cindy's world

The two brothers and I watched The Illusionist last nite. Pretty good movie, altho we predicted and unraveled the plot (accurately) as we went along the movie. I’d recommend picking up the DVD. It’s sort of like Romeo & Juliet, if Romeo were poor and into magic.

It’s nice to have a partner in crime in watching movies. Mr. W normally talks through an entire movie, but it’s more like he’s thinking out loud. Mr. W’s brother, on the other hand, makes smart-ass comments like this:

[At the opening scene, you see the illusionist sitting alone on the stage facing the audience. All is silent. The magician is staring intently into the crowd. Nothing happens yet, but in the flickering firelight from lit torches along the front of the stage, anticipation and tension are thick in the air.]
Brother: Boy, I hope these people didn’t pay a lot for their tickets.
Me: *snicker* Yeah, this looks like a real hard magic trick. How does he do that? *snicker*
Mr. W: Shhhh!
*all of us sitting in silence, still no sound or action happening on the TV*
Brother: Hey, turn the mute button off.
Me: *laughing*
Mr. W: SHHH!
Me: What, are you afraid you’re gonna not hear the silence?!
Mr. W: *death glare at me*
*all 3 sit in silence*
Mr. W: I love the lighting in this movie. It’s such great photography how you only see half his face.
Me: SHHH! I can’t hear the silence!
[On-screen, the magician’s manager gets onstage and introduces the magician to the audience.]
Manager: *dramatically* Life…and death. Chance…and fate.
Me: Peanut butter…and jelly.
Mr. W: I’M HAVING BAD THOUGHTS NOW. *staring me down*
Bro: We’re just giving you the real-life threatre experience.
Me: Yeah. *in infant voice* WAAAAH! WAAAAH!!
Bro: Where’s my cell phone? It should be ringing right now.
Me: *laughing*
Mr. W: *siiiigh*

I didn’t bring lunch today, as usual. Mr. W, as usual, did. He was too tired to meet me at the gym, so instead, we met up to eat his lunch. When I got back after lunch, I emailed him a thank-you:

>Dear [his job title],
> Thank you for sharing your lunch with me. You are the bestest Hephaestus.
>
> Signed,
> Clerkishness

He called me. “Who’s Hephaestus?” I honestly had no recollection, but rather than say, “I dunno, I just chose him cuz it rhymes with ‘bestest’,” I instead told him, “He’s a Greek mythology character. Look him up on Wikipedia.” Mr. W again asked, “But who is he? I mean, what did he do?” I said, almost slyly, “Look him up.”

So 5 minutes later I get a responsive email from Mr. W:

Hephaestus was lame and ugly, and was twice thrown from heaven on Olympus (http ://www.the-pantheon.com/olympus.htm), once by his mother in shame and anger at his deformity, and once by his father because of a quarrel in which he sided with his mother. Thanks

Oops!

You guys ever have one of those days where you’re talking to people, and you’re talking away, and then you realize no one’s responding to you? And then you look around and ask if anyone heard you, and they don’t respond to THAT? And then you wonder if maybe you died in your sleep last night, but that you’re unaware of that so you’re still walking around in your life as you normally do but to everyone else you’re invisible. So, in the words of Charlie Brown, you’re doomed to wander the earth as a lost soul. “I suppose before I wander the earth as a lost soul, I should feed my dog.” Who’s gonna feed Dodo?! Oh no!

Someone reply to my email so I know I’m not dead!

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.

Management snuck up behind me earlier in the courtroom to present a Christmas goodie: cute little bag of chocolates with a nice pen that has the court logo engraved on it. That’s the first time they’ve given us anything for the holidays. Scared the crap out of me. I’ve never seen so much management together in one place, and I may have made the error of saying that out loud. I mean, I know I said it out loud but I hope it wasn’t a faux pas.

