cindy's world

Last nite during dinner at my parents’ house, my mom looked at me and asked, “Are you gonna lose weight before your wedding?” Geesh, there’s no hiding any new fat cells from Mom. I told her I know I’d gained a little recently. She scolded me to stop weight lifting so I don’t thicken up any more. I said annoyed, “Yeah okay, I’ll be a skinny fat girl instead of a fit girl.” (Dwaine, by the way, hates skinny-fat girls. You know, the chicks who have tiny measurements and who fit in a size 0, but jiggle everywhere and have no tone or shape cuz it’s just fat wrapped around bone? If I’m gonna be thick, I’d rather be a fit-looking thick.)

And then I wondered…is all the trendy frozen yogurt that I’m eating on a regular basis making me fat? I must’ve gone every day this past weekend. A new favorite at YogurtLand is the peanut butter froyo. I think I’d be pretty devastated if I had to cut the yogurt out of my life.

It’s hard to wonder anything for long when my mom starts lightly smacking my upper arm, making critical comments on my arm girth due to what she considers excessive muscle. And then the next thing I knew, she started doing some Tai Chi moves she’d learned from her new Tai Chi recreation classes, saying she’s now built up some strength too and can beat me up. I wasn’t even going to entertain that thought. Silly mommy.

But then, it wasn’t like I was helping myself today, anyway. I’d planned on hitting the gym both during lunch AND after work, but since we were in the midst of a trial when on my first day back today, of course we worked into lunch and then there was no time left for the gym. So instead, for lunch I ate a giant slice of chocolate cake my court reporter had saved for me from my judge’s birthday last Friday. And then Gym Trainee and I drove to a nearby discount store where I purchased the glassware for my wedding centerpieces. At least it was a productive lunch. I balanced out the chocolate cake with a powdered donut after work that was left over from the morning. =P Work was really WAY too productive without the internet to entertain myself with. I kept staring at my email inbox willing people to write me so that I could at least carry on an email conversation with friends. Wish me luck for hitting the gym after my 7pm Homeowners Association meeting tonite!

Today I picked up jujitsu buddy Josh at his house and drove to Long Beach, where we had lunch at Tokyo Wako. Josh is my wedding photographer and over lunch, we discussed wedding day scheduling and strategy. He’s such a gentleman; despite the fact that he was out there for me, he wouldn’t let me pay for my misoyaki sea bass and even paid me an immediate compliment that I seemed a lot slimmer than when he’d last seen me (which I think was at his graduation from Orange County Sheriff’s Academy last year).

After lunch we fulfilled our purpose for the meeting: he scoped out the wedding venue for the first time. We strolled around the grounds as he took a bunch of test shots, taking mental and photographic note of where he’d like to have people pose for group photos and where to set up for the best over-water bridge shots. He also took a few of me to check for lighting and positioning at the garden. I was surprised when I saw some of the photos on his digital display — I hadn’t seen my face and cheeks look that round in a loooong time. Might I be bloated from PMS? *squeezing boobs* No…I’m not sore at the key spot(s). Crap. Maybe the once-a-week gym time has caught up with me. My left wrist seems 90% recovered so I should be able to hit the weights again more regularly. The wedding isn’t for almost 4 months so that’s enough time to drop some inches.

BUT, I have an appointment to get my wedding gown alterations on Thursday. I’d thought that setting up an appointment this long before the wedding would be counterproductive, cuz who knows what size I’d actually be in 4 months. But when I picked up my dress last Thursday, that’s the day the alterations department said was appropriate. Having gone with Mr. W’s niece to her alteration in Vegas over the weekend and seen how her size changed between the time she bought the dress in January and now (a month before the wedding), I’m thinking this 4 month thing is way premature. Maybe they just want me to alter it for a second time closer to the wedding so they make money off the dress twice after its purchase. I’m going to cancel or postpone that appointment.

Out of curiosity, though, I tried the dress on for the first time tonight. It fit comfortably and almost loosely without the bustier, but the bustier somehow causes a fat roll effect above the dress. Sure the bustier enhances cleavage by lifting my chest, but it also lifts other things, like the fat on my back. Gross. And it’s uncomfortable and hot, and makes the dress fit tighter. What the heck; I thought the form-fitting restrictive undergarments are supposed to make my measurements smaller, not thicker. Is there some kind of rule that says I have to wear a bustier under my white bridal gown?

My bathroom scale’s been out of battery for months now so I don’t know what I weigh or what my body fat percentage is, but I’m afraid to find out anyway. I’m terrified that I’m gonna go thru a pudge period right when I have to be photographed for an high exposure major life event that’s gonna bring about many witnesses. My body tends to have some crazy momentum when it starts to gain weight, and is reluctant to reverse the cycle to lose weight again, so I’m gonna hit the gym on the regular starting tonight and double up on cardio. Josh reminded me today that when he first met me, I used to hit the weights at lunch, go back for cardio after work, run 6-8 miles every other evening, and go to jujitsu on the nights I wasn’t running.

