cindy's world

That’s me. I wrote something on the Disneyland Half-Marathon run entry about running next to a guy in a banana costume, and the next day, the same guy commented on that entry to explain the costume. That’s SO COOL. Let’s see whom else I can get to talk to me!

I think it would be so cool to be friends with Jennifer Aniston.
I think Antonio Sabato, Jr. is really hot and my friend Vicky bought me his workout book as a drool-inducer many years ago, but it had actually changed and improved the way I work out. Great advice, Antonio!
My great-uncle Miao Tien is a movie actor in Taiwan who’d passed away recently, and he told me in ’98 that he was friends with Jackie Chan before Jackie became the megastar he is now. They used to drink tea together. I think it’d be neat if Jackie Chan gave me a shout-out.
I’m a bit concerned about Danny Bonaduce. I haven’t heard anything about him since his reality TV show, which documented his family life, showed him getting back into drugs and his marriage falling apart. Because I was a huge fan of his when he was on a morning radio talkshow, I know he tends to overdramatize for the TV cameras, so I hope he’s okay and his marriage is intact. It’d be neat if he could let me know how he’s doing.

*sitting back and waiting*

Mr. W: Who is that? Is that a good guy? …I can hit him. Oh, I can become him. Who am I? I’m a bounty hunter?
Me: Do you always think out loud when you play video games, or are you doing that for my benefit?
Mr. W: …

I’d always known that I’m surrounded by so-called coincidences, but I never really kept track of them until James made a big deal out of how odd it is that “coincidences” keep happening to me. Here are some more in the past 2 weeks:

At Dwaine and Andrae’s bday party on Saturday, we got there early so Andrae gave us a tour of Dwaine’s house, which I’d told Mr. W before that he’d love because Dwaine and Mr. W have similar tastes in decor. Rich mahogany wood and leather couches, interesting global artifacts, British-looking pieces with guilded gold accents. Mr. W remarked that he did indeed admire Dwaine’s decor, wall paint, etc. and I whispered, “Actually, his mom had a lot to do with the pieces. She picked most of them out.” Suddenly the front door opened behind me and said mom walked in, carrying flowers for her sons’ shindig. “Speaking of their mom, here she is!” I said as I gave her a big hug. Half an hour or so later, Mr. W and I sat on the couch and I told him that my ex Gary may be coming with his current girlfriend, but I wasn’t sure because Gary didn’t respond on the Evite and when I’d asked him about it, he’d said he may have to help his girlfriend move that weekend. Right then I heard Andrae greet someone at the front door and I looked up and there was Gary with his girlfriend. I did the Chandler (of Friends, pilot episode) thing then, saying, “And I just want a million dollars!” and swept my arm toward the door. Nothing. Later, as we got ready to leave, I gave their mom another hug and said my regrets at having to leave early due to my race the next morning, and said, “I guess we missed your husband,” a wonderful man who was known to arrive trendily late. “Yeah, it’s too bad,” she said, and then IN walked said husband! “Oh, there he is! I guess we’re not gonna miss him after all!” I said and walked up to give Dwaine and Andrae’s dad a hello/goodbye hug.

I’ve been playing random CD Roms of various MP3s in my new car. I didn’t recall what was on the CDs, but it turned out that I had clips of Margaret Cho’s stand-up comedy. I’m a big fan of hers. Last week I heard a snippet of Margaret saying, “I know I’m not fat, but I have a fat complex. I got it as a child because of this one old lady. When I was small, there was this old black lady that lived near us, really old and wise, like Alice Walker, The Color Purple. One day she said to me, ‘Baby…I used to be able to fly, but I cain’t fly no’more, baby. But baby, you…you too fat to fly.’ ” A day or two after I heard that in my car, I was at the gym on the elliptical trainer with my gym trainee and she said, “My [9-year-old] son and I watched The Color Purple last night. I had to convince him that that’s Oprah Winfrey. He did not believe me!” I laughed and said, “Yeah, she did good in that film! Her character was exactly how Alice Walker wrote her in the book. Oprah was fat back then.” My trainee said, “Yeah, he had to sit there and read through the end credits to believe me. He kept saying, ‘Oprah don’t look like that!’ I said, ‘She did back then!’ ” I heard that Margaret Cho clip again 2 days ago in my car driving to work, and I chuckled to myself. That evening, I visited Mr. W, who knew nothing of my Alice Walker experiences, at his work and he pulled out a DVD from his desk. “Look!” he said, “I have The Color Purple! My coworker loaned it to me!” I told him how I had heard the clips in my CD in the car and how my trainee had said her son didn’t believe it was Oprah Winfrey. He’d never seen the movie nor read the book. I guess we’re watching The Color Purple this weekend.

