cindy's world

Things are finally kinda quiet for the first time in a week. A feminine little diamond chevron band has now joined my pretty engagement ring. *looking down at the sparklies* I just want to jot some things. (After I wrote this post, I discovered that Mike [“Wilco“] is insanely prompt in his photo processing, so here are some shots I snagged from his collection. The first shots I’ve seen of our wedding, period. Thanks, Mike! Rest mouse pointers over photos for captions.)

1. I can’t imagine how hard the wedding would’ve been if I hadn’t had the help I didn’t ask for. Bridesmaid Sandy made sure my skirt was held up all night (I didn’t have a train, but the back still dragged a bit), sometimes in addition to MOH Vicky and bridesmaid Diana. Jordan did all the wedding day box/stuff migration from the house to the car for me because my nails were still wet after my very first manicure/pedicure and I was a helpless little piece of veal in a box. Lots of people pitched in in unexpected ways, like photographer Josh giving us a ride from the hair/makeup place to the venue, with his wife in tow driving his camera equipment to the venue. MOH Vicky was always there to help me find earrings and do my dress changes. Bridesmaid Diana ran around in circles collecting people and handing out corsages and boutonnieres. Every time I turned in the dressing room someone handed me blotting paper. The dressing tent was cleaned up and dresses hung and bagged as if by bridesmaid-dress-wearing wood sprites. The list goes on and on.

2. Like I expected, no one in the spectator side of the attendees knew anything was different, wrong or changed. No one knew my judge messed up on a pivotal point in the vows, no one realized the Garden neglected to have fish food at the pond edge for our after-vow presentation (but someone did belatedly run the fish food up to us), but everyone DID notice when the DJ weirdly announced me, at our grand re-entrance into the Garden for the reception, “Sandy [last name].” According to lots of people I’ve talked to today, there was a collective gasp in the crowd, a sort of, “No he DIDN’T just say that…” But everyone will forget that in a few days. No biggie. And he did correct himself.

3. The presentation of the wedding was SEAMLESS. I was so impressed with the Garden and the DJ. They coordinated with walkie-talkies and every piece I picked for the procession played perfectly, the DJ fading out and changing pieces. Everyone oohed and aahed at the singing sensation that was Daughter opening and closing the processional and recessional. The speeches were funny and touching.

(Why do I look so obese? Good grief, I’m only 118 pounds right now. And now I’m terrified to see other photos.)

4. The ONLY thing I was unhappy about going into the wedding was that we were totally unprepared for our first dance, and for the father-daughter dance. I didn’t want to do the cliche hold-and-sway for four and a half minutes, so we planned for a fast waltz to “I’ll Be.” Without knowing what we’re doing! We’d paid for a community class that’s supposed to choreograph our 1st dance song for us to the music of our choice, and the lady TOTALLY didn’t do that. All the entire class of 10 couples learned was the stupid foxtrot, just cuz there were more couples that were doing foxtrots than other stuff, even tho the 2 most imminent weddings coming up were ours (waltz) and this other couple’s (salsa). I’m totally gonna write a scathing email. BUT, we were rescued by the fact that the Garden had limited electricity output and therefore had very dim lighting over the dance floor. Nobody really witnessed us not knowing what we were doing. And because the Garden seating was circular around the pond, most people stayed put instead of gathering around to stare and scare me. And my dad couldn’t dance, and had never danced before (according to him), so we just walked around the floor in a pseudo-waltz pattern (my parents wanted me to do a waltz here, too) to the orchestral slow waltz father-daughter song I selected, and nobody could tell we didn’t know what we were doing here, either. At least that’s what they all claimed. Even though the low visibility was a common complaint among guests, I was grateful for this. My mom told me today that the darkness was the only reason my dad had the nerve to go up and do the dance with me.

5. I have, as I knew I would, the most beautiful bridal party I’ve ever seen. So there.

6. Everything coordinated themselves perfectly. The centerpiece matched the napkins sitting in the water glasses on the tables, my guest wedding favors lit up the night beautifully. Our theme-matching 3-D cherry blossom wedding cake was GORGEOUS displayed on the romantic chiffon-draped cake table, surrounded by the shockingly feminine and eloquent bridesmaid bouquets. I need to send my florist a thank-you card for the designs, also timely delivery and installation of the bridge garlands. I’d just told her, “You’re the professional, I trust you, go with it.” My bouquet was beautiful as well.

