cindy's world

Mr. W’s suggestion on the diet portion of my weight loss attempt: eat all my meals, small amounts of calories per meal, and when I’m eating out with him, we’re splitting a meal. So yesterday was day 2 of the strictly limited caloric intake.

Breakfast: Mr. W made bacon (3 strips, which I wrapped and patted in paper towels first, and peeled off some of the fat), banana-nut french toast (I skipped both butter and syrup) and a grapefruit-grape-apple-garlic-onion-scallions-raw oyster-lawngrass smoothie. (Okay, it wasn’t that bad. But it was darn healthy and I chewed a lot of fiber in the beverage.)

Lunch: We split a BBQ pork po-boy sandwich from The Jazz Kitchen in Downtown Disney. It came with fries, which I ate probably 3 or 4 of, and a Diet Coke. This was, of course, before Erin informed me in her comment that Diet Cokes make you fat by increasing your appetite. Oh wait. I just remembered that he introduced me to Beignets, which is “A New Orleans classic. French donuts deep fried and topped with powdered sugar.” I had 2 little squares. That was my sin for the day.

Dinner: He made a buffalo chicken patty on a whole wheat bun with a ton of raw little baby carrots on the side. I ate so many baby carrots (I was STARVING by that time) that I woke up this morning expecting my skin to be orange. Baby carrots are amazingly delicious when they’re really cold straight out of the fridge.

Dieting sucks.

Since Erin and I were commenting about the “are you going to hell” test in the “Jaded Courtroom” post a couple of posts ago, I thought I’d put the link up for all of you to enjoy. My cousin Jennifer sent me this link a couple of weeks ago.

Are You Going to Hell?

Disclaimer: for those of you with more “sensitive” senses of humor, i.e. you don’t have one, this test is for your amusement purposes only. It is not meant to be any sort of indicia as to whether you are actually going to hell, or whether you are a good or bad person. If you are one to think a quiz which scores your sin points is bad taste, do not click on the above link. Thanks.

P.S. I scored a 70. I think Mr. W scored 200. Haha. Feel free to comment on what you scored and if I know you, I’ll tell you whether I think it’s accurate. >=)

Okay. So. My trainee had a doctor’s appointment today, which allowed me to go to the closer gym. I got there early, ran 3 miles on the treadmill plus 1 lap cool-down. Then I hit the weights for 30 minutes, crammed 5 exercises in. I was sweating like a pig (do pigs sweat a lot? or are they referring to cops? like when a cop’s overweight from all the donut-munching that they’re sweaty and out of breath chasing a suspect for half a block? of course I’m just saying this to jab at all the sheriffs who work with me), I even got a blister one the side of a toe, just like I used to when I packed on the running mileage. The run was still terribly boring and seemed to last forever. I couldn’t wear my MP3 player until after the run cuz any contact with anything would cause it to reset, and as it was, it reset 3 times when I was doing weights. I need to get a better MP3 player. Any recommendations? The music was very helpful in hyping me up. Weights feel lighter with “I wanna fk you like an animal, I wanna feel you from the inside…” screaming in my ears.

Food count so far:
Breakfast – 1.5 cups Silk vanilla flavored soy milk (150 calories)
Snack – Chocolate Amond Biscotti ZonePerfect bar (210 calories)
Post-Workout Lunch – Chocolate Peanut Butter ZonePerfect bar (210 calories)

570 calories…that’s a lot, consider how little food that is! I expect to receive a phone call soon from Mr. W saying, “WHAT? That’s all you ate all day?! You need to eat more!”

In late 2002 or early 2003, I was at the gym and something my ex-roommie Brian, who was training a client near me, said to me caused me to respond, “Hell, I’m even scared to jog by the KFC cuz knowing my body, I’d smell the fried food and my body would take that scent molecule and turn it into a fat cell.”

I think my body also takes happiness and turns that into fat cells.

I have gained 15 pounds since the 2nd week of September. Actually, I think it’s the accumulation of lots of factors.
1.) Training someone at the gym means I’m not getting my usual 20 mins cardio plus 6-7 exercises every lunch. Because I have to go to a farther gym to train my coworker, that also cuts into the lunch hour. A typical session of ours is like 8 minutes of cardio warmup, 3 exercises with weights. (Which is why I don’t understand how she’s losing all this weight and gaining such great muscle tone.)
2.) Before the summer was over, in addition to my great noontime workouts, I used to do jujitsu 4 evenings a week, 2 hours per evening. I’m now down to 2.
3.) For 1.5 weeks straight before Cancun, I had to work thru every lunch and stay overtime till 7:30p and come in 2 Saturdays. That means no evening workouts and no noontime workouts. That must’ve greatly slowed my metabolism to cut out all exercise that suddenly.
4.) During Cancun, altho we worked out (HARD) twice a day, we were eating gourmet food probably cooked in lard, and I was pigging out cuz it was all-inclusive, so the working out did not offset the sluggish metabolism and the extra calories.
5.) I haven’t changed my eating habits to match my significantly less intensive exercise regimen.
6.) I’m happy, which means I have a great appetite. I’ve never dropped weight so fast as when I was going thru the crap the ex put me thru; I had no energy, I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep at nite, and all I did at lunch was sleep in the jury room as my escape. My body dropped 20 lbs in a month.

