cindy's world

I bought a little container of planted Venus fly traps over the weekend that I’ve brought to work. There’s been gnats irritating the crap out of me in the past week. I think they’re coming from the avocado trees’ soil. Hopefully this’ll resolve the problem, altho it doesn’t look like it’s caught anything yet. All the little pink teethy mouths are still open and hungry looking.

Today marks the first day I’ve gone to the gym in 9-10 days. There were plenty of little excuses — lunchtime work meetings, evening HOA meetings, bartending class, my trainee being unavailable due to her own lunchtime meetings and errands. I’ve even leaned heavily on the fact that I’d injured my left wrist months ago by benching with an easy bar (yeah, don’t do that; use a straight bar or skip it if the straight bar for your weight isn’t free), and now it hurts to support any weight whatsover so my constant heavy weightlifting through the pain has lengthened or maybe even worsened the problem. But the real reason for my lack of appearance at the gym is that I haven’t felt like going. Today, because gym trainee and I both hadn’t gone in over a week, we decided to make this a cardio-only week to give my wrist an extra week to heal and to warm us back up into working out. 10 minutes elliptical on hills, 10 minutes run on a treadmill, 10 minutes stairs, and we were sweating bullets. Serves us right for being so lazy the past week.

Saturday, Mr. W and I had dinner with my parents, my aunt, and her sort-of significant other. She refers to the guy as her “best friend” and “soulmate” but she’s still married to my uncle. Anyway, the guy is a definite fan of the gym and is wider than he is tall (all muscle), and all evening long, in between his pill-popping of various supplements, digestive aids, and fat burners, he insisted that Mr. W adopt his workout and supplementation regimen, with a GIANT push for creatine. Mr. W pushed it on me and said I won’t let him take creatine, but I just didn’t want to get into that stuff with a fanatic. It got awkward as they were leaving, tho, cuz he hugged us goodbye (really friendly guy, been in my aunt’s life for over 10 years now) and then said to Mr. W and me that he’ll see us soon, if not then he’ll see us at the wedding. After they left, my mom said that my aunt had told her that he can’t go to our wedding because her husband will have a fistfight with him. I guess I’m only addressing the envelope to Mr. and Mrs., then. I don’t want two grown men fistfighting at my wedding!

On Sunday in the middle of watching “Angel,” I felt my first twinge of stress since planning the wedding. A couple of people had asked me last week how the wedding plans were coming along, and I’d answered honestly that I haven’t done a thing toward that end in months. It used to be because I was so ridiculously far ahead in wedding planning that I haven’t thought about doing more, but now that it’s been months since I did anything except order that cute little cake topper that came today, I started to feel like I’ve let myself fall off-track and waste weekends doing nothing but hanging with Mr. W idly playing Wii or watching “Angel.” So I ran off into the other room, typed out an email to MOH Vicky and my mom to schedule measurement day for our dresses, scribbled out a to-do list for the 2 weeks of vacation I have coming up in May (which I will fill with wedding and home repair stuff), and felt better.

Sunday night, Mr. W invited his neighbor over to my makeshift bar in Mr. W’s kitchen. I wanted to get drink mixing practice in, but I don’t really drink and there’s not enough adults to drink my stuff ordinarily. Sunday night, I gave the guys a menu based on the liquor we had on-hand, and I made Mr. W a Long Beach Iced Tea (gin, rum, vodka, Triple Sec, tequila, sweet & sour, splash of cranberry juice), his neighbor a Sour Apple Martini (vodka, Sour Apple Pucker, splash of sweet & sour) and a Washington Apple Martini (Crown Royal, Sour Apple Pucker, splash of cranberry) which his neighbor has now decided are his all-time favorite alcholic beverages ever, and I made myself a makeshift Red-Headed Slut (Jaegermeister, peach schnapps, cranberry juice; I didn’t have peach schnapps so I substituted it for a shot of Triple Sec and it came out tasting nearly identical). I forgot — on Saturday I also made Mr. W a dirty extra-dry blended gin and vodka martini, and made myself a Bacardi Cocktail (Bacardi Premium [dark] rum, sweet and sour, Grenadine). 2 drinks in a weekend is bad for me, especially when I haven’t been at the gym.

