cindy's world

Yesterday evening, I went to meet MOH Vicky and commenter ‘a’ (also “anny”) for dinner at Curry House in Irvine. The two of them have known each other since before I knew ‘a’ through this blog, and had been meaning to get together for awhile. Small world now that we have the internet. I pulled up a couple of minutes after 5:30p, the agreed-upon meeting time, and spotted Anny’s car first right in front of the restaurant. She was sitting in there looking down at something. I looked to my right and directly behind Anny’s car parked across the aisle was Vicky’s car, and Vicky was seated inside with her back to Anny, on a call. I thought it was hilarious that these two were both so punctual they had to wait for me and/or for Curry House to open at 5:30, AND they were both unaware that they weren’t alone.

We had a girly chat over dinner. I ordered a giant spicy chicken curry plate while the other two girls ordered some dainty feminine combo. I totally ate too much cuz while we talked, I just kept shoving food into my mouth. It wasn’t until afterward that they both said they were impressed (I’m sure they meant “surprised” and “disgusted”) at the sheer quantity of food that went down. I badly regretted not taking half home with me.

After dinner, we had dessert at Mochilato, where Anny and I first met. Vicky had been curious about that dessert shop. Again, the girls ordered daintily, Anny with her tiny cup of gelato and Vicky with her two little gelato-filled mochis. Trying to be good about saving calories, I ordered a Japanese-style green tea flavored shaved ice, that was made by coating the bottom of a large bowl with sweetened condensed milk, green tea syrup, then shaved ice, then green tea syrup and condensed milk, then sweetened red beans, then vanilla gelato, then shaved ice, green tea syrup, condensed milk, red beans, and finally a generous handful of mini mochi balls. Vicky watched that sucker being made and kept saying, “There’s more? She’s still adding MORE stuff? Condensed milk AGAIN?” I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I thought, “Shaved ice is just water.” But add water to the giant portion of rice I had with the curry and suddenly *I* felt like a huge mochi ball. I badly regretted finishing all of the curry AND ordering a shaved ice instead of a modest little cup of frozen yogurt.

We had a lot of fun chatting and catching up, and parted with promises to do it again as a triple date.

I “borrowed” these photos from Warren (Jimmy’s best man), and as I get more from other people I’ll post them.

Jimmy and Sabrina’s wedding party standing inside the Shakespeare Garden:

This is the “blogger picture” I made everyone take. I totally felt like a geek, but everyone was really good sports about it.

Top row, left to right: Dardy (twenty-five seconds of silence blog), strange guy I don’t know, Mel (herro… blog), ex-blogger Diana, Jen (Jen’s blog), Warren (Meet Me in Montauk blog)
Bottom row, left to right: Christi (Better Together blog), Mike (what fools these mortals be! and Better Together blogs), me (Cindy’s World blog, duh), Cheryl (The Adventures of Cheryl and Greg blog; her hubbie Greg totally refused to join in the photo, ashamed of having sold out to blogging a few times).

Our original plan was to leave Tuesday and drive back along the coastline, stopping whenever we wanted, staying overnight at San Simeon Pine Lodge where we’d stayed last year, and then take a leisurely drive home Wednesday. But because we were having so much fun with the NorCal folks, we decided to stay another night and leave Wednesday early morning instead. We figure if we leave at 7a, we’ll avoid downtown LA rush hour traffic.

We’ll never know if that timing would’ve worked, because I could not get up Wednesday morning. As Mr. W packed around me, I woke up in a start having been jolted out of a very disturbing nightmare of betrayal by a girlfriend over some jerk I wanted nothing to do with, who nevertheless swallowed my housekey (which I didn’t even know he had) instead of turning it over to me as I screamed louder and louder at him demanding my key back. ANYWAY, I tried hard to get up, but I kept falling over to the right. I looked up and the ceilings swirled to the left, over and over. I made it to the bathroom and while sitting on the toilet, I got deeply nauseated as the bathroom continued to spin counter-clockwise. I crawled back to bed and said I think I have vertigo. Diana soon came back up and asked for my symptoms, and confirmed it sounds like vertigo, which she used to get and which her mother gets occasional severe attacks of. She suggested motion sickness medication, and told me to just lay down. Mr. W went out to his car and got some Dromamine for motion sickness. I chewed two tablets, fell over sideways to the right again (there seemed to be this weird rightward gravitational pull), and knocked out. I woke up again at 11:30a. The room was still doing its counter-clockwise turns, but the nausea was now gone so the dizziness is tolerable. It’s not unlike being on a moving ship. I packed up my stuff and we soon took off. Diana had left for work already by this time.

