cindy's world

I’m blogging on my laptop off of my new wireless router! Yay! I’m too cheap to buy one so I’ve been “borrowing” internet access when on my laptop at home, but lately the reception’s just been horrible. Unless I want to get up, go to the den and turn on the desktop, I just skip blogging altogether when I’m at home.

This wireless router’s free. It came in one of those buy-this-laptop-for-a-bijillion-bucks, get-a-router-and-printer-free-after-rebates store deals. My mother wants a laptop for Christmas, and they already have wireless set up on their DSL, so I’m stealing the one that came with her package. I’m not sure whether to be impressed by her technological thirst, or annoyed at her frivolous impracticality and wastefulness, that she wants a laptop to play with downstairs in their living room despite the fact that she and my dad each have their own desktop set up right next to each other in their computer room.

In any case, I got a free wireless router! Yay! Well, it’ll be free in about 10 weeks, anyway, when the refund is processed and mailed to me.

Thomas tagged me, so I suppose the result is that I have to list 5 random facts about myself. You’d think that wouldn’t be hard, but what new things can I put out there in cyber blog world that my readers don’t already know?

1.) My favorite author in elementary school, and I still have a bunch of her books that are falling apart and probably older than me, is Beverly Cleary.

2.) I knew I wanted to write when I was 7, mainly because my Aunt Jessica (my cousins Diana and Jennifer’s mother) shared her fantasy that I would be the next Amy Tan, and then she’d be interviewed and she’d say to the reporter, “It was all my idea! I told her she should be a famous author.” My first poem was written at age 7, when I was still struggling with the English language. It was inspired by a really pretty doll with a wind-up base such that it turns slowly and plays music, and the poem goes like this:
“My little doll stands in front of me
With its glaring eyes and little feet.
Although I know it is quite old,
It still doesn’t have anything like the mold.”

3.) I love watching phase changes in burning objects. I think fire behavior is almost the exact same but opposite of water, it’s like upside-down water with a reversed polarity. Watching things burn and change is endlessly fascinating to me.

4.) My rose-tinted lenses work the opposite from most people’s. Instead of having a “honeymoon” period, my rosy outlook is weakest in the beginning, and the blushing hue deepens the more I’m with someone. Some time into the relationship, I have to be seriously hurt by the person for those glasses to fall off, whereas in the beginning I’m almost looking for an excuse to jump ship.

5.) The quickest way to my heart is to get my quirky jokes and comments, and bonus points if you can play along.

Okay, now I understand I can tag other people. Those people I tag, if you decide to do this on your own blogs, please comment on this post and leave me a link or something to your tag entry. But I won’t take it personally if you guys don’t participate. I tag Mike, Diana, and both Jens (my cousin and my friend) and my cousin Mark in an attempt to get them to blog something, ANYTHING.

Friday morning I was getting ready in the bathroom when Dodo walked in and meowed persistently. I finally stopped and inquired as to his needs. He meowed again, looking up at me as though passing some dire information on to me telepathically. I looked down and noticed vomit on the inside of his cone. “Oh, no, you threw up,” I said, wiping him. I looked around to see where he’d thrown up. That was weird, cuz it’s not like he’s gonna have hairballs to cough up when he can’t lick himself with the cone on. I saw a little pile of vomit with pink sticking out. Great. He’d swallowed, and now hacked up, some ribbon that I’d been wrapping my gifts with the night before. I cleaned that up, got dressed, and with my arms full of presents that I was bringing to work, rushed toward the stairs…and stepped in a cold pile of vomit. I was grossed out, took a step back, and my other foot was christened with another pile. I stopped and just screamed. So I cleaned that up, as well as another pile IN his cat bed, the genius cat, and now totally late for work, rushed into the garage, opened it, and saw that the tar machine and tarp were set up again and blocking my egress from the garage. So that was Friday morning.

