cindy's world

Sunday morning, Mr. W and I got up early and hit the gym. We were going to take Diana’s recommendation for a nearby breakfast place first, but she and her boyfriend caught us on our way out the door and strongly suggested we eat last. They said that the last time they’d eaten at Sugar Butter Flour bakery, they were happily useless and had to come back for a nap. Hence, Mr. W and I worked up a healthy appetite which we quelched with mushroom, spinach and feta cheese crepes (me) and banana strawberry pancakes (Mr. W). While eating I got to watch a girl try to buy a floral fondant cake displayed on the counter and having to be turned down as the cashier attempted to explain to her that the display cake isn’t real, but made with paint and styrofoam.

As we got ready for the afternoon wedding, Jen came by to carpool with us. Diana made me show her all my multi-layers. Jen laughed and I think she may have taken a photo. I again announced that they can laugh all they want, but I’ll be the only one warm while the rest of them froze in oceanside fog and rain.

It didn’t rain! It was a BEAUTIFUL day in San Francisco, sun beaming directly on the green floral Shakespeare Garden, and if I hadn’t been in long sleeves, I would’ve gotten a sunburn. There was also no fog whatsoever. It was in fact so dry that my furry scarf was supercharged with enough static electricity to look like a wild cat reaching out to grab me in its deathly tight grip. There’s a photo of this somewhere in Jen’s camera. The wedding was beautiful, 7 classically dressed groomsmen with 7 bridesmaids in flowing strapless pink trained gowns, 2 flower girls, one of whom threw petals as hard as she could onto the ground as she walked and her partner threw petals straight into the faces of the ducking audience, causing laughter as they walked down the aisle. The groom was also in a classic black tux, pink vest and tie, and the bride had a jewel-lined bodice and long train. After the wedding ceremony, Jimmy and Sabrina’s photographers called individual groups in for photos. Like, “Jimmy’s family!” “Sabrina’s family!” Diana, Mel and I were in the “UCLA people!” group. Mike (“wilco“), Christi (“flip flop girl“), Dardy, Greg and Cheryl were in “bowling group!” Christi seemed rather embarrassed to be affiliated with this group, but hey, she married a member.

Since there was a few hours of time between leaving the ceremony site and getting to the Chinese seafood banquet site, a bunch of us killed time at a nearby Starbucks and goofed off, while Diana worked on her laptop there. Poor girl. Mr. W was starving and we split a garlic cheesesteak sandwich and garlic fries (we stunk!) at the ONLY other place open there, which was a cheesesteak sandwich hole-in-the-wall shop. Apparently, since the meal was in was in Yank Sing (I made a crass joke to Mr. W when we walked up to this sign) restaurant in San Francisco’s financial district at the Rincon center, on Sunday there’s like NOTHING open. Once the front doors to the restaurant opened, however, I was floored.

Banquet tables were arranged from the lobby area all the way around a large fountain that dripped rainfall from what looked like 10 floors of glass-paned offices above. We were seated at table 2, which is immediately to the right of the head table. It was dubbed the “UCLA table” according to the placecard, the back of which had a photo of Royce Hall. “Whoa, you must be important!” Christi joked, as she was in the back at the “bowling table.” We had 3 groomsmen at our table as well. There were ten courses of food, not counting wedding cake. Their cake was three tiers of beautifully detailed pink ribbons and flowers that matched their theme colors of ivory and light pink. We were stuffed.

