cindy's world

I gave Mr. W a Motorola Razr V3 for his bday, which led to much of the weekend spent with him playing with his phone via his laptop via the Bluetooth connection. He transferred address book entries, downloaded and cropped MP3s to transfer to his cell via Bluetooth to use as ring tones, transferred photos he took while in Alaska and some from Disneyland to use as caller ID tags or phone wallpapers. Such is the life when one dates a techie. I’m happy he’s enjoying the features on his new phone, even tho it did bring about a slew of cussing about the defects of networking. Well, that was bday present #1. Bday present #2 is a 2-day pass to Sea World. We’re going this Saturday. Luckily, the 2 days don’t have to be used consecutively, so we have until the end of May next year to go again. I’m really looking forward to Shipwreck Rapids floating river ride, R.L. Stine’s Haunted Lighthouse 4-D show, and the Journey to Atlantis water coaster ride. I’m only slightly concerned with getting my stuff wet. My bailiff, who went to Sea World this past Saturday and brought me back a map and schedule, suggested I just bring a plastic Ziploc bag to hide the camera and electronics in when necessary. Mr. W gets to play with his new camera and maybe, just maybe, we’ll have photos as impressive as Jordan’s (who recently went to the Sea World in Florida).

For the life of me, I can’t remember what we did on Saturday, but on Sunday, we went to an amazing champagne brunch at the Anaheim White House with the very generous gift certificate that Navy Girl Vanessa gave me when she moved out of my house. We’d never been there before, but the food and presentation were so impressive that he said, “How do I get rich so I can eat like this all the time?”

And then after brunch, Mr. W and I went to visit my parents, where we hung out for like 7 hours before going out to a Taiwanese dinner with them. Yummy greasy “street” food! Ah, childhood memories…

I was requested to employ my “Mata Hari wiles” to get some information about something yesterday. I didn’t know the reference then, but now I do:

Mata Hari. Behind the patina of the pseudonym Mata Hari (“Eye of the Dawn”) is a rather prosaic Dutch name. Margaretha Geertruida Zelle (1876-1917) used Mata Hari as both her stage name and nom de guerre when she chose to become a spy for the Germans before World War I. Acclaimed throughout Europe for her interpretations of naked Indonesian dances, she met many men in high places, including German officials in Berlin who recruited her as a spy in 1907. During World War I, her dancing was the rage of Paris and she became intimate with top Allied officers, who confided military secrets to her. Mata Hari, who slept with literally hundreds, thrived on the deceit of espionage, but she was eventually betrayed to the French secret service by another German agent, Captain Walther Wilhelm Canaris, later to become head of the German secret service in World War II. Her trial was the most publicized of the many espionage trials held during the war, and her name became synonymous with a glamorous female spy and femme fatale. She was convicted by a French court-martial ane executed by a firing squad.
– The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, Third Edition, Robert Hendrickson

That’s kinda cool for this esoteric belly dancing German-speaking wiley fraulein.

Last nite, I redeemed Karen’s birthday dinner offer. I met up with her at her Santa Monica apartment, so that I could also visit Dozer…

who is my cat Dodo…
‘s older brother.
Scottish Fold cats are very inbred and therefore have genetic vulnerability to many health problems. Don’t make me get into them. We love the Do-brothers, as Karen called them once. The above are the 2 most recent photos taken of the brothers, thru my new cameraphone. (rest mouse over the cats to make them chase it! just kidding, it’ll just bring out a caption.)

We had dinner at a new Spanish tapas restaurant called Tasca in Beverly Hills. Her best friend Jose of nearly 2 decades met up with us there. The chemistry between the two of them is hilarious. They are so night-and-day, but so in sync, that they totally play off each other. The earliest example I can think of is when Karen wore a Windex T-shirt to school in high school, and Jose happened to be wearing a plain white T-shirt. They looked at each other, and Jose took a big marker and drew a window on the front of his T-shirt. And the two walked around together all day like that. (I may have gotten the details on that story confused, so feel free to correct me, Karen.) Anyway, dinner was fun and delicious. We all took turns ordering small plates, and ended up sharing something like 7 small plates and 2 desserts. The Argentinian owner was very nice and service-oriented. Karen assured him we’d be back.

Thanks for the birthday dinner, Karen!