7. As I said in my impromptu thank-you speech immediately before the dinner started, I’ve discovered that my favorite thing in all this wedding planning stuff is not the pretty dresses (3, in fact) I get to wear, or the pretty flowers I get to hold. It’s having so many people I love, from places as close as next door to as far as Florida, Nevada, and Northern California, be surrounding me at a beautiful venue smiling at me and having a good time.

8. I spoke to a bunch of wedding guests today, and 4 out of 5 female guests agree, Dwaine and Andrae are hot. One chica said my photos on this blog do not do them justice. The 1 female guest who didn’t agree didn’t see them.

9. I spoke to a bunch of wedding guests today, and 5 out of 5 guests agree, the wedding was a raging success and everyone was in great spirits, mingling went well, and overall guests loved each other and made a bunch of new friends. Chemistry was in the air. Grace’s widower husband Justin had said to me, “One of the best things about being with Grace is being around her friends. She surrounds herself with really good people.” I felt like that last night. And others felt it, too.

10. It’s really, really odd to see that many people there for me and taking photos of me. I feel something resembling guilt that all these people went to such great lengths to travel to our wedding venue, just to see me and Mr. W get married. When I was walking down the path to the bridge with my dad (to Clarke’s Trumpet Voluntary, i.e. The Prince of Denmark’s March…no way I was gonna do the cliche “Here’s Comes the Bride”), I kept looking at all the people standing and snapping photos and had this conversation discreetly with my dad:
Me: Wow, look at all these people looking at us.
Dad: Walk slower.
Me: I really wanna do something.
Dad: No, I mean your footsteps. You can take make slower motions. We have 3 minutes for the entire procession, the Garden coordinator told us.
Me: I wanna wave at them. Can I wave?
Dad: I don’t know. Can you?
Me: Is it inappropriate?
Dad: I don’t know. I’ve never done this before, either.
Me: What if I wave? What could happen?
Dad: I don’t know, probably nothing.
Me: I REALLY wanna wave.
Dad: …
Me: *waving at crowd*
Crowd: *snap!* *click!* *wave!*
Me: Hey! A bunch of them waved back! *giggle*

Meanwhile, I learned later that this was happening on the bridge as my bridesmaids and maid of honor waited for us to join them:
MOH Vicky (thinking): She looks so happy with her dad. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her look so happy. Eep! I’m gonna cry! Think happy thoughts. Think happy thoughts. *wringing her hands*
Bridesmaid Diana (thinking): I’m gonna cry! Funny thoughts, funny thoughts, funny thoughts… *wringing hands*
Bridesmaid Sandy (thinking): Awww, look at her walking with her dad, she’s so beautiful and happy… Oh no! I’m tearing! Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts, la-la-la… *fanning hands over face*

What is it about a wedding that makes people cry? Everyone said it was a hugely successful, perfectly choreographed and visually beautiful wedding, and I made a point not to have sappy crying moments put in. I didn’t cry. Nobody else should. They can save the tears for the funeral.

11. One last thought: I missed the entire wedding that happened before my entrance with my dad, and whatever was going on in the courtyard during the cocktail hour. I kinda wish I had a videographer now. I could hear what was going on, the music playing exactly as I had arranged, classical as the guests were arriving, then Daughter singing “A Moment Like This” to open up the procession, the separate classical pieces I’d selected for the parents’ entrance, the men’s entrance onto the bridge, the women’s entrance and long walk to the bridge to join the men, and then my and my dad’s entrance. And the DJ hit my requested period of music on the nose during cocktail hour, mellow stuff, Michael Buble, rat pack, no cussing or rap or hip hop, as we stayed behind inside and did a quick photo session. I wish I could’ve seen the guests’ reactions to the courtyard hors d’oeuvres, sake bar, brushed silver signing photo frame in lieu of guestbook, arrival into the Garden before the ceremony, and especially their re-entry after the Garden was transformed into a glowy wonderland for the Reception. (It was daylight when they left for cocktail hour, and dusk/night when they re-entered and all the rope lights and candles danced in the dark.) I guess I’ll have to wait for the photos.

