I watched Witchblade tonight and OH MY GOD, there was the cutest looking guy on the show. He's supposed to be Cartaphilus, the Wandering Jew, who Christ condemned on his way to Golgatha. Man, the actor they picked to play him was soooo cute. I wonder if every woman watching the show thought the same thing. He was beautiful like the beautiful elf man in The Lord of the Rings. He was like the love god himself Jim Morrison from the Doors only modern.

And of course, he was the bad guy, a demon, who killed and maimed without a conscience. But still, god was he cute. I taped the episode and had to watch it again because Mr. Demon was so darn handsome. It just reinforces my theory that the bad boys for me are often the major hotties in my life.

And it was love at first sight, like how every girl fantasizes, meeting some guy in some weird place like at a restaurant bathroom, and you both stand there and stare into each others' eyes, where you're half expecting the earth to move. Then of course, they make Mr. Demon, such a guy-guy and he drives a motorcycle, but he's into art and he puts the seat down in the toilet. Now if the guy did yoga, he'd be a dream come true.

I don't believe in first love myself, but it's my total fantasy that I meet a guy at some weird place and we stare into each other eyes and the next thing you know, you're married. I thought I had a love at first sight experience in February in my screenwriting class with my beautiful marina hottie boy, but the only eyes that were sparking were mine. His were turned away and surveying all the available chicks in the room, not including me. Ah well. He was a beautiful man and there's nothing like have a pretty boy in your class that you can stare at if class is boring. So he was good at least for that.

I have no idea why I thought this particular actor playing demon boy was so attractive either. But god, he sure was and he also had a great voice. His character was also plain speaking which I liked. When the witchblade chick told demon boy she had fallen in love with him, he replied that he had fallen in love with her too. God, what a totaly fantasy! An honest man. The only guy who ever admitted to me what he really felt was Brian and I think that confession came not of his own volition, but out of a need to explain our relationship, which of course was incredibly unexplainable. When the witchblade chick said to Mr Demon guy that she'll never get used to watching him leave, he turns around and says, you won't have to, ever. Well the guy has been wandering around since the days of Christ, so you'd think he'd have picked up a few tips on what to say to a woman to make her happy and how to treat a woman. He's practiced, that's all.

Then of course to complete the total chick fantasy, Mr. Demon says at the end when he's dying that the witchblade chick is the only woman he's ever loved. Nothing like a guy dying in your arms and saying you're the only he's ever loved, which of course is true because now the guy is dead. How convenient.

Mr Demon guy reminded me of Anne Rice's The Mummy. Of course, you'd want a guy who's been wandering around this earth for centuries. Think of how many sex tricks the guy knows and how many positions. I'm bad, I know.

I wish I could fall in love at first sight but I never have. I don't know if it's because I don't believe in it or it's just never happened. I've never met a guy who had eyes I wanted to stare in for a very long period of time. Except there was this one guy at some outlet store near Jackson Square park a very long time ago. I couldn't take my eyes off him and he couldn't take his eyes off of me. I ran out of the store blushing and embarrassed about doing that, but I had the distinct feeling that the guy might have "the one" and I passed it up. But then again I was married at the time and it didn't make sense that there could be two "the ones" and I wasn't willing to think that maybe I had married someone who wasn't "the one." That would have been way to depressing. And I never ran into him again and I put the whole episdoe down to me salivating over some beautiful man in a store.

Finally at home, dreading over reading the 66 messages on my personal email. On my junk mail hotmail account, when I last checked there were 76 messages and counting and god only knows how many emails await me at work.

God, I love being home in San Francisco. I love the fog and the salty smell of the air. I just love being in a big city and close to an ocean.

So many things to think about. I've been writing a diary for my trip to West Virginia which I'll to post tomorrow. I'm only up to day 5 though and I have day 6 to 14 to work on. I just wish I could have blogged every day, but when on you're on vacation, it's hard to find the time. Plus, I felt so guilty logging on since each log on was a long distance call for my host. I left her some money, but I don't think it's going to be enough. I'm sure she'll email me if I need to send her more money.

The one fun thing about West Virginia which is so unPC of me is I started my mammy collection. My friend who has relatives there has one and I've been dying to start my own collection. I bought a picture from the 30's with a mammy which needs to be framed. The tag said it's from the 30's but who knows whether that's true or not. Then at a flea market on Tuesday near Lewisburg I bought a cast iron mammy. Then this girl Cindy whom we met and who lives next to the General Lewis Inn in Lewisburg and who is also a friend of our hostess, gave me her salt shaker mammy. I scored three mammies on this trip.

My friend was kidding me about me starting my racist collection. A mutual friend of ours also has a mammy collection. but since she lives in Berkeley proper, she has to hide it for fear of reprucussions we think from Berkeley PC nazis.

I wonder if I will be subject to the same PC scrutiny. I love my mammies. They're so cute.

We visited the Homestead Resort in Virginia and that was a shocker. Talk about days of the old south. The serving people were all black. The whole thing freaked me out a bit since I'd never seen anything like it, only read about it in books or seen it on TV. But Virginia is definitely a different state than West Virginia. Virginia is so much more formal and West Viriginia, more laid back, hippiesh and country hillbillyish. I'd been to Virginia before but I never noticed the formality of the state until I crossed the stateline from West Virginia.

Any way more to come. Sleep awaits after my long flight from back east. I'm very, very glad to be home.

I'm flying home tonight. Blogging on the road has been difficult on vacation for two reasons. Lack of time and where I'm staying, logging on to the internet is a long distance call. It's so different from home where logging on to the internet is a local call and I can stay on as long as I like. Here I've had to worry about logging during the cheapest time rates, which means I've either had to blog after 11 pm or early in the morning before 8 am. Either time has been difficult.

I tried to write something up in Pocket Word and then tried to copy it into my blog but for whatever reason, I couldn't do it. Just as well.

It's been a strange trip.

I just read a newsletter from an astrology site that I check frequently. There was this whole thing about the eclipses and how it affected the astrologer's life. I think I've been affected too.

