cindy's world

This is what’s called a cheap cop-out post, friends. I admit it. I don’t have much drama to write about because the biggest dilemma in my life right now is whether to cut 30 people off my wedding invite list so that I can save $3000 to make my budget. I was talking to college roommie/bridesmaid Diana about this yesterday and she said 30 people is a lot to cut. So I floated the question: assuming I get a bartending job that brings home $300 in tips each night I work, how many nights would I have to work to pay for these 30 people? Diana said ASSUMING I could get that much in tips, I would have to work 30 days, because $300 pays for 3 people. And then I felt like “Schindler’s List” and had to stop. “This lapel pin…if I sold this lapel pin, 7 more people.”

WAIT a minute. I just realized she did the math wrong. If I bring home $300/night, and that’s 3 people, then I only have to work 10 days to bring home $3000 for 30 people. I can bust my ass for 10 nights. Or sell my ass on the side. Or, just sell my ass, period.

I am making WAY too many prostitution fundraiser jokes.

Okay, now the cop-out part of this post, today’s lawyer joke left on my desk:
Attorneys Jones and Smith were arguing over whether sex was work or pleasure. Being unable to reach an agreement, they decided they would ask their paralegal to decide the issue.
Upon explaining the question to their paralegal, she thought for a moment before responding, “Why, it is definitely all pleasure.”
Smith, who’d felt it was work, asked, “But how can you say that so quickly?”
The paralegal just smiled and replied, “Why, that’s easy. If there were any work involved, you’d have me do it for you.”

I’ve been looking for a clip of Brian McKnight singing Luther Vandross’s “Never Too Much” since I went to the Brian McKnight/Boyz II Men concert and watched Brian sing as a tribute to Luther while the original black and white video of Luther singing his song played in the background. Here it finally is. I think this song is a wedding must-have.

Never Too Much Lyrics

Yesterday evening, maid-of-honor Vicky (yes, I’ve decided recently she’s my maid-of-honor; she’s more than earned it. Didja read all my past Las Tunas and Chinatown trauma she guided me through?) came by with her boyfriend Glenn and the three of us went out to a local sushi joint for dinner. After returning to my house, Glenn proceeded to take apart my living room’s vertical blinds to see if he could replace the broken clip on one panel. He soon discovered that the system was made in the late 70s and the parts I’ve purchased don’t fit in the old system. GAH! He was a good sport and reassembled everything, put it back up in the window, and advised me to buy a new blind system. After checking the blinds upstairs in the bedrooms, he found they were the same old system, so those will all have to be replaced, too. While upstairs, he said my ceiling damage from the leaks actually aren’t that bad and that they can be repatched very inexpensively, so I don’t have to hire an expensive ceiling repair guy or put a claim into my homeowner’s insurance. Great! With his prior experience managing multiple apartment homes, he recommended some products and even offered to come help patch the ceilings once my external roof is replaced. Looks like Vicky’s dating life has finally paid off for me. Haha!

(Today I told Mr. W about Glenn’s blind discoveries and Mr. W said he already knew that the pieces were not compatible cuz he’d already looked at it. Well, why didn’t he tell me?!)

Afterward the free inspection, we hung out and chatted in the living room, when something someone said sparked the memory that I have video tape footage of Vicky when we were in 8th grade. I busted it out, popped it in the VCR, and I watched Glenn’s amused smile looking at his whiny girlfriend more than 15 years back in time. Bridesmaid Sandy is in our 8th grade graduation video, too! I threatened to play it at my wedding. One thing we all noticed is how incredibly tan we were as pre-teens. Of course there was the daily P.E. class and playing outdoors and swimming, but man, adult office life has done nothing for our tans.

Now I need to find some embarrassing video footage of bridemaid Diana from the late 80s. Heh heh heh!

You know what sucks ass? My judge is on jury duty, IN THE BUILDING upstairs, so he’s around still doing some work in chambers which I’ll probably have to process. But because we’re technically “dark” (meaning the judge is unavailable and the courtroom is not open to receive cases today), administration wants to send me to Compton in the afternoon to sit in on a criminal jury trial. You’re telling me that in the entire West district where Compton courthouse is, there is not anyone who is available to babysit a trial for one afternoon, that they have to send someone from NORWALK? ARGH.

Now that that’s out of the way, Mr. W and I had a productive enough weekend. Saturday, at our wedding food tasting (all the food you can eat and champagne/sake cocktails you can drink!) we pretty much decided our wedding menu. We’re considering ordering a hosted sake bar for the reception, and coming up with a signature east-meets-west cocktail drink. I’d never had sake cocktails before now and they’re DELISH! After the food tasting we went to our wedding cake bakery and ordered our cake. It fits perfectly with our theme, and will be 3 round tiers of chocolate cake layer+amaretto bavarian creme+light streak of raspberry jam+white cake layer. I know it sounds funny, but it tasted good and was a good compromise for us. If our guests don’t like it, whatever. Fill up on the food and alcohol.

