cindy's world

I think in our last trial, the attorneys actually managed to assemble a collection of 12 of the stupidest members of society to act as our jurors. Even with surveillance video footage, even with a signed confession-like document in which she promised to repay everything she stole, she claimed she didn’t understand the word “theft” and wasn’t really confessing to any wrongdoing when she signed the document.
DA: Although you’re saying now that you were lying when you wrote that?
Defendant: What do you mean lying.
DA: You weren’t willing to pay back? Were you willing or not?
Defendant: I am willing to pay back if they prove it to me that, you know, I am actually stealing money from the [store] but I am not going to pay them back if they didn’t prove it to me that I am stealing money.

Uh…WEREN’T YOU THERE TO KNOW THAT YOU STOLE THE MONEY? The camera footage said you were! Jeebus.

Anyway, the jury acquitted.

And then after the trial was over, the judge put a written quote on my desk, saying as he did so, “Words to live by.”
It said: “The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom. – Aristotle”
HUH???

Justice is ALL confusing today.

Rock Band (the multi-player game for PlayStation3 and XBox360) has been the topic on a few of the blogs I read lately. Lotsa people are jumping on the Rock Bandwagon. Koinkidinkally, my cousin Mark from Canada got a hold of me earlier, and we had the following conversation about Rock Band:

Mark: Hey I finally got around to trying the multiplayer in Donkey Konga, fun times! Also, Rock Band rules!
me: Rock Band is HARD. We were just talking about it on my friends Mike & Christi’s blog.
Mark: YA ROCK BAND IS AWESOME, not that hard! Well maybe. Depends on what difficulty you play it on. I sang Radiohead’s Creep 100% on medium! You’ve played it?
me: Yeah, it’s a lot harder than guitar hero. You have to hit it exactly on the mark or you’re scored really low. I don’t know why they make it so hard.
Mark: Really? Everyone says Guitar Hero is harder… well except for the fact that there’s more of a window for a mistake when you hit it. But there are more buttons to hit in Guitar Hero, like they come up faster and with more.. at least on hard.
me: Hard has 5 buttons. But it doesn’t demand such precision. You don’t fail so fast/easily. Rock Band, 1/3 way thru the song on easy, you fail cuz you didn’t hit them all PRECISELY on the MILLISECOND they want you to.
Mark: !!! :O On easy it’s soooo easy!
me: It may also be hard for me cuz I never know any of the songs. So I have to “read” the screen.
Mark: :O You don’t know the rock classics? Guitar Hero is supposed to be tougher cause they make you hit a lot of buttons really fast. You should sing! That’s fun too, and drumming is wickkkkkedd!!
me: I can’t drum. Too many things my body isn’t used to doing/responding to.
Mark: Hey did you at least have fun while losing at the songs?
me: No, it was freaking stressful. Cuz I was really good at GH, so I couldn’t understand what the prob was w/RB.
Mark: Wow, all my friends who were awesome at Guitar Hero found RB to be too easy…Hrm…If you’re playing on an HD TV, sometimes the calibration is off, so it LOOKs like you’re hitting the button but it’s really off. So it’s really frustrating… my friend had an issue with that.
me: But everyone else I know in CA has the same opinion as me. RB is harder cuz it demands more precision.
Mark: Wowzers! It’s like the opposite of Toronto, haha.
*some time passes*
Mark: You know what, I’m reading up on it now and it’s the same as what you said. So Guitar Hero throws more notes at you, but the accuracy is not as tight. Where Rock Band is more realistic, with less notes but forcing you to be more accurate.
me: ah HA. That means that your friends in Canada are freaks. RB was frustrating for me cuz I was like, “WTF, I HIT the damn notes, why are they failing me?!”
Mark: Awww, you gotta download the music and listen!
me: I don’t really like rock.
Mark: Fair enough.
me: if they could figure out a Hip Hop Band, I’d be SO ALL OVER that.
Mark: We were talking about that! I was talking about that with friends. But hey they patented the name “DJ Hero”. I’m excited! Really though all they have to do is add a keyboard to the game, and blizzkapow it’s there.
me: And a record scratcher DJ station.
Mark: Hells yes. I’m in.
me: And all the karaoke part entails is someone spitting into the mike rhythmically. Ptth, ph ph ptthhhh!

