cindy's world

I noticed when I was driving the other day that my headlight settings seem to be different. I’d always thought it was on “auto,” meaning it turns on and off in response to an external light sensor. But now it was on this dot thing, I have no idea what the dot means, and the second half of the lever was turned on some strange picture. (Did the dealership change it last weekend?) After I got to the gym at lunch yesterday, I sat in the parking lot and looked through my car manual, then turned the dial back to “auto” for headlights, and turned off my foglamps. This made me 20 minutes late for the gym so my trainee and I only managed to get 4 different exercises in (3 sets of 15 each), plus 15 minutes of cardio.

Luckily, Vanessa emailed me in the afternoon inviting me to go to the gym with her in the evening after her acupuncture (*shudder*) appointment is over at 7p. She told me to pick a gym, and I picked Brea. I met her there, James also was there altho he worked out separately, and I’d called Vicky to go, too, but she didn’t show and didn’t call to let us know. *kick* It’s okay, we didn’t really expect to see her anyhow. We hit the weight floor probably about 8p and it wasn’t nearly as crowded as the other gyms we’ve been to! I guess New Year’s resolutions don’t hold as strongly in that area of Orange County. Aside from some chicks who have their hair done and are wearing full faces of makeup (why do they do that, btw? do they not plan on sweating, ever?), almost everyone there appeared to be gym regulars, going methodically machine to machine pumping iron to increase their already over-exercised proportions. The three of us stood around talking about what we’re going to do next; James hadn’t eaten dinner, Vanessa had a bowl of oatmeal before her acupuncture (*shudder*), and I had a couple bowls of soup. Vanessa opted to hit the cardio machine again, so James and I went to pick up some Lee’s Sandwiches, which we consumed in front of his giant TV while watching TiVo’ed episodes of South Park, grimacing as the hard-toasted bread cut into our gums and mouth-roofs upon every bite and the jalapenos seared every new injury.

Mr. W, from what I learned driving home from work yesterday, had planned to game the entire night with his brother and eat fast food. Basically, a bachelor’s evening. My bachelorette evening was hanging out with friends and working out, and eating relatively healthy. I’m pretty happy about that.

This evening: belly dancing with my coworker under her instructor for the first time. I’m kinda excited. She says her instructor gives a good workout and that I’m guaranteed to sweat, and that she’s always tired and sweaty after these sessions. My belly dancing instructor, I felt, was kind of tame in the exercise department. Now I get to see whether it’s just the instructor, or whether belly dancing just doesn’t do it as cardio for me.

I walked out to the parking structure with my gym trainee yesterday evening. She asked what I had planned. I said I may just watch TV on the couch until I fall asleep, which is a great luxury cuz I don’t have kids to pick up, cook for, or otherwise tend to. Driving home, I knew I had other options, too. I’d planned on going to jujitsu this week since the guilt has been driving me a bit batty. But it felt too cold to walk the 2 blocks from the parking area to the dojo. Childhood pal Vicky had called the other day, and I know she’s got more free time now, so we may plan something. Navy Girl Vanessa had invited me to a fitness class at 24 Hour Fitness that seemed interesting if I wanted to drive all the way out there. I also called James to see what time he was getting off work — not till late, he didn’t expect to be home till closer to 8p, but he left it up in the air after that (since he doesn’t sleep, anyway). Mr. W had also called on my drive home and said if I get bored, to go over to his house and play more video games with him and his bro.

So after I got home, I made some noodles for dinner and ate that while watching TV. Next thing I knew, it was 4am, “Cops” was on TV (no wonder I was dreaming about catching criminals), and 2 out of my 4 previously lit candles had burned themselves out. I blew out the remaining candles and went upstairs to bed.

Earlier at work, I received an email from Vanessa who asked if I ended up going to jujitsu, and confessed that she’d missed the workout class at the gym. She said she put some fish in the oven, sat down to wait for it and the next thing she knew, it was 7pm, she’d missed class, and the fish was burnt.

Mr. W called earlier to see what I did last nite. I had to confess that I didn’t do much of anything. He laughed at me. I said that Vanessa had done the same thing, except she burnt fish instead of candles. He said it’s lucky we didn’t burn our houses down. I said that’s why we used to live well together; I was awake in the early evening so she wouldn’t have forgotten the fish, and she used to blow out my candles in the wee hours when I fell asleep watching TV. My college roommie used to take the textbook out of my hands and turn off the reading lamp when I fell asleep. Haha. Some things never change.

