cindy's world

Here is a catch-up of some stuff we did for fun in the last few weeks.
One Saturday morning, the weather looked great so I suggested we go kayaking at Balboa Island. So up on the car roof went the two-man kayak that I hadn’t been in since our first date almost exactly 5 years ago, and we had a great time kayaking, watching a seal swim right by us, discovering a great seafood happy hour for lunch.

On another day, we decided to see “Eat, Pray, Love.” It was playing at our favorite very uncrowded theatre in a historic quaint small-town district. When we were in line, we heard two women in front of us complaining about their tickets to the showing that we wanted to catch, wanting refunds or exchanges to a different showing time and location. Turned out that the noon showing we were aiming for was playing in a special theatre. You pay like $16 a ticket instead of whatever movies cost nowadays, and it’s in an upstairs VIP theatre where the leather seats are farther apart, fully reclining, the armrests have swiveling table trays attached, and a pushbutton for service and a wait staff brings you real restaurant food and wine. I had a chardonnay with a Mediterranean curried chicken and cous cous salad. (YUM.) Mr. W had some sort of red wine with a kobe burger and garlic fries. We definitely want to go back to that theatre again, altho we’ll be sure to get in a little earlier next time so we don’t miss movie parts while we’re picking cous cous out of the bed of lettuce.

Earlier this week, our Disneyland annual passes kicked in again after a summer-long blackout period, so we decided to go to Disneyland after work to see the new show at California Adventure, “World of Color.” A friend who works there tipped us off that if we had dinner at one of two restaurants in California Adventure, we could participate in a program that gets us perfect spots for the show without having to line up when the park opens for a Speedpass ticket into the show. The restaurant we chose to go to was Wine Country Trattoria, and the deal is we eat before 6:30 p.m., ordering from a “Preferred Dining” 3-course prix fixe menu at $39 a person, and after eating, we get show tickets to the special section. The food was flippin’ amazing. It was easily $60/pp quality fine dining. Soon we were in our section, from which I had this great view across the water:

Unfortunately, since this was an impromptu trip and I was still in my work dress and high heels, and it’s standing-room only at this show, I had to stand for nearly 2 hours waiting for the show to start and then for the half hour show to end. My feet and back were killing me. Even more unfortunate, an older lady and her friends who were next to us started inching their way in front of me, severely encroaching upon the space of a family of 4 in front of us, so that one old lady was nearly in the father’s lap as he sat on the ground with his kids by him. So when the show started, this, instead, was my view. Story of my life.

On Wednesday, we decided to stop by The District, an outdoors shopping and and restaurant area, for dinner at vegetarian restaurant Native Foods Cafe. I met the most gorgeous, well-behaved Japanese akita there! The owners let me pet him. Turns out he was only 4, so I asked how they trained him so well. They said they’d only gotten him a year and a half ago as a RESCUE. They were unsuccessful in finding out why an owner would let such a gorgeous, mellow dog go, but he ended up at a city kill-pound. An akita dog rescue group saw him, took him, and contacted this family, who’d just happened to put their interest in for an akita the week before. They met the dog and fell in love. Both the akita and the family got lucky! This dog was not territorial, didn’t have problems socializing with other passing dogs and people, and was silent. The owners say that at home, he knows to be a guard dog, and would alert them if someone lingered by their front lawn too long, or a stranger came too close to the house. Petting this large gorgeous animal, I felt like I was playing with the giant wolves in “Twilight.” Mr. W and I hung out over coffee a bit more there, and he said, “I love not going home with you.”

YESTERDAY was WONDERFUL. A high school acquaintance extended an invitation to me for a tequila tasting event, hosted by Tequila Ocho, at Mexican restaurant Olamendi’s in Laguna Beach. We got to the restaurant about 45 minutes before the event, so we walked across the street and stared at this for awhile:

I had never heard of Tequila Ocho before. Apparently it’s a higher-class sipping tequila, made the old-fashioned way. You treat and drink it as you would wine, such as letting it breathe first to expand the flavors, and it definitely has a nose and a palate that sometimes differ from each other. The chef at Olamendi’s created an exclusive menu to pair to each tequila and it was delicious, paired more perfectly than any wine or other pairing I’ve never tried, and the food wasn’t bulky or greasy! The tequila was amazing, too. They take the bitter core of the agave out, so their tequilas are sweeter. We got these nice bottles of 2010 plata to take home as attendance gifts.

On the social networking site where I posted the above photo, this conversation ensued when I got home:
Claudio: I soooo could use a drink right now.
me: I am dizzy. D-I-Z-Z-I-E-E-E dizzae!@#$ I hope I’m not gonna have my first hangover ever tomorrow morning, cuz I still gotta work!
…duuuuude, my fingers feel weird. like I can’t really separate ’em to type.
Maggie: LMAO!!!!
Claudio: If you tequila tasting, you should have at least SOME kind of hangover. Wear it like a badge of honor.
me: they did better than “tasting.” they started with a mixed drink (plata in a mint pineapple margarita — tasted like a tequila mojito; we had TWO each), then did generous pours in wine glasses of a 2009 plata paired with a cheese appetizer folded in some sort of native leaf doused in a tomato-based sauce, then we went to a 2009 reposado with a spicy cream of bean tortilla soup, then a 2010 reposado with an amazing tender chicken breast with baby pearl potatoes in a chipotle mole sauce (hubby had beef and what looked to be some veggies in a dark sauce), and finally a 2010 anejo (not yet released on the market) with a light dessert of broiled mango and another native fruit that tasted like apple/pear over Monterey jack cheese on toasted bruschetta bread.
Claudio: Sounds amazing. Glad you guys had fun. 🙂