Sunday, we had dim sum brunch with our realtor and his wife (who are close and old family friends of mine) and then the wife went home while the three of us did concentrated house-hunting. The houses are increasing in quality, but my favorite were two Chino Hills homes with beautiful entertainment backyards. One has a view of rolling green hills right beyond the yard that you wouldn’t believe is in overpopulated Southern California. I love the flowy layout of that house, too. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for that one, but won’t let my hopes soar too high since recently, everything we really liked was GONE the day after we saw it.

And then we went to my parents’ and had dinner there, telling my parents about our househunting adventures, showing them online photos of a few of the ones we saw. My mom is blown away by the high price of housing these days, but such is life. And the decline of the almighty American dollar.

* House-hunting is getting old and making us feel poor.
* I booked our venue wedding coordinator consultation and our venue rehearsal, and tomorrow we’re attending the food-tasting to pick our meals.
* Today I received my order of more face powder and 3 eyeshadows from Sephora; starting tomorrow everything on my face will be Bare Escentuals and the switchover will be complete.
* We’re on Week 1 of Phase 2 in the psycho workout routine, both I and my gym trainee are looking the best we’ve looked since we can remember, and I was very proud of her when she told me she’s decided to wear a racer-back tanktop dress this weekend to visit her cousins in San Diego to “show off” her toned arms (since we did upper body today).
* I finally got to select vacation days for this year, and I got the week after my friend Jimmy’s upcoming Sunday wedding off so we can take our time coming back from Northern California after his wedding, BUT I didn’t have enough seniority to even make the WAIT LIST for the week of my own wedding. >:-(
* Dodo’s being a good sport in letting me brush some clumps out of his fur this week, altho it seemed somewhat painful, and he’s stopped jumping into the shower to lap up leftover bathwater in the mornings.
* The Association finally signed and mailed back the roofer’s contract this week, and I received an email from the roofer saying he hopes to start work around March 10; I was afraid to tell him my Association neighbors are asses and all still refuse to pay their contribution toward the repairwork.
* At Mr. W’s house without a TV in his bedroom and being unable to watch TV in the living room w/o disturbing his son who’s sleeping in the upstairs loft overlooking the living room, I am unable to fall asleep (obviously).

I’m working away…but I’m here to do a quick status report of my projects.

1.) Roofing – My association treasurer’s letter “to clarify the secretary’s letter” arrived yesterday. He explained the situation to the homeowners about having to pay for my roof, and brought up a good point: if my roof had been replaced 2 years ago when everyone else’s roofs were replaced, everyone would’ve had to pay an extra $300 THEN, so it really doesn’t make a difference whether they pay then or now because either way everyone has to pay for my roof. I got the 2nd estimate yesterday, too. It was only $200 less than the first estimate. So I’m gonna compare the 2 contracts and see who gives me the more bang for my buck.

2.) Parents’ Trust – Vanessa’s a huge advocate of setting up a Living Trust, because she found out the hard way when her dad passed away without having done one, that there are major messy, extensive and expensive probate issues that they’re still trying to clean up. College roommie Diana sent me a Living Trust format which I customized the best I could and this past weekend, Vanessa (who’s a legal notary until February 8, which is in 3 days) came with me to meet my parents, have lunch with us, and she notarized the Trust and Deed for them. I had a judge look the papers over but he had some concerns, so he referred me to a good Probate attorney for document review. I submitted my documents to his office today and set up an appointment for Valentine’s Day (the first open appointment).

3.) House Hunting – No significant progress. Just keeping an eye on the market and on the places we’d like to live. House prices are still dropping (woohoo!) and more nice houses are coming up for sale (woohoo!) and interest rates just dropped another half percent last week (woohoo!).

4.) Wedding – I got my photographer booked. Josh, my buddy from jujitsu, is gonna do it. He’s a new Orange County Sheriff but was a professional photographer, so he’s, like, friend/photographer/security all wrapped up in one! Talk about multi-tasking! Plus, he’s going to give Mr. W all the raw digital images he (and his photographer assistant) will take and Mr. W likes to play with Photoshop, so Mr. W will make our wedding album. I’m pretty sure I’m way ahead of schedule; all there is left to do as far as vendors go is to find a florist for our bouquets.

5.) Taxes – Done and mailed out yesterday. Why wait if I’m getting money back? I just have my parents’ taxes left to do.

6.) Exercise – My gym trainee and I are back in the gym. Yesterday we did upper body and today we did lower body. I’m sore, but I guess that’s a good sign. Aside from being a little weaker, it doesn’t look like my 2-week hiatus did much damage. Whew!

Okay, I guess this update wasn’t that swift.