I slept most of the drive, until we stopped by Magic Mountain and ate a late lunch/early dinner at Marie Callendar’s. Then I slept again in the car until we got to Mr. W’s house. I’d wanted to watch “Buffy” and “Angel,” but every few seconds I’d get the sensation of falling backwards into my own head, so I eventually just closed my eyes and slept on the couch. This morning, Mr. W woke me up, dropped me off at my house on his way to work, and I crawled into bed at 7a and slept. I’d wanted to get up a few times, 10:30a, 11:30a, 12:30p, but every time I pushed the covers away, the cold air would make me pull it up again. I finally made it out of bed for the first time at 3:30p.

The nausea never came back (thank goodness, cuz that’s the most awful part of this vertigo thing), but the dizziness didn’t completely go away until maybe late evening. I was concerned I couldn’t drive, but I badly needed groceries, so I visited the new “healthy” organic grocery chain “Fresh & Easy” near my house. After eating, I now feel a lot better. Thank goodness I’d taken the whole week off.

On Monday evening, Mike & Christi had wanted to join us for frozen yogurt at Mel’s shop “Yogurt Fantasy” on Castro, but couldn’t because they had St. Patrick’s Day dinner plans with Christi’s dad, who she was surprised to find is a great chef. He made his own Irish dish of corned beef and cabbage from scratch! So we volunteered to do yogurt a second time on Tuesday evening after everyone got off work.

As everyone else worked, Mr. W and I had a decent gym session, a late breakfast, and returned to Diana’s to shower and get ready for going out again. Diana was seated at her dining table in the exact same spot where we’d left her early in the morning, working away on her laptop. The work was about to pay off, however, as the deadline was later that night. She suggested that since the weather has continued to be beautiful, warm and sunny, that it was a great day to visit the campus of Stanford University, about 10 miles away (as everything is). She drew us a quick map and off we went, leaving her to her selling her soul work.

On the way, we thought we’d try to hit up another food joint made famous by my NorCal blogger pals, Pizz’a Chicago. Dardy and Mike’s favorite pizza on their menu is the Great Chicago Fire, comprised of spicy Italian sausage, sport peppers (like peppercinis), fresh garlic, cilantro on a thick Chicago deep-dish crust. Oh…my…gawd. It was spicy enough, I never would’ve thought of adding cilantro to pizza to give spicy ingredients a refreshing twist, and the crust was crispy on the outside while the soft cottony inside melted on the palate. DELICIOUS. It is nothing like the greasy bottomed, soggy uppered BJ’s Pizzas, which chain also claims to be Chicago deep-dish. Mr. W especially enjoyed the menu and the wall decorations, as he’s from Chicago and gets all the inside jokes. For me it was like, “Huh? Fire? Mrs. O’leary? Cow? What?” His rocker brother even played at the Cubby Bar or whatever that one pizza was named after. He took a to-go menu to share with the family. I also loved the flexible ordering; we could’ve gotten half-pizzas if we couldn’t decide what we wanted but didn’t want to order 2! They also let us half any appetizer order for half-price.

Stomachs happily digesting, we drove out to Stanford University, parked in front of the Alumni Building, and took a nice long walk on campus. The center quad is grandiose, with its many rows of archways and columns. We found the church in the center and walked in. The intricately detailed stained glass lining the wings, the giant wall of brass pipes to project the 2nd story pipe organ, the soaring arched ceilings all dropped my jaw. I tugged on Mr. W’s sleeve. “Can we get married here if I convert to Catholicism for a day?” I asked. We noted while walking in the sunshine, smelling the trees and flowers, seeing all the green around us, that the campus is very aware of natural aesthetic beauty and plays up all the gardens and trees in its giant stone architecture. I wondered aloud whether Dardy appreciates how beautiful this campus is, but doubted it as he’s a graduate. We never appreciate what we’re used to, right?

