cindy's world

After work today, Vanessa and I hooked up to assemble James’ belated birthday present. I’d sent out an evite last week to James’ friends to meet up for a belated birthday dinner on Wednesday evening at Taps Fish House & Brewery. Vanessa and I figured we’d go above and beyond the hostessing of this event by making him a basket of treats, too. Here are some clues as to what we assembled for him.

* There’s a magazine in the collection. To help with his…”hobby.” He probably wouldn’t read it for the articles, tho.
* We included a bottle of performance-enhancing supplements.
* A rapid hand-jerking back-and-forth motion is required to take full advantage of some of the goodies.
* There’s wood involved.
* There are many little packets that you tear open to use the contents.
* There are lots of products meant to make you swell. Real big. And hard. Like a real man.
* Some products may result in frothy, milky fluid production.
* There’s plastic to wrap the wood in.
* We even included a cloth to put around the hips, you know, to catch the drippage.
* There are multiple single-use packages of long items for inserting into moist holes.

We can’t wait to present this big collection of goodies to James! We know he could use it! We just regret that we couldn’t get the inflatable sheep, but it’s on backorder. 🙁

CAUTION: This post contains workplace unfriendly material. DO NOT…I repeat…*DO NOT* click on the “more” below when you’re at work, or in front of your parents, or your children, or other people who may be offended or embarrassed by human nudity. In fact, if you’re related to me or Mr. W, don’t open this further. And if you don’t want to see nekkid men and/or TMI stuff, don’t click on the “more.” You know what? Just close your browser right now. Thanks.

You guys know that I got Mr. W a 3-year prepaid gym membership for Christmas. You know that he started working out with me every lunchtime and sometimes after work and on weekends, and that he’s become even more fanatic about the gym than me. He didn’t have any personal training, except for a few tutorials from me, and then he’s gone and run with it. Here are some “before” photos from last year, and “after” photos I took this weekend, which I’m really proud of, not only because he’s done an amazing thing for himself, his health and longevity, but because I am an amazing photographer. Uh-huh. That’s right, I take credit for this.

Again, DON’T click on the “more” below if you’re at work or could possibly get in trouble for viewing non-PG images. I’m serious.

(more…)

The purpose of this post is two-fold. First, because I got a new Billabong swimsuit that I really like on Saturday. (Mr. W decided that it was my fault we don’t go to his jacuzzi more because I don’t have a bathing suit at his house, so he “decided” unilaterally that we were going to go out and buy one, pronto.) Second, because you guys asked for photos after reading this recent post. So here you go. Don’t say I’ve never done anything for you.

This is the swimsuit worn the way I like.

This is the swimsuit worn the way Mr. W likes.

Side view of, um, swimsuit.

Another side view that better shows off the, um, suit.

Rear-ish view.

Unfortunately, I’m already starting to bloat up again. 🙁 That didn’t last long. But fortunately, the sliding weights scale at the gym Saturday night (after a grueling 3-hour workout, at the end of which I ran a mile just to kill time as I waited for Mr. W and his buddy to pretty themselves up. I’d never run just to kill time before.) put me still in the mid-120s. Yay!

Vanessa had written a post entitled “Lucid Dreams,” and through my comments on there, I was told that lucid dreams are not common and that I’m “special,” which suddenly made my own experiences more interesting to me, so I decided to blog about that.

Lucid Dream (as defined by Wikipedia): Lucid dreaming (lucid from Latin, lux “light”) is the conscious perception of one’s state while dreaming, resulting in a much clearer experience and sometimes enabling direct control over the content of the dream, a realistic world that is to some degree in the control of the dreamer. The complete experience from start to finish is called a lucid dream. Stephen LaBerge, a popular author and experimenter on the subject, has defined it as “dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming.”
LaBerge and his associates have called people who purposely explore the possibilities of lucid dreaming oneironauts (literally from the Greek ονειροναύτες, meaning “dream sailors”).

In 5th grade, I participated in a program called GATE (Gifted And Talented Education), which in one lesson taught us that most or all blind people dream in color, whereas only a percentage of normal-sighted people dream in color. Fascinated, I decided to check my own dream that night. In a dream, I found myself alone in the house I lived in at the time. Remembering the fact I wanted to explore, Dream Cindy walked down the hall to the living room wood coffee table. It was dark in the dream, nighttime, and I couldn’t see very much. I put my hands down on the surface of the coffee table and leaned my face down really close to its surface, trying to see whether the wood grain was in color or black and white. I could not tell, but I didn’t know whether things were colorless because it was dark, or because I was dreaming in black and white. Frustrated, I woke up.

