cindy's world

Belly dancing got sexy tonite! She started the class with the usual technique-intensive, fast-paced stuff, but ended the class with a routine of lots of slow gyrations, sweeping arm movements, “snake arms,” “tulip hands,” body undulations, “alligator jaws.” I’m gonna try to remember the routine and do it right now in front of my wall mirrors. There are no mirrors in class, and I wonder if I look as good as the instructor did doing these movements. BRB…

Okay. Why do I look like Tai Chi when I’m doing this?! I gotta do this sometime in a tight tanktop and an Indian skirt instead of in the fitted black T and black dance pants that I’m in right now.

…or opened a can of worms, whatever your favorite expression is.

Remember that Motorola Razr I bought Mr. W as part of his bday present? What happens when you give such a phone to a gamer/techie freak is that he subsequently spends weeks downloading games, music, programs, code cracks, program hacks, etc. for a freaking CELL PHONE. And our conversations dwindle down to stuff like this online just now:

Cindy: Hey, you never called me back.
W: Give me a minute i will
W: involved in very dangerous and delicate phone/computer mod
Cindy: at least you’re not DRAMATIC about it.
W: ssssshhhh!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

I bet I don’t hear from him.

Did I buy him the best present or what? This is how you know you got something someone really likes — the object replaces you.

I worked late yesterday, left at about 6:30p. Since I would’ve missed half of jujitsu by then, I went to Mr. W’s and coerced him to take a 3-mile run with me. It felt really good for me, altho he was in pain. What a trooper. For me, it was a nice, comfortable run and I could’ve gone farther. That makes me feel a bit more comfortable about the upcoming half-marathon. I need to get a good MP3 player that’ll play for 2.5 hours straight.

Probably because of that run, I was happy and inspired and was wired even today. At lunch today, I worked the gym hard with my trainee. She’d been expressing some discontent about having plateaued in her weight loss, so we did a 4-exercise freeweight circuit with no rest in between sets (diagonal bicep curls to tricep extensions to lunges to shoulder presses, X3) and finished off with some assisted pull-ups.

Tonight: belly dancing! After I run over to a coworker’s house to feed her kittens. She was suddenly hospitalized yesterday morning and she lives a few blocks from me, and how can I let kitties go hungry?!

Yesterday I was engaged in a long conversation with an old friend (who JUST emailed me right now, how weird!) on the drive home from work, and the conversation continued as I plopped sideways onto my chenille La-Z-Boy recliner, which ended all hopes of making it to jujitsu last nite for me. I decided to at least go for a run and try to prepare somewhat for the Disneyland half-marathon coming up in a couple of months, and I changed into my running clothes. Before I even got off the phone with the first friend, Dwaine called me. Turned out he had a hard month at work and was looking for a drinking buddy. So off came the workout clothes, on came the casual going-out clothes, Dwaine stopped by to pick me up in his new ’68 restored Camaro, and we were off.

Actually, it didn’t work like that. After first showing off his car, Dwaine came inside where I showed off my chair. He’d heard about it, but never seen it. True to its reputation, the La-Z-Boy sucked in the bachelor and it took some time and convincing to get Dwaine out of that chair so we could go out. He really enjoyed the motors.

Anyway, Dwaine felt like Italian food so we attempted to go to Market City Caffe in Brea, but it was just closing at 9pm. So we skidaddled over to the Cheesecake Factory near the Brea Mall. The food was wonderful, Dwaine introduced me to a refreshing drink made with Absolut Citron, tonic water, and a slice of lemon, but I ordered a yummy mojito. When the bread came, we found that the foil-wrapped pats of butter were cold, which made them unspreadable. We lamented on this simultaneously and each warmed a pat of butter in our hands. Here’s where Dwaine gets mega brownie points… We were just sitting there, laughing and munching, and I reached for another piece of bread. I scooped up the sliver of butter I had left on my foil and spread it on the bread, which wasn’t nearly enough, but before I could reach for another packet of butter, Dwaine tossed a pre-warmed pat in front of me on the table. He had stopped eating bread long ago. I looked up at him in surprise. “I saw that you were running out of butter and I thought, ‘She’s gonna need more butter!’, so I already warmed this up for you.” How considerate, observant, and gentlemanly! We joked about how a slick a guy would be if he carried around foil packs of butter in his wallet, how one day when it’d come in handy, it’d be more effective than condoms stored in a wallet on winning a girl’s affection, and if you get stuck in a doorway, you can grease yourself out of the situation. I dunno, it made sense when we were drinking. BTW, Dwaine titled this blog post.

He also took the following shot with my camera WHILE driving, with his arm out the window pointing the camera at us. “One of the few benefits to having long arms,” he demonstrated. I was just relieved he didn’t drop my camera on the street, or have a passing car take his arm out.

Of course on the way back on Sunday we had to stop by Solvang.

Early Saturday morning were our tours at Hearst Castle. The weekend was in the 60s, overcast, misty, foggy. It made the tours very comfortable and it was a nice escape from the recent heat wave, but it didn’t do much for our photos. The indoor shots also didn’t come out, as we weren’t allowed to use flash. Here are a few salvageable photos; you can read the captions by resting the mouse pointer on the photos. Hearst Castle in the mist…

The Buildings on the Property (I’d identify them, but I wasn’t listening to the tour guide. Again. Some villa, a main house, I guess.):

Statues were scattered in abundance around the property:

Fruit trees and lush vegetation can also be found on the property:

And of course, the famed outdoor Neptune Pool:

In case that’s not enough water for swimmers, there’s the 22 karat gold plated indoor Roman Pool:

Mr. W and I drove up to San Simeon with no hotel accomodations made ahead of time. This is the first time I’ve traveled like that, but we got lucky. The San Simeon Pines Resort, which happens to be a place my judge recommended, had one room left, but for that night only. The front desk lady said because it’s a resort with its private beach, woods, golf course, pool, clubhouse, shuffleboard, etc., people book the place up months in advance for their vacations. Minutes after we snatched that room up (for less than $100! lodge-style rooms with private fireplaces were like $104. What a steal.), the front desk had to reject room requests over the phone and she lit up the “no” on the “vacancy” sign.

I was recently informed by 2 friends who don’t use Internet Explorer as their web browser that my captions don’t pop up when they rest their mouse pointer over my photos. If you’re running Netscape or Foxfire, you can right-click on the photo and drag down to “see alternate text” or something like that.

The Golf Course:

On the Private Beach: