cindy's world

(Do I need to remind you guys to rest the mouse pointer over each photo for captions?)

Hit the gym first thing in the morning, then walked 2 hotels over for our timeshare presentation. I got them to leave me alone by making myself their worst type of candidate: “I vacation, like, once every 7 years, so I’ll never be able to use your packages. I also can’t afford any packages, especially ones I won’t use.” Diana got them to leave her alone by folding her arms over her chest and saying firmly and stand-offishly that altho she vacations often, she’s unable to make any commitments or decisions of the sort on the spot, and furthermore, refuses to. After a couple of hours wasted on us, we collected our $10 Chichen-Itza excursions and scheduled it for Wednesday, then went back to our own much better resort.

We had scheduled a dual beachside massage for the afternoon, and that was incredible. It was done in a private cabana on the beach so that we’re listening to the ocean and had the incredible ocean view as we enjoyed our 50-min massages. We lounged in enclosed spa area afterwards and I enjoyed the complimentary fruit.

Check out the spa showers.

They’re open-air on one side!

Then we explored the resort and hung out at their private beach.

Arrival. Diana’s flight to Cancun was scheduled to land 10 minutes before mine, and she greeted me on the other side of Customs. At the airport, we allowed ourselves to be “suckered” into a timeshare presentation at another hotel order to score two excursions to Chichen-Itza for $10 each. (Average price for excursions: $80 per.)

The all-inclusive Dreams Resort & Spa was very appropriately named. See link for their photos. You’d think the colors of the water, sky, or resort are touched up, but they aren’t. We unpacked, worked out at their gym (not a bad gym!). We had our first drinks at an outdoors bar, then a nice seafood dinner at one of their amazing restaurants.

Cindy & Diana’s Cancun Vacation

First of all, I must say, it is good to be home. I really enjoy the cool SoCal air that breathes so much easier than the thick humid Caribbean atmosphere. But my skin seems to like the humidity. That being said, here’s my vacation, organized by days. (I will later hit categories when I have time.) This is a lot of work (piecing together my days and resizing/uploading my photos), so please be patient with me as I slowly put these posts up. And…prepare to be jealous. =)
Monday.
Wednesday.
Thursday.
Friday.

At Jade’s request, the “before” gray eyes look.

Also a day in which I slept very little. Up at 4am, then a very full day playing bridesmaid at Vicky’s wedding; this shot was taken at like 2am later that evening.

These are my “mysterious,” “cat-like,” “beautiful,” “trippy,” “vampire,” “natural-looking,” “don’t-you-have-shit-brown-eyes-like-me?” gray eyes. (Yes, all adjectives actually used by people regarding my eyes.) Taken today, after 3 days of very minimal sleep.

I’m watching you.

me and Grace at her bridal shower, April 10, 2004

I was doing a massive digital photo review last nite, and for the first time, opened the CD case that contained a CD-Rom of Grace’s photos. Upon Grace’s passing last October, her uncle had collected photos from all stages of her life and put together a memorial book for her. I’d also loaned my entire photo album collections from high school to her uncle for this purpose. The rough photos and completed pages, along with other miscellaneous things related to Grace (poems, etc) were in the CD-Rom.

I thought I’d dealt with Grace’s passing fairly stoically, but I could never bring myself to view the CD-Rom. I’d always attributed it to laziness. However, with someone very supportive “with” me via IM, I popped the CD in… and cried my eyes out. One of the most significant things to me was the digital image of the back of a photo Grace had given me (which I’d forgotten about), on which she’d written:

The funny thing is now, 12 years later, I still change my outgoing message regularly, altho now it’s a cell phone instead of an answering machine (currently it says “Hi, I’m out hunting buffalo. Leave a message!”) And she advised me about men unworthy of me all the way thru to the last time I saw her alive.

It was a good cathartic release, and I was given great support and comfort as I shared Grace and Justin (her husband)’s story and some of their photos. Thanks, Kevin.

(See 8-20-05 entry, “Friday, and the Promise of Good Things.”)
Brad thought it would be a cakewalk to get his DUI charges dropped, until the surprise witness walked in the door.

We all know “who dunnit.”

Me, Brad & Val reconciled after I took Brad’s bribe and only imposed a sentence of having to take us out to dim sum on Sunday.

I don’t like it when photos are taken by people taller than the subject. We look unproportionally midgety. (I forwarded this photo to the judge. He phoned me from chambers and said in a mock-stern voice, “Ms. [my last name], a photo shows you standing in my well.” I forgot about the evidence of us being in the forbidden space, but hey, it’s my bailiff’s job to keep people out and posing us in the well was HIS idea!)

A fellow classmate gave me a CD-ROM of jujitsu photos. I didn’t even know when some of these photos were taken. I figure since I write so much about jujitsu, I may as well share some of these images with you. Please keep in mind that these photos appear to have been taken the 2nd week of class, and I had just gotten my gi and hadn’t washed/preshrunk it yet, so it’s oversized. Or maybe there’s a reason why my class nickname is “the little one.”

“Josh, you’re doing the arm-bar shoulder throw,” said the instructor. “Cindy, slap him.” Oh, how nice.

There’s me. Being shoulder-thrown after a blocked slap.

The 33rd Annual National Down Syndrome Congress Convention was held this weekend at the Hyatt Hotel a block from Disneyland. (Man, that is a niiice hotel. I had no idea.) Today is the talent show, held in a large ballroom. We volunteers were designated 2-3 per banquet table of about 8 Down-affected attendees, and our purpose was to keep an eye on the Down attendees at our table, be their friend, make sure they don’t wander off, make sure they get onstage when it’s their turn to perform.

N’Sync and Titanic…really big in the Down Syndrome community. Didn’t know that. Anytime N’Sync is performed, the room would be a riot with cheering and dancing Down people. Titanic musical performances would make most of the Down people cry.

To add to the list of things I didn’t know until today: You make one audible comment about how one of the Down men in a nice dark suit, had he not had Down, would’ve gotten women left and right, and about how he looks like Keanu Reeves with a touch of Down, and suddenly you’re the butt of all the jokes among the volunteers. “Oh, there’s your man in line for open mike!” “Hey, your man’s about to go up for his dance routine, you gonna scream and cheer?” “Hey, your man’s crying!”

All in all, I had a great time. After the conference, my cousin Jennifer, her “pal” David, and I went to Downtown Disney and had a late lunch and drinks at Restaurant Catal’s outdoor circular UVA Bar. Their caramel apple martini? AMAZING.

Sunday afternoon, I went to the Shoshin Ryu Region 1 Kata Contest that 2 teams from my jujitsu dojo were competing in. I’m so proud of them – they competed as green belts (they were initiated green belts just before the contest) against brown belts and took away first and second place in the adult division. It was fun to see what the competition is like. They were egging me on to compete for next year.

I took a bunch of photos, but here’s my beef with the digital camera. 1.) The delay between clicking and the actual photo taking is over a second, and by then the move’s already done and I ended up with a bunch of photos of them getting up from a fall, not of them in mid-air. 2.) I put in fresh batteries when I got to the site, and 38 photos later, I was running out of juice and the battery symbol was flashing. 3.) It takes too long for the flash to recover in between shots. Not that the flash works well anyway; it barely illuminates to the middle of the gym.

As I was driving out after the contest, I got a call from my instructor asking me to join the other instructors for an In-N-Out burger. I was craving In-N-Out because I saw a bailiff walk in with it at lunch last week, so how could I resist? I am now so bloated that it looks like I have puffy ciabatta bread dough wrapped around my lower abdomen.