cindy's world

(rest mouse pointer over each photo for caption)

We got up Friday morning at the buttcrack of dawn and arrived at the airport by 6:30a to catch our 7:45a flight. Mr. W gave me the window seat. As we descended over San Francisco, he scrambled over my lap and peered excitedly out the window, pointing things out. It was endearing, and it reminded me of a large dog overpowering and standing his front paws on someone in a car seat to look out a car window at a passing car or another dog. I made a note to give Mr. W the window seat on our flight back.

We shuttled over to our hotel near the Civic Center in SF and got there before 10a, when we were told we can’t check in until closer to 3p because the entire hotel was booked solid for the weekend. (We would find out why on Saturday.) We walked around Chinatown, looked at the shops, I relived my childhood in Asia, we grabbed dim sum, walked to and around Embarcadero.

I thought about calling college roommie Diana at 9a to tell her we landed, but I figured she’d either be scrambling to get ready for work, or she’d be at work, so I’ll call her later. I also figured as soon as she settled in at 9:30a or so, she’d call me to check up on us. I had my cell on, and we did our tourist sight-seeing thing. I was a bit surprised when we walked back to our hotel at 2:30p and I hadn’t heard from Diana yet, but Mr. W and I were tired from our hours and hours of walking, so we checked in and took a nap. I figured she’d call me closer to the evening to finalize plans for meeting up with everyone for dinner. At some point the hotel room phone rang, and I remember groggily forcing Mr. W to pick it up even tho he had to reach over me (and he was napping, too), and I remember him writing some number down on a pad of paper and saying, “Call Diana,” but I looked at the clock, figured we had plenty of time before dinner reservations at 6:30p, and went back to sleep. 3:30p-ish, the hotel phone rang again. It was Diana, and she sounded frantic. “Didn’t the hotel give you my message?” she demanded. I didn’t know what she was talking about. She started saying that when she gets to our hotel she was going to totally yell at someone about that. Turned out my cell phone had no reception the entire time it was on and Diana had been wigging out all day not being able to get a hold of us and she checked the flight and it didn’t explode in mid-air, and she checked the hotel and they said we hadn’t checked in but that they’d tell us she called when we did (the 1st phone call).
[here is where I’d insert a group photo of the dinner when/if Jen emails me one, hint hint]
Diana and Jen picked us up at the hotel and we took a traffic-congested drive over to one of Diana’s favorite restaurants, an Asian fusion place called The House. We got there about 10 minutes late, ordered some appetizers, Brad and Val got there 40 minutes late due to the very bad traffic, and then Mike and Christi showed up a full hour late. I had been in touch on the phone with everyone to check on their progress, and apparently the traffic was horrendous everywhere in the city. (I blame this all on USC, by the way.) These friends had been driving 2 hours or so to meet up with us for dinner! I felt horrible and really honored at the same time. Dinner was delicious, we had good wine, even better company. I kept laughing. It was impressive I was able to keep any food inside my mouth. “So this is Wilco-Mike,” Mr. W said. Mike stood and shook his hand. “And I only know you as Mr. W,” Wilco-Mike said. It was hilarious realizing that they had heard about each other primarily thru my blog and it was like the old BBS days when at the meet, we’re finally able to connect faces to names to screen names, and it was like, “Oh, so YOU’RE Dark Knight,” while thinking He totally lied about his physical description. Ew.
[I’d like to insert a photo here of Fuse, Jen. 🙂 My camera was out of battery at this point.]
After dinner we hit up a martini bar in North Beach called Fuse and there were a few rounds of shots going around. This shot called a Chocolate Cake was delicious! You scrape the sugar off a slice of lemon without biting into the lemon, do the shot that really does taste like chocolate, then bite into the lemon. More laughing and antics. I loudly presented Jen with two tickets Mr. W and I had been given off the street earlier, for “free IQ and personality tests” offered by the Church of Scientology in SoMa (South Market Street area). It was hilarious because of this entry that Jen wrote a few weeks ago. Diana’s mystery date showed up soon thereafter and told us how many panicked phone calls and emails Diana had with him about her inability to contact us all day, we had more drinks, and then split.

