cindy's world

I had 2 sets of plans in place for yesterday. The first was lunch with my childhood friend Lily and her hubbie Arnold, both of whom I hadn’t seen since their wedding in ’05. It just seemed like every time we tried to make plans for the past year they’ve been in Southern California, either my dad was in the hospital, or we were in San Simeon, or my dad was in the hospital again. So I was not about to cancel that. The second was dinner with my parents and maternal grandma for grandma’s birthday. It was already postponed from last week from my dad being in the hospital. I also was not going to postpone that again. So I didn’t tell any of them I was sick. Since I’d lost my voice yesterday, I text-messaged Lily to tell her we were on the way.

I broke the news to Lily and Arnold when they tried to hug me with “I wouldn’t hug me! I don’t know what I have!” The two doctors paused and shrank away from me. I felt like a leper, but they were so good about it the rest of the time through dim sum. I requested a spare pair of chopsticks to use as “community chopsticks” so I wouldn’t infect the food with the pair that I was using to feed myself, and Lily and Arnold shared a second pair of “community chopsticks.” After dim sum the four of us went back to Lily’s parents’ house in the affluent gated area of Diamond Bar, and Arnold set up the billiard table in the living room. “Do you shoot pool?” I asked Mr. W. He said, “A little. We played sometimes in the Marine Corps.” Arnold and Lily were apparently really good. Mr. W accepted the invitation to play against Arnold for a round, as Lily and I flipped through her professionally created wedding and engagement photo albums. It wasn’t long before we heard Arnold say, “I think [Mr. W] is hustling me.” We soon theorized through a brief period of observation that instead of protecting the country, Mr. W’s battalion had invested much time in goofing off.

After leaving Lily & Arnold, Mr. W and I met up with my parents at their house nearby. I was exhausted from being up most of the night before due to the tremendous throat pains. My hopes of sneaking a few z’s at my parents’ were quickly shattered as the construction activity of massive home remodeling going on indoors and outdoors of their house drove me and Mr. W back to my own house. There, Mr. W caught the pregame reports of the Superbowl on TV as I knocked out upstairs in bed. My mom called to check up on us, and then we were off to meet them for dinner.

Dinner was in a Chinese hot pot restaurant, but my grandma being the picky eater, wanted to order separate cooked dishes in lieu of hot pot (but insisted on doing so at a hot pot restaurant, which she chose). Oh well, it’s her birthday, what she says goes. The food was delicious, except when it came to the last dish, which is a delicacy — a cross-section of tender white fish simmering over tofu, with stir-fried ground soy beans covering the top of the plate. The fish is served on a metal tray set over contained flames so that it’s still cooking as it sits on your table. I took one bite and it felt like someone shoved sandpaper down my already-raw throat, rubbed it up and down my throat, and then sprayed chili-oil covered asbestos on the offended area. I gagged and choked and hacked so hard my inner ears stung, and sucked down 2 cups of tea to soothe my pissed off throat. I think it was largely due to that episode that my parents tried to take the bill from me when it came, cuz they felt bad I didn’t eat much (I ate till I was full). I was so offended, however, that they ended up giving the bill back to me. I have no idea what I looked like as I was surprised at my parents’ reaction. I just know that when they took the bill, I said hoarsely in the little voice I had that they shouldn’t do that because we’d already agreed that I was paying and they already gave my grandma a bday present and this was supposed to be MY bday present to her, and suddenly, they froze looking at me, said quietly to each other, “Daughter’s really mad!” and gave the bill tray back. It was under $100, anyway, not bad for 5 people.

I got my voice back this morning (altho a bit weak), but I am coughing more. The throat pain is more bearable, and the fever and body pains are pretty much gone. So my body, not to be outdone by a virus, saw to it that I got my period today. “She’s sick and in pain and hasn’t slept well in days, so let’s make her bleed, too!” *sigh*

When did my conversations with the Do-Cat deteriorate into something like this, from this morning? :
Me: *peering into litter box, and gasping with great excitement* Yay, you POOED! You’re such a good BOY! *pat pat*
Dodo: Stop it. You’re embarrassing me. Now Q-tip my ears.
Me: Okay.

