cindy's world

The Boyz II Men/Brian McKnight concert was Tuesday night, not Wednesday night as stated in my previous post. I put Wednesday to throw off any stalkers. Just kidding. I thought Mr. W said Wednesday but turned out it was Tuesday. *shrug*

I’ll post more about it later on since it’s pretty late right now, and maybe even post a cameraphone video clip. I didn’t take photos because 1) I didn’t bring a camera, thinking the venue wouldn’t allow them (which was true and they announced no photography, but tons of people had their cameras going anyway), and 2) my cell phone died so I didn’t even have a cameraphone with which to take pictures. Mr. W had his cameraphone, tho, and recorded some clips.

In a nutshell, I laughed, I cried (well, no I didn’t), I sang along, I danced, I had a blast, I blast out an eardrum. It was a very nice experience to have shared with Mr. W, who isn’t even an R&B fan but enjoyed himself anyway. He’s a good guy to take out cuz unlike me, he’ll truly give a new experience a real attempt before making up his mind that it’s not his thing. Plus, R&B tends to be very romantic so it would’ve been slightly sad if I’d been alone. Altho I suppose even if Mr. W hadn’t gone, I wouldn’t have been alone. His daughter, upon finding out we were going, made some jealous protests that I should take her instead because she’s a bigger fan of those singers than her dad is, and ended the conversation by saying, “Oh well, have fun! Take pictures! Take me!” Haha.

Dude, my ears are still ringing. Seriously. “You ruptured an eardrum? Wow, were you at a shooting range?” “No, I was at a Brian McKnight concert.” Dumb.

Happy Labor Day. But not for 24 Hour Fitness employess. You guys I thank for laboring through today to keep the gym open so that I could go kill myself. Much obliged.

This holiday weekend, Mr. W and I became “two.” Not two as in two people (altho we’re that, too), but two as in, we need two candles on the relationship birthday cake. We celebrated by doing nothing, our current favorite pastime, since weekends are oddly overbooked these months. So Friday, I stayed home all by myself and hung with the Dodo Boy; Saturday, I cleaned the house, organized some stuff, ran some errands, then in the afternoon finally made it over to Mr. W’s house, where we watched “Perfect Stranger” starring Halle Berry and Bruce Willis on DVD. (The movie affected the mood; I felt sick and perturbed afterwards. Not a great aphrodisiac movie for dates, just to warn you.) Sunday, we had a dim sum brunch with my parents, then went to my house where Mr. W worked some air conditioning filter magic and got my A/C in tip-top shape so that my Fozzy Wozzy Dodo Pal could survive in his unremovable fur coat in this freakish 100+ degree weather. There’s only so much cooling down my dumping ice cubes into his water dishes would allow. Oh, and I cleaned his little ears, so it was a productive day. Then after confirming that college roommie Diana has arrived in San Diego in the afternoon, I drove us down to meet up with her and her friend Gil for a nice dinner. Aside from Mr. W and I walking over a mile to the wrong location to meet them at the bar they were at (the brilliant Ivy League-bound bartender there gave her the correct number of the building, but the wrong street, so that the address made us walk across town stepping over the legs of drunken homeless people and crazy ladies in wheelchairs yelling at us on the streets and avoiding sidewalk pee puddles to arrive at the address we were given, staring confusedly at a run-down Hawaiian burger joint, which was CLOSED, instead of leading us to a safe, lit swanky bar in the middle of night life action in the Gas Lamp District), the night was fun and we got to explore the less ghetto parts of San Diego on foot. Diana also treated everyone to a very nice Italian dinner as an “engagement present” to me and Mr. W. Even as I write this, Diana is out playing in San Diego with Gil, her personal tourguide right now. Nice guy. Very funny. (I mean he’s a funny guy and made me laugh, not that it’s funny-weird that Diana knows a nice guy.) We got back to Mr. W’s house at 2am, and I was exhausted.

This morning while at the gym, trudging from machine to machine, I thought for probably the hundredth time in the past year how I must be just physically out of it right now, because I’ve had to stop to catch my breath in between exercises of my supersets, and will myself to continue to the next exercise. I tried to remember the last time I’d felt full of energy and ready to tear it up. I know I’m anemic right now from the time of month, but the fact that I can’t remember the last time I felt really good in-between exercises makes me wonder, am I getting lazy and unconditioned? Am I *gasp* old? My recent physical examination scored me in high marks health-wise, both in bloodwork (crazy-low triglycerides, ideal blood pressure, low overall cholesterol with high HDL cholesterol) and in physical body (doctor said everything looked and felt very healthy and normal, and I’m right-smack in the middle of the ideal range for my body mass index). So what is going on?