On our way to Castro St. yet again, I called Dardy. “Guess where I called you from earlier! Your alma mater!” I told him excitedly.
“What?”
“We were on campus at Stanford!”
“…why?!” he said, totally unimpressed. I went on and on about how beautiful I thought the buildings were, and he said flatly that yeah, they’re Spanish. I protested that I didn’t think they were Spanish. “They’re not? They look Spanish to me. It’s like a giant Taco Bell.” What? (Later, while relaying this conversation to a laughing Diana, she said she thinks it’s Spanish-Renaissance, not Taco-Bell-Spanish.)

We were supposed to meet up with Mike, Christi and Dardy at Yogurt Fantasy, but even tho we got to Castro St. first, we got to the yogurt place last as Mr. W found a Chinese loose leaf tea shop and stayed there for awhile to indulge his fobby side. He tried to buy a $17 ginseng oolong, but ended up walking out with a $45 high-energy oolong tea that’s supposedly sold nowhere else except at that store, according to the storeowner’s claims that he dispensed for half an hour to an enraptured Mr. W. Walking out with his leafy loot, Mr. W wondered aloud if he may have been swindled. I kept my lips shut.

I got a strawberry fro-yo mixed with chocolate this time, and it was delicious. I found strawberry strings and seeds in there, so it’s definitely made with real fruit! How I wish I had some right now, but not even the NorCal folks can have some; we caught Mel’s shop just hours before they were going to shut down for a week for major remodeling.

After Yogurt Fantasy, we drove out to a new Japanese restaurant that Christi and Mike had been wanting to try, called The Red Crane. It’s an artisan sushi place, and served some fancy stuff. Jen joined us there. Mr. W and I had gotten there first and I gave the host my card ahead of time, explaining I was to pay no matter what and to please keep it discreet. He said he understood. Unfortunately, he got off work before we were done eating and handed the card with directions to our server, who was totally oblivious. The bill came and was placed at the other end of the table so I didn’t even know it was there until after people had already looked at it and tallied up what they owed. Mr. W got up and talked to the waitress, who pulled my card out of her apron and said she’d forgotten about it. “Now we’ve got people fighting over the bill, which is what we were trying to avoid,” he told her. I’d wanted to treat everyone to a last dinner to thank them for coming out and hanging with us, even tho every one of them had work. NONE of them would let me. The cash sat on the table until I finally had take it after it was pushed back to me two or three times. *sigh*

We told them that the next time they’re in our neck of the woods, it’s going to be our treat.

Monday was St. Patrick’s Day, which we’d totally forgotten about until Mr. W and I wandered the 1.3 miles over to downtown Sunnyvale from Diana’s pad and saw Murphy Avenue completely decked out in green. It was only noon, and there were patrons in green wigs, green plastic bead necklaces, green shamrock sunglasses, green clothing, sitting outside this restaurant- and bar-lined street enjoying the day. It seemed like every bar there was an Irish pub, and most restaurants Indian.

We selected Scruffy Murphy’s Irish Pub & Restaurant, and walked into the very crowded parlor. We opted to eat upstairs where there were less people, and ordered off their special St. Patrick’s Day menu. I had corned beef and cabbage (delicious) and Mr. W had a lamb stew. He also had a green beer (Harps Lager) and I wasn’t as daring with my Bailey’s Irish Cream on the rocks. We put on our green beads and shamrock sunglasses and walked back to Diana’s, where we took a nap. (She was at work.) Then we got up and drove out to the beautiful Hakone Gardens in nearby Saratoga. (One of the funny things about NorCal is that we think everything’s really close, within 10 miles away from Diana’s, but to people who live there, we went far.) A few scenes from the cinematographically-acclaimed film “Memoirs of a Geisha” were filmed there. I loved that garden. I thought it kicked our wedding venue Japanese garden’s ass, and one of my favorite things about this garden, aside from its beauty from every angle, is that it allows visitors to go on each footpath and go exploring. I found some discreet sights of bamboo, flowers, zen gardens and hidden seats, stunning views that continued to take my breath away as I turned angles. Mr. W took some photos, but I was disappointed how the photos could not come close to doing the sights justice.