Mr. W assembled a really amazing slideshow with special effects and rotating photos and Louis Armstrong singing “When You Wish Upon A Star”, with the photos he took (and doctored on an advanced version of Photoshop) of my 30th at Disneyland’s 50th. I’ve got a CD-Rom for everyone who attended, but here are some random photos. It’s really too bad I was bloated that day, but it was so hot I couldn’t wear enough fabric to cover up…
(rest mouse over photo for caption)
Bet you can’t tell that Sandy and Alex (white t-shirts in the middle, top row) were photoshopped in from another photo:

That tattoo was not on my arm. It was photoshopped in from an image at the entrance to the building of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride:

Yes, we spent money on Pirates headgear. Sandy’s cowboy hat and my tiara was a gift from Sandy’s boyfriend, and my Pirate Princess mouse ears hat was a gift from Mr. W:

Vicky’s wearing a San Diego Rock-n-Roll Marathon ’06 t-shirt. Thanks for your support for her very first marathon, ever! Ignore all the pink I happen to have on, I swear I’m not normally a “pink” person. The rude Happy Bunny tank, a gift from Vanessa, says “A makeover? You should be run over.”

Some of us walking. All of us drenched after Splash Mountain. Everyone in this photo is with the group:

We’d separated, and Mr. W and I went exploring on Tom Sawyer’s Island. Here is some other portions of the group riding Tom and Huck’s raft to get to the Island:

Me waiting at the shore to greet them on the Island:

Ah, the many variations of headgear. Mark got me the paper birthday hat that has another set of pop-out Mickey ears. So in that photo, I had 6 ears. “I have many (y)ears on me ‘cuz I just turned 30,” I told people. It was a very good day. =)

Call it a combination of heat (Southern California has been in the mid-90s to low 100s F for the past few weeks now) and hormones, but I have been unable to peel myself off the couch for many things lately. Twice this week, I’d fallen asleep with the big screen on all night. Thank goodness my body wakes me up around 6:30a. Listening to TV in my sleep makes the characters in my dreams speak of infomercial topics.

Today, I don’t feel too bad about my recent laziness, since I filled the non-jujitsu time last nite with vacuuming the house (still loving the new Hoover) and changing the litter box. The run I’d planned to have in lieu of jujitsu last nite but didn’t, was done today at lunchtime. I did the run at the gym on a treadmill on a hill program and I took a shower afterwards, but it was so hot that driving the mile back to work was more miserable than the 3-mile run. I was actually nauseated when I got back to the courtroom. I have got to up my mileage, and fast, to prepare for the half-marathon in September. Too bad my lunch hour isn’t longer so I can fit in more miles. I am becoming increasingly concerned about the heat and sun on the morning of the run, tho.

Tonight: belly dancing!

Late yesterday afternoon, I was going through some divorce cases when I came upon one that was mostly done correctly, which was impressive because neither side had an attorney, altho it was clear that a paralegal was involved in the paperwork. It was also impressive because there are 2 minors involved in the marriage, and when there are kids, the requirements increase and get more stringent.

The only thing wrong with this paperwork was that altho they had agreed to $450/month of child support that the father is to pay to the mother upon finalizing the divorce, they didn’t specify how much of this $450 pertains to the 8 year-old and to the 7 year-old. Because one kid will reach age 18 before the other one, I don’t want a situation where the father decides that he intended $440 to be for the older kid and now that the older kid’s support expired, he was only gonna pay the mother $10/month for the younger kid.

I decided to be a nice person and call the petitioner (who happens to be the mother) and ask her what the breakdown is per child and I could just write it in myself, initial it with the notation that the information was given to me over the phone, instead of rejecting the entire divorce packet and mailing it back, thereby causing a huge delay in processing and she’d have to go back to the paralegal who typed up all her paperwork and have it redone, and then mail the whole thing back to me and it’d be behind all the other divorce cases I received before her correction came back. Here’s how that phone call went.

Female voice (with screaming kid in background): Hello?
Me: Hello, may I speak to Isabel, please?
Female: Isabel not here!
Me: Okay, may I leave a message for Isabel, please?
*CLICK* What the –? Oh, no, she did NOT just hang up on me —
*CLICK* (screaming kid again in background) Oh, maybe she just dropped the phone or something)
Me: Hello?
*CLICK*

APPARENTLY she tried to hang up the first time, picked up to check to make sure it was hung up, realized it didn’t hang up, and then hung up on me AGAIN! I am SO rejecting this divorce packet. I should hold it for a month and THEN reject it, but I’m not, I’m just gonna reject it today. I don’t know whether it was Isabel I was talking to or not, but if you’re not going to do anything with phone calls, don’t pick up the damn phone!

I finally went to jujitsu again! It was a beginner’s class so there was a lot of standing around as people learned how to set up a hip throw, but in the warmups and ab exercises, I got worked. It was also a good 85 degrees Fahrenheit in the room. Mr. W said that people there would be upset that I didn’t show up for the last 3 months and they’d disown me for the Hawaii trip, and I told him, “Nah. They’ll welcome me with open arms.” And that’s what happened with the returning students. It was also Vanessa’s first day back, and Josh was there, so it was a lot of fun.

