cindy's world

Mr. W called me this morning from work and told me that he MIGHT get a 4-day all-inclusive free ride, sponsored by his work, to Washington, D.C. in January for president-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration. He was giddy with the possibility. But he’s not bringing me.

So I instantly thought of where *I* could be during this historic moment. When I’m old and grayish-yellow-green, when my grandkids ask me if I remember the day, this will always be the story of where-I-was-when. I bounced a few ideas around and then I said excitedly, “Ooh, I should go to Florida! They finally turned blue this election! I can watch the inauguration with Jordan!”
“We won’t even know for two weeks whether I’m gonna get to go or not!” Mr. W protested.
“Okay, but I’ll just tell Jordan now, since it’s a possibility.”
“Don’t tell her! Wait at least 2 weeks.”
“But she might be scheduling her work schedule for January NOW,” I pointed out, eager to start planning my 4 days in Florida.
He still insisted I shouldn’t tell her, we shouldn’t start planning on something that’s not set yet, I shouldn’t get our hopes up that I’ll be making that trip to Florida when I may not be, etc.
“Okay,” I finally relented. We said our goodbyes and hung up.

Instantly I called Jordan. Anticlimactically, I got her voice mail and then she didn’t get back to me for a few hours. But when she did, we started excitedly planning where we could go on day trips, since it is a long weekend. I’ve been to Miami, but never to Orlando. She also named some other city, Saint Somethingsburg, where I’ve also never been. After all the giggling and excited chattering, we came down to earth a little and talked about how this may not happen cuz Mr. W may not be going to Washington D.C., after all, and we’d be all disappointed. There was a little silence, and then I said, “Heck, if he tells me he’s not going after all, I’ll just tell him, ‘Too bad, we already planned this, I’m going to Florida anyway!’ ”

I think I’m beginning to see why Mr. W didn’t want me to talk about it with Jordan early.

Happy Veteran’s Day!

It’s not even 10 am yet. My veteran is sitting in his hammock wrapped in a bathrobe reading the lastest of fantasy series book Brisingr. I woke up about 40 minutes ago in the spare bedroom where I’d stayed up late reading an old bestseller about a true alien abduction, Communion. I’d staggered out into the hallway to see that a big maroon pillow from the master bedroom was sitting awkwardly balanced on the rail. I lifted the pillow and saw my cell phone, the hapless victim of the smothering. Soon after Mr. W came up and seeing me awake, pointed his finger at me and sternly admonished me for having a “bad” phone. A bad phone which identified this morning as any other weekday morning, not recognizing automatically this day’s holiday sleep-in status, and chirped its 6am alarm. As no one hit the alarm-off button, it chirped again at 6:05. And 6:10. And 6:15. And so on. “I even put a pillow on it and closed my door. And THAT didn’t work! I wanted to throw it in the toilet!” Mr. W was lamenting.
“Why didn’t you just turn it off?”
He froze as this new possibility entered his head. Then he said, “I don’t know which button to push! Your phone has a million buttons!” I guess he didn’t read the screen.
“Then why didn’t you just give me the phone and I could’ve turned it off?”
He didn’t have an answer for that one.

Now he wants to go to the gym. So much for relaxing.

My dad frequently chats with his Canadian brothers via Skype, and received news about a month ago that my cousin Norman in Canada is engaged and would be married some time next year. This created quite a buzz of excitement among me and my Californian cousins, and we talked casually about a triple-date trip to Canada to attend the wedding. If this wedding occurs late enough in the year, my cousin Jennifer would be a newlywed also, so it’d be me and Mr. W, my newlywed cousin Diana and her husband Doug, and her sister Jennifer and her then-husband Brad. We could make a stopover at a bed-and-breakfast at the Niagara Peninsula, too. The “grownups” (our parental generation) in California are all abuzz with the news, too. My aunt (Diana and Jennifer’s mom) even received some recent photos of my cousin via email and pointed out the girl to us, saying “This is the fiancé!” We talked about how cute she is and what cute babies they’d have.

So last week Mr. W was looking over his department’s vacation schedule and asked when I thought he should take time off for next year. I figured it’s only prudent to check when the Canadian wedding is. So I text messaged my cousin Norman:
hey cuz, did u set a day yet? =)
He texted back: Date for what?
EH? Men! I texted: oh, I heard a rumor in family circles that u popped the question? (if u say “question 4 what?” im never gonna listen 2 the grownups again.)
He texted back: What question?