Brad, Val, Jen, Diana, Diana’s Date, Mr. W and I went to a club called the Velvet Lounge, where we did some dancing, Diana and her date did a bit more drinking, and the night concluded for everyone but Diana and Date at 11:30p (we griped about being “too old for this”) and Brad drove everyone back to their respective residences). I hear that Diana and Date did quite a bit more partying and hitting up different joints after that.

I feel bad about the last post. I was very derogatory toward senior citizens, fat people, angry minorities, Oldsmobiles and Buicks. And any vehicle with only 4 cylinders. And the security guards. I’m over my morning attitude now. I’m really not a morning person. I say really ugly stuff to people I end up on the elevator with in the morning right after leaving the metal detectors. This morning, for example, a Spanish interpreter who works in the building was nice enough to hold the employee elevator door open for me and upon my entry, I just hurled my irritations all over the man. Luckily, I saw him during a break in our trial and I was able to make my peace with him. He seemed surprised that I felt bad about the morning. Either he’s a good actor and is trying to make me feel comfortable, or I’m more self-conscious and guilt-ridden than I need to be. In any case, sorry for the negativity of the last post, I don’t want to be one of those people who only sees the glass as half full, and whose blogs are 95% bitching about something or another.

A coworker suggested an impromptu happy hour after work at Taps Brewery today. I’m interested in going, but I gotta figure out how to juggle final tidying of the house, completion of packing, and taking care of the cat before I leave for the weekend. I may also have to repack cuz Diana just emailed me that the weather is going to be mid 60s and sunny, whereas I had packed pretty much winter clothing.

I had a very messy evening last nite.

I took off my makeup and got changed for jujitsu early, had dinner early, and burned my tongue on chicken noodle soup. Then I noticed that some body parts that are required for jujitsu are in horrible condition, in pain and oozing blood and whatnot. So I decide to forego jujitsu to give them a couple of days to heal before causing more damage. Feeling bad for wasting an evening, I decided to visit my parents, whom I had not seen since their return from China this past weekend. I changed into comfy clothes, and immediately fell asleep on the couch. I woke up at 8p and debated whether I still wanted to head over to my parents’. What if they’re already asleep from the jet lag? I went anyway, realizing I wouldn’t be seeing them this weekend because Mr. W and I are gonna be in San Francisco, and I still needed a good way to break that to them.

The first thing my parents, who were seated in the family room having dinner and watching TV, said upon seeing me walk in was, “WHAT are you WEARING?! Did you DRIVE here in that?!” I went into the bathroom I was next to and looked at myself in the mirror. Oversized gray Esprit sweatshirt that went down nearly to my knees (remnant of the early 1990s, B.U.M. Equipment flava’), baggy black sweatpants with a white Dodo hair here and there, big plush green houseslippers designed to look like huge tennis shoes, complete with green shoelaces. My hair was matted on one side from when I leaned against the back of the couch and fell asleep, such that my head then slid down, and I’d scrape my head along the couch back up, and it’d fall down, I’d push myself back up, etc.. Yup, I looked like a crazy homeless woman. But I was comfortable, damn it.

I picked up a pair of chopsticks and jumped in on the homemade Chinese dinner. I’ve missed my mom’s cooking. Mom showed me digital photos of their trip with a feed into their big screen TV. The photos were projected so large that on one, they suddenly realized there was a fly that landed on the side of my dad’s forehead to get in on the shot. Then I was shown the printed out photos their friend took, and then my dad showed off the rocks he bought. Well, these weren’t so much rocks as much as stones that some famous artist carved into overpriced ink-grinding platforms that ancient Chinese used to do their brush-writing. I shouldn’t say ancient Chinese, it’s still practiced today. My parents had visited an ink factory and I finally found out how solid blocks of ink are made. The transformation from pine to ink blocks is fascinating. And then my mom popped in a DVD they’d bought which introduces “the mysterious Huangshan” (Yellow Mountain) to “foreigners” so that I can enjoy vicariously what they saw in person. “We tried to watch this twice already, but we fell asleep both times,” my mom announced, causing me to quake excitedly with eager anticipation.

