A very good friend of mine laughed at me when I told her I spent most of 2006 mourning breaking up with M-Square. She said "You had a crush on someone while you were supposedly dating, you lined someone up right before you broke up because you hate hard landings and then, and then three months later you were hot for MBA guy at work."

So here's the real truth.

1) Yes, I kind of had a crush on this guy at work while things were hot and heavy with M-Square. I don't know how it happened, but we were talking on the phone and we connected. Nothing happened, but I did feel bad about it. And now we're working together a ton which is great because he is so cool to work with.

2) And yes, I am one of those who believes that if things start heading south, get a "lifeboat". I never break up a relationship without a new guy in the wings. And if my intuition is working right, I line a new guy up just before a guy decides to dump me. A girl's got to have something else to think about besides the breakup of a relationship. I did kind of of have an "possible lifeboat" in the wings when things went bad with M-Square. It was too soon to do that, but old habits die hard. My lifeboat guy gave me a soft landing instead of a hard one, and it was wonderful for a few months to have it.

3) MBA guy at work just happened out of the blue. I wasn't expecting it. I went to the guy's welcome party and didn't feel connected. But when we started talking and couldn't stop, I knew the guy was a soul mate. I just don't talk for hours to a guy without us having some past life connection. And it was a good connection too because we just got along so well and there was no weirdness between us. And MBA guy at work went from May and is kind of actually still going, although it's not as intense anymore. I did talk to MBA guy before Christmas at a division party, but it was short and he apologized for not spending more time with me because he's been like totally swamped with work. I totally love MBA guy but as friend I think, and not as boyfriend material. We've been there and done that in our past ives and made it work, so we don't have to do it again. That's kind of a nice thought isn't it? I had a past life where my relationship worked so well that there wasn't any karma to carry over.

Okay, so I didn't really mourn M-Square and I'm sure the boy is not mourning our breakup either. I wanted to mourn but the fates kept sending me guys to fall in love with, so what's a girl to do?

At home today cleaning up and getting a huge pile of stuff to take to the Salvation Army for my year-end charity deduction.

I'm so psyched Barry Zito is going to stay in the SF Bay Area and play for the SF Giants. He'll have to hit the ball now, because in American League they have designated hitters for pitchers.

Watched the body of Gerald Ford pull up at the church in Palm Desert. Betty Ford looked so old. It was kind of sad because I think he was a nice guy who just happened to be President of the US at such an interesting time. Talk about being in the right place at the right time.

The news channels have been speculating for hours about when Sadam Hussein is going to be hanged. How weird. I had no idea that there's a state that lets you choose between lethal injection and hanging. If the hanging is videotaped, you know it will show up on YouTube eventually. The man was a butcher like Hitler and Stalin, and I don't understand why people are making such a fuss over him. Talk about America trying to impose their moral standards on the world. In Hussein's part of the world, they execute people all the time. The same people who love multiculturalism are saying he shouldn't be executed. Isn't that hypocritical? I mean, they hate that America exports its values around the world, but I guess it's okay that we export our value of no execution. I don't get it. Multicultuarlism isn't selective.

I saw "Night at the Museum", and liked it despite the fact that the first half of the movie was just not very enjoyable for me. The Ben Stiller character is not sympathetic, and he came off almost too pathetic. But half way through the movie, it got better and I laughed. I saw the moview with about 30 kids and they didn't laugh during the first half of the movie either.

The movie has some great special effects, and it made me want to revisit the Natural History Museum in New York.

I also saw "Curse of the Golden Flower" directed by Zhang Yimou. I loved his movie "Raise the Red Lantern", and loved the spectacle of "Hero" with Jet Li.

The movie was beautiful and slow going, and ends with the typical cloying chinese song at the end. I couldn't help but think of Quentin Tarantino's movies "Kill Bill, Parts 1 and 2". Quentin Tarantino sure does know the kung fu movie genre. And yes there were lots of good fighting scenes. I saw chinese grandma types with their daughters there, which I thought was so cute. My grandma would have loved this movie, and I wish she was alive so I could take here to a theatre so we could watch the movie together.

I saw "Curse of the Golden Flower" at the Sony Metreon, which was a little strange because it's not like they show a lot of Hong Kong kung fu action flicks, but I liked that a very mainstream SF movie theatre was willing to have it there.

Who knew that if you see a movie before 12 noon at Sony Metreon theatres the cost of the ticket is $6. Talk about a bargain! After 12 noon, it goes up to $8.50 and after 6 pm, it's regular price.

Would love to see "Happy Feet", "Dream Girls" and "Children of Men", since I read the PD James book. A friend was raving about "The Departed" recently as well "The Queen".

So around 10:30 pm on my Christmas vacation, I am editing a newsletter that I have to email to my boss before the end of the year. I got way behind on my weekly industry updates and have been putting them off, but I can't put them off any longer.

What a life, huh?

I went to see the Titanic exhibit, but it wasn't cheap. The ticket cost $22 and $5 more if you wanted the audio. There were a lot of artifacts, and I did get to touch a piece of the hull of the Titanic but still. A friend recommended I go because she liked it, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it unless you're into the Titanic.

It was only fun because of the movie, and it would have been more interesting if they had included some of the movie props and the real stuff.

But oh well. I paid for a ticket and an audio, and I'm glad I got to see it.

It's day after Christmas and I know I should be at the mall checking out the discounts on xmas decs and seeing what else is on sale, but I hate crowds!

I really am very shopped out right now. I don't think I could buy one more thing unless it was totally cheap as dirt and I absolutely had to have it.

Besides it's supposed to rain and it's too cold to be out. I am out all week from work. This is the second year I've take the off the week between christmas and New Years. I kind of like it. This year we got Christmas and the day after christmas off, so it was a short week anyway.

It's probably the best time to be in the office because it would be so quiet, but I'd rather stay at home and be lazy. I am going to try to do some movie watching this week, and hopefully if the weather gets better check out Angel Island. I've been to Angel Island a few times for parties, but I've never seen the whole island. Angel Island was the west coast version of Ellis Island in New York.

But then again, it would be nice to just hang at home and go through my stuff so I can do some year-end charity donations.

Merry Christmas everyone! Wow, I finally got some useful presents this year, which is a first for me.

I needed a new wall calendar for my bedroom and I got a big calendar and a smaller calendar for work.

I have one of those home fragrance burner things from The Body Shop, which I've been wanting for awhile now.

A friend gave me an astrocartography reading with San Francisco, London and Bombay India as the chosen places to check out. I've lived everywhere where there is a line; interesting huh? I don't think I'm supposed to be living in San Francisco, which I've known for about two years now. Check this out - Las Vegas is supposed to be a good place for me to live. I can't imagine living there because I have to live near an ocean and I don't like to gamble.

And my cousin sent me Joel Osteen's newest books. I love that man's sermons.

Speaking of pastors, Rick Warren has been on TV a ton and I really, really like him. I love his book "The Purpose Driven Life".

We had christmas pudding for dessert. We doused it with brandy and lit the baby on fire. You gotta love food that burns. We also had french brioche in the shape of loaves, which was fattening and divine, for appetizers, and I made braised chard with garlic from a recipe that was in the San Francisco Chronicle. I love chard! The recipe is definitely a keeper.

Okay, one last post. It's freezing here! I wake up every morning and my car is covered with white stuff. It's not snow, but the dew is frozen and white on my car.

I just bought a new parka from LL Bean that is wind proof, and I am very grateful for it with this freezing weather. The parka is warm, maybe too warm, but that's fine with me. The parka also has thinsulate in the body which is nice.

I decided to get rid of books I'm reading on the left side bar. It's too hard to keep up with because I read a book a week. This year however has been a bad year for reading. I thought I would increase the number of books I read this year, but I didn't.

My movie watching has also been abysmal. I hardly went to the movies this year, and now that I use Netflix insetad of Blockbuster I don't rent as many movies either. With Blockbuster I was forced to watch my movies in a week. With Netflix, my movies sit around for months on end before I watch them. There is no urgency at all for me with Netflix.

I have to decide if I should go back to Blockbuster only because I did like the serendipity of going to the store and seeing what was available. I ended up discovering many good movies this way. Netflix is good for renting movies that are hard to find, especially the classic old movies. But that's about it.

I saw the movie "Apocalypto" at the new Century theatre in Union Square that is part of the new mall with Bloomingdales. The theatre has leather seats and they were big and roomy.

I really liked "Apocalypto" and am glad I saw it on the big screen. Some of the cinematography was so beautiful. I went to the Mayan exhibit that were here last year, and it was fascinating to see how the Mayans were depicted.

I didn't think the story was a bad as the reviewers said, and I loved the violence. However if you're not into violence then I wouldn't watch it. The amount of violence kind of reminded me of a porn movie. In a good porn movie, there's like a sex scene every five minutes or less. In "Apocalypto", there's a violent scene every five minutes which was fine with me. I mean, HELLO! It was a period piece and back then life and living was hard and violent. People killed animals and ate them. They didn't go to the butcher to buy meat.

I wasn't sure about the ending, only because I think I wasn't expecting it. But it makes sense. So I don't know what is the big deal about this movie. I loved that it depicted a non-white culture, and a culture there are so few movies about.

I had two work gift exchanges this year and there were completely different experiences.

