I'm trying to decide if I should take September 11, 2002 as a day off, as my way to honour what happened on that day. So many memories flood my mind from that week.

On 9/11/2001, I didn't turn the TV on that morning. Strange for me, since I normally turn it on every morning to check the traffic and weather. Even when I was in my car driving to work, I didn't turn the radio on till I was on the road for five minutes. Why I don't know, and the reasons for my out of the ordinary behaviour that morning still elude me to this day. Maybe I was somehow intuitively picking up the horrible feelings that were already in the air, because by the time I got up the World Trade Centers were already on fire, the Pentagon was in ruins, and the plane in Pennsylvania had already crashed. I don't know.

My first bad memories of 9/11 are therefore, driving in my car and turning on the radio and NPR and listening to the announcers freaking out about what was happening. Part of me thought at first, that I was listening to a clip from a movie or a documentary. Within five minutes, I knew it was real. There is something really strange about listening to a national tragedy like 9/11, while doing something completely mundane like driving to work on the freeway at 70 mph.

When I got to work, a couple of people from work were standing outside my building. My company had closed our office because we were close to the airport, and they were afraid that if anything happened at the airport we would be in danger. There was also a news report saying that all the roads around the airport would be closed, and we didn't know if our office would be affected.

On the way home driving, I remember just feeling very sad and crying. At stoplights, I looked around at other drivers and wondered if they were freaking out as well. In my mind, everyone looked dazed but that might have just been wishful thinking on my part. On the way home, a news report came on saying that the Golden Gate Bridge might be a target, and I thought great. I live five minutes from the Golden Gate bridge, and if they block the roads I might not be able to get home. Then another thought came. What if the bridge gets blown up? How will the bridge gets blown up? If they drop a bomb, what if they miss and my neighborhood gets blown up? What if the terrorists have hijacked another plane, and another struggle ensues and they crash the plane in my neighbourhood instead? I'm only five minutes away, after all. If I have to die, I want to die at home where I'm comfortable. I feel bad, thinking how selfish I was at the same moment a national tragedy was taking place. People were already dead in NYC, DC and Pennsylvania, and all I thought about was wanting to get home as soon as possible so I could die comfortably in my own home.

As I parked the car in my neighbourhood, I saw that the schools were letting the children out. I had heard on the radio that Mayor Willie Brown had closed the public schools. I thought of parents who had to leave work to pick their children up, who had to explain to little ones what was going on and why they had to leave school. My eyes fill with tears at this memory. I was glad to not be a parent, who had to explain 9/11 to a child.

Walking around my neighbourhood was eerie. There was an unnatural silence in the air. I pictured televisions on in every house, and people watching the news in horror. I didn't see anyone on the street, as I walked back to my apartment, which was strange. At that hour of the morning, there would have been quite a few people out on streets. Perhaps my neighbours were too freaked out to leave their homes and apartments. I wondered if they were having the same fears I was. God, we were only five minutes away from the Golden Gate Bridge and they said on the news that the bridge was a target. Were people in their houses praying to whoever they worship, I wondered? Praying for the people who had already died back east, praying that the terrorists had not hijacked another plane, praying for their own safety, and most of all praying for their own peace of mind to face whatever was going to happen that day.

More later.

I'm listening to Ron Owens' talk show this morning. Apparently, there are talk shows hosts on KGO who are upset that people are making 9/11 too patriotic. If you want to reinforce your conservative point of view, spend time in San Francisco and listen to the talk shows and read the papers and revel in the idiocacy of overly educated people with way too much money and time on their hands. Living in San Francisco tests the limits of my middle of the road democratic point of view. Sometimes listening to Rush Limbaugh is like a breath of fresh air in the extreme left wing, relativistic, politically correct silly fog of San Francisco Bay Area politics.

The San Francisco Bay Area is supposed to be the most tolerant city in the country, if not the world. What a lie! People here only seem tolerant of those who tout the extreme left wing, politically correct, point of view.

God, what is so wrong on being patriotic on 9/11? The nation went through a tragedy, a great tragedy. Tons of innocent people died, innocent civilians, not military, innocent people who were at their appointed place of work just trying to make a living, just trying to support themselves and their families, just trying to get by in this crazy world of ours by working.

