[here is where I’d insert a group photo of the dinner when/if Jen emails me one, hint hint]
Diana and Jen picked us up at the hotel and we took a traffic-congested drive over to one of Diana’s favorite restaurants, an Asian fusion place called The House. We got there about 10 minutes late, ordered some appetizers, Brad and Val got there 40 minutes late due to the very bad traffic, and then Mike and Christi showed up a full hour late. I had been in touch on the phone with everyone to check on their progress, and apparently the traffic was horrendous everywhere in the city. (I blame this all on USC, by the way.) These friends had been driving 2 hours or so to meet up with us for dinner! I felt horrible and really honored at the same time. Dinner was delicious, we had good wine, even better company. I kept laughing. It was impressive I was able to keep any food inside my mouth. “So this is Wilco-Mike,” Mr. W said. Mike stood and shook his hand. “And I only know you as Mr. W,” Wilco-Mike said. It was hilarious realizing that they had heard about each other primarily thru my blog and it was like the old BBS days when at the meet, we’re finally able to connect faces to names to screen names, and it was like, “Oh, so YOU’RE Dark Knight,” while thinking He totally lied about his physical description. Ew.
[I’d like to insert a photo here of Fuse, Jen. 🙂 My camera was out of battery at this point.]
After dinner we hit up a martini bar in North Beach called Fuse and there were a few rounds of shots going around. This shot called a Chocolate Cake was delicious! You scrape the sugar off a slice of lemon without biting into the lemon, do the shot that really does taste like chocolate, then bite into the lemon. More laughing and antics. I loudly presented Jen with two tickets Mr. W and I had been given off the street earlier, for “free IQ and personality tests” offered by the Church of Scientology in SoMa (South Market Street area). It was hilarious because of this entry that Jen wrote a few weeks ago. Diana’s mystery date showed up soon thereafter and told us how many panicked phone calls and emails Diana had with him about her inability to contact us all day, we had more drinks, and then split.

Brad, Val, Jen, Diana, Diana’s Date, Mr. W and I went to a club called the Velvet Lounge, where we did some dancing, Diana and her date did a bit more drinking, and the night concluded for everyone but Diana and Date at 11:30p (we griped about being “too old for this”) and Brad drove everyone back to their respective residences). I hear that Diana and Date did quite a bit more partying and hitting up different joints after that.

I feel bad about the last post. I was very derogatory toward senior citizens, fat people, angry minorities, Oldsmobiles and Buicks. And any vehicle with only 4 cylinders. And the security guards. I’m over my morning attitude now. I’m really not a morning person. I say really ugly stuff to people I end up on the elevator with in the morning right after leaving the metal detectors. This morning, for example, a Spanish interpreter who works in the building was nice enough to hold the employee elevator door open for me and upon my entry, I just hurled my irritations all over the man. Luckily, I saw him during a break in our trial and I was able to make my peace with him. He seemed surprised that I felt bad about the morning. Either he’s a good actor and is trying to make me feel comfortable, or I’m more self-conscious and guilt-ridden than I need to be. In any case, sorry for the negativity of the last post, I don’t want to be one of those people who only sees the glass as half full, and whose blogs are 95% bitching about something or another.

A coworker suggested an impromptu happy hour after work at Taps Brewery today. I’m interested in going, but I gotta figure out how to juggle final tidying of the house, completion of packing, and taking care of the cat before I leave for the weekend. I may also have to repack cuz Diana just emailed me that the weather is going to be mid 60s and sunny, whereas I had packed pretty much winter clothing.

It turns out, my hair is no longer wash-and-go. I had to spend about 10 minutes this morning with a curling iron, which is a waste because it’s raining now. I suddenly recollected haircuts of the past I did not like, where the layers were cut too high and too short, so that unless I curled my hair, the shorter layers would bend in odd directions and press the longer layers against my head and then poke out toward the end. =P I guess I’ll just have to get up a bit earlier now until my hair grows out a bit more. I expect it to be wash-and-go again in another month or two.

A problem with Southern California drivers when it’s damp or sprinkling outside is that they don’t know how to handle their cars anymore. The freeway drivers are as aggressive as ever and tend to hydroplane. The surface street drivers slow to half the speed they normally drive. I drive approximately 7 miles on all surface streets to work (I have no freeway alternative), 6 of those 7 miles are driven thru an area where it seems everyone on the road in the mornings are blue-haired retired people in their 70s and 80s chugging along obliviously in 1960 Oldsmobiles and Buicks. By obliviously, I mean that they’ll drive right alongside someone in the other lane (the road is 2-laned only), both cars going 30 mph, for miles. They are unaware that the light in front is green and they’ll go so frustratingly slow until the light turns yellow and they stop, when they had more than enough time to have made it thru the green, but now everyone’s stopped. Once we hit one red, we hit almost all the rest of the 33 lights, it just works that way. And we can’t get around them, because the moment one gains a little ground on the other one so that you think you can get in the other lane, we hit another red light and have to start over. Or, just as I’m finally able to get around a slow car and have a clear lane ahead, another oblivious old driver in front slowly merges over into my lane and gets in my way, blocking me off before I could get my stupid 4-banger to pick up any torque. My next car is definitely gonna be at least a V-6.

And then when I get to work, there are idiots dropping people off while perpendicular to both entrances into the parking structure so that they block everybody off while their obese passenger takes his/her sweet time coming out, orbiting around the car and wobbling off the street. They can’t pull forward 10 more feet or pull up against the sidewalk so that they don’t block off 6 cars trying to get into the structure?! Then when I’m trying to get thru the metal detectors in the courthouse entrance, I’m significantly delayed by either a mom trying to herd her 6 children into the detectors, or by some idiotic man who needs to drop every coin from his pockets onto the tray for the x-ray machine, one coin at a time, or by some fat chick who suddenly goes from the detector archway back to the x-ray belt because she thinks that unless she puts her pack of cigarettes onto the tray, it’d set off the metal detector. There is a side line for employees and attorneys only so that we can get ahead of the general public when there’s a line. But this shortcut isn’t very well enforced because the general public in the geographical area this courthouse services are angry large minority people who block employees off with their large bodies and larger handbags as if their very lives depended on letting no one cut in front of them, and the new security people at the detectors don’t do a damn thing about it.

*growl*

Ah, yes. PMS in full swing. I’m gonna be a lot of fun this weekend.

I’ve cleared some stuff off my desk at work, and I want to throw this away, but I figure I kept it for a reason, so I’ll record it here and throw it away afterwards.

“When two hearts race, both win.”

*retch*
*tossing silver wrapper in trash can*

I don’t know what it is about traveling, even for a weekend, that makes me feel like I must leave my house in a cleaned up condition.

I had a pretty productive day last nite. Came home, did dishes, vacuumed, cleaned the cat area, started laundry, had dinner, went to get a haircut (I don’t like it as much as I liked my last haircut at Great Clips, but eh, it’s just hair. I can fix it, and it’ll grow out fine), and did laundry thru the night and finished it. Watched several episodes of Angel in the wee hours of the morning. Brushed Dodo.

This evening I have jujitsu 6:30p-8:30p so I won’t have time to do much. Maybe I’ll get gas on my way home and touch up my hair color after I get back. Maybe I should start packing. Maybe I should light a fire in the fireplace, light candles all over the living room, curl up and read a good book to the sound of the rain. With the cat yowling loudly and rubbing fur all over me.

I love all the freedom and options and the peace of mind to take advantage of all the freedom and options.