Now I was thoroughly confused. What’s he doing? Is he being silly? Or is he playing dumb because WE AREN’T INVITED?! I thought about how all our Canadian relatives declined to attend my wedding and didn’t come to my cousin Diana’s wedding this past Saturday. Maybe they figured since they didn’t attend ours, we wouldn’t attend theirs and they’d save money having to accommodate us at their reception. And now that I’ve asked, they didn’t know how to respond so they’re just stalling. I went from confused to miffed. Multiple theories were offered by my friends. Maybe “popped the question” is an American colloquialism and Canadians don’t know what it means. Maybe it was Norman’s dad’s (my uncle’s) wishful thinking that his son was gonna get married. Maybe there was a miscommunication between my dad and his brother when they were talking about all the weddings lately.

So I emailed Norman’s younger brother, my cousin Mark, with whom I have more frequent (altho sporadic) contact. I wrote:
Hey Mark. So I’m, like, confused. I thought my dad talked to your dad and got news that Norman’s now engaged, but I had the following text message exchange with him the other day… [relaying text message conversation]
My cousin Mark wrote back:
Yeah… that’s weird. I don’t think they’re engaged yet… lol. They’ve been dating for a while but as far as I know, no engagement yet. They probably will get married though. That’s so funny… never
listen to the grownups. LOL

Oh.my.gawd.

I called my cousin Jennifer and told her about this. She was aghast about it, too, but got a good laugh. “I gotta call my mom! Cuz she’s been telling everybody!” And we were all speculating about cute BABIES and trying to plan trips to see some nonexistent wedding.

Yesterday I received this text message exchange with my cousin Mark:
Yeah I just asked my parents. They said nope. They laughed at the story. My dad says that he did tell your dad that Norm is getting married some time next year though. Funny.

Geez! Teaches me to listen to parents without consulting my cousins directly first. =P I wonder why my uncle would tell people about some imminent wedding next year before my cousin’s even proposed.

If you were observant in reading the last post, you would’ve noticed a wedding invitation on the tabletop in the photo. That’s my cousin Diana’s wedding, which took place yesterday at the Marbella Country Club at San Juan Capistrano, which is truly a beautiful setting. And of course Mr. W forgot his camera, so I was the weenie taking photos with her cameraphone. Again. You can bring out captions by resting your mouse pointer on the photos.

I was on reception table duty, so I got there a bit early, and ran into the happy couple taking their pre-wedding photographs. That was what we did to reduce the time that guests would have to wait between the wedding and reception, which is the traditional photo-taking time. So I guess all four of us are more practical than superstitious about the groom seeing the bride in her dress before the wedding.

Ever the it’s-all-about-everyone-else gal, my cousin said as I walked up, “Wow, you look beautiful!” And I was like, “ME?! Have you LOOKED in a mirror today?!”

They talk about radiant brides, but wow, she had some glow going on! It was like she swallowed some stars and was now walking around illuminating everything around her. That included her almost-husband, whose eyes softened every time he looked at her and it seemed he could not stop touching and kissing her. Of course it could be stage directions being called by the photographers, but I’d like to think it was cuz he truly appreciated the moment.

~ THE SCENE ~
A shot down the aisle:

Overview of the ceremony set-up:

The altar (and yes, that IS a water trap with a waterfall at the golf course):

They don’t appear to have one theme color, but instead embraced all the rich jewel tones of the autumn: golds, burgundy, browns, oranges. Their decor was beautiful.

~ THE PLAYERS ~
Their aisle walk pairings were unique. Here is the groom with the bride’s paternal grandmother.

The groom’s father and mother. Wow, these two LOVE their new daughter-in-law. I’d never seen anything quite like it.

Bride’s sister (and maid of honor)’s fiance, Brad, walking bride’s mother. If he looks familiar, it’s because Brad welcomed guests along with my cousin, his fiance Jennifer, at my wedding’s reception table.

My aunt was so cute, she was all smiles and waved at everybody at the bride’s side on her entire walk down.
The best man, Russ (groom’s brother) and the maid of honor, Jennifer (bride’s sister).

And then, the flower girls, the daughters of my cousin Olivia.

The parents of the flower girls, my cousin Olivia and her hubby Eric.

Whoa, wait, who’s that? Who’s behind there?

All stand for the bride (with her father)!

Awwwwwwww! She’s beautiful! *sniffle*

Walking her to her almost-husband…

“Thank you, daddy.”

I swear, I was not this teary at my own wedding.

