cindy's world

Mr. W, his son and I tried to catch the 9:30p showing of The Simpsons Movie earlier, but the tickets were sold out. I thought of college roommie Diana, who watched the premiere of the movie as a company-wide activity with her law firm, and I lamented the day I decided not to go to law school. What I do not lament, however, is the fateful day in 8th grade when I decided to take German as my foreign language, because that got me and Dwaine in the same class for the next 5 years, where we became friends. After a brief financial discussion over the phone with Dwaine earlier today, we decided to meet up tomorrow so that he could crunch some numbers for me. The goal: sell my current home, throw the money into investment property that I will live in for now and rent out later for supplemental income.

Whereas the original plan when I bought the house was to live in it until I decided to put down more permanent roots in a more palatable part of town and at that time rent out the first house, I had been growing increasingly discontent with my association’s lack of competency in handling financial matters. So the new plan is just like the old plan but with the added step of upgrading the future rental property. I figure if I buy a townhouse near a major university, I will always have renters, and assuming these renters are students, it would be a high turnover rate so that I can keep increasing rent to just below the growing cost of dorming. If I have a bad tenant, it’d only be for a year or so. Short-term-wise, I can avoid being taxed on the profit I make on selling the current home by reinvesting it into another primary residence, so I just have to live in the new place for the minimum required amount of time. And then I move on with my life and get a new place if I want to, renting out the school-side property. I’m looking at the new developments in Irvine, near University of California, Irvine. Orange County is quickly growing as Southern California’s version of Silicon Valley, so property there is bound to increase in value. Plus, with foreclosures at an all-time high, Dwaine is going to look into foreclosure and short-sale properties for a steal.

I don’t expect to have the kind of miracle housing experience I had with the first purchase, but I may be able to keep the same profit margin renting out the new place as I would in renting out the current place. When I bought the place I live in now, it was right before the housing market went crazy, so the price was already reasonable. And then, because the seller was desperate to sell (their new house had to close and their buyer for their current house, the house I got, fell out of Escrow and abandoned the purchase) during the Christmas holidays when no one was looking for housing, my realtor gave them a lowball offer which they countered and we came to a very nice compromise for me. I got decent interest rates at 6.75% for a 30-year fixed mortgage, and two years later, the housing market skyrocketed, interest rates dropped, and I refinanced at 4.875% for a 15-year fixed mortgage paying only $200 more a month than the original 30-year. People hated me enviously. But the situation now is a little different — interest rates are higher which means the housing market is about to take a fairly significant dip. I want to sell now while the market’s still high on my house and I can make triple what I originally paid for the place, and if it means I need to hold off just a tad for housing to drop so that I can buy the next one for cheap, then so be it. I can move back in temporary with my parents, or even with Mr. W. It is scary to step out of the property game altogether, though — a lot of people sold their houses when demand was high a few years ago, thinking that at any time, the housing prices will drop back to “normal” and they can take all their newfound money from the sale of their house and put it into a much bigger house. Well, that hasn’t happened and years have gone by and some people are still renting, which to me is just throwing money out the window. So I am facing that kind of a risk if I don’t do a simultaneous sale-purchase. Not that I’ve ruled that out, either. It all depends on what the numbers tell me tomorrow.

That’s why I’m glad I chose to take German way back in ’90. Cuz 17 years later, I am overwhelmingly grateful for my connections. “See, where would you be if you’d chosen to take Spanish?” Dwaine said on the phone earlier.

This is my horoscope for today:
You might bring an unrealistic idea into your workplace now and your thoughts may be more grandiose than the problems they are meant to remedy. The good news is that, although you may be stressing over finding the right amount of passion to have on the job, you do have a solid chance to strike the balance you need.
Thursday, July 26, 2007

Do you guys suppose it could apply to this? We were told by our supervisors recently that we’re supposed to be locking up our file stamps, judge’s signature stamps, and other sensitive court materials whenever we leave our desks. Our old furniture used to have a little cubbyhole with a lock, but our new modern desks do not. Instead, there is a keyhole on the side of the desk drawer that will lock up all 3 drawers in the column, so the supervisors suggested we do that. I was trying to get in that habit yesterday, except it’s such a pain in the ass as I’m constantly in and out of the courtroom doing stuff, and every time I come back and need to get white-out, paperclips, envelopes, forms, etc. I’d have to unlock the drawer. And it occurred to me that if I have the keys to the desk with me and it locks up EVERYTHING, then if I were to call in sick one day, the relief clerk can’t access ANYTHING. So I talked to my supervisor about that, and suggested maybe using my separate filing cabinet to lock up the sensitive materials at the end of the day would be better as file cabinet keys are standardized and any other clerk in the building could unlock it. My supervisor thought I was brilliant for thinking of these angles said he’d write a memo to that effect, but as I left the building, I suddenly pictured my coworkers really annoyed at me for suggesting that every time they leave the courtroom, they remove various little stamps and seals and release books from their drawers, and walk them to a separate file cabinet drawer, dump them all in, lock the cabinet, before they can leave. And coming into work would entail them moving all the stuff over from the cabinet to the desk drawers.