We’ve been tackling the do-it-yourself wedding projects this week. We decided to forego the Garden’s table numbers and create our own. This is a small sample of what Mr. W designed from photographs he’d taken himself at the Garden (rest mouse pointers over photos):

All the table numbers were sent electronically to Costco for printing like photos, and retrieved (for FREE cuz Mr. W had free prints in his account) an hour later. No sweat!

We ran into a hitch yesterday when designing (or rather, attempting to design) the labels to attach to the wedding favors. We couldn’t get the templates to do what we wanted, couldn’t figure out a program that would give us what we needed to do, and printing them and cutting them were a nightmare. AND, they totally looked cheesy attached to the favors. So I made a rash decision to HANDWRITE on the edges of the favors with a permanent marker.
“<3 Cindy & Mr. W <3
August 31, 2008”
I did one as a sample. It looked okay. And we were desperate and tired, anyway. We were gonna start writing yesterday, but got lazy. LUCKILY. Cuz today, Anny saved the day! In discussing my dilemma, she IMed, “can u just print out on a small card for the table , some cute saying that they can take the [favors] home as their favors?” It…was BRILLIANT. We did it the same way as the table numbers, so it’s all in the same (easy) theme. I’d LOVE to post what the card looks like and says, as it came out beautifully with Mr. W’s mad photoshopping skills, but it’d ruin the surprise for my guests. So maybe next week. 😉 Thanks, Ann!

(Written 8-19-08, 7:33p, but it took this long to get the photos. Photos were as of last week; there’s been improvements since.)

The first week of living with a boy was stressful; the house was a mess and the very tidy Mr. W was about to pull out his hair. He so badly wanted his house to look a certain way, and there just weren’t enough hours in a day, what with having to work and all. But we chipped away at the pile of boxes, and over the weekend he built another Gorilla Shelf in the garage for additional storage. The garage is neater now, altho we still have to find places for more stuff if we want both our cars in the garage at the same time. The house is fairly presentable now, tho.

Up until two days ago, Mr. W fixed breakfast, handed me a lunch as we went to work, made dinner. It was all his stuff and his food in the kitchen, so he knew his way around it earlier. Three days ago he uncovered a giant box of kitchen food we had yet to unpack, and so I went thru the box as he worked on the sprinkler system outside. The boy has like 12 cans of salmon, 9 cans of tuna of various brands, a case of canned peas, a bazillion packets of hot cocoa (which he doesn’t drink), three commercial-sized boxes of Lipton iced tea bags, three bear-shaped bottles of honey, two difference sizes of unopened Heinz ketchup, 28 cans of different brands, cuts and preparations of tomatoes, 5 canisters of different protein powder mixes, 3 bottles of different brands of apple cider vinegar, 2 or 3 more different bottles of different kinds of vinegar (balsamic, red wine, rice, etc.) plus a gallon jug of store-brand apple cider vinegar, 10 boxed packages of various flavors of instant Thai noodle dishes…I could go on (believe me, I can), but you get the idea. It was an inane amount of food, most of which he doesn’t eat. Like the bajillion little packets of dried up mac & cheese. Immediately I resolved to clean this out cuz we have a HUGE shelved pantry and things are piled on top of other things. When I ranted about this inventory, Mr. W said helplessly that 1) he shops at Costco and things come in multi-packs, and 2) when he lived alone he was too lazy to dig out what he had in his shelves and pantry so if he wanted to eat a particular thing, he’d just go buy more. At Costco. So last nite I made a modified Thai green curry with peas and ground turkey over brown jasmine rice, and tonite I made honey-barbecue glazed chicken breasts (in the oven so it’s healthy) with wasabi and Italian herbs as a base marinade, served over a bed of mashed potatoes to balance out the sweetness of the honey.

Not a dent in the pantry. I haven’t given up.

I feel slightly bad for the people who google for photos of steamy wet women in the shower and instead find their way here. Oh well. Enjoy anyway.

