cindy's world

On Saturday, my mom’s morning phone call inviting us to lunch was a little unusual, because our normal visiting day is Sunday. She explained that she and my dad had just purchased a new TV for my grandmother and were at my grandmother’s home right now. The TV is a birthday present, and I’d already agreed to go in on it with my parents. So off we went on the looong drive. We passed Angel Stadium.

We passed a guy riding an odd but loud 3-wheeled bike of some sort.

In her next phone call, we found my mom’s ulterior motive. My dad couldn’t get both the video AND the sound of the DVD player to work, he was getting either one or the other, so they needed Mr. W. By the time we arrived, however, 2 hours later, my dad got everything working, so I just wrote my mom a check for half the cost of the TV and it was the most brainless present ever. Because my dad’s birthday is a few days away, my grandma treated us to lunch, and then a dessert coffee and tea cakes at a nearby French cafe.

We left and got detoured to childhood friend Sandy’s parents’ house, because Sandy was struggling to get their TV to work in conjunction with a satellite dish AND a cable box. She got them both hooked up, but her parents were pulling their hair out over annoying horizontal interference lines when they watched satellite. Mr. W redid some of the setup behind the TV and then found Animal Planet for them, which turns out is the only reason they’re paying $100/month for a cable box to begin with. They had sought for the channel unsuccessfully until Mr. W just stumbled upon it during a channel scroll. They were so grateful they kept us for dinner, with promises to treat us to a future dinner. It was fun hanging out with Sandy and her parents, it’d been awhile. I also found out that my mom’s former death scare is no longer an issue, but that she’d totally neglected to tell me that! Sandy’s dad, a physician, checked my mom’s tests and reports and apparently found nothing alarming on it. No wonder my mom seemed to have taken a mood 180 many months ago! “She didn’t TELL you?” Sandy mom asked in surprise. I’m sure she deliberately didn’t tell me so she could keep holding the guilt stuff over my head! Isn’t that such an Asian mom. Even last week she wrote me an email starting off with “I’m not sure how many more years I can remind you of your dad’s and your grandma’s birthdays…”

While hanging out with Sandy and her family, I also found out that her brother, my Dentist Andy’s, birthday is tomorrow. I have an appointment with him tomorrow! I can’t believe he’s working on his birthday. I just spoke to his office a little while ago and asked if they were going to do anything for him, because if they didn’t have anything planned I was going to bring in a little cake or something like that.

My mom also called yesterday to tell me that since my dad celebrates his birthday on the lunar calendar, it falls on a different day each other, and this year it happens to fall on his good friend’s birthday. This good friend is our realtor. I wonder if they’re gonna do anything to celebrate together.

This is probably the most boring post ever. Sorry. But lemme tell you about my Sunday!

Last night was oodles and oodles of fun! You can tell by my giddy delirious diction. But that very possibly is also caused by lack of sleep.

After work I drove to Vicky’s new house in the newly burnt Chino Hills. Altho Mr. W and I had considered buying a house there when we were looking, I now know that I could not have handled living there. Although it is 10 miles closer to work than our house is, the drive took twice as long as it wound through scenic single-laned roads with motorists who had to brake down to 15 mph at each turn. I was awed by the charred land and could still smell the smoky carbon aftermath. Vicky’s house itself was great. It was so spacious that when I called Dwaine upon my arrival there, he could hear my voice echoing through our cell phones. It is evident that she and her handy boyfriend worked hard on endless renovations there, and although they say a lot of detailed work remain, I think the house is ready for furniture. The textured dark wood floors were especially breathtaking, even without the excited dog charging full speed toward me as I entered and instead skidding sideways past me as his frenzied feet pedaled Looney Tunes style in a fruitless attempt for some traction to turn around. Vicky’s house has the exact opposite problem as ours — they have 3 spacious common areas for entertaining, not including the formal dining room, kitchen and breakfast nook, and were trying to figure out what to do with all that room. Mr. W and I had trouble fitting 8 teenagers into any single room in our house for Daughter’s birthday party a couple weekends ago.

