cindy's world

Yin yang, Newton’s Law, whatever the natural or supernatural forces you choose to believe in, has made the pendulum swing the other way.

The four-star, all-inclusive Dreams Cancun Resort & Spa that Diana and I have had our eyes on has been $213/nite as the best price I could find for the week we’re gonna be in Cancun. Just today, I get an email from Diana that says “dreams is having a super sale, $150 /night.” And subsequently, “Airfare about the same too.”

My response: “OH NO WAY!!!!!!!!!! And we just got a 15-count child molestation criminal trial…this is a great day! A GREAT DAY!!!” We’re gonna book our vacation today at lunch. If anything’s worth missing a lunch or a lunchtime workout for…

I was so excited that when the criminal attorneys came in for their trial and I saw one of my favorite DAs, I actually threw my hands in the air and said “YAY!!!” My boundless joy was so apparent that the public defender, who I do not know well, noted, “Gosh, this is such a happy court.” No one has ever said that about OUR court. Never. Quite the opposite. The judge is in a great mood after seeing the attorneys, too. He respects the DA greatly, and apparently was a juror in a case tried by the PD before he became a judge. He’s all cracking jokes off the bench and laughing.

And just now, I got a phone call from a fellow clerk, who gave me the AMAZING news that a difficult, overly complicated, multi-party car accident civil trial we have coming back in September, has just been settled in its entirety by his judge.

I’m so happy that I’m afraid of the other shoe dropping! Or maybe I already earned this wonderful karma I’m getting today. *dancing vigorously in seat*

Aside from my supervisor’s chastizing solicitation of a verbal agreement from me to complete 82 fking divorce cases in the next 17 work days in addition to my regular workload, Friday was a DAMN good day. Damn it. Damn, damn. (Okay, so I’m still upset about the fking family law crap.)

In the realm of his work, a friend I don’t see nearly enough popped by the courthouse Friday and we had fun catching up with each other. Brad and Val also visited in the afternoon. They drove in from San Jose early in the day, and as they plan to be in Disneyland all day today, my bailiff was nice enough to pick up 2 discount tickets from the Sheriff’s Dept at lunch for them. Since we’d concluded our court trial the day before, nothing was going on in the department so my judge came out and met them, then donned his robe and posed for some photos with us. I wish I had them to post now, but they’re in Brad’s camera. Since Brad brought his laptop with him on this trip, MAYBE HE’LL READ THIS AND EMAIL ME THE PHOTOS ASAP. =) Brad and Val are both good sports in my cheesy photo antics, as you guys know from the July 4th weekend photos posted on my blog. I’m gonna try to meet up with them some time this weekend, maybe late tonite or tomorrow before they leave to drive home. We were gonna meet up last nite after my dinner plans, but they were too tired and crashed instead. That worked out for me, as I didn’t even come home until almost 6am this morning.

After work, I drove to Irvine to meet up with my cousins Diana and Jennifer at their house in Irvine. They have a really nicely decorated place! It’s very femme and creative. Our cousin Olivia also joined us, with husband Eric and daughters Nikki (5) and Erin (2) in tow. Olivia was so cute. She’s missed her carefree days of romping around with us now that she’s heavily into family responsibilities and real-life issues. When we were walking to the cars to take off to the restaurant, she started toward their car, then paused and said, almost whinily in Chinese, “Aww, I so want to sit with you guys!” We told her she’s welcome to, and she got all excited and said “Okay! Lemme ask my husband.” She ran over to him and asked if she could ride over to the restaurant with us, like a little girl hoping her dad would consent to letting her go out and play. I assume by the way his butt and legs stuck out of his car as he loaded the youngest into the carseat that he agreed, and Olivia came skipping, SKIPPING! back toward us with a huge smile on her face. A few more skips, and little Erin’s audible wail for “Maaaaaa!” permeated the air. Olivia froze, turned around, then back toward us, and the same huge smile came back as she skipped the remainder of the way to our car. Even with their car door closed, we could hear Erin crying. “Ooh, Eric’s gonna have a bad drive to the restaurant,” Jennifer said. “That’s okay, it’s only for a few minutes,” Olivia said dismissively.