Courtesy Vanessa’s camera (rest mouse pointer on photos for captions):

At dinner, Restaurant 162′, Laguna Niguel Ritz Carlton

The waitress thought we were taking too long deciding on a dessert (actually, we were just chatting with the dessert menus open in front of us) so she took the liberty of just ordering the sampler for us. Everything was delicious. We each picked up a tiny spoon, and took a tiny scoop of whatever was in front of us, and then we turned the plate for the next one. Scoop, ROTATE! Scoop, ROTATE! I think Vicky called it out to keep the process orderly.

Lily said that the stripes on the nightie she got were strategically placed so that I don’t have to wear anything under.

The couples massage tutorials part of Vanessa’s present.

(No, not that kind of shower. No pictures of 10 wet girls.)

We had an amazing time at the bridal shower. Food was drop-dead delicious. Spa treatment was to die for. Friends around me made me feel like I DID die and go to heaven. As always, rest mouse pointer over photos for captions.

Lunch at 230 Forest Avenue Restaurant & Bar, patio seating:
From Anny’s camera

Anny’s so petite she makes my arm look huge. *sideglance*

From MOH Vicky’s camera

Dinner at the Ritz Carlton’s Restaurant 162′:

Vicky ordered a bottle of my favorite wine, Caymus Vineyard’s “Conundrum”. It was a hit.

Gee. Can you tell these girls were drinking?

I’d just like to point out that I’m not as red as Vicky is here from the wine. =)

Vanessa’s card said to be careful what you wish for on a blog cuz you just might get it…

Lily got me this swanky slinky strategically-placed alternating striped nightie. Mr. W loves it.

In addition to what’s pictured above, Vanessa’s gift collection included a couples massage how-to kit complete with photograph illustrative cards. Very Mr. W. Anny got me a gorgeous silky white chemise with a matching g-string, and a great black tanktop with bling on the front that says in fancy script “Mrs. [Mr. W’s last name], Est. [wedding date]”. Insanely cute. Vicky got me the entire event and dinner for everyone. I didn’t get my wish of finally getting all my bridal party together, tho…bridesmaid Sandy called me that morning in a panic saying she woke up and her right eye was swollen shut. Turned out when her physician father examined her later on in the morning that she had four spider bites on her eyelid. Eek! She stayed out of the public eye and sat at home icing it and taking antihistamines. Gym Trainee was a no-show to dinner and when I called her she didn’t pick up; turned out she somehow thought dinner was canceled. EH??? Oh well. We all had a blast, though. I think the chemistry at the tables were good, so it all worked out. Diana flew down for lunch and after our massage session at the Ritz, she and I hung out with Lily and Vanessa poolside at the Ritz as Vicky got her pedicure session, and then flew back home to NorCal before dinner. Even tho her visit was short, we all enjoyed her presence, especially the guy at the spa check-out counter, who asked me when I was checking out what Diana did for a living. He was surprised to find she’s not a bodybuilder or Olympic competitor by profession, because “that girl has the most well-toned body I’d ever seen in my LIFE!” he exclaimed. *high-five Diana*

I had a great time. It was classy, low-key, and PRIVATE. Thanks, Vicky! There are more photos on Vanessa‘s camera, if she emails them to me I’ll post them if she doesn’t.

Due to the 5.4 magnitude earthquake yesterday before lunchtime, our building was evacuated as the Sheriffs worked through lunch with shotgun rifles in hand to check the floors for leaks and damage. Apparently they didn’t want to take the chance that inmates in the building got worked up over the rumble. Our building’s on wheels, so the quake felt more dramatic than it actually was. We had a lunchtime meeting that was canceled because of the mandatory evacuation, so I went to the gym instead. Then I went home to check on Dodo. A bunch of my things, including all my bingo daubers, had fallen on the floor, but luckily nothing broke. Dodo was fine and normal. He did make strange whimpering sounds in the middle of the night, as if he were stuck in a nightmare. It took my calling him three times to wake him up. I wonder if he sensed the impending earthquake.

So our lunchtime meeting was postponed to today. It’s supposed to start in 2 minutes, so I’m borrowing a coworker’s internet access to post what I’d been doing during my lunchhour while waiting for the meeting to start:

There’s all the guests on little slips of paper, clustered into groups for tables, using the map of the Garden as a seating guide (center).