Anyway, I am determined to lose the 15 pounds I’ve gained. Which means
* no junk food, period. I am applying the same stubbornness I had when I said, “Soda has 7 teaspoons of sugar per can?!” and stopped drinking soda for 9 years until I discovered Diet Coke.
* trying to get to the gym 10 mins earlier at lunch to get 20 mins of cardio in on M, W, F before I start training sessions w/my coworker
* running 3-4 miles T, R, and one weekend day (which is no problem because I’m sure Mr. W wouldn’t mind running with me)

Wish me luck! I’m sick of not fitting in my size twos.

For our most recent trial about the defendant who chased down the victim on the street and used the victim’s car Club in their fight and to break the van’s windows, the jury came back this morning and found the defendant not guilty of assault with a deadly weapon (I agree, cuz it really does sound like the two were just fighting each other), and guilty of vandalism with over $400 in damages (the victim produced a receipt from a car repair shop showing the repairs cost him $425.)

My bailiff said, “When the defendant’s mom asked him the night of the incident where he’s been, he told her he’d been clubbing.”

Remember that defendant I wrote about in the October 26, 2005 entry The Human Side of the System? I said I’d let you guys know what the sentence is and today is the guy’s sentencing.

I’d like to first address how people seem to think that judges pull a random number out of their butts when they’re sentencing someone to jail time. Our justice system is not so arbitrary as to let judicial officers amerce based on their moods. Every crime has a sentencing range that is mandated by law. Assault with a Deadly Weapon, for example, Penal Code section 245(a)(1), has a sentencing range of 2-3-4, which means that if the judge does not put the guy on probation and decides to give state prison time, he can select either the low term of 2 years, mid-term of 3 years, or high term of 4 years in state prison for this crime alone. The judge can take into consideration myriad factors when he’s selecting the sentence, such as whether the guy has a significant criminal history, whether this was a freak situation that created the assault, etc.

Anyway, in a case where a man is convicted of having shot and killed his wife and therefore is guilty of the crime of first degree murder, Penal Code section 187(a), as the judge said from the bench, “The crime of murder of the first degree warrants significant punishment and there is essentially little to no — with an emphasis on “no” — latitude with respect to Mr. [defendant]’s sentence in this case.”

Murder –> 25 years to life in state prison
Enhancement that he used a gun in committing the crime –> another 25 years to life in state prison
total sentence –> 50 years to life in state prison

This means he needs to serve 50 years in state prison before he’s even eligible for parole. This guy’s not even 40 yet.

So, boys and girls, the moral of this story is, when your wife is divorcing you, LET HER GO. Do not kill her. And if you do decide to kill her, DO NOT USE A GUN. Not even as a bludgeoning device, cuz that still counts as using a firearm in the commission of your offense. Seriously, if someone no longer wants to be with you, take that as an opportunity to get a clean start and have a great rest-of-your-life.

…Harry Potter.

I had no interest in reading the books nor in watching the movies, simply because the series was so overhyped and it seems like every kid, young adult, and most of my peers are under the Harry Potter spell. I even walked by the living room once when visiting my parents and they were watching some Harry Potter movies. And not even subtitled versions! I typically avoid trendy stuff in general (with the exception of Cancun, but boy, am I glad I went when I did given the weather-beaten town now).

So imagine my consternation when Mr. W and another one of his close friends (whom I’m also familiar with) jumped in on me about how they’re going to watch the new Harry Potter movie when it comes out and they’re so excited and the books were so great and they’re planning a big group to go and stand early in line, etc. I politely turned down their invitation to go along, explaining that I couldn’t possibly watch the movie because I hadn’t read the books and hadn’t seen the prior movies so I wouldn’t be able to understand what was going on. Mr. W’s solution? “Well, I guess you’ll just have to come over to my house and watch the first 3 movies and catch up.”

I watched all 3 movies last week.

I’m hooked.