I texted Claudio at a little past 10pm, “dude. my mouth is numb. is this normal? the food was flippin amazing tho! omg.”
He responded 2 minutes later, but I’d already konked out. I woke up at 2am to see this from him: “Normal? No. The tequila is prob eating away at ur nervous system. Enjoy the food while u still have the ability to swallow.” Then 5 minutes after that, when I didn’t respond, “Did u go to sleep already????? Geez!” Well GOOD THING cuz he would’ve scared the crap out of me in my buzzy state! I got out of bed, went downstairs for water as Dodo followed me closely, and ran into Mr. W in the kitchen. He had fallen asleep in the cool weather outside and had also come to the kitchen for water. “What are YOU doing here?” he asked me.
“Taking Dodo for a walk.”
Today, no hangover. Nothing. I feel GREAT!

(photos courtesy Tom’s cell phone camera)

Just got home from The Doors concert at our lake. I didn’t get the music; it was just noise to me except for the encore song, which was “Light My Fire,” #1 song on the charts in 1967. It was pretty cool that Robby Krieger (who mainly wrote the song) was performing it live in front of us. Maggie, her hubby Tom, and Mr. W had a great time. I’m glad, because I was mostly distracted and very violently annoyed by three morons standing up in the front nearly the entire time blocking people’s view with their gyrating, despite Lake rules that people stay seated and despite my and other people’s requests to them to sit down or move aside. I had never wanted a slingshot so badly in my entire life. Tom kindly told me after the concert that he’d considered throwing a fork at one of the guys. Judging by the way these idiots ignored angry tugging on the back of one of the guys’ shirt and the crowd’s shouting demands for “down in front” to sit down, they wouldn’t have felt the fork, but it was the thought that counts. According to the people in the know (apparently everyone except for me), the current lead singer sounds like Jim Morrison, looks like Jim Morrison, and has the exact mannerisms and movements as Jim Morrison. Mr. W said he felt like he was watching and living 60s history. At one point, someone even lit up and we smelled the skunky stink of pot. I think the sheriffs were on that pretty quickly because the smell was gone within a minute. But let me back up.

Before the concert, Dwaine came over and hung out, then Maggie and Tom arrived, and we all went to the lake early to get in some kayaking. Dwaine asked as we left the house whether we were gonna take pictures of our adventure. I thought it was a great idea, and asked Mr. W if he had his waterproof camera ready. He answered that it was too much trouble to put the camera in the waterproof casing, so I ran upstairs and got my (significantly more expensive) DSLR camera and met everyone outside. We got to the lake, I grabbed a towel and my camera and we headed to the watercraft rental station. Since we had to wait for Tom and Mr. W who were changing in the restroom, I decided to start a new folder in the camera for this trip. I turned it on, the battery indicator flashed, and the display shut off. That’s weird, I had enough juice in the battery the last time I used it, or I would’ve changed the battery already. But I walked back to the restrooms where Mr. W was walking out, handed him my camera, and asked him to put it with his stuff in the locker because it was out of battery. He looked at me like I was stupid and troublesome, which okay, I was at the moment. I ran back to my beach bag, retrieved my fairly new Android cell phone so that I could at least take photos with that, and returned to the kayak area. Soon we were on our kayaks in the water. I took some photos, and Tom pulled out his cell phone and took some photos, including this one of me:

This is the conversation that followed the photo.
Everyone: Be careful! Don’t fall!
Me: It’s fine, the kayak’s actually pretty steady. I can probably even do this on one foot. *lifting one leg*
Everyone: Be careful! Don’t fall!
Me: It’s fine! *lifting the other leg in another direction* *the kayak rocks toward the weight*
Everyone: *random gasps and yells*
Me: *lowering my foot quickly and restabilizing the kayak*
Everyone else: *sighs of relief*
Dwaine: Nice save! I thought it was gonna tip over!
Me: No, the kayak’s stable. I can actually get it to rock pretty far and it stays upright. *rocking left and right* See, I can rock it back and forth and it doesn’t –”
*flip*
*sploosh!*

When I came back up, my kayak was upside down. Which wasn’t a big deal in the very comfortable water temperature in the hot sun, until I understood what Mr. W was yelling. “Your cell phone! Your cell phone’s in there!” Oh, CRAP. My phone was in a zippered pouch attached to the back of my kayak seat. I pushed on the kayak. It just floated a little away from me.
“How do I flip this back over?”
“You have to get under it,” said Mr. W, paddling toward me. I took a breath and went under and pushed. Again, the kayak just moved away from me across the water. I had no leverage. Soon Mr. W got the kayak from one end and someone else, I think Tom, got it from the other end, and they pulled it up and flipped it. I pulled myself in and checked on the pouch right away. There was about 3 inches of water inside and my phone was submerged. Tom immediately took my phone and examined it, and took it apart to dry. *sigh* I wasn’t worried about it because what I was supposed to do? Besides, it’d gotten wet once before (rather mysteriously cuz I didn’t do it, I just found wetness and steam inside the display) and that time, after it dried and I recharged the phone, it stopped acting weird. So I wasn’t too concerned, altho it did suck that I was unable to entertain myself with it during the concert.