I left Vicky and her boyfriend an hour later to join Dwaine at a nearby new Yard House Bar & Grill. The menu looks different from other Yard Houses, but I almost recklessly and randomly decided on the Porcini Crusted Halibut, which is described on the menu thusly:

Porcini cream sauce and white truffle oil, asparagus and bok choy over parmesan mashed potatoes.

I pushed the plate toward Dwaine, who had ordered a chicken and mushroom pasta. His eyes widened as he tasted the perfectly seasoned flakey halibut. I then took my first bite, which was of the mashed potatoes dipped in the truffle cream sauce, and my eyes rolled into the back of my head. I grabbed his fork and insisted he try that, too, and got him a clump. As soon as he tasted that, he looked angry. Looking at his own dish in disdain, he announced that although he always gets that pasta dish because he’s always enjoyed it, he now wants what I had. I laughed and said it happens all the time when people eat out with me, but now he knows what to order for next time. Dwaine vowed to return the next day for lunch and order what I had. In fact, he said, he would bring someone with him so they could also enjoy this amazing dish and understand what we were experiencing in food. I don’t know what it is about that place — even the Framboise Lambic (raspberry ale on tap) tasted better than I’d ever had it. Maybe it’s the company. We chatted for two hours at the restaurant, and then went to his house 10 minutes away (Vicky’s house was 5 minutes away) and continued chatting so that we didn’t have to yell over the bar noise. We hit lots of topics, introspected, made jokes, caught each other up on stuff, psychoanalyzed other people, reminisced, shared photos and inside information, and I only left because he yawned and I had a long-ass drive back home.

Today childhood friend (and bridesmaid) Sandy called out of the blue and we had a long catch-up chat, and are tentatively planning to finally hook up this weekend. I hadn’t seen her since the wedding, and she still has my watch. 🙂 I think I really do have the world’s coolest people in my friends group.

OH, I ALMOST FORGOT. Hey girls, if you’re described by someone as physically “thick”, but you don’t have the benefit of knowing the context of the description (like you don’t know the tone or the sentence it was used in, just that someone described your body type as “thick”), do you automatically take that as a negative description? Like, do you think “fat”? I’m taking a survey.

Mr. W’s kidlets left some time ago to attend Round 2 of Christmas with their mother’s side of the family. I guess it doesn’t hurt for them to get used to all the traveling for when they’re married and have the spouse’s family to add to the partyhopping. Having made myself a 4-shot Screaming Orgasm drink over ice (Bailey’s, Kahlua, vodka, Amaretto), I got sleepy and went to take a cat nap with Dodo in the bedroom. He’s so warm to snuggle my face into during the winter. I woke up and came downstairs to this:

There’s nothing like father-son bonding over fishing together…on the Wii.

As I type this they’re playing House of the Dead 3. Shooting zombies together just like in the good ol’ days right before Santa’s reindeer trot their way onto our roof as the aroma of gingerbread wafts through the air.
What’s Christmas without hearing in the background: “Reload. Re-re-reload.” “What’re you shootin’ at them heads for?” “Cuz that’s the weak point.” “They’re comin at us from all areas, too!” “Re-re-reload.” “Oh my God, the shotguns!” “He’s not feeling them, though.” “Ahh! He got me!”

Tonite for dinner, Mr. W’s mother made meatloaf, I made (by special request) onion mushroom soup with seasoned cheddar French bread toast, Mr. W threw some veggies into the nukebox, I spun up some cocktails (Chambord Manhattans for Mr. W and his mother, Bloody Mary for Mr. W’s father), and we had a nice homemade dinner listening to Dean Martin and Brian McKnight crooning Christmas songs. Now, the fireplace is lit with some organic coffee log crackling, and we’re hanging out in the living room. Dodo’s curled up napping on our bed. Life’s pretty sweet. Here’s our front yard, in a crappy cameraphone pic:

Mr. W’s about to show his parents his fobby side by making loose-leaf tea the old-fashioned Chinese way with all his special tea utensils and precious tea service sets. “What the HECK is that?!” I just heard my father-in-law exclaim. Haha!