The US Postal Service is pretty computerized these days. Not only can you go online and track a package mailed through them, but Mr. W signed us up for email notification so that each evening, when the status of your package is updated in the computer system, you get an email saying where your package is.

Since we mailed out my engagement ring last week for resizing in Florida, we’ve gotten an email saying that it was accepted at 12:30 p.m. at our local post office. That’s it. It’s been almost a week and there’s been no additional update.

On the one hand, I’m a little bit concerned, cuz it is a small package bearing my very nice engagement ring. On the other hand, if the postal service loses the ring, we ought to be getting $16K due to the insurance. And then I’ll just get a cheaper ring and have a large chunk of my wedding paid for.

I can tell that I want the ring more than I want the money, because this post exists. Murphy’s Law would have it that the moment I post this, I’ll get something in my mailbox that says the ring’s in Texas or something in transit to Florida, and I’ll feel all stupid for worrying about it and writing this post. So the writing of this post somehow, karmically, cosmically, induces the ring to appear back on the radar. So I’m making an active effort to secure the safety of my ring at the expense of appearing paranoid or silly or crazy. You see, I’ve thought about this.

I didn’t go to the gym at lunch today cuz we had a mandatory 1pm meeting at work. Instead, I met up with Mr. W and we went to the post office to drop off my engagement ring. It’s on its way back to Miami, Florida (where it was born) to be resized by the original ring designer. With gold values on the rise, I’m kinda bummed I’m losing two full sizes on the ring, but I can’t keep wearing it with moleskin adhered to the inside forever. How cheesy. We insured it at the post office for $16,000 and Mr. W very nervously filled out all the mailing/tracking/insurance forms and off it went. “Say bye-bye,” he told me as he raised the overly-wrapped package to my eye level before it left.
“Bye-bye for now,” I said to the wad.

I received my invitations yesterday. They’re so unexpectedly beautiful I had to hold back tears. Well, not really. But they are REALLY nice.

It appears that quite a few people, mostly women, are using my wedding as a “goal date” for various personal improvement deadlines. I think that’s cool! I feel strangely influential that I can arbitrarily set a date for something, and a bunch of people now set their mental clocks to that date. The power…

I’ve been pretty true to my workouts, but I think I need to incorporate more cardio than I’ve been doing, just to increase the burn a little more. I was eating an Oreo-style sandwich cookie in the elevator yesterday, waiting to get to my floor, when a jury room clerk got on and said, “You can eat whatever you want, you’re skinny. Are you still going to the gym?”
“Every day at lunch,” I told her.
Meanwhile, I’ve been getting crap for doing weights at the gym from the previous generation of Asian women. My mom told me to stop all the weightlifting I’m doing because I’m just gonna make my arms even thicker and less attractive before the wedding, since I’m apparently not heeding her advice to get my wedding gown and Chinese dress with sleeves. The Chinese dress seamstress/shopowner advised Vicky to, above all else, avoid any weight-bearing exercise using her arms to prevent them from growing bigger by the wedding date. (The seamstress didn’t say this to be rude, she said it to address Vicky’s concerns that Vicky wants her bridesmaid dress to have sleeves because she dislikes the appearance of her upper arms.) I still insist there’s a reason why there are no fat girls on the weight floor but tons of them on the cardio equipment and in the aerobics classes.

I discussed this with my co-gym-rat-friend, college roommie Diana, yesterday evening when we met up for a healthy dinner at California Fish Grill in Irvine. Her response was, “You HAVE to keep working out!” (She meant “you” as in “one,” not saying that I personally have to keep working out or explode in outward-falling fluffy fat rolls. No, that’s more like MY personal fear.) I find it ironic that when the seamstress lady was telling Vicky to avoid working out her arms and yet had praised my figure, she was unaware that between the two of us, I was the one who hit the heavy gym weights. And when Diana and I went in to the seamstress shop Monday evening to be measured for her dress, the seamstress was all impressed by Diana’s slimness and the toned appearance of her arms and shoulders, and Diana hits the gym weights hard, too! Diana’s dress, as a matter of fact, is slightly halter-top cut because the three of us (me, Diana, and the seamstress) agree that it shows off her arms and shoulders perfectly.

Diana and I celebrated ourselves by having dessert at Mochilato, and had three ice cream mochis each. This time I had pistachio, mint chip, and toasted almond flavors. YUM. In fact, I’m sitting here eating a plain mochi I’d brought back with me right now.

My mom had emailed me two recommended shops to get custom-made Chinese dresses for me and my bridesmaids, one shop in Temple City (which happens to be the shop Vicky had used for her wedding attire) and one in Chinatown. Since Vicky and I were familiar with the Temple City shop already, we thought we’d start with the one in Chinatown and do a price comparison. That was yesterday (Sunday).

