cindy's world

Vanessa took me to Lake Shrine in Santa Monica on Thursday, which is a meditation garden and lake honoring every religion through spirituality and nature.

I snapped away with my camera cuz the grounds are just too beautiful not to try to capture it in some small way and take with me. Rest mouse over photos for captions.



Altho ripples on the water catching gleams of sunlight were attractive enhancements, I couldn’t help but wonder what was causing all that bubbling in the middle of the lake. There were several spots like this. Natural springs, I hope?

One of many pretty pathways:

This was a trip: Mahatma Ghandi is actually there. Well, a piece of him, anyway. They built this shrine around the aforementioned piece:

An across-the-lake view of the Ghandi shrine:

Visions of heaven on earth…


No kidding, eh?

Just finished watching The Wedding Date starring Debra Messing (Grace of “Will & Grace”) and Dermot Mulroney (the groom in My Best Friend’s Wedding). It’s kind of a reverse Pretty Woman, and unbelievable in the same way. But sweet and fairy-tale-like in the same way, once one suspends disbelief. It’s probably one of my favorite feel-good movies already. Here are some of my favorite lines that Nick (Mulroney’s character) got to say:

* While giving a toast to the women at the bachelorette party – “Here’s to the husbands who’ve won you, the losers who’ve lost you, and the lucky bastards who get to meet you.”
* Consoling the drunk groom-to-be, who was offended that his best man broke the no-stripper pact and hired strippers to his bachelor party, “as if I would sleep with a prostitute; I’m about to get married!” – “It’s been my experience that a man in love doesn’t want a prostitute. Eddie, you did the right thing.”
* Laying down next to Kat (Messing) on a large bed that she flounced on, after she complains that she spent the whole weekend complaining about her life and she doesn’t know a thing about him – “I’m allergic to fabric softener. And I majored in comparative literature at Browne. I hate anchovies. And I think I’d miss you even if we’d never met.” Reaches out to hold her hand.
* In explaining to Kat why he came back to her after they fought – “When we were fighting, I thought this was over. And I was gonna leave you alone and just take off, but…then I realized, I’d rather fight with you than make love with anyone else.” They kiss sweetly.

siiiiiggggggghhhhhhh…

My old friend Vicky (hugging the bunny [me] below) turns 30 today!

In 3rd grade, I came home from school one day and told my mom that there’s a new girl in my class who’s Chinese and she has a younger sister who’s in kindergarten (Karen, left in the above photo). My mom strangely became very interested and started asking all sorts of questions like where they live and whether her mom works. It was strange. But nevertheless, I went to school and relayed the message to Vicky that my mom would like to meet her mom. We kids were very excited to become family friends. And that’s how the business deal was struck. My mom would wake me up way early in the morning and drop me off at Vicky’s house before school on her way to work, and I’d hang out there until Vicky and Karen were up and ready to go to school, then we’d get dropped off by either their mom or dad. As the weather got nicer, we’d walk to school. And after school, we’d walk back to her house, where I’d hang out, cause trouble, do my homework, until my mom came by to pick me up at 5:30p or so.

For awhile there, my mom called Vicky’s mom her best friend. Vicky and I declared ourselves mortal enemies. Decades later, I was sitting with Vicky in her mom’s kitchen before going off to play Bingo at our alma mater high school, and her mom said how she hadn’t seen me in so long and how I’m always welcome in her house because she watched me grow up and I’m like her “second daughter.” There was an small silence, broken by Vicky: “But mom, you already have a second daughter.” Now the silence was awkward. “Oh!” gasped her mom, “I forgot about Karen!”

Happy 30th to Vicky, my long-time friend since 3rd grade, with whom I fought like sisters and still ended up being her bridesmaid at her wedding, just like a sister. (Her actual sister was maid of honor.) I’ll see you on Friday!

(Sorry for the bad quality in photos…all I have is my cameraphone cuz the digital camera was even worse!)

Man, in the past year, I’ve eaten at a lot of restaurants, and gotten a lot of massages! The coolest receipts are the massage receipts from Cancun’s Dreams resort. One says “IMPORTE $1,550.06” and the other says “IMPORTE $1,880.02.” Things look so expensive in pesos! I have no idea how much that actually is in American dollars.