They did play some wedding games, which I don’t think I want to do, as much as I enjoy watching them happen to other people. Case in point: Ansen (groomsman and one of Jimmy’s UCLA roommates) had told me at the Shakespeare Garden that I was in a video they were going to show at the ceremony. During the food festivities, Ansen orchestrated a game in which he called Jimmy to the front stage, and then behind him on the stage, all 7 bridesmaids plus his new wife lined up. Ansen then turned Jimmy’s back to the 8 women, explaining as Jimmy was being blindfolded that he was going to feel the hand of each person behind him, and he would have to guess which one his bride is. “If you don’t guess correctly,” Ansen warned, “We will play a video clip that, trust me, you do NOT want played in public.” I knew the clip Ansen was referring to, but I wondered how he KNEW it would be played cuz Jimmy had a chance of guessing correctly, right? As soon as the blindfold was installed, four groomsmen stopped eating in mid-bite and silently ran onstage, replacing 4 bridesmaids. Sabrina, the bride, was removed from the stage altogether. “You can feel, but DON’T GROPE,” Ansen said, as hand after hand was offered to Jimmy as the audience snickered. After all the hands were felt, Ansen asked, “Well, Jimmy? Which one is Sabrina?”
Jimmy hesitated. “I don’t think she was up there,” he said, sounding confused. “And I think there were a few men in there.” The audience laughed and started to clap, but Ansen wasn’t going to risk not showing the video he painstakingly edited.
“Guess one,” he pressed Jimmy.
“The closest would be #1, IF she’s up there,” Jimmy said, still sounding unsure and confused. #1 was indeed a female bridesmaid, but of course it wasn’t the bride. Ansen gestured for a male groomsman to trade spots with a bridesmaid and took off Jimmy’s blindfold, saying, “LOOK WHO YOU PICKED JIMMY!”
The crowd laughed and cheered as a video clip played on a projector, showing what happened at Jimmy’s birthday many years ago in SoCal at Huntington Beach’s “Joe’s Crab Shack,” in which the waitress humiliated the birthday boy by making him don a pink tu-tu, silver tinsel wig, I think he may have worn a coconut bra, and pink lacey butterfly wings. And in the video, on slow-mo and on repeated play, our boy Jimmy decked out in fairy attire holding a star wand shimmied and shook what his mama gave him. You see half my head thrown back in laughter at the lower margin.

The garter toss was uneventful, but the bouquet toss would be remembered. Diana had to be dragged from the table to participate in the bouquet toss, all the while protesting and claiming she can’t catch. Picture this: so the bouquet, on the count of 3, flies through the air toward the group of women. It arcs overhead and starts to fall. The pink and ivory bouquet nears a woman with her arms outstretched, and she is ready to catch as the bouquet makes its beeline toward her. Suddenly, a flash of two bare arms appear directly over this woman’s head and snatches the bouquet out of the air before it could land in the waiting hands. Yoink! What the heck just happened? The crowd screamed and laughed. “What happened?” I asked Mr. W, “Who got the bouquet?” Diana claims she instinctively just reached out and grabbed the flowers because she was taller than the girl in front and that she really didn’t think about it. I can’t wait to see this on video. SOMEONE HAS TO YOUTUBE IT!

A beautiful slideshow was also played during dinner, which Jimmy gave up all but 2 hours of sleep the night before to put together. It was set to 3 songs by “The Cure” which I totally associate with my UCLA NorCal friends, and the last song, “Pictures of You,” is a Jimmy classic. I was surprised to see a photo of me and Mr. W with Jimmy that I’d never seen before, and I bugged him to send me a copy. His slideshow inspired me to want to make one, too, but I don’t know where I’d display it in our scattered outdoor venue.

It was a fun evening with friends. Congrats, Jimmy & Sabrina!

I’m back from NorCal! Mr. W and I drove up Saturday morning and got to college roommie Diana’s new tri-level townhouse in Sunnyvale 6.5 hours later, past noon. Diana was away on a pseudo-work-related volunteer project she was to be involved in all weekend, so I took the liberty of running around admiring the split level floorplan, nice dark wood floorboards, new appliances. I don’t think her place is even a year old. It also happened to be within walking distance of downtown Sunnyvale, so Mr. W and I went off to explore and to buy a few things while we waited for evening to roll around. One thing I found that was notable about being at Diana’s house without her is that I already knew where everything was. After living with someone for 3 years, you pretty much pick up on their storage and organizational habits. For example, I needed a plastic bag, so I went to her kitchen, looked at her bottom drawers, and found a bunch of old grocery bags tied up in knots in the second drawer I looked in.

We already had plans to play Rock Band with Mike and Christi (“wilco” and “flip flop girl”) at their house, so soon after I received their phone call, Mr. W and I drove out to their new house. Very nice! Everyone seems to have new houses with upgraded floors and kitchens. Mr. W and I were very happy for them, and only slightly jealous for ourselves. A few Rock Band songs later, I realized that I’d missed a call from Dardy, so I called him up and coerced him to come join us for some Rock Band and sushi (Rockin’ Sushi?). Mike said he was making enough food for 8, but college roommie Diana was on her way to the gym and her boyfriend was still working, so it was up to the 5 of us. I think we pretty much finished everything except for a few chicken shish-kabobs.