We had a delicious dinner at King’s Fishhouse in Laguna Hills. Their something-bikini martini, however, could’ve been a little more fruity, a lot less starter-fluid-y. Blech. We took a photo of the four of us cousins at the table which I hope I’ll get from Olivia soon. The lack of sleep and food coma caught up with me and as we returned to Diana and Jennifer’s house, I was invited in to crash for a few hours and all three of us did, in the living room in front of their TV, until Diana and I woke up around 3:30am and watched the remainder of “White Chicks” which was playing on Starz!. It’s a pretty typical night of falling asleep in front of the TV and waking up in the middle of the nite for me, but I’d never driven over half an hour afterwards before.

Oh, I also missed some calls from some friends at dinner, and one was from my girl friend inviting me to go to a huge party tonite. The birthday boy’s turning 40 (I can’t even imagine!) and has rented out the ballroom of a hotel in downtown LA. That should be interesting.

…but it’s starting to feel like that’s all I do!

My friend wrote a blog entry today about her disappointment in people who take the sanctity of marriage lightly, and how despite their belief that the marriage will likely end in divorce, they get married anyway. Like, “We’ll try this out, and hell, if it doesn’t work, we can always get divorced.” She’s very much against that frame of mind.

Well, my work day took a very frustrating turn shortly before lunch, to the point where it so soured my day that I couldn’t even do my usual lunchtime workout — I had Jack-in-the-Box instead. I had been trying not to blog about it because I didn’t want to ruin this rare “happy streak” appearance that I’m giving out on my blog. However, this opened the door, so I’m gonna share my comment on her blog w/my readers, too:

Tell me about it! I hate, HATE family law divorce cases that I have to process. I had a NIGHTMARE last nite about people coming into my courtroom to inquire as to the progress of their divorce case. And today at work, aside from numerous phone calls from people “checking on the status of my divorce judgment,� my SUPERVISOR came up and handed me a fax from some b!tch demanding special favor to push her divorce thru, and also LYING about contact with me. He made me type up a list of my hundreds of pending divorce cases and what date they came in. These people piss me off so bad, I want to yell into the phone at them, “If you’re gonna be so rude about this, guess what? I’m NOT divorcing you! So there! You’re gonna have to file your taxes this year as married! HAHA!� *CLICK* So people should really do ME the favor, even if they’re not doing themselves the favor, of NOT getting married if they believe it will end in divorce! In fact, I’m gonna blog this on my site. This is such a SORE SPOT with me.

Friday turned out to be a salvaged day. I went from this in the morning…

Bailiff: I just want to compliment you on the way you look today. Nice outfit, your hair, your makeup…
Me: Thanks, but what’s the point? I mean, really. What’s the point.

…to lots of fun at work, lots of laughing, a tad of drama between men, and a good time at Outback during happy hour after work. I finally met someone that I’ve heard my coworkers refer to for years. I would’ve never imagined that she’s physically the real-live version of Fran Drescher (not that Fran isn’t alive), except sans annoying accent. Hey, turns out that the Outback makes a caramel apple martini (not on their menu, but made at my request) as identical to the one from Downtown Disney’s UVA bar as I can tell.

Yesterday, we were waiting for all the criminal trial attorneys to arrive so that we can address a written question the deliberating jurors had sent out. I started to tell the DA the gist of the question, and the judge (who was sitting on the bench) stopped me and said, “Actually, Mr. [Private Defense Counsel] hasn’t heard the question yet, so let’s hold off until he gets here. Just in the parody of fairness.”

Parody of fairness, I mused. How interesting that the judge would mock himself like that.

The judge glanced at me silently from the bench, then said, “Cindy, that’s P-A-R-I-T-Y, not P-A-R-O-D-Y.”

Oh! That changes everything! To the exact opposite meaning. “I was actually thinking P-A-R-O-D-Y,” I said, laughing.

“I know you were,” the judge said. Man, I’m not sure if it’s a good thing that people can read me that easily.

I got permission to blog about this.

Our criminal trial got a late verdict today and we had 4 deputies backing up my bailiff when I read the verdicts. One deputy is a friend of mine and he was showing an overtimer, a stranger to me, the ins and outs of our courthouse. The following conversation took place (unbeknownst to me until just now) as the courtroom was being prepared for taking the verdicts.

New guy: She’s really pretty.
Friend guy: Wait till you see her stand up.
[Right then I was instructed by the judge to go get something, so I left my desk and walked out the back door of the courtroom. In my fitted sweater and plaid skirt.]
New guy: Whoa! Very nice! [or something to that effect, I may have misquoted a bit] How’d you mess that up?
Friend guy: I’m an idiot.