Somehow I fell asleep, too. I woke up at 4am sprawled out on the 3-sectional couch and looked around groggily at my mom, asleep on the recliner, and my dad, asleep on the 2-sectional couch. I got up, went to the bathroom and contemplated going home, but somehow ended up back on the couch and asleep until my mom kicked me out at 6:20 a.m. and I fought traffic all the way back to my house, showered, fell asleep again in my own bed for half an hour (which was longer than I’d spent in my bed for days, as I spend a lot of nights on the downstairs couch so that I could hang out with die kleine Katze).

And after all that, I realized at work earlier that I still forgot to tell my parents I’m not gonna be around this weekend.

Mr. W and I watched The Interpreter this weekend on DVD. Sean Penn is a great actor. Nicole Kidman was actually pretty good, too. I wonder how precisely her foreign phrases are spoken. I mean, it did sound like African Ku, but it’s not like I know how Ku sounds. The downside to the movie is that watching it was like when I watched The Pelican Brief (Julia Roberts) when I was in high school. I could not follow the political and legal issues in the movie. Here’s me throughout the movie: “Who’s that guy? Wait. Why’s the FBI people tailing him? Oh, he’s the assassination target? Then who’s the other guy who was speaking in the beginning? Why’s Nicole Kidman talking to Philippe? Who’s Philippe? Who’s the dead guy in the tub? Is that her brother? Who’s that guy who just dropped the bomb? Is that the exiled political leader? Then who’s the other leader? Wait. What? HUH?” It’s a very perturbing thing when you realize you don’t get a mainstream movie which markets to the masses of average IQed people.

On the brighter side of things, I may not have gotten some random movie, but there are few joys as pacifying to me as seeing eye-to-eye with someone when it comes to the major issues in a relationship. We had some good conversations this weekend on some subjects sensitive to me. He makes me feel so at ease and stable, which frees me up to be balanced, secure, silly, independent, and embrace all these other traits that are purely “me.” I don’t think I’ve ever been this comfortable and peaceful in a relationship before. Erin was right — when you’re in a good, loving, trust-worthy and respectful relationship, one day just flows right into the next.

…Harry Potter.

I had no interest in reading the books nor in watching the movies, simply because the series was so overhyped and it seems like every kid, young adult, and most of my peers are under the Harry Potter spell. I even walked by the living room once when visiting my parents and they were watching some Harry Potter movies. And not even subtitled versions! I typically avoid trendy stuff in general (with the exception of Cancun, but boy, am I glad I went when I did given the weather-beaten town now).

So imagine my consternation when Mr. W and another one of his close friends (whom I’m also familiar with) jumped in on me about how they’re going to watch the new Harry Potter movie when it comes out and they’re so excited and the books were so great and they’re planning a big group to go and stand early in line, etc. I politely turned down their invitation to go along, explaining that I couldn’t possibly watch the movie because I hadn’t read the books and hadn’t seen the prior movies so I wouldn’t be able to understand what was going on. Mr. W’s solution? “Well, I guess you’ll just have to come over to my house and watch the first 3 movies and catch up.”

I watched all 3 movies last week.

I’m hooked.

Harry Potter is SO much better than Lord of the Rings. Karen was right. Those LOTR dwarfs were retarded to be walking around, tripping and starving and freezing and victimized by various magical things when they had Gandalf as their friend and mystical flying animals in their realm. If Harry Potter were in charge of getting rid of the ring, he would’ve flown on a broomstick over the volcano and done it already, or ridden a dragon, or ANYTHING. It woudn’t have taken 3 DVDs of 3 hours in length each. (This is how little I care about LOTR. I bought the first 2 DVDs, slept thru them, loaned them to William and Raquel, haven’t seen them since, and I don’t even care to find out if the couple still has them or whether they returned the DVDs to my ex, who never returned them to me.)