And then we discussed the impending weather the next day. The reason we were up there was for college buddy Jimmy’s wedding the next afternoon, and all week the forecast called for rain that weekend. The ceremony was to be outdoors in Golden Gate Park’s “Shakespeare Garden,” and the usual climate is ocean-fog-cold anyway, so with the 60% chance of rain made everyone nervous. I was going to be wearing layers, i.e. long velvet skirt with a fitted velvet bodysuit inside, buttoned over skin-tight running capris. Who’d know? They all laughed at me when I told them what I was wearing, and I told them, “Laugh now, but tomorrow when you’re all freezing and I’m the only one with a warm butt…” How wrong I was.

This morning, I put on a short black velvet go-go looking dress, high black boots, tossed my long hair back and skipped off to my car. I pushed the ignition start button, heard the 306 horses roar to life, and popped in a CD I made in ’98 called “Driving Music.” Pulling my beautiful IS350 out of the garage of my home where I left my furry li’l companion chomping away on his breakfast after he walked me downstairs, I bopped to upbeat music (“Fantasy” remix, by Mariah Carey and Old Dirty Bastard) which took me back to the days of driving around UCLA blasting that song in my friend Johnny’s car.

“Beachside, lakeside, or horse property? I wish I had your problems, Cindy,” my ghost said in our phone conversation last night. “I should never have left Southern California,” he said, tracing the roots of his multitude of regrets. His mother just wishes he could get a normal job, marry a nice girl, have a nice normal life. And although it breaks his heart, he can’t explain to her why that is impossible for him now. “That’s all she wants. It’s so simple. And I’m so fucked up.”

Listening to my music from the good ol’ days, half of me went back to the past mindset, and the other half remained (because SOMEONE had to safely operate the vehicle). The two Cindies looked at each other, smiled, and agreed: I have arrived. But I was always arrived; there was never anything wrong with my life. Okay, there were things wrong with people whose lives have at times crossed paths with mine and thus affected me very negatively, but MY life was, on the whole, on track. As with all my friends and loved ones, even the ones who lament.

There was a milk commercial where a young girl looks in the mirror and sees a beautiful young woman looking back at her, and the young woman explains that she’s the girl’s future self, and how she’s healthy and strong because of the years of milk drinking, and then a gorgeous hunk of a man walked into the mirror frame, put his arms around the young woman, and grinned. “Who’s THAT?” the little girl asked. The young woman whispered, “That’s your future boyfriend.” The girl instantly chugged her milk. I think if miserable little Cindy could have looked in that mirror and caught a glimpse of 31-year-old Cindy now with her hot wonderful fiance and promising life, she would’ve had a lot more to look forward to than she knew. Boo to me that it took listening to someone whose life path had gone horribly off-track to appreciate mine.

Dwaine and I have launched a search for our high school German teacher, Mr. Finn Englyng. We both started taking his class in 8th grade, being bussed over from our junior high to the local high school for 6th period, and continued through to our senior year in high school. He was such an influencial teacher to both of us, that we tried to look him up in our high school’s website so that we could stop in and visit him at school one of these days. He wasn’t listed as a teacher anymore. I told Dwaine it’s okay, as I had Mr. Englyng’s email address and would write to him that way. But my email to him got kicked back the next day. I spent much of the next morning on the internet searching for Mr. Englyng, and was able to find another email address for him from a helpful message he’d posted on a teacher’s online forum in 1996. I forwarded the original email to this new address, and minutes later, that got kicked back as well. Shit. The latest thing I could find on him was something to do with an educational pilot program he, along with 6 other teachers, had tried to launch which finally succeeded according to the 2006 write-up. I could find nothing after that. I even called our school district administrative offices and spoke to someone in human resources; she put me on hold but 5 minutes later my call somehow transferred to the main menu again. Exasperated, I hung up.

Where are you, Mr. Englyng? I’m going to keep searching until I get an answer. Dwaine brought up a health concern that I didn’t know about — Mr. Englyng is diabetic. We hope he retired and is in good health enjoying his free time at home. You can tell he made an imprint on me because my “quotes” page has things he’d said that had stayed with me all these many years.

I heard on the news this morning that one day, a woman went into her boyfriend’s home’s bathroom, and then just didn’t come out. He brought her food and water to the bathroom, for TWO YEARS, she wouldn’t come out of the bathroom, and no one knows why. And then one day recently, he finally called the cops about it. The cops came out to his house to get the woman, and found that she had been on the toilet seat for so long that her skin had grown around the toilet seat, and they had to surgically remove her ass from the toilet seat. Now the boyfriend is facing criminal charges for waiting so long to call for help or for the cops to investigate.

I have SO many questions about this.

I heard from my ghost today in a brief, 2-lined email.

