cindy's world

Remember those funny little anecdotes my judge was leaving for me on my desk? I got more today and these are my top 2 favorites:

#2
Q: What’s the difference between a good lawyer and a bad lawyer?
A: A bad lawyer can let a case drag out for several years. A good lawyer can make it last even longer.

#1
From Actual Court Records:
Judge: Please begin.
Counsel: Thank you. (to witness) Miss, while you have, if you do have — you still — oh, you don’t.
Judge: That was a great start, Counsel.

Before I write what I came here to write, I feel compelled to report that this morning, someone came upon my site by doing a search for “jordan boobies” on Google. Jordan, your boobies should feel honored. Especially since on your blog, you promote feeling them on the regular.

I had a great day at the spa yesterday. I hit the whirlpool, hit the steam room, and then got a relaxing 80-minute full-body massage that put me in a sort of trance-like state. After finishing, I let the massage oils absorb into my skin with another 10 minutes in the steam room, then hit the great rainfall showers. At one point I had water spraying on me from 3 different directions. By the end of my time there I didn’t even care that despite my recent weight loss, my stomach fat still jiggles as I walk, which I observed with dismay in the mirror as I went into the whirlpool in my bikini. (How low does my body fat percentage need to be to stop jiggling?)

After I went thru a few loads of laundry, I headed off to Mr. W’s house. He and I looked at a few more houses online that had dropped into our price range. Our realtor agent told us that we’re not locked into the short sale house, so if in the meantime we see something we like better, to feel free and explore other options. I personally have a problem with the short sale house’s bedrooms and bathrooms (BIG problems with their bathrooms), but the rest of the house is fine. But if houses formerly out of our price range lower their asking prices due to the spiraling market and fall into our price range and we don’t have to do any fixing-up to move in, so much the better. Vicky seems to have found such a house for us online and we looked at it online last nite. We were very interested and will probably drive by to look at it soon. It seems more move-in ready than the short sale house, is newer, is valued higher, has a prettier pool (Again with the pool. Why do people build so many pools?), is larger, and it’s the SAME PRICE!

I have faith that whatever happens will happen because it’s meant to and if I lose something I think I want, it’s because something bigger and better is around the corner that I’m meant for, and I trust the universe completely. Oh, and I had another perfectly reconciled credit card statement that accounted for every receipt I have, “coincidentally”.

I was about to set my alarm clock for tomorrow morning when I realized — wait a minute — I don’t have to go to work tomorrow. Happy Birthday, Mr. Lincoln! HA-ha! So tomorrow, whenever I get up, I’ll do some laundry. Then I have a 3pm appointment at Glen Ivy Day Spa for an 80-minute massage, courtesy Mr. W and my court reporter. My reporter had given me a gift e-certificate for Christmas, but I was so busy I never used it. Then a few days ago, I got another e-certificate from Mr. W for Valentine’s Day. His gift was so generous that I think I’ll have to split it up into two sessions. Upon receipt, I’d emailed him immediately to thank him, and to tell him to stop wasting our wedding money. I was joking. Partially.

Speaking of money, Mr. W and I went to our realtor’s office after work today and signed our house offer papers. And then we stayed and discussed our finances with him for an hour, figuring out ways to make ourselves more appealing to the bank for mortgage loans. The bank’s current formulas for risk assessment sucks. The crappy California housing market is making loans so hard to get; lenders are getting crazy conservative. By that, I mean stingy and paranoid. But we’re still in a pretty good situation to appear attractive to lenders. Jumbo loans are considered anything $417K and up, and those have higher interest rates, which is ridiculous cuz you can’t even get townhomes for under that price in Southern California these days (unless you’re going into seriously questionable neighborhoods with resale values inversely proportional to the probability that you’ll get shot living there). Luckily, it looks like an “economic stimulus package” bill is newly passed that increases the definition of a jumbo loan, just temporarily, to the neighborhood of the $700Ks. That means we’ll be able to get a higher loan for a decent house and pay a lower interest rate if we buy property this year. (If you read the article I linked to, it criticizes the effectiveness of this bill in warding off a recession, and claims it only helps certain people in certain financial situations in specific housing markets, and those people and situations listed includes us. And if the bill doesn’t stop the housing market from its continual slide downhill, well, then that’s just more affordable inventory for us to pick from.) What a stroke of luck! Interest rates are also about to drop again in a month. Housing prices are still spiraling downward as sellers get more desperate. This is the perfect time to buy. “It looks like everything is lining up perfectly for us,” Mr. W observed happily tonight during a dinner of Thai food. I reminded him that I’d told him last year that my finances always line themselves up magically, and that since he was going to be with me, his finances would line up, too, as a necessity by proxy. And maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that when we walked into my realtor’s office, the first person I ran into was Grace’s dad (also a realtor). I had no idea he worked with that company, and my realtor told me that he’s been there for about 2-3 years, which is approximately the period of time that I’d lost touch with Grace’s parents. It’s almost like Grace is sending her hello to me, letting me know that she’s watching over me and not to worry about finances, things will fall into place. I’d also gotten two other positive signs about finances in the past few days. One, I was balancing my checkbook, and for the first time that I can remember, it balanced out exactly between my checkbook register and the bank statement without my having to make adjustments to account for things that either haven’t processed or that I forgot to account for. Two, I was reconciling my receipts with my credit card bill and for the first time ever, I accounted for every receipt in my room without leftover receipts that didn’t show up on this billing cycle, and without receipts I still need to retrieve from my wallet downstairs.