The first gift exchange I went to was "funny" gift exchange. You had to buy a funny gift up to $15. Talk about a dumb idea. The gifts were so dumb, like a farting Santa, Homer Simpson slippers, etc. $15 is a lot of money to spend on a funny gift. And it wasn't fun at all because who wanted to steal stupid gifts. I rebelled and bought a $10 Walgreens card. It's kind of funny to me because you would normally expect to get a gift card from an expensive store. It would have been more funny I suppose, if I had a McDonalds gift card but I didn't think about it until I saw the commercials on TV.

The second gift exchange was much better and the limit was still $15. The gift were really great like a mini fondu maker, a 1 gig memory stick, expensive chocolates, etc. I was in the middel of the draw and picked a bottle of wine. My bottle of wine was immediately stolen, so I opened another present and got a mini fondu maker. I was so excited, but of course as is my karma, my boss steals my fondu maker, so I stole back my bottle of wine. It's so much more fun to steal gifts if the gifts are worth stealing.

The 1 gig memory stick was stolen three times. So was the fondu maker. But thank god I was able to hold on to my wine. At the first gift exchange, I ended up with a bunch of self-help books. I was a little upset, but the books are at least ones I wanted to read but didn't want to spend the money to buy.

But it is so not fun to steal a "stupid" gift. No one wants a farting Santa!

There's too much white space on my blog, so I am going to post the picture that was desktop background for a year.

Okay, I fixed the archiving problem and now they're back. Apparently I had code that was older than two years. Whatever!

I am all shopped out, except that I have to buy one more gift to buy because a friend of mine gave me more present than I was planning to give her. I was only planning to give her an ornament, but she gave me a calendar and an ornament.

I spent way too much money this year, more than I was planning to spend. I even took back a gift because a friend told me I was giving too much. That was hard but I did it. It was just a stocking stuffer anyway and not the real gift.

Somehow my archives disappeared and now I have to figure out how to get them back.

The woman, who made my current job miserable since the first month I started, was escorted out of our building yesterday. The HR person didn’t even give her time to pack up the pictures of her children that are in her office, and an hour later the lock to her office was changed.

Life changes quickly. At noon, we were all in a staff meeting and she came but left after an hour. At around 3 pm, we were all called into the director’s office and told that she had “resigned effective as of today and if we needed to contact her about work issues, we need to go through him.” A friend who has seen this kind of thing happen before said she was terminated, otherwise why would they have escorted her out of the building like that without even time to gather her personal things.

I never liked the woman, but I felt compassion for her. They wouldn’t even let her take her kids’ pictures with her. That is cruel. The woman totally deserved it, but still.

I guess I am sucker for rock music ballads because I love the new song "Lips of an Angel" by Hinder.

I bought the whole season of Heroes from iTunes and I just found out I can't copy them. What a bummer. And who knew downloaded tv shows would cost me 5 gigs of disk space! Yikes! That's what it says on iTunes on my laptop. I should buy a DVD recorder and record the shows I want to watch instead of buying them! What a drag!

I'm probably going to catch total flak for doing this, but I declined to participate in buying a gift for the director of our group. This is the first department I've worked in where the employees buy presents for the boss instead of the boss buying gifts for the employees. In the 2.5 years I've worked at this company, I have never received a gift from my immediate boss for christmas or for my birthday.

I see other bosses giving their employees gifts in other departments, but not ours. Oh no. We, the employees who are getting paid less than the director of the group, are shelling out money to buy a gift for the director who gets paid way more than us. That is so weird. I mean, I can understand buying a gift for your boss if they're getting married or having a child, but not Christmas. That is so odd!

I'm sure my fellow employees are going to talk about me, but I don't care. I really need to get another job. This place is so strange. It's calmed down for now, so I stopped looking for a job, but I know it's just going to get bad again. I don't fit here, I never will and I keep denying it to myself because every time I start looking for a job, something happens in my life that makes me want to stay.

But this christmas gift giving to the boss is I think the last straw for me. It's always the little things for me that decide a course of action for me, never the big things. I thought with this new director things would change, but obviously they haven't. It's a new person, but the weirdness in the department still exists.

I'm not a fan of Anne Coulter by any stretch of the imagination and hate almost everything she's ever written, but I kind of like this article. Ann Coulter: How can I make your flight more uncomfortable?

We had a photo contest in my department and I won first place in "Offsite Picture" and "Best Overall". There were only six people taking photos so it's not like there were dozens to choose from, but I was so surprised I won. I didn't even buy my digital camera. My cousin gave it to me in 2004, and I'm pretty sure she bought it at Walmart's or some store like that.

The photo was taken at Domaine Chandon, a champagne maker Napa. I think it won because on the right side of the photo somehow I captured a beam of light. Is that hard to do? It must be because it's never happened to me before. The mushrooms were just rocks piled up to look like mushrooms.

I won treats from Peet's coffee: a bag of chocolate toffee almonds for best offsite picture, and a one-pound bag of coffee called "Holiday Blend" for best overall.

I need to update my reading list. I have been getting into reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation stories.

I've read Prelude to Foundation, Fondation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation, and Foundation's Edge. They are amazing stories.

A friend got into reading Asimov's Robot stories and she's going to lend me her books.

I'd like to read all of Asimov's books; he is such a good author. When I really like a writer I read all of their books. So far I've read all of F. Scott Fitgerald, Elie Weisel, Oliva Butler. Can't remember any more right now.

The worst thing about having to sit around and wait to see "Heroes" is having to watch Howie Mandel on "Deal or No Deal". I just don't get him and that show, and even just five minutes of it is torture for me.

I'm getting over a cold and waiting for "Heroes" to come on. There was an article on SFGATE.com about the show, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2006/11/09/apop.DTL&hw=dna&sn=003&sc=242, and I had to watch it. I downloaded the episodes I missed on iTunes and got hooked. What can I say?

For Thanksgiving I drove up to Redding to see my aunt and uncle. There were their usual selves and I spent Thanksgiving at an indian casino gambling, just like the last time I saw them. My aunt made turkey dinner and I brought home a ton of leftovers. But it was rainy up there and I think I got too cold and on Friday I started sniffling. This is my second cold of the season. Normally I get a cold when I can't get enough sleep. I didn't know I could get a cold when my body temperature drops too low, so this is a new one for me.

The first one only lasted 4 days, although I was in recovery for a couple of weeks. I'm on day 3 now and feeling better, but I think it will take me all week to get over it.

I've seen three movies with all this time off. So here are my capsule reviews:

Marie Antoinette - I wanted to see this movie because The Cure contributed two songs, but there were instrumentals only. I was so bummed. The costumes were beautiful and I think Sofia Coppola was able to film at Versailles, which is rare. I read the review afterwards and loved The NY Times review. The movie needed I think some editing, and I think the type of storyline that worked in "Lost in Translation" doesn't quite work in this type of historical fiction movie. Jason Schwartzman was totally miscast only because he looks so much older than Kirsten Dunst. Marie Antionette was 15 years old when she become engaged to the Dauphin, who was only a year older than her. If the Louis character looked around 16, the storyline might have made more sense. If you're into late 80's post-punk music, then you'll like the soundtrack. I think it might have been better if I saw this movie in a theatre with a better sound system.

Casino Royale - Daniel Craig is beautiful and he looks like he could kill a man with his bare hands; how cool is that! The first James Bond actor who actually looks like he can kill people, and not some dressed up Brit pansy. I mean Pierce Brosnan is not a man I want to see sans clothes, but I'd love Daniel Craig to walk around in my apartment permanently in the nude or with those cute swimming shorts of his. I normally hate men in tiny swimming shorts, and Daniel Craig is an exception. He is so cute! And so rough and tough too with great biceps! He looks mean and nasty. There was not not quite enough violence in the movie to suit my taste. I think they toned that part down, but there was some good hand to hand combat scenes with 007 getting punched out and bleeding. Some guy in the theatre afterwards said that Daniel Craig looked like Joe Montana. Interesting. I'm not into blondie boy either, but Daniel Craig can definitely act and he's got killer blue eyes like my first love. I'm a sucker for boys with deep blue eyes.

For your consideration - not as outrightly funny as their other movies, but the laughs are there if you get the jokes. It helps if you know yiddish too. Catherine O'Hara was brilliant as usual, but even more so in this movie because she went through quite a transformation. I think you have to know quite a bit of how Hollywood works to get this movie fully. The characters aren't quite as self-explanatory as they are in the other movies. I'm not sure how many people will like it because it represents an evolution from their other movies. Instead of just presenting people as they are, they added some commentary probably because it's Hollywood and it's their business and they have a ton to say about it all works.

I think I just added I just added a favicon to my blog. It's showing up on my computer, so hopefully other people will be able to see it.

I went down to Pacific Grove to attend a seminar. The weather was gorgeous and the monarch butterflies were there for their migration. A volunteer at the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary in Pacific Grove that last year there were 17,000 butterflies, and this year their number had increased to 23,000. There were flying overhead in the grove of eucalyptus trees and it was amazing. I had never seen so many butterflies in one place before. It was hard to get a photo of the butterflies, but I did manage to take a photo of one.

My digital camera is not the greatest, but I did get a decent photo. If you are passing through the area, the monarch butterflies are going to be there through I believe mid-December. It is so worth seeing them. The volunteers had a telescope set up and I saw the monarch butterflies clinging together like a daisy chain. It was so unreal to see them like that, all close together and just hanging on to each other. It was like I was looking a live butterfly curtain, which felt so surreal and yet it was right there in front of my face.

Then we drove down to Carmel and walked down to the beach to watch the sunset, so here's my Carmel beach at sunset pic.