Last nite I met up with Navy Girl Vanessa for what she called “holiday cheer.” We ate some hot ramen which was great on a cold night (no, not Instant Ramen; the “real” Japanese ramen at a noodle house in Tustin called Ezo Noodles). We tried to go to BJs Pizzeria but it was insanely crowded. We exchanged gifts, and her gift made me laugh. In the prettiest ice blue glitter-and-white-fur bejeweled gift bag were, wrapped in white tissue paper, the very feminine items of an electronic tire pressure gauge and jar opener. “Blogs come in handy!” Vanessa said. The electronic gauge even has programmable memory so that it’ll remember what PSI your tires are supposed to be at. The jar opener looks like a huge handle that you slide into the jar, and some rubber teeth catch the jar, and you just turn the handle to unscrew the jar lid. I can have spaghetti now! As soon as I saw the gifts I knew I had to blog about it.

Vanessa got the ideas for my gifts here and here (where my car almost went up in flames due to an improperly inflated tire) and here (where an un-openable jar of spaghetti sauce nearly cost me my life).

P.S. Just to make James jealous, 2 nites ago I had a holiday dinner with childhood friend Vicky (BEEKY! to him and me) at Cheesecake Factory and I again ordered the seared tuna tataki salad. =P

My gym trainee gave me my xmas present yesterday. She’d bought me a white belly dancing outfit (halter and hip scarf), jingling with coins. It’s really cute, except that the hip scarf, even tied all the way in as far as the embroidery and coins hanging off of it allow me, is too big. I jingle a little bit, do a few hip lifts, and it falls down. That reminded me of another piece of clothing she picked up for me some time ago. Everyone knows I’m a huge fan of Happy Bunny. So she picked up a t-shirt with Happy Bunny in front saying, “Okay, I’m perfect. Stop staring.” It’s a funny shirt, but I’ve never worn it. I’ve worn many other Happy Bunny things, a tanktop Vanessa got me that says “Makeover? You need to be run over.” (I didn’t really get the meaning until it hit me at the end of the day in Disneyland when I’d been wearing it all day.) My Happy Bunny keychain says “Me. Just like you. Only better.” I have a long-sleeved hoodie where he says “Please make the stupid people shut up.” But I can’t bring myself to wear the “I’m perfect” t-shirt because, well, I’m afraid that people would judge me. Like, they’d look at the shirt, then look at me, and snort, “Perfect? Pshh, she’s fat and ugly.” Whereas if I weren’t wearing an obnoxious shirt, they may think I’m kinda cute. It’s kinda like if you drove up behind a car that had a license plate frame that says, “My other ride is your boyfriend,” or “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,” or “The queen as arrived,” or “Hot Chick”, you wanna drive up and look in the window, and then you have this elevated expectation of the person’s hotness and you’re always disappointed, right?

Am I crazy?

Me: how’s this for my xmas cards?

Josh: haha. I’m sure your mom would love it!
Me: who mails their mom an xmas card? I see her every weekend.
Josh: oh ok. what’s the title for the card?
Me: “xmas tree with moon”?
Josh: yeah but if it was a moon, then you need to drop your pants.
Me: “hidden moon and xmas tree”?
Josh: oh ok better

Mr. W told me earlier that his daughter went home from school early today. She caught the stomach flu that her brother and school friends had last week, and she threw up in science class today.
“She threw up in the science class?” I asked. Apparently she did.

I bet most of you normal people, in your head just now, went, “Aww.”
Some of you who are less paternally- or maternally-inclined may have just thought to yourselves, “Ew. Well, that sucks.”
Here was my immediate reaction. I said, “Oh, that’s cool! Cuz then the other kids can take a sample, put it on a slide, and look at it under their microscope.” I mean, it was in science class.

And it didn’t occur to me until now, almost 2 hours later, that my reaction wasn’t probably the most normal or thoughtful one.

So what’s it mean if I dreamt that I’m trying to stuff a sack full of cat hair up my vagina, and the background music in the dream is Lynard Skynard’s “Freebird”? I think I’m playing too much “Guitar Hero.”