cindy's world

My jujitsu instructor loaned me his extra martial arts top since I forgot mine at home yesterday, and I used the class community white belt, which is a size 6 (my own’s a 3), way too long for me. The excess length of belt that hung off the knot kept getting kicked up and would hit me in the face. During one exercise, I did a back roll and the belt flipped up and hit me in the eye. I finished the move, then walked back to the line with the offended eye closed.
Instructor: What’s wrong with you?
Me: The belt hit me in the eye.
Instructor: (pause, then putting his hands on my shoulders, speaks solemnly) I feel your pain.
Me: (pause) I know. I mourn deeply.
Instructor: I should’ve called you. I thought about calling you, but you didn’t call me when SC lost.
Me: I expected you to call me, too. I was surprised you didn’t. I thought about calling you to harass you and I changed my mind.
Instructor: And I thought about that so I didn’t call you to give you a hard time, either.

Some students around us had laughed when we got all dramatic and the instructor told me he felt my pain, but didn’t realize until this point that we were talking about the UCLA loss of the final NCAA game to Florida.

Stupid Greg. I hope you get a papercut with the money you won. He actually called me and IMed me to say, “Boooo, UCLA! Goooo, Florida! I need money! I need new shoes!”

Oh yeah. AND my internet’s not working at home again. I don’t know what’s wrong, my laptop picks up my internet wireless connection with excellent reception, but is unable to connect into it. =P

I’m at home, Vanessa’s here moving stuff in, and my INTERNET *AND* ROUTER IS WORKING!!!! YES!!!!! (Mr. W and I had come by my place at lunch and couldn’t get the router started.)

We’re gonna ditch jujitsu together and hit up a sports bar or something as soon as she’s settled.

I’m just EXCITED I HAVE INTERNET ACCESS AGAIN!!! WOOHOO!!!

I am seriously considering ditching jujitsu today to watch the Bruins take the NCAA Championship crown. But Navy Chick Vanessa’s supposed to meet up with me at jujitsu so that she could follow me back to my place after class and move in with me. I’m actually looking forward to having her live with me for a month. I left her a voice mail saying that I’m gonna skip class, giving her the option to either way for me to “pick her up” after class there so she could follow me back, or to come on her own with my directions, or to ditch class and watch the game with me. I’m not sure how into basketball she is, but she’s definitely not a UCLA alumnus.

We ran late into lunch today, so I didn’t get to go work out. I’m not going tonite. Tomorrow at lunch is my trainee’s bday and a ton of people are gonna take her out to lunch to celebrate and she’s invited me as well. So that leaves being good the rest of the week, I guess.

I kinda wish I knew some Bruins near me that I can watch the game with. I am definitely not driving to LA to hang with my Bruin friends up there. That’d be suicide. In 1995, the last time we won, riots broke out all over Westwood and there were students stampeding in the streets and they tipped over a KIIS (local Top 40s radio station) newsvan. It was embarrassing.

The things Diana and I had to hit after I picked her up on Thursday nite was

Thursday:
* sushi at Ch0mp on our way back to my house
Friday:
* old-style pancake breakfast
* lunch at Market City Caffe in Brea
* spa appointments in afternoon in Brea
* UCLA for NCAA Final Four gear in the evening
* Monterey Park for late-night Chinese food run on the way back from UCLA
Saturday:
* book my birthday flight up to San Jose online
* take her to the aiport in the late morning