Life improved after I got into work this morning. Mr. W’s coworker was trying to unload two concert tickets for next Wednesday and she’s having trouble finding a buyer. Mr. W told me of her woes sympathetically, and I asked, just making conversation, whose concert it was.
“Boyz II Men and, um, Brian McKnight or something?”
I almost fell out of my chair. “Really???”
“Yeah,” he seemed surprised. “Why, you wanna go?”
The venue is an outdoors concert hall in a city right next to the city that I work in. It’s perfect for a Wednesday night concert!
“But aren’t they has-beens?” Mr. W asked. “They’re not BOYZ anymore, they’re more like MEN now, aren’t they? ha ha.”
Ha, ha. Boyz II Men andBrian McKnight defined my generation’s high school R&B music. I bought every music single by Boyz II Men as they were released, rather than wait for the entire album to be released. I played Brian McKnight’s “One Last Cry” so often that rather than playing then rewinding then playing then rewinding the cassette tape single every 5 minutes, I recorded it back-to-back on a second cassette tape many times over so that I could pop the 2nd tape in, press “play”, and have that song played back for 45 minutes straight. I have a letter on which my (male) friend quoted a segment of Boyz II Men’s “I’ll Make Love to You” on the top margin. My girlfriends and I cried to “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye (to Yesterday)” at the Class of 93’s graduation. My friend Lily gave the single “End of the Road” to a boy she liked in high school who was about to move away. My friend Vicky had a card written to her by some boy who quoted his own variation of “Down on Bended Knee”. A friend who was asking me to stop being mad at him on the phone one night quoted the speaking part of a Boyz II Men song, “Baby, I’m sorry. Please forgive me for all the wrong I’ve done…” in exactly the same deep baritone voice and inflections as in the song, and made me laugh and get over whatever I was upset about. I blasted Brian McKnight’s “You Should Be Mine” indignantly in my car when I was getting over some guy, and crooned to his “Back at One” when I dreamt of my future perfect boyfriend. I could go on, but this post is already getting long.

I’M GONNA GO SEE BOYZ II MEN AND BRIAN MCKNIGHT IN CONCERT NEXT WEDNESDAY!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!! It’s gonna be my first pop music concert EVER! (I’ve only been to Jim Brickman before this, and it was an excellent, funny, and very entertaining concert, but it was piano music with the occasional saxophone.)

Saturday was a beautiful day for riding to (or for Mr. W and myself, driving to) San Onofre Beach. We went to Costco for some supplies, had an organic healthy lunch at Mother’s Market, then drove down south to the campsite. We were the second party to get there; my jujitsu pal Gloria and her husband had already set up their tent. The four of us hung out and set up our tent until the biking crew arrived. It was a lot of fun, and sunny without being too warm as we were just over the deep blue ocean. I’d brought along a bunch of Milton Bradley Get-Together games, but never pulled them out as everyone was enjoy hanging out so much. We burned lots of wood in the firepit, made turkey burgers for dinner, smores for dessert, laughed and joked and listened to music. Mr. W rallied everyone into agreeing to go with us to the nude beach the next day, and altho they all agreed to include a visit to fleshville as part of the next day’s beach festivities, no one was going to join Mr. W as part of the 80%. Together, we were gonna make non-nudist participants of the nude beach 21%, darn it. Even the night was beautiful. The weather was cool and we needed nothing more than a light blanket over us in the tent to be perfectly comfortable.

The night was great, I mean, except for some crazy guy in the tent next to ours, not part of our group, who thought it was a good idea to make sex sounds in between snores every 5 minutes through the night. He was by himself. “OOH!” he’d groan. “OH, yeah, BABY!” “OHHHH!” There were little KIDS with their parents at the campgrounds, for gosh sakes!! He would actually startle me awake every time I started to doze. I think I finally fell asleep after some angry parents threw his tent, him included, over the fence into the water. Or maybe that was just wishful dreaming.

The next morning, we got up at 7a, made campside breakfast of pancakes, fire-toasted French rolls, scrambled eggs, and coffee, packed away all our tents and camping gear, just in time time to watch lightning strike the water in some dense dark clouds approximately 30 miles away. We’d heard about Florida’s Hurricane Dean bringing showers to Southern California, and looks like it was happening. Nevertheless, because it was still a nice morning out, we headed over to the beach, Mr. W barely able to contain his excitement at the prospect of his upcoming public stripping. That’s when it started to pour. We could barely see the road ahead of us through the splashes and mist, and after parking at the beach area, we exited the car in our bathing suits and proceeded to get drenched. It was a cold rain, and altho everyone was trying to be a good sport trudging their goose-pimpled flesh to the cliff’s edge, the amount of water and mud and made our descent down the hill onto the beach, in our flip flop shoes, impossible. From behind us, someone mumbled about having a lot of stuff yet to do this weekend. Another person agreed, saying something about laundry and unpacking, and then another voice about catching up on work before Monday. To Mr. W’s utter disappointment, we disbanded. Only three remained to surf, having the luxury of their own boards, wetsuits and water shoes. Oh, and the instructor who was supposed to bring extra boards and teach us to surf never showed, anyway.