I think the guilt over not fixing up my house (removing bathroom wallpaper, repairing the ceiling damage caused by the roof leaks) is permeating my subconscious. This morning I was trapped in a nightmare about there being a landslide and my house being half submerged underwater. In my dream I thought for some reason that I could just leave it underwater cuz the inside’s dry, but then suddenly the walls got moist and the ceiling started leaking in the upstairs hallway, and Dodo was getting concerned. I also dreamt that I kept trying to go to work, but 3 attempts all landed me at Disneyland. So in my dream I seriously considered calling in sick from my physical inability to be anywhere but Disneyland. Oh, and some staff member at Disneyland was trying to peddle some nutrition meal substitute on me.

MOH Vicky and I came across this small store that sells Japanese stuff. Cute stuff, like cartoon videos and colorful Japanese snacks and trinkets. I was musing at the video/DVD section and the older saleslady (whom I assumed was the owner) said that if I liked those, I should check THESE out. Then she went in the back and returned with some anime porn, and they were all on a special with a large discount. So I was all excited to see anime porn, especially really cute anime, and I left the store with a bag of anime porn DVDs and a few snacks for $29.09! What a deal! As we were walking away, MOH Vicky and I shared a bag of multi-colored puffy snacks, like Pops! cereal (man, I haven’t had those for awhile!) that looks like those long Cheetos Puffs, and she laughed at me and said I shouldn’t be buying porn cuz I’m about to be married. Why?! Am I not allowed to have porn if I’m married? Then it makes even more sense to stock up now while I’m in my last months of singledom, right? But she couldn’t bring down my mood, as we walked and chatted, I was looking extremely forward to getting home and seeing what these anime porn videos are all about. I had high hopes for them.

But I never made it home. I woke up instead. Bummer.

~ Cindy and Gym Trainee’s Top Picks for Stupidest Bartending Moment This Week ~

There’s always many staggering examples of stupidity to report in each session of bartending that we’ve attended so far, but if I were to list them all, this post would be ridiculously long. So here’s my #1 pick for the week:

At the start of each class, the instructor passes around a sheet of neon-colored self-adhesive address labels. We’re to write our name on a label and stick it on our shirt as a nametag so the instructor knows who he’s looking at. This week, it was bright hot pink.
Toward the middle of class I returned to my desk after doing some pour drills in the bar area, and saw the half-used sheet of neon address labels near my desk. On a white rectangle where a pink label has already been removed, is written “Melissa.” *blink blink* The idiocy hit me fully and dully. “Melissa” had written her name on a white space that no longer contains a hot pink label, and tried to peel it off to stick on herself. I wish so badly that I had a photo of that sheet to post here, because seeing the thing and realizing suddenly what had happened is so much more impactful than my describing it to you!
“Melissa,” by the way, is one of the two unemployed blondie girls who were an hour late to the 1st class, who didn’t buy a day parking pass to put in their cars so the whole class had to wait another half hour for them to get that done so they don’t get towed, and were 20 minutes late returning from break that 1st day. The two girls missed the 2nd week completely, and were again an hour late to this 3rd class.

Gym Trainee’s #1 Pick of the Week:
Our instructor has a rule that if we miss our session that we’re enrolled in (Tuesday evenings), we can make it up by attending the Thursday evening session that week. If we can’t make that, either, we can pop into the Saturday morning or Saturday afternoon session. He teaches the same material in each session each week.
Toward the end of class while he was finishing up his lecture, the instructor said, “I know you’re not obligated to attend more than one session a week to be certified, but the Thursday evening class is only half full. The Thursday class is at the same time as this class, so if you’re not doing anything, you can slide into the Thursday class too, to get some extra practice in for your pouring and mixing. I’m not charging you extra, and it’s to your advantage to come to the Thursday class as well. So who thinks you may want to come in on a Thursday class?”
As a few hands went up, the cop groupie chick asked, “What day’s the class?”
Uh…the Thursday sessions that he teaches on Wednesdays. What did she THINK?!
The cop groupie girl is the same person who did the dumb stuff I mentioned last week, too.

I don’t understand how these people have managed to stay alive this long to be in their 20s. How is it that they didn’t trip one day while walking and chewing gum at the same time, and fall face-first against a moving vehicle?
Gym trainee said to me during break, “I’m glad I’m a girl. So I don’t accidentally date one of them.”