Vanessa sent me some photos of China this morning to get me excited for the upcoming trip. Photos such as:

I can’t hope to take photos like this in China, can I? 🙁

Mr. W and I are invited to his boss’s awards ceremony banquet this Saturday evening, where we’ll be rubbing elbows with high society as Boss is awarded [Her High Position] of the Year. It’s a black-tie optional affair, so that means “pretty formal.” I thought I’d try to wear a classic black designer original gown I’d purchased my freshman year in college, a $400 number I’ve had occasion to wear all of twice. It’s not like me to blow that much cash, especially as a poor starving student, on non-tax-deductible stuff like clothing. But eleven years ago, my college roommate was a karaoke video model and a slave to Chanel makeup and United Colors of Benetton clothing. What happens when I shop with someone like that is I make a frivolous purchase or two with no occasion to use the new attire.

The dress has a strapless straight neckline, a fitted bodice down to the hip and a slightly A-line skirt going down to my ankles. A wide slit up the left side of my leg is partially covered with two layers of slightly flared, sheer black chiffon. It’s timeless, romantic, classy, and…a size 4. Nervously earlier in my bedroom before the floor-length mirrors covering my sliding closet doors, I stripped and stepped into the dress. I pulled it up, reached behind me, and zipped the sucker right up to the top! Woohoo!! I can sit in it and bend and everything! I should probably be able to eat, too. Talk about making my night! Oh, and also, now I’m a bit guilty for skipping the workout at lunch today. Vanessa’s on her way over to meet for dinner and hopefully we’ll make it to the gym afterwards.

Now I gotta figure out if I have shoes to go with the dress. And jewelry! Because of the simple neckline of the strapless bodice, I’m free to accessorize as much or as little as I want. Maybe I’ll go with pearls, something simple to complement the simplicity of the dress. But I think I may have to go shoe shopping.

Whoa. Suddenly…prom flashbacks.

My mom’s on a wacky roll today. This morning, an email string was going back and forth between my mom, Mr. W and me regarding an upcoming vacation he and I are planning. We’re going on an organized China tour in the near future and my mom’s got travel agent connections. Plus, she’s gone on 2 organized China tours herself so she has opinions on what places are worth visiting. The gist of the trip is that for about $1500, you get round-trip airfare, all transportation within China, all admissions into special parks or places on the program that require admission fees, all meals, all hotel accomodations (4-star hotels and higher), and tours for an 11-day trip. So my mom’s answering questions, giving us her feedback, telling us what her travel agent was quoting on tour packages and prices. And then all of a sudden out of nowhere, this paragraph from her:

11 days trip include Suzhou, wuzhen and Hangzhou, only 9 days trip exclude those places! I’d go for 11 days trip, only $60.00 more and you got 2 more days trip, meal and hotel! Any question, you can email her or call her tel# xxx-xxx-xxxx. She is very nice and she also can arrange Honeymoon trip!

Ehh??? That’s not subtle at all! And she doesn’t even know about a whole bunch of my friends who suddenly got engaged in the past few months. Mr. W thought it was so amusing he read the paragraph aloud to his coworkers.

And then later, my mom emailed me that my grandma’s birthday is this Friday, and that we should go out to dinner to celebrate. So this exchange followed:

Me: okay, we can both make it on Friday night. I suppose I should get Grandma something…what do you suppose she wants for her bday?
Mom: Money?
Me: really? that seems so impersonal.
Mom: Sign your name on it!

What the –? When did my mom get all wacky and smart-ass?

On a double-date with two of Mr. W’s oldest friends, we saw the musical Camelot at a local stage production theatre, in La Mirada. This theatre is the first stop in Camelot’s national tour. I’ll have to say that this is much better than I expected, as the acting was amazing and funny. Laugh-out-loud moments were peppered throughout the show. Even tho the headliner Michael York (who plays King Arthur) was the only one with a 40 year career in screen, stage, and recording with bragging rights to the movies The Three Musketeers,” “Logan’s Run,” “The Island of Dr. Moreau, and all three Austin Powers movies, the two who really blew me away with their voices were Rachel York (Guenevere) and James Barbour (Lancelot). I mean, wow. What amazing singing. Mr. W was uncomfortable with Michael York playing the husband of Rachel York’s character, firstly because of the huge age difference, and secondly because we speculate that the two are real-life father and daughter. It was all a little Electra Complex for us. However, I think it works in the sense that King Arthur and Guenevere seemed to share a deep respect and love for each other, but when Lancelot stepped in, it was immediately apparent that the two, closer in age and attractiveness, had more of a lover-like, passionate chemistry.

