cindy's world

This would’ve been the day to call in sick. There’s a throbbing pain behind my left eyeball in my head, and I’m pissed as hell from being unable to reach Mr. W since 5:30p yesterday despite calling his cell, house, and leaving messages. I also didn’t sleep well last nite because I still had my summer sateen sheets on the bed and was freezing to death. I really need to change to one of my flannel sheets. I actually had to duck my face inside the covers so my nose and face could thaw out, and then I was scared of falling asleep and suffocating. Even now my fingers are frozen, stiff and painful. I suppose I can skip a workout today at lunch, since I got to go to jujitsu yesterday evening. It was just a 45 minute workout then a potluck/movie (we saw Kung Fu Hustle, which I did not know was entirely a Mandarin-speaking movie), but we ate healthy and I managed to sweat during the workout despite its minute duration and the freezing temperatures. Besides, I did run yesterday at lunch, a little over 3 miles.

Or maybe I just want to go shop or something, I dunno. I hate crowds, tho.

Where’s a pissy, cold antisocial girl to go?

** Addendum: We’re on a break right now and I just went to get some coffee and brought it back to my desk. It’s so cold that I gave a big shudder and almost spilt the half-full cup on myself. Good lord.

You know how sometimes you’re reading a blog, and that blog refers to another blog, and you think, “Oh, that’s cool, they’re supporting each other’s blogs.” But then sometimes one blogger talks about another blogger as if they actually know each other, and then they talk about meeting each other and lifting the blogger interaction from the pixelated pages of the internet onto a real live 3-dimensional face to face interface. I know what you guys all think — “Pssh, they don’t actually know each other! It’s all just an act, a scam, shenanigans to hype their blogs. Everyone knows bloggers don’t have lives, and are too socially inept to deal with real human interaction.”

…

Well, here’s photographic evidence.

Apples are just kewl, aren’t they? When I was little, I’d imagine that early peoples (like Neanderthals, I guess) who didn’t know what an apple was would be handed this red hard rock-looking thing, and be told to bite into it. They’d dubiously look at the object in their hand. “But it’s hard. And I’m thirsty.” Then the apple introducer would explain that yes, it is a solid, but as you chew it, liquid comes out that you can just swallow directly. So they’d take their first hesitating bites. *Crunch, crunch, chug, chug.* “This is amazing! And it’s sweet! Apples are kewl!”
“Yes, and it cleans your teeth, too! Feel how squeaky clean your teeth surfaces are.”
*lick lick, squeak squeak*
(Cut me some slack. I am an only child. But my Barbies and stuffed animals always had the most interesting conversations with each other.) It’s juice, that travels easily. You don’t have to worry about spillage, it’s all contained in these solid-looking cells.

Now, there are so many different sizes, textures, flavors. You like slightly more sour juice with cleaner teeth? Gnaw on this Granny Smith apple. You like crisp and syrupy sweet? Here’s a Fuji apple. Have one a day! It keeps the doctor away! As you chew and drink, chew and drink, you’re actually getting all these great tasty vitamins and antioxidants, too! Easy delivery method, no pill-swallowing required.

Plus, there’s just something about apples that helps you go poo. I don’t know what it is, maybe all the fiber goes through your system and scrapes your innards clean on its way back out.

You want cold juice? Refrigerate an apple! And altho I’m not a fan of this, you can have your apples hot, too, cut in chunks and wrapped up in sugar and pastry shells!

Apples are as kewl as bar soaps are neato!

(Read the 1st in the Miraculous Series [which may turn out to be just a two-part post instead of a whole series, I dunno yet], The Miraculous Soap Bar.)

Mr. W had no plans for lunch, so after hearing all the commotion about my tires being overinflated, he offered to come find my car and deflate my tires to the proper PSI for me. (What a great guy!) Meanwhile I hitched a ride with my gym trainee to go work out at the gym for lunch, laughing about how people would see him letting air out of my tires and go, “Dude, did you guys break up?”. That’s when I checked out her tires and saw that her maximum PSI was 44, which made me wonder what makes my tires so different to have a maximum of 51.

We just took a break in our trial, and I was able to touch base with Mr. W. He said he did indeed let out the air in all 4 tires to between 34 and 35 PSI, BUT that the tire said the maximum PSI is 40 and not 51.

=O !!!

Not only am I going blind and can’t read numbers anymore, but I almost killed myself! Mr. W quickly said that it was dark in the parking structure so maybe he saw the numbers wrong, or maybe it was a recommended PSI and not a maximum PSI.

Can I leave right now and go look again?!

Oh, and he also said his tire pressure gauge read that I had 40 PSI in each tire, not almost 50. Did I spring a leak in all 4 tires? I did drive thru broken glass the other day! Waaaaah!!!

I was just in the midst of an email exchange with a coworker. She wanted to know if I still had a copy of an email forward entitled “The Slightly Gay Male” which described the modern day “metrosexual.” She said she wanted to send it to a friend who’s in denial about his metrosexuality. There was no way I could dig that old email out, and we went back and forth on how she could bring up her archived mail and look in there, and when that didn’t work, I had the brilliant idea of telling her to google “slightly gay male” because it’s the internet, and any forwarded email can probably be found online. I know I certainly post some of my favorite forwards as “humor”, as pages linked from my sidebar.

A minute later, my phone rings. It’s the coworker. “Uh, Cindy,” she starts. “I would recommend that you do not look up slightly gay male on Google.”
“Why not?”
“Because… *hesitantly*…all this porn popped up about slightly gay male sex!”
Oops.

Oh, for heaven’s sake, people, he’s RIGHT THERE!

Now look again at the original photos, you’ll be able to spot him in the other one, too.

Oh my gosh, lemme tell you guys what happened to me this morning before work! To squeeze all that drama in (which happened in a half-hour), I’ll have to write this Jordan-style. What happens when you’re too tired to go to jujitsu, and too tired to get up for work at your normal time? You have a tire problem.

Last nite, I skipped jujitsu (in reality, I still didn’t go to jujitsu) and went to Mr. W’s house after work. Usually when I stay over, I leave when he leaves for work, and I go home to shower and get ready. This morning, however, I could not get out of bed. I was just sleepy and cold. So with a kiss, he left me in bed and warned me not to stay too long or I’d be late for work. (stop laughing, people who know me) I probably only left 10 mins after he did. As soon as I turned on the ignition, the car went thru its usual systems checks, and then flashed a warning on the dashboard: “TIRE LOW!” There were two or three more warning lights in red and yellow. I realize this is not a big deal for most men, who’d interpret the warning and act accordingly. But for me, I just stared at it. “Tire low? What’s that mean? Maybe my tire pressure is low. What do I do? WHICH tire? And how low is it? Is it DANGEROUSLY low, or can I drive the 20 freeway miles home, and the 7 miles to work until I can have some male coworker look at it for me? It’s a new car; how can it have problems?!” I got out of the car and examined all 4 tires. A minute later, I shrugged and sat back in the car. The warning bells and whistles were all still dancing like sugarplum fairies. I looked to the left, where I saw Mr. W’s truck parked. He’d driven my Accord to work today. If we’d left at the same time, I could’ve left my Lexus there to deal with later, and he could’ve taken his truck and I could’ve taken the Accord. Maybe he’s not too far out yet. Maybe he can at least give me advice on whether he thinks I can make it all the way home. My cell was dead, but luckily I had a car charger, which I plugged in and called his cell phone.
1.5 rings later:
Phone: Hi, this is [Mr. W]. Can’t get your call right now so just leave a message.
Me: Hey, it’s Cindy. I’m in my car right now, and there’s a warning light on saying my tire’s low. I don’t know whether I should risk driving all the way back home and explode into a big ball of flames on the freeway. *click*

Having nothing else to do, I got behind the wheel and backed out slowly. The car’s moving all right. I called James. He has an expensive foreign car, he should know what to do. But of course at 7:15a, he wouldn’t be awake yet, something about rolling into work at 10:30a daily. (Why do techies have such late work hours?!) I drove carefully out of the neighborhood and down the block before paranoia took over and I pulled into the nearest Chevron. After parking in front of the air/water machine thingie, I squatted and looked at my left front tire. Shouldn’t it say on the tire what the pressure ought to be? I read the entire tire, turning my head upside-down. “Max. 51 PSI” I read. I unscrewed the air cap on the tire, grabbed the air nozzle on the machine and shoved the two ends together. The instructions on the nozzle said to release lever for pressure reading. My tire was only a few lines past 30, so I must only be at 32 PSI! That’s really far from 51! The machine said 50 cents to use the air/water, so I went thru my coin purse. I had one quarter. How could I only have one quarter? I ALWAYS have coins! I checked my little travel wallet in the glove compartment; I usually leave coins in there. It was EMPTY! What the hell. The only money I had on me was a dollar bill. So I locked my car and trudged into the station’s mini mart.
Me: Hi, can I get change for this dollar? I just need to put air in my tires.
Girl attendant: Oh, that’s free!
Me: Really?!
Girl attendant: Yeah, just push the button to the side of the machine and hold for 3 seconds. *she pushes a button behind the counter*
Me: Thank you so much!

Back at the car, I pushed the button and the machine hummed to life. I squatted in front of my front left tire again and put the nozzle into the tire. A sticker on the nozzle handle said to check tire pressure often. Thanks for the late advice, that’s how I got into this mess, I thought. And then I realized that it meant “As you’re filling your tires, check pressure often so you don’t overinflate,” not “Haha you should’ve checked your tires more regularly so they didn’t go flat, ya moron.” I hit the trigger. Fffft. 34 PSI. Fffft. 36 PSI. Fffffffffffffffffffffffffft. 44 PSI. Fffffffffft. 49 PSI. Ffft. Ffft. Fft. 50 PSI. That should be good, right below the maximum.

I checked the left back tire. It said 32 PSI, too! So I filled that one to 47PSI. I had second thoughts about overinflating the first tire, so I let some air out to 47 PSI, too. I got back behind the wheel and started the ignition. “TIRE LOW!” I didn’t hit the correct tire!! I was able to drag the hose over to the right front tire, but the machine had stopped humming. I checked the tire pressure. It, too, was at 32 or so PSI. I turned my car around and then ran back into the mini mart to beg the nice lady attendant to turn the air back on. Then I ran out and filled the other 2 tires to about 48 PSI. Now the car did its check and everything showed fine. Driving out of the gas station, my phone rang with Mr. W’s special ring tone.
W: My phone’s doing this weird thing again with a SIM card problem and keeps shutting off and not letting me make a call! So I had to take the battery out, take the SIM card out, and then put it all back in and turn everything back on again.
Me: Yeah, when I called you, your phone only rang like one and a half times before it went to voice mail.
W: You must’ve called when it had turned itself off. I didn’t even know you called. I only checked my phone because while I was driving, I had the overwhelming urge to call you and tell you I love you, so I took out the phone and saw that it turned itself off again.
Me: You had the overwhelming urge to call me and tell me you love me because I was gonna die in a big ball of flames on the freeway.
W: Well where are you now?
Me: I’m driving to the freeway. I just filled up all my tires. They were all only at 32 PSI!
W: That’s pretty normal. What’d you fill them up to?
Me: Just under 50.
W: 50!! That’s WAY too HIGH! You don’t want to fill it that high because when your car’s driving for awhile, the tires heat up anyway and the pressure will go up again. You might blow a tire!
Me: *blink blink* …But the TIRE says the maximum is 51! That should be the maximum to drive it safely, not “Your car will explode at 51 PSI”!
W: It says 51? …Well, I don’t know, every car’s tires are different.
Me: The car’s warning lights all turned off now.
There was some further discussion about high-performance vehicles and under-inflating high-performance tires which I will not bore you with, presuming perhaps audaciously that you’re not bored already and are still reading this.

I suppose your average manly man would’ve gotten the car warning, and simply pulled a tire pressure gauge out of his front shirt pocket, or from the back of his pants, and tested the tires, humming all the while. And he would’ve said, “Oh, this car’s warning is pretty conservative. The pressure’s still fine. I’ll fill it up to 36.7512 PSI after work today,” then he would’ve put the tire gauge back up his ass and then hummed his way back into the car and driven uneventfully to work. But for ME, I imagine this exchange took place above my panic:
Cindy’s Spirit Guide: Dude, she’s freaking out. She can’t be freaking out. Call Mr. W, he’ll tell you everything’s all right.
Mr. W’s Spirit Guide: She can’t call him, his phone’s going wacky again!
Cindy’s Spirit Guide: Well, get him to fix it!
Mr. W’s Spirit Guide: How?! He doesn’t even realize it’s off!
Cindy’s Spirit Guide: I don’t know, she’s about to drive home! Make him call HER or something.
Mr. W’s Spirit Guide: He doesn’t even normally call her. What reason could I possibly give him to make him contact her?
Cindy’s Spirit Guide: I don’t know, make him call to check if she got up for work or something. Or just to call and tell her he loves her.
Mr. W’s Spirit Guide: Oh right, like that’s gonna work.

