cindy's world

If you have Internet Explorer, resting your mouse pointer on the photos will bring a pop-up caption. *side glance at Wilco, who pointed out the wrong usage of the alternative text tag, but did not educate me on what the correct title tag is*

I walked up to this great sideways-growing tree on the beach, reached for a branch, and all of a sudden, this huge wave crashed toward me! I yelped and jumped on the nearest branch to keep from getting wet. Mr. W, who was on a hill behind me, laughed and started taking pictures.

I was now committed to this tree, as the tide seems to have suddenly risen. I figured I may as well curl up in its protection.

Cradled in this branch, which looks like the tree’s smile, I enjoyed the scenery.

These photos were the ones I took atop the tree:



When I was ready to hop off, I watched the waves and counted how much time I had to hop off and run up the slope before the water came crashing in again, and just when I had it timed just so, I realized that behind me, these 3 or 4 Asian tourists were posing right next to the tree, behind me, taking photos of themselves by the tree! Hello, could you not wait till I got off the damn tree? Am I not ruining your shot?! So I had to wait uncomfortably for these men to finish the pictures before I could hop off and make a run for it.

You know how when a toddler does something remotely coordinated, such as bend a knee halfway in time with music, or spin around lopsidedly, or almost make palm-to-palm contact when asked to clap, the grownups all go crazy and cheer and compliment the kid, and the kid’s face lights up and suddenly everyone’s watching this toddler just go nuts showing off and repeating movements that really weren’t even that interesting to begin with?

Well, thanks for all your encouragement and compliments on my Hawaii photos! Here’s MORE!

The reason there’s a rainbow on the state license plate:

Some place on the North Shore (I think):

I had to climb a tree hanging over water to get this shot (photos of tree climbing to come; they’re in Mr. W’s camera right now):

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This is Roxy. She is the happiest dog I have ever seen. She pounces around the waves, and jumps in and ducks her nose underneath the foamy waterline. I wish Mr. W got a photo of her doing that, but this is the only photo he took of her. I met her when I emerged from snorkeling.

If I had known that Waikiki Beach hosted freaky All Hallows Eve Parade of Drunken Patrons Staggering Around Kalakaua Avenue, I’d have brought a costume. Or at least my camera. But I did have a camera when I saw this home decor:

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Vicky called me earlier in the evening and asked what I’d been doing all night. I told her that I’m in the middle of a ton of stuff, irrate that so little of the tasks I had at hand were done.
Vicky: Like what?
Me: I have a week’s worth of mail I was going through, and partway through I saw a letter from Citibank telling me they were gonna change my account unless I called this number, and my phone downstairs doesn’t work so I went upstairs to call, and while I was up there I saw my luggage I still had to unpack so I started doing that, and half the stuff was still damp from the humidity in Hawaii so I’m rewashing everything. And then halfway through that, I realized I had to take some stuff downstairs I’d need tomorrow so I came down, and saw that my mail’s still unfinished so I sat down to do that, and then Dwaine called so I was talking to him, and then Andy called so I talked to him, and then I decided to eat a little something so I turned on the TV and now I’m watching that for some reason, and then you called so I’m talking to you. Nothing’s done!
Vicky: So life’s pretty good, huh?
Me: [pause] Yeah. Life’s real good. I’m all tan from Hawaii and I have the luxury to do my chores really slowly, and I got to talk to my friends who called to say hi.