Tuesday evening was our last bartending class. We got our certificates. I’m now certified! Yaaaaay! We even got new dipschticks in our class who’re normally enrolled in another session. There was one guy who was very quick and smart, whom I found myself chatting with more than the other people, cuz it was just easier to communicate with him and he had knowledge to share. Such as, drinks that have only 1 mixer or 1 liquor are served in the short chimney glass; tall chimney glasses are for drinks with multiple ingredients. I don’t think our instructor gives all his classes an equal distribution of knowledge.

OH. And I made the most crass joke ever. We were doing Brain Hemorrhage shots. 3/4 of a shotglass is filled with Peach Schnapps, and then we carefully, using the back of a barspoon, layer some Baileys Irish Cream on top. Then we even more carefully drip some drops of Grenadine into the concoction, and the heavier Grenadine syrup makes the Baileys drop into the Schnapps. Since Baileys is a milk product, it curdles inside the Schnapps and with the red Grenadine syrup, the result is something that looks like a little brain in the shotglass with blood around it. The instructor said, “You guys wanna be real fancy? Don’t use a barspoon to float the Baileys. Use a cherry and let it dribble off the cherry. Then just drop the cherry inside the shotglass when you’re done.” The result of that is a shotglass with a cherry, and a brain hemorrhaging on top of it. I said, “That’s a virgin Brain Hemorrhage. Cuz it’s got its cherry.” Only an older assisting bartender and the smart guy from the other class laughed. Everyone else was like, “Huh? It’s not a virgin drink, it’s got alcohol in it!”

This weekend there’s a bartending competition, formal banquet dinner and champagne brunch sponsored by the United States Bartenders Guild at the Queen Mary in Long Beach. Volunteers get to participate in the $200 banquet and brunch for free, plus a free bottle of booze. Guess where I’m gonna be.

Last nite’s class was fun. We did a lot of pouring at the bar, making tons of drinks on demand. My first drink set, the instructor told me to ice up 4 chimney glasses, and then he rattled off drinks which I made quickly with no problem. After I was done, however, I wondered aloud what garnishes to put in the drinks. I was gonna leave garnishes out until intructed otherwise, but Cop Groupie chick (standing across from me at the other side of the bar) said to put a lime in the first and a cherry in the middle 2 and a lemon twist in the last one. I don’t know WHAT I was thinking but I did as she said. The instructor came by and asked, “What are these garnishes? Did you just decide to put these cherries in?” I said, not wanting to be a rat, “Sort of.” He said, “No, you don’t do this unless the customer orders it that way. The middle two get limes.” And then he took out the cherries and twist and moved my lime over, added a 2nd lime. The lesson learned: NEVER listen to idiots over my own instincts. My bad. The rest of the drinks went extremely smoothly. I daresay I’m the fastest and most accurate drink maker in the class; the giggly guy (boyfriend of the girl who turned 21 the day before class started) rushes through everything trying to go for speed, but makes tons of mistakes. He puts the wrong liquors in, the wrong juices (like how did his Screwdriver end up red?), shorts the shots even with use of a jigger, knocks things over. A lot. But he’s a nice fun guy and knows a lot of drinks cuz he apparently frequents bars with his girlfriend, he just has to put some finesse into his work. I’m so glad I got the extra practice in over the weekend, that helped A LOT. I was the only one who knew offhand what went into Long Island and Long Beach Iced Teas.

Toward the end of class, the instructor gave me a Boston shaker (tin tumbler + tall glass), strainer, wooden muddler, upright supply tray for straws, swords, etc., and a full-sized compartmented garnishment tray. And the Flair Techniques DVD. All for editing what turned out to be just 21 pages of his Course Manual (the last 3/4 of the manual turned out to be copyrighted ServSafe material for classroom instruction on laws regarding beverage service, so that was already fine). Everyone was very jealous. He also did a big giveaway, and tossed out glass shotglasses (got one), plastic shotglasses on necklace strings (went to the giggle couple), little felt pouches for jiggers and shotglasses (got 2), and gave out his trusty Swiss army-style barknife/corkscrew/bottle opener, which he handed directly to me and said, “Why don’t you hang on to that for me?” I almost bought one over the weekend, too. I’m glad I didn’t. Cop Groupie chick nicely offered to help me carry my stuff to my car after class, but I took a paper grocery bag instead and it was fine.