After class, those of us who’ve been around the class for awhile and have become friends went out to Chomp! sushi for my bday. Yes, again. It was a really good time, lots of laughing and goofing off. I’d post the details of the night, but I don’t think it’d be good for my karma.

*** LATER ***
Navy Girl Vanessa’s email to me:
“I don’t think it’s bad karma to blog about [Creepy Guy]. If you knew he was going to read it and you wanted to hurt his feelings then that would definitely qualify for bad karma, but you are just journaling your feelings, so need need for karma to come back.”

I already told her that I’m gonna blame it on her, so here we go…
There’s this creepy guy in our jujitsu class whom I’ve mentioned on a few earlier blog entries. The first time he met me he thought it’d be good to walk around with his shirt off and try to start up a conversation with me. Subsequent to that, Vanessa had an experience where she was hugging people hello or goodbye and he planted himself there so without much thought, she included him on the hugs. After that, for a long time, he tried to hug her every time he saw her. Someone else told us that he “accidentally” grabbed another female student’s breast during practice. When I was chatting with a student about taking Mr. W to a future performance of Cirque du Soleil’s “Quidam” and the student was telling me his recommendation of “Quidam,” Creepy Guy kept interrupting the conversation and following me around asking me about when I was going and saying how he wants to go, too. For days.
So anyway, last nite, Creepy Guy was on his way out the door after class but overheard someone mentioning going out for my bday. He came back and announced he was hungry, and asked everyone where we’re going. Damn. We all acted indecisive, but he wouldn’t leave. So we had to decide on the plans with him having planted himself under our noses. Vanessa had to go run some errands so she bailed out. Josh, however, totally took one for the team.
Chomp! seated us at a semi-circular booth and Creepy Guy got in first. I was like, “Frick, that means he’s gonna be in the middle.” No one moved to sit after that, cuz either way you slide in, you’re gonna be next to Creepy Guy. But then Josh got in, I clambered in behind him, and then one of the blackbelts, Ramon, got in the other side. Whew. Josh complained afterwards that Creepy Guy’s breath stunk and he wouldn’t shut up. HAHA! Creepy Guy’s not a bad person, but…
Oh yeah, and afterwards as we were about to separate outside, Ramon got up and hugged me again. I saw Ramon moving toward me and look like he was gonna hug me, and my immediate panicked thought was, “Now there’s gonna be a hug chain and Creepy Guy’s gonna hug me, too! ACK!” And that is just how it happened. Ramon hugged me, wished me happy bday and apologized again for forgetting, Rebecca then hugged me, and then Creepy Guy stepped up, and then another blackbelt Lee, and Josh and I walked off since we parked next to each other. Of course the first thing he did was bust up laughing at me. As we walked off, Creepy Guy said pointedly, “I guess I’ll walk home.” We just kept walking, and apparently the 2nd instructor Lee offered Creepy the ride. Josh said, “THANKS, LEE!” I’m sure Creepy didn’t know what the thanks was for, but Lee did and grimaced. Vanessa said that that’s how Creepy tagged along for Ramon’s birthday celebration, too; saying the same hinting thing and suggesting that someone give him a ride. Gerardo took the hit that day, not wanting any of us girls to give him a ride home.

Now I must cleanse my karma.

*** STILL LATER ***
I just added a photo onto my Disneyland post.

I just saw a Kellogg’s Special K cereal commercial. It starts off with a young woman joining her girl friends at an outdoor cafe for lunch, and as she smugly sits down all glowy, her friends remark on how great she looks and ask what she’s been doing differently. She says that she’s been eating breakfast. Apparently she’s been eating not just any breakfast, but a breakfast of Special K cereal with berries blend. The commercial ends with the announcer saying, “Studies show that women who eat breakfast — like Special K cereal — weigh less!”

But what I heard was, “Studies show that women who eat breakfast like Special K cereal way less.” I thought, “Why would they say that in their commercial? Why would I buy Special K cereal if I’m gonna like it way less?”

Isn’t there supposed to be someone whose job it is to find and eliminate miscommunication like this before they spend billions of dollars putting it on the air?