I had to step back and take a photo with my cameraphone cuz it looks like such a masterpiece. You guys have no idea the dynamics of people I had to take into account. That was fun, like working out one of those math equations like, “Tommy has 4 brothers and 2 sisters. One of his sisters has a female and a male friend. The male friend is 3 years older than Tommy’s youngest sibling, and Tommy has 3 siblings older than his sister’s female friend. Arrange them all in order by age keeping in mind that Tommy’s younger sister can not stand the oldest brother’s cologne and hence can’t stand next to him although the female friend likes the sister AND the cologne…”

Mr. W and I weren’t going to pick this one, as it looked very Catholic and I’m not Catholic, but the makeup lady really liked it and said my mom would, too, as it’s in a style popular when my mother got married, so we got it. Even Mr. W’s daughter wasn’t too thrilled with this one. I had to post it cuz it reminds me of one that Flat Coke & Flies posted of herself.

This one I did like. I think I just love, LOVE this ballerina dress! And the fresh flowers (plumeria and 2 pink baby rosebuds) in my hair ain’t half bad, either. I just kinda wish they’d kept my original left arm, tho.

My mom, grandma and I went to the photo studio yesterday to look at the engagement photos. To my surprise, the makeup lady (who apparently is also Photoshop Queen) had busted her rump to get our order done so that my mom could pick them up for us. All the larger photos had weatherproofing done on them, giving them a canvas effect, and were mounted on cardstock backing so that we don’t need to find glass-covered frames to put them up. When we got there, the makeup lady opened our package and laid out our photos on a large table for our inspection. The first thing my grandma said was, “NONE of these look like you! How come you look so thin?! Why is your face so long and narrow?”
My mom actually defended me with, “That was the way she looked the day they took the photos. The hairstyle is flattering on her.” And then she said happily, “HEY! Your arms don’t look big in these photos!”
The makeup lady aka Photoshop Queen said, “I’ve cut all those arms down for her in the computer.”
Then the three of us were seated in front of the large monitor as the makeup lady displayed all our photos for my mom and grandma, making note to tell them which ones we’d purchased and which ones we were letting go, giving my mom the option to buy some photos on her own if we didn’t select them. I didn’t select a lot of photos with just me in them, cuz I can’t justify making Mr. W pay half for photos that he isn’t even in. But my mom definitely wanted those. The women discussed how of COURSE the bride gets all these solo photos cuz the wedding is about the BRIDE; the GROOM is just the prop to accompany the bride in all these photos. The makeup lady said engagement/wedding photo session breakdowns are typically 1/3 solo bride photos. And then she added hesitatingly that sometimes a vain groom would fight for camera time with a bride. How funny.

So I asked her, “What DID you change on me? I can tell you altered the arms and you softened my skin and removed my bug bite scar on my shoulder.” The makeup lady opened up an unaltered file of me to do a side-by-side comparison, pointing out her changes. She redefined the jawline (I knew it! I knew I had more significant chipmunk cheeks!), softened the coloring on the face, took AWAY my tan, carved off the bicep, tricep and deltoid muscles on my upper arms, shaved off some forearm muscles (I got those from gripping heavy weights at the gym), and trimmed off my calf muscles! I’m cool with complexion repairs, but SERIOUSLY, how much time have I invested in making my body look a certain way, only to have it photoshopped OUT?! But of course my mom and the makeup lady were happy, talking about how all the customers leaving this studio are delighted with the effects. Obviously they don’t have a lot of Americanized gym rat customers.

(Arms, calf and hamstring shaved off in the above photo. To me it looks like I have the limbs of a quadriplegic. Not that there’s anything wrong with atrophied muscles, it’s just that I don’t have them.)

My grandma out of nowhere said, “Why do you have that on display? I think neither person in there is good-looking.”
I turned and saw her still sitting in front of the monitor with two of my solo photos on the screen. I thought she was implying shutting the monitor off, but then my mom asked her, “Ma, what are you talking about?”
And my grandma pointed to a giant sample portrait of a couple hanging on the wall. “They’re both ugly.”
My mom hit her mother on the shoulder lightly in embarrassed horror, as the makeup lady said awkwardly, “Well, only some people would allow us to use their photo as our sample, others who may look better may not want their photo on display in our store…”
Is this what happens in old age? Like, tact? Tact is for sissies who can’t handle the truth.