If you’re local and interested in seeing Lerner and Loewe’s musical Camelot, it’ll be at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts from January 12th to the 28th.

I noticed when I was driving the other day that my headlight settings seem to be different. I’d always thought it was on “auto,” meaning it turns on and off in response to an external light sensor. But now it was on this dot thing, I have no idea what the dot means, and the second half of the lever was turned on some strange picture. (Did the dealership change it last weekend?) After I got to the gym at lunch yesterday, I sat in the parking lot and looked through my car manual, then turned the dial back to “auto” for headlights, and turned off my foglamps. This made me 20 minutes late for the gym so my trainee and I only managed to get 4 different exercises in (3 sets of 15 each), plus 15 minutes of cardio.

Luckily, Vanessa emailed me in the afternoon inviting me to go to the gym with her in the evening after her acupuncture (*shudder*) appointment is over at 7p. She told me to pick a gym, and I picked Brea. I met her there, James also was there altho he worked out separately, and I’d called Vicky to go, too, but she didn’t show and didn’t call to let us know. *kick* It’s okay, we didn’t really expect to see her anyhow. We hit the weight floor probably about 8p and it wasn’t nearly as crowded as the other gyms we’ve been to! I guess New Year’s resolutions don’t hold as strongly in that area of Orange County. Aside from some chicks who have their hair done and are wearing full faces of makeup (why do they do that, btw? do they not plan on sweating, ever?), almost everyone there appeared to be gym regulars, going methodically machine to machine pumping iron to increase their already over-exercised proportions. The three of us stood around talking about what we’re going to do next; James hadn’t eaten dinner, Vanessa had a bowl of oatmeal before her acupuncture (*shudder*), and I had a couple bowls of soup. Vanessa opted to hit the cardio machine again, so James and I went to pick up some Lee’s Sandwiches, which we consumed in front of his giant TV while watching TiVo’ed episodes of South Park, grimacing as the hard-toasted bread cut into our gums and mouth-roofs upon every bite and the jalapenos seared every new injury.

Mr. W, from what I learned driving home from work yesterday, had planned to game the entire night with his brother and eat fast food. Basically, a bachelor’s evening. My bachelorette evening was hanging out with friends and working out, and eating relatively healthy. I’m pretty happy about that.

This evening: belly dancing with my coworker under her instructor for the first time. I’m kinda excited. She says her instructor gives a good workout and that I’m guaranteed to sweat, and that she’s always tired and sweaty after these sessions. My belly dancing instructor, I felt, was kind of tame in the exercise department. Now I get to see whether it’s just the instructor, or whether belly dancing just doesn’t do it as cardio for me.

The two brothers and I watched The Illusionist last nite. Pretty good movie, altho we predicted and unraveled the plot (accurately) as we went along the movie. I’d recommend picking up the DVD. It’s sort of like Romeo & Juliet, if Romeo were poor and into magic.

It’s nice to have a partner in crime in watching movies. Mr. W normally talks through an entire movie, but it’s more like he’s thinking out loud. Mr. W’s brother, on the other hand, makes smart-ass comments like this:

[At the opening scene, you see the illusionist sitting alone on the stage facing the audience. All is silent. The magician is staring intently into the crowd. Nothing happens yet, but in the flickering firelight from lit torches along the front of the stage, anticipation and tension are thick in the air.]
Brother: Boy, I hope these people didn’t pay a lot for their tickets.
Me: *snicker* Yeah, this looks like a real hard magic trick. How does he do that? *snicker*
Mr. W: Shhhh!
*all of us sitting in silence, still no sound or action happening on the TV*
Brother: Hey, turn the mute button off.
Me: *laughing*
Mr. W: SHHH!
Me: What, are you afraid you’re gonna not hear the silence?!
Mr. W: *death glare at me*
*all 3 sit in silence*
Mr. W: I love the lighting in this movie. It’s such great photography how you only see half his face.
Me: SHHH! I can’t hear the silence!
[On-screen, the magician’s manager gets onstage and introduces the magician to the audience.]
Manager: *dramatically* Life…and death. Chance…and fate.
Me: Peanut butter…and jelly.
Mr. W: I’M HAVING BAD THOUGHTS NOW. *staring me down*
Bro: We’re just giving you the real-life threatre experience.
Me: Yeah. *in infant voice* WAAAAH! WAAAAH!!
Bro: Where’s my cell phone? It should be ringing right now.
Me: *laughing*
Mr. W: *siiiigh*