I entered the street address my mom emailed me into my navigation system, and the two of us were off. We chatted in the car through a very long drive (45 miles), and then suddenly, Vicky observed, “Are you sure your nav is correct? Cuz we’re nowhere near Chinatown. We’re going into Santa Monica.” I didn’t know anything cuz I’m a navigational idiot, but Vicky pulled out her portable navigation system from her bag, input some addresses and researched, and discovered we were 15 miles out of our way past Chinatown. Turns out the street I was supposed to input was “North Broadway” and I was only told “Broadway,” so the nav was taking us to an entirely different location. I was pissed, I hate driving in circles for nothing, especially when it takes me 30 miles out of my way round-trip, but Vicky calmly and cheerfully told me to just get off the freeway and find a place near UCLA (which is where we were near) to have a nice lunch. It suddenly dawned on me that Killer Shrimp may be nearby. I input the restaurant into my nav, found we were less than 4 miles away, and we ended up having a great lunch (Vicky’s first time there).

After lunch, we input the correct address and drove into Chinatown. It went severely downhill from there. I felt like I’d driven into a third world country. Asian people were milling about the streets oblivious to cars; the streets were dirty with trash, mysterious liquid, and pigeons; there was no parking; street vendors were yelling and peddling wares and birds and crap. We stumbled through crowds of people onto a small pay-parking lot that was at least fenced off with a live person overlooking the lot; I had little doubt that if I’d parked my Lexus in the streets, I’d come back to a stripped car. Having parked and paid, we made our way through the dirty, rude, shoving people and crowded street vendors to the address I was given, which turns out to be NOT A SHOP, but a huge building with many more swapmeet-like booths and vendors inside, just like in China. Unlike China vendors, however, these shopowners are ghetto and rude. Vicky would ask every vendor displaying Chinese dresses, in Mandarin, whether they custom-make dresses or whether they simply sell premade dresses, and they treated us very scornfully, scoffing at us when they’d answer. The only vendor who said he did sell custom-made orders wouldn’t stop loudly smacking on rice he was eating out of a large metal bowl while talking to us, and when Vicky inquired as to whether he had fabric samples, he just pointed to the dresses already hanging on the wall and told her to see the fabric for herself, and when she asked if they had other designs, he treated her like an idiot and gestured again to the few dresses he had hanging up. I told her in more than one shop in a small voice that I was ready to leave. I wanted to crawl into a dirty corner amongst the cockroaches and half-gnawed cow bones and rock back and forth until I woke up in the U.S. again.

Oh, one redeeming thing happened in Chinatown. Amongst all these rude vendors (we were told later that they look down on us cuz we don’t speak Vietnamese or Cantonese), we did happen upon an undergarments shop. That vendor was very nice and helpful, spoke English, and Vicky thought to ask her whether she carried strapless bustiers that went underneath white bridal gowns. She did indeed, and let me try some on. I found a seamless one that fit perfectly! I didn’t like the one that David’s Bridal tried to sell me along with my wedding dress purchase because that one was lined with foam (like the stuff in a padded bra) and they wanted $90 for it plus tax. Vicky had purchased nearly an identical one from Victoria’s Secret in the neighborhood of $80 for her wedding gown. This bustier in Chinatown, Vicky bargained with the vendor and we walked out with it for $28 cash, no tax. *high-five Vicky* It hadn’t even occurred to me to ask for bustiers in this place; I’m glad Vicky was on top of it. She even spotted me $18 cuz I only had $10 in cash. Oh, and the vendor called me “skinny.” Whoa…sale!

We skidaddled out of Chinatown half an hour after we got there and went to the Temple City shop. It was SO NICE to park in a normal parking lot and not fear that I was gonna run over some hunched over Asian grandma in a straw rice paddy hat carrying a stick on her back attached to a cloth bundle of bok choy and live chickens who expected traffic to stop for her. I decided that even if this store costs more, it was worth it to not have to go back to Chinatown for measurements/fit/pickup of dresses. The irony is that weeks before, I’d thought Temple City was chaos hell so the gods of fate saw fit to send me to true chaos hell so I’d know the difference, apparently. We sat in a respectable shop specializing in Chinese dresses, flipped through volumes and volumes of beautiful colorful fabric samples, got to try on many different cuts of dresses, and because the shopowner remembered Vicky, got a fairly significant discount on the dresses as well. Oh, and this shopowner called me “skinny”, too! *faint*

Vicky and I were productive; we selected my dress, her dress, the fabrics, and requested customized changes to the designs, and the store opened a portfolio for my wedding party. College roommie Diana flew down from San Jose this afternoon for a job thing, so she and I will hook up tonight and go back to the Temple City shop and let her try on/pick out her dress design. My third bridesmaid, childhood friend Sandy, is going on her own to the shop on Friday when she expects she’d have permission to work from home.

Wedding preparation is still going very smoothly and quite a bit ahead of schedule, and for the clothing aspect of it all, I really have Vicky to thank.