Now I’m having horrible flashes of these girls googling information on bartending or the class, and incidentally landing on my blog and reading this mean-spirited post. The cop groupie chick might sic some of her cop party attendees on me.

This past weekend, while I was reading the bartending course manual, I kept seeing all these typos and errors. I tried hard to ignore them and move on, but I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I’m sorry, but I don’t think a course manual for bartending, that hundreds of students view monthly, should spell brand names of alcohol wrong. It’s Absolut Vodka, not Absolute Vodka! Apple Pucker, not Apple Puckers! And when you make a point that 1 drink = 5 oz. wine = 12 oz. beer = 1.25 oz. hard liquor, and you want to say that it takes a person’s liver 1 hour to work through each of the above, you shouldn’t say “Alcohol is metabolized in the body at a rate of about 1 ounce per hour for the average person.” It should be 1 drink per hour. (I pointed this last one out to the instructor the 2nd week and asked for clarification, and he was at first confused but realized the error and said I was the only one who’d ever caught that.) If you know me you’ll know what an editor at heart I am. Dwaine just lovingly refers to that trait of mine as “neurotic.”

So this weekend, after pages and pages of errors, I lost self-control. I emailed my instructor.
Hi Dan!
This is Cindy from your Tuesday evening bartending class. But enough about me. (ha.) I was reading over the course manual and saw some minor errors and inconsistencies that can easily be corrected. I was an editor and copywriter some years ago, so things like typos, misspellings and syntax problems jump out and wave at me. Your website, by the way, is error-free and very impressive that way; it’s rare to see perfect language usage these days, especially online. Anyway, I was wondering if you’d like me to mark up a copy of the manual with editing corrections so your next print/publication of the manual would be cleaner. I’m not soliciting and I’m not charging you anything, I just like to see clean professional copy and thought I could offer you a skill and help you out. I hope I’m not offending you; I’m not passing judgment on the contents at all. Just a tiny bit on the presentation. Haha.
Cindy

Soon, I received a reply.
Hi Cindy,
Thanks for the suggestion. I would like to review these issues with you next time we meet. Thanks for your support.
Best, Dan

Okay, so I think he wasn’t offended. I approached him after class on Tuesday. “Oh, you’re the one!” he said. “I wanna sit down with you and talk about the changes.” After a brief discussion, I realized he’s pretty computer illiterate and I decided it’d be faster for me to mark up a copy of the manual with the suggested corrections, give it to him for approval, and then he’ll give me the computer text files of the manual and I’ll make the changes myself. He was very receptive and excited. And here’s the best part. “I’ll make it worth your while,” he insisted. “I’ll give you a whole bar set. With the tray for the garnish swords and straws and stuff. How’s that?” I loved that! Since gym trainee was standing next to me, he said to her, “I’ll give you a complete set, too. That way you won’t be all mad and jealous that she [nodding toward me] got one.”
Gym trainee said, “I won’t be jealous!”
I was like, “Shhh, he’s giving out free stuff!”
And then he offered to throw in free DVDs for Flair bartending techniques! Throwing bottles and fancy tricks! I knew my neuroticism would pay off one day!

I’m sorry, I have to vent again.

Maybe I’m more into self-preservation than you or the next person. I’m definitely more into self-preservation than Mr. W is. I have that trait because that’s just what my past experience has taught me. I look out for myself, because ultimately I’m responsible for myself and my own happiness, and I am the only factor that I can control. Other people tend to be unreliable at best.

And it drives me CRAZY that I’m trying to plan my own future, making some big, major, permanent, expensive decisions here, and there are tons of large x-factors floating out there that aren’t even MY x-factors, that would significantly change the landscape of whatever future and decisions I would make and/or be locked into. I’m not even allowed to have feedback on these x-factors because they’re not within my control and any feedback just pisses off the one who DOES have control. So I can’t plan. I wish I could just grab a hammer and nails, or better, some nail guns, and nail down these x-factors NOW so I know where the issues are and work with or around them.

And it’s crap that I have to feel guilty about feeling like this. Utter crap.

Let’s say my significant other lives in a cabin at the bottom of a large slope. Let’s say that it snows a lot in the area, and the hill is more often than not buried in deep snow, so the possibility of avalanche is always in the back of everyone’s minds. Let’s say that one day, the avalanche becomes not just a possibility, but a definite likelihood, and fairly soon.