Later on down in lock-up, apparently there was another conversation about me between these guys and another regular bailiff in the building.
Regular bailiff: She recently broke up with this doctor she’d been seeing. You single?
Friend guy: Yeah, but we’ve just been really good friends for too long.

The reason why the 2nd conversation is notable is…I never told that bailiff about my social status. He’d heard thru “the grapevine.” How come I try to plant the rumor seed that I’m a lesbian and that didn’t take (I even went so far as to hit on our waitress in front of everybody at a restaurant/bar), and I break up and everybody knows?

What a crazy lunch. Our trial settled late morning so I had some extra time. Since I did not sleep until past 3am and had a really hard time getting up this morning, I took an hour-long nap in the jury room women’s restroom “lounge” at lunch. Really odd dream involving tea lights on a cheesy mattress, my crying because I wasn’t allowed to use the bathroom of a friend’s house, and something about living in a forest. When I woke up, the tiny room I was sleeping in had turned into Antartica. I took a walk across the street to an outdoors eatery to thaw out. (Yes, my lunch is legally 1.5 hours long.) Ran into a DA who was enjoying the weather, his wireless internet access on his laptop, and what appeared to be a really decadent lunch of celery and carrots. I purchased my pizza and Diet Coke and joined him at the outdoors table and we analyzed my dream. I find myself still rather cranky about my last relationship. Then when I came back to work, on my keyboard I find a newspaper clipping someone had left with the headline Cindy Hits Gulf Coast. “Tropical Storm Cindy, possibly intensifying to a Category-1 hurricane this morning, will churn inland across the Mississippi Delta early today, packing winds at over 70 mph as it batters the region with heavy rain and thunderstorms.” I like how they personify objects, and objectify people, but my weather alter-ego is definitely sounding like me as she sits and pounds over New Orleans. You go, girl.

After work (and I use the word “after” loosely) I met up with some coworkers at a local restaurant/bar, Geezers, for a farewell-good-luck social for a deputy district attorney who is leaving the DA’s Office to go into private practice with his friend. Many of my favorite work people were there, and I would do shouts-out, but I don’t know how they’d feel about being named on a public blog. 🙂 For a belated b-day drink, a fellow clerk bought me a HUGE margarita which was easily the size of 2 large margaritas. I had some second thoughts about finishing a drink that big, but I can’t let good alcohol go to waste. I missed most of the good stuff, because I had to leave at 5:45p to make it from Santa Fe Springs to Fullerton for jujitsu. It looked like there were props being brought in by the attorneys and I left just as everyone started eating. Oh well.

In case you can’t read what I wrote on your card, Mike (guest of honor), it says, written upside-down and reverse mirror-image and in German, “Vielen Gluck und Geld, mein Freund.” Much luck and money, my friend. Thanks for the counseling sessions over beers at Outback.

The above paragraph is funny because, altho a few DAs have my blog address, the aforementioned Mike does not even know I have a blog. Maybe I should tell him tomorrow.

I just read 6 verdicts on a two-defendant case in Department R. One of the bailiffs who was backing up the regular bailiff was hanging out after the verdicts, and the regular bailiff had already put on his radio, which was then playing the theme song from Romeo & Juliet, “A Time for Us.” I said in passing that I keep hearing songs that I used to play on the piano and it makes me miss playing. The bailiff hanging out said, “Would you like to have a free upright?” Turns out the piano in his daughter’s room at his ex-wife’s house (really close to the courthouse) is now unneeded and they don’t care to sell it, they’ll just give it away. That would totally fit in my living room! YAAAAAY! Now I gotta find someone with a truck who’s willing to help me out…

After I wrote the previous post I put up an away message on AIM that says I’m in the shower (“I’m standing in a vertical column of water. I’ll get back to you after I dry off. Or something.“), and fully intended to jump in the shower, get ready for bed, and knock out. However, as it was a few minutes into 11pm, I decided to watch the remainder of “Friends” first. The next thing I knew, it was way late in the morning, the TV was still on, and I was laying half over my covers, contacts in and everything. Of course I got into trouble at work. I deserve it, I need to manage my life better than I have been. However, I’d like to know who these clerks are that get off on going to my supervisor to bitch about why he “lets” me go in late so frequently. I don’t go in to his office and demand why he “lets” other clerks leave at 3:30pm regularly.