Things, people that I thought that were very secure in my life, I found out on this trip aren't. It's kind of like being adrift on the ocean of life without the safety of what you thought was your life raft. It's kind of what I was expecting anyway, but still it hurts deeply on some level.

I had seen the signs earlier last month so I was prepared, but still ... The only good thing is that when your old life gets stripped away like this, it just means that another new life is starting. I also have a feeling that the new life will be so much better than the old. Maybe I'll find get the support I so want and crave in my life, which right now is sadly lacking.

It's not anyone's fault either. I'm just on such a different trip that most people. It's the sad but true life of an artist I think. Only other artists understand and then only just a litttle.

Most people, maybe 99.9% of the world is so caught up in having their needs fulfilled, that this is their whole life. With me, most of my needs have been fulfilled enough, so I'm content with my life. Not that I haven't struggled, because I have and I wasn't given any break in my life either by having very rich and loving parents who gave a big fat never ending trust fund. No, my contentment has been of my own making, my own design, my own hardwork. Sometimes I think that I'm content because I have such low expectations, but then again I think, it doesn't matter. It's contentment and happiness that count.

I mean sure things could be better, they always can. But I've got life pretty well damned handled, finally after all these years, and thousands of dollars, thousands of books, thousands of hours in therapy, seminars and classes, and thousands of bucketfuls of tears.

But it's this contentment with my life, that has allowed me the freedom to pursue my creativity, my art and now maybe finally work on it when I'm not working. It's been a long and difficult road to finding my true art, but I think writing may be it. At least I've made the decision at this point, that I'm never going to find out if writing is my true art unless I devote alot of time and energy to it.

It's like when I wanted run marathons. I devoted alot of time and energy into my running and I ran three New York City marathons before I decided that marathoning and long distance running wasn't my thing. But at least I had run three marathons to confirm my decision.

I need to do the same with my writing. I'm in year 4 of my writing quest and I've been pursuing it halfheartedly. I read somewhere that it takes five years for an artist to develop their style, their voice. I still have another year and a half to go, but this time I want to write with purpose and much more seriously than I've done it in the past.

When I was doing the climbing the corporate ladder thing, it took my five years to almost double my salary and responsibility level. And at the end of five years, I looked at my life and said being a corporate freak wasn't it.

I have a history of pursuing what I want and going for it in five years and being successful and finding out whether I want it or not. I need to do the same with writing. Except with my writing, I kind of think this is it. At least I hope it is. I don't know what I would do if writing didn't pan out. I'm sure there's something out there for me, I just don't what it is yet.

So it's writing for me until I decide that writing isn't it. My mission starts officially on July 20. I'm looking forward to what my new life will bring.

Trying to blog on a hot summer July night in West Viriginia. The mosquitos are eating me alive and moths are flying everywhere.

I'll try to review my trip from Day 1.

The airport shuttle arrives at my friend's house in Oakland at 4:30 am. Our flight did not leave till 7 am from San Francisco, but we didn't know what to expect with all the post 9/11 security.

The ride to SFO at that time of the morning only took at half an hour so we got there at around 5 am. To my surprise, we saw people doing curbside check in, which I thought was not allowed anymore. There were very few people in line. We looked inside and the line at the American Airlines counter was 100 people deep. There was an airline person there and we asked him where we needed to go to check in. He told us we should do curbside check in. Why more people weren't doing that is a mystery to me. You have to tip the guy about a couple of dollars per bag, but it was such a small price to pay to not have to wait in that very long line.

San Francisco is one of the few airports where there are no federal screeners. After all the mishaps with the private screeners, I wasn't sure if I felt very comfortable being checked in by non-federal screeners but what can you do.

The airport security at SFO is now set up like JFK and LaGuardia. If you don't have a ticket, you can't get to the gates. The screening process wasn't too bad, except that if you have a laptop, you have to take it out of your bag. A few people were getting extra screening with the security wand but it was hard to tell why they were getting picked out of line.

After awhile, I wanted to get wanded, just to see what the full security screening was like. But when my friend got wanded in Chicago, I quickly walked away, not wanting security to know that we were together.

The flight itself was uneventful. We had a 1.5 hour layover in Chicago and had fun trying to figure out how to get from the American Airlines terminal to the United Airlines terminal.

One thing I did notice was the presence of the oh so trendy turquoise jewerly that was worn by the majority of the women at SFO. At Chicago, I saw one teenager wearing something turquoise. Don't women in Chicago and the rest of the country read fashion mags? I mean, I even had my oh so trendy turquoise bracelet on and I'm not trendy at all.

The United Airlines plane we took to West Virginia was one of those small hopper airlines, that seated less than 30 people maybe, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the flight to Charleston WVA was only an hour.

The airport at Charleston is very small and the car rental places are right where you pick up your luggage. We were going to rent a compact car but somehow the lure of a mini SUV seemed a more appropriate vehicle for driving around in the country. The car rental guy told it was only going to be $3 more a day and so we rented a Chevy Tracker, which is kind of like a low rent Toyota Rav4. The engine is good but not that powerful. My Golf would leave the Tracker in the dust in a race, but for a rental car it's great. Plus we have 4 wheel drive should we ever need it.

We arrived at around 5 pm and my friend decided that we needed to go to one of those tourist traps to eat. We stopped at this eating place with shops called Tamarack. There were signs for it everywhere on the freeway.
The menu feature a more upscale version of WVA food and even had fried green tomotoes and bacon on the menu. I settled for a barbeque pork sandwich, which my native WVA friend said wasn't very authentic since the meat wasn't shredded enough.

The restaurant is surrounded by these shops which are supposed to represent the best of WVA arts and crafts. We decided to go back there on the way back to the airport when we fly home if we needed last minute gifts. I'm kind of bummed I didn't have the fried green tomatoes but we'll end up going back I think.

The 'skeeters are eating me alive now. More tomorrow.