Aside from attending Jimmy’s wedding, the other thing I absolutely HAD to do on this trip was to visit Mel’s frozen yogurt shop, a new business venture of hers. We made plans to meet up with Dardy on the same street (which is like Restaurant Row), parked at the start of Castro St. in Mountain View (yes, 10 minutes away). Mr. W and I wandered by the shop first, saw Mel and chatted with her a few minutes, I sampled a couple flavors, and we walked off to meet Dardy for ramen at Maru Ichi restaurant. I kept feeling like I was having celebrity sightings this whole trip, as we’d drive by places I read about on my NorCal friends’ blogs but had never visited myself. I got all stupidly excited when I spotted HC Dumpling, too, one of Dardy’s other favorites. I thoroughly enjoyed my miso ramen (dude, that ramen’s messy! it’s impossible to eat the stuff without spraying droplets of soup everywhere unless you painstakingly wind noodles onto the soup spoon and then put the whole spoon in your mouth, which I did for awhile until I got too hungry for the slow process.), and then we walked to Mel’s shop, Yogurt Fantasy.

I’d heard that her yogurt texture is different from PinkBerry or other yogurt places, and it’s true! Her yogurt is sooo creamy and rich tasting. It doesn’t just liquify and dissolve right away. Her flavors are also very true to their name; my blueberry tart was very blueberry-y, and paired with the chocolate, I felt like I was in taste bud heaven. It was the perfect nightcap before we returned to Diana’s place where she was again back at her dining table working away (impending deadline). She’d passed on dinner to stay at home and work, opting to eat Jimmy’s banquet leftovers with Jen who was due to arrive after work. She worked late into the night while I stayed and chatted with her a bit until I felt too guilty for stealing her time and went off to bed myself. Her boyfriend also stopped by late to visit, having just left the office himself. Lawyers!

Sunday morning, Mr. W and I got up early and hit the gym. We were going to take Diana’s recommendation for a nearby breakfast place first, but she and her boyfriend caught us on our way out the door and strongly suggested we eat last. They said that the last time they’d eaten at Sugar Butter Flour bakery, they were happily useless and had to come back for a nap. Hence, Mr. W and I worked up a healthy appetite which we quelched with mushroom, spinach and feta cheese crepes (me) and banana strawberry pancakes (Mr. W). While eating I got to watch a girl try to buy a floral fondant cake displayed on the counter and having to be turned down as the cashier attempted to explain to her that the display cake isn’t real, but made with paint and styrofoam.

As we got ready for the afternoon wedding, Jen came by to carpool with us. Diana made me show her all my multi-layers. Jen laughed and I think she may have taken a photo. I again announced that they can laugh all they want, but I’ll be the only one warm while the rest of them froze in oceanside fog and rain.

It didn’t rain! It was a BEAUTIFUL day in San Francisco, sun beaming directly on the green floral Shakespeare Garden, and if I hadn’t been in long sleeves, I would’ve gotten a sunburn. There was also no fog whatsoever. It was in fact so dry that my furry scarf was supercharged with enough static electricity to look like a wild cat reaching out to grab me in its deathly tight grip. There’s a photo of this somewhere in Jen’s camera. The wedding was beautiful, 7 classically dressed groomsmen with 7 bridesmaids in flowing strapless pink trained gowns, 2 flower girls, one of whom threw petals as hard as she could onto the ground as she walked and her partner threw petals straight into the faces of the ducking audience, causing laughter as they walked down the aisle. The groom was also in a classic black tux, pink vest and tie, and the bride had a jewel-lined bodice and long train. After the wedding ceremony, Jimmy and Sabrina’s photographers called individual groups in for photos. Like, “Jimmy’s family!” “Sabrina’s family!” Diana, Mel and I were in the “UCLA people!” group. Mike (“wilco“), Christi (“flip flop girl“), Dardy, Greg and Cheryl were in “bowling group!” Christi seemed rather embarrassed to be affiliated with this group, but hey, she married a member.

