cindy's world

It got a little serious in here yesterday, so I’m gonna bring some yippy skippy through today’s post. And nothing exemplifies yippy skippy more than…DINNEYLAN!!! Unless you’re running the half-marathon at Dinneylan, in which case it’s too crowded to skip, and you’re too tired to yip.
(As always, rest mouse pointer over photos for captions.)

We first entered thru Downtown Disney.

At “Innovations,” Professor Tom Morrow (from Tomorrowland) introduces us to the technology of tomorrow! This is also where I had those aging photos taken.

What’s happier than a bunny grinning in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle?

Uh-oh! Don’t look now but you’re being spied on!

Ya know, the thought of Disneyland is a lot nicer than the reality of it — or rather, the reality of being mobbed to death in its colorful vicinities.

Here’s some lazy people on Main Street, USA and a very unlazy beast of burden. When I was small (okay, I’m small still), I couldn’t bring myself to add my weight to the haul load the poor uncomplaining animal has to pull.

Sometimes, as an Asian girl, I just feel like I can’t live up to my parents’ expectations of me. “Look at me, I can never pass for the perfect bride, or the perfect daughter; Can it be, I’m not meant to play that paaaaaaart? I can see, that if I were ever to be myself, I would break my family’s hearrrrrrrt!”

Right as you enter Disney’s California Adventure, you see this atop some buildings on your left. It’s like a giant postcard from California.

The day we were there taking these photos (or, as I like to call it, the Day At Disneyland and California Adventure in which we Rode No Rides — That’s Right, No Rides, No Lie) was the last day the two parks had their Christmas decorations up. This is a tree in California Adventure, which is about 1/3 the size of the main tree in Disneyland’s Main Street USA.

Now wasn’t that nice? Awwww, Dinneylan. *sigh of contentment*
(I admit this isn’t my better photowork, it was a new camera, and it was sunny, and I didn’t have a wrist strap and I was paranoid I was gonna drop the camera and break it. AND the camera has no viewfinder, there’s only the screen in the back, which I couldn’t see cuz it was too sunny so there was always a glare that washed out the display, and *insert more excuses of your choosing here*.)

More and more personal blogs are going “private.” That means you need to be a pre-approved reader of that blog to have access to the website. Usually the blogger would send out an invitation to show you that you’ve been added to the “in” group, and you’d have to log into their blog with an ID and password to read it.

I think bloggers didn’t expect to be so easily searchable when they first start publishing their journals and thoughts online. When blogging was a relatively new thing, we just figured that we’d give out the address to people we wouldn’t mind keeping in touch with, and we can all stay updated on each other’s lives whenever we’re near an internet connection. I’m sure it was in the backs of everyone’s minds that maybe, just maybe, the address will be given out to someone in our extended network, and perhaps once in awhile, a stranger would stumble across our blog, read a passage or two, and then leave forevermore, and what’s the harm in that? So we create and personalize our sites with information easy to remember about us; we use our real names, cities, colleges, other identifying information. And then now, Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and other search engines have become insanely powerful that a few key words bring up our blogs to anyone who knows even the most basic things about us. My buddy James, whom I’d lost contact with for years, randomly found this site by googling “cindy vicky ucla,” Vicky being a childhood friend he knew I hung out with a lot and UCLA being my alma mater. Despite not using my last name anywhere on this site, I was still that trackable.

When I started blogging, one of the appealing things was, and remain, the widespread access of the general public to what I put out there. I love feedback, and I love to entertain. I love to contribute to other people’s thoughts, even if it’s a momentary “Hmm” by them as a new angle enters their perceptions. But then I’m a literary exhibitionist. That being said, I didn’t write much that would be devastating if specific people happened upon my blog. Except, maybe, if my parents found this blog. Mom, Dad, if you’re reading this, I’m still your happy little pristine daughter who doesn’t think too much and sees no evil — especially not in the form of certain things in certain men’s pants. Ew, boys! Gag! Ick! Puke! Boys are GROSS!