The weather was warm which was so unexpected since it was rainy and cold just a couple of days ago. Okay, one more photo.

We were at a gallery afterwards and asked the gallery person for a recommendation for dinner, and she said to go across the street and try the newest restaurant in Carmel called Cantinetta Luca http://cantinettaluca.com/, which is located on Dolores Street between Ocean and 7th Avenue. The woman at the gallery said the pumpkin ravioli was to die for.

We were able to only able to get a table because it was 6 pm and very early for dinner, otherwise the restaurant was all booked up with dinner reservations. For appetizers, we tried 1) Arancini - fried risotto balls with mozzarella and prosciutto and 2) Grilled local sardines, eggplant crostini, teardrop tomatoes and balsamic Vinegar and the Tricolore salad of bitter greens, green apple, gorgonzola, walnuts and honey vnaigrette. I loved the fried rissota balls, very inventive, and the local sardines were out of this world. I'm not a big sardine lover, having only ever had the canned variety, but I could get used to eating fresh grilled sardines.

We each had the pumpkin ravioli with brown butter, sage and saga and just a glass of wine each of the Sangiovesse, Remole " Marchesi de Frescobaldi" 2003. The sangiovese was like a pinot noir only a little more earthy, and a very good wine.

We were thinking of eating at the Merlot Bistro on Ocean at Lincoln. I've eaten there a couple of times before, but it's nice to try new restaurants especially when one that's been recommended. And it wasn't that expensive either I think. We paid around $80 with tip for dinner for two; not cheap but not outrageous for great food and very, very nice wait staff. And I love that they had dishes I'd never seen before and wanted to try.

Never give money to your political party or to a candidate you like, because they will sell your identity and at election time your home will be bombarded by pollsters and voicemails from party freaks wanting your vote.

Okay, I'm one of those crazy people who permanently votes absentee ballot but who totally waits till the night before the election to vote. Nutty, yes!

And there were so many things to vote for this time, what a bother! I'm thinking this is the first time, but I know it isn't, that I'm voting for the other party! I am still peeved at the Phil Angelides people for booting Steve Westly from the demo primary for Governor, so I absolutely cannot vote for him. In fact, I'm still so peeved I voted for his opponent. Oh well, the Governator will sweep Cali big time so one more vote won't hurt.

I've also never voted for either Dianne Feinstein or Nancy Pelosi. I cannot stand either of them. I detest Dianne Feinstein for her performance as mayor of San Francisco, and feel she is directly responsible for SF's homeless problem. Nancy Pelosi is way to left of center to ever get my vote, plus whenever I hear the woman speak or give a speech I totally cringe!

And just to be incredibly anti-Feinstein and anti-Pelosi, I voted Republican in both races. It's a wasted vote since they will probably both sweep.

I also could not vote for Cruz Bustamante and had to sadly vote for Steve Pozner. Boy, maybe the pundits are right when they say that the older one gets, the more conservative one votes.

Plus since I'm in a major contrary mood today, I whipped out the Bay Guardian guide to voting and voted against everything and everyone they endorsed! Actually, that was the fun part of my voting experience.

I am so looking forward to the elections being over because I've been bombarded by voicemails from people asking me to vote for this or that. I received voicemails from Bill Clinton and Al Gore, and didn't even listen to the message and hit the delete button. The Democratic Party sold my identity and had all kinds of democratic freaks calling my home. I even received a voicemail from Nancy Pelosi; talk about scary!

I heard a phrase in a meeting today that I thought was very intriguing - "dollar curtain". It's a variation of the phrase "iron curtain", which was coined by Winston Churchill to define the boundary between the Soviet bloc countries of Eastern Europe and the West European countries.

"Dollar Curtain" means a town that defines the boundary between the rich and riff-raff/have-nots. Mission Viejo was described as a "dollar curtain" town in Orange County.

Is it like totally weird that one of my ex-boyfriends has his own entry in Wikipedia? I knew there was a reason I named him "the one that got away".

I had a dream about him last night where I was kissing his neck and it tasted very salty!

Men are like so dang emotional! I can't stand it! There's this guy at work, the one I took a two-hour coffee break with a couple of weeks ago, and he is like so mad at me. I don't want to work for him, and I have been avoiding not telling him because I hate conflict. So tonight there was like an Octoberfest outing for his group that I got invited to, and I went thinking I could talk to him. Big Mistake! It was not the right time and place and there were way too many people, and I got so triggered so I like flirted with whoever was sitting next to me and this guy like gave me the evil eye the whole time. God I hate that!

Okay, I know the guy is mad at me because I haven't fessed up to him that I don't want to interview for a position in his department, but does he like have to give me the evil eye at a company outing. I was only going to stay for one beer and instead ended up drinking three beers, and finally I couldn't stand it and had to tell him on the way out that I needed to talk to him.

How dang awkward! Oh my god! I'm not his fiance and I don't need him being all mad at me because I'm too chicken to talk to him and tell him that I don't want to work for him. He wants to talk to me in person and so I'm going to have to take him to lunch next week and break the news to him, like he doesn't already know that I don't want to work for him. What a bother!

But I totally like this guy and he's like a soul mate and everything, and if maybe things were really different and he wasn't like that much younger than me and not spiritual, I might go for it somehow. But god! The guy has got a fiance whom he totally loves, but for whatever reason the guy totally loves talking to me and we can talk to each forever and feel like there's no one else in the world but the two of us. It's a weird situation and I can't deal with weird right now.

But I guess he has a right to be mad at me because I'm like such a wuss, so I'll take him to lunch next week and face the music and hopefully salvage our friendship.

So like I am wondering if I should torture myself again and do the National Novel Writing Month. I was so good in 2001, 2002, and 2003. I failed in 2004, and completely skipped it in 2005.

It's such a great exercise for a writer to see what your capacities are for novel production. Lessons I've learned:

I can write every day, but it is very challenging with a full-time job.

I can only write for 2-hours at a time and then I burn out.

I can do three writing segments with each segment lasting 2 hours, if I have a 1-2 hour break in between each segment.

Four writing segments is way too much for me. I tried but I couldn't do it.

I need to write with an outline with the story loosely plotted out, otherwise I will get lost and take detours and spend hours writing about one thing.

What a busy weekend! Missy L and I and her mom drove down to Pacific Grove to a seminar on Soulmates, and then we went to my favorite restaurnat "Fishwife". After lunch we walked to Asilomar Beach and hung out It was a beautiful day and there was a ton of people at the beach. The weather was so gorgeous!

Then we took a drive around 17 mile drive. The waves were so picture post card perfect, breaking at around 2-4 ft which is great for those beaches. The light was hitting everything at an incredible angle and everything just looked so beautiful.

We drove back on 1 and stopped at a veggie stand. Missy L bought a cinderella pumpkin and brussel sprouts. I bought 5 just picked artichokes for 50 cents.

Then we stopped at this new restaurant in Half Moon Bay called Red Ginger. a new pan asian fusion restaurant that just opened six months ago. The food was delicately flavored and pretty amazing. We were pretty darn impressed and definitely want to go back. They had fun japanese vodka maritinis. I had something called a "rose petal martinini, which we think was vodka and rose water. I loved it. Missy L had tangretini, which was like a tangerine flavored martini and her mom had something called a "geisha girl martini". The restaurants also served flights, which are three small glasses of either red or white wine. Flights are great if you're into a little mini wine tasting.

All in all it was fun day. And I can't believe the Red Ginger restaurant had a whole menu of vodka martinis, and not gin martinis which I abhor. The smell of gin makes me woof my cookies, which is kind of sad since I used to drink gin straight out of the bottle like any proper flapper girl. It's what always happens when you abuse something for too long. I totally abused my gin drinking in college and now cannot absolutely stand the smell of it.

I've been drinking vodka martinis since my first love introduced them to me in a bar in Washington DC the semester I was interning there. God I remeber that night like it was yesterday, which is shocking since I think I drank about 7 VMs. I hadn't seen MN since he transferred to Oberlin the year before and it was just so cool that he was still in town when I landed in DC. Had I known he was going to be home in Bethesda Maryland, I wouldn't have stopped in New York for a few days before flying down to DC.

Wow, talk about regrets. I used to think I had very few regrets but I so regret not going to DC right away. If I had gone early maybe MN and I would have gotten to know each other intimately, instead of my roommate walking in on us just was were getting really comfortable. Talk about a spoilt moment and a wasted opportunity. He was leaving to go back to Oberlin the next day. We would never have a moment like that again.

Oh well, probably just as well we didn't. MN was such a soulmate, but I think he was only supposed to be a non-romantic soul mate and not a romantic one. He was my best friend in college my freshman year. We did just about everything together but that. I still remember MN telling me once "if you can't trust me, who can you trust?"

Okay, I know it was probably all for the better but it's making me cry all the same. I'm also listening to the song "Too little, too late" by JoJo that I just bought from iTunes, so maybe that has something to do with the tears.

I did have a weird dream about my first love a couple of weeks ago. I haven't had a dream about him in years. God, I hope he's safe and sound and alright. He's like some president of some organization right now in New Jersey.

MN was the standard I used to measure all my boyfriends in my 20's. MN was so cool! He was the I think, the number one singles player in Maryland in high school tennis, was first violin chair in his school orchestra, he had his pilot's license, he was smart and so darned cute, and he played a damned good bass on his Rickenbacker. I still remember the time he played one of Rachmaninoff's piano concerto for me. I mean how bizarrely romantic is that!