After the half-marathon on Sunday morning, I overheard a guy telling his friend, as he looked at his heart monitor watch thingie, “I burned 1650 calories.” I thought, knowing my stubborn body, I probably burned 16. When Vicky finished, she checked her monitor, and announced, “I burned 18[something] calories!” So I figured I must’ve lost something after running for 2.5 hours. So this morning I got on the scale. No change in pounds, no change on body fat percentage. Argh! Stupid stubborn body fat! To all the teenagers out there: DO NOT GET ANOREXIC. It is SO not worth it when your body doesn’t respond to ANYTHING.

I’d been dying to chop my hair, but held off until after the half-marathon because I needed it long enough to be tied up in a ponytail. So yesterday after work, I went and got it chopped. I showed the lady the picture on my college ID (age 21), she said, “That’s cute! Okay.” and went to work. 15 minutes and 9 inches later, it was done, and I was happy. How refreshing it is to feel the way I did at age 21 again! Here’s a cameraphone pic of me at work today (after a little bit of a large-barreled curling iron):

Is it just me or do I still look tired from my run?

We got a 5-defendant special circumstance preliminary hearing this morning. The district attorney came up to my desk to alert me to the fact that we need 4 interpreters for witnesses, for the languages of Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and Arabic. “What is this, a liquor store shooting?” I joked.

“Actually, yeah!” the DA said while a private attorney for a defendant laughed.

I was surprised. “I was just making a cliche statement joke, I didn’t really presume –”

“I like her sense of humor,” the DA said.

“Yeah, just don’t let it get beyond this courtroom,” I said. Before I posted it online for the world to read.

(as always, rest your mouse pointer over my photos for captions)

Shortly before 7:00 a.m. on Sunday, Mr. W was awakened when his cell phone received the livetracking automatically generated text message that indicated I had just passed the 5K point in the Disneyland Half-Marathon. He got up, jumped in the shower, checked the course map to see where the 5K marker was, then decided to drive out to Angel Stadium (which is Mile 10) to take photos of us. He didn’t expect to see me because he had no idea where I was by the time he got to the stadium, but figured he could take photos of the runners by the stadium and photoshop me in later. Turned out, he didn’t have to because I ran right up to him. He didn’t even know it was me until I waved in his face. I’d thought he had it so perfectly planned; turned out it was just chance.

At the completion of the 13.1 mile race, finishers were given this gawdy huge gold commemorative Inaugural Disneyland Half-Marathon medal, which on our tired bodies felt like 3 pounds. But it was really only 2 pounds. Haha.

An exhausted Vicky right after she finished:

Thanks to Mr. W for the photos, and for making me feel like walking the half-marathon is not an option. And for driving me around the next day and waiting on me hand and foot because I was in too much pain (whilst calling me an emperor penguin for my hobbling). “It’s my job,” he’d said when I thanked him on Sunday. “It’s not your job to chauffeur me around,” I’d said. “It’s my job to take care of you,” he told me with a kiss.

I was out of bed at 3:30 a.m., down in front of the hotel waiting for the shuttle at 4:15 a.m., at Disneyland at 4:35 a.m., in my corral waiting for the start of the race at 5:05 a.m., sniffling in the cold darkness. Yes, there were indeed people in trash bags, just like Greg said. There were also people in Tinkerbell and Peter Pan outfits, and those were just the men. A lot of women wore Minnie Mouse outfits, one in Pocahontas, another in Snow White, and lots and lots of them wore Mickey ear hats. When we were going down the Downtown Disney street being funneled from the corral to the start street, I looked up and saw that they had stopped the Disneyland Monorail directly above our path and a ton of Disney cast member characters in costume were hanging out of the Monorail cheering and waving at us. That and the pyrotechnics as we launched were pretty cool.

My goal: be done by 8:30 a.m., especially because it looked like it was going to be a clear and sunny day. At 4:30 a.m., the sky was dark but with visible moon and stars. Darn it!
What I did not expect: it took me 10 minutes to even get to the start line. Oh well, I guess I should change my aim to 2 hours and 30 minutes from the time I started, which would make it 8:40 a.m., which I acknowledge is optimistic considering I haven’t trained more than 3 or so miles before the race.

the liveresult emailed to me:
disney@alerts.activeresult.com to email-services
More options 8:34 am (6 hours ago)
CINDY [my last name], 02:22:47 @ Finish: Disneyland Half Marathon presented by Kaiser Permanente, Disney Destinations LLC

Woohoo!