I love this. Windows open, airing out the smell of bills and the incoming breeze distributing the scent of honeydew melon from my large jar candle burning in front of one of the windows. The radio alarm lightly playing “Slow dancing, swingin’ to the music…”

And to think, if I hadn’t procrastinated on a year’s worth of receipts, I wouldn’t be having this nice time spent in my room doing this with the great breeze and great music and great scent. I’d be, uh, at jujitsu. *sheepish*

I’m making major, major progress in organizing my bills. I finally grit my teeth and tossed years of statements for my utilities, cell phone, satellite TV, auto insurance bills. Just now I’m going thru a year’s worth of credit card statements and trying to match them to the year’s worth of receipts I’ve collected. I don’t know how I let my finances slide like that, but at least I still pay my bills in full on time, it’s just the organizing that’s behind. So I figured the quickest way to find receipts to go with the statements is to divide the receipts up, within their current categories of “food”, “gas”, and “miscellaneous”, into subcategories of which credit card they went with. There are some restaurants I can remember going to based on the dates, but I came across one for El Cholo Cafe in late August that I can’t imagine why I’d go to. It was just a couple of days before Mr. W and I rediscovered each other, and it was months after the ex and I stopped hanging out. So I thought, “I’ll check my blog!” Sure enough, there the answer was. I was having a miserable weekend having recently ending a potential something-or-other with someone, and my old trainer/roommate Brian had come over to my house to replace my garbage disposal for me, and I’d taken him out to dinner to thank him.

Ahh, the memories. =)

I love this blog thing.

Hey, yeah, I’m alive.

Today, I woke up at 9:30a and got out of bed with my radio alarm cranking out a morning show with 3 on-air personalities that I’ve come to be familiar with, and I walked into the bathroom intending to take a shower. Suddenly, hearing something interesting, I paused and backed out of the bathroom and went back into the bedroom to listen. Since I was just standing there, I may as well lay back down on the bed. The next thing I knew, I was waking up at 11:30a. Oh well. But I did manage to get lots of stuff done. Went to the bank (where I was told by the teller that a letter accompanying my new ATM card telling me all PIN numbers remain the same did, indeed, “lie”), went to Trader Joe’s and picked up stuff for my parents, Mr. W and for Jordan (all my loved ones get flax seed meal, haha), got a smog check for my car, went to the post office and got stamps, mailed out some bills DMV registration renewal and sent a package of flax seed meal out to Florida for Jordan, hand-delivered other stuff to Mr. W, went to Home Depot and got a garage door spring, and am halfway done with my Mother’s Day project.

I’m putting together this big photo collage in a multi-dimensional frame for Mother’s Day. Photos of my mom, proud with a month-old infant at age 24; laughing with her adult daughter pouncing on her back in front of a famous memorial in Taiwan; holding her young daughter up between herself and her husband in a national park. I’m going to do a counterpart for my dad for Father’s Day, also. I already some photos set aside of him sitting on a large rock with his year-old daughter asleep across his knees, rowing a boat with his young wife and daughter sitting at the other end… It wasn’t until starting this project that I realized how few photos I have of myself as an adult with my parents. I am so not hanging out with them enough. We should do more on my weekend visits aside from watching TV and having a home-cooked dinner. Maybe I can take them out and take some nice photos soon.

Nope, don’t miss work yet. I did call my coworker over the weekend to check up on him. This would be his first weekend without his girlfriend in a long time. He says it’s rough at home because it’s so quiet without her, but he’s hanging in there. Being at work helps because he can laugh and joke with people, but it’s a different story when he’s alone. I remember those days. I was so scared of the weekends and of the silence. That was one of the main reasons I took up jujitsu.

I just found out this morning that on Monday, the day when immigrants supposedly all ditched work to make a point about their impact on the country (altho around here, the only immigrants that participated that I know of are Hispanic), the traffic was so light due to their disappearance that the news did a segment on it. Los Angeles traffic that Monday was compared to the traffic of the previous 2 Mondays, and the previous 2 Mondays were light already due to Spring Break. But that Monday, it was even lighter than those days. I’m not sure if this is the impact on our community these immigrants meant to highlight.

It kinda just hit me this morning that my vacation is NEXT WEEK. Which means, after today, I’m off!

Vanessa’s not gonna be working next week, either, so we’ll probably goof off all week and, like, repair the garage door spring (that broke last nite) and do laundry and vacuum and stuff.

And Vicky, I gotta go up there and give you your bday present! Lemme know when you’re free.