I know it's way too late for us, but he's my first love, my soulmate, and we finished our karma together in this lifetime, which makes him so special for me. I would have converted for him back then if we had gone in that direction. But it's way too late for all that.

Today was supposed to be a day to wish for what you want. I read several articles about the "cosmic trigger event".

So I thought about what kind of guy I would want and came up with the following:

red-hair, spiritual, surfs, played college football, earring, lives in the SF Bay area, connection to Hawaii, lots of light, no addictions, my universal soul partner and soul mate.

And then I'm like thinking, in my wildest fbombing dreams!

Took a weekend trip with two girlfriends to attend a seminar in Sacramento, so now today at work I'm exhausted. We rented a huge suite and shared a room, so it was like a slumber party except we were all adults.

One of my friends love to gamble, so we went to Thunder Valley Casino every night and gambled and drank. Our hotel had happy hour every night and we each got two free drink tickets, so we started partying right after the seminar. It was cool though because then we got to socialize with people from the seminar outside of class.

I even got a Thunder Valley Casino travel mug and card. Gambling is entertaining if you can make your money last. It's a fun way to kill a couple of hours if you're with friends because we sit around and watch one person play and laugh and cheer if the person is winning.

We even had to go to Thunder Valley for lunch on Monday, because they had a sign that sais "Best buffet in a casino in California".

But I am so tired now. I had to come in to work early for an 8 am meeting, and I was planning to leave early but there's a division meeting this afternoon and I guess I have to attend.

And my week is not over yet. I'm going to meet my writing group for drinks tonight. Wednesday is my writing get together day. Thursday I have a massage appointment, and on Friday I have to get ready to go to Monterey to go to another seminar on Saturday.

Missy L and I are thinking we might stay at Esalen on Saturday night, but it's still all up in the air.

I love being busy but I am looking forward to quiet weekend alone!

This has been a good year for meeting new girl friends. I am becoming very good friends with this project manager that I was assigned to work with, in fact we are going away next weekend to Monterey to take a seminar on soulmates.

Missy L is so fun! She's a USC grad and has direct TV so she can watch USC football games. She's so lucky because her dad bought her this huge flat screen TV for her house. Nice dad huh? He also bought her this cute Rolex watch that I love.

She had an amazing spiritual experience when she went to Argentina over the summer, and when she was telling me about it as we were driving to a meeting I told her "now I know why we get along so well, you are spiritual. I only get along really well with spiritual people."

She has the cutest house in San Francisco in my old neighborhood. I am so jealous that she is a homeowner in San Francisco, and in a damn fine neighborhood too. She said she only got it because she bought a house in Menlo Park years ago and sold it when market was hot.

She's like from Long Beach and very tall, and she reminds me of what they used to call the "LA Poodle" stereotype. She's going a mile a minute, has kind of big hair, is very bouncy and laughs and laughs. She loves to wear fur and high heels, even though she probably is over 6 ft when she wears her heels.

We drove to a meeting in Sacramento together last month and then went shopping at Costco, Ross' and some carpet place that she wanted to check out afterwards. We just had so much fun, but I think she got bummed because she wanted to stop at a wine place and grab a couple glasses of wine but I had to go home to meet friends.

We were at a vendor conference together about a couple of months ago, and we drank way too many glasses of wine which was so much fun. We had way too many glasses the night before as well because there was a cocktail party before the conference. She is a hoot when she drinks too much.

She's got the cutest pomeranian dog who is quite friendly, and made me want a rat dog for a first time my life. Pomeranians are so fluffy and loving.

I want my own house in San Francisco and a dog!

I have this guy friend at work Mr. CE and we've been chatting off and on since March, and he is so cool! He is one of those rare guys who I can talk to for ages and ages and never realize how much time is actually passing. The conversation is just so amazing and you're so engrossed in each other that it's like no one else is around.

Like take Monday for example. We went out to get coffee together to talk about some work stuff and we were only supposed to be gone for 30 minutes. It was so weird because it didn't even seen like that much time had gone by, but we were gone from the office for 2 hours. Talk about a heck of a long coffee break.

Mr. CE is soooo cool! He has an MBA from U of Michigan and is so smart. Okay, the boy is much younger than me but is just the bomb! A friend at work thinks he is too intense, kind of nerdy and talks way too much, but I don't think so.

I think we were soulmates in another life, and it's so cool that we met at work. I am so impressed with Mr. CE's intelligence. He's the smartest guy I've met since my friend Brian from Texas in 1999. He's got tons of integrity too, which is so rare in guys these days.

But can Mr. CE eat! We went out for lunch last Friday and it was my turn to pay, so I took him to this great dim-sum place and I almost died when I got the bill for lunch which was about $70 something. He offered to pay for some of lunch, but I told him not to worry.

It's just weird how we can gab and gab and never run out of things to say or talk about, and time flies by so fast and I never notice anyone else in the room. I think there could a gun battle going on and we wouldn't even know it.

I don't know about you, but there is something very amusing about researchers giving mice California cabernet sauvignon. The questions I have are: 1) what was the brand? 2) how many points from wine spectator? 3) cost?


A glass a day: Cabernet Sauvignon may help ward off Alzheimer's disease (from The Advisory Board - News for Healthcare Executives, Sept 26, 2006)

A first-of-its-kind study by New York City-based Mount Sinai School of Medicine researchers appears to support the suspicion that a glass or two of red wine daily lowers the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, WebMD reports. For the study—to be presented at next month’s Society for Neuroscience meeting in Atlanta—researchers investigated the impact of California-grown Cabernet Sauvignon on 11-month-old transgenic mice that possessed genes that govern amyloid-beta protein production, which has been linked to brain plaque in Alzheimer’s patients. The mice were given water “spiked with red wine,” water mixed with ethanol, or plain water and allowed to consume as much as they liked for seven months, at which point they were placed in a maze and left to find their way out. Researchers found that mice in the red wine cohort fared the best and also had the lowest levels of amyloid-beta. The researchers say that although the findings offer no “direct experimental evidence” of red wine’s protective effect, the study may help guide future disease prevention efforts. —WebMD/CBS News, 9/20

I miss going to football games. It's been years since I've gone and I really, really miss it. I've been to Sunday games, Thursday night games and Monday night games. They are so much fun. It's just such a slog to get home.

There is nothing like the excitement of a close football game!

There is really no privacy on the internet, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

I know what my ex's are doing, at least the ones who are posting their lives on the internet. I found an ex on myspace. How bizarre is that? And being the natural investigator that I am, I looked read through the comments on his profile and the comments he made on his friend's myspace profiles and found out what the guy's been doing for the past year.

Of course, my ex's could read about my life if they about my blog but I try to keep that part of my life private. And if they did stumble across my blog accidentally, at least it's impersonal enough I think for someone to not know it's me.

In other more happy news, the Oakland A's have beat their first round curse and have made it to the American League Championship Series. Go A's!

And the 49ers beat the Raiders in today's Battle of the Bay. Go Niners!

So North Korea had a nuclear test tonight, and a news commentator remarked "our world has changed overnight." Do you think it's true? Is this another 9/11?

My prediction about the automakers unloading their retirees to Medicare is sadly coming true.

From Kaiser's Daily Health Policy Report:
Ford Motor, as part of an effort to reduce costs, will offer 75,000 hourly workers buyout packages, some of which will include the loss of health and pension benefits, the Washington Post reports. According to United Auto Workers summary, Ford will offer eight early retirement and buyout packages to workers that range from $35,000 to $140,000, based on seniority and age. Workers have from Oct. 16 through Nov. 27 to consider the buyout packages, and those who accept the highest buyout packages will lose health and pension benefits. Ford also will offer as much as $15,000 annually in tuition assistance for workers who decide to attend two- or four-year college programs. Workers who accept the assistance will retain health and other benefits during their time in the college programs. Ford declined to comment on details of buyout packages. According to the Post, Ford and other U.S. automakers, "reeling from global competition and high gasoline prices, have initiated massive programs to slash costs." Last year, Ford entered an agreement with UAW that for the first time will require union retirees to pay monthly premiums and annual deductibles for health benefits (Freeman, Washington Post, 9/15).

Yes, I am still around but work has been crazy these last few weeks and I've been tired to write anything in my blog. I've been however busily taking notes on my next novel, and I think I am almost ready to start writing it.

This will be Book 1 of my elfgirl series, which I've renamed to "The Elf Chronicles". Oh well, no elf girl because my new writing partner said I was alienating boys from reading the story.

The title of Book 1 will be "The Price of the Future". I've got so many notes, and I think I have the plot almost all fleshed out.

I write with my new writing partner every Wednesday. We eat, and then go to her place and seriously write for an hour. We've been doing it all September, although now we're thinking of changing the day to maybe Tuesday and adding another day.

On the weekends, I've been going to the coffee house to write or type up my notes. And now this week I've gone back to working out.

What else? Oh yeah, I am job hunting again. I applied to six jobs last Tuesday, and have gotten two call backs this week. I had one phone screening interview today only to find out the job doesn't pay what I make. Oh well.

I had another screening interview right afterwards, and again found out they don't pay what I make but the woman said she was going to try and see what she could do. I'm not hopeful because it's a small place, but I told them I'd like to interview anyway. I need to start practicing my interviewing skills.