When we got home awhile ago and we walked to the front door, I mentioned to Mr. W that I need to remember to say a prayer of thanks to God (and really, to everyone helping me up there — spirit guides, angels, friends, etc.) for killing the battery of my DSLR camera. “Why?” Mr. W looked at me oddly.
“Because if that camera weren’t dead, it would’ve been in the kayak.” And I definitely would’ve been upset about THAT, because not only is it an expensive camera, it would’ve been resting on the bottom of the lake.
“Oooh,” he said, understanding.
A negative’s not always a negative, that’s why I’m not usually upset when little “disasters” strike, such as when I’m stuck hitting every red light on a drive. In that situation, I’m probably being deliberately delayed for a reason. In this case, it was weird that I didn’t check my DSLR battery before leaving the house, weird that the battery was so dead the camera wouldn’t even stay on which renders the camera completely useless, weird that my kayak was the only one with a seatback that had a zippered pouch cuz otherwise my cell would’ve been sitting in the open on the back of the kayak (where my stuff usually goes). Lastly, it was weird and unusual that Mr. W insisted, before we set out, that I remove everything (my tank top, flip flops, beach towel) from the back of the kayak where I usually keep things, and leave them instead on shore next to the launching area. All those things ended up being VERY lucky things.

Still, it was a stupid, careless move on my part. I should’ve just sat back down, but I wanted to demonstrate just how stable a kayak wasn’t, I guess.

Yesterday evening, Mr. W and I met up with a couple of my coworkers in Seal Beach for another coffeehouse visit with our clairvoyant Rebecca. (If you want to read more on Rebecca, type her name in my “search” box in the sidebar to the right.) First we had a fun, delicious dinner at Cafe Lafayette. Their food is amazing, we happened to hit happy hour so we my raspberry Lambic was nearly 1/3 off, and I now have a new love for string bean fries. Wow, that batter, dipped in their garlic aioli…just, wow. There was something else in the aioli, too. I can’t recall what it was, but it made it kind of green. Curry? Some herb? I guess I’ll have to go back to make sure.

After dinner, we walked down Main Street past the bustling shops, cafes, and restaurant-bars to our little hole in the wall coffee house. The tiny place was ridiculously crowded last night, and there was standing room only inside soon after the four of us sat down. There were already other coworkers there, waiting for our time to take a peek through the veil. Soon Rebecca arrived.

Mr. W asked the question of where she sees us traveling on our upcoming vacation. We’d felt like we were all over the place, first thinking of going on an adventure trip to Australia, but then realizing how difficult that was to plan in our strict 2-week time off window. Rebecca closed her eyes and received information for what seemed like a long time, so of course I got excited. It wasn’t going to be something easy and unexciting like “Vegas again.” She opened her eyes and said, “I keep seeing Greece. If not that, then Europe. The reason I say that is because the two of you like something with more culture, and you seem to like water, something like Aruba, but you don’t like vacations where you just sit somewhere on a beach the whole time, that’s boring for you, and Greece and Europe has more history, there’s more culture and substance there.” We then told her that just earlier that day, we had changed gears and started looking up cruises in the Greek Isles, a dream of mine. We found a cruise that left from Venice to spend a week exploring the waters and islands of Greece, then returned to Venice, and we would still have a week left to discover Italy. We had only that day put Europe on the possibility list. This cruise and itinerary had fit our schedule perfectly (unlike the Aussie cruises we looked into first), but we hadn’t worked out the budget yet to see if it was realistic. As I told Rebecca about our research today, a heard a bunch of “awww”s around me. People approve of Greek Isle cruises, apparently! haha. I think the reason she saw Aruba is because of our recent French Polynesia trip, and Mr. W said earlier yesterday that if we could find another trip with the same cruiseline for that time period for Fiji or something, he’d jump at it. Rebecca then cited us to the crowd as an example of how easy it could be for her to receive specific information if people are open to her and trust her, and she thanked us for our faith in her.

Another spot I’m more and more interested in, but had done no research in, is Ireland. I’ve always kind of felt like I hadn’t been Asian before in a past life (at least not recently), but I had been European. I get overwhelming feelings of nostalgia when I see pictures of certain locations in Europe (strongly in parts of France — so strong I bought a painting when I found I couldn’t walk away from it, parts of Italy), even though with the memories of this life I am unable to identify those places as I have never been to Europe, and for the most post, don’t know much about Europe short of what we learn in a historical context from school. I feel like I was in the US for its Golden Age in the 40s and 50s, and Europe after the Renaissance. So I thought I’d ask. “Why do I feel so drawn to Ireland?” The answer was better than I’d expected with my writer’s heart.