Since there was a few hours of time between leaving the ceremony site and getting to the Chinese seafood banquet site, a bunch of us killed time at a nearby Starbucks and goofed off, while Diana worked on her laptop there. Poor girl. Mr. W was starving and we split a garlic cheesesteak sandwich and garlic fries (we stunk!) at the ONLY other place open there, which was a cheesesteak sandwich hole-in-the-wall shop. Apparently, since the meal was in was in Yank Sing (I made a crass joke to Mr. W when we walked up to this sign) restaurant in San Francisco’s financial district at the Rincon center, on Sunday there’s like NOTHING open. Once the front doors to the restaurant opened, however, I was floored.

Banquet tables were arranged from the lobby area all the way around a large fountain that dripped rainfall from what looked like 10 floors of glass-paned offices above. We were seated at table 2, which is immediately to the right of the head table. It was dubbed the “UCLA table” according to the placecard, the back of which had a photo of Royce Hall. “Whoa, you must be important!” Christi joked, as she was in the back at the “bowling table.” We had 3 groomsmen at our table as well. There were ten courses of food, not counting wedding cake. Their cake was three tiers of beautifully detailed pink ribbons and flowers that matched their theme colors of ivory and light pink. We were stuffed.

They did play some wedding games, which I don’t think I want to do, as much as I enjoy watching them happen to other people. Case in point: Ansen (groomsman and one of Jimmy’s UCLA roommates) had told me at the Shakespeare Garden that I was in a video they were going to show at the ceremony. During the food festivities, Ansen orchestrated a game in which he called Jimmy to the front stage, and then behind him on the stage, all 7 bridesmaids plus his new wife lined up. Ansen then turned Jimmy’s back to the 8 women, explaining as Jimmy was being blindfolded that he was going to feel the hand of each person behind him, and he would have to guess which one his bride is. “If you don’t guess correctly,” Ansen warned, “We will play a video clip that, trust me, you do NOT want played in public.” I knew the clip Ansen was referring to, but I wondered how he KNEW it would be played cuz Jimmy had a chance of guessing correctly, right? As soon as the blindfold was installed, four groomsmen stopped eating in mid-bite and silently ran onstage, replacing 4 bridesmaids. Sabrina, the bride, was removed from the stage altogether. “You can feel, but DON’T GROPE,” Ansen said, as hand after hand was offered to Jimmy as the audience snickered. After all the hands were felt, Ansen asked, “Well, Jimmy? Which one is Sabrina?”
Jimmy hesitated. “I don’t think she was up there,” he said, sounding confused. “And I think there were a few men in there.” The audience laughed and started to clap, but Ansen wasn’t going to risk not showing the video he painstakingly edited.
“Guess one,” he pressed Jimmy.
“The closest would be #1, IF she’s up there,” Jimmy said, still sounding unsure and confused. #1 was indeed a female bridesmaid, but of course it wasn’t the bride. Ansen gestured for a male groomsman to trade spots with a bridesmaid and took off Jimmy’s blindfold, saying, “LOOK WHO YOU PICKED JIMMY!”
The crowd laughed and cheered as a video clip played on a projector, showing what happened at Jimmy’s birthday many years ago in SoCal at Huntington Beach’s “Joe’s Crab Shack,” in which the waitress humiliated the birthday boy by making him don a pink tu-tu, silver tinsel wig, I think he may have worn a coconut bra, and pink lacey butterfly wings. And in the video, on slow-mo and on repeated play, our boy Jimmy decked out in fairy attire holding a star wand shimmied and shook what his mama gave him. You see half my head thrown back in laughter at the lower margin.

The garter toss was uneventful, but the bouquet toss would be remembered. Diana had to be dragged from the table to participate in the bouquet toss, all the while protesting and claiming she can’t catch. Picture this: so the bouquet, on the count of 3, flies through the air toward the group of women. It arcs overhead and starts to fall. The pink and ivory bouquet nears a woman with her arms outstretched, and she is ready to catch as the bouquet makes its beeline toward her. Suddenly, a flash of two bare arms appear directly over this woman’s head and snatches the bouquet out of the air before it could land in the waiting hands. Yoink! What the heck just happened? The crowd screamed and laughed. “What happened?” I asked Mr. W, “Who got the bouquet?” Diana claims she instinctively just reached out and grabbed the flowers because she was taller than the girl in front and that she really didn’t think about it. I can’t wait to see this on video. SOMEONE HAS TO YOUTUBE IT!