Blogging from south eastern West Virginia, on a 100 acre farm belonging to my friend's sister. I can hear the sounds of bull frogs croaking in the stagnant pond nearby built by the beavers who tried to flood her out. Alas, the beavers are gone; it's kill or be killed here in the Appalachian mountains.

The farm, called the Rockdale Farm, lies at the end of a road. If I lived here, I would have a big barking dog and a shotgun so I could shoot any strangers who come on my property. If you love the silence of the country, this the place to be, but for me the isolation is hard to bear.

To get to town takes about 45 minutes on windy country road where deer, bunny rabbits, racoons and other animals dart in your path. Sometimes the road is paved and sometimes it's not. If you don't know where you're going, it would be easy to get freaked out and think you were lost.

This is beautiful country, unspoiled by industry, only because the windy roads make it impossible or any industry to sprout. Not that the state isn't trying. Everywhere you go, you see four colour brochures that sell West Virginia as the last great wilderness left in America. Perhaps they are right. You'd have to really want to live here to bear the isolation and the monotony of the trees and forests.

The people here are very friendly, which I don't find that surprising. I grew up in the country and most country folk are friendly on a one on one basis. My friend tells me it's the second to last poorest state in the nation; Mississippi being the poorest. Tourism is the only industry that West Virginia has and the country people know that.

In a general store near Droop Mountain, I had a fun flirtation with a guy whose car had Alberta license plates. He had a mountain bike attached to his car. There's a 76 mile river trail here that you can bike called the Greenbriar Trail. The trail runs along a river that you can swim in. We biked six miles of it on July 4th and swam in its muddy waters and watched lightning spikes on the ridge right in front of us.

Droop Mountain is the site of some civil war battle. We still haven't visited the site but we pass it on the way to my friend's parents' 150 acre farm which lies on the other side of Droop mountain.

Her mom says the weather is better on the top of mountain, especially in the winter time because the cold winter snow air settles down to the bottom of the valley. But when there are lightning storms, they're the first ones to get a bolt since there is nothing else on the mountain to hit.

We went to a luncheon today with authentic west virginia food. Corn pone, sugar cured ham, sweetened ice tea, baked beans, macaroni salad with mayo but no eggs, and cut tomoatoes from the garden. The ham was salty and fried to death but so delicious. Corn pone is nothing but a moister corn bread but it's what they eat here so it's native cuisine.

I had grits for the first time a couple of days ago. It tasted like a grainer version of my mother's lumpy cream of wheat. But again like the corn pone, it's authentic native cuisine.

There's so much more to write but technology seems so strange here in the Appalachian mountains. It almost feels sinful to be typing away on little baby laptop with pocket explorer that can't read javascript. Somewhere a West Virginian is having a laugh at my predicament. It's so typical of the state.

I've been trying to modify my blog so I don't use javascript to show my archives, because my baby laptop which I totally love, has pocket explorer and pocket explorer can't read javascrit. Damn! Much as I love my baby laptop which is great for writing stories on Bart, Muni, etc, it's got way too many drawbacks when travelling.

You can log onto the Net but the connection is so slow. And there's no way to tell what your connection speed is either. I also can't load programs like Final Draft, the screenwriting software that everyone uses, so I can't write screenplays while I'm on the road. I can't even use the template I found for Word because pocket word doesn't accept template.

I'm going to have buy a laptop and I think I might just buy an old laptop. I mean, I don't travel that much and it's usually for vacation. I just need to be able to get on the Net at a reasonable speed and maybe work on a screenplay.

As you can tell, I'm getting ready for my vacation to West Virginia. My flight is at 7 am tomorrow, which means the shuttle freaks will pick me and my friend up at 4 am. I'm leaving my car at her house in Oakland so I can avoid those damned SF street cleaning tickets. Actually, it's probably cheaper to get the street cleaning tickets than to park, since street cleaning tickets are only $25 each.

My apartment is totally clean and everything is in its proper place. I just hate coming bck to a messy apartment. I'm looking forward to drinking moonshine and seeing the hillbillies in their natural environment. I just like that it will be different than San Francisco, which I am getting very tired of lately.

I loved that Rob Morse column in Sunday's Chron about what it takes to live in SF. Things are easier when you have more money that everyone else. Not that money really matters, but you need alot of it to make your life very comfortable here.

Some people mistakenly think that money is not spiritual. My guru used to always say, you can't meditate well if you're wondering about debts, starving and where your next paycheck is coming from. Besides if you're working like a dog all the time, you won't have time to meditate, go on meditation retreats and all the other things you're supposed to do if you're spiritual. Not to mention you need money to buy the books you have to buy, the equipment, the outfits, etc.

My guru liked when his students were financially independent only because then you're not a burden on him, other students or society. He hated bums and freeloaders. He said being a bum and freeloader was bad karma. I think he was right. He said everyone had a god given talent, and being a bum, a freeloader and living off welfare and others is not a god given talent. If you're a bum and a freeloader, you're not using your gifts and that's definitely bad karma.

I hate that stupid 9th circuit court of appeals decision which says the pledge of allegiance is unconstitutional. Some guy on the news said the 9th circuit court of appeals gets overnturned more than any other circuit court. It's so embarrassing too, because it's some nut case from California, Sacramento to be exact who brought the suit. I'm sure this lawsuit has just solidified in people's mind outside of California, that our state is full of nuts and flakes.

Now, I don't mind care if people are aetheists, but in my experience, aetheists hate people who believe in god and try to attack them at every opportunity. Aetheists just aren't comfortable with the fact that anyone believes in god. Most people who believe in god are comfortable with aetheists, but not those oh so politically correct, smug, aetheists who think they're intellectually and morally superior to everyone else because they don't believe in god. Have you ever noticed that the people who advocate political correctness the most, are aetheists?

Anyway, you've got this aetheist nut case trying to impose his religious beliefs on the rest of the country. It's so typical it's not even funny. And you just know that the supreme court will take up the case and overturn the ruling. And that idiot from Sacramento who brought the suit, you just know that he'll come back a toad in his next life.