And then this morning, I see my supervisor has mass-distributed this via email:
GOOD MORNING,
During the courtroom inspections we were informed that some of the J.A.’s do not have keys to their desks.
We suggest that you lock up the security items in your file cabinet which uses a 3X5 key. The other alternative is your exhibit closet.
That way, if you are out, another J.A. can access whatever is needed out of the cabinet or closet.
We will, however, attempt to find keys for your desks
If you do not have a key to your file cabinet, please let me know.

Oops.

Rest mouse pointers over photos for captions (as usual).

Here’s a nice shot of the Queen Mary through the Queen Mary Lounge on our ship, the Carnival Paradise:

If you’ve ever sailed on a cruiseship, you’ll remember the mandatory pre-sailing orientation/enactment/drill in case of an abandon ship order.

You know how so many people think I look like Sandra Oh, and how I didn’t think I did? Well, check out who *I* think looks like Sandra Oh, at the very next table:


I had been wondering whether I’d meet another Jordan on this cruise. If you’ve been reading my blog for some time (and/or Jordan’s), you’ll know I met our dear Jordana Banana on my first cruise. We hit it off, I gave her my blog addy, she checked it out after returning home to Florida, we started emailing and communicating thru my blog, I convinced her to start a blog “for therapy”, she did, and the rest is history. I didn’t meet another Jordana Banana, but we did hit it off pretty well with this couple. Steve and Sally are therapists the next city over from my work, turned out my courthouse refers people over to their counseling services all the time, both in criminal matters (drug/alcohol outpatient counseling) and in family law (family/marriage counseling). Steve is sort of like Jordan, but Sally is more like the other girl Nadia that Jordan and I met on our cruise. She’ll know what I mean.

Steve, by the way, worked some therapist diagnostic magic on me and dropped my jaw during our last dinner together. See, I thought I was pretty introspective and psychologically keen, but he made a connection that I never saw, in regards to certain childhood experiences involving my mother’s behavior toward me and my worst adult fears today. How cliche, huh? haha.

This is a blowhole called La Bufadora in Ensenada, Mexico. Apparently it’s “the” thing to visit in Ensenada. Our tourguide equated not seeing it to going to Paris and not visiting the Eiffel Tower. The four of us talked over dinner (me, Mr. W, Steve, Sally), and concluded that we were not that impressed. Mr. W said the blowhole in Poipu, Kauai (Hawaii) was far grander of a sight. I didn’t actually see the blowhole at La Bufadora, because I didn’t want to fight the 5-layers thick crowd of people, so I stood back and let Mr. W climb an overhang and take the photos. I just got occasionally misted with seawater when the spray floated up every 5 minutes or so. Oh, and we also concluded it was probably low-tide.

You guys can click on this video if you’re bored, or want to be as (un)excited as I was.

I was nice, by the way, and posted the “exciting” video. There are other videos of minutes entirely without any visible water movement.

This is the obligatory posing-like-the-towel-bunny shot in our cabin.

Just to compare, here’s the one from my prior cruise, the one with Jordana Banana, in February of ’06.

We had Friday off and got to the cruiseship before noon for an early boarding. We had to walk across this high bridge from the big dome in Long Beach that used to house the Spruce Goose:

Ever seen a ghost ship? Most people hadn’t boarded for the 6pm sailing, so we got to walk around and take pictures of the empty rooms. This was pretty much the only time the ship was people-less that weekend.

What, you were hoping for photos with PEOPLE in ’em? Well, those are in Mr. W’s camera. I’ll post some when he downloads them off his camera. Meanwhile, you can rest your mouse pointer over these photos for captions and pretend that people are in them talking to you.

Look! Another time-bombed entry! I must really love you guys. It’s 2:21 a.m. on Thurs nite/Fri morning, and you’ll see this post on Sunday. So if it’s Sunday and you’re reading this, I’ll be back from the cruise with Mr. W tomorrow morning!