About 3 or 4 lifetimes ago, I was Scottish (hey, like my cat, I just realized!) and there was an Irish man I was involved with. But because of the time period, the strife between Ireland and Scotland made this union very difficult. (When she told me this, I had no idea about any problems between Ireland and Scotland, and Mr. W had told me in the car, “Are you kidding? They had MAJOR problems with each other! That’s what the movie Braveheart was all about!” Well, I couldn’t watch Braveheart cuz I’d kept falling asleep during it. I don’t like violent films.) My love soon left to return to Ireland, and it was expected and talked about that he would come back for me. I waited expectantly; he never returned. I was drawn toward Ireland then, wanting to search it for him, and I am still drawn to Ireland now, although with no clue of what I’m looking for there.
I asked Rebecca when this was, if it was 3-4 lifetimes ago. Hundreds of years, then. She said, 1600s.
I told her I’d always pictured myself there around that time period, but didn’t know if it was just imagination. Thinking back now, it was played out in my little girl’s let’s pretend scenarios (minus the man), and my childhood drawings were full of women drawn from that time, in that period clothing and hairstyle. I guess I’d just assumed it was fairy tale emulation. But I was always more drawn to fairy tales than other girls. Rebecca confirmed that I have vague memories of being there at that time because I WAS there at that time.
I then thought to ask her whether this Irish guy is around me, spiritually or maybe on this plane. Turns out, she says he is. She first asked if I had a brother. I said no. She said he’s a relative with whom I have a sisterly-brotherly relationship. A cousin. He’s 4-5 years younger than me, and it’s someone I’ve had a sense of familiarity with and am comfortable around. She sees a relationship where we playfully kid with each other. I only have 1 younger male cousin. He lives in eastern Canada and we’ve only seen each other in person 3 or 4 times. The second time I met him, I’m not sure how old he was but I was 13. After his family visited us and returned to Canada, I was surprised when I started finding letters in the mailbox from him to me. I still have them somewhere; he was too little to coordinate the pen to paper, so he’d type out his letters to me — long rambling punctuation-less “sentences” mostly listing out the titles of all the Nintendo video games he had, his prized possessions. The envelope was also typed, clearly from a typewriter, so that it was legible for the postman. I’m sure I wrote back, and we were pen pals for awhile. I’d even then thought it strange that my little geek cousin could work a computer word processing program before he could write well, and use that to write to me, and it was also strange that I seem to be closer to him with our big age difference, than I am to his older brother, only a year younger than I am. We “found” each other again once emails and IMs became a regularly available medium, and clicked instantly. We discovered we had a lot of things in common, such as our love for Bill Watterson’s “Calvin & Hobbes.” I’d really enjoyed reminding him of my memories of him and our interactions when he was very young, which he has no memory of and had found to be hilarious. I was always the one who remembered stories to pass on, anyway. Although the regularity of our contact waned or intensified as we both felt the need for, we never really lost touch again. I was pleasantly surprised when years ago, he’d declared me his favorite cousin despite growing up with other cousins closer in proximity to him. I’m definitely most in touch with him than I am with other cousins who live near me and whom I grew up with.
I told Rebecca I could tell my cousin Mark about this and really freak him out. “He’ll think it’s the grossest thing ever,” I laughed. She said to wait a bit before telling him.

I’d always wondered whether relationships feel strange when people incarnate together and go from husband-wife to mother-son, or sister-brother to husband-wife. Now I know. The old relationship doesn’t carry anything with it except for the sense of bond and trust; none of the romantic ties or emotions follow through. I’m sure that would be a relief to Mark, as well. Since he sometimes visits this blog, I’ll let the universe determine whether this is something he should find out about. If he reads this, he does; if he doesn’t, I won’t bring it up. Yet. *snicker*

But, I’ve gotta check on our age difference. My sense is that it’s greater than the 4-5 years Rebecca said. I’ll post the result here in an update.

** Update: Okay, he’s almost exactly 7.5 yrs younger than me. That would make that first letter (the one listing all the video games) typed by a 5 yr old.

Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger, the keyboardist and guitarist of legendary Jim Morrison’s band The Doors, are coming to our lake for a private concert. Commenter Maggie is a friend and former coworker of Mr. W’s, and he thought this is the type of music Maggie and her husband Tom would enjoy. I extended the invitation to Maggie, she and her husband excitedly accepted. We’ll try to fit some kayaking on the Lake in there before the concert, and we’ll do a wine and food picnic for the sunset concert. It should be a great time.

I just checked the dates, and turns out, this event will take place on the same day, same time as my chauvinistic neighbor’s BBQ! And we didn’t even plan it that way. I guess Mr. W did get his wish to be “busy.” I just sent Maggie a little note earlier alerting her to this:

I just checked dates… concert day is the same day as “douchebag neighbor’s” sausagefest BBQ. He may come by and yell at [Mr. W] from the front yard again to abandon us women and join him at his house. Bring a rolling pin, cuz I only have one. 🙂

Maggie’s more on top of it than I am, because she responded:

Yeah, that actually occurred to me when you reset the date. I’ll fling my Harley helmet at him!

(I had originally given her the wrong date that Mr. W had thought the concert was, and then emailed her back to tell her the correct date)

The beauty of this, aside from the fact that it worked out without my (intentional) doing, is that the neighbor can’t say I forbade Mr. W to attend his sausagefest; this is a Lake concert that the neighbor is aware of because we’re in the same association, these are Mr. W’s friends, and who can blame a guy for choosing to go with his wife and friends to a pseudo-Doors sunset concert on a lake instead of a neighbor’s BBQ in which women were expressly forbidden? Right?!