Here are photos of what I was doing this past long weekend. Rest the mouse pointer over the photos for captions.

This is what I looked like in Mr. W’s first 50 photos of Thanksgiving Thursday, no matter if I was in the foreground, midground or background:

We went for a stroll at an upscale outdoors mall, and saw these nice decorations.

Here are the Red Rocks shots.

The unveiling of Mr. W:

I was chatting with childhood friend Sandy over the weekend about how much we love Trader Joe’s whole organic food products. I’d seen this great jar of marinara sauce at Trader Joe’s, some garlic basil flavor, and had to buy it. Except that after I got it home, I couldn’t get the jar open. So I’d put it back in the cabinet. Every so often, when I’d have a craving for tomato-based pasta, I’d pull out the pot and put it on the stove, dig out the dried pasta and set it on the counter, and pull the jar of marinara out of the cabinet. And I’d struggle and fight with the jar, admit defeat, then put the pot back on the shelf, the pasta and jar back in the cabinets. Sandy suggested some ways to unscrew uncooperative jar lids. “There’s nothing I haven’t already tried!” I explained. “I’ve used a dry dish rag. I’ve used a wet dish rag. I’ve knocked the lid against the counter. I’ve had the jar between my knees as I sat on the ground. I’ve had it between one knee and the carpet. I’ve thrown my entire weight onto the lid. It freaking doesn’t open!”
“What about asking someone for help?”
“I live alone! I’m not gonna walk around outside with a jar of sauce and ask passerbys for help! And I’m not friendly with my neighbors. Besides, if I asked a guy neighbor, he’s gonna think it’s a setup to get him to play hero so I can talk to him.”
“So how often do you take that jar out to try to open it?”
“Oh, like every 3 or 4 months.”
“3 or 4 months? How long have you had it?!”
“Not that long, like a year.”
“A year! So you haven’t had pasta in a year cuz you couldn’t get the jar open? Why don’t you just go buy another jar?”
“Because I already have a jar at home, I’m not gonna buy another one, then I’ll have TWO! I don’t eat that much sauce.”
“But if you can’t open it –”
“But I’m still Asian. I’m not gonna waste something that I already have, or spend money on another one.”
She laughed and said, “Okay, I do understand that. But I just bought a jar of sauce from Trader Joe’s last week, I think it’s even the same tomato basil one, and now I’m wondering if I’M gonna have that problem.”
I said, “Well, now that I know you have the same jar, I’m bringing mine to your house and I’m gonna swap the two when you’re not looking. Then you’ll just think all Trader Joe’s jars are impossible to open. We’ll see how YOU handle it.”

I visited my parents last nite and had dinner with them. My mom packed all this food for Mr. W that he could have for lunch today, because he wasn’t able to go with me to their house this weekend.

Mom: [wrapping up food for Mr. W] So you stayed at his parents’ house in Las Vegas?
Me: Yes.
Mom: Did his mom prepare 2 bedrooms for you?
Me: No, just one.
Mom: *pause* Just one? She was okay with you two being in the same room?
Me: That’s how she did it the last time we went over there, too.
Mom: I think if his parents are letting you two stay together like that, you two should start some serious discussions about getting married.
Me: What? WHY?!
Mom: Because his parents already accepted you as someone in that situation, it’s just weird if you’re not headed there.
Me: They’re white! It’s not a big deal to them! If it were some Asian household, sure that’d be weird and it’d be a big deal, but they’re white, so it’s totally normal!
Mom: You’re Asian.
Me: …

And I didn’t even tell her that his parents had requested couples photos of me with their son, as well as an individual photo of me so that they could frame them and put them up on their family photo wall, and that Mr. W and his dad had selected from some photos that were already in W’s computer and had them printed into 8x10s at Costco, AND the two picked them up already on Saturday morning.