Here’s how it actually went. I picked her up Thursday nite, traffic was hellish and there were always idiots in front of me. But whatever, that’s a commonplace occurrence, altho it was bad enough that Diana noted how I’m always behind the morons no matter what lane I change to. Getting to Chomp, we got a prime parking spot in a very overcrowded parking lot, and then we got out and saw a roped-off line in front of the restaurant by a bouncer. The bouncer told us that Thursday was their all-you-can-eat sushi nite and that’s what the line’s for. WHAT?! The ONE DAY we were there! The wait for the restaurant was hours-long, and we asked the bouncer how long the sushi bar wait was. He nodded at the line and said, “These people have been standing here for…oh…about 45 minutes already.” Jeebus! (I’ve never typed that before.) We were starving, so we got in my car, regretfully vacated our prime spot, and left. Diana then suggested Market City Caffe, which is one of her favorite Italian restaurants near me. We drove there, parked, walked over…it was closed already! It wasn’t that late! We then walked by another restaurant across the street that she was interested in trying, and it was closed, too. We’re 0 for 3. We finally walked to the nearby Taps Brewery and had a great dinner there. I had Chilean Sea Bass. Yum. So now it was totally late on Friday and we came back to my house, full, tried to stay up and watch TV and chat like the good ol’ days, but we must’ve both aged since college cuz we were asleep on the couch within the first 15 minutes of watching my Bewitched DVD.

On Friday morning, which is a holiday for me because it was Caesar Chavez’s birthday, Diana tried to do some work on her laptop but couldn’t because my internet router is secured. I put in what I thought was the password key to allow her access, but it was wrong. (She’d done most of her research the nite before on my laptop.) So I frantically IMed Mr. W, who was at work, and asked him if he recalled the correct password key which he set up when he set up my router. He did not, but suggested I simply push the tiny concealed “reset” button on the back of the router with a paperclip, and then re-set-up the router and make up my own password, allowing Diana access that way. Diana meanwhile was shaking her head, telling us it’s okay, don’t bother, that’s too much trouble. Well…always listen to an engineer who graduated magna cum laude from UCLA, because she was RIGHT. My router crashed. My modem crashed. I could not access the internet thru my laptop, desktop, or by unplugging my router and plugging my modem directly back into the desktop or the laptop. An hour or two of troubleshooting later, we gave up and drove to Knott’s Berry Farm for the big breakfast.
Knott’s was having some “special event” according to the signs, and a sign blocked off the regular entrance into the parking lot for the Knott’s Marketplace, so I unknowingly drove past it. There was nowhere to turn around once I passed that point, so I had to leave Knott’s and go around the block. I somehow did not go around the block as I thought and ended up lost. I hate driving around in circles and/or backtracking, but Diana’s calm nonchalance about the fact that I was now STARVING again while looking for a restaurant did chill me out. We eventually found our way back and I parked, and we walked to Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant. I walked in and noted how it looked totally different. She asked if the lobby was not how I remembered it. I said maybe I came in a different entrance before. We circled out and looked around. No, that’s the only entrance. This was weird. And then suddenly, I let out a gasp. This was NOT the restaurant I was thinking about! This was one I’d wanted to try, but never did. I was thinking about Po’Folks about 3 blocks away! Crap. We thought we’d try the restaurant anyway, but because of the late morning time that it now was, they had stopped serving breakfast. So we got back in the car, drove to Po’Folks while I cussed about how we’re perpetually hunting down restaurants fruitlessly, and did end up having a great lunch (it was WAY past breakfast time by now) there. I have no idea how I made that mistake — confused a restaurant I’d never been to with a restaurant I’d been to twice, and as recently as in the last month or so.
So now we were plenty full, not the state you want to be in when going to get massages. But we got to Glen Ivy Day Spa without further incident beyond idiotic drivers blocking me on the road. We did have a great massage, hung out in the jacuzzi and steam room, and then it was off to UCLA.
The drive there was great once we passed some initial clogs on the freeways, and it only took us an hour or so. We parked in Westwood with fairly little difficulty, grabbed some cookie ice cream sandwiches and walked to campus munching, and so far, so good. When we got on campus, happily high on sugar and reminscing, we were stopped dead in our tracks when we saw that an older lady trying to open the door to the Student Store apparently couldn’t. The door was locked! We peeped in. The store’s closed! We looked at the posted hours. It was an HOUR before the posted closing time for the day, and they were freakishly closed! Diana said it must be because it’s Spring Break. WTF! But who would close the store right before the weekend of the Final 4 game?! Do they not want to make money?! Diana suggested we just wander around Westwood to buy UCLA stuff at the smaller retail stores. How could all the stores be closed for Spring Break, right? We roamed Westwood and the few stores that sold UCLA anything either had virtually no selection, or were closed earlier than posted hours. Seriously, WHAT THE HECK?! Diana then remembered that there’s a UCLA Store in Santa Monica on 3rd Street Promenade which, she reasoned, couldn’t possibly be closed because 3rd Street is always bustling with people and activity. I was bummed about our luck, so she looked up the store on Google via her Internet-accessible Blackberry, read the phone number for the Santa Monica location aloud, and I dialed it on my cell phone. We were on a busy street in Westwood, so there were buses passing by, which kept me from hearing what the girl who answered said. It was just a “Blah-blah-blah! How can I help you?”
Me: Hi, I’m wondering what your hours are tonight.
Her: We’re open until 6.
Me: (looking at watch) It’s 6 right now.
Her: Oh! Well, we’ll be here ’till 7.
Me: Okay. I’m just wondering because we’re at UCLA right now trying to buy UCLA merchandise, and the Student Store’s closed, and I wanted to make sure you’d still be open before we drove all the way out to Santa Monica.
Her: Uh, I think you have the wrong number.
Me: What store did I call again?
Her: This isn’t a store. It’s a sex house.
Me: (pause) Oh, I definitely have the wrong number, then. Thank you!
Her: You’re welcome, have a great day.
Me: (to Diana, after hanging up) IT’S NOT A STORE, IT’S A SEX HOUSE! NOT EVEN A SEX STORE, BUT A SEX HOUSE! Isn’t that illegal?!
Diana: (checking her Blackberry for the Google listing again) What number did I give you?
Me: I have a SEX HOUSE on my phone record! This does NOT look good! If Mr. W ever checked my cell phone or phone bill, he’d think I was totally lying about us hanging out all day to do our own thing!
Diana: What number did you call?
Me: (reading number out of my “dialed” list)
Diana: That’s what it says! I DIDN’T read you the wrong number. But see, the address is totally correct. We should just go there, I’m sure they’re gonna be open late.