WELL?! All you game programmers, GET ON IT!!!

Candy wrapper count for today:

1 peppermint clear cellophane wrapper
1 York Peppermint Patty wrapper (the heart-shaped ones with the pink mint cream, leftover from Vday)
4 gold Almond Roca metallic wrappers
4 pink and silver Hershey’s milk chocolate metallic wrappers (also heart-shaped Vday edition)
5 or 6 French truffles that came out of a big metallic bag w/o individual wrappers to count

…HEY! Some of these Hershey’s wrappers are wadded up into a tight little ball! I don’t do that! I think I’m picking up someone else’s wrappers that they threw into my trash can. Maybe I only ate HALF of what the wrappers claim I ate! Eh, who’m I kidding?

2 tangerine skin wrappers/peels — and that would be the only healthy thing I ate all day.

“It’s okay, you’re PMSing,” commenter ‘a’ told me about half an hour ago. Right before I tore into the bag of truffles.

That being said, I think I need to force myself into the gym tonight.

So I grabbed my voluminous buffalo chicken wrap off my desk as soon as the jurors were situated in the courtroom, and dodged out into my judge’s chambers and proceeded to stuff my face on his couch. Because of the width and size of this wrap, and how drippy it got toward the end what with the chopped lettuce and red buffalo sauce, I got red stuff all over my face burning my cheeks and lips, and I was aware of the sauce touching my nose, too. And there I was looking like a carnivorous wild animal eating another wild animal, when a horrible thought occured to me.

What if they take one of many sidebar discussions that they’ve been having, right now? I could just imagine the judge, court reporter, and both attorneys walking into chambers for a sidebar argument and stopping short, seeing my hunched over form on his couch with red stuff all over the place, chopped tomatoes and chicken falling from my open mouth. There’s no recovering from that. So I wrapped up the bundle of mess in the wrapper and dodged into the hallway bathroom.

As soon as I entered the second room of the restroom that contained a small table, a chair, the sink and stall, I froze again, and thought, “Oh shit. I’m pulling a Dardy.” I imagined all the poo and pee molecules that came out of coworkers floating in the air around me, adhering onto my chicken wrap.

And I quickly ate it all up and came back in the courtroom.

What sucks is to be starving and not be able to eat the food that’s right in front of you. I had insisted on going to the gym today because I’d missed all my lunchtime workouts this week as our trial keeps running late, but after our workout today my gym trainee and I ran across the street to Tropical Smoothie Cafe where I grabbed a buffalo chicken wrap. Sooo good! Unfortunately, as I expected, when I walked in the courtroom the judge was already on the bench having a hearing, despite the fact that I wasn’t late. So now the wrap sits on my desk, getting cold, as I drool.

I’ve always thought it a form of torture, too, when I’m starving to death and have to drive to pick up a pizza. My parents were always too frugal to pay or tip for delivery so after waiting what felt like forever until the estimated time the pizza would be ready for pick-up, they’d take me along to the pizza place, and of course I wasn’t allowed to eat before dinnertime for fear of ruining my appetite. So we’d pick up our pizza, I’m starving while the cheese and meat aromas circulate around the car, and as a final tease, my job was to hold the hot box on my lap. There was rarely a longer drive than the one back home. As tormenting as these drives were, when I lived on my own I would also occasionally opt to pick up my own pizza rather than have it delivered. I think it’s the Asian thrift gene passed on, but I did make one modification: no later than when I get in the car, I would open the box and grab a slice of pizza, happily proceeding to burn the roof of my mouth off with molten cheese on my drive back home.

*looking at wrap*

MAN I wanna eat. I think I’ll take my wrap out into the back hallway and eat in secret.

I got this via email forward from a coworker. Makes you wanna have kids instantly.
~ * ~
Cup of Tea

One day my mother was out and my dad was in charge of me and my brother who is four years older than I am. I was maybe 2 and a half years old.