~ THE CEREMONY ~
So my uncle hands off his elder daughter…

…to be entrusted into the care of this waiting man.

On top of the world. Listening to their officiant tell everyone the story of how Doug proposed.

My cousin Jennifer was so happy for them.

My mom and dad. Awww.

They exchanged vows. He spoke touchingly of how much she meant to him.

She did the same, vowing to honor him forever in a quivering, emotion-filled voice. Both of them had to wipe at their faces up there. But they recited their vows without a hitch.

They also did a rose ceremony, honoring their parents by presenting each with a rose and a hug.

And then, for his parents.

Seriously, look at the way her new father-in-law is looking at her. To Doug’s parents, she’s already their daughter. (During the reception, Doug’s father gave a speech talking about the first time he met Diana, and how he knew within 5 minutes that she was someone very special and she was the one for his son. “I don’t know how long it took DOUG to figure it out,” he joked. And then he talked about calling Diana on her cell phone shortly after their engagement to get a hold of his son, since he knew that Doug never picked up his phone [the audience laughed knowingly], and recognizing the phone number, Diana had answered the call with, “Hi, Dad.” He said he was surprised and it threw him off for a moment, and after a pause, he realized and said, “I really like the sound of that.” Tears, man! All over their wedding.)

The ring exchange.

And the epic moment, the you-may-now-kiss-the-bride seal on the wedding vows:

Presenting, the new Mr. and Mrs.!!!

Walking away into the sunset. Or pretty blue cloud-laced sky, in their case.

See what I mean about the sky? It was the PERFECT day, and it RAINED that morning, too!

~ THE COCKTAIL HOUR AND RECEPTION ~
Upstairs in the cocktail area…

…a handsome man awaited me, too.

My dad chatted inside with his eldest sister while behind them, Mr. W…uh…I was gonna write that he was waiting for me, but now that I look closer at the photo…*looking closer*…I think I need to finish off this sentence with, “while behind them, Mr. W checked out some blonde chick’s back and legs.”

That girl was everywhere in my photos. It seemed that every time I changed direction to get a shot, she’d move in front of it.
This is a Chinese girl, so this is Dress #2, a pewter sparkly ballgown:

The flower girls playing with their mom, my cousin Olivia, and their cousin, as their dad looks on:

And then all of a sudden they all ran away from each other. What a strange game. =)

Everyone had a great time at the cocktail hour.

You know it’s a good wedding when I’m buzzing before dinner’s even begun. I had champagne, chardonnay, AND a lemon drop on an empty stomach. So I ate a couple of hors d’oeuvres. Their food was amazing.

At the reception, we were at Table 3 with the maid of honor and her fiance, and the bride’s parents.

The sweetheart table was right next to us…

…which made for great photo ops. Too bad I didn’t have a camera (aside from the cameraphone which took all the photos you see here).

I’d like to point out the loving looks my cousin Jennifer’s fiance is giving my cousin here. They’re getting married late next year. 🙂
The couple listening to a speech before dinner:

This happened a lot:

They had one of those storybook classic weddings where everything was beautiful and touching and loving and there were happy tears everywhere. You feel your heart swell to be a part of it, like you’re truly, to borrow a quote from Friends, “in the presence of love.” Made me almost feel bad for demanding that our wedding be all happy-happy-joy-joy and tearjerker-free. At the time it seemed like a great idea to have a unique non-traditional wedding style and I just told people that if I’m spending that much money on makeup, they’d better not make me mess it up with crying. I actually just am not that comfortable with being emotional with witnesses… Oh well.

During the cake-cutting, my mom, the bride’s mom (my aunt), and Mr. W thought it was BRILLIANT to take the photos from outside to get a truly unique angle.

Until we realize how crappy lighting was.

That was dress #3, the red Chinese dress. It was too darkly lit by this time to get a good shot of it, but she looked beautiful in it. This is Dress #3 during the dancing part of the evening, when the bride took photos of people dancing at her own wedding. Silly girl.

I don’t know HOW this picture happened, but it’s to my advantage. Now we can see the bride’s dress!

It was rumored that there was a Dress #4, but when I asked her about it, it was while we were already dancing the night away and Mr. W’s gold dress shirt had turned into a brown washcloth, and my cousin said that she couldn’t imagine how she could possibly peel the Chinese dress off her at this point and was thus bypassing the fourth dress.