I’m not sure what to think about blogs going private. I think on one level, it defeats the purpose and the fun of a published web log. But on another level, I can understand the violation of being read by someone who’s your mortal enemy, who may use information against you, or if someone from your past whom you wish to have no contact with hunts down your blog, or if an ex’s new significant other suddenly becomes obsessed with you and fixates on your blog. Not all “surprise! remember me?” comments turn out like James. It’s no one’s fault, it’s just the nature of being on a WORLD-WIDE web.

To combat the accessibility, people have created either super-anonymous, code-named blogs that aren’t readily searchable, or have created a password-protected private blog, either in addition to a public blog or in place of one. Sometimes the public blog loses color and detail as people hesitate to put possibly incriminating things online.

It all just makes me a little sad, as much as I see the necessity in going private, publicly.

I have this problem where I can’t throw stuff away. I remember where every little note or memoir came from, and I sit there and reminisce everytime I try to clean the house. I’m running out of room. I don’t know how one person fills an entire house and 6 closets with crap. This past week, I finally gritted my teeth and threw some stuff away. And then I go visit my parents for the weekend and my mom dumps 4 boxes of crap on me. They’re remodeling their entire house so my mom’s doing massive clearing, and figures I attach enough sentimental value to stuff that I’d want to retain every vocab index card I made in high school, every Chinese School exam paper, all my Chinese workbooks, every doodle of dream outfits I drew in elementary school, every hair doodad I ever had (and I grew up in the 80s, so you know about THOSE hair doodads — most of them plastic, many of them fuschia), every funky eraser and cute writing utensil that I collected since I was alive, makeshift ghetto sticker books, a Halloween mask cut-out book. Believe me, being a packrat is not a trait you just suddenly acquire in mid-life, so the 4 boxes are packed just from the first 10 years of my life. I even uncovered my Slam Book and had a good laugh over the entries written in there.

Now there are boxes and boxes in my car as well as in my house. What do I do?!

P.S. The reason I write about this is because I tried to clear some of the clutter by bringing them to work, and now I’m looking helplessly at my work L-desk covered with stuffed animals, a cat sitting with a fishing pole, 15 or so little gumball machine aliens, photos, and newly added from my Christmas Present Collection ’06, a scented flameless candle from Mr. W’s brother and a hamster running on a wheel powered by my typing speed via USB from Mr. W.
*giggle* The hamster is running his little legs off. The wheel is actually making a whirring sound as he races with my fingers.

Mr. W and I went on a photographic outing today to Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure. It’s mostly so I can try out my new camera that he got me for Christmas. I’ll post some of the pictures later, but I found this to be funny…
There’s a building called “Innovations” where it’s all advanced science stuff, virtual reality, futuristic…stuff. So anyway, when we were in there we saw a section of computers that take your facial photo and ages it based on some questions you’d answer first, i.e. your gender, whether you’re over 10 years old, your race, and whether you’re a smoker. Mr. W’s aging showed his eyebrows gradually sinking and getting whiter, his face got wrinklier, his eyelids drooped a little bit, his lips got thinner, and he got a double chin. When it was my turn, my photo came up and we kept hitting the part of the screen that says “older” and it didn’t seem to be doing anything. And then Mr. W hit the button that said “younger” and it gradually restored me to my original photo. Oops, I guess it WAS displaying the “aged” version of me. Here’s the “younger” and then the “older” photos:

If you didn’t see much of a difference either, then you know why we laughed. “Can you handle that?” I asked him, implying he’d have to deal with me looking like that when I’m old. He laughed and said, “Yes, I think I can handle that.” By the way, I am a non-smoker. If I smoked my face would be more aged because of the toxins from sucking in smoke and chemicals. Aside from having slightly drooper cheeks and a double chin, I don’t look that different. “It’s cuz I’m Asian, and Asians don’t really age,” I joked.

I was just praising Mr. W for taking such good care of me, and he said I take good care of him, too. I said I don’t do anything; I just come over, eat, and then sleep. “Nuh-uh,” he said, “You keep me entertained and make me laugh.” I said, “A monkey can do that for you.” He said, “But monkeys are illegal.” “Not all monkeys are illegal,” I said, and just as he opened his mouth to protest, I defended my position with, “Sea monkeys are legal.” He said sea monkeys aren’t very entertaining. I said you can train them to do tricks, like flip in the water to get food. He doesn’t believe that brine shrimp are actually trainable.