Nevertheless, despite Mr. W’s threats that we were going to go back there sometime very soon to camp out on our own and visit the nude beach THEN, I had a great time and secretly thanked the Lord for the providence. It was also nice that everyone saw me in my pyromanic state, burning pine cones, used paper plates and napkins, etc., and still loved me for it. Turned out there were other pyros in the mix who enjoyed watching random things burn as much as I did. Chewed gum is fascinating. It dissolves and the whole thing lights on fire. The blackbelt organizer of the trip even offered his experience that pine needles burned really well, and at one point, he brought back an armful, threw it into the fire, and said, “There you go, Cindy!” as the fire blazed upward in a hungry lurch. I vaguely remember cackling and dancing around the living flames. Other people started experimenting, too. I returned from the restroom once to see a large black charred blob stuck on the side of a piece of wood. “What’s that?” I asked. “It’s a marshmallow,” a brown belt revealed.

This is me having way too much fun watching a cup of coffee in the flames. Mr. W put it in there for me. The theory is that the cup wouldn’t burn because paper burns at 451 degrees Fahrenheit but that the liquid forced it to remain at 200-some degrees Fahrenheit. Indeed, it DIDN’T burn…until the coffee boiled dry and as soon as upper portions of the paper cup dried, that part of the cup burned off. Fascinating.

Oh, and it was also nice that these people are used to seeing me without makeup, as I used to attend jujitsu bare-faced, cuz man, I realize as I see this photos that I’m not fit to be seen without makeup on!

Since I’m now posting faces, here’s a photo of me looking like crap and my fiance looking like a model.

Guess he would’ve totally stolen the show at the nude beach, gay or straight audience, huh?

Ramon: *nodding at red fleece sweatshirt that comes down to my knees* That’s not YOURS, is it?
Me: Sure it is!
Ramon: Did you BUY that for yourself?
Me: Yup. It’s a 4X. I was looking for something bigger, but this is all they had.
Ramon: How long have you had that?
Me: Oh, about 6 years. And it’s really comfortable and warm, it’s like wearing a blanket with arms.
Ramon: *picturing how fat Cindy must’ve been 6 years ago*

Tomorrow at this time I’ll be camping out with the jujitsu clan plus Mr. W at San Onofre beach near San Diego. The trip was meant to be a 40-mile bike ride from Angel Stadium in Anaheim down to the beach campsite, a nice leisurely roll along Pacific Coast Highway, but Mr. W was convinced our delicate untrained heinies wouldn’t withstand the soreness of being on a bike seat for that long. Besides, all the both of us have are mountain bikes, and not distance cruisers. Maybe I’ll invest in a cruising bike for the future. I would really love to get into riding.

So instead, Mr. W and I will drive down to the two reserved campsites and set up tents and stuff, and wait for the bikers to get there. So far I believe there are 6 or so riders and the rest of us are driving. Everyone will camp there overnight, tell campfire tales, play games, hang out, then play on the beach all the next day. One jujitsu instructor, a Santa Ana police officer, is bringing extra boards and providing surf lessons! I may get to cross one more thing off The List, albeit very belatedly! I am VERY excited. Maybe I’ll know enough about surfing to do some more of it when I’m at the Big Island of Hawaii next month for Wilco (Mike) and Christi’s wedding! (Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff going on. haha.)

One thing I’m not particularly excited about, is that I may have to go to a nude beach while we’re at San Onofre this weekend. Mr. W found out there’s a nude beach in San Onofre, and despite the organizer of the event’s insistence that the nude beach is nowhere near where we’re gonna be, Mr. W considers it “close enough” to hunt out and participate in the threadbare activities of. I’ve been told by more than a few people that the participants in this flesh fest are nothing to look at; they’re typically saggy, wrinkled and aged mostly male, mostly hairy body parts. Online information forwarded to me by Mr. W provides statistics that 80% of the nude beach attendees actually go nude, so I’m going to be part of the 20%. I compromised with Mr. W by saying that if he absolutely HAD to go (which appears to be the case), then fine, I’ll go along but I’m not participating. He’s okay with that, since he claims the only reason he wants to go, is not to gawk at the dongstorm, but simply to be nekkid outdoors without being arrested. I’m sure knowing that he’ll be the hottest nude guy there helps make the situation more enticing for him. As for my entertainment, I plan to mitigate the fact that I have to be there, by searching out Navy Seal trainees doing their training exercises nearby. Thanks, Navy Girl Vanessa, for alerting me to their existence there. I packed binoculars.