(My hands look HUGE in the photo above cuz they slimmed down my arms so dramatically.) This is the photo I’d written about before. My mom said I should’ve done the mouth open, hand on my cheek “ooh!” expression which she thought was really cute, but I DID do that and the photographer didn’t snap that.

My mom ordered 8 extra poses that we hadn’t ordered, and a couple of enlargements of her and the makeup lady’s favorite pose, the one I wrote about in which the makeup lady kept talking about the bust and waist proportions. She did that again this day, fluttering her mouse pointer around the bust and waist and the arc in the back.

(You can ALMOST see the shadowing around my shoulder created by deltoid, but WHERE’S the deltoid?! Where’s the tricep?)

When we got back to our neck of the woods, we called my dad to join us for lunch. He did, and we handed him the envelope of developed photos. My dad knows me so well. He took one look and said, “Hey, they cut out all your muscles!”
“I know,” I wailed, “And I worked so hard for those muscles!”
He chuckled. Then looking more closely at the other photos, he said, “They made you look like a movie star, but you look like a Japanimation cartoon, all white with skinny stringy limbs.”
“I know!” I wailed again.

I totally understand old or fat people loving this type of photoshopping, but I’m not sure I’m a fan. Maybe it’ll grow on me. I’m just not the ultra-femme type. When I brought the photos to Mr. W, pointing out where the editing was done, he (a fan of healthy toned women) exclaimed, “What makes her think she can take this type of liberty with other people’s photos?!” I explained that it’s the cultural and generational difference in perception of beauty. Well, there’s always the wedding day photos that have a chance of looking like me.

You can compare what I actually look like with the (crappy) photos I took of myself yesterday morning.

Wow, I’m behind. Not having internet at work sucks ass. It really blows. …It sucks AND blows. a-whoo a-whoo a-whoo!

I got a bad-news call from my bridal party’s dressmaker earlier in the week saying that the fabric Mr. W’s daughter had chosen for her dress design is no longer available, and that she would have to select a different fabric or a new color. Of all people to have this happen to, it would be Daughter, who is slippery-er than an eel when you’re trying to get a hold of her. I left a couple of unreturned voice mails on her cell. She finally picked up on Thursday afternoon and I explained the problem to her. She was sad, but to my surprise, offered to come with us that evening to select a new fabric. Mr. W and I had an appointment to view and choose our engagement photos after work that day, and the studio was only blocks away from the dressmaker’s shop. Daughter canceled her volleyball event with her friends and drove out to my work to meet up with me.

We hit a couple of snags at the dressmaker’s, as certain other fabrics weren’t available to go with the second fabric Daughter had selected, but I think eventually we did arrive on something Daughter was relatively content with. Next was the engagement photo appointment. Daughter oohed and aahed over how I turned out in the photos, but I was less impressed. I mean, the photos looked pretty, blah blah, but can they photoshop me any more?! I know what I look like in the mirror, unless all my home mirrors are distorted, and in these photos they narrowed my face, lost my chipmunk cheeks, and I could swear that at least on one pose, they totally CUT OUT half my upper arm. It just makes me wonder what *I* would’ve looked like in these photos, not this strange girl they’ve created by manipulating my likeness. Mr. W and Daughter disagreed with me and said it’s clearly me in the photos and Mr. W thinks that when I see myself in a mirror, the image that enters my brain is distorted by anorexia anyway, but they both did agree that Mr. W himself apeared to be severely airbrushed. He looks something like a man-boy in some poses, instead of the man I’ve come to love when I look at him. I guess this way, we appear to be closer in age… =P

Anyway, out of the many poses the three of us viewed on the large computer monitor, we only selected 15 to purchase. The makeup lady and her husband the photographer had their favorites, and they kept raving about certain features on me that make me “model” material, such as the way the corners of my lips angle up when I smile (apparently a lot of their customers angle back or down, like Kate Winslet), the great teeth, the way my body is SO unlike an Asian’s body because I have a chest and butt and proportionally smaller waist. She complained that most of her Asian customers’ torsos are shaped like a square. She REALLY pushed for purchase and blow-up of one photo in particular (her “favorite”) in which I slightly had my back to Mr. W as I lounged on a chair, and her mouse pointer kept traveling embarrassingly to circle my chest and delineate the arc in my back as she explained the figure thing.