On the way to Santa Monica, we stopped by a great little Italian restaurant first where we had a delicious dinner, and it was pouring rain while we were inside eating, so we remarked on our great luck that at least we weren’t out walking on 3rd Street Promenade while it was raining that hard.
And then we hit 3rd Street in dry weather. It was POURING the second we stepped out of the parking structure, however. We walked up and down 3rd street, looking for the address, and we stopped and looked into the windows of…a whole different store. The UCLA Store that used to be here doesn’t exist anymore! We checked the posted store directory in case it moved. Nope. Diana re-checked the directory and read all the listings. We walked thru the area anyway in case some other store had UCLA merchandise. No luck whatsoever. “I don’t understand how we could’ve tried SO HARD to buy UCLA stuff and have not been able to. This makes NO SENSE. It’s not like a weekend or a holiday! Places either are freakishly closed early, or they no longer exist, or they’ve been turned into a sex house! What the heck! I mean, what’s the purpose of this in the universe?” Diana said, “Maybe we weren’t meant to buy Final Four stuff because UCLA is going to win tomorrow against LSU and enter the finals. But maybe that’s just wishful thinking.” “I hope you’re right,” I grumbled, “Cuz this would make NO sense otherwise.”
Amazingly, she was right. But we wouldn’t find out for another day.
So we left Santa Monica and drove thru massive rain and decided to nix Monterey Park for some Chinese cafes closer to home, so that we wouldn’t get lost in the rain and possibly get stuck in rain traffic. We ended up at a Thai restaurant in Rowland Heights called The Boat and had great food. That was about 11pm, and we didn’t finish eating until midnight.
I wanted to stay up another 3 hours to digest my food, but we again crashed in front of my TV. She wanted to watch The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, but only remembers that it came on and the next thing she knew, she woke up and it was The Cosby Show.