This job that I may interview at is going to administer the health plan that Mayor Gavin Newsom is proposing for residents of San Francisco. It's an exciting opportunity I think, and I would take a lateral to work for this place. I am still a firm believer in socialized medicine and would love to work for a company that is involved in bringing it to San Francisco residents.

OH NO! My liberal streak is showing! Yikes ....

Watching Monday Night Football made me wish I could date a pro football player. I dated a semi-professional soccer player from England and one from Texas who played semi-professional soccer in Italy. I dated a guy who played football for Santa Clara State and M-Square played football for the University of Hawaii. Cute guy from screenwriting class whom I had a huge crush on, played college football for University of Pennsylvania.

Now Chris Berman is on, and I really like him. When Red-Haired guy had a tryst in LA, it was so awkward I made him put on ESPN and we were doing it and listening to Chris. I figured that if the sex got kind of boring for either of us, we could at least catch up on sports scores. I love multitasking, don't you?

It's the 5th anniversary of 9/11 and I'm at home surfing the net and watching Monday Night Football on ESPN and not on ABC. I can't even remember how I spent my 9/11 five years ago. It's all a blur. I was probably watching TV all night long and listening to pundit after pundit trying to explain what happened.

The Oakland Raiders are getting their butts kicked by the San Diego Chargers. The 49ers got their bums kicked yesterday in Arizona. It doesn't look like it's going to be a good football season in the San Francisco Bay Area. I know I am being pessimistic because it's only the first game sof the season, but it would have been nice for both teams to win their first games.

Not sure if I like Monday Night Football on ESPN. I was watching the Redskins/Viking games and I was annoyed by the announcers. I recognized the voice and I was wondering if it was Joe Theisman. I can't stand his voice. It's so weird because I heard Joe speak at a company meeting. The guy sells himself as an inspirational speaker. I don't think so.

I think the only reason they had him speak was because the execs at that company were all football crazy. Fantasy football was a big deal among the executive leadership and they took it very seriously. The Booard Room with the $250K silk rug was used for the draft meeting and I heard it was a very serious event.

All the execs always played in the March Madness pool as well, but it was as serious as Fantasy Football.

Oh well. At least football fans must be happy because it's a double header. And one good thing about not havingn MNF on ABC is I don't have to watch promos for TV shows. It's been mostly Superbowl type commercials. This works for me. I hate watching TV show promos during a game. They are so annoying!

The guys that dress up in the Oakland Raiders Black Hole crack me up. When I attended the Jim Rome's The Jungle Oakland tour stop a few years ago, those guys were there all made up and in full custume. They really made me laugh. You gotta love a crowd that boos the warm up band. How funny is that. I tried to fit in and wore a push-up bra and tight t-shirt. I knew if I looked semi-decent, the guys would leave me alone. Plus, I dragged a good guy friend with me and Charlie was good looking enough to scare guys. We ended up talking to other couples there who all assumed Charlie was the Jim Rome fan and not me, which ended up being kind of awkward. But Charlie was a good BS'er so he could hang and not look too dumb. I had no idea he liked sports so much. That was a side of him I wasn't aware of until that day.

I'm back on a writing roll. I wrote on Monday, and then for a little bit tonight. And tomorrow, my friend S and I are going to write together.

I'm a bit bored editing my finished novel, so I'm now plotting out Book 1 of my elf girl chronicles. I sketched out a couple of new characters and now I am beginning to write the plot for book 1. Even though the chronicles will be in 7 books, I'd like each book to be distinct and be able to stand on its own.

I believe Tennessee Williams wrote his novels this way. He wanted every chapter to stand on their own like a short story, and thinking this way made it easier for him to write.

Book 1 will set up the conflict that drives the whole series, and so many things have to be introduced including the characters. An acting director I know does this. He has all his actors in his play appear in the first scene to 1) make the actors feel comfortable on stage right away and 2) introduce by sight all the people in the play to the audience. Book 1 will have to introduce, even if it's just for a page or two, all of the major characters in the story. Even the evil characters will need to be introduced.

Wow, this is getting so complicated. I have to write out so many notes, and keep track of so many things. But I think it will be fun because it will be like a detective puzzle trying to figure out what comes next. It' s a good thing I"m a pretty darn good detective on some level, and enjoy figuring out how things works, because it's going to tough to figure this all out.

The Dallas Morning News is reporting that Mark McClellan, who is currently the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), may be resigning on Tuesday. I heard him speak at the conference I attended in Chicago last month. Mr. McClellan was articulate and interesting, and he definitely knew his stuff. I was very impressed with his Q&A style. He was relaxed and not easily fazed by the barrage of questions sent his way.

I'm always telling my boss that CMS or Medicare is a trendsetter for health care. In the next 10-20 years, I think the stats are 50% of the country will be on Medicare because of the baby boom retirees. That's a lot of people on the government plan. The sheer volume of people expected to be on Medicare make the current levels of payment unsustainable for the U.S. economy. The US cannot fight a war and have that many people receiving social security benefits and health insurance.

I would expect for Medicare to start some serious cost containment programs soon. CMS already has a few in place, but they will need to have them at all levels to try and control costs. Some exec at one of the plans, can't remember which, predicted that the pool of businesses that offer health insurance will start to seriously shrink and more and more people will have to turn to the government for health care.

Walmart started the trend by not offering health care, and other companies will soon follow. I have been predicting for some time that when, not if, the big three automakers (GM, Ford and Chrsyler) declare bankruptcy, the first thing to go will be the retiree health insurance. In fact, I can see the execs of each corporation recommending bankrupty as a way to unload retiree costs, since it looks better to dump them in bankruptcy than when the company is still solvent.

A bankruptcy would give them the cover they need to unload the retirees, get concessions from the unions, and restructure the company. And those poor retirees will have to turn to Medicare for their health care, and Medicare won't be able to handle it. The gloom and doom health exec then said that Medicare will contract with the individual health plans to take of the sudden influx of retirees into the government system.

This will be a recipe for disaster because right now the easier and in the short term cheapest way to reduce health care costs is to have everyone on medication. Preventative care requires too much manpower, and the CMS payment system does little too reward preventative care although they are trying to reverse this trend. In the long run however, I think that people on medication will cost the government more because who knows what the side effects will be for people on continual medication. I can only relay what what people have been predicting for the last 10 years, which is that 3 out of every 5 americans will be suffering from some debilitating disease and that there will more people requiring care than people paying into the system to pay for the care and people healthy enough to take care of the sick.

I had an idea to throw out some old furninture I had by posting for dirt cheap prices on Craig's list, but being the tech idiot I am, I didn't even think about posting pics of my stuff. Someone just emailed me asking for pictures. How dumb, huh?

I was going to have The Salvation Army come and pick it up, but they only take certain items, none of which I seem to have. If I can't get anyone to buy it, I will do the typical San Francisco thing and just leave it out on my sidewalk and pray that someone takes it. Someone always does. I just didn't want to haul the stuff out there. Or maybe even post it as Free on Craig's list and hope someone wants it. And then as a last resort, call 1-800-JUNK and pay to have them get rid of it for me.

Ahhh ... the joys of living in a modern disposable culture where everyone is giving stuff or selling it 24/7.

I'm back to reading my novel out loud into a tape recorder and then listening to it to see if it sounds alright and if there are any obvious gaps. I really like my guy character. He is such a hoot. He is so arrogant and full of himself. I modeled him after someone I knew from Texas, and I made a note that I have to change more details. I don't want that guy, if my novel ever gets published, to get mad that I took details of his personal life and gave them to my male character. You'd think he'd be flattered, but I can't take any chances.

My guy character has such a distinctive voice and speaking style compared to my female character. That was the fun part of writing this novel, writing in a guy's point of view. I have my doubts if the conversations I wrote between my guy character and his best friend are authentic, but it sounds really good even with me reading it out loud. I made a note that a conversation between two guys wouldn't be complete without some sports reference. How could I forget about men and their sports obsessions?

Other than that I think the only thing I need to be careful of is repeating myself and the usual, which is my worth thing, telling and not showing. I also made a note to myself to make sure I was revealing new information in this chapter and not repeating stuff from the first chapter. Although I kind of like the idea of repeating information but with a different spin each time, depending on what's happenning and who is speaking and to whom the character is speaking to.

I'm back to reading my novel out loud into a tape recorder and then listening to it to see if it sounds alright and if there are any obvious gaps. I really like my guy character. He is such a hoot. He is so arrogant and full of himself. I modeled him after someone I knew from Texas, and I made a note that I have to change more details. I don't want that guy, if my novel ever gets published, to get mad that I took details of his personal life and gave them to my male character. You'd think he'd be flattered, but I can't take any chances.

My guy character has such a distinctive voice and speaking style compared to my female character. That was the fun part of writing this novel, writing in a guy's point of view. I have my doubts if the conversations I wrote between my guy character and his best friend are authentic, but it sounds really good even with me reading it out loud. I made a note that a conversation between two guys wouldn't be complete without some sports reference. How could I forget about men and their sports obsessions?

Other than that I think the only thing I need to be careful of is repeating myself and the usual, which is my worth thing, telling and not showing. I also made a note to myself to make sure I was revealing new information in this chapter and not repeating stuff from the first chapter. Although I kind of like the idea of repeating information but with a different spin each time, depending on what's happenning and who is speaking and to whom the character is speaking to.

I took a friend and her friend who was visiting to Ikea last Saturday. I'd always wanted to see the newer Ikea in Palo Alto so we trekked down the peninsula instead of to Emeryville. I was really good last Saturday and only walked out with $20 worth of stuff. But the Ikea bug bit me big time and this Saturday I went to store again in Palo Alto just to check it out and ended up buying all kinds of stuff.