I think I’m getting into cooking again. It’s so nice and rewarding to cook when there’s someone else to eat it with you, and it’s especially nice when the someone else is really complimentary and appreciative. I have this developing inherent knack for feeling what goes well together and how to cook various things, even if I’ve never cooked the item before. That’s why I usually don’t have recipes to give out when people ask me for them. A retired coworker gave me a huge bag of home-grown produce, and I did eggplant last week (lightly sauteed in fresh jalapenos and garlic and then steam-cooked the rest of the way in chicken broth) and Anaheim peppers today (stir-fried with low-fat ground beef and fresh Serrano chili peppers, served over steamed multi-grain rice), both of which were totally new ingredients for me. I’d never even heard of Anaheim peppers till I was faced with their shiny curvy green selves. And experience now teaches me another lesson — don’t touch mucus membranes when you’ve been chopping spicy chilis and peppers. (Duh, Cindy.) =P

I got an email on Friday advertising 50% off on this massage package:
“Renew yourself with this head to toe pampering experience! The OC Spa Vacation Package includes a full body Swedish Massage with Deep Back Therapy & a Heavenly Warm Foot Exfoliation & Reflexology Treatment (75 min.). Next, enjoy a Green Tea Purifying Facial accompanied by a Soothing Acupressure Scalp Treatment & Neroli Floral Water Aromatherapy. Finally, your stress will melt away with a Calming Back Facial to help soften & smooth this often neglected area (75 min). A Perfect Package for both men & women who would like a summer vacation without the stress of travel. We look forward to taking you away soon!”

How could I turn that down? That’s 2.5 hours for $160! The facility was able to accomodate 2 simultaneous appointments on Saturday afternoon, so I booked that for me and Mr. W. While at our appointment yesterday, I think I picked up on the massage therapist in that platonic girly way. She’s fairly newly here from Chicago but had always said, since she was a young girl, that she would move to California one day. Her family just ignored it as the unrealistic musings of a dumb kid, until she up and moved here last year. We got talking about how she feels like she ought to start dating, but she was also enjoying her freedom too much to give it up. On the other hand, she’d like some casual dates here and there to pass the time but didn’t know how to go about doing it. She was thinking about joining Match dot com, and I held my tongue about that which ended up being a good move as the next thing she told me was that her brother had been on that dating service and ended up marrying his Match. I suggested that if she just wants really casual hangouts for now, to give people around her a chance before she puts money down on an internet dating site. She didn’t know where or how to start.

I suggested that she think about what hobbies or interests are important to her. Then to join a group or activity revolving around that interest and meet people through there. At least then, she knows she has at least one thing in common with the guy. I told her that I’ve actually had quite a few people ask me out through the gym, and at least if I meet someone through the gym, I know he’s not a total couch potato and is into keeping up his physical health, which is important to me. I told her that peak gym times are about 5:30p, when people get there after work, and if she gets there a bit before that and situates herself to see patrons walk in, she’ll know who comes in wearing suits cuz that’d mean they’re professionally employed. And if she sees someone she likes, she can always walk up to him and say, “You look like you know what you’re doing, can you help me with this piece of equipment?” or maybe ask some tips on developing some body part while complimenting the guy, such as “You have great shoulders, what exercise do you do to tone that up?” She’s actually very pretty, so I can’t imagine that some guy wouldn’t be glad to give her a few pointers. Plus, when some gym rat finds out she’s a massage therapist, he’d be all over that! She thought my ideas were creatively brilliant. I suggested if she likes cooking, to take a few recreational specialty cooking classes, and it turns out she absolutely loves cooking. So that opens a ton of other stuff up, such as telling some guy she’s developed some rapport with, “I’ve got a class tonight to make Mediterranean pastas from scratch and I can’t finish all that food we bring home by myself, wanna help?” Or, “I’ve got this great recipe I wanna try at home from my cooking class for savory tarts, wanna come by and loan me your taste buds?” Pretty girl + massage therapist + cook, HELLO! I also told her she has very little competition in SoCal because (sorry for the stereotype, but stereotypes exist for a reason, not saying there are no exceptions) pretty girls tend to be pretty useless. They tend to have everything handed to them on a silver platter due to their looks, so they can’t cook, don’t clean, have nothing interesting to say as they haven’t needed to develop their personalities or be particularly educated, they can’t save or hang onto money, and feel entitled to being financially spoiled by men. “Really?” she said, “But the stuff I do are so…normal.” “Not around here,” I told her. I also gave her some examples of overheard conversations at restaurants; some pretty blonde in a business suit gushing to her girlfriend about a new guy she met who’s so perfect and oh yeah, he’s a “waitress” (how’d he pull that one off?); girl going on and on to a guy at the bar about her lipstick color and lip shape, while he zoned out and sat there silently staring into his beer while she obliviously rambled on (he ended up turning to his other side, where I was, and bought me a drink and the other girl was so mad she stormed out and kicked my barstool hard as she passed by); man at a restaurant’s outdoor patio table staring past a woman’s shoulders as she gabs to him about random stuff, completely unaware that he had been silent and not looking at her for the past 15 minutes as she talked. The massage therapist laughed and said she was going to pay more attention to things around her from now on.