Had a nightmare about being at a joint bday party for my twin friends Dwaine and Andrae, where the Cheating Ex (an optometrist by profession) showed up uninvited with a few of his inebriated friends and tried to force an eye exam on me, saying that it’s been too long since I’ve had my eyes checked. I had to swat his hands away and basically screamed bloody murder at him for trying anything with me. Toward the end of the party, which was becoming an all-nighter thing, Dwaine tried to make a move on me, and I had to turn him down due to the fact that I’m with Mr. W, altho he apparently didn’t even care enough to show up to the dreamland party.

I’m glad real life is easier than dream life.

The two brothers and I watched The Illusionist last nite. Pretty good movie, altho we predicted and unraveled the plot (accurately) as we went along the movie. I’d recommend picking up the DVD. It’s sort of like Romeo & Juliet, if Romeo were poor and into magic.

It’s nice to have a partner in crime in watching movies. Mr. W normally talks through an entire movie, but it’s more like he’s thinking out loud. Mr. W’s brother, on the other hand, makes smart-ass comments like this:

[At the opening scene, you see the illusionist sitting alone on the stage facing the audience. All is silent. The magician is staring intently into the crowd. Nothing happens yet, but in the flickering firelight from lit torches along the front of the stage, anticipation and tension are thick in the air.]
Brother: Boy, I hope these people didn’t pay a lot for their tickets.
Me: *snicker* Yeah, this looks like a real hard magic trick. How does he do that? *snicker*
Mr. W: Shhhh!
*all of us sitting in silence, still no sound or action happening on the TV*
Brother: Hey, turn the mute button off.
Me: *laughing*
Mr. W: SHHH!
Me: What, are you afraid you’re gonna not hear the silence?!
Mr. W: *death glare at me*
*all 3 sit in silence*
Mr. W: I love the lighting in this movie. It’s such great photography how you only see half his face.
Me: SHHH! I can’t hear the silence!
[On-screen, the magician’s manager gets onstage and introduces the magician to the audience.]
Manager: *dramatically* Life…and death. Chance…and fate.
Me: Peanut butter…and jelly.
Mr. W: I’M HAVING BAD THOUGHTS NOW. *staring me down*
Bro: We’re just giving you the real-life threatre experience.
Me: Yeah. *in infant voice* WAAAAH! WAAAAH!!
Bro: Where’s my cell phone? It should be ringing right now.
Me: *laughing*
Mr. W: *siiiigh*

Mr. W, his bro and I had lunch at Original Mike’s today, where I watched his bro consume an entire full rack of ribs. (“You can’t finish a full rack in one meal here!” “Oh yeah? Watch me.”) Then, walking toward the Prius, Mr. W ordered me to drive back to his house despite my protests. I’m really uncomfortable driving people’s cars, especially their new cars. I go through a paranoid period when I get a new car, so I’m pretty sensitive to other people’s PP, too. “Just do it,” Mr. W insisted, “And you can see what it feels like to drive a car with only 4 cylinders.” Does a Prius actually have 4 cylinders? It has pretty decent torque for 4 cylinders, but it doesn’t jump and fly into warp speed the way my IS350 does. I was secretly relieved. I’d have been mad if I could’ve spent $10K+ less on a car that is more fuel efficient (600 miles to the 12-gallon tank) without sacrificing the power. The Prius is perfect for Mr. W, however, because he gets the headroom in the dome-shaped roof of the Autopia-looking car, and crazy gas mileage, and it’s small enough to fit in a garage unlike his last few vehicles when he was in a run of 4 or 5 Toyota Tundra double-cabs, and it’s pretty affordable in the mid-$20K range. Plus it has most of the bells and whistles of a luxury car, i.e. touchscreen navigation system, back-up camera, upgraded speakers and 6-disk CD changer. He doesn’t have my tooshie-toastin heated seats, tho, but that’s okay for him cuz he also doesn’t have to deal with leather, either.