Sometimes I don't understand people. Sometimes I don't understand the intolerance of the extreme left, just as much as I don't understand the intolerance of the extreme right. Sometimes I hear my dead father's voice whispering in my ear, "if those people don't like it here, why don't they just leave and go some place else. America, love it or leave it."

I finished reading "Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague" by Geraldine Brooks last night. A review is forthcoming. I really enjoyed this book but, like other reviewers at Amazon.com, I can only give it three stars.

Now for more fun reading. My next books is "Harry Potter and The Prison of Azkaban" by JK Rowling. I bought the four book set from Amazon UK last year, but only read the first two books. I love Harry Potter. Doesn't everyone?

With the drought, comes higher food prices. I think with drought, there will also be a rise in plague like diseases. It's already starting with the West Nile virus. The FDA is going to start testing a drug/vaccine for the West Nile virus. I guess they're expecting the virus to spread around the country soon.

In Denver, they're banning lawn watering. The same thing is happening in New Jersey. When will other states be next?

A water war is already starting in Central Asia. How soon before states here are battling over the water? Or have they already started?

I just looked up how many calories are in a nacho grande and it's huge. I probably ate over 1,000 calories or more. The margarita had about 550 calories. Yikes!

I'm trying not to freak out, because I walked five miles today. I read somewhere that you burn 100 calories whether you run or walk one mile. If this is true, I had room for the 550 calorie margarita. I also walked 4 miles on Sunday and 6 miles on Monday, and that that's 1100 calories which takes care of the nachos.

God, I feel fat. On the way home, I was really pissed at myself for eating. It wasn't like I was hungry or anything, but I was at a restaurant with nice people who were eating and it seemed sociable to eat. My friend was hungry, and he wanted to split food. I didn't want to just sit there, and be the only one not eating. Is this a bizarre form of peer pressure.

On the way home, it was horrible. I had this little voice inside of me saying, whispering, that I could go home and hurl it all out. I haven't heard that bulemic voice in a long time. I saw an interview with Jane Fond, another bulemic, and she in the interview that the urge to throw up your food never goes away. I think she's right.

It's been years since I was in college and bulemic. And I was stopped myself from bulemia voluntary. Well, maybe not quite so voluntary. After months of bulemia, a hunk of hair the size of a half dollar fell out of my head. I thought I was having a brain tumor, and rushed out to the doctor to get it checked. The doctor said that I had alopecia. He said my hair probably fell out, because I was under alot of stress. I sort of half mentioned that I was on an extreme diet. He looked at my seriously and said that my extreme diet probably caused my hair to fall out, and that if I kept up with my extreme diet, more hair would fall out and I'd probably be bald in six months.

His warning was enough to scare me, so I stopped making myself throw up my food. Funny though, how the urge to throw up just never goes away.

I'll make up the calorie difference in the next few days. I can eat 1,000 calorie and under on Thursday and on the weekend. I think I'll also walk six miles from Thursday through Sunday.

Three days into my new eating plan of eating 15000-1600 calories per day, and I've already had a relapse. I hate this. I hate all of this. I know I have to just put this eating binge behind me, and get back on my eating plan. I feel like an alcoholic who's fallen off the wagon.

God, I hate all of this. I was just starting to feel thin too. I wonder if splurged, because I started freaking out yesterday about being too thin. I had this thought, this belief in my head, that if I got too thin, I'd be a target for rapists and mugger. I know, I know, it's a stupid thought, but I had it. II weighed 115 pounds in college, and back then, I looked strong and healthy. I know it's stupid to think that I'm equating being thin with feelings of weakness and vulnerability, but I'm having these feelings. I guess it's good that I'm recognizing these feelings of vulnerability, and dealing with them through reason. It's just weird having these feelings, since I didn't even know I had these beliefs until now. Where these beliefs came from, is another big mystery I guess I'll have to solve some day. I't's not important for to solve them now, I think. It's just good to recognize them, see them as insights and move on, move on to a happier place whree I feel safe and secure. Who knew I had such bizarre feelings of vulnerability about the size of my body? I didn't.

I went to the San Francisco blog meetup at Yerba Buena Bowl tonight. God, what a disaster. There was no one there. We were supposed to meet at Yerba Buena Bowling Alley, which was somewhere I'd never been before. The place was really small, and there was no bar. I mean, what kind of bowling alley doesn't serve beer? That's the whole point of going to a bowling alley, isn't it? Beer and bowling with the homies.