We weren’t gonna do Christmas this year, mostly cuz we’re just feeling lazy. Christmas seems to be more about the kids anyway, and since Mr. W’s kids aren’t with us and Dodo doesn’t seem to care one way or the other, we decided to skip it. But then there was always the “Well, this IS our first Christmas as a married couple, we ought start SOME tradition” guilt hanging over us.

And then, Mr. W’s parents decided to drive aaaaall the way out from Vegas (where it SNOWED last week! we saw photos!) and then the decision was made to have Christmas at our house. Up went the Christmas lights and lawn decorations and pine mantlepiece and garlands wrapped around the stairway railings.

My mom sorely disappointed me this year. They were invited but she immediately had a ton of excuses why she (meaning her, my dad, and her mother) can’t make it. It was so ungraceful and left me in the awkward position of having to explain to my new in-laws why my parents and grandmother won’t be joining us, while I could not think of any reason that wouldn’t make them look bad. So the in-laws arrived yesterday, did indeed ask about my parents, and I chose the least offensive reason my mother gave me.
In-laws: When’re your parents coming?
Me: Oh…they’re not coming.
In-laws: They’re not? [Mr. W] told us they were invited.
Me: They were…but they think we live in Egypt.

The in-laws chuckled and nicely left it alone. If it were MY mom in their place, she would’ve said, “We drove all the way from VEGAS and she thinks driving from your home town is too far for one day, even though you guys drive out there EVERY WEEKEND to see them?!” But luckily we only have one of those kind of moms in this marriage. =P

Okay, enough talking crap about my bloodline. We’re gonna have a nice few days together, just me in a house of white people. Including Mr. W’s daughter’s 18th birthday party on Sunday at our house, just her and her closest 7 friends for a winter-themed semi-formal dinner, games, and firepit fun. We’re having it catered by the Newport Rib Company and I know there’ll be good music because she sat with me for a couple of hours last nite picking out 90s R&B, which I grew up with. I’ve always thought it was the best decade of music, but wasn’t sure if I was falling into the ol’ stereotypical, “All this crap you kids listen to these days is just noise! Now music in MY day…”

Two nights ago, I spent a couple of hours watching the season finale of The Biggest Loser. I hadn’t seen any of the other episodes this season, but that show always inspires me to work out. To watch these people push themselves at the gym with fitness trainers yelling at them to suck it up and give them 5 more, and the triumphant weigh-ins as their lifestyle changes begin to remold these morbidly obese bodies…makes me feel guilty that I’m sitting on my butt popping Junior Mints after not seeing the inside of a gym for weeks. That night I dreamt I jogged to work, jogged at lunch, and was surprisingly not winded.

Last night, I spent the evening watching the Victoria’s Secret 2008 Fashion Show. I LOVE the below segment, the Ballet de Fleurs, which has great music and my favorite wings of this year’s show: a gorgeous pair of butterfly wings with an assortment of floating life-size butterflies around the model’s big wings (1min30secs into this video). I also love that these models were allowed to show off their angelic smiles, and not just strut around smoldering. And they DO strut…I couldn’t strut so hard my hair’s bouncing like theirs without everything else on me jiggling, too. Blech. Mr. W was shockingly disinterested in watching supermodels strut for an hour in lingerie. He said he doesn’t understand fashion shows because who in their right minds would wear crazy concoctions like giant feathered gold wings on the street? I had to explain that they are exhibiting their 2008 lingerie collection and the decor is just eye candy interest, like when you order a simple vegetable at a French restaurant and it comes out on a plate decked out in swirls and whorls of sauce and shaved truffle and decorative hand-carved carrots in the shape of a rose. You’re still just eating that vegetable in the plate, but the presentation adds a lot. I’m sure model after model in just lingerie would start to look the same after awhile, too. Nevertheless, Mr. W’s attention was unbroken from his computer while I called out name after name of stars the camera panned to in the audience of the fashion show. You’d think he was watching porn or something. What could be more interesting than half-nekkid strutting? Here, see for yourself.