I’m pretty happy, despite the fact that I’d called Josh around 7pm (5pm Hawaii time) to ask what they were doing. He said they’d just gotten back from a hike where they saw waterfalls, they were waiting around about to go out for dinner, and then they thought they’d go hang out in the hotel’s hot tub afterwards. “I’m so jealous! Work here sucks!” I wailed. He said, “Yeah, I’m sorry, we wish you were here, too.” And then I heard everyone in the background of his phone telling me hi. But even work wasn’t too bad. We started a criminal trial today, but that didn’t come until after lunch, and during lunch, I met up with Mr. W and we napped off our jet lag exhaustion in his portable hammock, set up in the shade of a building on a private rooftop. After work and starving, having last eaten at lunchtime before my flight back Sunday, I hit up Vons and filled up a grocery basket with a tub of cashews, 2 packs of honey twist pretzels, Fuji apples, variety of yogurt, loaf of sprout grain bread, spicy jack and baby Swiss cheese, eggs, canned corn and margarine. $30 with a Vons Club card! I should grocery shop more often than my two or three times a year. They say to never shop when you’re hungry, and it’s a good thing I limited myself to one handheld basket, or I would’ve added ice cream, powdered hot chocolate, cereal, milk, chips, and cookies to the mix. I ended up eating a couple handfuls of cashews, some honey twist pretzels, yogurt , a slice of each type of cheese and 2 apples for dinner. That pretty much hit all the food groups, and was faster than what I’d planned to have but was too hungry to wait for — creamed corn egg drop soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. And I did manage to unpack, catch up my checkbook to all the debit card purchases I made in Hawaii, get through all my mail, and spend quality time with some friends on the phone. I also spent quality time with the Doey boy (who’s asleep upstairs on my bedroom floor right now, curled up in a cookies n’ cream colored ball) and changed out an ugly wall switch plate for a prettier mosaic one.

What a frazzled, aimless post. My point is that recognizing my small increments of successes brings me a sense of accomplishment and happiness that I’m glad I didn’t let pass by unnoticed.

I got 2 emails from Jordan this morning (2 on EACH ACCOUNT) all excited telling me she made some Cindy bobblehead doll and that if I don’t put it on my blog, she will (put it on hers, I mean). I haven’t seen it yet. It won’t load. So I’m gonna try it on here and see if it works from within a blog.

The hose was turned on at 5:15p. We washed with Dawn and dried, stripped the entire car by hand with claybar (I dropped my claybar on the driveway already and had to toss it :(), washed off the claybar residue with the Zaino carwash. It was 6pm at that time. Not bad. Now for the polish. 2 ounces of Z2 polish, 5 drops of ZFX accelerator, shake shake shake. The application wasn’t too bad, but it was getting dark outside. After we waited 30 minutes for the first coat of polish to dry, it was dark enough that we couldn’t tell how much wax we were removing. The second layer of polish would have to be applied in the garage. But first we sprayed on and wiped off some Z7, which is supposed to deepen the shine in between coats of polish, and repel dust and has SPF 40 sunscreen (stronger than the stuff I put on my flesh). Then James moved both Mercedes (Mercedi?) out of the garage and I parked my little Lexus in there so we could see in the light. (I felt bad that the Mercedeses were in the street getting sprinkled on with the neighbors’ sprinklers while my car was being primped in the garage.) We actually ran out of mixed polish and had to mix another batch. With the 2nd coat of polish applied, we went out for sushi while it dried. It was my small payment for his slave labor. Then we came back and removed the polish, and it was still too dark to see detail on the side of the car. I had to use a flashlight. However, at one point James tossed a towel on the hood of the car and it glided across the hood like figure skaters on ice. I couldn’t even lean on the car with a towel because I’d slip right off. We finished off with the Z7 spray, James did my tires and windows and we were done at, oh, 10:30p. So of course I opted to skip the 3rd coat of polish. “And you’ll have to do this again twice a year,” he said. I really don’t know at this point whether I would.

I’d forgotten my camera. James ran in and got his, however, and took a few “before” shots. The “after” shots were probably bad, since it was pitch dark by then and altho the flash went off, he said the photos didn’t come out. I’ll tell ya where the camera DID come in handy. There’s no light that comes on in my trunk when I open it, but there is a light switch on the inside. James said, “You have to manually turn the light on every time? That’s weird.” But the light doesn’t turn off on its own when I close the trunk. We bent our heads down and I slowly closed the trunk with the light on. The light was still on…still on…still on… And then James said, “Oh, I know how we can tell if the light turns off!” He put his camera on video record mode, put it in my trunk facing up to the light. I closed the trunk. I opened the trunk. He pulled the camera out and we eagerly watched the playback. You hear him say, “Here we go. Okay, close it,” you hear him laughing at my saying how overtechnologized we are in this generation, you hear a thunk as the trunk closes and the light goes dark. “Oh! It DOES turn off!” we said. “There you go,” said James proudly. And I was gonna do it the prehistoric way, of opening the slot between the trunk and the back seat so I could look in from the back seat with the trunk closed.