I got there late, and I started freaking out because no one was there. There was a big group of people there, but they seemed to all be a little too chummy, so I figured there was company or department havinf a night out. I was just about to leave, when I see three people enter with camera equipment. I knew right away somehow, that there were here for the blog meetup. But when I went over to talk to them, they weren't from the blogger group. They were from a new cable access show on the Peninsula, who came to the blog meetup to film it for their show.

Then my friend from my writing group shows up, which was strange because he wasn't even sure he was coming. What a night. I dropped my yoga class at City College, which I was supposed to start tonight, to go to the blog meetup. I was going to drop the yoga class anyway in four weeks, because I enrolled in a bible study class at church which meets on the same night as the yoga class, but which doesn't start until late September. In the meantime, I was going to take four yoga classes and then drop the class. Taking four yoga classes for $13 is a steal and half, since private yoga classes run $10 per class. I also blew a chance to go down to San Jose to meet guys. A friend of mine was having an introduction at her house for a seminar, and she mentioned to me that there might be some guys there I might want to meet. Okay, so the guys I would have met in San Jose were mostly like geographical undesirables. I mean, who the hell goes to San Jose and the South Bay unless you work down there or are going to a concert at Compaq Center. Still, it's always nice to meet new guys and just talk sometimes.

I guess the night wasn't a total washout. The cable access people ended up interviewing me and my friend about our blogs for their show, and then we all went to Chevy's for food and drink. I was so upset with the no show blog meetup, that I needed a cocktail to soothe my frayed nerves. The cable access people were very nice, and it was fun to talk to people who are doing something fun and creative like starting their own cable access show.

My friend said we'll be famous, because we'll be on TV on some cable access channel on the Peninsula. How we're going to watch the show is a mystery, since we both live in the city and county of San Francisco, but that's just a minor detail.

God, I hate seeing myself on TV. I used to act in these videos for a friend of mine, who was producing Hindu legends she's read. She'd put together a cast, film the legend, and then show it friends here and in New York. I could not watch myself in any of the videos. I'd sit there with my eyes closed, cringing at the sound of my own voice. People afterwards came up to me and said, they loved my performance. I would just stand there and smile and nod, not wanting to mention that I'd never watched myself ever. I was in four or five of her films too, but I never watched any of them because I was in it.

I blew my calorie counting at Chevy's. I had a margarita and half a plate of nachos grande.

I fixed the comment margin thing. Thank god for FAQs and discussion boards. My next goal is to add images.

I finally figured out the stupid space linking problem. There was margin:10px in my link line. How it got there is unknown to me. Alas like anything else in life, you fix one thing and another thing messes up. Now my comments are to far over the left. I'll have to fix that sometime today, but my commenting software is acting up.

I'm glad I figured out the stupid linking problem. I think one of my greatest strengths, and also one of my worst weaknesses, is when I get hooked on something, I get really hooked. I spent all last night and the better part of the morning trying to figure out the extra space link problem. I couldn't concentrate on anything else until I fixed it. My obsessivenss is great when I'm doing something that's good for me, and it's really bad when I get obsessed over things that are bad for me.

Still, I did figure how to fix the extra space link problem. Now if I can just fix the comment thing.

A great article from the Village Voice on the coming global water crisis.

Maybe we will someday be like the people who live on the planet Dune in Frank Herbert's book. I love the book "Dune". Frank Herbert was a genius! I hope to write books like him one day, not for adults, but for children. I love books that make me think deeply about issues.

I was at the library today writing. I'm very lucky to have a public library within a short walking distance of where I live. When I was in college, I did all my studying in public libraries. I never studied in the college library, even when I won my own carrel in the lottery. The college library was too distracting; I spent all my time there people watching. The public library in town, on the other hand, was quieter and it had less distractions for me.

Since I was at the library, I even borrowed a book, EM Forester's "A Room with a View." I've never read the book despite the fact, that "A Room with a View" is on my top ten movie list. I was actually thinking, that it might be fun to go on an EM Forester reading binge. I could read everything EM Forester has ever written. I like all the movies that have been adapted from his books, including "Howard's End" and "A Passage to India", so it might be time to actually read his books.