I took a “What Kind of Soul Are You?” quiz. I think it’s strangely accurate, down to the yellow rose. Here’s what it says about me:

You Are a Visionary Soul

You are a curious person, always in a state of awareness. Connected to all things spiritual, you are very connected to your soul. You are wise and bright: able to reason and be reasonable. Occasionally, you get quite depressed and have dark feelings. You have great vision and can be very insightful. In fact, you are often profound in a way that surprises yourself. Visionary souls like you can be the best type of friend. You are intuitive, understanding, sympathetic, and a good healer. Souls you are most compatible with: Old Soul and Peacemaker Soul

I had a great time at Disneyland! Mr. W and I got there right when the park opened at 8a; the crowd was thin, and we (along with my gym trainee and her son) managed to hit all the rides we’d wanted to in 45 minutes, i.e. the revised Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones Adventure, revised Space Mountain, and Buzz Lightyear’s laser shoot-at-targets ride.

REVIEWS: The Pirates ride is revised by making it more Jack Sparrow-themed. The pirates talk about Jack Sparrow, and Jack Sparrow mechanical dolls make 3 appearances throughout the ride. But other than that, it’s pretty much the same. Oh, and it’s wetter. As far as the new Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest movie goes, apparently this 2nd Pirates movie was just the interlude to the 3rd Pirates movie. There’s no payoff in the end. The entire movie was pretty much just a set-up to announce the 3rd movie. Johnny Depp, as usual, was entertaining and completely dissolved into his eccentric character.
The Space Mountain ride is updated in that the red pulsating laser beams that twirl around the coaster as you make your first ascent is gone. Other than that, it’s still completely dark inside save for the “stars”, the coaster still does a lot of drops and spirals. The music is still 70s “techno” meets 80s detective show theme songs, like “Simon & Simon” or “Hawaii 5-0”.

The hour-long scavenger hunt was successful. The winner, my bailiff and his girlfriend (who had annual passes to Disneyland for years and used to go 2x/month) got 8 out of the 10 items. One they didn’t get was a cameraphone photo of them rubbing Aladdin’s Lamp, because that show wasn’t open and they didn’t think to grab a fake lamp at a store for the photo. The other one they didn’t get was to get a cameraphone photo of them with an employee named Cindy. They ran around asking employees whether there was a Cindy who worked there, and they kept being redirected to different stores until they got a definite confirmation where a Cindy works. They ran into that merchandise store and the manager pulled out the work schedule and that employee doesn’t get on shift until later that night, way after the scavenger deadline would be up. I can’t believe that in all of Disneyland, there’s only 1 Cindy employed. So anyway, they won $80 cash. The 1st runner up, my trainee and her son, got 6 items and $40 cash. My childhood friend Vicky, who got to Disneyland late when the scavenger hunt was already in full swing, said that she was at the Carnation Cafe on Main Street hanging out while waiting for me to go fetch her, when she looked across the way and saw Esmeralda, the automated fortune teller doll, at the front of the Penny Arcade. She decided to walk over there and get a fortune. Right before she could, however, she saw some people run up to Esmeralda, read frantically from some colorful piece of paper, and get a fortune. She saw over their shoulder that the paper had something about “Cindy’s birthday” and “Treasure Hunt” on it. Haha!

The 50th Anniversary Fireworks Show was amazing. I wasn’t that interested at first, since parades and shows had always been the perfect time for me to hit all the rides with shorter lines while other people were clustered around the streets waiting for the shows. Well, I still did that with Navy Girl Vanessa, her boyfriend, and our jujitsu friend Josh; while the rest of our party were holding up the perfect spot for the show facing the Castle, the four of us rode Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. That in itself was a hilarious experience. Vanessa’s boyfriend and Josh were deeply involved in a conversation about martial arts and self-defense on the streets, so Vanessa and I sat together on the train with the guys behind us. As the coaster went, for about 30 seconds all you could hear were the roar of the train on the tracks and the screams of the other passengers, then it quieted down, and from behind us drifted, “…So anyway, when you’re grappling…”. They continued the conversation in totally normal voices in pieces in between coaster roars and other people’s screams! It was sooo funny to overhear.

Anyway, I was a bit nervous about mixing work people, childhood people, and jujitsu people, but it worked out really well. Everyone got along, and people were arriving and going home at various times but when we were at Disneyland, we all generally stayed together (except during the scavenger hunt and lunch). The 4 of us early arrivers stayed until midnight when the park closed. Oh, and Mr. W and I got annual passes, so we’ll be back. Good times!

This is probably the best birthday (month) I’ve ever had, with last year’s birthday up north coming a very close second. Oh, and the birthday celebrations still continue… Josh is going to pull people together after jujitsu today to take me out for my birthday drinks. I guess I’m going to jujitsu today! Vanessa promised to, too. And other friends who were unable to join us at Disneyland offered belated birthday meals and drinks, which I’m going to take them up on. Vanessa had always advocated “milking” your birthday, but I didn’t expect to milk it to this degree. Haha!