Okay, I just did a similar pose right now from my computer chair and looked in the mirrored closet door, and the woman apparently photoshopped out the definition in my deltoid and tricep! I know that traditional Asian women are totally anti-tone and don’t think it’s feminine, and they’re always telling me to stop weightlifting, but I WORKED HARD FOR THAT DEFINITION! I wanna see the “before” pictures!

Wanna hear something more exasperating? I tried to take photos of myself to illustrate my point, but either 1) the flash kept going off ruining the photo, 2) taking the flash off made the exposure time longer so it was totally blurry, or 3) finding a setting that turns off flash and does the steady-hand thing changed the lighting (or maybe I turned funny) so that you can’t see definition in the photos after all, altho it’s clearly in the mirror.

*sigh*

(As w/all my photos, resting your mouse pointer on it brings up a caption.) But anyway, see what I mean? Chipmunk cheeks. Please ignore the glasses, messy hair and jammies. I just got up.

Oh, and the studio, as I expected, absolutely does not sell the digital images. You pay for every print you want.

After I got home, I grabbed a bag of DVDs Busykitty Vanessa had wanted to see and brought them over to her place, as she was on lockdown for 10 days after her surgery. I met the last sister I hadn’t met yet, and the three of us ended up chatting until I was dozing off on Vanessa’s comfy couch. MAN her TV is huge. I’m happy to report Vanessa is recovering well and her doctor doesn’t expect the lab to return any significantly bad news. Oh yeah, my Happy Bunny jammies (above) was a 30th bday present from Vanessa!

Speaking of no bad news in lab results, I see my doctor had left me an email regarding my pap last week. I’m gonna read it and I hope I don’t have another abnormal pap that requires further cutting, like last time! *crossing fingers*

(As always, rest mouse pointer on photos for captions.)

Mr. W and I met up with my realtor, his wife (as they are long-time friends of my parents’), and my parents at our future new house for a home inspection today. I think my mom was relatively happy with the house, altho she still complained about it being too far away. I have to say, tho, you never realize all the little issues you have with a place until you do a home inspection yourself. There are 3 or 4 switches that seem to activate nothing, we can’t get 3 of the ceiling fans to work altho the lights attached to them do come on, and the garage door lock is installed backwards such that you can click the lock from inside the garage, but you need a key to unlock it from inside the house. Also, the sprinklers seem to have missed a portion of the lawn for some time as patches of grass have died. This was supposedly fixed so we’re just hoping it’s fixed in time to revive the patches. Ideally, we’d also like to upgrade the bathrooms.

See where the grass is yucky?

Mom and realtor’s wife bored.

Mr. W and realtor in kitchen.

Just a note: all the furniture you see is not ours; they’re stuff left behind to “stage” the house so that people viewing it can picture what goes where. Once our place is situated I’ll take more photos. Should be soon; we’re in a 35-day Escrow. Man I hope my place rents right away! I’d like the transition to be seamless.

After the home inspection we all went for lunch at Claim Jumper. Since I was on my diet, all I had was a Caesar salad, no croutons, with shredded broiled chicken. It totally looked like diet food compared to the garlic cheese breads, babyback ribs, sandwiches and delicious food everyone else was having. And then after that we all went to the City’s private lake 2 miles away. Everyone was impressed and made plans for future fishing. After that was a leisurely walk around Dana Point’s beaches, we all climbed some rocks, and then we separated; Mr. W and I went to Costco and then back to his house as my parents and the realtor and wife went to Balboa Island for fishing.

Pretty decent day. Except for the food. Man, Costco had some fine looking cupcakes and ice cream cupcakes. And soft serve frozen yogurt, and chicken bakes, and pizzas.