I'm sort of getting into the new diet. Actually, it's the old fashioned diet where you just count your calories. I've never done calorie counting before; some part of me has always rebelled against counting calories. Counting calories seemed so anal, so nazi, so I don't know, way too intense for me. I had friends who had done and told me horror stories about their calorie counting experiences, and their stories put me off. It's amusing to think I've never counted calories before, especially since I've been dieting since I was 13 years old. I think I've tried every other diet on the planet, except for good old fashioned calorie counting. Strange.

I'm finding however, that calorie counting is actually quite fun. I like doing things that I can track and count. Counting and tracking are after all, how I make money in this world and I'm quite good at it too. Counting pages I've written or words I've written is the only way I seem to able to finish any writing project. Doing Nanowrimo last November clued me into this way of working. I was also only able to finish my screenplay, by setting up a schedule of how many pages I had to write each week.

Maybe calorie counting is the only way I'll finally be able to take off this awful weight I gained, when I was having problems with my silly hormones and my thyroid. Those problems are all fixed now, thank god, but the weight is still there. I lost 14 pounds of it last year and kept it off for a year. Now I just have to lose the rest.

Calorie counting is also easy for me since I tend to eat the same foods over and over again. I think what's going to be difficult is when I go to parties and when I go out. On Friday at work, we're having a potluck for someone who is having a baby. Potlucks at work are always calorie laden eatathons for me. I'm also having dinner at a friend's house on Friday, and she'll probably cook. When you have dinner over at a friend's house, especially a friend who never has to watch what her and her husband eat, the food is usually delicious and completely fattening. How will I track my calories at these events?

I've told myself in the past, that it was always okay if I ate like a complete pig at parties. Now I'm not sure if it's okay for me to eat occasionally like a pig anymore. I think this maybe the reason why I've always hated calorie counting.

The dieting gurus say, if you want to avoid pigging out at parties, eat before going. If you eat before going, you'll be too full to eat like a pig when you get to your party. I wonder if I should try this method. I've never done it before. I've had drinks before going to parties, but never food. I mean, the whole point of going to a party with food, is to eat as much of the free food there as is humanly possible. Is this how I've gained weight over the years? Treating parties like eating free for alls, and eating like I've never seen food in my life before, only because the food is free. Silly attitude isn't it? I don't think I'm the only one with this attitude though, if I think about all the holiday office parties I've attended.

I wonder where I got this attitude about free party food came from? It seems like I've always had a thing about free food. Maybe not in grade school, but definitely since then. I'll have to think about my free food thing; it's never crossed my mind to question this attitude before. Interesting.

One of my guilty pleasures in life is reading Craig's List SF Bay Area Missed Connections.

It all started when a friend of mine told met that he found a post about someone wanting to meet him. I told him that he could never be sure that was post was about him. If he answered it, he could be making a total fool out of himself. He said it didn't matter anyway, because the girl who sent it wasn't that cute.

The thought of someone posting on a board, lamenting that they didn't speak some cute person, is romantic to me. Okay, maybe screwily romantic, but romantic nonetheless. I find it intriguing that someone would go out their way to post an add about someone they'd never met, in hopes of meeting them. But people post more than ads about missed connnections on this webpage. There are lists galores, cries for helps, and even erotic stories. Someone was posting very erotic stories a few months ago. To whom these posts were intended, who knows, but they were fun to read.

I even posted myself once, mostly to complain about writing and not having enough time, or some dribble like that. A few people even responded to me, offering advice, sympathy and tips.

So I read Missed Connections daily, secretly hoping someone will post an ad about seeing me and wanting to meet me. I'm not sure I'd ever answer them, but I would greatly appreciate the thought. Or, at least the chance to dream, to wonder if that post is really about me. I'm not a very romantic person; boyfriends have complained about it even. I find most men are way more romantic than I am. It's not that I'm not romantic, I'm just not romantic in an obvious way. If anything, I'm a closet romantic. I'm a little too practical to really be romantic, but I do fantasize and dream like everybody else.

Craig's List Missed Connections is my secret daily dose of fantasy, my escape from reality, a much needed amusement to my day, and sometimes an inspiration for future stories. Romance stories, of course, which of of course I will secretly publish under a different name. I wouldn't want to ruin my image, after all.

