cindy's world

It’s finally chilly in the mornings again. It started to cool off a bit in California before my Hawaii trip, but right before we left, the dry, cow-scented Santa Ana winds heated up SoCal again. This weekend it was so dry that, having forgotten to smear body butter on myself after the shower Sunday morning, my skin felt itchy at the Getty Center, like it was gonna rip if I bent over too suddenly.

Even though the high was forecasted to be 85 degrees F today, the morning was icy. I wrapped up in a thick terry bathrobe after my shower. Dodo-Puff’s fur was cold to the touch, too. He’s fluffier than usual, which means his body’s sensing the climate shift as well and is growing extra fur. (Either that or I need to brush him more to get rid of the old fur.)

I like chilly mornings. It reminds me of winter mornings past.
* Me as a 6-year-old in the country for the first time, away from the tropical island I was born, looking out the window minutes before dawn breaks, admiring the water-colored people-less tree-lined streets that is America.
* Reading Calvin & Hobbes cartoons in elementary and high school, wishing I could relate to the sled-rides, the snow monsters, the snow fort, the mittens/scarves/snow pants.
* Reading other stories of 60s and 70s American life, wanting so badly to tap into a maple tree for maple syrup that I could boil on the stove, then bring outside to pour on some tightly packed and pounded snow on the ground to make crunchy maple candy.
* Awakening in the mornings at UCLA in the chill, seeing Diana up and moving around making tea, or plodding along in her pajamas getting set to study with her gigantic headphones.
* Walking the Naples water canals in Long Beach with my coworker Sandy and our significant others, admiring the extravagant Christmas decor of the rich with endless money to throw at electricity.
* Curling up on my sheepskin rug in front my crackling lit fireplace the first time I was really truly happy in my own skin being single, smiling at my house, my Dodo boy and multitude of lit candles around me.
* Mr. W lighting his fake fireplace for me knowing I love the dance of flames, and finally allowing me to throw in a pine cone so I could watch it change to carbon (I had a blog by then, and I wrote about that here).

There are so many more memories, in between all these events, that I savor and relive when the temperature drops. =)

I fell in love with this bed at the Getty. It was taken from Paris in the 1700s. The embroidery is beautiful on this robin’s egg blue silk fabric, and the detailing is amazing. The tassels were neat and different, the top corners of the canopy had plumes of real ostrich feathers. I’m bummed the photos didn’t come out (no flash allowed in museums).

My mother, ever the muse for my runaway imagination, said, “Maybe you like that bed so much because in the past, in another lifetime, that was your bed.” Well, in that case, I think it’s really messed up that I used to run from across the room and leap onto the bed, and it was my bed, and now, just because it’s a few lifetimes later and I’m in another body, I’m not allowed to even touch my own bed anymore. Hmmph.

Today Mr. W and I took my parents to the Getty Museum. My mom had been wanting to go, which my supersleuth powers picked up through her barely perceptable hints, as follows:

Mom: Have you ever gone to the Getty Museum?
Me: Yeah, I have, with my friend Lily.
Mom: Oh. I really want to go. I’ve been wanting to go.
Me: I see.

It was a beautiful day in L.A., uncharacteristically clear, after the 3rd day of a long weekend.

Mr. W stopped to take a picture of a pretty yellow flower in the lawn. A chicken stopped by to admire the flower, too.

I can pose for a sculptor, too.

In the gift shop, I found this really cool paper camera with a scalloped lens!

It makes me look like this.

Ha! Stupid kids.

Fun with Mom & Dad!

Afterwards, we all went to Beverly Hills for some garlic lunch at The Stinking Rose. It was a very nice day.

All photos courtesy of Mr. W (except for the one of the kids crying, which I took on his camera). Roll mouse pointer over photos for captions.

In no particular order except the order in which my eye spotted them on the thumbnail lineup…rest mouse over photos for captions…

Diana, who was in downtown LA for a hearing yesterday, wanted to come down to our courthouse to catch part of our jury trial. She didn’t actually make it until the courts closed down and besides, we got an early verdict (both counts not guilty) so she would’ve missed everything anyway. Instead, she had the cab drop her off across the quad at City Hall and walked over to the courthouse to meet me. I happened to see her across the wide square grass lawn and as we walked toward each other, the first thing she said to me in person was a yell: “YOUR HAIR’S SO SHORT!!!”