Harry Potter is SO much better than Lord of the Rings. Karen was right. Those LOTR dwarfs were retarded to be walking around, tripping and starving and freezing and victimized by various magical things when they had Gandalf as their friend and mystical flying animals in their realm. If Harry Potter were in charge of getting rid of the ring, he would’ve flown on a broomstick over the volcano and done it already, or ridden a dragon, or ANYTHING. It woudn’t have taken 3 DVDs of 3 hours in length each. (This is how little I care about LOTR. I bought the first 2 DVDs, slept thru them, loaned them to William and Raquel, haven’t seen them since, and I don’t even care to find out if the couple still has them or whether they returned the DVDs to my ex, who never returned them to me.)

I’ve been walking around for a few days in a sort of confused Harry Potter haze, avoiding knobby-limbed trees in case it decided to “wump” me to death, hearing the buzz of an insect fly past my ear and thinking it’s the Golden Snitch and where the hell are the Seekers to snatch it and win the Quidditch game…

Yeah, I’ll be watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire when it’s released on November 18, 2005.

photo courtesy of movies.about.com

Mr. W treated me last nite to a nice sushi dinner and a movie. We saw The Legend of Zorro, starring Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. I love Catherine Zeta-Jones. She’s so beautiful, even after popping out 3 kids. I’d said long ago that if any woman could turn me lesbian, it’d be Catherine Zeta-Jones. And then she had to go and marry Michael Douglas and burst that dream. Hmm. Come to think of it, I may have been overly vocal with that proclamation before because I remember getting an email from my friend Raquel with an attached photo of Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Raquel had typed as the introduction: “Your favorite.” I don’t even recall having had a discussion with Raquel about the actress.

Anyway, the movie was pretty good. I love all of Catherine Zeta-Jones’s expressions, the way her eyes look when she’s conveying anger, coyness, hurt, fear, confidence. I think my favorite scene was when her character, Elena, was fighting some bad guys with Zorro, and they managed to turn one villain’s back to them and you just see the two of them swiping away with their swords. The camera then goes to the villain’s back, and on the right buttcheek of his white underpants were tears in the fabric forming the legendary “Z”, and on the left buttcheek was an “E.” The camera then cuts to Zorro and Elena, and the two of them cock their heads slightly to the side, seemingly mesmerized by and admiring their handywork. Then the pause in the action is over and they jump right back into the swordplay.

Zorro and Elena’s son, now a mischievous 9-year-old Joaquin de la Vega, played a large role in the movie. I would’ve enjoyed the movie more if he weren’t in the movie, because as I see it, the kid was nothing but a liability to his parents and leverage for the villains. If he weren’t in the movie, his parents would’ve taken care of business and the movie would’ve only had to be 30 minutes long.

This movie was also my first IMAX Theatre experience. Altho it wasn’t 3-D, it did play on the gi-normous IMAX screen, where I felt like if I didn’t keep moving my head and eyes to follow the action, I’d miss something on the other side of the screen. I think that’s what kept me from falling asleep at the 8pm movie. That, and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

I had lunch today with 4 coworkers plus one retired coworker. The retired coworker was a very good friend when she worked with us, and she drives back to the courthouse almost every Tuesday to have lunch with whomever would like to come along. I haven’t been going to lunch with them because I’d been working out every lunch. Today, I’m just tired, hungry, and vexed by the lack of result from all the working out and running (my body is SO stubborn, whereas my trainee’s weight’s just flying off her body such that people come up to ME to tell me how great she looks now), so I went to lunch and had a great time. I tend to be reclusive at work although I consider myself on at least decent terms with everyone, so it was nice to see the girls in a more social setting and catch up on each other. I also got a heaping helping of moral support and affirmation. That’s definitely worth missing a workout for. 🙂

This is the basis for our present criminal trial:

The soon-to-be victim (5’5″ Latino man in his 20s) is driving down a street in his van, when the defendant (5’6″ 22-year-old Latino man) drives by and sees him. The two know each other and they don’t get along. The defendant starts waving and screaming profanities out the car at the victim. The defendant keeps following the victim until they get to a more residential street, at which time the defendant drives in front of the victim and cuts him off and stops the car. The defendant gets out of the car and goes to the victim’s van, pulls the victim out, and starts smacking him upside the head. Somehow one of them gets the victim’s Club (metal steering-wheel lock anti-theft device) out of the victim’s car and the story gets disputed at this point about who was hitting whom on the top of the head with the Club. The defendant uses the Club to smash the side of the victim’s van and some of the van windows. This altercation took place in front of a car repair shop and the owner of the shop and one employee are eye witnesses.

I’m sorry, this scenario sounds so juvenile that it’s actually funny to me. It plays out in my head like a movie. These two kids just going at it, and they’re costing the County millions of dollars in resources to make the arrest, prosecute this case and bring it to a jury trial.