And then there was this silence as I reminisced about my own sea monkeys back in the day.

I can’t believe my mom wouldn’t buy me a Peachy stationery set but she’d let me have sea monkeys.

*** Addendum ***
Mr. W just pointed out that it’s no longer “Saturday morning.” I looked at the time of the post. “Oh.” Time flies when you’re on vacation and sleep all day. He and I had that conversation earlier, too. I said that it doesn’t feel like we’ve been together 16 months, it feels more like 8. He said time flies when you’re having fun. I added, “And when you’re about to die.” There was a pause. He said, “Then I must be flying to my death, cuz time has been passing faster when I got older.” I said, “Or maybe I’m flying to MY death. Cuz time sped up when you and I got together.” He said, “Maybe your other relationships just passed slower.” What, like a kidney stone?

What did I do on the 3rd day of my week off? I got another person to join my gym today. It’s Mr. W’s neighbor, the guy he went to Alaska with. He’d mentioned over the weekend that Mr. W has noticeably lost weight and that he wants to do the same for himself, so I told him about my gym’s current promo and went with him to join today. Now he’s all excited and motivated to work out with us. It seems like everyone’s motivated but me. I dunno, maybe I think that if I could get a bunch of people to join with promises to work out with them once they do, that’d get me into the gym more, out of a sense of obligation to them. Most days, if it weren’t for Mr. W or my trainee dragging me to the gym at their own momentum, I wouldn’t go at all. I’m always glad I went, but man it’s hard to get up and go.

Mr. W, by the way, is getting a lot of attention lately. Apparently some female coworker’s been making flirtatious remarks about how he’s gonna get back into his original hot shape, and how she remembers when he first transferred to his current work location and he was one of 3 (in her opinion) best looking, most eligible bachelors, and she said something about how women would make excuses to be in his area so they could go check him out. *shrug*

Sixteen months ago today, Mr. W challenged me to take our “friendship” up a notch to something less platonic. He asked me by maneuvering me (with dizzying speed) onto my back on the floor of his living room, pinning my wrists above my head, straddling my hips, and leaning into my face while breathing, “You sure you only wanna be ‘just friends’?” One of the hardest things I ever had to do was turn my head to the right and whimper, while cussing in my head, a pathetic sounding “Yes…?” Despite how unsure I sounded, after pausing for about 4 seconds to look carefully into my eyes while I tried to keep the blood away from my cheeks in defiance of my pounding heart, Mr. W good naturedly said, “Okay!”, grinned at me and rolled off of me. I still laid there a few seconds, panting for breath. As consistent as I remained right then to the “there’s too much on my plate right now, I can’t handle anything more than just being friends” talk I gave him at BJs Pizzeria the afternoon before, I knew that everything would change that night. Mr. W would tell you, however, that he knew we wouldn’t stay platonic long from the very beginning, “as soon as you figured out what was good for you,” he’d once said to me facetiously.

I’ve been smiling and giggling ever since. Despite the occasional (okay, monthly) ironing-out-compatibility bicker seshes.

While I was screwing with one of my favorite photos, to turn this…

…into this…

…for this post (at Jordan’s request to be photoshopped into our fun), it turned out that the original photo got deleted out of my laptop. I just checked my home desktop and I don’t have a copy on here. I still have this photo on the image hosting website, but it’s small and won’t have the same resolution and print quality. 🙁 I checked with college roommie Diana and she didn’t have an original copy, either. I explained that I’d already deleted the memory card that had the photos in my camera. Her brilliant solution is:

diana: oh
i guess you will just have to come back to visit
and i” get phil
and we can take another

I hope Jordan’s happy. This just goes to show that no good deed goes unpunished. Hmmph.