When we left, she passed me her email address and after getting back I sent her the most recent specialty cooking class syllabus for a great artisan bakery nearby. We’d been emailing since.

Why weren’t things so crystal-clear when *I* was looking, years and years ago?

The Simpsons Movie is one of THE best movies I’ve seen at the theatre this year! It dropped my jaw a few times in a South Park way, and had me laughing out loud every 15 minutes! I would so watch that again!

Rest mouse pointers over photos for captions (as usual).

Here’s a nice shot of the Queen Mary through the Queen Mary Lounge on our ship, the Carnival Paradise:

If you’ve ever sailed on a cruiseship, you’ll remember the mandatory pre-sailing orientation/enactment/drill in case of an abandon ship order.

You know how so many people think I look like Sandra Oh, and how I didn’t think I did? Well, check out who *I* think looks like Sandra Oh, at the very next table:


I had been wondering whether I’d meet another Jordan on this cruise. If you’ve been reading my blog for some time (and/or Jordan’s), you’ll know I met our dear Jordana Banana on my first cruise. We hit it off, I gave her my blog addy, she checked it out after returning home to Florida, we started emailing and communicating thru my blog, I convinced her to start a blog “for therapy”, she did, and the rest is history. I didn’t meet another Jordana Banana, but we did hit it off pretty well with this couple. Steve and Sally are therapists the next city over from my work, turned out my courthouse refers people over to their counseling services all the time, both in criminal matters (drug/alcohol outpatient counseling) and in family law (family/marriage counseling). Steve is sort of like Jordan, but Sally is more like the other girl Nadia that Jordan and I met on our cruise. She’ll know what I mean.

Steve, by the way, worked some therapist diagnostic magic on me and dropped my jaw during our last dinner together. See, I thought I was pretty introspective and psychologically keen, but he made a connection that I never saw, in regards to certain childhood experiences involving my mother’s behavior toward me and my worst adult fears today. How cliche, huh? haha.

This is a blowhole called La Bufadora in Ensenada, Mexico. Apparently it’s “the” thing to visit in Ensenada. Our tourguide equated not seeing it to going to Paris and not visiting the Eiffel Tower. The four of us talked over dinner (me, Mr. W, Steve, Sally), and concluded that we were not that impressed. Mr. W said the blowhole in Poipu, Kauai (Hawaii) was far grander of a sight. I didn’t actually see the blowhole at La Bufadora, because I didn’t want to fight the 5-layers thick crowd of people, so I stood back and let Mr. W climb an overhang and take the photos. I just got occasionally misted with seawater when the spray floated up every 5 minutes or so. Oh, and we also concluded it was probably low-tide.

You guys can click on this video if you’re bored, or want to be as (un)excited as I was.

This is the obligatory posing-like-the-towel-bunny shot in our cabin.

Just to compare, here’s the one from my prior cruise, the one with Jordana Banana, in February of ’06.

We had Friday off and got to the cruiseship before noon for an early boarding. We had to walk across this high bridge from the big dome in Long Beach that used to house the Spruce Goose:

Ever seen a ghost ship? Most people hadn’t boarded for the 6pm sailing, so we got to walk around and take pictures of the empty rooms. This was pretty much the only time the ship was people-less that weekend.

What, you were hoping for photos with PEOPLE in ’em? Well, those are in Mr. W’s camera. I’ll post some when he downloads them off his camera. Meanwhile, you can rest your mouse pointer over these photos for captions and pretend that people are in them talking to you.