I bought this shelf thing for my hallway didn't like it where I thought it was going to go, and ended up putting it my bedroom where it has made an incredible difference to the room. That got me into a huge decorating kick on Sunday which led me to rearrange my closet and my drawers and get rid of a dresser. I've had that dresser for over 10 years so it's gotten alot of use. It didn't cost me much money, but it's lasted so I definitely got my money's worth. Now it is sadly falling apart and I've been wanting to get rid of it for awhile, and I finally took my chance. My closet actually looks a lot better I think and for whatever reason it feels like I have more room.

Now I want to throw out the desk that I have in my bedroom since I never use it. I think I've had that desk for a few years as well. It's not falling apart of anything, but I bought another desk when I was working at home and I don't need two desks.

I've decided to make my bedroom more of a bedroom and move all my paperwork stuff to where my work desk is. The only paperwork stuff I want to keep in my bedroom is my wriitng stuff because I write in bed alot and my financial papers. Everything else will go towards my designated office space. And Ikea is going to help me achieve this goal because I think, I"m not sure yet, I'm going to buy one of their larger shelvie things. It will be tall and have lots of room for files in baskets and book and all my other paperwork stuff.

But I'm not done yet. I need another cd tower thing to hold dvds and videos as I don't quite have a proper place for them, and because I took a bunch of kung fu videos from my dead uncle's collection. My aunt was going to throw them out so I took a bunch I'd never seen before.

And then I decided that the space in my hallway which I was trying to fill with the book case that's now in my bedroom, needs to have something there after all and I'm thinking it needs a bench with a cushion and a place for shoes. I heard some guy say in the Ikea store that the bench would be a great thing for his hallway so he could have somewhere to sit when he took off his shoes. And I'm like, you know, that's not a bad idea. I'm running out of shoe space anyway, so the shoes that use everyday could go in the shoe shelves, there are 8 of them, and I could have a place to sit or set things down in the hallway.

I was thinking of an armoire because I need more hanging space, but I don't know. My friend whom I took to Ikea last week now thinks she could use an armoire, and I told her I was thinking of buying one as well.

So I think from now until the end of the year, I will be on a huge Ikea spending binge trying to bring some order into my apartment.

I think I am going to go through withdrawals now that the only show I watched regularly on tv, "The 4400", has ended for the season. Thank god it's been renewed for a fourth season. The writing is brilliant plot wise because it's all twisty and turny and how they end things really make sense. I might not like them but the payoff makes sense to me. To have to be thinking that far ahead all the time seems unimaginable.

I wonder if JK Rowling did the same thing with the Harry Potter series, where she had to think that far ahead to have things pay off. In the first screenplay I wrote, reviewers said I paid things off well and answered questions that they had in the screenplay. I didn't do it deliberately though, it just kind of happened that way. But a 110 page screen play is easy compared to a seven-book series for three seasons of a 13-episode show.

Conferences are so disorienting. My health care conference was at the Omni Hotel on Montgomery and Calfornia and was only for 1.5 days, and I didn't think it would be a big deal to attend. But it really was. You're in an enclosed environment for that time period, so you're participating in your normal world which means coming back is like so weird. I didn't travel to the conference, I took the train to work like I normally do, but it does feel like I've been away for a couple of days. It's a very, very strange feeling.

I do like conferences though because they do feed you very well. We had breakfast, lunch and dinner at The Waterfront Restaurant on the first day, and then breakfast and lunch at the half day. The food at the Omni Hotel was very good and I was surprised how good the food was at the Waterfront. There was also a constant stream of snacks and drinks, and the hotel even had a basket of Power bars, Luna Bars, and Cliff Bars for snacks and Numi teas. Talk about a swanky hotel. They were were real cloth towels to dry your hands in the bathroom along with nice smelling soap and lotion. And they must have drained a whole quarry of marble because it was everywhere in the hotel.

I was just at a 1.5 day conference with a bunch of healthcare folks from around the country, and it was such a strange experience for me. I work in health care, and it's really a job and not a career for me, so it's really a bit uncomfortable for me to be in a healthcare conference when I don't necessarily believe in the efficacy of western medicine.

I am a big believer in alternative health care treatment because I don't think western medicine has all the answers to keep me healthy. Western medicine is great when you break a leg or when you have a chronic condition like diabetes, but western medicine seems to be completely clueless about how to keep a person healthy.

The cash incentive in the U.S. health system is to treat really sick people, with more than one disease. That's where the cash is. The pharmaceutical industry has their share in U.S. health care as well, because if it was up to pharma, every single person in the U.S. would be on one or more pills. Doctors don't make money on people who are healthy and not on drugs.

CMS is trying to change the medical cash incentive somewhat by paying more for preventive care, but we're talking a huge behavioural change in the way doctors do business. No doctor likes to see their patients get sick, but they don't have a lot of monetary incentive to keep their patients healthy either. And frankly, I don't think a western medical doctor would know what to tell their patients anyway about how not to get sick other than the usual crap of exercise more and eat healthy. I mean, lots of people do that, exercise and eat fairly healthy and they still end up getting diseases.

So if western medicine doesn't quite know why the body breaks down and gets sick, how can a person place faith in their dcotor for keeping them healthy? I mean, you can't. That's why I am open to alternative health treatments. It's not that everything western medicine tells you is wrong, they just don't have all the answers. After all, if western medicine had all the answers we'd all be disease free wouldn't we?

The work person I went to the health care conference with told me "well, you didn't drink the Kool-aid of western medicine and besides you're from California and it's hip to be into alternative medicine". I don't even consider myself being hip about my health, but instead just prudent and practical about my health.

But it is weird to be with people who have "drunk the Kool-aid of western medicine". And the assumptions of most companies is that the majority of the American population will at some point as they age be on a ton of medications and have any number of chronic diseases that need to be constantly managed. It's a bleak picture of the health of our country, but I have to admit myself, they might be right and that it's a future that most Americans will be realizing very soon.

U.S. News and World Report just released their college rankings for 2007 and my old alumni, Grinnell College, came in 10th for Best Value in a Liberals Arts College and 14th in Top Liberals Art College.

I just checked my Dell laptop batteries and found out that I do not have the exploding batteries. I entered by battery part numbers and they came up "no need for replacement". I was looking forward to getting new batteries but oh well.

So I had all these cherries that I bought and knew it would takes for me to eat, so I looked through all my recipe books and found a recipe called "cherry clafoutis". It's some kind of french dish I found out when I googled it later. There are apparently several ways to make it which is good, because the recipe I have is not very sweet. I'd love to eat it at a restaurant because I have no idea what it's supposed to take like My clafoutis rose but it was like so custardy in the middle. I thought it was going to be more like a light cake and not like clustard, but there are several variations on the recipe and it could be either way.

I should have stuck to what I know how to cook and made a cherry cobbler. Fruit obblers are easy to make every if you're making it for the first time, especially if you are using just picked fresh fruit.

As I'm typing this I am watching an Eagles Farewell concert in Australia. Those guys do have amazing harmonies. They're doing interviews of the band members and I'm like what is up with Joe Walsh's voice. The guys sounds so retarded. Did he like have a stroke or something? Or has the guy always talked like that. I mean, he sounds the same when he sings and everything, but he just sounds like he took way too many drugs or something.

Joe Walsh used to so cute when he was younger. The rest of the Eagles don't look like they aged that much other than getting older, but Joe Walsh looks like a completely different guy. I had a boyfriend who was such a huge, and I mean huge, Joe Walsh fan.

Of course "Hotel California" is their best song and I think my favorite. It's so weird to see these Aussies singing along to the song. I think of the Eagles as such a Cali band. Don Henley and Glen Frey have aged so well. I love that I live in "the hotel California". Henley's drums still sound amazing. I wonder if he tunes his own drums or does have someone do that for him.

Well Joe Walsh can definitely still play guitar, but his voice so reminds me of freaky "Brian Wilson". Now there's a guy who definitely fried his mind. Poor Brian Wilson. He was such a musical genius and then I don't know, the guy just went through something. I saw an interview with Brian Wilson once, and some blonde bimbo chick with an obvious fake rack was with him. I don't know who was more scary, him or her. The bimbo blonde chick was like channeling Yoko Ono or something because she never took her eyes off Brian Wilson. Girl must have thought that's how a rock star girlfriend needs to look and took page from Yoko Ono's playbook. Yoko looks like so spooky in the films of the Beatle recording an album, when she looked like she and John Lennon were literally glued at hip.

Didn't Yoko's behavior just so send feminism back like two centuries? Women as adoring pets who never leave their men's side.

Woke up this morning, very early this morning since I had to be in the office by 7:30 am, that I thoroughly enjoyed the process of listening to my novel read out loud. I hated hearing it in the sound of my voice, but it was a fantastic way to hear which parts of the chapter worked and didn't work. It was fun to do as well and it's been a long time since I've had any fun with my writing process.

Recently I read about a famous author who writes their first draft very quickly, reads it once, and then throws it away and then writes the story again from scratch. I'm not sure if I'm ready to do this, but it seems like an appealing way to rewrite your novel. The first draft, if you write it very quickly, is just a vehicle for getting one's ideas on paper. Quick first draft writing is never very good anyway and the plot always seems to need some major reworking. It makes sense to just start over sometimes instead of doing a lot serious surgery on your novel.