And THERE’s my photojournalistic wedding story of my cousin Diana’s wedding to her new husband, Doug. Congratulations to the happy couple! 😀

A gal pal of mine recently accepted an invitation from a guy to go out. She wasn’t sure she was interested in him romantically, so she asked for my top 5 methods of keeping this outing from being interpreted as a “date.” I responded:

1.) Go to lunch. Lunches are asexual. So’s coffee, actually.
2.) Go to an asexual place. Denny’s and IHOP come to mind.
3.) Talk about other men while on the non-date. Follow attractive men with your eyes when they pass you while on the non-date.
4.) Pick up your cell phone if it rings.
5.) Don’t dress sexy, and don’t shave anything.
Free bonus: scratch yourself a lot.

She ended up going out for a few drinks and had a great time. I’ll take credit for that. Ha!

Deep rumbling noises culminating in howling and rattling woke me up this morning. I was confused, because it sounded like the throaty growl of earthquakes past, but there was no movement of the walls, just a sense of everything outside the house spinning in loud commotion. Turns out the Santa Ana Winds peaked early this morning.

Mr. W came back into the house at 7am cursing. Mondays are trash collection days, but the winds have beaten the City to the collecting; large bins in front of each house are blown over, some bins thrown down the street, trash strewn everywhere. Our magnolia tree in the front yard painstakingly picked out at a local nursery the first week we moved in and planted and babied was lying on its side, as with my poor abused avocado tree, still in its plastic pot. The avocado is now just inside the front door, but Mr. W has gone to buy stakes to replant the magnolia and give it enough support so that it’d hopefully survive the fall. Other saplings in our backyard blew over, and all young trees still standing have this sideways slant although surprisingly the roses still top our rose bushes beaming a bright white in the sun. The sun’s another weird character in all this. It shone optimistically and innocently the entire time, so that if you go out to curse the weather, it looked at you like, “What?”

Mr. W ran into a neighbor outside this morning, who was also running around trying to retrieve their trash cans, Halloween decorations, patio furniture. “Does this happen often?” Mr. W asked her.
“Yeah, at least twice a year. Didn’t they tell you that?”
“No…they omitted that fact about this place,” Mr. W, the man from the Windy City of Chicago, sighed.

If Christopher Columbus had enjoyed these winds 516 years ago to the day (did I do my math right?), the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria would’ve sailed to land in a week.

So our pretty little girl was nominated to be on the Homecoming Court for her high school. All the potential homecoming queens were escorted by their fathers or uncle or some other male parental figure from a convertible car onto a stage during the homecoming football game’s halftime show, where the winner of the title of homecoming queen was announced.

You would think that at a school where the winning homecoming queen is someone with practically all consonants in her first name (Chyi Shin), the below wouldn’t happen, but such is my stock in a racially mixed relationship:

When Mr. W and I got there, Daughter led her dad, me, and another one of her friends onto the field where the teacher coordinating the event greeted them, and gave Mr. W a rundown of where he would stand, when he’d come down, where he’d escort Daughter as she exited the convertible, where the stage would be. At some point he turned and acknowledged me, asking, “Are you with Yearbook?”
“No, she’s with us,” Daughter said.
“She’s stepmom,” Mr. W explained, as I said something simultaneously about pseudomom. The man apologized, and then I wondered — was that actually a compliment? Cuz, did he think I was a high school kid on the Yearbook staff? Cuz THAT’d be flattering.

It was 95 degrees Fahrenheit at home today, and triple digits in the previous hometown. Ah, autumns in Southern California. Hot days like this remind me of an email I’d received in college from an advertising ex-coworker who’d transferred to Cal. He wrote of the warming of the weather, his excitement in sensing the approach of summer, and then, “You know what it means when it gets hot, don’t you? The girls, man, the girls. They wear less.”

I was sore before I even worked out at lunch today. It dawned on me that the tight muscles are due to the furniture rearrangement Mr. W and I did last night. His son moved in on Sunday night, so we cleared out the downstairs bedroom which had been serving as a computer room, and hauled a giant solid oak desk from the garage into the dining room. We put the desktop computer on this heavy desk in the dining room, then changed the dining room into a sitting room/den. We then arranged the dining room furniture in a diagonal in the previous den, which was intended to be a breakfast nook anyway. Dodo walked downstairs after the two rooms were rearranged, and inspected the new nooks, crannies and hideouts. He seemed to approve.