Friday evening was much better. I sat through 1.5 hours of traffic to get to my mechanic’s shop, a drive that should’ve been 20 minutes, and got my oil changed. Since I was now 2 miles from my parents’ house, I went and visited them and got that out of the way for the weekend. I feel bad that visiting my parents sounds like a chore, but I have a busy weekend scheduled. I had dinner with my mom, my dad was again nowhere to be seen, then I came home to finish off chores. I was happy to get my 4 Fantom Fury belts and replacement bulbs in the mail at work, so that means I can finally vacuum! I maneuvered around the tar machine that was still there, managed to park awkwardly in my garage, came inside, replaced the rubber belt and the light bulb in the vacuum. When that baby started up and the headlamp shone on, I gave a happy laugh. I love that upright. I was glad I didn’t toss it and replace it like I had been planning to do. I did actually buy a Shark canister vacuum when I couldn’t find the Fury replacement belts in the stores, but I returned it as its performance and ease of care were so inferior to the upright Fantom Fury. When I first got the Fury, I was so excited at how great it was that I vacuumed twice a day, even hauled that thing to my parents’ and vacuumed their house. I stopped vacuuming that much when the neighbor that lived in the apartment directly underneath mine at the time came upstairs and pounded angrily on my door, then demanded I stop vacuuming as it’s keeping her from sleeping and she has to work early in the morning. What the hell else was there to do when one has insomnia at 3am?! I think that was when my bad TV habit started. Hmm.

This is an extremely stream-of-consciousness post. Trying to get back on track here. So Friday, I finished up laundry, brushed my cat, had a banana for dinner. These light meals, along with the 4.5 miles I ran at lunch Friday, brought my weight down to…a pound heavier than I was Thursday!

Why do I bother?

I hadn’t been spending a lot of time at home, so all the chores (and cat hairs) were piling up. But I had the best Thursday and Friday evenings ever! Well okay, not “ever,” that might be offensive to some people. Thursday after work, I got to fill up my car for the lowest gasoline price anyone had ever seen in awhile ($2.07/gallon). Then I went to Drug Emporium and bought stuff I’d been needing for awhile, i.e. contact solution, shampoo/conditioner, eyelash curler, etc. I found a little clear plastic cosmetic organizer stand that has 12 slots in which you can insert all your lipsticks, mascaras, eyeliners and stuff, so they’re not laying all over the counter. I had been looking for such an item for years! I don’t know why suddenly nobody seemed to carry it anymore. I was so excited at seeing it for $5 that I bought 2. Now the 2nd one is sitting in its box on the counter. I have no idea what I’m gonna do with it. It’s not like it’d run out.

Anyway, I then went to the grocery store and bought a fruity dinner: 2 Red Delicious apples, a cluster of organic bananas. Next was to hit up Longs Drugstore to look for a ChiaPet. There’s a white elephant Christmas potluck tonite at my cousins’ house, and I bought Hungry Hungry Hippos (all you who grew up with me in the 80s, you know this is a ‘bitchin’ gift), but that was only $15 and the gift guideline was $20. I really, honestly thought ChiaPets were like $3-$4 bucks, cuz really, who has them out here? Turns out nope, they’re $17.99. So I’m gonna tape some lottery scratcher tickets on the wrapped gift instead. Mine’ll be the only gift that, altho budgeted at $20, has the potential of being $10,000. But I digress. I went to the pet store and bought cat food and cat litter. Then I went home.

When I got home, I was greeted by a shock. The roofer people left their huge tar-mixing machine thing smack in the middle of the driveway with tarp all over the driveway! There was no way I could maneuver my car into my garage. It was also blocking two other garages across the driveway from me. I had a total fit, called the association secretary, who in turn called the roofing company’s owner. Meanwhile, a new neighbor whom I hadn’t met yet came out and helped me move the tarp aside, and with the association treasurer’s help (he came out to see what I was screaming bloody murder over), I managed to back my car into my garage around all the crap laying around the driveway, so that I could get out and go to work in the morning. They were so nice that I felt bad for being so pissed off earlier, but it’s a total peeve of mine when people park their cars perpendicular to the garage in the driveway despite all the signs that tell you to park on the street or risk being towed, because it prevents me from being able to get in my garage. The neighbors across the driveway from me always has their lazy friends park in front of their garage for hours on end, and I have to do a 9-point-turn to get into my garage. Anyway, I was glad to have met my new neighbor Tom, who said anytime I need to borrow sugar or flour, or if he’s in my way, to go over and pound on his door. I asked how long he’s been living there. “Two years,” he said. Oops. I’m a horrible neighbor. “I’ve seen you around,” he said to me. I don’t remember ever seeing him. The owner of the roofing company called me later on and apologized profusely, saying he wasn’t there when his crew shut down and didn’t know they had left that honking tar machine (about the size of a small tractor) sitting there, but that it needs to be towed away by a truck and his trucker is presently in Hawthorne (i.e. far away). I thanked him for his attention and directed him to the treasurer for a place to keep that machine for the next 10 days that would be out of the way. By the way, Friday and today, Saturday, that machine was still exactly where it was in the way. I backed out of my garage today by running over their cone and tarp at such an angle that I barely missed taking out their machine. But it was the only way I could get out.