I know this is way too much boring personal financial information, and it doesn’t mean anything to anyone except that I appear to be incredibly anal in accounting for my finances, but it means something to me as far as signs go. So I’ll just take it as that, that I’m being told celestially that I’ll be okay.

Here are a couple photos from Chinese New Year dinner.

Gong xi fah tsai!

What a Saturday. Mr. W woke up and decided that it was such a beautiful day that we just HAD to go hiking. So we grabbed his neighbor-buddy, who just happened to have an annual National Parks pass, and drove out to the mountains to hike. Turns out strong ankles and a good sense of balance is really important as we stepped carefully and hopped from rock to bark to rock to cross the rushing streams. The recent California rain made all the water levels rise and the waterfalls were much wider and faster than usual. I did almost fall backwards into the water once, but the neighbor, who spent most of the time behind me (Mr. W was in front leading and I was in the middle for safety reasons), stepped up and grabbed my arm when my ass was a foot from the ground. I managed to keep my shoes and socks dry until the last stream, tho, when some water ran over my left toes and since I was in my running shoes, the fabric upper sucked the water right in. Man, I was pissed. I hate walking around in wet socks. I did enjoy the doggies on the trails, tho… they just jump right into the water all happy and waggy.

After a long afternoon of hiking, we went to Big Mama’s Rib Shack and pigged out on soul food. Good times.

Another progress update on my projects:
* Roof – Friday, I selected my roofer and left a voice mail with the 2nd company thanking them for their professionalism and blamed it on my association that I’m going with another roofer. In truth, the association left it up to me to decide. I went with the more expensive one that seemed to give me more for my money. But I felt incredibly guilty calling off the second company cuz those people were so professional and so nice. In thinking about it now, I STILL feel bad and almost wish I had another leaky roof to give business to them. =P Anyway, the roof job should begin in about 10 days.
* House Hunting – Mr. W found a really nice short sale in a very desirable area nearby to his current home, and we’ve gone over there 3 times this weekend already to look at it in the day, at night, and met my agent there today. The price is right, the inside could use a little work but it’s not bad at all, and Mr. W really likes the house’s potential. The only thing we both don’t like about it is that it has a pool. Ick. But it also has a huge enclosed patio, so can we say, par-tay house? We decided to put our offer in today. Maybe next summer, my bday can be celebrated at home with a house pool party!

Yesterday was Chinese New Year Eve. After work, Mr. W and I went to my grandma’s house, where my parents were already poised to dig into a Chinese feast, to ring in the new Year of the Rat. (That’s right — if you’re pregnant now, you’re going to hatch a rug rat.)

At one point during dinner, my grandma asked Mr. W in broken English (plus a lot of gesturing) whether he voted in the Primaries on Tuesday. He said that he didn’t, even tho he’d intended to. I obviously didn’t cuz I was at work late and then I went to Vicky’s to do my parents’ taxes until midnight. Turned out my parents didn’t vote, either. My grandma raised her hand proudly. “I did,” she said. We looked at each other.
“So at this entire table, the ONLY ONE who was a good citizen is grandma?” I said.
My mom said dismissively, “She always votes. She also votes in the Taiwan elections. She flies back every year to vote.”
My grandma said, “I vote 91, and I vote 92…” which I took to mean she’s been voting annually for the past 18 years. Turned out, as she started saying “yes”es and “no”s, that she was telling us how she voted on the propositions. She’s informed on the propositions, too? I felt like a putz as she showed everyone her new “I voted!” sticker, which she had in a protective plastic sleeve. Haha.