With 3 hours until I had to get her to the airport, she opted to not spend precious hang time stuck in traffic, so we went to happy hour at Outback Steakhouse across the street from the courthouse. I think the yummy factor of the new menu surprised us both. The seared ahi and its two sauces were delish, and we filled up on the meaty chicken wings. I think for the first time ever, I drank more alcohol than her. (Pick up your jaws, Diana friends — I only had 2 drinks. She just drank very little.)

I didn’t look up directions to John Wayne Airport in Orange County; I figured that’s why I paid the extra few grand for the navigation system, right? I blame the drinks for my failure to program the airport into the nav system before we took off, and while driving, the nav system disables most programming buttons presumably so I won’t stare at the screen, push a bunch of buttons, and instantly crash. So I pulled off the freeway at what turned out to be the most complicated exit/entrance ever, Diana said to do a list search for SNA, the airport code, and I did, and we went in circles trying to get back onto the freeway. We ended up having to hit the freeway from a few miles down, as the no u-turn signs and lack of side streets made going back on where I got off impossible. While on the freeway, Diana and I laughed about the time she came down earlier in the year when I hadn’t gotten this new car yet and were horribly lost going to a restaurant without a navigation system. We laughed about all the traveling gone wrong on that trip and how those days are over since I’ve now stepped into the wonderful world of GPS technology. And then my nav piped up and told me to exit. So I did. “Hmm, I don’t recognize anything around here,” Diana noted, “I’ve never gone to the airport this way before.” “It must be a major shortcut, cuz it says we’re only 4 minutes away,” I said. We drove into the heart of Santa Ana, commenting all the way about how we don’t see any planes and we don’t recognize anything. Finally, surrounded by Vietnamese and Spanish signs in some plazas, the nav system said, “Your destination is straight ahead to the right.” “It IS?” Diana asked dubiously, looking out the window. What the hell. The map on the nav showed a grid full of streets, and no big space for an airport. Where the hell were we? I pulled into the parking lot of a McDonald’s and this time did a search for “travel,” then “airport,” then “John Wayne.” The guide pointed back onto the freeway to a location about 5 miles away that looked like a big open field with circular runways on the lit map screen. Driving there, things finally started looking familiar. Geez.

That’s not where the nav adventure ends. After I dropped Diana off, I followed its directions to go to Mr. W’s house, 6 miles away according to the nav system. It led me into a secured parking lot where I had to push the automated machine for a ticket to get the wooden arm to lift, then follow nav directions to drive out the other side of the parking lot, where I had to hand the ticket to the guy manning the tollbooth and tell him apologetically, “My navigation system actually directed me through here. I really didn’t park.” He took the ticket, pushed the lever to raise the arm and kindly waved me through without charging me. “Thank you so much,” I said helplessly.

What is it with me and Diana trying to get anywhere when I drive?! Altho, getting lost with a nav is slightly more comforting than getting lost without one, as with the time I was lost in Long Beach in the middle of the night about to drive into the water.

On the drive in to work this morning, radio personality (and American Idol host) Ryan Seacrest kept throwing out teasers, saying that after the commercial break, he and his co-host Ellen K. will tell us about something you can do that’d get you out of any relationship dog house, it’s something so ingenius that even if you were on massive negative points, this one thing alone would put you back in the positive.

So I waited through many commercials. They returned. Ryan again said that this great idea is coming up to put you way ahead in the relationship game. They played a song. I waited. And then finally, the promised idea when I was already in the parking structure…

Ryan told us about a guy (presumably friend) who’s just tired of seeing his boyfriend’s car all dirty. The boyfriend wouldn’t clean out or wash the car. So one day when the boyfriend was out without his car, Ryan’s friend, at Ellen’s advice, took the car keys, drove the car out and had it washed, he filled the car up with gas, and then drove it back home. When the boyfriend came home and saw the sparkling car on the driveway, he was in enraptured joyous shock for 24 hours. “You cleaned my car? You took the keys, drove it out and had it washed? AND you put gas in it?” Impliedly Ryan’s friend got real lucky that day and night. “It’s so simple! It’ll solve all your relationship problems and put you way ahead in the positive! All the chocolates and flowers you can get don’t compare to this,” Ryan said. Ellen said, “See, and it’s something relatively effortless but it’s something that most people wouldn’t even think of. There’s just something about people and their cars.”