Someone had given me a little ‘tea set’ as a birthday gift and it was one of my favorite toys. Daddy was in the living room engrossed in the evening news… and my brother was playing nearby in the living room when I brought Daddy a little cup of ‘tea’, which was just water. After several cups of tea and lots of praise for such yummy tea, my Mom came home. My Dad made her wait in the living room to watch me bring him a cup of tea, because it was ‘just the cutest thing!!’

My Mom waited, and sure enough, here I come down the hall with a cup of tea for Daddy, and she watches him drink it up,
then mom says, ‘Did it ever occur to you that the only place that baby can reach to get water is the toilet?’

I wasn’t going to do a weekend update post, but seeing as how I’ve been in the habit of using my blog as a reference when I see strange charges come up on my credit card statements, it doesn’t hurt. I’ve also used my online record of my life to settle some disputes. Dork, huh?

Saturday: Mr. W and I visited some houses he’d found online thru his MLS search. We always check out the neighborhood and houses first before involving any realtor now, cuz that first house we saw online and got all excited about turned out to be a total dud. We’d met my realtor there and realized as we drove to the area that we’d never live there. The area of the city was dirty, run-down, old, and there were a bunch of illegals milling about on the sidewalks trying to discreetly get hired for exploitatious work. I was so embarrassed to have wasted my realtor’s time. Photos are so deceiving! On this trip, we found some neighborhoods we loved and houses that we were impressed by, so much so that I called Grace’s dad and told him to cancel paperwork for the 2nd shortsale house (the ex-“the one“).

Sunday: Mr. W and I got up bright and early, hit the gym, then met up with Vicky and her boyfriend Glenn for Korean BBQ. Vicky had recommended the place, and it was delicious AND generous in its food portions. Apparently all the small dishes AND all meats were all-you-can-eat. The waitress also kept coming by to cook and turn the meats for us. We had thin beef slices, cubed steak, marinated chicken, bulgogi pork. The included salads staved off the meat sweats. I was also not feeling too guilty cuz I KILLED myself on the weights at the gym earlier, so I figured I earned the right to chow down on so many animals. Lunch was fun and a lot of laughs. We stood outside in the parking lot after we were done and made tentative plans to do outdoorsy stuff in the future. Vicky has, through her interactions with Glenn, become quite the hiking fan. Mr. W was already a hiking freak, so by default, I am going to be doing more hiking. I also promoted a wine country bike ride/wine tasting, which I’d done a couple years ago with the NorCal friends, and it will always be remembered as one of the happiest, most carefree times of my life, a desperately-needed reprieve from my life at home at the time. Vicky and Glenn were in for that, and also were in for my last pitch which I REALLY want to do: rafting down the American River. Vicky had swimming-related concerns, but I convinced her she’ll be fine on the guided raft tours wearing a lifevest. (Or I’d feel severely guilty if she weren’t.)
After lunch, Mr. W and I met up with Grace’s dad at my parents’ house (5 houses away from Graces’ parents’ house), and the three of us went to look at 3 houses. I liked one in particular, Mr. W liked another one, but in the next couple of days following, Mr. W fell in LOVE with the one I’d liked. Today he downloaded photos of this house and they are now revolving background wallpaper on his laptop. We’re waiting for my realtor to come back from vacation (next Sunday) to put an offer down on the house. I figure this gives fate a chance to intervene — if it’s gone in a week, it was never meant to be ours; if it’s there AND the price was lowered due to lack of interest in the current price, so much the better for us.
After seeing the houses, Mr. W and I returned to my parents’ house, where my parents promptly put Mr. W to work figuring out what’s wrong with their surround sound stereo, and installing rear speakers for their sound system. It was so cool to see my fiance stripping the plastic off wires with his teeth, twisting wires together, painstakingly hiding wires around walls and fireplace to hang the rear speakers. *swoon* I told my mom that even if I left him now, she and my dad would’ve gotten their money’s worth from him. She wasn’t pleased with that comment.