It got a little serious in here yesterday, so I’m gonna bring some yippy skippy through today’s post. And nothing exemplifies yippy skippy more than…DINNEYLAN!!! Unless you’re running the half-marathon at Dinneylan, in which case it’s too crowded to skip, and you’re too tired to yip.
(As always, rest mouse pointer over photos for captions.)

We first entered thru Downtown Disney.

At “Innovations,” Professor Tom Morrow (from Tomorrowland) introduces us to the technology of tomorrow! This is also where I had those aging photos taken.

What’s happier than a bunny grinning in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle?

Uh-oh! Don’t look now but you’re being spied on!

Ya know, the thought of Disneyland is a lot nicer than the reality of it — or rather, the reality of being mobbed to death in its colorful vicinities.

Here’s some lazy people on Main Street, USA and a very unlazy beast of burden. When I was small (okay, I’m small still), I couldn’t bring myself to add my weight to the haul load the poor uncomplaining animal has to pull.

Sometimes, as an Asian girl, I just feel like I can’t live up to my parents’ expectations of me. “Look at me, I can never pass for the perfect bride, or the perfect daughter; Can it be, I’m not meant to play that paaaaaaart? I can see, that if I were ever to be myself, I would break my family’s hearrrrrrrt!”

Right as you enter Disney’s California Adventure, you see this atop some buildings on your left. It’s like a giant postcard from California.

The day we were there taking these photos (or, as I like to call it, the Day At Disneyland and California Adventure in which we Rode No Rides — That’s Right, No Rides, No Lie) was the last day the two parks had their Christmas decorations up. This is a tree in California Adventure, which is about 1/3 the size of the main tree in Disneyland’s Main Street USA.

Now wasn’t that nice? Awwww, Dinneylan. *sigh of contentment*
(I admit this isn’t my better photowork, it was a new camera, and it was sunny, and I didn’t have a wrist strap and I was paranoid I was gonna drop the camera and break it. AND the camera has no viewfinder, there’s only the screen in the back, which I couldn’t see cuz it was too sunny so there was always a glare that washed out the display, and *insert more excuses of your choosing here*.)

I’d actually meant to post on Christmas with some heartwarming story like I did last year…I even had a few anecdotes in mind, but then things got busy and I got too involved in hanging out with Mr. W’s huge family and playing board games and eating. =)

Friday after work, I met Mr. W and his daughter at my house and we flew off to Vegas, just as fast as a car could fly, and arrived at his parents’ house a bit past 8pm. Toward the beginning the 4-hour car ride, his daughter took a 20 minute nap, then awoke, looked around, and asked hopefully if we’re almost there yet. Her dad laughed at her. “We’re still 3 hours away!” he informed her. There was a disappointed gurgle from the back seat. “I didn’t sleep that long, then,” she said miserably. When we finally got there, stopping just once for $6.99 prime rib at Stateline, I met his aunt and uncle who were visiting from the windy city of Chicago, hung out with his parents a bit. There was more of the same the day after, and then Christmas Eve, the entire household filled up with cousins, brothers, sisters, generations and generations of W-folk. Lots of food later, Mr. W’s mom and her 2 sisters played Yatzee at the dinner table; we played Cranium at the “kiddie” table, boys (Mr. W and his 2 brothers) against the girls (me, Mr. W’s daughter, the daughter of Mr. W’s rocker brother). Unfortunately, the boys won. I have no idea how that happened; all I remember is that I couldn’t correctly spell “anecdote” backwards. Mr. W’s rocker brother read the word to me pronouncing it “ana-SEE-doe” and I spelled it “anecdone.” EH??? Let’s just blame it on the alcohol that I didn’t have.