The night ended well…I had a Red Delicious apple for dinner while I did laundry and sorted through my bills and receipts and wrapped my Christmas gifts.

I was checking to see if the blog server came back up, cuz I mean, it’s been days, and I have stuff to say. But when this site popped up, all post ideas fell out of my head through my gaping mouth. What happened to my pretty green script-fonted format?! Oh well. Blue is pretty, too. I like ice blue, that’s the color of my cell phone, too. And it’s wintery.

I have 15 more minutes to kill while I wait for my hair to suck in the hair dye, so I’ll sit here and explore the format and try to remember what it was that I wanted to post over the past several days when the server had been down.

My busy gym trainee rushed in earlier and plopped a tupperware container on my desk with a piece of chocolate on top of it. “You never bring lunch, so I don’t even gotta ask, ‘You got lunch?’ ” and rushed back out before I could get over the shock enough to register what happened.

That’s so sweet! =) I’m in a totally good mood now. Mom-types pick up right away that I’m a mess. Haha. But it takes a friend to try to clean me up.

(I’m running out of winter holiday themed titles, by the way. And we’re only halfway thru the month!)

I was helping Mr. W’s daughter with her math homework yesterday, and I use the word “helping” very, very loosely. People who know me know I avoid math whenever possible, and in college, I’d taken anything that would fulfill the same credit requirement that math would — geology, pollution & atmospheric sciences, accounting, oceanography — to avoid taking a math class. (I must’ve been out of my mind to take AP Calculus my senior year in high school.)

My brain froze on this equation:
A train leaves the station traveling 45 kilometers per hour going east. 3 hours later, a second train leaves the same station and travels east on a parallel track at 68 kilometers per hour. How long would it take the second train to catch up to the first train?

WHO REMEMBERS HOW TO DO THAT?! I mean, I could probably do it the dummy way and make a chart of “hour 1, train 1 is this far away. hour 2…” and then do another series for train 2 and wait for the numbers to coincide. But apparently this is a distance = rate X time algebraic equation set-up thing.

BLEAH! *vomit*

I caved this morning and turned on the central heater and set it for 70F degrees. It’d gotten to the point where it was too difficult to wash my face and do my morning routine while shaking so hard that I’m afraid I’m gonna put out an eye with my toothbrush.

I think Dodo has g0tten puffier. His winter coat is very dense and longer than his regular coat, and Scottish Folds have more rounded-off builds already, but this morning, looking down at him as he unfurrowed from his “C” in the cat bed, he was like a large round black and white poof. Brushing him didn’t appear to shrink him any, but it made me 25 minutes later getting in the car than I expected to be.

I don’t get it. I must step through some miniature Bermuda triangle in between the kitchen and the garage.

This is something I’ve never expressed outside of my head before, which brings to question why I’m expressing it now. Maybe I just need to sniffle to you guys — some friends, some acquaintances, some relatives, some complete strangers — piteously. I know not to what end.

It has been so cold here that I’ve been in a fitted turtleneck every day this week. (A different, clean turtleneck each day, my fashion-conscious friends.) Our jurors probably think I’m hiding a hickey. And yet, day after day, I ignorantly fail to bring a jacket or coat, despite knowing that it’s freezing at work and outside. So anyway, there are few things more uncomfortable to me than having to stand, face a 14-member jury panel plus witness and court staff, raise my right hand, and swear the witness in, while it’s obvious to everyone that I’m cold. =\ I used to be able to hide it with my long hair, which I would simply part and let drape down each shoulder. But I’ve had a haircut recently, and my hair no longer covers the essentials.

I am reminded of a line from “Friends,” in an episode where Chandler had started smoking again and had Ross’s apartment window open so he could blow smoke outside. It was snowing outside, and Joey said something to the effect of, “Will you stop smoking and close the window?! My nipples can cut glass over here!” I love “Friends.” I miss it.

At this time of year, when the holiday spirit abounds and inspires man to overcome all differences in philosophy, lifestyle, and personal history, it’s really nice of people to think of me and take that extra step.

2 minutes ago, a sheriff here on overtime from his academy-trainer regular position stepped into my courtroom and whispered (we’re in the midst of a criminal trial, he’s not just being creepy), “I thought of you last weekend.”
I asked, “How come?” and then answered my own question as we both said simultaneously, “The UCLA game.” “I know, I know,” I said, admitting defeat, “it should’ve been called the USC game because UCLA may as well have not been there.”
“Yeah, they need to substitute-in UCLA with a high school team,” he said, right before he said “Nice seein’ ya” and walked out.