I think if my significant other, seeing this ominous and precarious hang of the snow, jumps into action and starts shoveling snow or doing whatever prophylactic measure is needed to prevent or mitigate an avalanche (yes, I realize now this is a bad metaphor to use because I know nothing about snow or avalanches or cabins), I would rally behind him, get on board and grab a shovel, or a blowdryer to melt the threatening snow (I dunno). Or maybe build a dam or dig a trench or a giant anti-snow wall. =P Whatever people do.

BUT, if I see that my significant other is just running around in circles in the cabin panicking and cursing the gods and feeling sorry for himself and unreceptive to anything to get him out of his woebegone mood, my instinct is to distance myself. I’m gonna look for a way out of this cabin, a window to jump out of when the avalanche comes, a way to someplace safe.

Is that WRONG of me? Am I supposed to stay in the cabin and get buried alive just because my significant other isn’t doing anything to help himself and when I tell him that he needs to do something or get buried, he tells me “I don’t need any more grief, I don’t want to talk to you anymore, GOODBYE” and slams the door in my face? Should I take this as a sign that his end of things aren’t going to come through and we’re not meant to be?

This morning, the talk radio show I listen to had comedian Ant (of “Last Comic Standing” fame) on as a special guest, talking about a recent TV-people cruise he’d just been on. He said that he actually went on the cruise stag, because just hours before the cruise, his long-term boyfriend of 3 years dumped him. By text message. So Ant received this text message that said, “I’m not going with you on the cruise.”
Ant texted back, “Why, are you sick?”
He received, “No. I’m dumping you.”
The hosts of the talk radio show were shocked, and asked a bunch of questions. So turned out, Ant’s always been the provider, he paid for everything as well as their home, the boyfriend was a 45 year old (which is like 90 in gay years, Ant joked) who moved back in with his parents. “You should’ve canceled his cell phone so he can’t dump you by text message!” the hostess said.
Ant said, “Oh, I didn’t pay for his phone. His mom did.” !!!
So this jobless loser moocher left a younger celebrity who paid for everything, whom he’d been with for 3 years, by text message for what reason?
“I don’t know,” Ant said. “Once you get a text that someone’s dumping you like that, you kinda don’t want to continue the conversation. It’s a waste of my 400 texts.” Hmm.

Ant also had a funny anecdote from the cruise. He said that Ross(?), the intern from The Tonight Show, was also on the cruise, and one evening at the dinner, there was “unicorn” on the menu. When the waitress came around for orders, Ross said, “I’ll try the unicorn.”
Ant: What’s the unicorn?
Waitress: It’s a fish.
Ross: Oh. Then I’m gonna change my order.
Ant: Wait a minute. You were okay with it when it was a magical horse? And now you want to change it cuz it’s a fish?!
HAHAHAHAHA!!! Made me laugh out loud in my car. “Can I order a pegasus instead?” HAHAHAHAHA!!

Wilco/Flip Flop Girl and Mr. W/I finally traded Wii codes, so we’re now in each others’ Wii address books as “friends.” That means we can send Mii characters to each other. I was the first to send the Miis of Mr. W and myself over to them, which I did this past Saturday night. What else was I to do when the only other person in the house (Mr. W) has a 9pm bedtime? I was so bored that I started exploring the Mii Channel for the first time, and made up 2 additional Miis, Buffy and Spike. I considered doing an Angel Mii, but didn’t want it to become a love triangle mess between the 3 of them again. Haha. I sent the Buffy Mii and Spike Mii over to Mike and Christi as well. The resemblances were such that Mike didn’t even know who they were at first. =P

And then I found that I could write Memos as different Miis to display on the letters screen. They appear like a little rectangular text box with the Mii’s picture on the upper left corner. So Snoopy’s memo said “Arf. Signed, the Red Baron.” Will Smith’s memo said “What up, Big Willy Style’s in da house! Get jiggy wit it, y’all!” And then on Sunday morning, I waited for Mr.W to turn on the Wii and discover that there was new mail.

Well, Mr. W totally freaked out. He stared at the messages and kept saying over and over that the Miis aren’t supposed to do that. I just played dumb. “They’re not? I think it’s cute!”
Frustrated that I wasn’t understanding the gravity of the horror of this situation, he said, “No! They’re not supposd to be INTERACTIVE.” He totally thought someone hacked into his system. And then he got to the memo from my Mii that said, “Being up all by mysmurf isn’t very smurfy.”