I rewrote my first screenplay like this and ended up altering the characters and the thrust of the story, although the plot was basically the same. I know I have to redo the plot for my Texas novel since it doesn't have enough drama to keep a reader interested. My main character doesn't have alot at stake and that makes for a very boring read. It's so funny because you hear people say all the time "too much drama in my life". However in writing, drama is essential to keep the story line moving and to make the story interesting enough for the reader to care what happens to the character and to keep reading.

Decided to try this technique tonight I'd read about, where you read a chapter of your novel into a tape recorder and then listen to it to hear how your wriitng sounds. First of all, I hate listening to the sound of my own voice but you know I didn't sound too bad. I don't sound like the Valley Girl I've been accused of being and maybe that semester of Stage Speech actually helped because my voice actually sounds decent and normal.

My first chapter is good but needs some fine tuning. The first part has to go because it's boring. I know it's a cliche to open up stories saying "here's an event that changed my life", but I love this technique. Maybe it's my acting background coming through but I want the narrator to reflect in written form this part of her life. She is looking back, kind of like she is almost speaking into a tape recorder and preserving her own memories. She knows this momentous thing happened to her which was life-altering, but she's still processing it. The novel then becomes a story of her trying to understand this part of her life, what part or role she played in what happened to her, what was in her control and what as not. The telling of the story is like a kind of therapy for her. If she tells someone else the story, she will be able to figure it all out. If one can ever really figure anyting out that is.

Listenng to the first chapter read out loud, I also saw how to add an obstacle into the story that I never thought of before. My character has to do her job well because her boss has promised her that if she nails the story then he'll promote to her dream job as in investigate journalist.

Now there's a great dilemma for you. Do you do well in your job and get promoted or do you chuck it all for love, for a crush, for a childhood fantasy that was importnant to you only you'd forgotten it until he came along. That's got to be a romantic story. Good looking rich guy reawakens your childhood fantasy and dreams, only thing is you are interviewing him and your boss wants a hit piece. I was after all trying to write a love story, you know.

I don't know, I like the conflict. It's mild and interesting. God, I hope I'm not writing chick lit. I never read books like that, but I'm a chick and it would kind of be natural for me write chick lit. Maybe I need to go back to writing science fiction and fantasy. I kind of don't want to be known for writing chick lit. I am so jumping the gun here thinking I'll even get the darn thing published. Haven't the book people called for the end of chick lit? How exquisitely like my bad instant karma karma to be writing in a genre I really don't know anything about.

It's been awhile since I've posted and so many things have been happening.

I had some minor surgery last week to have some things growing on my body that shouldn't be growing. It was all very quick and took only an hour in my doctor's office, and did hurt a bit. It's a pretty common procedure and tons of people have had it.

What else ...

I went to a gem and mineral show on August 6 in Golden Gate Park and bought all kinds of fun stones. I will never buy beads in a bead store again after seeing the prices. There was a woman selling pearls for 60% off. I haven't take the class on how to knot pearls, but I think I will so I can make my own pearl necklaces.

Afterwards a friend met me for a late lunch and we went to this italian place on Judah and had a New York maffioso experience. There we were sitting in the restaurant when a bunch of italian maffioso types walk in. Who knew there were maffioso types in San Francisco living in San Francisco. Those people are everywhere!

I kept having flashes of "The Godfather" movie because the mafia guys always knew where to eat at the best italian restaurants in the New York City/New Jersey area. I had always fantasized of eating in some obscure italian restaurant in New York city and having maffioso types walk in, which would be the clue that the food in the restaurant would be fantastic and authentic. I just didn't think I would be having the experience in San Francisco.

And yes, the food at this italian place was great! The portions were amazingly generous and cheap, totally cheap! I had a half sized order of spaghetti with marinar sauce and it was like a normal full order. I wanted to try the spaghetti to see how authentic it was. If an italian restaurant makes a decent spaghetti then you know the rest of the dishes will be very good. The spaghetti was very good and very authentic tasting. I am definitely eating at this place again.

I've seen this place for years and it doesn't look fancy but it's definitely a culinary gem of authentic italian food with maffioso types as an added attraction to boot. The italian boys were noisy which only added to "I must be in an italian restaurant in New York city somewhere". And these guys were big like you definitely wouldn't want to get into a fight them because they looked like they would beat the pulp out of you and then tremendously enjoying the experience of seeing blood squirt out of you.

I'm sitting in bed reading and all of sudden things started shaking. There was a 4.4 earthquake at around 8:12 pm somewhere in Sonoma County, which is about 2 hours away from San Francisco, but I definitely felt it here. I got up to look around to make sure nothing had fallen. It was short but things were definitely shaking.

The summer is zipping by and I'm in the process of editing my newly completed novel. Boy, does it need some major rework. Oh well, this is what editing is for right?

I was fantasizing about going to visit Jerusalem about a couple of months ago, but that's not going to happen now with the war and everything. I am not paying attention to news about the conflict because it's just too much for me to taken in right now. I've got my own horrid life to deal with without having to pay attention to world events.

Check these shoes out, they are so cute but so expensive!

http://www.coach.com/content/product.aspx?product_no=8507&category_id=159

Other songs I downloaded from iTunes this morning:

Obsession (no es amor) by Frankie J
One Thing by Finger Eleven
So Yesterday by Hilary Duff

Downloaded some new iTunes songs this morning. Listening to "The Diary of Jane" by Breaking Benjamin.

Chicago was fun, although the fun and glamor of travelling for work is definitely gone. I don't know how people do it because it really is very tiring, but it does have its perks. On Tuesday July 18, I went to the hotel gym and worked out for 30 minutes then sat in the jaccuzzi for 1/2 an hour.

Now listening to "The Kill" by 30 seconds to Mars

In morning, I went to the front desk to get a cab to take me to the conference at the Swissotel in downtown Chicago, and instead I get a car and a driver. Talking about living the high life. My driver was nice and gave me his mobile number in case I wanted to have dinner later that night. I thought that it was pretty funny that my driver guy was hitting on me.

I wasn't sure how people were going to dressed for this conference and was going to go very business casual, but at the last minute I decided to pack a couple of normal work outfits for me which is a silk skirt, shirt and sweater. Sure enough, I get to the conference and most of the guys are in suits and so are the women. I felt appropriately dressed and was glad.

There was a cocktail party after the first day and I indulged myself and had a couple of glasses of wine, and then the three women I ended up talking to invited me out for dinner and we took a cab to Navy Pier to have dinner and to see the fireworks show.

Navy Pier is right in downtown Chicago and was only built in the last five years. It's kind of like SF's Pier 39 but much more fun because they are more things to do. They had this huge ferris wheel which we all went on. For $5 you get on and go around once. The ferris wheel never stops so you have get and get off fairly quickly. It offers some amazing views of downtown Chicago which was very cool at night.

Now listening to "Beautiful Soul" by Jesse McCartney

From Navy Pier, you can take boat cruises. If I ever go back to Chicago again, I'd like to take an architectural boat tour of Chicago. It's weird because it looks like Chicago is on an ocean coast but it's on the shores of Lake Michigan. I never quite noticed that about Chicago before.

We at some restaurant called "Riva's" and then saw fireworks but it started to sprinkle so we cabbed back to the Swissotel. Those sprinkles were a bad sign but I didn't know it yet.

Thursday morning I'm watching the morning Chicago local news and it's storming and causing quite a traffic mess. The conference ended and I'm at O'Hare at 5:30 pm and the place is a zoo and a half. The thunderstorms closed down O'Hare for most of the day. Some girl told me they had only allowed three flights all day. My 8 pm flight back to SF was delayed and if I was thinking right, I should have realized that since the two fights in front of mine were delayed that my flight would be delayed as well, and that I should have tried to go standby on one of the earlier flights.

But I wasn't thinking and the monitor up until 7:30 pm said our flight was on time. What a joke! My flight didnt' take off from Chicago till 11:30 pm and we touched down in San Francisco at a little after 2 am.

Now listening to "Leave the Pieces" by The Wreckers. It's a country song and I only purchased it because I was perusing the iTunes top 100 list and playing every song and I liked this one instantly.

I had already decided to take a cab from the airport to home because my original flight was arriving at 10:30 pm and I didn't want to be stuck in Super Shuttle hell getting home. So at 3 am I was in bed and wondering what time should I get to work in the morning because it wasn't going to be early. I made it into the office by 11 am, and only went in because I had some analysis due that afternoon. Otherwise I think I would have just stayed home.

I was telling someone about my flight back from Chicago and they told me that if I arrived in SF at 2 am, with the time change, it whould have 4 am in Chicago, so I was basically up for almost 24 hours as I had gotten up at 5:30 earlier that morning.

So that was Chi-Town Trip. I was still in recovery all this week and my suitcase is still out waiting to be put away. I'm thinking it must get easier if you travel all the time because then you get into a routine. Travelling by plane somewhere almost feels like commuting if it weren't for the time change I think. I never used to think way and it's only lately that I've equated plane flights with commuting and thinking it's really not bad, except for waiting to get on a plane at the airport of course.

I am blogging from the Windy City - Chicago. I'm staying at a hotel right outside the airport and I can see the Chicago skyline from my hotel window. I was trying to stay in a hotel in downtown Chicago where my conference is being held, but every hotel in the downtwon area was booked.