The final event of the evening had layers of people sitting around the living room like we’re at a mini stadium, and presents were distributed. We filled 2 large black garbage bags of wrapping paper between the 20 or so people plus the prettiest baby and a little fuzzy house doggie. In that r0om that night, the feeling was almost tangible: we knew that, at least between those of us there, we kept the warm spirit of commercialism alive.

Mr. W’s family is great; they always make a point of coming around and greeting me with a warm hug, and always had made me feel included in their festivities. I know from other experiences that even family can get clique-ish, but in this family, everyone was everywhere, no one was left out.

We left Vegas early Christmas morning, dropped off Mr. W’s daughter at her mom’s house (where her mother chatted with us excitedly about her first turkey ever that she made the night before, making me realize that that’s the one thing we didn’t have at Mr. W’s parents’, and I may have drooled a little bit). Then Mr. W and I trotted over (as fast as cars can trot) to my parents’ house for Christmas Day lunch. Lunch was hot pot, healthy and oil-free which was perfect after the pies, cookies and rich foods of the weekend. (I should talk — I brought them a giant candy wreath.) My mother cleverly scheduled my dad’s colonoscopy exam for today, the day after Christmas, which means my dad can’t have anything except clear broths and water the day before the exam. And my mom made my dad work the hot pot and help serve us anyway. He was very good-natured about it, and we kept telling him to drink the broth, but he stubbornly refused to, wanting to err on the side of caution for his exam. I don’t know how you can not eat all day, and then drop crab, lamb, pork, beef into a huge boiling broth, plop in mushrooms, Chinese cabbage, clams, tofu, vermicelli noodles, chopped turnips, etc., stir stir stir and keep spooning it out for the people around you, and not want to eat any of it.

The funny thing is that on Christmas Eve, a bunch of us sat around the living room chatting and Mr. W’s rocker brother was saying something about how men should never buy women appliances for Christmas, he’d learned that lesson well, and Mr. W said that’s a dumb rule, and I thought about my friend’s Christmas present dilemma with her current boyfriend, and it turns out that Mr. W’s parents got me an electric jar opener and my parents got Mr. W a hot water boiler/dispenser (yes, the fobby one that every Asian has in their kitchen with boiling water for tea ready at the push of a button). I love my jar opener, and Mr. W loves his hot water dispenser. It’s also funny that Navy Girl Vanessa and I were emailing just Friday about how she heard there was an electric jar opener and she would’ve gotten me that one instead of the hand opener had she found the electric one in the store, and I said I’d never seen such a thing, maybe the person who told her about it meant an electric CAN opener. Oh well, now I have both and I can see which one works better for me. Methinks I may have been complaining too audibly about my inability to open jars. 🙂

Management snuck up behind me earlier in the courtroom to present a Christmas goodie: cute little bag of chocolates with a nice pen that has the court logo engraved on it. That’s the first time they’ve given us anything for the holidays. Scared the crap out of me. I’ve never seen so much management together in one place, and I may have made the error of saying that out loud. I mean, I know I said it out loud but I hope it wasn’t a faux pas.

Last nite I met up with Navy Girl Vanessa for what she called “holiday cheer.” We ate some hot ramen which was great on a cold night (no, not Instant Ramen; the “real” Japanese ramen at a noodle house in Tustin called Ezo Noodles). We tried to go to BJs Pizzeria but it was insanely crowded. We exchanged gifts, and her gift made me laugh. In the prettiest ice blue glitter-and-white-fur bejeweled gift bag were, wrapped in white tissue paper, the very feminine items of an electronic tire pressure gauge and jar opener. “Blogs come in handy!” Vanessa said. The electronic gauge even has programmable memory so that it’ll remember what PSI your tires are supposed to be at. The jar opener looks like a huge handle that you slide into the jar, and some rubber teeth catch the jar, and you just turn the handle to unscrew the jar lid. I can have spaghetti now! As soon as I saw the gifts I knew I had to blog about it.

Vanessa got the ideas for my gifts here and here (where my car almost went up in flames due to an improperly inflated tire) and here (where an un-openable jar of spaghetti sauce nearly cost me my life).

P.S. Just to make James jealous, 2 nites ago I had a holiday dinner with childhood friend Vicky (BEEKY! to him and me) at Cheesecake Factory and I again ordered the seared tuna tataki salad. =P