This morning I touched up around my car with the garage door up cuz I can now see the water trickle marks at the usual places around the door corners, and lemme tell ya, mirror effect! I totally saw my reflection in the car. I still haven’t seen my car in sunlight, since when I’m driving I can’t see the outside, and then I parked in the structure so it’s shady, but I can’t wait! “You’re gonna be one of those people that are like, ‘DON’T TOUCH MY CAR! YOU’RE GONNA LEAVE FINGERPRINTS!’ ” James said. I think he’s right.

Oh, and the weather reports say rain tomorrow and Thursday. Of course. But I get to see how the beading effect works!

How long is this post on washing my car?! I said to James mid-project yesterday that I felt like such a loser for spending this many hours on a car in the evening, but that I felt better when I realized James is spending the same number of hours on a car, and it’s not even his car! HAHAHA! What a good friend.

Oh my gawd! Embedded videos work! Now you can see and hear our idiocy!

I’m cat-sitting this weekend for Vanessa, who’s out there somewhere looking at some redwood tree as I type (presumably). Today, the sky was overcast and I spent a couple of hours in her apartment playing with her two tabby kittens. Few things make me sleepier than being indoors on a cool-weathered day with 2 furry warm bundles around me, and watching them blink slower…and slower… until they doze off. *yawn* I’m sleepy now just thinking about it. I took a brief cat-nap on Vanessa’s couch with Maxwell, the affectionate male, tucked against the crook of my bent knees purring away…

…and with Angelina, the independant Amazon female, curled comfortably in the rocking chair next to me.

*yaaawn*

Call me lame, but I love this photo. I think what I love about it is how surprisingly normal my thighs look. This was taken by Mr. W last Sunday. My jujitsu class all met up at Huntington Beach to take group dojo photos. We hung out and ate some food in street/beach clothes, and then changed to our gis for the photo shoot. I changed behind the open car door to shield me from the class, but apparently Mr. W had made his way to the other side of the parking lot for an unobstructed view. (And that’s a swimsuit, you pervies.)

I think a lot of us (mostly us women folk) have specific things we look for in a photo of ourselves, and we judge whether the photo is “good” based on these predefined points. Someone self-conscious about crooked teeth, for example, may examine a photo nervously to make sure no teeth show through the smile. For me on body shots, I dread the lower abdominal pooch, fat rolls, thick upper thighs, fat upper arms (that part behind your arm that flaps when you wave too rapidly, or looks extra big when you’re at a diagonal angle with your arm too close against your body). There are many specific things I look for on facial shots, too, which I won’t disclose because listing those flaws is just too embarrassing. Men, however, roll their eyes at these things. “What do you mean it’s a bad picture?! You look fine! It looks how you normally look!” And then I think, “I normally look like I have no jaw definition due to a double chin?!”

We see a photo of ourselves. We silently run through our personal checklist of flaws. We evaluate said photo against the list. A “good” photo is one in which the image is better than how we see ourselves in our heads. I think it’s a girl thing.

Dwaine finally posted photos of his and Andrae’s 30th bday party. Looking at the photos, I was like, “Aww, me with long hair.” Haha.

This was the photo taken when Andrae suddenly realized that altho we’ve known each other for 18 years, we do not have a photo together.

If you’re thinking, “Wait a minute, she must’ve had a photo with him before because I’ve seen him before,” you’re thinking of his identical twin brother Dwaine.

HEY! I just realized I never had any of this cake!

The DJ is another high school German pal of ours.

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