So anyway, I was again inspired to hit the gym. I should watch this video daily for motivation. So I can hit the New Year on a running start, instead of just starting out New Year’s Day on a diet resolution like everyone else. It takes awhile to get going so I’m gonna start early, hit the ground running.

It is POURING right now. The streets are flooded, up to 4-5 inches deep along the edges of the roads. The gutters and storm drain systems are unable to handle this amount of water. On the way to work splish splashing other cars next to us, Mr. W griped about how California (unlike his hometown of Chicago) has no clue how to equip itself for any type of weather except sunny days. I shrugged. Why spend billions establishing a system for something that only happens 15 days of the year? Hopping over the flowing wide rivers trying to get to the building from the parking structure, it did feel a lot like UCLA finals weeks (when it seems to ALWAYS be pouring).

Here are some memories of sunnier days, taken from a walk Mr. W and I took around our neighborhood just last month.
The afternoon before our walk:

The Lake:

Mr. W, taking a break on the path:

While Jordan and I were pedaling our heinies off on the 2-person pedalboat the day before the wedding, we came across one lakeside mansion that Jordan claimed to be hers. She took a bunch of photos of it, and then suggested we get close enough so that she could climb onto the property. “Drop me off! I can be in there a WEEK before they even realize I’m there!” she said. This is the front entrance of that property. The backside is the Lake.

(as always, rest mouse pointer over photos for captions)

Mr. W and I watched “Four Christmases” on Friday with two coworkers. I still think Reese Witherspoon is adorable. Parts of the movie made all of us laugh aloud. Like when an old family photo portrayed a young version of her character in couple-like poses with a very butch looking female, and Reese’s character denied naively that her buddy was gay, saying that they used to play-pretend they were laying out on the beach sunbathing, and they’d lay in the basement naked, and her friend would be very protective and didn’t want her to burn in the pretend-sunlight, so she’d rub sunblock lotion onto Reese’s skin everywhere — and then realize halfway into her sentence what she was saying. There was one part of the movie that was exceeding disturbing to me, though. The boyfriend’s sister-in-law, towing a toddler with her, was telling Reese’s character that breastfeeding doesn’t hurt her at all anymore. It did at first, she explained, but then the nipples toughen up like leather and she can’t feel them at all anymore; “here, look, flick one,” she invited, offering her left boob to an alarmed Reese.
I turned to Mr. W with my eyes wide. “Is that true?” I gasped.
He wouldn’t answer me!!! Waaaah! I’m loathe to lose two of my erogenous zones.

Today was spent reading the fourth book of the Twilight series, Christmas shopping, wandering around the Irvine Spectrum outdoor shopping, exploring a new crepe restaurant and then a new coffee shop that claimed to have live music (turned out it was more like some teenage kids goofing off doing more party karaoke than actually performing for strangers; we left before we were even halfway done with our specialty coffees), then finished off the night at the Lake. And I went back to reading.
I guess it’s somewhat noteworthy that I did do a tiny bit of hat shopping. Enough to know that I can not pull off the cabbie cap. The hard brim and low bulky top turned the girl in the mirror (me) into a Communist. I quickly took it off. Ironically, Mr. W found a short-brimmed Fedora that he really liked. The tag said it was on sale for $9 and it looked good on him. After he came back from the register, he explained his wide grin by telling me that it rang up as an even deeper sale item, $4. I ducked his efforts to find me a hat as well, dodging the bulbous colorful yarn caps and the hunter-in-the-blizzard style lambwool-lined plaid hats with ear flaps.

Welp, back to the book. Stephenie Meyer is getting really good at her characters’ dialogues in this last book of the series. I actually chuckled aloud quite a few times.