My reaction: :/

I imagined coming home and seeing that my car’s been suddenly washed. After the initial shock of disbelief, I’d freak out like so: “You washed my car? You TOOK my friggen keys, you DROVE my car out someplace, and HAD IT WASHED?! Where the HELL did you take it, some freaking automated carwash where they scratched my car to death with spinning sandpaper??? GIMME THE DAMN FLUORESCENT LIGHT! I wanna see how badly it’s scratched! DAMN this! Now I have to Zaino it with Z5 Scratch Remover! You better PRAY this sh!t comes out with 3 layers of Z5 polish! I’m probably gonna end up spending my entire freaking weekend claybar-ing it, too! Don’t look at me! Just…go away!!!”

But then I’m not your usual girl.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been having near-nightly nightmares about Mr. W. I forget the dreams within an hour of so of waking up, but I know that I’m furious at him in all of them. Sometimes things happen that aren’t necessarily the fault of Dream W, but the situation it places me in the nightmare sends me reeling, making me self-analyze, even in my unconscious state, whether I’m overreacting or unreasonable. The pattern upon waking, of course, is the slow dawning realization that Dream W situations would not happen in real life as the real life Mr. W does not have the asshole behavior that Dream W exhibits. I’m not sure whether these dreams are my subconscious acting out my worst relationship fears, or maybe putting Mr. W’s face on behaviors of past assholes I’d been involved with. 2 nightmares ago, I’d remembered the dream long enough to tell Mr. W about it in the morning. As I relived the details, I wondered aloud why Dream Cindy didn’t just dump Dream W as I feel she definitely should have. So in the last dream I had, Dream Cindy did dump Dream W. Here’s me IMing Mr. W about it:

Cindy: OOH, I had another nightmare about you this morning!!
I was SO MAD when I woke up.
I was so pissed in the dream I actually DID dump you this time.
You bought this game on some game console that you kept playing, but you never let me play.
Mr. W: Awe I must be an asshole in your dreams
I want you to play
Cindy: so I finally made a big point of sitting in the chair you always sit in to play the game, because the controller is right there, and you simply moved the controller and played from another position.
At first I was just like, “Jerk won’t share his turn.” And THEN I realized “WAIT a minute, there are TWO DAMN CONTROLLERS. He could totally let me play AND play himself at the same time! But he just WON’T! He DELIBERATELY plays in single mode!”
And I was SO mad that I got up and said, “You know what? That’s IT, it’s OVER!” and you seemed perfectly content to let me leave but you STILL wouldn’t let me play.
AAAAAARRRRHGGGGHHHHH!!
Mr. W: Wanna come over and play xbox tonight?
Cindy: HAHAHA!!!
Ya know…after that dream, I kinda do.
Mr. W: Yaaaeeh!

I swear, not all my dream infuriations are over such stupid things.

Having just found out why the photo captions pop up for some but not for other readers of this blog, after Wilco finally explained his “pet peeve” of miscoding to me in his comment a couple posts ago, I fixed every photo’s coding back through September of 2006. That includes the Disneyland Half-Marathon Run photos. I could go back farther, but I’m lazy, and I don’t know that readers even go back into archives to know the difference. Besides, this pop-up caption problem only seems to affect Firefox users.

I had been using alternative text because when I post a photo, I get prompted for alternative text content. From now on, my photos will have pop-up captioning, but no alternative text. I just don’t see me doing both due to above-stated laziness issue.

You really do learn something new every day. Thanks, Wilco and James.

If you have Internet Explorer, resting your mouse pointer on the photos will bring a pop-up caption. *side glance at Wilco, who pointed out the wrong usage of the alternative text tag, but did not educate me on what the correct title tag is*

I walked up to this great sideways-growing tree on the beach, reached for a branch, and all of a sudden, this huge wave crashed toward me! I yelped and jumped on the nearest branch to keep from getting wet. Mr. W, who was on a hill behind me, laughed and started taking pictures.