Been a really long time… Just wanted to see how you were doing Cindy

Guess he never googled me or he would’ve found this blog.

Yesterday evening, Mr. W reportedly bribed his son, saying dinner out is on him if Son would drive to his mom’s house to retrieve Mr. W’s Playstation2 console, Guitar Hero games, and guitars. Son agreed, infiltrated his mom’s house (where he no longer lives), retrieved the goods, and received his bribe.

Figuring he was on a role (roll? row? roe?), Mr. W attempted to bribe me this afternoon saying if I go over to his house after work, I can play Guitar Hero. I replied that I didn’t care to play Guitar Hero, that’s an ineffective incentive for me to drive over there. Especially while my house is being worked on by the roofers (they woke me up with loud pounding this morning at 7am, which, mind you, is “really” 6am with the weekend Daylight Savings adjustment) this week. He admitted that he just wanted me over and thought offering Guitar Hero playtime would do the trick.

After gym trainee and I returned from our lunchtime gymming, I noted my craving for a smoothie, and decided to bribe Mr. W with my going over to his house after work IF he got me a smoothie. But the difference between me and everybody else is that NOT only am I NOT bribe-able due to my high integrity and true sense of self, but I am also not one to use bribery to get something I want. So I didn’t bring up the smoothie offer to Mr. W.

All right, so the truth is that I got busy in the afternoon divorcing people at my desk and didn’t bother to call Mr. W, and I’m more easily and inexpensively manipulated because somehow Mr. W convinced me to go over to his house after work anyway by sheer guilt and expectations alone. I don’t even get a smoothie out of the deal.

That, and the last thing he said to me when I talked to him half an hour ago was, “You need to get some Guitar Hero practice in before we go up north to play with your friends.” 😛 We’ll see if I can kick “wilco” and “flip flop girl”‘s Guitar Heroing asses this weekend.

(GREAT movie, by the way. LOVE that movie.)

If Mr. W gets his way, this will soon be our backyard:

We drove around and looked at houses in the above-pictured area on Sunday. Many properties are within our price range, the area is extremely nice and upscale, and the people there are freakishly nice. I watched a teenage boy with his girlfriend thank a driver as he crossed the street in a parking area and the driver stopped to let the boy and his girlfriend cross in front of him. Whoa. Where am I, in Hawaii? Where are people this laid back in Southern California? Incidentally, this area is ranked as the #1 safest city in the US by the FBI, to give curious people a tiny little clue. I don’t want to say where or make any announcements in case I jinx anything.

But hey, great area, affordable for us, it’s like being at the ocean without the nasty beachside cities or freezing temperatures, and okay, it’s far from work, but if we figure out a way to carpool it’ll be quality bonding time on the road!

This is what’s called a cheap cop-out post, friends. I admit it. I don’t have much drama to write about because the biggest dilemma in my life right now is whether to cut 30 people off my wedding invite list so that I can save $3000 to make my budget. I was talking to college roommie/bridesmaid Diana about this yesterday and she said 30 people is a lot to cut. So I floated the question: assuming I get a bartending job that brings home $300 in tips each night I work, how many nights would I have to work to pay for these 30 people? Diana said ASSUMING I could get that much in tips, I would have to work 30 days, because $300 pays for 3 people. And then I felt like “Schindler’s List” and had to stop. “This lapel pin…if I sold this lapel pin, 7 more people.”

WAIT a minute. I just realized she did the math wrong. If I bring home $300/night, and that’s 3 people, then I only have to work 10 days to bring home $3000 for 30 people. I can bust my ass for 10 nights. Or sell my ass on the side. Or, just sell my ass, period.

I am making WAY too many prostitution fundraiser jokes.

Okay, now the cop-out part of this post, today’s lawyer joke left on my desk:
Attorneys Jones and Smith were arguing over whether sex was work or pleasure. Being unable to reach an agreement, they decided they would ask their paralegal to decide the issue.
Upon explaining the question to their paralegal, she thought for a moment before responding, “Why, it is definitely all pleasure.”
Smith, who’d felt it was work, asked, “But how can you say that so quickly?”
The paralegal just smiled and replied, “Why, that’s easy. If there were any work involved, you’d have me do it for you.”

I’ve been looking for a clip of Brian McKnight singing Luther Vandross’s “Never Too Much” since I went to the Brian McKnight/Boyz II Men concert and watched Brian sing as a tribute to Luther while the original black and white video of Luther singing his song played in the background. Here it finally is. I think this song is a wedding must-have.

Never Too Much Lyrics