A beautiful slideshow was also played during dinner, which Jimmy gave up all but 2 hours of sleep the night before to put together. It was set to 3 songs by “The Cure” which I totally associate with my UCLA NorCal friends, and the last song, “Pictures of You,” is a Jimmy classic. I was surprised to see a photo of me and Mr. W with Jimmy that I’d never seen before, and I bugged him to send me a copy. His slideshow inspired me to want to make one, too, but I don’t know where I’d display it in our scattered outdoor venue.

It was a fun evening with friends. Congrats, Jimmy & Sabrina!

I’m back from NorCal! Mr. W and I drove up Saturday morning and got to college roommie Diana’s new tri-level townhouse in Sunnyvale 6.5 hours later, past noon. Diana was away on a pseudo-work-related volunteer project she was to be involved in all weekend, so I took the liberty of running around admiring the split level floorplan, nice dark wood floorboards, new appliances. I don’t think her place is even a year old. It also happened to be within walking distance of downtown Sunnyvale, so Mr. W and I went off to explore and to buy a few things while we waited for evening to roll around. One thing I found that was notable about being at Diana’s house without her is that I already knew where everything was. After living with someone for 3 years, you pretty much pick up on their storage and organizational habits. For example, I needed a plastic bag, so I went to her kitchen, looked at her bottom drawers, and found a bunch of old grocery bags tied up in knots in the second drawer I looked in.

We already had plans to play Rock Band with Mike and Christi (“wilco” and “flip flop girl”) at their house, so soon after I received their phone call, Mr. W and I drove out to their new house. Very nice! Everyone seems to have new houses with upgraded floors and kitchens. Mr. W and I were very happy for them, and only slightly jealous for ourselves. A few Rock Band songs later, I realized that I’d missed a call from Dardy, so I called him up and coerced him to come join us for some Rock Band and sushi (Rockin’ Sushi?). Mike said he was making enough food for 8, but college roommie Diana was on her way to the gym and her boyfriend was still working, so it was up to the 5 of us. I think we pretty much finished everything except for a few chicken shish-kabobs.

And then we discussed the impending weather the next day. The reason we were up there was for college buddy Jimmy’s wedding the next afternoon, and all week the forecast called for rain that weekend. The ceremony was to be outdoors in Golden Gate Park’s “Shakespeare Garden,” and the usual climate is ocean-fog-cold anyway, so with the 60% chance of rain made everyone nervous. I was going to be wearing layers, i.e. long velvet skirt with a fitted velvet bodysuit inside, buttoned over skin-tight running capris. Who’d know? They all laughed at me when I told them what I was wearing, and I told them, “Laugh now, but tomorrow when you’re all freezing and I’m the only one with a warm butt…” How wrong I was.

Yesterday evening, Mr. W reportedly bribed his son, saying dinner out is on him if Son would drive to his mom’s house to retrieve Mr. W’s Playstation2 console, Guitar Hero games, and guitars. Son agreed, infiltrated his mom’s house (where he no longer lives), retrieved the goods, and received his bribe.

Figuring he was on a role (roll? row? roe?), Mr. W attempted to bribe me this afternoon saying if I go over to his house after work, I can play Guitar Hero. I replied that I didn’t care to play Guitar Hero, that’s an ineffective incentive for me to drive over there. Especially while my house is being worked on by the roofers (they woke me up with loud pounding this morning at 7am, which, mind you, is “really” 6am with the weekend Daylight Savings adjustment) this week. He admitted that he just wanted me over and thought offering Guitar Hero playtime would do the trick.

After gym trainee and I returned from our lunchtime gymming, I noted my craving for a smoothie, and decided to bribe Mr. W with my going over to his house after work IF he got me a smoothie. But the difference between me and everybody else is that NOT only am I NOT bribe-able due to my high integrity and true sense of self, but I am also not one to use bribery to get something I want. So I didn’t bring up the smoothie offer to Mr. W.