Other stuff I did not expect:
* running through Disneyland and California Adventure took forever because people kept stopping in front of me to take pictures with the Disney characters that had come out to cheer us on (I hit 5K or a little over 3 miles in 45 minutes; 3 miles normally takes me less than 30)
* I felt so incredibly good through mile 8 that I thought I could run an entire marathon; I only stopped to a walk twice at that point, both times for 30 seconds to drink some water that was offered
* the first physical pain hit me at mile 10; the PowerAid I’d drunk the mile before was giving me pain on the right side of my waist, like it does when I eat too much and then play too hard, so I walked for about 30 more seconds
* after rounding the bases inside Angel Stadium, I ran out of the stadium to see Mr. W on the side of the track taking photos (photos to come as he shrinks them down enough to be uploaded)
* I ran near a banana almost the entire time (an Asian guy in black tights wearing a banana suit shaking maracas — I didn’t get it)
* the last 3 miles were so incredibly hard because the physical pain kicked in; my right 4th toe felt tingly and sloshy, like a huge blister enveloped the entire top half of the toe; the left foot’s 4th toe hurt, too, but not as badly; to compensate for the weight I’m trying to keep off the toe, the inside of my ankles started hurting. I was having trouble lifting my shoes entirely off the ground in the steps
* Since I started 10 mins late, and I started having some problems toward the end, I figured there was no way I would finish before 8:30; instead, I finished at 8:32a; the chip time (which takes into account the fact that I crossed the start line late) is 2:22
* Vicky, doing her run-2-minutes-walk-a-minute routine finished only 32 minutes behind me, and she was feeling good with no injuries (except a slightly swollen ankle)

The music I had on the MP3 player helped immensely. I know this because for a brief moment, the gap between 2 songs was unusually long and I was running in silence. Hearing my footsteps pound on the ground, I was immediately drained. But as soon as the music started back up, I was all good and could run uphill over the 5 Freeway without slowing down much. During the run, as I surprised myself with how well I was handling everything cardiovascularly, I thought about Greg (the commenter who suggested I wear a trash bag) and the time I ran with him in San Francisco from the clock tower through Embarcadero to some old battalion thing under the Bay Bridge during the Blue Angels Air Show. It wasn’t until after the 12-mile run that I found out the farthest he’d ever run up to that point was 3-4 miles. “Then why’d you run this with me? Why didn’t you tell me?” I’d asked him. “Because I told you I’d run with you, and I didn’t want you to be all, ‘Oh, we didn’t do 12 miles because Greg wimped out.’ ”

I was afraid to look into my shoe after the run because I didn’t want to remove the sock and see a toenail fall out, which I hear is a relatively common occurrence. But what it appears to be, is a blood blister around the toe and under that nail. Despite the fact that the toe is the color of a black grape, I was instructed not to drain the blood for fear of infection. Maybe when the blood clots, the nail will fall out anyway, I dunno. I ran into an old friend, who’s also a running trainer, at the end of the race. She lectured me, “Next time, Cindy, when you decide to do something like this…TRAIN!” Well, hindsight, 20/20, etc.

The mandatory Fitness Expo at Disneyland Hotel was pretty cool. They gave out a lot of free edible nutriments, and the free t-shirt that races give participants turned out to be a Champion brand long-sleeve double-dry commemorative tech shirt. That’s almost worth the $80 this race costs! Okay, not really. I’d also been looking for trendy sunglasses, and bought 2 pairs at the expo. They’re really different from what I usually wear, mostly because I normally resist trends. Oh well, I gave in to them because I like the way these glasses look on me. One is a rhinestoned light blue lens, and the other is squared larger black frames. I have two pairs of Brooks Bros sunglasses that the Cheating Ex had given me for my bday a couple of years ago, which I don’t wear anymore, and friends were telling me to put them up on Craig’s List or Ebay. However, because some of those same friends were complaining about another friend of theirs putting up their gifts to her on Craig’s List, I don’t think I should do that. I mean, it’s kinda rude, isn’t it?

I just finished compiling a bunch of running songs into my MP3 player. At least 3 hours’ worth. And if it takes me longer to finish the half-marathon, well, then, I would be disqualified and shipped back on the bus. I’ve also set up the runners’ tracker so that me, Mr. W, and Navy Girl Vanessa get an instant text message on our cells whenever Vicky or I cross certain checkpoints, i.e. 10K, halfway, and finish line.

On my way to Dwaine’s house party, then to Disneyland! I can’t believe I’m gonna be in bed by 8. I bet neither Vicky nor I would be.

Me: *trying to cram out some last minute divorce cases before leaving for the day* Is there something ironic or inappropriate about divorcing people right before the weekend I run a half-marathon at Disneyland?
Mr. W: No, because these people will be overjoyed to get their divorce papers in the mail and they’ll wave them around and say, “Yay! I’M going to DISNEYLAND!”

How sad. I bet these people would’ve never thought that when they were getting married. Well, not the women, anyway. The men were probably forced onto the altar at gunpoint (or expecting baby-point).

Which reminds me. During warmups at jujitsu on Tuesday, the instructor asked Creepy Guy, “So what’d you do over the weekend? You got married?” Creepy Guy (who can’t even get a girl to go out w/him) responded with “Psh, I wish.” I instantly felt a “what a weirdo!” expression come over my face and looked around the mat to see who else thought Creepy Guy was a total moron for wishing he were married. Simultaneously, my instructor was responding, “No ya don’t.” And then I thought, “How sad is this? The institution of marriage is TOTALLY bastardized in my generation. No one thinks marriage is a good thing anymore. It’s more of a sacrifice you make when you don’t want to lose someone.”