This morning, I dropped Mr. W off at work, then drove his car to get an oil change. I brought along a 815-page hardback cover book, Lin Yutang’s Moment in Peking: A Chinese Novel. My mom had read it in its Chinese translation, then loaned it to my aunt Jessica, and they both have been looking for it in its original English to get me and my cousins to read it. After years of searching, my mom found this ratty well-loved copy from an online bookstore that exchanged used and out-of-print books. My mom also printed out a 3-page Wikipedia quick-biography on the author and put it in the book. (I honestly don’t know when my mom got so internet-savvy.) This was back in October, and she’d been asking me during my weekly visits whether I’d read the book yet. My answer was always a sheepish no.

Truth is, it’s hard for me to crack open a Chinese historic novel because it makes me feel guilty that I haven’t written one. Plus, I haven’t read a book for months, not since I read, for no good reason, three or four women’s erotica short-story collections within a few weeks’ time. I actually do miss reading. I miss the excitement I used to feel as a 10-year-old entering a library and seeing the shelves and shelves of great stories just waiting for me to bring them to life, to dance within my imagination.

Being stranded as a car went through servicing, while being on vacation from work, I have run out of excuses. I hugged the heavy volume to my chest, walked into the little waiting office, selected a chair, and settled in to read. What caught my eye before even opening my book, however, was a current Premiere magazine with Will Smith on the cover. It was an interview about his new movie, Pursuit of Happyness, which I really want to see. So I picked that up. It’s a 2-3 page article, shouldn’t take me too long to go through before I cracked open the serious novel. Half a page into the article, I saw a tow truck driving up outside the window. I saw a teal bumper of the car being towed. I thought about how it looked like my high school friend Edgar’s high school car. And then I saw Edgar’s mom come out of the towtruck. Oh no! I walked outside to see if everyone was all right. I hadn’t seen Edgar’s parents for years. After the usual greetings and comments of how I’ve grown, and the ubiquitous critiques and reviews of how I look now with respect to my skin, my hair, my makeup, and of course, my weight, I found out that there was no accident. The “check engine” light had gone on, so rather than risk breakdown, Edgar’s mom simply had the car towed in to the shop. About 15 minutes later, they left. I went back to the article. And then the mechanic came back with the car keys and a bill.

Oh well. I guess I’ll have to find another opportunity to crack open the book. Right now it’s resting under my left elbow as I type like an armrest. It is a useful little book.

After commenting about sweet dreams and blogging in the last post, I immediately went to bed to dream that I was indeed blogging, except the keyboard was so cool that it sort of did an osmosis thing such that the information travels above the keyboard in a white cloud and goes in its own organized way into the computer and appears on the monitor. Upon awakening, of course, I realize it’s not that different from a wire connecting the keyboard to the computer, but in the dream, I was all impressed by how high-tech this keyboard relays information. And then the dream went through several other humorous courses that ended with me actually laughing so hard at a sarcastic joke I made myself that I woke myself up snorting. Laughter in the dream translated itself into two bedridden snorts/snores in real life. In the darkness of the wee hours, I remembered the dream in such detail upon waking that I wanted to go straight to the computer to blog it, but I couldn’t find my glasses so instead I just peed and went back to sleep. You guys missed out. Sorry.

Mr. W, I’m proud to report, actually stayed up to midnight this year. It took hours and hours of playing “Guitar Hero,” though. I think I’m all guitar heroed out now. It’s not as much fun when you realize each stage you unlock still has no songs that you know. We rang in the new year with some sparkling pomegranate juice watching, from the warm safety of the couch, the crystal ball drop on the Times Square mob along with 3+ tons of paper confetti. I’m not exaggerating on the record tonage of crap the New York sanitation guys had to clean up as their first job of the year. I hope they recycle. Mr. W saw on the news, as we were approaching the countdown, some self-proclaimed “confetti disbursers” sitting at the highest buildings over the Square, ready with business-card sized squares of confetti that they were just going to hurl by the handfuls down into the crowd to herald the new year. I wanna know, how do we get THAT job? You get to hang out at the party without being trampled by the drunken crowd, watch the goings on from a great vantage point, and you get to throw crap right on people’s heads below, and everyone cheers instead of calls the cops!