I dug this out in the earlier packing/cleaning (this is why it takes me so long to clean my room or rid myself of old junk — too much reminiscing):

I want a guy who knows what he has when he has me
I want a guy who feels he’ll love me for eternity
I want his eyes to soften when he looks into mine
Content to have me near while he reads and sips his wine
He’ll love me for enhancing his already beautiful life
He’ll love the dark I bring to his light
He’ll appreciate the reinforcement I am to his strength
Does not need (me) but chooses me to be his bane
I want to love and lavish without fear
Release him to go and welcome him back with no tear
I want to give him my world and sleep softly at his side
Be his girl forever and his woman when the time is right.

6am Thurs., 7-24-03

I don’t really remember writing this altho I can relate to the almost desperate desire for someone who’d protect me, love me, and bring me peace especially at that time in my life, but what throws me is the middle of the piece, in which I seem to write myself as the destruction of this great guy’s great life, and yet the guy loves me in spite of and through all of that. Why did I feel like I’d be the guy’s vulnerability, the Achilles heel that he has attached his heart to? Was it low self-esteem? Or maybe I was just making the point tongue-in-cheek that altho the guy’s fine without me or any girlfriend, he chooses to keep me in his life with all my dark sarcasm and the inevitable relationship fights. It really does read like Mr. W — he’s said over and over that he wouldn’t change a thing about me. “What about my crabby PMS-ness?” I asked him the other day. He replied that that’s but a small manageable inconvenience outweighed by all the joy I bring to him.

Happy (1-day early) birthday to the man of my dreams, the heart’s desire fantasy come to life, the exact personification of what I’d scripted almost exactly 4 years ago to the day. Well, except he sips martinis instead of wine.

James bugged me to blog about this, so I’m time-bombing it to post on Saturday when I’m on the cruise, despite the fact that I’m writing it at 1:48 a.m. Thursday night/Friday morning.

I was on my own for dinner tonight, but didn’t feel like spending a lot of money. James owed me $10 for when I spotted him at The Yard House last nite at dinner with Vanessa, so I called to see what he was planning for his own dinner. We agreed to meet up for Japanese so he could be my debit account. I’m paranoid about getting fatter lately (I seem to have grown somehow softer and wider in the past couple of weeks, even tho it’s not reflected in the body fat scale), so I ordered a sashimi plate. I’d gotten to the restaurant first, grabbed a seat at the sushi bar, chatted a bit with the two sushi chefs, before James got there. In spite of that, the two chefs revealed they were clearly first-generation immigrant Japanese men, which I would’ve known even without their accents or their use of Japanese when they spoke to each other. Here’s why.

Toward the end of dinner, the two chefs asked us, or more specifically, asked James, what race he was. Was he Chinese? James said he’s half. They then asked him where he worked. James gave the city, and the chefs exclaimed how far away that was. Then they asked him what he did for a living. James said he built speakers and sound cards for computers. They were impressed. I’m sitting there, totally ignored, wondering why they were asking him this and not also asking me. One of the chefs finally turned and nodded at me, and asked James, “Is this your wife?” They were lucky I had a mouthful of orange, so that James could reply, “No, we’re friends.” How patriarchal was that? Despite my being there first, having a rapport with the chefs first, sitting closer to the chefs than James, they ask the man about his career and personal information, like I didn’t have a job or something, and then only involve me insofar as I relate to the man, and then not even asking the question directly to me, but asking it as if I were some non-human possession, like “Is this your briefcase, sir?”

I would’ve demanded feminist retribution, but then James paid my entire bill, so I was happy to leave it at that. =P

I was just on the Happy Bunny site and saw this. I suddenly laughed so loud it woke up my cat down the hall.

Can you imagine driving by a car and looking over, and seeing THIS window cling looking back at you? HAHAHA! Alas, I don’t have the balls. You know how you’re behind a car and see their window sticker or license plate frame saying something like, “Powered by HAWT” or “Don’t hate me because I just had your boyfriend” and you want to look in the driver’s window to see just how hot this obnoxious girl is, and no matter how hot she is, you’re gonna scoff and think she’s too ugly to make those claims? *Sigh* This Happy Bunny window cling is going to go into the same pile of wishful thinking as that t-shirt that says “O.K. I’m perfect. Stop staring” (a Happy Bunny T my gym trainee got me that I still haven’t had the courage to wear), and that tank top that says “Well? It ain’t gonna lick itself.”

