cindy's world

Don’t forget to “spring back” an hour today, peoples. You don’t want to be EARLY to work tomorrow, do you?

My parents left this morning for a 9-day vacation in China. A DA friend observed yesterday how it was interesting my parents should choose this time to visit China, given the bird flu and all. I think my parents have less to be concerned about with the bird flu than they do with their optimistic plans to CLIMB YELLOW MOUNTAIN. They bought hiking backpacks and gear and Motrin for the endeavor. Let me tell you, my parents are not active people. They don’t do the gym thing, they don’t do the running thing. They used to spend some time taking a walk around the neighborhood after dinner (during which trips I’d get an occasional phone call with my mom panting into the phone while trying to tell me something she just remembered I needed to know, such as she got a coupon in the mail for batteries that she was keeping for me for the weekend when I visited them), but I don’t think they’ve done that as of late.

When I visited them yesterday, my parents finalized their wills, showed me where all the important legal documents are kept, and packed up all their uneaten perishables for me to take home. To use up her tomatoes, celery, onions, etc., my mom made a vat of ox tail soup. That’s one of my favorite things that she cooks. I haven’t had ox tail soup for a long time, and it is so perfect for the cold weather. The stainless steel vat, which I imagined was a cauldron, was also very apropos for Halloween. I had two bowls of the soup before I knocked out on their recliner. I awoke at 1:30 a.m., picked up my gargantuan container of remaining ox tail soup and grocery bag of various exotic fruits that my mom was dumping on me, and drove home.

I will be looking forward to the soup the whole time I’m sitting at Kaiser, I’m sure.

My blog benefactor just gave me access to some color-coded bar graphs of my blog statistics. He observed that whereas most of the traffic on his own blog peaks around noon and after-work hours, my readers tend to visit my blog first thing in the morning, 8-10am. On a summary by month, June and July were nearly equal in hits, very modest, averaging a little more than 400 hits/day. August doubled at 827 hits daily, September peaked out at 1125 hits daily, and October (I know we’re not at the end of the month yet, but almost), it slowed to 853 hits a day so far. Total hits by month are as follows (and this is more accurate than the hit counter cuz the hit counter only starts counting when it was installed, on 9-8-05):
June – 12,585
July – 12,822
August – 25,648
September – 33,768
October – 23,889

I am fascinated. I wonder what was going on in September that made my blog so interesting. And what happened in October that made people lose interest. I didn’t even have as many entries in September as I normally did, because I was in Cancun for the entire last week and couldn’t log on.

So if any of you care to give me some insight, let me know what you like to do when you’re reading my blog. Are you getting to your first cup of coffee while surfing the net? Are you just settling into work and warming up your desktop so you decide to see what’s going on with me? Do you figure I post throughout the day so it’s just easier to check first thing in the morning to see what I did all the day before? Are you checking less in October because the photos slow down the loading? Am I somehow whinier and more annoying in October than I was in September? (Boy, maybe I’m inviting feedback comments I don’t want to hear. Haha.)

Happy birthday, Grace. Thanks for smiling down on me and setting my life straight for the past year. I know you said, “I can’t help everyone; I don’t have the energy,” but you do anyway. The last time I saw you alive, you stood from the hospital room chair and hugged me goodbye, and said in my ear, “You know I love you, right?” Fighting back tears, I said back, “And you know the same, right?” I should’ve said, “I love you, too.” But I know you know, and I know you knew, and forgave my stupid inability to open up. You’re in a better place than we are, my friend, and you deserve every sweetness heaven has to offer. I’ll see you again soon.

1.) I’d been working with the petitioner on a divorce case, trying to get his paperwork straight so that we can process it and get his divorce finalized. He called me today to tell me the missing documentation is on its way to me. That led to a conversation about his current fiance, his ex-wife, paths of life and God. He said, “What I wish for you, Cin, is for you to find someone who loves you like Jesus loves his church, who is willing to die for you, and who will find you too important to stray from to satisfy those selfish, selfish temptations. When you have that, all of life will be beautiful.” Weird, huh? We didn’t talk about my life; mostly about his. My “homework assignment” tonight that he gave me is to read the Book of John in the Bible. I may just do that.