All right, so the truth is that I got busy in the afternoon divorcing people at my desk and didn’t bother to call Mr. W, and I’m more easily and inexpensively manipulated because somehow Mr. W convinced me to go over to his house after work anyway by sheer guilt and expectations alone. I don’t even get a smoothie out of the deal.

That, and the last thing he said to me when I talked to him half an hour ago was, “You need to get some Guitar Hero practice in before we go up north to play with your friends.” 😛 We’ll see if I can kick “wilco” and “flip flop girl”‘s Guitar Heroing asses this weekend.

Yesterday evening, maid-of-honor Vicky (yes, I’ve decided recently she’s my maid-of-honor; she’s more than earned it. Didja read all my past Las Tunas and Chinatown trauma she guided me through?) came by with her boyfriend Glenn and the three of us went out to a local sushi joint for dinner. After returning to my house, Glenn proceeded to take apart my living room’s vertical blinds to see if he could replace the broken clip on one panel. He soon discovered that the system was made in the late 70s and the parts I’ve purchased don’t fit in the old system. GAH! He was a good sport and reassembled everything, put it back up in the window, and advised me to buy a new blind system. After checking the blinds upstairs in the bedrooms, he found they were the same old system, so those will all have to be replaced, too. While upstairs, he said my ceiling damage from the leaks actually aren’t that bad and that they can be repatched very inexpensively, so I don’t have to hire an expensive ceiling repair guy or put a claim into my homeowner’s insurance. Great! With his prior experience managing multiple apartment homes, he recommended some products and even offered to come help patch the ceilings once my external roof is replaced. Looks like Vicky’s dating life has finally paid off for me. Haha!

(Today I told Mr. W about Glenn’s blind discoveries and Mr. W said he already knew that the pieces were not compatible cuz he’d already looked at it. Well, why didn’t he tell me?!)

Afterward the free inspection, we hung out and chatted in the living room, when something someone said sparked the memory that I have video tape footage of Vicky when we were in 8th grade. I busted it out, popped it in the VCR, and I watched Glenn’s amused smile looking at his whiny girlfriend more than 15 years back in time. Bridesmaid Sandy is in our 8th grade graduation video, too! I threatened to play it at my wedding. One thing we all noticed is how incredibly tan we were as pre-teens. Of course there was the daily P.E. class and playing outdoors and swimming, but man, adult office life has done nothing for our tans.

Now I need to find some embarrassing video footage of bridemaid Diana from the late 80s. Heh heh heh!

* House-hunting is getting old and making us feel poor.
* I booked our venue wedding coordinator consultation and our venue rehearsal, and tomorrow we’re attending the food-tasting to pick our meals.
* Today I received my order of more face powder and 3 eyeshadows from Sephora; starting tomorrow everything on my face will be Bare Escentuals and the switchover will be complete.
* We’re on Week 1 of Phase 2 in the psycho workout routine, both I and my gym trainee are looking the best we’ve looked since we can remember, and I was very proud of her when she told me she’s decided to wear a racer-back tanktop dress this weekend to visit her cousins in San Diego to “show off” her toned arms (since we did upper body today).
* I finally got to select vacation days for this year, and I got the week after my friend Jimmy’s upcoming Sunday wedding off so we can take our time coming back from Northern California after his wedding, BUT I didn’t have enough seniority to even make the WAIT LIST for the week of my own wedding. >:-(
* Dodo’s being a good sport in letting me brush some clumps out of his fur this week, altho it seemed somewhat painful, and he’s stopped jumping into the shower to lap up leftover bathwater in the mornings.
* The Association finally signed and mailed back the roofer’s contract this week, and I received an email from the roofer saying he hopes to start work around March 10; I was afraid to tell him my Association neighbors are asses and all still refuse to pay their contribution toward the repairwork.
* At Mr. W’s house without a TV in his bedroom and being unable to watch TV in the living room w/o disturbing his son who’s sleeping in the upstairs loft overlooking the living room, I am unable to fall asleep (obviously).