Earlier, I was doing last-minute packing-slash-throwing-things-together-slash-cleaning, and dug out an old driver’s license. What’s unusual about this driver’s license, is that it’s not mine. It belongs to a guy who wooed me back in the BBS days. I had just been thinking about him yesterday morning, too.

What triggered the thinking was a morning talk radio show that I listen to while driving to work. The on-air personalities of this particular program are huge fans of the TV show “To Catch a Predator.” I’ve never caught one episode of this show, but I understand it to be a “Cops”-style reality show in which decoys posing as underaged online chat users get into an online rapport with adult men who hook up with minors they meet online. Then a meeting is planned, and upon his arrival to the meeting site the adult sexual predator is “surprised” by the host of the show, who reveals that the predator has been caught red-handed, then corners the predator with a “Do you know what you’ve done? Do you know we all know what you’ve done? Do you know how much trouble you’re in?” type interview. The predator, after denying things and playing dumb, eventually gets arrested.
So anyway, the morning program was interviewing the host of the show, and they got into the different types of sexual predators. The host says they’re pretty careful about misuse of the word “pedophile” because some of these predators would never go after underage kids if they were not on the online chat forum. Maybe this is their first underage attraction and it’s an “exception” to their rule. And then there are the types who would consistently pursue naive young kids on and offline, loiter around schools and playgrounds, and the internet is just one of their tools. “Ick,” I thought, “How can these victim kids not know adult contact like this is improper?” And then I gasped. I was one of those kids!

I’ve already blogged before about my BBS addiction when I was 16, 17. Now I thought about some of the guys who pursued me through that venue. Boys my age didn’t tend to like me (my mom said it’s because boys my age back then went for looks and it’s the older men, people I would meet as I got older, who would appreciate me because of my personality and other strong points), and the chat board was pretty much my only social exposure to other age groups. One guy head-over-heels was 21. John lived up in Northern Cal somewhere and worked in the tech industry. He was nice, and we’d chat online and on the phone a lot, but he wouldn’t ever send photos. Later that summer (between junior and senior year) he decided to drive through the nite to meet me. That did not go well. That was the origin of my still-present fear of tall skinny men. But that’s another story. Anyway, it was his license I found. He actually whipped it out and slid it across the table to me, saying, “Oh, I DO have a picture of myself! Here, you can have this license. It just expired.” I’ll bet he didn’t know I’m such a pack-rat. But 4 years’ age difference isn’t that big of a deal.

And then there was the 25 year-old later that summer, Phil. He lived closer, in Orange, and we also chatted on the phone a lot. I was more careful to stay reserved until I saw what he looked like in person, after my last experience. And I was surprised to find myself minisculy attracted to someone 8 years older than me. My mom was thrilled. 8 was the magic number to her. “He’s old enough to be mature and established, and he’d take care of you and not sweat the small stuff about you,” she said. I think she was just happy that he was Asian. He was also in the tech industry, and eventually also relocated up to Northern Cal due to his work. Silicon Valley, ya know. Chat boards were not mainstream back then, so most of the adults who’d know about them are in the industry. It was okay he moved away, because I was starting to feel the age difference. Prom, hip hop, school club affairs, that was all way removed for a 25-year-old. His world was work and grownups. Besides, there was this one night when he burped from 15 feet behind me and I smelled it a few seconds later. Ew. That’s more than sufficient to turn a 17 year-old off to the point where I requested that he take me home…and he refused. So I was stranded alone with him in his house for longer than I’d wanted. But that’s another story. But 8 years isn’t even the largest gap.

There was the 28-year-old who, unlike the previous two guys, was just plainly sexually attracted to me. I believe the “younger” two, after investing time into getting to know me, actually liked me for me. But Tony, he had a live-in girlfriend who I believe he was engaged to at some point. He had a very young son from a prior relationship or marriage. He’d tell me about his Asian fetish (altho both his prior relationships were with white women approximately his age), about how “you Asian girls’ skin is soooo soft” which he’d discovered while stationed in Asia with the armed forces earlier in life, and asked if he could be my “first.” Although I knew he was physically attracted to me from the way he talked to me and from the way he’d hug me too long in greeting and rub my back too sensuously during these unnecessarily long hugs to be platonic, I knew that when he wasn’t with me, he didn’t think about me, and had his eye on other pursuits as well. I never took him seriously. He ended up breaking up with his live-in 27-year-old girlfriend and getting together with a 17-year-old white girl, also from the BBS. I asked his ex how things have been for them, were they civil? She said they’re okay, and apparently the new girlfriends’ parents, despite having caught them making out in their backyard spa (obviously the girl lived at home w/her parents still), “are thrilled to have a 28-year-old dating their daughter. Go figure.”