I’ve been walking around for a few days in a sort of confused Harry Potter haze, avoiding knobby-limbed trees in case it decided to “wump” me to death, hearing the buzz of an insect fly past my ear and thinking it’s the Golden Snitch and where the hell are the Seekers to snatch it and win the Quidditch game…

Yeah, I’ll be watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire when it’s released on November 18, 2005.

photo courtesy of movies.about.com

Mr. W treated me last nite to a nice sushi dinner and a movie. We saw The Legend of Zorro, starring Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. I love Catherine Zeta-Jones. She’s so beautiful, even after popping out 3 kids. I’d said long ago that if any woman could turn me lesbian, it’d be Catherine Zeta-Jones. And then she had to go and marry Michael Douglas and burst that dream. Hmm. Come to think of it, I may have been overly vocal with that proclamation before because I remember getting an email from my friend Raquel with an attached photo of Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Raquel had typed as the introduction: “Your favorite.” I don’t even recall having had a discussion with Raquel about the actress.

Anyway, the movie was pretty good. I love all of Catherine Zeta-Jones’s expressions, the way her eyes look when she’s conveying anger, coyness, hurt, fear, confidence. I think my favorite scene was when her character, Elena, was fighting some bad guys with Zorro, and they managed to turn one villain’s back to them and you just see the two of them swiping away with their swords. The camera then goes to the villain’s back, and on the right buttcheek of his white underpants were tears in the fabric forming the legendary “Z”, and on the left buttcheek was an “E.” The camera then cuts to Zorro and Elena, and the two of them cock their heads slightly to the side, seemingly mesmerized by and admiring their handywork. Then the pause in the action is over and they jump right back into the swordplay.

Zorro and Elena’s son, now a mischievous 9-year-old Joaquin de la Vega, played a large role in the movie. I would’ve enjoyed the movie more if he weren’t in the movie, because as I see it, the kid was nothing but a liability to his parents and leverage for the villains. If he weren’t in the movie, his parents would’ve taken care of business and the movie would’ve only had to be 30 minutes long.

This movie was also my first IMAX Theatre experience. Altho it wasn’t 3-D, it did play on the gi-normous IMAX screen, where I felt like if I didn’t keep moving my head and eyes to follow the action, I’d miss something on the other side of the screen. I think that’s what kept me from falling asleep at the 8pm movie. That, and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

After dinner last nite, we all went from downtown Los Angeles back to hometown Diamond Bar to Oak Tree Lanes for bowling. I reminded Edgar (Happy 29th, buddy) in response to his inquiry of “You bowl, right?” that the last time I bowled was 12 years ago on my 17th birthday, and in the same bowling alley parking lot, he had poured “magic dust” in my hair, which was packages of sugar which, because my birthday is in summer, melted promptly into my roots and scalp. “Well, I won’t pour magic dust in your hair today,” he promised. I should’ve poured it in his hair, but he’s too tall for me to reach. As with most people.

Well, as I expected, I bowl worse than the special olympics people we rooted on a couple of weekends ago. All the tips from the men who could actually bowl (Edgar, Tony, Mr. W) did not do much for me. At one point, a fallen pin rolled into the gutter and stayed there. I said, “Uh-oh, we have a problem there,” and Mr. W said, “It’s okay, your ball will knock that right out of the gutter.” Thanks. Altho if anyone could criticize me, I guess he could cuz apparently, he’s really good at bowling.

I challenged him to meet me on the tennis court one of these days. (Altho I’m out of practice there, too. Hmm. Maybe a typing contest, then. Don’t laugh. One of my oldest friends and a reader of this blog actually HAS side-by-side typing contests with her coworkers. During work hours.)