These photos are from the American River whitewater rafting trip we took the weekend of July 24th. We left from a local meeting point after work and took a chartered bus to NorCal. The trip was organized by work’s Sheriff Department volunteers, and chartered 2 buses. Unfortunately, our bus took off half an hour late after waiting for stragglers, then one of the organizers got a phone call on the bus and made us turn around, go back to the meeting place, and wait for a couple that was almost an hour late. After they got on and was promptly booed by the crowd, we chatted, shared drinks and jello shots, and soon realized we still weren’t leaving. Turned out we were waiting for 2 girls who ended up being almost 2 hours late. They walked slowly onto the bus after finally getting there and parking, and moved through the bus to their friends unapologetically. Oh, they were boo’ed rather dramatically. It was a harsh long drive up thanks to now hitting major rushhour traffic, and we’d lost the 1st bus already. But luckily, after arriving at 1:30 in the morning, the trip went uphill from there and redeemed itself. I would highly recommend Earthtrek Expeditions for their awesome campgrounds, activities, food, guides, etc.!
So here’s Day 1, July 24. Class III rapids are safe enough (as you can see) to not need helmets. You can even swim some of the rapids, floating on your back with your feet out in front of you to avoid smacking into things with your face.

Me and the Claudio!

Me and the W!

Day 2, Sunday July 25. Me and the guide, Tony! Note his hat.

“Your hat,” I asked the New Zealand native, “Morrison Forrester?”
“Yeah! You are the only person to ever correctly identify the hat!”
Given the off-color (but funny!) jokes he told during the calm parts of rafting, I’m sure his love for the hat has more to do with what people mistakenly think it stands for, rather than a loyalty to the law firm that had once represented his wife.

Wanna see us go thru a rapid? I can’t remember which rapid this is, it’s either Satan’s Cesspool or Hospital Bar. I bet if you scroll down quickly, it’ll look animated! We put Jenny in front center (without a paddle or anything to strap her down with!) to frontload the raft for maximum splash and bounce impact. I love watching her expression changes. 🙂 (I still put a caption into all the photos, as usual. Just rest your mouse pointer over each photo.)

It was a great first whitewater rafting experience, and I want to make it a regular thing!

We’re picking a jury for a month-long civil trial. I just watched “Flags of Our Fathers” so that when we swear in our jury and begin our trial, I could follow better. I’m not one to handle violence well, and although the war violence depicted in this movie was on the subtle side and nowhere near the red fountainous phantasms in “Kill Bill” or “Ninja Assassin” (the latter of which some friends wanted to watch after my July 4th shindig — photos forthcoming [of the shindig, not the gross movie] — and I spent much of the time memorizing the way our ceiling looked as these friends made sounds of horror and disgust every 20 seconds), I’m still left perturbed. So I need to do this light post to settle my stomach.

The evening of Friday June 18th, Mr. W and I drove up to Northern California for Eddie & Michelle’s Calistoga wedding ceremony. We left at 3:30p hoping to get to Sunnyvale around 10:30p to visit with college roommie Diana and stay overnight. We didn’t get out of Los Angeles in time and hit nasty rush hour traffic, so we didn’t actually arrive in NorCal until almost midnight, having made one stop for gas along the way (I drove as Mr. W napped). After arriving, we did our usual — we all chatted in Diana’s living room for awhile and then Mr. W and Diana’s fiance Eric went to bed, and Diana and I stayed up and chatted some more until past 3 in the morning. Then we went to bed only because we’d planned to hit up their local Farmer’s Market first thing Saturday. On Saturday, Mr. W woke up early as normal, I got up soon after and since Diana and Eric were still sleeping, Mr. W and I went to the Farmer’s Market. I bought a string of colored pearls and matching earrings to go with my dress. Diana and Eric soon biked over and met us, and then we all went out for brunch at a nice restaurant on Santana Row. I don’t remember the name of the restaurant, but here’s a picture of me and Diana there.

I know, the drinks look yummy, but the martini in front of me is actually staged. It belongs to Mr. W; I wasn’t drinking. After brunch, Diana and I went to her bridal boutique for her final decision on her bridal gown. Her friends Caroline and Melanie met us there. (Mr. W hung out at a nearby Starbucks.) Diana tried on the 3 dresses she’d narrowed it down to. All 3 have the same simple A-line silhouette that she’d already decided she looked best in. The first had stitchwork and lines in a chevron that drew attention to the smallness of her waist and was very flattering, and when she walked out of the dressing room I had to hold back tears. I knew this wasn’t her favorite, but I couldn’t imagine how another dress could top how beautiful she looked in that one. She popped back into the dressing room and came out in her favorite, dress #2. If I didn’t cry seeing this, it was only because I was in shock that she found a dress that topped dress #1. Dress #2’s design had embellishments and embroidery around the ribs but left the top and bottom simple, and not only was the dress itself impressive, but it seemed taylored to showcase Diana’s figure. SHE looked beautiful in Dress #2. I wish I could post a photo I took on my cell, but her fiance Eric may read this and he’s not allowed to see the dress (which makes me really wish I had photos of the other 2 dresses so that I could post them). Dress #3 was gorgeous and had a jeweled bodice and jeweled skirt and intricate beadwork everywhere, but it was way fancier than Diana would normally be, and certainly not as simple as the wedding she was now planning. It also took the attention off Diana and focused it on all the bling. She finalized her pick for #2, said, “Yay, that was easy,” made the transaction, and was done.