I'm so glad I don't work in Finance anymore, especially with all these accounting scandals going on. All finance and accounting departments for every publicly traded company will be heavily scrutinized from now on.

In the 12 years I worked in Finance, I worked for three publicly traded companies. They all has suspect accounting practices. Two of the companies were traded on Nasdaq and the other one traded on the New York Stock Exchange. All three companies used Deloitte and Touche as their accounting firms, so I was never exposed to the Arthur Anderson folks. I knew people who worked there though since people in Finance and Accounting go back and forth between public and private companies.

I even have a Worldcom story in my closet. Actually, it's about their subsidiary MCI. I worked in the MCI finance department for about a couple of years. I remember one quarter back in the 1989, or maybe even 1990, my boss told me that there was some kind of tax write off that they weren't going to report because it would materially affect the stock price. He said if anyone found out, he would lose his accounting license. He said they were going to report the tax write-off in the following quarter, just not this quarter. At the time, I didn't think anything of it, thinking everybody does weird stuff with their books. However in light of the Enron and now Worldcom scandals, I guess he should be glad no one found out.

At the next company I worked at, the one traded on the NYSE, we used to report earnings growth all the time in our press releases, even though technically, the company never really had enough revenue to cover expenses. All of that company's revenue growth came from investment income. Since the stock market was booming at the time I worked there, my company's investment returns were phenomenal. I asked my immediate boss about it and he laughed and said, "Sad, isn' it?"

I used to wonder why those brilliant Wall Street analysts never caught on and questioned us, but they let it slide. I have since come to believe that everybody does it and knows about it, and it's okay. My boss's boss told me once, he was glad I wasn't an investment analyst because if I was, he would be afraid of me. I wasn't sure if he was compilmenting me or not.

At the third publicly traded company, I worked in the IT department for the CIO. She basically hired me to do all the finance stuff since she had a worldwide budget of $30 Million. I think I used to do the same stuff that got Worldcom in trouble.

On the news, they said that Worldcom had improperly accounted for $3.8 billion in capital expenditures. The neat little accounting trick that got Worldcom in trouble is you can amortize capital expenditures over time. I don't remember how it goes exactly, but it's something like 3 years for software and 5 years for hardware and furniture. Anyway, simply what this means is, if you bought say $1 million worth of computer hardware in 2002. Instead of having to report or incur the expense in the year bought, 2002, you can report the expense over five years or the useful life of the product.

I used to jokingly refer to is as the "corporate credit card plan" because amortization of capital expenditures works like a credit card, especially if you're one of those people who never pay your bills in full every month. Corporations, especially publicly traded ones love it, because they can use the amortization to offset higher than normal expenses and still report an increase in revenue which translates into earnings growth and then stock growth.

All companies would have loved to amortize Y2K expenses, but the SEC put at a stop to that. They said that money spent to upgrade to Y2K could not be amortized and had to be incurred in the year done. Since Y2K was an upgrade, it could not be considered new software or hardware. If the SEC hadn't put their foot down on this issue, I think we woudl have probably seen more companies charged with improper accounitng methods.
I spent two weeks going over FASB, the Federal Accounting Standard Boards, and looking up accounting cases to see what expenses you could be legally capitalized and still pass a public audit. Because of new accounting laws for intellectual property which came about in I think, the early 1990's as a result of computers and technology, companies started capitalizing like crazy and not just physical equipment, but employees, consulting fees, conferences, etc.

Since you needed people to build software or build hardware, all of their time, even the food they ate sometimes or even their plane fares, could all be capitalized and amortized over 3 to 5 years.

God, the stuff I used to put in my amortization column was just amazing. But I did my research and I was definitely following FASB rules and accounting cases. And when D&T came to audit me, I had my paper trail ready and so I passed my audit with flying colors.

Those accounting/finance people at Worldcom probably got a little too carried away when they capitalized $3.8 billion. I'm sure they started amortizing acquisition costs, because you could technically say that cost to acquire a company is directly related to the cost of bring a piece of software or hardware to the company. There are no hard and fast rules for amortization, since computers and technology really added a new dimension to the amortization issue.

The problem is if you start capitalizing stuff and saying that it's for hardware or software, you need to make sure that the hardware or software project is viable, actually works, actually goes to market. If the project doesn't finish, you have to eat the expense in the year you abandon the project, sometimes even in the year you actually incurred the expense. I wonder if this is what happened at Worldcom. They over amortized on hardware/software projects that failed.

I mean, Worldcom couldn't help it I guess. The went on a huge acquisition binge, bought out all these companies and just at the time, they finished the buyouts, the bottom fell out of Wall Street and they couldn't sell their hardware/software. All those hardware/software projects had to be abandoned because there was no one around to buy them. In the meantime, Worldcom had started capitalizing all the expenses and spreading the expense out over 3 to 5 years. And when it came time to report their earnings, they pretended like the hardware/software projects were stll going, when in reality they were actually abandoned.

Poor Worldcom. I'm just glad I don't have to deal with Finance and money anymore. It's such a dirty business. And it's like that I think at all companies, especially at the public traded ones.

My favorite finance story is from the NYSE company I worked at for five years. Our beloved CFO, who was on the wagon/off the wagon alcoholic, would go to a bar with the CEo and over senior VPs in the afternoon, drink like fish, when he was off the wagon, decide some time while drinking what our earnings should be. Then they would come back, drunker than hell and hand my boss a paper bar napkin. The bar napkin has the numbers we were going to report that quarter. It was our job in Finance to get to the numbers on the napkin and make it all look legitimate and be able to pass a public audit. And we could do it too. Sad isn't it?

Most companies are having such a hard time, especially with a substantially lowered stock market. If you think people made money during the dot com stock craze, think about corporations. All corporations have money invested in the stock market. But when the dot come bubble burst, regular people lost money and so did most companies.

I think that's why most publicly traded companies can't report any earnings growth anymore. They don't have their investment income returns to help wih their earnings growth. There are very few companies whose revenue pays for their expenses. Corporations are like normal people; they totally spend more than they make.