Monday: Another low-key day, starting with another drive to the house that Mr. W fell for, an on-foot jaunt around that neighborhood listening to birds sing their welcome to spring. Mr. W and I then washed our cars, knowing that it’s going to rain again this week but not wanting the dirt to pack into cake on our respective paint jobs. Then we had dinner as we watched “Buffy” and “Angel” on DVD (still in succession so the cross-over events would be in line), and ended the evening by hitting the gym again.

Good thing we did the gym 2x, cuz I worked thru lunch today.

Trip out. My godbro’s dad (father of one of the founders of Formula D racing) is one of our JURORS today. I went out in the hall half an hour ago, did my orientation, and as I let the jurors file into the courtroom, he waved at me. Oh my gosh! Suddenly, all the lame jokes I told during orientation flashed before my eyes. I’ve been doing this a long time, but NOW I’m freaking out all self-conscious. Sheesh.

This isn’t even one of our home trials, either. We got the case transferred to us from another courthouse. Some dinky little misdemeanor. The female defendant allegedly stole $400 worth of stuff from a 99c Store. The bailiff and I were laughing about how anyone could steal $400 worth of stuff from a 99c Store. Did she take 400 items out with her inside her coat? Did she have to make many many trips? We’re horrible. This is what happens when you work in a system that’s used to multiple murders and child molestations and they give you a misdemeanor that you know nothing about. =P

Addendum: Isn’t this a koinkidink? Today, I packed for my workout clothes, the T-shirt I’d purchased at my first Formula D event that I wrote about in the post I linked above!

Horoscope for February 17, 2008:

You could feel somewhat unsettled today and may not be able to quell your anxiety. Even if your emotions are a bit out of whack, it probably isn’t severe enough to require drastic action. Be careful not to become overly possessive, as Venus in your 8th of Shared Resources encourages you to exert control. Don’t succumb to fear, for tightening your grip on love could easily backfire.

I just advised a friend not to jump the gun about someone possibly having a crush on my friend’s significant other, and then I see this horoscope of mine immediately after. Okay, so I’m being pointed in a specific direction. Cuz truth is, I HAVE been feeling unsettled about a little thing for the past couple days. Mr. W told me that his biatch ex (not the mom of his kids, I mean the one who always gave me a hard time) called him on Friday and said she found some stuff in her house that belongs to or was made by his kids when they were younger, and said she wanted to meet up with him to return them. I had gotten instantly annoyed since any mention of her annoys me, and I told him to let me know when he plans to do that and I’ll make sure I’m nowhere near cuz I don’t want to deal with her attitude again. And we left it at that. Altho I’ve felt “somewhat unsettled” about it for the past couple of days, I’m chalking it up to my “emotions [being] a bit out of whack” and not readdressing it with him because 1) I trust him completely, and 2) I respect him so much for telling me something that I’m sure he knew I wouldn’t want to throw a party over. Unless the party were her and I’m throwing her overboard. I’d enjoy that. Anyway…I may be PMSing.

After another long Saturday of running around checking out open houses and taking external peeks at houses found online, we decided to not even put an offer on the 2nd short sale house, i.e. the ex “one”. One reason is that with all the offers already being considered by the bank on that one, putting another offer in for the asking price would likely be an exercise in futility. The other reason is that we discovered many other properties that are NOT on short sale that have fallen into our price range. The non-short-sale houses, because people are not upside-down on their mortgages, are in better condition and more move-in ready. And, they’re newer. Another thing we learned is that old houses are just not our thing. We thought we could do the 30- or 40-year-old homes if they’ve been fully upgraded, but truth is, the architecture then was just different and no matter how upgraded a bathroom, it’s just not gonna be the open double-vanity, separate tubbed bathrooms of this century. Of course, with newer houses are new cons, i.e. association fees, Mello-Roos taxes, and generally smaller square footage. You’re also in disturbingly close proximity to your neighbors.

So on Sunday, we’re meeting up with Grace’s dad again, to look at 2 newer homes and one older one which, at least according to photos, is promising.

As much as it is sage advice to not fall in love with a house at this stage, I really would like to fall in love again. I want to love the place we’re about to buy, whichever it is. I want to love all my major life decisions — from small things like my car to larger things like my homes to permanent things like my husband.