On Saturday, I did get her to the airport in Santa Ana without much ado, and I didn’t get lost going from there to Mr. W’s, and he and I had a great time at Cirque to Soleil watching Quidam. I also go to eat at Chomp’s with him last nite. So I guess all’s well that ends well.

And no, I’m not gonna post the phone number of the sex house on my blog for you pervies.

Today, as the UCLA Bruins gear up to battle the Florida Gators for the NCAA Men’s Basketball championship title, my morning local radio talk show puts on a 7-year-old boy whose mom called the station to let him sing the UCLA fight song live on the air.
Sing the UCLA fight song? He knows all the words?
His name is Ross and after a brief interview with this boy who sounds adorable, he sings, “Dah dah dah, duh-duh-duh DAH! Dah dah duh, duh-dah! U! C! L! A! Fight, fight! Dah dah dah, duh-dah!” It was way off key, missing some notes, but it was so cute!
The talk show people asked, “Where did you learn that song? Who taught you?”
Ross replied, “I hate USC.”
My jaw dropped.
“Wow, hate. Kind of a strong feeling for a 7-year-old,” one of the radio personalities commented to the other personalities. “But Ross, how do you know the UCLA fight song?”
“Oh, I see it on TV with my dad.”
“Did your dad go to UCLA?”
“Yeah. And those people who are all foo-foo? They suck.”
My jaw dropped again. The radio talk show people said, “I’m more concerned that a 7-year-old knows the work ‘suck.'”
Parents, your kids ARE listening when you talk.

I haven’t blogged in the longest period since…I don’t know when. The reason is because I lost internet connection at home. (I’m currently not home, obviously.) The lesson learned: listen to Diana when she shakes her head and says, “Don’t do it. It’s not worth the trouble.” And there’s so much crap that happened this weekend that just thinking about how behind I am in blogging stuff I want to blog makes me want to crawl into bed and take a nap.

So I’m gonna do that until the urge to spat it all out there in cyberland becomes too overwhelming.

But I’m just checking in to let people know that I’m alive. Diana and I did indeed survive this past weekend together.

P.S. It’s daylight savings again. Turn your clocks 1 hour forward!

I’m STARVING. I can’t wait to have sushi tonite after I pick up Diana. So far today I had a banana for breakfast, an apple and a few handfuls of roasted salted soybeans for lunch on my drive to the gym, more soybeans after my workout on the drive back to work from the gym. I can’t get a break in the day to eat the oranges that’ve been looking at me since we’re constantly in session on day 9 of a 6-day trial, the judge is cracking the whip and yelling “Mush!” at the attorneys to make more, faster, progress. It’s high-stress in here.

Hee hee hee. “Mush.” Alaskan sled dogs are so pretty.

Okay, I’m delirious.

If someone hides the fact that he’s in a relationship from someone of the opposite sex, it makes me uncomfortable if the concealment goes beyond simply “it never came up.” I’m talking if the person had to lie about it, i.e. calling the significant other by a different title (“friend,” “roommate”) when the need to refer to him/her arises. And to make matters worse, when it comes out in the open that this person’s married, it doesn’t stop this person for long before advancing to the next step, which is engaging in a conversation (with the person of the opposite sex) that the spouse would be very offended by, hitting topics that are highly inappropriate altho they are addressed rather matter-of-factly and clinically. Should the recipient of this attention be flattered? I think it’s rather scary, personally. Because I’d like to have faith in married people, have faith in marriage, especially the ones that appear happy. At least the marriages that I see around me. I don’t care about divorce case people whose files are ruining my workday. And now the opposite sex person is stuck in a position where he/she has to keep something from the spouse, and now there’s some secret bond that exists between the married person and the opposite sex person outside of the marriage. Ugh. Isn’t it true that if they’ll do it for you, they’ll do it TO you?

I need to take my own advice sometimes. A friend is dealing with garbage people from her past polluting her present peace that she had worked so hard to achieve. She’s hoping that karma gets them in the end. And here’s what I told her, because it’s SO CLEAR when it’s about someone else:

“Another side to this is, you know if they’re messing with you, they are REALLY unhappy people who are trying to feel better by making you fall. That means they perceive your happiness and are jealous. So in the whole karmic balance, you’re ALREADY one-up on them. You spend your day doing your own thing and grinning, and they spend their day having it ruined by you simply because you exist. You got them back and didn’t even have to lift a finger or dirty your own karma to do it.