P.S. Remember that one post about how I wish I could gripe about someone not doing something good, and then that someone would do something good and make me eat my negative words? It happened yesterday! Yay! I felt appropriately bad. I was griping to Jordan or Vanessa on the phone about how I got to Mr. W’s house to meet up before yoga and he was on his computer talking on his headset and didn’t even acknowledge me, and I’d been out in the living room for like 10 minutes and he still hadn’t come out even tho I’d nudged his chair 10 mins prior. When he did come out, he brought with him a 3-red-rose bouquet and said, “This is for you.” I asked what the occasion was, and he said he just chose Thursday because he knew I’d be going over for sure to meet up for yoga. Awww! I would’ve thought he got the idea from that prior blog entry, except that he doesn’t read my blog anymore and hasn’t for weeks, so I guess he gets full credit for that one.

Happy Birthday, Sandy!

Sandy is the very oldest friend I have in the world. She’s 30 today.

Wait. That came out wrong.

Sandy is the longest-time friend I have in the world. We go way back. She is my first friend in the United States, we met through my cousins Diana and Jennifer’s parents when Sandy and I were 6. We’ve seen each other through a hell of a lot of roller coasters, and even tho we may not talk all the time, we always pick up right where we left off when we do talk. Our parents used to have get-togethers for dinners, karaoke (during which we’d retreat upstairs and talk about boys), and fishing. We still have fishing horror stories that we share with our boyfriends when we all meet up. And sometimes one of us will recall something we had not reminisced on before, and trigger the other’s memory, and we’d laugh like a couple of lunatics.

At 30, Sandy, you’re more successful, more wise, more beautiful than you have been at your previous years. Regardless of what you may feel. Happy birthday.

Man, I should dig out an old photo of us at age 6 and post that. I’ll make that a project soon. Altho…nothing comes to mind. Did we not take any photos back then?! I can’t wait for Vicky’s bday around the corner. I KNOW I have photos of THAT!

Our trial yesterday ended at 4p, but I stayed at work till almost 6p to do more divorce files. I’m almost at goal. Blech. I didn’t get home till 6:30p, and by then, especially since Vanessa was home, stressed from work and wanted to treat herself to a nice dinner and drinks, I found it impossible not to ditch jujitsu again. I was starving and had a headache, anyway.

So we went to Market City Caffe where I had way too much wonderful fresh crusty bread, way too much creamy delicious Italian pasta, and way, way too much pinot grigio wine.

Obviously, we were too wired by then to just go to bed or something, so just as I was thinking about maybe watching a movie at home, Vanessa asked, “So what do you wanna do now?” I said, “Let’s go to Bed, Bath & Beyond!” It’s only a few blocks from my house. So we went there, learned it was closed, and instead went to…WalMart! Woohoo! Entering the megastore, Vanessa made a joke about oh no, we’re not gonna get out without spending hundreds of dollars, and altho I laughed, I had no intention of buying anything.

$150 later at the checkout (between both of us), we were remarking astoundedly to the friendly register lady how neither of us really expected to buy the massive quantities of scented candles, tea light holders, large mosaic photo frames, standing glass vase, DVD movies, long-necked lighters, Gatorade, low-rise panties, knee-high hosiery, incense holder, and other stuff I can’t remember cuz we were probably a little tipsy giggling down the aisles and admiring all the REALLY COOL and REALLY CHEAP STUFF that we NEEDED to buy RIGHT NOW in case they RUN OUT and we find we REALLY NEED THAT STUFF later on when it’s TOO LATE. It may be safe to infer that our judgments were a bit impaired. But that’s the beauty of WalMart. Sure, you can’t leave without spending a bunch of money you didn’t expect to spend, but you get, like, a billion items for the price. Costco works that way, too, but at Costco, you get a billion of the same products, in industrial-sized packages.

At one point, when I was clinging onto the shopping cart (we walked into WalMart without one, and I realized at some point early on we should have one; that was the beginning of the end), I had a moment of clarity and said, “I can objectively step away and observe that we are being really lame.” She said something about how being lame with someone else being lame is what’s fun about it. It reminded me of being a lame teenager running thru Thrifty (now Sav-On) with my friends Sandy, Vicky, Ling-Ling, cousin Jennifer, whomever was with me at the time, laughing and looking at all the really cool stuff we knew our parents would never let us buy. Like makeup and razors.

When I’d first gotten home and Vanessa had finished telling me about her most recent work drama, I said, “Boy, we picked a good time for moving in together.” She agreed, as the drama had been rotated between me, then her, then me, and then her, and having a friend at home made things so much easier.

Oh, I’d forgotten to mention in the post about the weekend that on Friday, we decided Vanessa would stay with me another month until her boyfriend moved down and they could find a place together. Yay!