This was a movie Thanksgiving weekend in Vegas so far. I watched “Twilight” in the theatres…it stuck as closely to the book as a movie is mostly able to, but I thought the actors and actresses were not very multi-dimensional and didn’t convey what they could have. Bella’s lines, for example, were pretty much all delivered in exactly the same tone. I didn’t feel like she gave Edward or her friends a reason to care about her. She was dull and antisocial throughout. But I understand you have to sacrifice SOME character development when you’re smushing a novel into a 90 minute movie. But I was just disappointed, is all. The book was enjoyable enough to read, if you feel like reading an adolescent love story a la Sweet Valley High with vampires. I went ahead and finished the second book in the Twilight series this weekend, by the way, and it was difficult to get through. I cried the last hour and a half straight of reading it (between 4 and 5:30 a.m.); it was like the author read my diaries and watched me and read my mind in my darkest relationship hours, and then wrote it into her book. After pulling the all-nighter on the second book, I’d been too scared to start the third book. I can’t afford to lose my 4th night of sleep this week.

Last nite while Mr. W and his gamer brother were, uh, gaming, bro’s wife, bro’s daughter and I went to watch our second movie of the day. I felt awful because I’d picked it, the comedy “Role Models,” and I was asleep for 90% of the movie. I heard the other two women chuckling throughout, but I’d fall asleep during blinks, completely unawares. That’s what happens when you pull an all-nighter reading after you pull an all-nighter driving to Vegas, and then decide to watch a 10:35p showing. I’d like to give the movie a good review, but I just don’t know anything about what happened.

What I did get out of the movies, though, was information gleaned from seeing a movie poster for an upcoming movie. To be released in February, 2009, just in time for V-day, they’re making my relationship bible into a movie! See the theatrical trailer by clicking here. It’s got an all-star cast, including Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Connelly, Drew Barrymore.

I should get my womenfolk together and watch this on a girl’s night out. I’ll even invest a few hours into sleep the night before so I can stay awake during the movie.

We woke up to a pretty day today. To make people in less sunny November days jealous, I took this photo on cameraphone from our master bedroom window and sent it to some peeps.

Downstairs, my husband asked, “Wanna go to Knott’s Berry Farm today?” It’s their annual veterans-get-in-free time, so YEAH! (Mr. W is a Marine.) We got dressed and got there a little past noon. It was a pretty day in Buena Park, too.

You can tell the Californians from the out-of-towners cuz the Californians are the ones in designer sunglasses but long-sleeved shirts and jackets, whereas those from out-of-state are in t-shirts and shorts talking about how “nice” this 70-degree weather is. After making ourselves sick on two rides (we’re getting old), we decided, less than 4 hours later, to just call it a day and head over to my parents’ house early for our weekend visit. My parents showed us the photos they took of my cousin Diana’s wedding, which were of course of better quality because they had an actual camera, not just a cameraphone like me. But I still think my photos had a better artistic quality. Haha. “It almost looks like you intentionally put the flowers in the photo,” my dad said, looking at my cameraphone photos.
“I DID,” I said defiantly. I mean, did he think I was leaning way over into the aisle and shooting upwards because it was comfortable? Hmmph.
Anyway, these are some of my parents’ photos.

Mr. W and I don’t have any photos of just the two of us like that; even in the hour we booked exclusively for a photo shoot before the wedding, we took group shots. We figured at the time that we have tons of photos of just the two of us, but it’s a precious and rare thing to have everyone we love all together at the same place, all pretty and dressed up, so we took exclusively group photos. I kinda regret now, looking at our photos and other peoples’ photos of their weddings, that we don’t have intimate shots like this.

Everyone asked me if they’d copied our cake design. I know that my cousin had commented how much she loved our cake, but really, how many ways can you make a 3-tiered round cake with your floral motif displayed? But even if they were inspired by our cake design…

…I’d take that as a compliment.

Cutting into said cake design.

For the first time I got to see what *I* looked like that day.

Me and the ‘rents.

Me and the moms, showing off how much liquor we had in hand.

Instead of doing a Costco sheet cake like other people when they’re afraid the wedding cake isn’t enough, they did a CLAIM JUMPER MOTHERLODE CAKE. (You have to click on that for a slice image. Really. You do.) Don’t you just wanna get down and worship these two people?!

My husband getting down.

I just like this shot of my legs.

Good times.

My newlywed cousin and her new hubby gets back from their Jamaica honeymoon late tonight.