The answer came later as I became nearsighted at the end of junior high. The more my eyeglass prescription increased (hence the worse my eyesight), the more frequently in color I dreamt. I think now, I dream almost exclusively in color.

I’ve had other lucid dreams, mostly in childhood or the early teen days, in which I didn’t like the dream I was in, or I didn’t like the way events were leading in the dream such that the dream was fast becoming a nightmare, so I’ve changed the sequence of events in the dream or lifted myself out of that dream environment into a different dream environment, or simply told myself to wake up out of it. But it seemed that as I did that more and more, I was soon less able to distinguish whether something was a dream. I found myself actually in the dream wondering if I am dreaming. Sometimes I would want to do something in a dream, but then I’d second-guess myself and think, “What if this isn’t a dream, and I end up doing some irreparable damage?” (This quandary was commonly in the form of *really* wanting to kiss some hot celebrity boy who was coming on to me.) And I would err on the side of caution and act conservatively in the dream, turn him down, tell him our worlds could never permanently merge, and then I’d wake up, realize it was all a dream and be pissed that I wasn’t more adventurous. So I developed a rule of thumb. “This is a dream,” I’d tell myself in the dream, “If I can’t remember how I got here, to this point. If I was just plopped into this situation and have no recollection of the process of getting here, then I’m dreaming.” Cuz in real life, I always have clear memories of so-and-so picked me up at my house, we drove down this street, came by this restaurant, and that’s how I’m here chatting and having a burrito. In a dream, you’re just there having the burrito suddenly when the last thing you remember is that you were hanging upside-down from some apple tree petting a sheep. That rule of thumb worked for awhile, and then my dream self started developing fake memories. Dream Cindy would sit there and consider how she got to that situation, to test for memories, and then snapshots of “memories” would appear, and she’d go, “Oh yeah!” when those things never happened to begin with, or they were intermingled with real memories from the day before. And I’d be fooled again.

I think the new rule of thumb should be, “When in doubt, you’re dreaming.” Cuz when I’m awake I never actually wonder if I’m really dreaming.

This morning as I got dressed, I looked in the mirror and saw…flat tummy, the outline of abs, smooth toned skin, muscle indentations on my lower back/upper buttocks, my body looked carved! Of course I got all excited and turned all sorts of angles to see myself nekkid, thinking, “The weight’s coming off, the weight’s coming off! Finally!” I weighed myself, and I’m down 4.5 lbs from the weight gain I had while I was sick and unable to go to the gym a few weeks ago.

And then, I thought about what time of month this is and realized this is just my Skinny Week. The week after my period. I start debloating the last day of my period, it takes a few days until I’m fully my “normal” weight, and then a few days later I’m gaining weight again as my body bloats in preparation for the next period. I’m fully bloated the week before my period as that’s PMS Week, and then I’m bloated throughout the period, and then after the period, I slowly start debloating again. So I’m “normal” only 1 week out of 4 in the month. By the end of this weekend I’ll again be saddened at what appears to be a weight gain and the disappearance of all the tone. *sigh*

My court reporter joked that I should schedule all social activities for my Skinny Week, i.e. parties, outings, swimming, weddings, vacations. I really should! If only this week were more predictable on when in the month it falls.

Oh, the woes of being a girl.

I should take some photos of myself while I’m “skinny” today, tho.

Oh, look. It’s before 1pm and Cindy’s blogging. What’s she doing in front of a computer instead of behind some gym equipment?, you may be wondering. A coworker I passed coming into the building earlier asked me that, too.

The fact is that I did go to the gym. After the judge ran late into lunch, after he didn’t get off the bench until past noon, I had to have him approve and sign a Restraining Order for a case earlier this morning (which I couldn’t do until after he got off the bench since he went right into our trial and ran late), then make copies and explain to the person waiting what to do with the copies. And then driving to the gym, I got stuck behind a car trying to make a left into a building from the left lane (not a left TURN lane, but the left lane), and I couldn’t change lanes to the right lane because of all the cars going by on the lane to my right. FINALLY, he turned and of course by then I missed all the lights. So I waited and waited, and when the light finally turned green, I couldn’t go because half a block away two ambulances were wailing their way over to cross my path. So I had to wait for them instead of turn. And when I finally make it to the gym, I got in the locker room, got undressed, put on my sport bra, my tanktop, and then dug around in my workout bag for…nothing. I didn’t bring workout pants or shorts. DAMN it. So I got redressed and decided to go salvage my lunchtime by grabbing something to eat. I checked my wallet. I have one dollar. So here I am, having a protein cookie that I had stashed away in the file cabinet, drinking water, and blogging.