After dinner, we had an exchange of gifts. Mr. W had designed and embroidered a circle featuring all the animals of the Chinese zodiac, the Chinese word for that animal next to the animal, and the English word for the animal. My dad’s animal (boar) and my mom’s animal (dragon), with their Chinese characters, are on either side of this zodiac wheel. He made a similar one for my grandma with her animal, and framed both. They were impressed and my mom remarked how Mr. W is like my paternal grandfather, who used to make me clothing and baby comforters. Traditionally, the older generation gives the younger generation(s) red envelopes of money, so Mr. W and I made out. We made out so much, in fact, that I felt guilty and returned half of what my grandma gave me and Mr. W did the same. Of course she wouldn’t simply take it back, so my mom stealthily stole a new red envelope from my grandma’s bedroom and gave it to me, and I stuffed it with $120, wrote “To Grandma, Happy New Year! From Cindy and [Mr. W]” on it, and propped it up against her toothbrush in her bathroom.
“You have to call her when you leave and tell her it’s there,” my mom said.
“She’s going to see it, it’s on her toothbrush.”
“Call her! What if she misses it?”
“Only if doesn’t brush her teeth!”
“Call her!!”
“All right!”

When my parents and we (us?) parted ways at my grandma’s door, my mom said her goodbyes to us and said, “Call her!”
“Okay!”

When Mr. W and I were walking to his car at the parking area, my parents, who’d gotten to their cars first, drove by us. My mom paused her car in front of us, rolled down her passenger side window, and called out her car, “Call your grandma!”
“Okay!!!!”

I forgot to call her.

I was reading Wilco’s recent post about Super Tuesday and the primaries election (he actually has photos of the ballots when he went to go vote; if he took these himself I can’t believe they let you walk in with a camera), and it reminded me of a conversation I had with Dwaine a year ago in my living room.

Dwaine: Obama is not going to be elected.
Me: You think the country isn’t ready for a black president?
Dwaine: I think the country is more ready for a female president than a black president.
Me: Really!

Although Barack Obama won more states than Hillary Clinton yesterday, Hillary Clinton got the states with more delegates, which is more important in the big picture. One of these states is California. Damn it, damn it.

Despite my opinion about these two candidates and their neck-to-neck race to be front runner for the Democratic party, I was disheartened by the way Obama has presented himself to the average public voter. That thing when Hillary Clinton extended her hand to Obama for a handshake and Obama turned his back to her at the media-heavy State of the Union Address by President Bush on January 28, that was captured in photographs and talked about everywhere. Also, a local but widely-syndicated radio station, 102.7 KIIS FM on the morning show hosted by Ryan Seacrest, invited Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Mitt Romney to come on air the morning of Super Tuesday to address the sector of the public who listen to pop radio on weekday mornings. The only one who accepted the invitation and did address these voters was Hillary Clinton. Obama’s people said he was too busy to call the radio station.

*sigh*

I haven’t weighed myself in like a month cuz the digital body fat scale I have at home has finally run out of battery after like 8 years. Mr. W’s old bodyfat scale, which I knew how to operate, went on the fritz and he’s got a new one that I can’t work, so I haven’t been using his scale, either.

When I arrived at Vicky’s apartment yesterday, she was out walking the dog but had told me to go ahead in as the door was open. So I went in her bathroom, and saw that her digital body fat scale, the same model as mine, was out. Of course I had to get on it, curious and nervous after my prior 2 weeks of only going to the gym twice to do cardio. And of course I had to strip from head to toe so as to eliminate any possible excess weight (You think I’m bad? My mom wouldn’t even step on her scale if she was damp from her shower.).

This model of scale had always placed me at approximately 28% body fat, and I had been about 126ish pounds for a long time. When my weight fluctuated down, the body fat would go up, and if my weight went up, my body fat would drop, indicating that if I put on or lost weight, it was muscle. But yesterday, I was at the lowest weight I’d been in a long time, 120.0 lbs. The body fat percentage was 24%. I had never been at a LOW body fat percentage WHILE weighing less, too! At least, not in recent memory.

What I think happened was that with the increased weights my gym trainee and I had been doing before we took a break, my body composition had changed dramatically to put on a lot of muscle which burned off a lot of fat. And with the two weeks of not doing weights but doing a little cardio, my body burned off some of the accumulated muscle but did not put the fat back on due to the elevated metabolism created from the new muscle. So the result is a drop on both ends.

I’m 5 pounds to goal!