I didn’t understand it then, but fast-forward to present-day. Last week while Mr. W and I were on our way to dinner with Mr. W’s neighbor (who’s a high school teacher), the neighbor was saying he didn’t get how adults could be attracted to high school students. To him, these kids were immature kids. “Maybe it’s because I have a daughter, it’s just disgusting to me,” he said.
Ever wielding the cattleprod, I asked, “So you’d be upset if your minor daughter dated an adult?”
“Oh, I’d be furious,” he said passionately.
“So you wouldn’t approve if your daughter were dating someone 14 years older than her?”
“No I wouldn’t approve! I’d MURDER him! That is SICK!” the neighbor exclaimed.
Mr. W turned around from the front passenger seat to take a side-glance at me in the backseat. “You’re NOT a minor!” he said.

I hadn’t seen Vanessa since before my birthday, which I didn’t realize until she brought me my birthday present last nite. I’d gone home right after work to pack for the weekend cruise, and Vanessa and I had talked ab0ut watching Transformers, so she drove down after I got done packing. We met up with James at The Yard House in Brea and I was handed two compact packages which unraveled to become this:

That little gift bag spewed Happy Bunny (TM) products! Vanessa must be Jim Benton‘s new best friend! I hadn’t gone to the Happy Bunny website in awhile and I did not know there was all this new stuff out there. Lollipops, candles in tins (at least that’s what we believe is in the tin that none of us were able to open), license plate frames, keyboard stickers, keychains, stationery, metal thermos, just to name a few. To even out the karmically-questionable Happy Bunny vibes, she included a pendulum kit for getting in touch with my inner Ethereal Cindy and/or the Other Side. Vanessa always knows just what to get to make someone feel like she was paying attention. Thanks, Vanessa! Everyone got me such great stuff this year, I’m spoiled sick.

Vanessa also treated me to the Transformers movie, for which I had yet to find a negative review from anyone I know who’s seen it, all of whom were in my Transformers TV cartoons generation. I remember the days when I would watch G.I. Joe and then Transformers right after that. Speaking of those two cartoons, the Transformers movie was actually like G.I. Joe meets Transformers. Meets The Iron Giant (which was a better movie). But as I was saying earlier, I have yet to read a negative review, so I won’t write my own. Maybe I’ll like it better the second time around, when I re-watch it with Mr. W.

Today is my Friday (as I am off tomorrow to sail the high seas to, uh, Ensenadas), so I’m posting a Friday ha-ha today. And also to say, “HA ha!” And of course, to help men understand women. Forwarded to me from a female coworker…

One day, when a seamstress was sewing while sitting close to a river, her thimble fell into the river. When she cried out, the Lord appeared and asked, “My dear child, why are you crying?”
The seamstress replied that her thimble had fallen into the water and that she needed it to help her husband in making a living for their family.
The Lord dipped His hand into the water and pulled up a golden thimble set with pearls. “Is this your thimble?” the Lord asked.
The seamstress replied, “No.”
The Lord again dipped into the river. He held out a silver thimble ringed with sapphires. “Is this your thimble?” the Lord asked.
Again, the seamstress replied, “No.”
The Lord reached down again and came up with a leather thimble. “Is this your thimble?” the Lord asked.
The seamstress replied, “Yes.”
The Lord was pleased with the woman’s honesty and gave her all three thimbles to keep, and the seamstress went home happy.
Some years later, the seamstress was walking with her husband along the riverbank, and her husband fell into the river and disappeared under the water. When she cried out, the Lord again appeared and asked her, “Why are you crying?”
“Oh Lord, my husband has fallen into the river!”
The Lord went down into the water and came up with George Clooney. “Is this your husband?” the Lord asked.
“Yes!” cried the seamstress.
The Lord was furious. “You lied! That is an untruth!”
The seamstress replied, “Oh, forgive me, my Lord It is a misunderstanding. You see, if I had said ‘no’ to George Clooney, you would have come up with Brad Pitt. Then if I said ‘no’ to him, you would have come up with my husband. Had I then said ‘yes,’ you would have given me all three. Lord, I’m not in the best of health and would not be able to take care of all three husbands, so THAT’S why I said ‘yes’ to George Clooney.”
And so the Lord let her keep him.
The moral of this story is:
Whenever a woman lies, it’s for a good and honorable reason, and in the best interest of others. That’s our story, and we’re sticking to it!
Signed,
All Us Women