Mr. W and I left from there to Napa Valley for Eddie and Michelle’s pre-wedding dinner at Cole’s Chophouse. We got there early and explored the quaint small town, did a little winetasting at a local bar, and walked to the restaurant to meet the couple and the other guests. Here’s the couple of the weekend at the restaurant:

After dinner, Mr. W drove through miles of dark windy forest roads (much to his aggravation) and checked in at our hotel in Santa Rosa, The Fountaingrove Inn. I liked the place and the restaurant where we had 2 mornings of breakfast. Loved the zen of the lobby. The next morning (Sunday), we drove to Calistoga’s Hans Fahden Vineyards for the wedding. What a gorgeous location! I took a lot of photos, but I’ll hold off posting them without the couple’s permission. 🙂 The ceremony was short, sweet, fun, pretty, and they even incorporated some wine drinking into the symbolism. When in Rome…
After the ceremony and a dessert reception with delicious dulce de leche cake, we all left the vineyard and met up in town for lunch. As it was father’s day, I made sure to call my dad and wish him a happy daddy’s day after I ordered. Cuz I’m thoughtful like that. =) Of course, this is the first year I recall doing that. I’d even forgotten to wish Mr. W a happy father’s day that morning as we were in a rush trying to eat and get ready to go to the wedding. His kids didn’t forget to text him, tho. Most of the wedding guests left to fly or drive home after this lunch, but we had reserved our hotel until Monday, knowing we couldn’t drive back in time after the festivities and get enough rest before having to go to work, so the four of us hung out and had dessert and coffee in town.

The above photo convinced me that 1.) I need to go back to the gym, and 2.) I need a haircut and new style. Just for fun, I’m gonna post something Michelle recently emailed me…a photo when the 4 of us hung out for dinner at a boutique hotel in Newport Beach the evening after their official wedding at our courthouse in February, cuz they’re sort of identical situations.

We said our goodbyes to Eddie and Michelle after that as they were driving to San Francisco later that evening. We went back to the hotel and went to bed early.
Monday, Mr. W and I went back to Calistoga. We couldn’t leave the city without doing the 2 most touristy things there. The first is the hot springs mineral mud bath. We booked a combination thing for couples at Golden Haven.

For a set price, we were first immersed in our own tubs of mud enriched with the local natural hot springs water (“hot” is an understatement; the guy had to dump ice cubes over the spot where my feet were so that I could manage to submerge them)…

…and then we rinsed the mud off in a large shower area that was in our private mud room. Of course these showers used the hot mineral spring water. Next we got to soak in a mineral spa at the other side of the same private room. Lastly, we were taken to a massage room where we were wrapped in blankets to help the body have a slow cool-down. I fell asleep there.

The 2nd thing we couldn’t leave Calistoga without doing is, of course, wine tasting at a vineyard. We weren’t big wine people, so some other wedding peeps recommended we visit Sterling Vineyards.

For a reasonable price, we were put in an aerial tram…

…and taken up into the mountain where the factory (are wine places called factories?) is located, and we get a self-guided tour of the place, learn about how wine is made…

…and get 5 samples of wines at areas throughout the tour. It beats just sitting at a counter and drinking a bunch of red stuff.

What a picturesque area! This is the view from the terrace of the building.

We did end up buying a pack of wine, which we didn’t expect we’d do…but of course it was the sweet pack with all the dessert wines and stuff. Haha! It was a great first visit for both of us to Calistoga and Napa.

OH. I need to add that all photos except for the two “foursome” photos were taken with my new LG Ally cell phone. Pretty decent, huh?

Yesterday on my birthday, Ann took me out to dinner at Gulfstream in Corona Del Mar. As we placed our drink order (dirty martini for Ann, chocolate cake shot for me), the waitress, instead of carding us, simply asked obligatorily, “You’re both over 21, right?”
As Ann nodded, I said, “I’m well over. Actually, 34 today.”
The young blonde waitress said, “Oh, today is THE day? Happy birthday! *eyes widening* Wow, 34? You REALLY don’t look it. Wow.” I smiled at her and thanked her for the compliment. As soon as we placed our dinner order, I went to the restroom. Looking at my reflection in the mirror, it kinda hit me. The waitress was SO impressed that I don’t look 34 that really, what it means is that 34 is a very, very large number to her. *sigh*
~ * ~
Mr. W told me earlier that he was chatting with some coworkers yesterday about it being my birthday. They asked how old I was turning. He told them 34, and added, “Yeah, she’s getting kinda old. I may have to trade her in for a younger model soon.” (Note that Mr. W is almost a decade and a half older than me.) His coworkers laughed at him and said something to the effect of, Oh please, she’s gotten better-looking every year since she met you. He took that as a compliment for himself and happily told me the story after work, practically glowing as he did so. I wasn’t totally sure how to take that…but I did happen to have a very recent experience wherein I was digging through early digital photos of us dating back to 2005 when we first started going out, and I was shocked at how unpresentable we both looked. His family members joke about how he gets younger every year that we’re together, and I have to say that based on photographic comparisons, they’re not wrong. I don’t know what we saw in each other back then. Lower standards maybe? haha.
This is a recent photo from our Tahiti cruise.