If I’m really, really good, I’ll go to the gym tonight after I do my and my parents’ taxes.

Today, after a hard workout and a pow-wow in the steam room, I weighed myself on the sliding weights scale AND at home on my digital bodyfat scale after a Black Angus prime rib dinner, and I’m STILL in the 120s! Yay! That means that after I debloat, I’ll be in the low 120s, and then I’m back on track to before I gained weight due to my inability to work out those 2 weeks I was deathly ill.

People have been reminding me to turn my clock forward an hour at 2am Sunday morning, which is in a few hours. I always rely on other people telling me to know when to spring forward and fall back, so it was news to me that it’s actually 2 weeks early this year. Really? Why change it? Cuz now we’re not gonna match up right internationally, since everyone globally is expecting us to maintain this time standard for another couple weeks. I’m glad I don’t work in a job where I have to deal with the technical problems this will cause on the computers and international stock trade.

Tonite at the end of bellydancing I added a new item to my gratitude list (which we give thanks for in our heads during a 1-minute silence as we stand holding hands in a big class circle). I am grateful for having hair to be screwed up.

Walking out to my car, I discovered another one. I didn’t have a coughing fit the entire day! I mean, I had the scattered coughs, but I didn’t double over in uncontrollable waves of heaves and hacks to the point of gagging. Sleeping with Vanessa’s humidifier on the past few nights may have done some magic. Yay for healing lungs and good friends’ caretaking.

Mr. W and I went to my parents’ newly remodeled house on Sunday evening to help them put away a few things and do some finishing touches, paint touch-ups, etc. The place is amazing, by the way. They ripped up all the carpeting in the house and put down either marble or rich deep floorboards. All countertops, sinks, toilets, tubs were redone; all tiles in the restrooms are new and very artistic. Each bedroom and bathroom has a new color and design scheme. The windows were replaced and the blinds have been removed with French wood shutters put in their place.

While I was up in my parents’ new bedroom upstairs lining shelving paper inside their drawers and cabinets (we are still Asian, after all), I saw that they have a new state-of-the-art glass digital scale. I stepped on it and it registered 127.9. I was not happy with that reading, so I dragged the scale into the bathroom, closed the door, and proceeded to lose weight. I peed myself dry, shed the clothes, and then stepped back on the scale. 125.9. There, that’s an acceptable number! Satisfied, I got dressed and came back out, and bumped into my mom in her bedroom. Sheepishly, I told her I just weighed myself. She said she was going to weigh herself, too. I put the scale down on the ground, and she stepped on. Immediately, she stepped off and handed me a small pair of scissors she’d been using to cut the contact paper. She stepped back on. I laughed at her, and confessed what I’d done in the bathroom. She said, “It’s okay, your dad does that, too!”

Genetics are strong, I tell ya.

Ass was the theme around lunchtime today. I felt the soreness in my butt all too distinctly when I got up to walk to my car at lunch. I was, however, comforted by the fact that the pain was equally distributed between the two butt cheeks. That means I did my workout properly yesterday. Driving to the gym minutes later, Sir Mixalot’s “Baby Got Back” came on the radio. A huge smile appeared on my face and I involuntarily started wriggling my butt to the music in my car. It was like driving around back in high school! Except with a much better sound system in the car, and a more painful butt.

“So fellas (YEAH!), fellas (YEAH!),
Do your girlfriends have the butt? (TELL ME!)
So shake it, shake it, shake that healthy butt,
Baby got back!”

I had to make some training and membership inquiries of the sales guy for Vanessa, so after finding him, I sat down at the desk with him for about 10 minutes as he explained the newest packages to me. He mentioned that one of the girls at the gym right now has a bet with him to see who can lose the most body fat percentage by the end of March, and that when she’d come by earlier, he’d deviously offered her chocolate, which she refused. He said he walked by where she was doing bicep curls with her trainer, and he joked, “Forget the biceps, work her out on her glutes!” She’d retorted, “Don’t worry about my butt when you oughta worry about your gut!”

Since I was late getting to the gym and made even later by talking to the sales guy, there was 20 minutes left before my usual time to leave the gym when I stood up from the sales table. I briefly considered just turning around and going back to work, but I couldn’t do it. I haven’t missed one noontime workout since I came back on Wednesday, and add to that one belly dancing session last nite. So I changed as fast as I could and did 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer, making myself so late that I sacrificed my after-workout shower. Oh well. If someone can smell me, they’re too close in my personal space anyway.

My sore ass nipped me every hurried step from the parking structure back into the courtroom.