And then he hit me. Haha!

We didn’t end up going to the jujitsu instructor’s wedding on Saturday. Mr. W wasn’t thrilled with the idea all along and thought the groom’s email invitation to crash his wedding was “cheesy.”

Instead, we hooked up with Mr. W’s close friends (his ex-bro-in-law and wife), had lunch at The Curry House, then went to the Formula Drift race at Long Beach. This was the friends’ first exposure to drift racing, and they picked up on it very quickly, even developed some favorites that they cheered for. My godbro’s family hooked us up with 4 great tickets at the Grandstand in upper center, perfect views.

After the race, we walked around Long Beach looking at house possibilities and strolling along the sand for a few miles and eventually wound up at Shoreline Village, where we had dinner at Parker’s Lighthouse. I didn’t know that this beachside seafood restaurant had a casual dining 3rd floor with a bar in the center and a circular 360-degree view of the ocean and city! As we ate, the sun set and lights turned on along the beach and the Pike. It was very pretty. Even the night was warm as we walked back to the car; we had a heat wave this weekend and temperatures flew into the 90s. Mr. W even got a sunburn despite his sunblock spray.

I guess it would be nice to live at the beach, drifting to sleep to the sound of the waves.

Our Sunday was very low-key. Lots of “Angel” watching and hiding out indoors from the heat, then an evening walk to get frozen yogurt and hit the grocery store, where Mr. W added light and dark rum to his alcohol collection. I now have all the ingredients to make a Long Island and Long Beach Iced Tea.

Last nite, my gym trainee and I got together and did our “homework.” We’d planned to hit up Downtown Disney’s Uva Bar after work to observe the bartender in action, but it almost didn’t happen. Her 10-year-old son was at the airport with a bunch of schoolmates getting ready to leave on a school trip to Missouri, and you know how the news stations kept talking about the 1000 American Airlines flights that got canceled? Yup; they were booked on American Air. The teacher had to make alternate flight arrangements when their connecting flight was canceled, and gym trainee was poised to go to LAX and pick her son up if their (nonrefundable) trip was canceled. I went online and had their flight updates automatically sent to me on my cell, and all night long while we were at Downtown Disney I got notifications of 40-minute delays. Their 5:20p flight was pushed back little by little until they finally left at 10:20p. They already missed a reception program at the arrival site. But at least they got to go!

Downtown Disney was unexpectedly crowded. The usual parking lot was full and they had to open overflow parking. On a Thursday? What was going on? And of course as we were trying to make our way to the bar at the other end of the walk, there were oblivious moseying teenagers and adults, and unruly children randomly darting around and arbitrarily stopping right in front of us, that we had to maneuver around. I was reminded of why I hate going to Disneyland in the summer. The Uva Bar itself was pretty crowded, too. We were lucky to find 2 seats in the circular outdoor bar area. The bartender was working by himself when we got there, and there was a slight delay in getting some service, but when he did come around to us, he greeted us with direct eye contact and a smile. Unfortunately, his work station was at the other side of the circular bar so I couldn’t see him pour directly from the bottles to check out how long his pours are. I did occasionally catch him shake and pour from the shaker, though. I had my usual there: caramel apple martini, Mezza platter (3 flavored hummus and pita bread) appetizer which we shared, and ahi tuna salad with a Mediterranean twist (zesty lemon dressing, hummus at the bottom of the plate, couscous, mint leaves, romaine lettuce, and GIANT cuts of seared rare ahi). Gym trainee had a Manhattan and a burger that she said was delicious, too. MAN they use real alcohol in their drinks. I was laughing about how she said she drank some of her drink, got buzzed, stopped drinking, ate dinner, finished her drink, and got buzzed again.

After dinner we walked off our alcohol with shopping. She bought some bath bomb fizzies and bath salts at Basin, which is also one of my favorite stores, but I was being frugal. There was a bath bomb that the clerk demonstrated for us and as it fizzes away, little tiny multi-colored Mickey Mouse heads pop out! That’s soooo cute. Of course she bought one.

After wandering around Downtown Disney, we went back to my house and watched half of the DVD that came with the class, which is another assignment for this week (to rewatch the DVD). We’re such good students.