Where these financial scandas will lead is anybody's guess. I'm just glad at hell i'm not in finance anymore.

That book on prosperity I've been reading is so great. I've been doing one of the exercises where you list out your wishes from the past, present and future. For the past, you wish that things that happened to you had gone a different way. For the present and future, you wish for how you want things to be.

It really works. Something about this exercise really works. I've been in such a good mood lately. Today while driving home in the car, the CSN&Y song came on called "Love the one you're with". That song was my theme song in college. Out of sight meant totally out of mind for me, when I was dating, and I was your typical american college girl who enjoyed whomever I happened to be with at the time. Didn't quite make my dates and boyfriends happy, but what the hell, I was young and it was college right?

I was thinking about my crush guy and how much I've been missing him, which is so uncharacteristic of me. That CSN&Y song made me realize that deep down, I'm still a part hippie chick from the 60's who doesn't believe in missing a guy. Out of sight means out of mind right? God, there are a ton of men to be explored, to be known and maybe even sometimes to be loved. In my old age, I've forgotten this well know fact of life.

So, one got away. BFD! Out of sight is out of mind and out of my life. Like CSN&Y say in their song "when you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with, love the one you'r with."

I saw the play Buried Child by Sam Shephard on Saturday. What a crazy, crazy play and so representative of the energy of Sam Shephard's early career, with the crazy dysfunctional family and images of food.

I wasn't sure if the Saturday audience at ACT liked it. There were two people, older, much older, from Monterey complaining about how they didn't understand the play. Did they even try? One of them, an older woman, she must have been around 80 years old with her frail bony body, lifeless white hair and papery thin blue veined skin, told the usher that she wished ACT would do more normal plays, plays that people could understand.

What was so great about this play, was the abundance of young kids, kids who probably know about Sam Shephard, maybe were even familiar with his work and came to see his pulitzer prize winning play. The five young girls in front of me, so young, bursting with fecundity, spoiled innocence and youth, loved it as did I.

Everytime I go to see a play now, I notice this odd generation gap. There was a show on PBS about theatre and the narrator said that theatre as institution is dying. He said the theatre needed to attract a younger audience to keep it going. I wonder if what he said is true.

The older grey haired qtip audience want plays that they can understand. The younger ones want to be shocked. Do the older ones forget that they too as youth needed to be shocked. Is that what happens when you get old, that after a certain point you can no longer accept new ideas, new things. That one day you wake up and you find that you only want to listen to music from your generation.

Isn't that what all those oldies music radio stations are about? Older people only wanting to listen to music of their youth. Older peope sneering at and hating the newer music and calling it noise. Didn't our parents say that that to us?

In college, there was a sign on one of the bathroom stalls in the Theatre building, which said "We are the people our parents warned us about." Perhaps it would be more fitting as we grow old for a sign like that to say "We are the people we hated as kids."

So this is what watching the Food TV network does for me. A few days ago, I watched a special on baseball park food. Interestingly enough, with all the great food at today's baseball parks, there are more hot dogs ordered than any other food item.

So today while shopping at Lowe's, I found a hotdog stand outside and what do I do? I buy a hotdog with mustard, onions, relish and sauerkraut and I wanted to buy two, which is what I usually do when I go to a baseball game, but I decided one was wicked enough for me.

No more watching the Food TV network!

The movie Endless Summer is on TV and I'm watching and I feel like I'm 13 years old, because that's the first time I saw this movie. I've seen this movie like about a dozen times all before the age of 18 and it brings back so many good memories of home and being in warm water and body surfing and laying out at the beach on Sunday afternoons.

I also decided tonight that I'm glad I didn't pursue acting. The fun of being somebody else and doing it in front of other people has definitely lost it charm for me. God, you're like a trained dog mouthing somebody else's words, telling somebody's else's truth and not your own.

Writing is so much better! You get to do what you do in private and you get to create and speak your truth and no one else's. No amount of applause and face recognition is worth the opportunity to speak your truth for the world to hear.

I just saw the play Angels Fall by Lanford Wilson and I feel bad because the play was for the most part really boring. I don't know if it was the acting or just the play itself, or maybe it's me, because I'm so used to watching TV and movies, but plays are just boring.

First of all, the characters never talk like real people. Dialogue must always be snappy and sparkling and I don't know about you, but I've never been in a conversation where the dialogue is snappy and sparkling like it is on stage, or if they have spoken that way, they could sustain it for more than a few minutes. In a play, the sparkling dialogue has to go for over an hour, maybe even 3 hours.

Then there are those long monologues and speeches. God, nobody ever talks for more than a minute in real life. And usually if someone does like that, they're like some stuffy professor type or something.

I feel bad because I go to plays now and I sit there thinking, this is the reason why the theatre in America is dying. It's boring, stuffy and unrealistic and the stories and ideas being put forth seem irrelevant somehow.

And this play, Angels Fall, should be relevant because it's about people stuck in a church after some disaster. It's so 9/11. But, I don't know. Watching it felt so artificial. Has 9/11 made me think that theatre is so irrelevant now? Granted Angels Falls did premier on Broadway in 1982 and 1983 and was even nominated for a Tony award for Best Play that year, so it it a little dated, but it was more than that.

I think I finally got tonight that the difference between plays and movies, is a play is about ideas and doesn't necessarily have to tell a story. A movie is storytelling in visual form and can be about ideas, but the movie's job is to tell a story. A play doesn't have to tell a story. And this play did not really have a plot.

Two couples along with a priest and a young boy are stuck in a church in some remote part of New Mexico after a mining accident at a uranium mine closes all the roads. Thatt's the whole plot. The rest of the play shows them interacting, having conversations and telling each other and the audience the story of their wretched lives. There's hardly any action, just people walking off and on stage. The only action is in the dialogue, that sparkly dialogue, that artificial way people talk only in plays.