2.) I spoke to a very trusted friend after my noontime workout and found out a few things, namely
– Mr. W’s ex is making stuff up
– her alleged “source” of information doesn’t exist, she’s coming up with stuff and pinning it on a nonexistent person so she looks like the innocent person who just “heard” all these random things; she named a category of people as the source of her information, and I just found out that no one in this category talks to her because none of them like her
– her claim that “everyone’s talking about it,” and how the rumors are all over, are all unfounded; no one’s talking about anything (I figured as much), and she’s the only one blowing this up
– she’s had a history of being extremely competitive with other women; the way she sees it, she should be the darling of all men and feels threatened by me
– my friend said she’s very jealous of me and that I should be flattered

Maybe now is the time to have a little fun and stop being so sensitive to other people who aren’t mature enough to deserve this consideration.

I just cast my vote for Maurice Drew to win the Heisman trophy. Our last (and only) Heisman winner was quarterback Gary Beban in 1967.

6-0.

Go Bruins.

Saturday morning, Mister Wonderful (there has been some confusion as to what Mr. W stood for, and some hapless men whose last names begin with the letter ‘W’ misaccused of being smitten with me) and I went to Fountain Valley Bowl to volunteer for a Special Olympics bowling event, which volunteer effort was organized by my cousin Jennifer through her company, Pacific Life Insurance.

Mr. W and I were in charge of 2 bowling lanes (7 special needs bowlers) and may I just say, Mr. W impressed both me and my cousin Jennifer. He was the total perfect volunteer parent type, enthusiastic, encouraging, responsible, had an eye on everybody, remembered everyone’s names, cheered for everyone, kept up the scores in the computer, took care of technical malfunctions. I basically just sat back and did the occasional clap or cheer (just kidding, I kept paper score and made sure my lane of 4 bowlers were content, happy, and went up to bowl in the proper order in their proper lanes, and chased down the one that kept wandering off).

This was Mr. W’s first volunteer experience. You couldn’t tell by looking at him. I’m already just so happy that he’d go along with it just because I’m doing it.

I made a mistake on Friday’s post about the Cal-UCLA game because I said they were playing Friday when they in fact played on Saturday. I made Mr. W stay in for the first 5 minutes of the game before we went out for the evening. As soon as Cal scored (and they did it fast and hard early on), I was disenchanted enough to tear myself away from the TV. I didn’t watch the remainder of the game as I couldn’t see a TV from the large slab of rock Mr. W and I were lying on watching the desert night stars.

Diana was nice enough to text message me after the game that we won, 47-40. Her text message said 47-70, tho, which got me really excited for awhile. Turned out the final 2 minutes were even more exciting, when the Bruins came back from behind to score a touchdown with Maurice Drew returning a punt 81 yards. (EIGHTY-ONE YARDS!) I’m kinda glad I didn’t watch that game. I wouldn’t have a voice right now. We’re now 5-0. (Unfortunately, so is USC.) We’re playing Washington State (3-2) this Saturday. Go Bruins!

This is funny, because I’m up against people I really like in this rivalry at the Rose Bowl today. My judge, roommie Diana, friend Jen, Mike, Grace, Bonnie, have all attended Berkeley. So I guess I’m okay with either way the game goes. I am, however, rooting HARD for USC to lose today, altho I seriously doubt I’m gonna get that wish. I mean, come on, it’s #1 Trojans vs. the freakin Arizona Wildcats. The only fame the Wildcats ever got was when Sandra Bullock admitted to being a Wildcat on the movie “Speed.” =P

I found out yesterday when a friend refused to take a call from University of Texas Law School Alumni Association (which was inviting him to the Los Angeles branch of a Law School fundraising event) that he’s holding a grudge against ALL of UT. Last year, Cal was primed to go to the Rose Bowl but due to political string-pulling by the head of UT’s Athletic Dept (or some position like that), people in the Association raised UT in the ranking and/or dropped Cal’s ranking, so due to the polls, Cal did not make it to the Rose Bowl. Also, when Cal was playing at Southern Missouri or Southern Mississippi (I may have tuned out at this point in his story), my friend said he actually saw on TV UT fans in full UT colors and gear in the stands cheering for Cal to lose and thus lessen Cal’s chances of getting to the Rose Bowl. He said he feels sore about the whole thing, and until he feels no longer sore, he will have nothing to do with his Law School alma mater.

Sports nuts are appropriately named.

My parents’ 30th wedding anniversary was October 4th. When my mom gave me the date last weekend, I thought it sounded familiar. But it’s not a holiday; it’s not the birthday of anyone I know. Just now, it hit me in the shower. (Click on the link below for “more” if you’re curious.)

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