“Really, my advice is just to roll your eyes at it, laugh at it, or wave your hand impatiently in a go-away-I-don’t-have-time-for-you gesture at it. It’s really laughable and pathetic. They’re STILL hung up on you after all this time that they can’t keep themselves from trying to knock on your door? It’s YOUR door to YOUR life, you don’t have to open it and let them in. Well, you opened it to see what it was. You don’t have to let them in.

“This isn’t elementary school where people will tease you or make your life hard just because they’re trying to get points for popularity or because they ACTUALLY don’t like you for the way you look or dress or act. In adulthood, they (try to) mess with you because your existence makes them feel insignificant, and they don’t like that. That’s not YOUR fault! They are insignificant because if they were better people, they’d be significant to somebody. It’s sad, really. Maybe that’s what you should do. Shake your head at them sadly and tsk.”

I’m just posting this on my blog because I could use the reminder, as well.

I’ve somehow made myself probably busier than I have time to prepare for.

On the drive to jujitsu, college roommie Diana and I were on the cell confirming our weekend plans to meet up after her work in Southern California on Thursday evening. We’d been trying to do a spa day and/or a UCLA visit for Friday, if she could get the day off. She just got the day off. I have Friday off, too. Cesar Chavez holiday. So I’m gonna pick her up Thursday night after her deposition in Costa Mesa, we’re gonna have a huge breakfast Friday morning at a restaurant in Knott’s Berry Farm, then it’s off to our spa appointments (which we still have to make), and then a late lunch, maybe at or near UCLA! We’re gonna buy Final Four stuff. She wants an easy, relaxing day so I have no plans after that, short of taking her to the airport to catch her flight home on Saturday morning. After she leaves I will go to Mr. W’s and we’re going to see Cirque du Soleil’s Quidam, my V-day present to him.

After jujitsu, 9 of us went to a great sushi joint in Fullerton called “Chomp Rockin’ Sushi and Teppan Grill“. It’s trendy, the prices are pretty average for sushi, the restaurant is huge and beautiful, there are gargantuan salt water tanks all over the place, including in the center of the large square sushi bar, and it was playing 80s music. Diana called me when I was there and I told her I was gonna take her there. I should also take Mr. W there, as he would really love the decor and the tanks. And the unique rolls! It’s really cool that I could insist on going to sushi after class and then end up with 9 people (most of the returning students) with me at a local restaurant I never would’ve known of on my own. I love that class.

On the way to sushi, I was walking out with Navy Girl Vanessa. She was complaining to me about the 1-month gap she had between when her current lease expires and when she moves in with her new roommate. She planned on moving in with her dad in the interim, and her dad seems to be totally taking advantage of her, telling her not only does she have to pay rent, but she needs to pay the $150+ electricity bill he has lying around and hire people to fix his plumbing. And there were some strange rules he imposed, too. She seemed really miserable, so I offered up my spare room for the month. She was so grateful and happy, she offered to pay my utility bills for the month. (I’m not charging her rent.) I asked when the month starts. She said she needs to move out by this Friday. Eeek! That directly conflicted with my plans with the college roommie Diana. So Vanessa’s going to stay with her boyfriend this weekend (he lives 80 miles away, tho) and move in next week with me. It should be fun. If not, it’s only a month. And we can carpool to jujitsu. She’s also an insomniac, so we’re compatible that way. Basically, neither of us are gonna sleep for a month. We’ll probably be at the gym. Hee hee.

Now, I gotta figure out how to tidy up the house and finish my laundry and clear out the spare room and guest bath by Thursday. I’ve got 2 loads of laundry going right now. It’s probably gonna be a couple of all-nighters. Either that or I gotta skip jujitsu the rest of the week.