One could even say the title of the play, Angels Fall, refer to the three male characters in the play, who have all been put up on pedestals by their groups and by each other. In the play, we see that they're just human, not divine, that they have free will and choice and they sometimes don't make very good decisions. And in a secondary theme, the play was also about doing what you love doing and not letting anyone tell you to do otherwise no matter how well intentioned.

I'm going to have to think about this play some more. I can't tell whether I liked it or not. The author is no slouch. He won a pulitzer pruze for a play called Talley's Folly". So he has to be a good writer. But I didn't like the other play of his I saw, Redwood Curtain either. It's definitely just me and not him. I think I expected more storytelling and instead I got exposition and ideas, And it's the lack of storytelling that makes for a me, a very boring play.

I've been reading this great new book called The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity by Catherine Ponder. It has this one exercise where you write about things from your past and present that you wished happened or could have happened a different way. Then you can also write out how you wish things to happen in your future.

I did the past and present part of the exercise on a break at work and afterwards, I felt like a big burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I don't have a lot of regrets in my life, not big ones anyway, but there a few things I do regret. I also wrote down incidents I had with other people that I wished had gone a different way and I got a few insights into why certain people might have acted the way they did. I felt very compassionate even for the people who I thought wrecked havoc on my life.

What else. I decided I needed more underwear for my upcoming trip, so I went to Victoria's Secret again. I was actually standing in line with my purchases, when I noticed the cashier ringing up a bra for a woman that cost only $10. Like a mermaid siren calling to a love starved sailor man, I was drawn back to the sales bins of underwear. And like the sailor, my hopes of finding anything in my size and in a colour I wanted was once again dashed brutally on the rocks of nothingness.

What is it about bins of sale items that make me want to dig through judiciously hoping against hope of finding something that fits in a color I like? You can go to 10 different stores and look through all their sale racks and bins and maybe find one thing you like after hours of hours of digging and combing through the ugliest pieces of clothing imaginable. There's a reason why the Victoria's Secret sales bins are full of thong underwear. NOBODY WEARS THEM! Despite what the media may be telling you, nobody wears butt floss. The sales bins and racks at any underwear department are proof of this widely known fact.

The other thing to know about shopping at underwear sales is all the big sizes are gone, which leads me to conclude that most women in America and in the SF Bay Area have huge rears! The small and medium bins are full of underwear in great colours. The large and extra large bins are full of thongs and other freaky coloured underwear. Why they make underwear in freaky colours is a mystery to me. The stuff never sold when it first came out and it's certainly not going to sell now when it's dirt cheap. Isn't it nice to know though, that most women do have beauty standards for their underwear.

I wish I could date my marina hottie boy. He's just so cute. But I'm so clueless how to even attract a guy like him. I think he might have been a little interested before when we first me and then I blew it and now we're just friends. I tried to get over him and I thought I was succeeding, but the guy just haunts my mind. He is like so amazing, so cute and so smart. Maybe we have some kind of past life/soul connection or something, because this crush is just way too strong to be an ordinary crush.

But I'm so clueless how to get a guy interested in me if he doesn't show interest right away or if he did, I missed my window of opportunity. How do you I get the guy to be interested in me again.

We're at least friends so I think there's hope. If I get my act together, lose a few pounds, buy some pushup bras and start wearing low tops, because he likes women that show their assets. I would love to just date him at least for 90 days just to see if we're compatible at all, if the's the fantasy man I've made him out to be in my mind.

I saw Lagaan on Sunday and I loved it. God, I love Bollywood movies and this one was a doozy and a half. A 30's musical in an isolated indian village complete with singing and beautiful people. The star of the indian epic looks like the Krishna portrayed in all the posters you see at hippie shops and at indian grocery stores. Which fits just right, since the village has a Krishna and Radha temple and there's even a Krishna and Radha dance.

Any spiritual chick worth her salt fantasizes, thinks actually, that she was a reincarnated Gopi girl who sat at Krishna's feet. At least, all my friends did. I never did, but that's another story.

The movie credits said it was a joint Indian and Brittish production. Which is interesting, since the Brits were played so one-dimensional and mean. I was watching the movie the movie and every time the Brits were mean to people, I was chanting Bande Materam, which was the chant used during the Ghandi revolution to free India from Brit colonial rule. Bande Materam which means Mother I bow to Thee, the mother being Mother India. That and my vague memories of the Indian national anthem going through my head. You almost want to yell at the screen, see, this is a perfect example of white people colonialism at its worst. And the Brits paid for their meaness too. Today, the Indians rule the cricket world and the Brits are horrible at it.

I loved the music. I think I'm going to have to try to get the soundtrack for it. I might even have track down the videos/DVD for this movie. It was that good.

And the cricket. Well, at least I now understand cricket. It's kind of like baseball in an odd way and I'm sure baseball has its roots in cricket. You bowl or pitch, you bat, and you score runs, except the Brits do it all wearing whites just like in tennis.

And the dance numbers. They were a riot. The whole movie was entertaining. You never see anything that campy, fun and overly dramatic in Hollywood cinema today. We need more Bollywood to come to America.

Then I saw Mulholland Drive. God, I love David Lynch. He is so strange and wonderful. This movie made me want to go back and rewatch all of David Lynch's other movies because images from his other movies are repeated in this one. This movie was one of the most thought provoking movies I've ever seen in my life. I would put this movie up there with Bulworth, another movie which I totally loved. I wish I'd seen this movie in the big screen. I mean, Being John Malcovich was child's play compared to Mulholland Drive.

David Lynch is so spooky and scary and I love how he weaves all his various scenes together to make one cohesive whole. The movie got kind of odd after the woman opened the blue box and I was like "what the hell just happened". But then while lying in bed, I got it. The last scene of the movie is the blue haired woman saying "Silencio" which is that weird theatre of the absurd that was in the movie. I mean, only in LA, will you even see such existential bullshit being done.

At Silencio, the announcer guy keeps saying that what you're seeing isn't real. Which is actually kind of funny in a movie, which also not real and fiction. So it's like, it's a fiction within a ficiton, within a fiction, within a fiction of someone's mind. BRILLIANT!