There was a visitor in class — a long-haired lady who graduated from his course a few years ago. She’s apparently having trouble getting hired. She said she went to places she wanted to work at, nothing happened, then she applied at places she didn’t want to work at just to get SOMETHING, that was also fruitless, and now she doesn’t know what to do. The instructor talked to us about the economy these days saying new employment may be a tad slow, and then he reviewed her resume and said it looked fine. Then he thought maybe she wasn’t interviewing right, but she said she only got 1 interview out of all her efforts. Okay, now that’s scary; I’d always assumed I’d just zip right in and get the job I wanted. =P

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.

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!

Mr. W’s splurge of the month was the Nintendo Wii game system. When you buy the Wii package at Costco, it costs the same as anywhere else, but the package is much bigger. I think it has something like 3-4 games, controller bumpers, 2 standard controllers and 2 nunchucks. We spent a significant portion of the weekend shooting zombies in House of the Dead 2 and 3, and Mr. W got up early and played Super Mario Galaxy while I was asleep. Today, while I was in bartending class, he “boxed” with his neighbor.

Tangent: Speaking of bartending class, we got to play with water in class today, and turns out my free-pour is pretty damn accurate. My 3-count yields a full jigger, as we found by free-pouring into a glass and then pouring the glass into a jigger for measurement. The low IQ of some of the classmates dropped my jaw a few times, and my gym trainee (who’s taking the class with me) was shocked that I was shocked. She pointed out that people aspiring to be bartenders, especially those who are in their mid-20s, unemployed, and living at home with no clue what they want to do with their lives, don’t tend to be the sharpest tools in the shed. Yeah okay, but still. How could you get lost cutting a lime in half, and not know how to tip a bottle to pour into a glass, and think you’re supposed to empty a full tall glass of water onto a serving mat? Where did you think the water was going to go? Do you SEE a hose attached to the mat? And why do you think you’re leaning over a SINK? Anyways…

Back to the Wii: Because the Wii connects to the internet and seems to imply that you can make your personal Wii characters (called a Mii) mingle and interact with other people’s characters, we figured it’d be fun to connect to Mike (wilco) and Christi (flip flop girl) all the way in Northern California and have our Miis hang out. I called them on Saturday night to ask how we link up. Turns out it’s totally complicated for us cuz we have to exchange Wii system codes, add each others’ systems as “friends”, and allow our Miis to roam globally. Mr. W and I couldn’t even find the screen to get our code information. Mike said it was a 16-digit number that could be found by looking into some envelopes on the screen or something. It wasn’t until way after we’d hung up that we stumbled into the right screen with the right envelopes. So now we can add Wii friends and mingle around the globe! I know Jordan had said that she wanted to get a Wii so she could go Wii bowling with us from Florida.

So who wants to be our Wii friends?

We had a great time at the class! I was right about a few things:
* The instructor looked JUST like how I dreamt he’d look, plus about 10 pounds. Even the salt-n-pepper goatee! He was funny and jovial and friendly, just like you’d expect a bartender to be. I would’ve done better in Geometry if a bartender had taught it.
* He talked about prohibition and moonshine, but thankfully, only in passing. (His point was that making things illegal, more specifically weed, makes it dangerous for the consumers cuz they find alternative deathly versions of it. And then he quickly went on to say that he didn’t mean to advocate drugs, he was just making a point.)
* The 1st class wasn’t hands-on playing with liquids, it was more introductory and lecture.

The class is taught by a very experienced instructor of bartending, and he teaches not just drinks, but also educates us on alcohol and safe consumption, checking for fake IDs, law on responsible alcohol service. It’s stuff that people don’t get through just in-service training, and things that are soon going to become a legal requirement (like CPR for personal trainers), so it’ll make us more marketable that we’re certified by this class after it’s over. I guess this program is one of very few official certified classes that are approved by some agency or other.

Yesterday we got a ton of recipe cards, an instructional manual/workbook, and a DVD. We went around the room of 11 students and introduced ourselves. There was a quiet loner guy, a giggly friendly couple (the girlfriend just turned 21 the day before class and both of them were still hung over), two young unemployed blondie girl friends who were late coming to class and late coming back from break, two other girl friends who either currently or used to work in restaurants, an overeducated and now out-of-work mortgage loan agent girl, a cop groupie who said her reason for taking the class was because she goes to a lot of cop parties and now she wants to work in them. And then there was me and gym trainee.

Some of the more interesting things we did in class (which brand new classroom had a restaurant-sized bar and expansive 2nd story view of the campus pool) was put on “drunk goggles” which simulate .16 blood alcohol level, .24 BAC, and .32 BAC, and try to do some DUI field sobriety tests in the classroom. I did okay with the .16 BAC goggles but did stumble initially. And then we looked at a ton of confiscated fake IDs. Some are really good, and others are so poor that you wonder what moron would pay good money for something that pathetic. At least, I wondered until I realized hey, that moron’s photo is RIGHT THERE! Idiot. We also learned some sneaky ways to question the ID-giver if we don’t think it’s his/her real ID. We also looked at our own IDs and credit cards under a blacklight, and DID YOU KNOW that imprints of the CA flag appears as if by magic on a CA driver’s license under blacklight?! I had no idea! You could see the red bars and brown bear and everything! (The instructor said his wife takes the blacklight to hotels w/them, and the class went “ewww” and then he gave us a tip to not touch the TV remote controls, and then there were bigger “EWWWWW”s.) The instructor also demonstrated usage of an ID scanner which reads a legitimate ID and displays the name and age of the person if it’s real, “expired” if it’s expired, and nothing if it’s a fake.