I was now committed to this tree, as the tide seems to have suddenly risen. I figured I may as well curl up in its protection.

Cradled in this branch, which looks like the tree’s smile, I enjoyed the scenery.

These photos were the ones I took atop the tree:



When I was ready to hop off, I watched the waves and counted how much time I had to hop off and run up the slope before the water came crashing in again, and just when I had it timed just so, I realized that behind me, these 3 or 4 Asian tourists were posing right next to the tree, behind me, taking photos of themselves by the tree! Hello, could you not wait till I got off the damn tree? Am I not ruining your shot?! So I had to wait uncomfortably for these men to finish the pictures before I could hop off and make a run for it.

Story 1:
10 of our building’s sheriffs worked overtime yesterday at the polls. This morning, some of them told me about one particular man there making some sort of a show for the TV cameras. The polls close at 8pm. At a few minutes past 8pm, a man in his 60s or 70s makes his way toward the lobby on crutches, taking his time. One of our deputies opened the door for him but told him the polls close at 8p. The man made like he was going to fall, staggering wildly, so our deputy, aware of the TV cameras in their direction, deliberately looked away so he couldn’t be accused of pushing the old man out and depriving him his citizen’s right to vote. Our deputy explained again that the polls were closed and that he was going to call a sergeant to escort the guy out. The guy started writing furiously on a pad of paper about how he was being deprived of his right to vote, he “DEMANDS” that he be permitted to cast his vote, etc. And then he handed the pad over to the deputy. He could talk, but put everything down on paper and handed the deputy a pen as if he wanted the response to be written down for the record. Our deputy refused to write anything, but read the notes and again stated that the sergeant was on his way down. The guy had a fit with other deputies and polling authorities there, and by the time he was done, 40 minutes had gone by, and the polls had closed by law before he had even come in. And yes, he was escorted out back to his car. Other deputies who were stationed outside that building stated that they saw the man in his car at 7:30p circling the parking lot aimlessly, and even after parking in the handicap spot, he was just sitting in his car fiddling and shuffling and not getting out. They had even thought him suspicious at one point, wondering what he was doing there, and he didn’t even get out of his car until past 8p. Other regular poll authorities working there said this man does this every year; coming in late and having a fit with everyone about not permitting him to vote. Gosh, and the most exciting thing I saw yesterday at the voting station was a woman volunteer collapsing a voting booth machine and disassembling the computer table’s legs.

Story 2:
The district attorney and public defender in trial with us right now just told me the story of their “favorite defendant ever,” whom they tried in another department last month. Apparently, this woman had some beef with a specific police officer, so what she did was she took a firearm (and she’s a convicted felon so it is illegal for her to be in possession of firearms) to the police station this guy was assigned to, walked up the front steps, threw the gun down on the ground and loudly demanded to see this officer, calling him names and basically having a fit. Other officers came out and took her into custody immediately. (Hey, it was a convenient walk to the holding cell with many many deputy witnesses.) I read about this in the newspaper when I was in Hawaii, not realizing it was our case. In trial, she insisted on appearing with a shaved head, such that the jurors were given a clean view of her forehead (which displayed the tattoo “F— YOU” completely spelled out), her left temple (which displayed the tattoo “I don’t give a f–k” or something to that effect) and her right temple (which displayed a lesbian pride tattoo in derogatory slang). She insisted on taking the stand, and her attorney, after ascertaining before the jury that she did not see nor speak to the targeted officer that day, asked her what she would’ve done if the officer had been there. She said gleefully, “I would’ve told him he’s a bitch.” That’s it. That was all she wanted. She went through all that, went thru trial and got sentenced to 16 months in state prison, just to create a public stage in which she could call this officer a bitch. She did it several times in trial, and very happily so. I asked, “If that was all she wanted, why couldn’t she just walk into the police station, ask to see the officer and then call him a bitch to his face, and then just simply get a misdemeanor for disturbing the peace or get escorted out? Why did she have to bring a gun to the scene and be charged with felony gun possession?” The DA and public defender looked kinda stunned. “I guess she just didn’t think it through,” the DA said. The funniest thing about her not thinking this through is, the day she did all this, the officer she wanted wasn’t even working that day.