What's real in the movie? Who knows? Does it matter? It's a movie whose very nature is to tell a lie and not to tell the truth. But we sit there in the audience expecting to see truth. Why? It's movie, not a documentary. The movie is not supposed to tell the truth, it's supposed to lie, it's supposed to stretch the boundaries of reality further, further than real life ever could. So in a cosmically absurd way, it doesn't matter that the story doesn't make sense, especially the beginning, maybe even the whole thing.

I'm going to have read reviews of this movie just to see what other critics have had to say.

I finally got around to seeing Star Wars, going so far as to seeing it at a digitial theatre, one of only two in San Francisco proper. I think there maybe one more digital theatre and it's in Marin near Lucas Ranch.

First off, seeing the move on a digital screen was amazing, especially since George Lucas shot the movie in digital. The sreen is so huge and the sound is great. There's just one problem. The screen is almost too big and there's so much going on in the whole frame that you have to tell yourself to check out the whole screen once in awhile instead of just focusing on the middle. Then sometimes, something on the side would catch my eye and I would stop paying attention to what was happening in the middle. Maybe the answer is to sit in the last row so you're further away? We sat in the middle.

Secondly, what a familiar sight the whole Star Wars logo is and that blaringly loud theme music. I jumped out of my seat and my friend Kim was laughing at me. Honestly, that opening note is so loud it's like a thunderclap. And what about the opening where they tell you what's going on. How familiar is that and how paradoied is that set up too.

The special effects were fantastic, although I couldn't help but flashback to all those making of star wars documentaries and picturing those tiny scale replicas Plus, with the advent of computers, I spent the whole time wondering what's real and what's computer generated.

And some of those backdrops were so beautiful, although I couldn't help but think some of the prettier scenes looked like something out of Thomas Kinkade painting, especially the ones at the lake. Maybe George Lucas has been spending time at the Thomas Kinkade store in Marin, which I think is now out of business. My friend guessed the lake site was the Lake Cuomo area in Italy and she guessed right because it was in the credits. I knew it was a shot from some Italian vista. Aren't all romantic scenes, no matter what time and galaxy they're from shot in romantic Italy?

The actor playing Anakin Skywalker was not cute. He had those bulging eyes like Susan Sarandon. Ewan Macgregor is definitely the better looking of the two. And Yoda too. Christopher Lee was great as always. The guy makes such a great villian. He was great in The Lord of the Rings too, only this time he even got to fight with a light saber. The old guy can definitely still move.

Rachel Portman was cute and I loved all her outfits and that whole no bra look. She's got a teenage girl's body and not really curvy enough to be playing a mid 20 something, which I think is Padme's true age. And yes, the first time she greets Anakin, she does sound like a Valley Girl from Naboo and not a princess or a senator. But you can see shades of Princess Leia in her daringness and her ability and willingness to fight.

And what about that Bambi scene, with Anakin and his dying mother. Was George Lucas taking a cue from Disney Land? Very Freudian. I'm sure there will be a ton of high school and college essays written about that scene. I think even Steven Spielberg had a Bambi and his dying mother scene in one of his movies, but I can't remember which one.

Then there was the execution scene which was right out of Russell Crowe's Gladiator. It's nice to know some of my favorite movies were echoed in Star Wars. My friend said it was more like a bull fight scene, except this time with space creature bulls. Even Anakin got to do the cowboy thing when he tamed the crazy creature with the horn.

And what about Bobba Fett? Wasn' t he just the cutest little kid? Was there some mother of a serial killer or other deranged criminal in the audience being reminded of her cute little son and what he grew up to be.

Then the last scene was like right out of Romeo and Juliet being married by the friar in the garden. How romantic!

It's like George Lucas tapped on everybody' s collective consciousness and gave it all back to aka Star Wars. Is that why the Star Wars series is so popular?

I liked the parallels that I saw in Attack of the Clones with the three previous Star Wars.

Anakin and Padme's romance mirrors Leia's and Han Solo's romance. Both mother and daughter had a thing for rebel types I guess.

Anakin and Luke, both liking to fix things, both on the desert planet, both disobeying their Jedi masters to help out their friends.

I'm sure there more but I just don't remember them right now.

Then the final shot at the end of the movie is the all the clones and they're playing the Empire theme song. You know the old dude senator is an evil thing. Why else would he be encouraging Anakin like that, making him think he's the next best thing to Yoda. The guy's got to be evil. Nobody is ever going to be better than Yoda!

But George Lucas did get the whole how you turn to dark side of the force right. My meditation teacher even talked about it. Doubt is the first thing. Doubt leads to distrust god and question what's happening all around you. You start to get mad a god, the force when events go bad, because you don't trust that it's happening for the good. Anakin definitely had alot of doubt in his heart when his mother died. Doubt opens the door to you thinking you know better than god, then the force, that you and not god, the force is the master of the universe. Doubt is the cause of all evil. I think Yoda would say a Jedi does not doubt the Force, a Jedi has Buddha like attachment and is a servant of god, unconditionally obeying and surrending to everything that is happening around him. In martial arts, they teach you that it is better to yield to an opponent than to fight him, because when you put up resistance, you lose your balance. You yield then your opponent is off balance then you strike.

Then there's that whole pivotal scene where Anakin and OB1 are in the cave with evil Count Dokuu. If Anakin hadn't charged, the whole Stars Wars series would have ended right then and there. No Darth Vader. But because Anakin was arrogant and thougtht he was stronger than the old dude, he rushed and was blasted. A warrior does not react out of anger or arrogance. There will always be someone out there stronger than you are. A warrior can only winning by cunning and by his own intelligence. Anakin has yet to learn these things.

But you know, Anakin is like a typical teenage boy, full of raging hormones. Just think the whole balance of power in the Star Wars universe was thrown off because of the antics of an arrogant, frat boy type, teenage boy. I'm sure there's another story like this around, but I can't think of one right now.