(Click here to see a post I’d written last year about what body fat percentage is right for your body type.)

I think I’ve generated some positive karma in the past 24 hours or so. Yesterday after work, I went over to Vicky’s so we can have a tax filing party. By that I mean we sat there on our laptops in her living room and I did my parents’ taxes while she did hers and then when her boyfriend arrived home, she did his. I left my TurboTax there with her in case she decided to be nice and do her parents’ taxes, too. Haha. We were tax-filing fiends until midnight, when I left to go home.

After I arrived home, I made 4 separate trips from my bedroom upstairs to the the garage downstairs to haul down the four heavy filled-to-the-brim trash bags plus one big box of clothes that I had cleaned out of my closets, with Gym Trainee’s help, last year. (You can read about those antics here.) I was going to donate them but didn’t get around to it, which was a good thing because yesterday I received this email from a coworker:

The brother of a dear friend of mine lost his home to a fire. He was renting and did not have renter’s insurance. He and his 3 children literally ran out of the house with just the clothes on their back. My girlfriend, Irene, and her husband, Matthew, have taken them in so they can get back on their feet.

So if you have any old clothes lying around ready to go to Goodwill, please consider bringing them to work and I will deliver them to Irene and Matthew to give to their niece and nephews. If you can help, it would surely be appreciated. If you do not have children’s clothing, as you do not have small kids, you can help by just keeping them in your prayers.

I wrote back to her:
I have 3 giant trash-bags full of old clothes. They were from the ’90s so that was my “dress like a boy in big baggy clothes” stage (in high school). There may be things in there that could be unisex, especially because of their oversized nature and my androgynous taste at the time. The clothes are clean and washed; I had simply cleaned out my closets last year and hadn’t gotten around to getting the clothes to goodwill yet.

I guess I had more clothes than I’d remembered. Anyway, we just did the trunk-to-trunk switch a few minutes ago. My coworker was shocked how much clothing I had. I told her I had to fight Dodo for them, too, because he wanted to play with the plastic bags and chew on the plastic drawstrings. There are tiny puncture marks and tooth marks on the tops of several bags.

I’m working away…but I’m here to do a quick status report of my projects.

1.) Roofing – My association treasurer’s letter “to clarify the secretary’s letter” arrived yesterday. He explained the situation to the homeowners about having to pay for my roof, and brought up a good point: if my roof had been replaced 2 years ago when everyone else’s roofs were replaced, everyone would’ve had to pay an extra $300 THEN, so it really doesn’t make a difference whether they pay then or now because either way everyone has to pay for my roof. I got the 2nd estimate yesterday, too. It was only $200 less than the first estimate. So I’m gonna compare the 2 contracts and see who gives me the more bang for my buck.

2.) Parents’ Trust – Vanessa’s a huge advocate of setting up a Living Trust, because she found out the hard way when her dad passed away without having done one, that there are major messy, extensive and expensive probate issues that they’re still trying to clean up. College roommie Diana sent me a Living Trust format which I customized the best I could and this past weekend, Vanessa (who’s a legal notary until February 8, which is in 3 days) came with me to meet my parents, have lunch with us, and she notarized the Trust and Deed for them. I had a judge look the papers over but he had some concerns, so he referred me to a good Probate attorney for document review. I submitted my documents to his office today and set up an appointment for Valentine’s Day (the first open appointment).

3.) House Hunting – No significant progress. Just keeping an eye on the market and on the places we’d like to live. House prices are still dropping (woohoo!) and more nice houses are coming up for sale (woohoo!) and interest rates just dropped another half percent last week (woohoo!).

4.) Wedding – I got my photographer booked. Josh, my buddy from jujitsu, is gonna do it. He’s a new Orange County Sheriff but was a professional photographer, so he’s, like, friend/photographer/security all wrapped up in one! Talk about multi-tasking! Plus, he’s going to give Mr. W all the raw digital images he (and his photographer assistant) will take and Mr. W likes to play with Photoshop, so Mr. W will make our wedding album. I’m pretty sure I’m way ahead of schedule; all there is left to do as far as vendors go is to find a florist for our bouquets.

5.) Taxes – Done and mailed out yesterday. Why wait if I’m getting money back? I just have my parents’ taxes left to do.

6.) Exercise – My gym trainee and I are back in the gym. Yesterday we did upper body and today we did lower body. I’m sore, but I guess that’s a good sign. Aside from being a little weaker, it doesn’t look like my 2-week hiatus did much damage. Whew!

Okay, I guess this update wasn’t that swift.