Okay, not really. We ate better than the firemen of yore.

Last nite was my old friend Edgar’s birthday dinner at Engine Co. No. 28, which is an authentic Los Angeles firehouse station turned restaurant. The food is pretty good, classic American like burgers, meatloaf, grilled salmon, sandwiches. The spicy corn chowder was great. However, the atmosphere of the restaurant was surprisingly upscale. Altho they didn’t appear to have a dress code as most people wore jeans, the ambiance was more formal, less fun. They did have an authentic brass fire pole toward the back of the restaurant, however. Mr. W, who had read up on the restaurant beforehand, informed me that the place was built to house horse-drawn fire engines, altho by the time they had finished building, the motorized trucks had come into vogue so the garage never actually had horses in it.

Throughout the evening, people pulled out their various digital cameras to take photos of the restaurant, food and 20 guests. Edgar’s cousin, next to me, took Edgar’s camera so that he and his girlfriend could be in some of the shots. She noted the slowness of the LCD display, and then said, “Oh, no wonder, it’s only a 200” (whatever the model number was). Edgar said, “I know, I know, I gotta get a better one.” His cousin then said, “I shouldn’t talk, I’m still using one of these,” and pulled from her purse one of the larger digital cameras with the lens that you can rotate perpendicular to the camera to change the direction of the lens, such that you can look at the display when you take your own picture. Everyone jumped in to make fun of how archaic her camera is. Edgar yelled from the next table, “What is that, a 2 megapixel?” Everyone laughed.

Technology snobs are funny to watch and listen to.

I don’t know why we didn’t think to put San Francisco on our list. Oh wait, it’s because the list was local stuff to do. Well anyway, a trip to San Francisco has just been booked for the Veteran’s Day long weekend. We’ll be leaving Friday morning and coming back Sunday afternoon.

And I bet Jen didn’t think we’d really take her up on her offer to cook for us on our next visit. HA! Mike, Brad, Jimmy, Diana, Jen, this is notice for you to clear your calendar for at least one evening that weekend so you guys can hang out with me and Mr. W! (I’m so lazy; I can just email you guys but I’m doing it this way.)

Saturday was a lazy day for Mr. W and me. For the most part, we laid around unproductively and napped frequently. Then late evening, we picked up a Mexican pizza from 3 Alarm Pizza, brought it back to my house, and watched the final 3 episodes of WB’s Angel on DVD, which I’d missed when they aired. Sunday (today), we walked to Starbucks really early in the morning (thank goodness the one about a mile from me opens at 6a on Sundays), had coffee (him), Chai tea with soy (me), cranberry scone, banana nut bread and zucchini muffin, and upon our return to my house, he installed/wired a digital compass in my car that also gave temperature, barometric pressure, altitude readings, and unclogged my upstairs bathroom sink. All voluntarily.

Mr. W met the ‘rents plus maternal grandma today. They’re going to China at the end of this week and I asked my mom if she wanted to meet him before they left. They in turn invited us to dim sum. (Another thing to cross off our list.) I think it went really well. My parents were a bit awkward at first but they warmed up really quickly — especially my dad, once he realized how much in common he and Mr. W have. After dim sum (Mr. W’s first time, he really enjoyed the food), my parents invited us back to their house for a demonstration of a traditional tea ceremony. I’d emailed my mom about how Mr. W was trying to pick out loose tea and asked me what the difference in quality of tea was, and how I couldn’t answer the question but deferred to my parents for that kind of tutorial. So my parents got to show off their tea stuff (some new really interesting pots; one that used some kind of water pressure physics and magnets so that once the teacup is placed at the base of the clay dispenser, it automatically filled the cup and would stop when the cup’s full), my dad got to show off his expansive natural stones collection, and pass on some of our culture and legends. Mr. W ate it all up because he has a natural curiosity toward the histories of other cultures, and he and my dad share so much of the same interests, i.e. nature, animal behavior, fish, etc.
(more…)