OOH, OOH, AND THE BEST PART!! The homework project due by the end of the course is to GO TO A BAR that we’d like to work at and sit and observe the bartender, and bring back observations on their work, such as how they do their pours (long or short) and how they interact with customers, whether they’re good on customer service, how they handle drunks or whether they’re responsible about cutting people off. He said we can go to bars several times, or to go multiple bars, but to research at least for a few hours total. He said to be responsible about our drinking and to not get toasted while on assignment, but still! What class gives an assignment to go hang out at a bar?! I know you’re all jealous.

The instructor said that the future classes will be hands-on barwork, and the nights will be themed. Next week’s theme: tequila drinks! “We don’t use fake milk or fake mixers or no-name sodas in here,” he said. “We don’t use actual alcohol, but the rest of the stuff is real and you’ll all get all the soft drinks you want.” Kinda makes me want to start drinking sodas again. It’s that Asian gene: “It’s FREE? Then I have to have it.”

If you’re interested in more information about his class, the instructor also has a personal business website at bartendingexperience.com.

This evening after work, I’ll be attending my first bartending class at a local college. Woohoo, four and a half hours of playing with colored water and bottle-spinning! Unless the first day is full of lectures about the historical origin of alcohol, the period of prohibition in the old South, and the molecular chemical breakdown of ethyl. That would not be fun. I remember in high school, for a full period of German class, our teacher Mr. Englyng (Dwaine and I now have a phone # and address, but we have yet to call him) talked about the beer making process and hops and fermentation, complete with diagrams drawn on the whiteboard. Sure, beer is a part of German culture and the discussion was held in the German language, but I learned very little. Mr. Englyng even remarked toward the end of that period that I was quiet that day. Yeah, no kidding! What do I have to contribute in a beer discussion?!

I told my judge yesterday that I would be leaving early to take a bartending class every Tuesday this month. He was surprised, but said, “I think you’ll be great at it!” He said there’s something about an occupation that entails physical exertion that makes you feel like you’ve put in a good day’s work, things like being on your feet all day during bartending and like his old college job of working for a moving company, loading heavy furniture into a moving van. “I think you’d be making money hand-over-fist,” he continued, then paused. “I’m afraid you’d be making so much money, however, that you may leave me.” I reassured him that he has nothing to worry about as I can’t even tell my parents about the bartending class and possible future gig. I can see it now:

Mom: WHAT?! You had a REAL job and now you’re serving DRINKS to people? You did not go to college to serve alcohol!
Me: Well technically, I did…

Eh well, it’s just 5 weeks, not much of a life investment to open a new door. And we do come out of the class certified.

I did a test drive from work to the college yesterday, and the drive SUCKED. There’s construction on the main street that the campus is on, reducing the 3-laned road to a single lane in both directions. I also didn’t buy campus parking, so I’m a little afraid that my car’s gonna get jacked parked on a street somewhere. We’ll see how it goes.

Even though today is supposed to be a day off for me (Cesar Chavez holiday, the NorCal folks hate that I have this day off), I’m here. At work. Getting a couple of things done. Of course my judge is here, too. He was surprised to see me and already gave me a couple of things to look over. There are a surprisingly high number of employees in the building. “Is this a day off?!” a law clerk friend said earlier, looking at all the coworkers around her.

Not that I came in during regular hours, nor am I planning to stay long. I’m just giving my roofing guy a few extra minutes to email me the roofing invoice, so that I can print it and include it with my homeowners’ meeting minutes and demand for payment for my roof to the other homeowners in the association.

I had a list of things to do today. I already reviewed and made changes to my HOA documents as requested by the other officers, I got Dodo more cat food and litterbox crystals, bought some necessities at WalMart (I usually go to Drug Emporium for toothpaste, shampoo, contact solution, etc., but I was dismayed to find that it’s shut down!), and am now at work. Soon, I’ll leave here to test the drive to the the bartending class (1st day of class is tomorrow after work!) and then meet up with MOH Vicky at the gym at 3:30.

Just for kicks, guess what Mr. W is doing all day! He’s attending employee training seminars/lectures at the Museum of Tolerance! I spoke to him at his lunch break and he said a guest speaker coming up in the afternoon is an actual survivor of the Holocaust.