For comparison, here’s a similar pose from 2005.

Mr. W surprised me this year… he bought Sylvia Brown’s autobiography “Psychic” and it was wrapped and waiting for me with a card next to the alarm clock when I woke up. I woke up so late that I overlooked it. =P It sucks getting old. And then at work, flowers came for me, yellow roses with accents of irises and some purple flowers. Also from Mr. W. People passing by the courtroom have been admiring them all day.

I also got a Prince tennis raquet from my judge along with a sporting good giftcard (Ann and I thought we’d brush the tennis rust off ourselves and start playing tennis together), a big bottle of Patron tequila and two gourmet mini cakes from my reporter…

…an efficient plug-in water boiling kettle from my courtroom assistant, and a surprise floral basket delivery from a mystery person. I figured out pretty quickly, as the card was written to “Cindy Lou,” that it was from Jordan, and I was right.

I had wanted a quiet birthday at work, mostly unnoticed, but you can’t be invisible very effectively when you walk out of a building with this stuff in your arms. I did feel very loved and appreciative. =)

One of the most annoying things I can’t figure out right now with this phone is how to get the photos out of it so that I could post stuff. I’ve sent numerous emails with the photos as attachments to myself, and none of the emails ever make it. I only have these because I stole them off my social networking site (the phone seems to post there just fine).

So anyway, here was my Friday. We went here…

…to support and watch this…

We also invited a friend, which I tried to document with a picture…

…but as you can see the flash went off WAY before the photo was taken. So we tried again and got this…

…through which process I learned that my phone’s “night” function creates a flash so blinding that neither of us could see for 10 minutes after that photo was taken. (I also learned I hate flash that close to me. I look so gross.)

After the show Mr. W and I went to see the new Karate Kid movie, starring 11 year old Jaden Smith and produced by his parents, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith. I think this is my favorite movie so far this year!! Jaden is AWESOME. Jackie Chan is hilarious. I heard Jaden actually trained in Kung Fu in China before he took on the role of Dre Parker in this movie. If you’ve seen the original Karate Kid movie from the 80s, you’d enjoy the inside jokes of this new movie running a parallel plotline with the original, but taking liberal departures to update the tone whenever it felt like it. The fly-catching scene and the waxing scene are two that come to mind. Watching Jaden is like watching a little Will Smith. All the same charm, humor and charisma. Plus some kick-ass martial arts moves. I’m happy the cheesy crane-kick has been replaced by a much more exciting single-legged back flip cobra kick. Read the synopsis here by Reuters, with interviews with Jaden Smith (big big personality! I look forward to great things from him in the future) and Jackie Chan (a personal friend of my deceased actor uncle in Taiwan). Does anyone wanna see this? I’ll go again!!

(Watch the above for Jaden’s musical performance and clips of the movie! I got a nice laugh in the end.)

Now that I’ve FINALLY finished posting about our early-May trip to French Polynesia, I can write about current life again! Yay! So a couple of weekends ago on May 23, we invited Eddie & Michelle to our lake for a South Coast Symphony concert. They brought Michelle’s aunt, visiting from Taiwan, and I invited my parents, who had immigrated here from Taiwan. The “grownups” somehow made it into a Chinese food potluck. My mom made beef stew & tendon noodle soup, brought some vegetarian chicken, and Michelle’s aunt made some buns which she tucked cheese inside of. I was glad for the meeting, so my mom could stop asking me, “Who’s Eddie?” every time I tell her about attending their upcoming Napa wedding events, and it turned out my mom and Michelle’s aunt came from the same town in Taiwan. Unfortunately for Mr. W, since everyone got along capitally, he was left out of a lot of Mandarin conversations. 🙂 I TOLD him to learn Mandarin. We found out that Michelle’s aunt is a musician, and my dad loves the symphony, and the rest of us liked company, the Lake, and wine, so it worked out really well. The ONLY thing contrary was that Eddie had to wear and bring Trojan gear (as he always does), so I made sure to wear my Bruin wear. We probably looked funny in public together.
Mr. W and I had prepared cheese and crackers, cut up a variety of fruit, and Eddie and Michelle are wine connoisseurs, so they brought some great rieslings and bubblies. Here Eddie’s serving alcohol to us waiting folk at our spot on the lake lawn.

This is how close our 3 blanketed areas are to the stage. Mr. W and I had gone to the lake early to snag the spots and set up.

My vantage point behind Eddie.

The symphony played a variety of show tunes, and there were 3 opera singers performing. I just remember that one of them, a woman who seemed to be hosting the event, used to be the female lead in “Evita.”

Mom and dad had fun.

Look at all that ‘SC crap! blankets, scarves…

…and portable cooler bags. But WAIT…why does a Bruin have it in hand?

That didn’t last long.

Because Moorea is so close to Tahiti, the M/s Paul Gauguin had already docked there the night before we were to disembark. We disembarked on Saturday morning, May 8th, to an overcast port.