I heard on a local radio show on Friday that a private survey shows that more American men would rather have sex with a post-operative transvestite than with an obese woman. Then male callers called in and it was pretty well split down the middle on where they stand. The ones who say they’d rather have a one-night stand with a transgender says at least the transgenders are totally hot and they now have female parts (altho artificially created), but that obese women just visually turns them off. The ones who’d take the obese woman said that they’d be confused sexual-orientation-wise if they slept with someone born biologically male, and even tho the obese female is not as aesthetically pleasing as a hot “transie,” at least she’s a woman. And then there are the callers who say they had sexual experiences with these transies and they are hotter than most normal women, and until told, they really couldn’t tell that these women were once men. I will admit that there are transsexual women out there who are able to make themselves up to be way hotter than I can ever hope to look, even with professional makeup. Plus they have that great male metabolism. Another factor both sides of the men mentioned is how much crap their buddies would give them for having sex with one or the other. One caller said if you put an incredibly hot transie next to a fat Rosie O’Donnell and tell a man he has to pick one for a one-nighter, his pals will understand that he picks the transie once they see the two options. The radio personalities then said, “There are overweight women listening to this right now who want to kill themselves knowing that men would rather have sex with a biological male than have sex with them, cuz they’re fat.” Ick.

I have male readers, don’t I? Where do you guys stand on this? Girls? How do you feel about the survey that concludes more men would take a pretty ex-boy over an overweight you? (Mr. W feels that society today is more forgiving if he has sex with a fat girl than with a transgender.)

I whole-heartedly delved into Mr. W’s little boy hobby yesterday. The three of us (Mr. W, his bro and I) started XBox 360’s “Marvel Ultimate Alliance” at 7:30p and turned it off at…uh…2am. Our characters went from Level 1 to 12. The guys plan on finishing the game before bro goes home next weekend. Yikes! It’s like high school Nintendo addiction all over again! I enjoyed playing the character of X-Men’s Storm, except she seems to be a weak combat fighter. She’s just cool cuz she can fly so she gets across the screen quickly. I can’t seem to aim her lightning bolt attacks very well, so after half an hour or so of being Halle Berry, I played the rest of the game as X-Men’s Wolverine. Now that’s a boy who can jump right into the heart of action and slash some enemies up! Playing Wolverine scratches an itch that road rage creates. How awesome it would be if I could leap over my car, yank some asshole driver out of his Corolla and do a double hook punch into his chest with metal blade claws. GARGH! After going to bed I dreamt the game for another 6 hours.

Speaking of cars, I brought the Lexus in for its 5,000 mile first service today. It was complimentary and the invoice didn’t state how much things would have cost had they charged me, but the people in front of me in the checkout line had this conversation with a young-looking, rather air-headish receptionist/desk worker:
Lexus desk worker: *handing over invoice* That’ll be [some price, I wasn’t listening yet] please.
Lexus owner’s boyfriend: That’s an expensive oil change!
Lexus desk worker: *defensively* Oh, they do much more than just an oil change. This is the car’s first major-major service. *looking at invoice* Oh, they gave you a great deal on the brakes!
Lexus owner: *dubiously* They did?
Desk worker: Yeah! They’re normally $400, and here they charged you $432.
Owner’s boyfriend: *looking at invoice, correcting desk worker* $332.
Desk worker: *not realizing she’d misspoken* Yeah. Here they charged you $332 for one, and $340 for the other one.
Owner: But you said they’re normally $400?
Desk worker: They’re normally $400 each, so $800 total.

This is just for BRAKES, and not even including labor charges and whatever other service they did? Holy CRAP. I’m gonna try not to brake. Ever.

When I first walked in to pick up my car, I had to wait like 15 minutes for the receptionist/desk worker who was having THIS conversation with an Asian guy:
Desk worker: *typing away on the computer* I’m not seeing your name come up. Lemme try something else…no, that didn’t work, either. You said Robert Sang, right?
Robert Sang, apparently: Yes.
Desk worker: *typing and deleting sporadically* Is it spelled C-H-U-N-G?
Robert Sang: No, it’s S-A-N-G.
Desk worker: Oh, then I was way off. Haha. *typing some more* S-U-N-G.
Robert Sang: No, S-A-N-G.
Desk worker: Oh, I’m sorry. *typing some more* It’s still not coming up. I wonder why it’s not coming up. Oh wait, there’s an S-U. *looking up at him* Is it Su?
Robert Sang: No, it’s Sang.
Desk worker: How about S-H-U? There’s a Robert Shu in here…?
Robert Sang: *looking confused* No…
Me: Look, his last name is not negotiable, okay?!
Desk worker: Oh, HERE it is! Robert Sang!
Me: *leaping over the desk, stabbing her with my extended Wolverine claws* Rawr!