Now the question remains, how does George Lucas wrap up the story. How does Anakin finally turn towards the dark side. The seed of doubt is alreading inside him. Doubt opens a door to all the evil stuff like anger, revenge, hatred. I mean Anakin already did the slaughter the whole village thing, so there's definitely going to be guilt for that. And you know if you can slaughter the a whole village, why not entire civilizations, why not the whole universe. Is it true when they say all it takes it one baby step?

Then how is George Lucas going to resolve Padme getting pregnant? Darth Vader did not know he had offspring. There will have to be a separation between the hero and heroine. And how long before Padme gets pregnant? She is a virgin I think. Will it be the first night or will several months or a couple years pass. I say, the next installment of the story starts shortly after this story ended, while Anakin has all those raging teenage hormones running his brain. Anakin will be not be allowed to grow up and mature.

What about the plans for the Death Star? That doesn't come till years later, but in this installment you already see the plans for it.

I almost want to see the movie again, maybe in a regular theatre to see if digital really makes a difference. I saw Spiderman twice, I should at least see Attack of the Clones twice.

Water fasting today. Water fasting is supposed to be good for you, helping to clear your body of toxins and to break your addiction to food like anything chocolate. I had never done a water fast before until last week. A juice fast maybe, but never a straight water fast. I have such a thing about food too because I think I maybe hypoglycemic, meaning if I don't eat, I get totally nauseous.

But when I water fasted last week, shockingly enough, I didn't get nauseous and I felt fine. I don't know if this means my health is better or maybe I just had this belief in my head that if I didn't eat every 3 or 4 hours, I'd die. I just don't know. It's weird to think you can survive without any food except for water because it goes against what all the health books teach you.

I told a friend of mine about water fasting and she said that water fasting has been around for years, it's even in the bible. All the other religions fast too and do it regularly. It's hard to know who to believe anymore as far as your health. The health and diet industry is a billion dollar business and when money is involved, it's hard to know if you're really getting accurate information.

It's not like I truly water fast anyway. I always cheat a little and eat small bits of food but it feels like I still get the same benefit. Tomorrow I eat only fruit and veggies. Last week, I ate fruits and veggies whole and not juiced. This time I think I will juice to see if that makes a difference.

Last week I ate a huge fruit salad and it was so delicious and wonderful in this hot weather. Then I ate steamed veggies and I don't know. I spent my 20's eating bushels full of steamed veggies and brown rice and I just don't know if I can do it anymore. But then in my 20's I was running 20-30 miles a week and yoga was a breeze.

Speaking of yoga, I feel like getting into it again. I first did yoga when I was high school because I knew people who were practicing it. I had incredible flexibility back then from my gymnastic background and yoga was this ultra cool way to twist your body into all these weird positions. I borrowed a book from the library that showed some homely indian guy doing all these amazing things and I just did whatever positions I could, which was almost 80% of the book.

I never got into it as meditation practice. To me it was just fun, like aerobics, like exercise, like an extension of gymastics. Even after I formally joined a meditation group and was meditating 3 hours or more a day, I didn't do any yoga exercises. If I wanted to exercise, I ran. Running was like meditation for me.

Every once in awhile, I still did the few yoga positions I did remember, mostly because they were fun and I liked being able to stretch my body and yoga is such a great way to stretch.

But it was until 1998 that I actually take a formal yoga class. Whatever flexibility I had in my youth was gone and I struggled through most of the exercises. Interestingly enough, after three months 1/3 of my flexibility came back. I still don't think of it as meditation though. Meditation to me is sitting still, quieting your mind, seeing colours and auras and getting that incredible high. Yoga postures are like fun exercises to see if you can twist your body into a pretzel.

Now I feel a sudden urge to practice my yoga again. Maybe even get back into a class. I'd love to take it from this ballet teacher that I know. If I want to take yoga, I like to take it from a dance teacher. They bring all their ballet training and most of them have also had Alexander and Pilates training too, so it's like getting all three disciplines in one class.

The classes with the ballet teacher doesn't start till the fall, so I gues until then I'll practice it on my own. I went through my video collection and I found a bunch of yoga videos that I forgot I owned. I wonder if it's possible to get 100% of my youthful flexibility back. I used to do the cobra position and be able to touch my feet to my head. This kind of flexibility is my goal.

So the search for the perfect leather bag to hold a tablet and my mini laptop continues. The bag I really want is a coach leather large duffle sack costing $300, but I just don't want to spend that amount of money right now. I have the money to spend, I just don't feel like spending a large amount right now. Not after I've spent over $100 on trendy turquoise bracelets and earrings for my vacation.

I went to Stanford Shoppping Center to check out bags and sitll no luck. I went to Stonestown and saw a Tumi bag for $245. The Tumi bag wasn't bad but it was black and contrary to popular belief, black doesn't go with everything. Then I saw a two bags at Malm luggage. A Tumi grayish green messenger bag on sale for $80. Too casual for me. And then a real messenger type bag. Again, too casual to wear with suits I think. Then into banana republic to the men's section to look at their messenger bags.

These bags weren't too bad. All brown but god, so boring because they look like briefcases and way too big for me.

Then to Macy's, where I saw a guess bag that was half way decent, but again only in black. What is it with all the black bags?

Checked online and found only one decent bag at Nordstrom.com. A leather bag in the right dimensions, a backpak which also turns into a shoulder bag. Went to Nordstrom to see if they had it there, but of course, they didn't

I'm going to have to bite the bullet and buy the coach bag. YIKES!!!

Missing my marina hottie boy alot. I think it's all residual left over feeling from the crush. I wonder what hot hottie boy is doing now? Does he miss me as much I miss him? Somehow I doubt that. He probably doesn't even remember my name and if he did, he'd think I'm just some freak of humanity who washed up on his shore like trash.

He said Fire and Air make for a great mix. Do they? Marina boy exhausts me sometimes, mostly because I can't forget him. But I will, one day I know I will. I just wish that someday would come sooner than later.