Our luggage was already waiting underneath some tarp. It had rained the night before, and as we waited outside for our transportation to a day room at the Radisson, the sky opened up and large drops of rain drove against us sideways. The side of the tarp blew open and luggage on the edge were instantly drenched. I was impressed by some ship boys, on their way to town for some rare free time, who came running back to the tarp and hussled to resecure the tarp and protect the luggage. They moved luggage around to bring them into some protection, and climbed large metal bins to refasten the ropes that held the flapping shelter together. Soon our shuttle to the Radisson came and we jumped in.
Tahiti is very different from the other islands. It’s been built on and commercialized, like a downtown city. Highrises, street vendors, shops, restaurants, banks, traffic, concrete, paved roads. I didn’t think to take photos on the car ride there because it was so dirty and unattractive to me. We did pass something interesting, tho — something that looked like a carnival or county fair with many people attending. “What’s that?” we asked our shuttle driver. She said it was a biannual street mart. We, along with another couple who was on the shuttle, decided to taxi back and visit this street mart for cheap souvenirs. First we checked into the Radisson.

What a day room is, is a hotel room given you only for the day and not for overnight. Our ship kicks us out at 10am, our flight leaves at midnight, so what were we to do in the meantime? Our travel agent arranged for us a room where we can keep our stuff, take a shower and a nap, hang out by a pool, etc. But check-in was at 2pm so we just let them hold our luggage and asked the front desk to call us a cab to take us back to the street fair.
Here was where things got weird. The receptionist seemed genuinely unaware of what event we were speaking of, but said the cab drivers should know the city well enough to know. She described the affair to them, and told us the cab knew what we were talking about, and that they’d be here to pick us up. When the driver got here, she didn’t know what street fair we were talking about and called her manager on her cell phone. They spoke in whatever language Tahitians speak, and then she passed us the phone, saying, “My boss want to talk to you, he speak English.” I heard Mr. W describe the affair, and then pass the phone back to the driver. The driver spoke to her boss a bit more, then hung up. Mr. W said the boss said that the street fair was really a public real estate convention, and that if we wanted shopping, then the place to go was all the way back to Papeete at the dock. When we’d driven by the fair, there were way too many people attending, and people bringing kids, to look like a real estate convention. Also, going all the way back to Papeete was 3000 Francs, whereas where we wanted to go was halfway, so it would’ve been only 1500 Francs, but we consented, figuring they knew better. The taxi took a turn to go on a street parallel to where we knew the street fair to be, and we never drove by it. We think she was instructed to bypass it for more fare money. Anyway, she dropped us off in a ghetto open-air market and we did end up buying souvenirs and random stuff. It’s remarkable how a place like that in the US would be selling dollar items, and in Tahiti, everything was still $20+. A keychain ran $15. Crazy. A vendor in a booth took pity on me when I bought souvenir keychains for my coworkers, and gave some money back to me, so I still walked with a great deal, considering. We took another cab back and that driver took us on the same route as the shuttle earlier that morning, and we went right by the street fair. We saw bouncer houses, kids with packaged toys in their hands, people eating cotton candy, etc. It was SO not a real estate convention!! But at least when we went back, we were able to check into our awesome room.

We had an ocean view room. Straight ahead is a separate HOT TUB room. The slats on the walls open up and you’re on the balcony with the ocean waves crashing behind you.

This is the giant bed.

The bathroom was pretty awesome, too.

When I took this photo from the balcony (which was so big it was really a terrace), Mr. W was in the hot tub next to me watching me thru the slats.

Here’s the view from the patio table on the terrace. I couldn’t get a good shot of how close the ocean was, tho.

So I walked to the edge of the terrace and took another shot.

Kids were playing on the surf and boogie boarding. Mr. W watched for a bit from the terrace before turning around and realizing that he was mooning everyone in the rooms above us, who were on their balconies looking down at our terrace.

We passed the time checking out the pool bar, exploring the hotel shops, watching TV, eating $24 paninis (everything was overpriced! we were so glad we had the cruise cuz we couldn’t afford to vacation on our own there), and soon it was time to meet our shuttle to take us to the airport. The shuttle driver (who had greeted us upon arrival with fresh flower leis to take us to the ship) put shell leis on us. “We say hello with flowers, and goodbye with shells,” she explained. My shell lei was itchy in the humidity, and it still rained off and on. Our flight ended up being almost 2 hours delayed and we didn’t board our 11:55p flight until almost 2am.
I love Air Tahiti Nui, tho…they feed you such great hot meals on their flights. I still didn’t take advantage of the free alcohol. Mr. W bounced away from his seat next to me into an empty center row before people had even finished boarding, more eager to lay down than to spend time next to me. 🙁 But that means that once again, I had the two-seat window seat to myself, and I controlled both TVs. I kept one on a movie, the other on our flight progress.

8.5 hours later, we were passing over Catalina Island near home.

When things go gray and ugly, that’s how you know you’re in LA.

I snapped this cuz the building border reads “Welcome to Los Angeles.”

Here we are, landing at LAX just past noon. It was FREEZING in the mid-70s, we were so used to a constant muggy 85F degrees, day or night.

Yay. We’re home. What a contrast. At least Mr. W climbed over and sat with me when we started our descent, so I didn’t feel quite so abandoned by French Polynesia.