Speaking of Dodo, Mr. W has already spoiled him. Because of the warm weather, Mr. W had taken to popping a few ice cubes into Dodo’s water bowl. Dodo loves this and will lap at the water and ice for 10 minutes, not even coming up for air. And now, Dodo will yowl, lead you to the water bowl, look discontentedly at it and then up at you, and yowl again, demanding ice. It’s gotten so Dodo won’t even drink tepid water anymore. He’ll probably break from this habit in the winter, and forget about the ice until Mr. W spoils him again next summer.

It struck me as odd that moving furniture around for half an hour could make me more sore than I had been weight lifting at the gym. And then I realized that sustaining heavy furniture in an elevated and balanced position while moving is way more taxing on my strength than the few weights I’d use at the gym, because when I drop the furniture, I’m completely spent, whereas at the gym, the weights I use are “light” enough that I could do a full range of motion with them for 10-15 reps. No wonder people lose weight when they’re moving, leaving drops of sweat stains on furniture and floors.

My poor tenants are moving into my house this week. Mr. W and I stopped by today to give them mail keys, and they had A/C on full blast. It must’ve been torturous straining and sweating moving heavy furniture in 105-degree weather.

I caved and bought the new LG enV2 (in maroon) after switching to Verizon Wireless. Having been a loyal and avid Nokia fan for the last, like, 5 cell phones, I was leery about different organizational layouts of other phone brands. LG is a relatively new company to enter into the cell phone market. This is also the first time I’ve changed cell phone companies since my first phone in 1995, although in the interim my LA Cellular service was taken over by AT&T Cellular Services, then by Cingular Wireless, and now by AT&T Mobility. But I just get too many dropped calls and dead zones with AT&T Mobility to stay loyal anymore.

So far I’ve been impressed with Verizon Wireless phone service. I got the premium package cuz what’s the point of getting a texting, internet-capable phone without getting unlimited texting and internet? I didn’t realize it also came with an excellent roadside navigation program that incorporates traffic conditions. We were considering buying a portable navigation, because having the navigation in both our cars have made us kind of, well, street-dumb. I now can no longer imagine traveling to unknown parts and getting around without a navigational crutch. I’ve heard that AT&T Mobility covers a wider area than Verizon Wireless, so now when we travel, I guess we’ll have the benefit of both since Mr. W hasn’t switched out of AT&T.

I do have several complaints about the LG phone format, though. It surprises me that for such an integrated phone, the address book doesn’t let you enter addresses or notes. It only takes phone numbers and email addresses. No websites, no extension numbers, contact names, street addresses. That kinda sucked, cuz I didn’t want to lose so much contact information. It also only allows 10 contacts per Group. What if I have more than 10 people belonging to a Group? Too bad. I guess most people don’t have contact numbers for more than 10 coworkers, friends, family members, business affiliates…? Oddly, it also doesn’t allow a group ring tone. My complaint with Nokia before was that it wouldn’t allow individual ring tones, only Group ring tones, but then I simply created a group with just 1 name in it. Mr. W was in a group all by himself called “The Man.” And his ringtone was Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby.” (Which I realized after putting it in place, that the lyrics were kinda stalker-ish, but oh well.) Another odd thing is that the instruction manual does not explain what the various symbol displays on the screens mean. The phone itself has an Icon Glossary you can bring up, but it tells you things like, the icon of the antenna with EV next to it with reception bars is “EVDO” and the antenna with a 1X next to it with reception bars is “1X”, and S is “SSL”. Well what the hell is EVDO and 1X and SSL?

The biggest downfall with the LG phone that I’ve discovered so far, though, is that there is no ringing profiles that I can set. This was very important to me in the Nokias. I had a “Meeting” profile that I’d put the phone on when I’m at work (which I hardly used because I didn’t have reception) or when I wanted to be discreet but still be notified when I get an incoming call, so calls would beep once and the phone would light up. I had an “Outdoor” profile that I’d use when I’m in loud places, and the phone would ring especially loudly and vibrate when I’d get a call. My “Normal” profile rang increasingly more loudly until I heard it picked it up. This LG only has the “Normal Mode” with sound at a volume you set manually to impose over all ringtones, and a “Vibrate Mode” to turn off all sound. The switch between the two is an easy 1-button operation, but I’d like other options.

I think the extra Verizon features override the LG programming shortcomings, though. I had just finished manually entering all the contacts from my Nokia into the LG, draining half the battery of both phones for the constant light-on, and I’ll have to invest more time in organizing and dividing up my Groups and assigning ring tones to each individual contact. Maybe that’s something to do tomorrow while I lay on the white sand of the Lake.