I’m just kidding, I didn’t participate in this conversation. I just waited impatiently through 15 minutes of this crap while I looked as patient as possible (which wasn’t very patient).

Oh, and another thing. It’s part of Lexus service that when you bring your car in, they wash it for you before returning it to you. For free. This is the last time I’m gonna let them do that. My painstakingly Zainoed car has spider fabric scratches all over it!!! Waaaah!!! I can actually see the wipe strokes. How dirty were their rags?! I know they go through a lot of cars, especially on a Saturday late morning. It also wasn’t spotlessly clean; there are slight waterspots on my hood and smudgy dirty areas on the lower panels of my car. *sigh* If it weren’t gonna be in the 20s Fahrenheit tomorrow, I’d Zaino Z5 Swirl-Remover it. Oh yeah. Now that my car’s clean, I can more clearly see the scratches on my hood that the wooden spool left. There’s even an area where the paint’s so chipped that there are strings of rag fibers caught in its roughness. *siiiiiiiigh*

We’re getting David Beckham to play soccer for the L.A. Galaxy with a 5 year contract at $250 million plus endorsements?!?! And we can’t feed the homeless?

Posh Spice must be happy.

This post has no spunk. It’s just a list of things going on. Random stuff.

Yesterday, Mr. W got his ’07 Prius in silver metallic green. It’s a little freaky when the car switches from gas engine to electrical cuz it feels like the car just stalled. But Mr. W seems enamored with his new toy.

Mr. W’s gamer bro drives in from Vegas this afternoon to spend a week with him. It’s going to be a boys’ gaming week. I’ve been looking for other things to do with other people. 🙂 Maybe I’ll finally make it to my first jujitsu class this semester. Mr. W, however, speculates that he’ll be able to get me into the X-Men PS2 game. I should be better about playing with his hobbies the way he plays with mine. (Lucky for him, I don’t have any left.)

Today, we celebrated my court reporter’s birthday at work. I brought in an artisan dulce de leche caramel mousse cake and some specialty cheese (spicy jack, medium cheddar, Muenster, and provolone) and whole-wheat crackers. Everything was delicious and lots of people showed up to sing to her in our jury room. I took our wheelie chalkboard and wrote in big script “Happy 20th Birthday [her name]!” and drew confetti, balloons, cake and bday hat. People have been trickling by all day to nibble on the cheese and crackers. I guess that’s what it takes to see your coworkers — free food.

Dodo’s finally in his lambwool-lined catbed. It’s been cold here again, the low tomorrow is predicted to be in the 30s. He curls up in a circle in it and shoves his cone into the wall of the catbed, sealing off the opening. I wonder if it bothers him when his cone is cold from the weather. He was trying to scratch his right ear through his cone this morning so I dug around in there and used up 6 Q-tips.

I think I’m becoming more lactose-tolerant. I haven’t been too religious on the acidophilus use lately, but it doesn’t seem to matter. I had green tea ice cream for dessert at lunch after sushi. Not to talk about the caramel mousse cream in the cake and all the different cheeses.

Okay, I’m feeling guilty. Extremely guilty. I have not gone to jujitsu this entire semester. I didn’t enroll, either, but I’m still on their mailing list and the emails keep urging attendance, saying the dojo is in danger of shutting down this semester due to lack of interest. I feel horrible, but I’m still not interested. It was something I did to expand my physical defense/combat knowledge and to take up time while I was single. Mr. W takes up most of my evenings now, and I enjoy that. I think he likes me being his little shadow when he runs his errands.

I also told a coworker that I’d take up belly dancing with her instructor this session. I think the first class is today. I was planning to go, but now Mr. W springs on me that he’s planning to buy a Prius today, so now I wanna be there.

Oh no, am I turning into The Girlfriend and not Cindy anymore? 🙁

*** Addendum ***
I just got a call from the coworker, who’s all nasal sounding at home. She’s been out sick for a week, and apologizes but she can’t make the class today. I’m off the hook! Guilt’s gone!

*** Additional Addendum ***
Mr. W just called. He’s leaving early to go to the dealership to get the car, since the salesperson he’d been negotiating with leaves at 6p. So I guess I actually could have made belly dancing. Oh well. The jurors buzzed that they have a verdict now, anyhow.