I am exhausted as I am not a very good traveller. My work Outlook is taking forever to send and receive messages and I am hungry. I don't know why because it's only close to 5 pm in Cali ut it's almost 7 pm here.

I will blog more later ...

I went to lunch with a co-worker I've known for about 10 years. We worked together from 1997-1999, and she just started at the company I worked for a few months ago. We were both remembering how we loved our boss John. We liked him and he liked us, and how rare it's been for both of us since then to have a boss whom we like and likes us.

I hope I get one of these two jobs that are in front of me. The two people I want jobs with like me and I like them. It's not that I don't like my boss now, I just don't like her in the same way I do these two people. There's an empathy missing with my current boss that I have with the other two people. I think it's that I like my boss as a work boss but I'm neutral about her as a person, whereas the two people who are offering me jobs I like both as bosses and as people. It's so hard to explain because it's so intangible.

I know for sure that the new person my boss is reporting to does not get me at all, which so bothers me. I think it's such a post 9/11 feeling for me, but it so doesn't make sense to work for people who don't get you and whom you don't like in and outside of work. Life is way too short for that kind of B.S.

My coworker thinks it is very rare for an employee to really like their boss, and that we were so lucky when we met in 1997 because we both had a boss we respected and liked and who respected and liked us. If only John didn't get sick, I would probably still be working for him. But he did get sick, and I just recently found out he died about three years ago. I knew he had a very decidedly uncertain future, and I guess I was right. It's such a shame because John was so smart and so nice, and the perfect boss in a ton of ways.

I may have posted about this before, but in going thru my writing notes I ran across an idea I had for christian writer's class.

Class Title: Riffing on the Bible: Adventures in Christian Storytelling

Using well-known biblical verses and/or texts of the discples' interaction with Jesus as a jumping off point, participants will explore the art of storytelling by telling stories of their own or a character's faith journey.

I even wrote biblical verses to use:
Matthew 4: 18-22 - Jesus invites his disciples to join him saying they will be a fisher of people
This story could be about when you were called to follow Jesus, when you had an evangelizing moment, when your faith inspired someone to christian action, etc.

Matthew 14: 25-34 - Jesus walking on the sea, "Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid."
This story could be about witnessing miracles or when there was a miracle in your life, or when Jesus came to you and pulled you out of a dark situation.

Matthew 26 - Peter's Denial of Jesus
Maybe these are stories about the ways you deny Jesus in your ife, the way you deny your faith, your humanity, your higher self.

Luke 9: 18-20 - Jesus asks his discples who am I and Peter says you are the "messiah of God."
These could be stories of recognizing who Jesus is in your life, recognition of your level of faith.

John 20-21 - the story of Doubting Thomas (the biblical character I relate to the most next to Father Abraham when he is about to sacrifice his son
These could stories about what else, doubt, I'm sure people could write volumes about their doubts about faith and Jesus

Acts 9 - Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus
These stories could be about conversion, faith and doubt.

So like out of left field, the only woman I get along with in my whole group asks me if I wanted to work for her. She's been assigned the creation of this huge writing project and says there is no way she can do it herself. She's going to ask for headcount and she immediately thought of me. She wanted to ask me first so she mentioned it to her boss, so very late on Friday she asked me.

It would be so cool if I could work for her. She and I get along really hell. She's been meditating for years and years like I have, and we think very similarly about a lot of things at work. I already sit in a cube next to her, so I w0uldn't be disrupted by moving. I think politically taking a job with her will be less freaky than taking a job with the guy I spoke to on June 23.

That guy would be great to work for as he is so smart and we also really get along, but he won't be hiring till September. If y cube mate gets headcount, I would probably be able to start as soon as the job is open.

So please pray for me that my cube mate gets headcount and I can transfer my job. I want to hedge my bets and apply for two jobs I found on Friday, because whether my cubemate gets the position or not, I will definitely leave my job one way or another. I don't like the new person my boss and I are now reporting to.

I don't know. Life since 9/11 is way too short for me to be in a job with someone I don't like and whom I definitely know doesn't like me. I stayed in my last job because the economy was bad after the dotcom crash. It wasn't the best job but at least I was liked.

This job hasn't been a good fit, and I knew it three months after I took the job. But then I was distracted by the red-haired guy and then by M-Square, and then when I met my new friend S I thought it was well worth it because she has become such a close friend. She's a writer as well and wants to collaborate with me on writing projects. I think she's also much more visual than I am and would probably be an ideal person to adapt my novels into screenplays. She even wants to do it, which is so cool.

I know most novelists want to adapt their novels into screenplays, but I'm not one of them. If I wanted to write the story as a screenplay I would do it. I know how to write screenplays. If I'm writing the story as a novel, it's because it's coming to me as a novel and not as a screenplay. And at that point, I want someone else to adapt my story for the screen.

Anyway, my new friend S and I are going to try and write every Thursday for a couple of hours together. We both need the inspiration and discipline of writing with a partner, and we both think we would make good writing partners for each other. I hope so.

I knew I had to stay in my job for a reason, and I think all of those reasons are now gone. I would love to stay in my job ony if I could transfer my job and work for my cubemate. If I can't then I don't think I should even take the job with that guy I spoke to a couple of weeks ago. I don't know. I feel like it's time to move on to another company. I get bad feelings about my company. We lost some market share this year and even though we won a big contract this year, strategically we are really floundering. Our competitors are so aggressive and we are so conservative. Our competitors are coming up with innovative products and bringing them to market quicker than we can.

My division hired a consultant to regorg our division, and when I met him I wasn't very impressed. The leadership in my company seem to be so lacking in vision and direction that everyone is basically running around like chickens with their heads cut off. It's too bad because my company is a good company, they have a great mission and all, but they are just floundering and I think everyone knows it but no one knows what to do about it.

They're also doing this weird thing with finances because invoices are taking forever to get paid. Having been in finance, this behaviour is never a good sign. There is no reason for companies not to pay their invoices on time, unless there is a good reason like they're having problems with cash flow or because they're watching the balance on the books. I just get a bad feeling about the place and I don't think I'm the only one becuase our attrition rate is so high, so high that they are basing VP performances on whatever attrition rate they promised. Can you imagine a VP not getting his bonus because too many left their division? Employees are bailing the ship like rats, and I'm like what are the rats smelling that I can't smell very clearly.

Maybe going back to writing morning pages really does work. I started writing them regularly on June 6, after I got back from the Julia Cameron seminar and about a month later I finished my first novel. I only seem to be able to write them during the week, and not on the weekends. I want to write my morning pages 7 days week, but on weekends I am way too lazy.

My life has been in a fog these last few months. My friend S gave me really good advice on how to restructure my SGVA screenplay, better advice than advice I was getting group from the screenwriting group I paid $600 to be a part of. And I thought for sure I had written it down, but I didn't. I am so upset because the advice she gave me was great and I didn't write it down. I hope she remembers what she said because I'm going to ask her if she remembers what she told me. I hope she does because I know I was amazed at what she said because it made such perfect sense.

My friend S wants to us to write screenplays together. She gave me a book to read so we could collaborate on a TV series she wants to pitch based on the stories in the boo.. Neither of us have written for television and I had no interest in writing for TV, but I would be interested in writing a two-hour movie pilot for a series. That I think I could do. I told her if she was interested in writing for TV she would have move to LA, because you need to be in LA to write for TV. She said she was willing. I think for the kind of tv series we are writing, you would have to write the weekly tv scripts in advance because of the production involved, so maybe she wouldn't have to move to LA. We'll see. These stories will make for a good two-hour pilot to a weekly series, but the real work would be creating new plots on which to base the series.

That Ivory Madison we heard last week told us that she writing a comic for DC comics. I'm like, how do you get a job writing a comic strip for DC comics? I never even thought of going in that direction, but it would still fall under writing. Granted the comic strip doesn't lend itself to long prose, you would still have to know how to plot pretty darn well to make a story work in a comic book.

Maybe going back to writing morning pages really does work. I started writing them regularly on June 6, after I got back from the Julia Cameron seminar and about a month later I finished my first novel. I only seem to be able to write them during the week, and not on the weekends. I want to write my morning pages 7 days week, but on weekends I am way too lazy.

My life has been in a fog these last few months. My friend S gave me really good advice on how to restructure my SGVA screenplay, better advice than advice I was getting group from the screenwriting group I paid $600 to be a part of. And I thought for sure I had written it down, but I didn't. I am so upset because the advice she gave me was great and I didn't write it down. I hope she remembers what she said because I'm going to ask her if she remembers what she told me. I hope she does because I know I was amazed at what she said because it made such perfect sense.

My friend S wants to us to write screenplays together. She gave me a book to read so we could collaborate on a TV series she wants to pitch based on the stories in the boo.. Neither of us have written for television and I had no interest in writing for TV, but I would be interested in writing a two-hour movie pilot for a series. That I think I could do. I told her if she was interested in writing for TV she would have move to LA, because you need to be in LA to write for TV. She said she was willing. I think for the kind of tv series we are writing, you would have to write the weekly tv scripts in advance because of the production involved, so maybe she wouldn't have to move to LA. We'll see. These stories will make for a good two-hour pilot to a weekly series, but the real work would be creating new plots on which to base the series.

That Ivory Madison we heard last week told us that she writing a comic for DC comics. I'm like, how do you get a job writing a comic strip for DC comics? I never even thought of going in that direction, but it would still fall under writing. Granted the comic strip doesn't lend itself to long prose, you would still have to know how to plot pretty darn well to make a story work in a comic book.