Hard at work today. The project, that I've been putting off for a couple of weeks, has to be done. I hate this. The project has been difficult to figure out, only because it involves money. When analyzing clients and how they spend their money, I'm always sure to be very carerful that what I report is absolutely correct, and mistake and audit proof. Clients get very upset if you make a mistake on reporting their spending patterns.

I went to Borders at Stonestown to buy a couple of books on grammar. The grammar thing is bugging me to death, and making me completely paranoid. I'm thinking this is a good thing, even though I hate being paranoid about my writing.

It's warm today outside. Thank god. Yesterday, it was totally freezing. Since I work out in the burbs, I can avoid the dreary foggy weather of San Francisco during the summer. When I get up in the morning, it's foggy. When I get home at night, it's foggy. Not here at work. Here it's sunny and hot and last summer, it even got up to 105 degrees. Much as I love the fog, it is very nice to be in hot weather for the summer.

Okay, that's all. It's back to work. I need to finish this project by Friday.

I'm excited! Football season is starting, and the 49er's are on Monday Night Football. How cool! I'm listening to the game on the radio. Does this mean they're on TV as well? Football is the only good reason I get up very early on Sunday mornings, just so I can watch and listen to Jay Mohr on Fox Sports.

Now if I can only figure out how to get tickets to a couple of 49er home games and who to go with.

I'm tired today. I went to bed at 1 am on Sunday, and woke up still tired this morning. I do this every week. By Sunday night, I'm so wound up from the weekend, that going to bed on a time is next to impossible. There has to be a way to control this very bad habit of mine.

I have a ton of work to do today too, so being tired is really not a good idea. What to do?

I'm still bummed at myself for the book/magazine buying bing I went on this Saturday. I had convinced myself on Friday that I couldn't afford to go see The Pirates of Penzance show on Saturday afternoon. After all, I'd spend way too money this month on my trip to LA. So what do I do? While in Borders at Union Square as I was looking for a specific diet book, I decided to check out the magazine section. This was not a good thing. I found four magazines, three on screenwriting and one on writing, that I absolutely had to have. Then I saw James Redfield's new book, which I hadn't read yet. Of course, I absolutely had to buy his book as well. So my spending free Saturday turned into a $81 buying binge.

If I'd gone to see Pirates, the ticket would have cost $30. I love my rationale for why I do things, don't you?

Honestly, I'm not even sure I needed all those magazines, but I just didn't want to spend the time reading them in the magazine section. Screenwriting magazines are not cheap either, costing about $7 per issue.

Part of me wanted to not buy the Redfield book new, because I know I could get a used copy for cheaper on Half.com. I told myself however, I'd always bought Redfield's books new. It's like a tradition with me. I get so much out of Redfield's books. Whenever I read his books, I freak out because he writes exactly how I've been thinking about issues. No other author has this effect on me. I don't mind paying full price for his book, but the price tag shocked me. I've been buying all my books at half.com in the last year, and I'd forgotten that $25 is the standard price for a hard back book.

Oh well. I'm sure there's some divine reason why I paid full price for a James Redfield book. At least, I hope there is.

Here's the link to Live105, one of my favourite radio stations, just in case you want to check it out.

Live 105

I can't decide which movie to watch tonight if any. Choice number one is The Insider with Russell Crow, which I saw in the theatre. Crowe plays the corporate fat fbomber to a T. I used to sit in meeting with corporate jerks like the one Russell Crowe plays, so I know the type well. Check the way he walks. He totally has the walk down and the pudgy body too. On any given day, there are guys like Russell Crowe in The Insider walking around corporate board rooms dreaming up way to get more money out of their customers, the government, and anybody else they can think for that matter

Choice number two is to Live and Die in LA. I was obsessed with this movie when I first saw it, and I don't know why. I even own the soundtrack. I love the title song, To Live and Die in LA. I think the guy who is the star in CSI is in this movie. He plays a crooked cop, a very crooked and bad cop. Most of the movie takes place in the yucky places in LA like Long Beach.

I suppose I should watch To Live and Die in LA again. Maybe I'll figure out why I was obsessed with it. Maybe not. Maybe some obsessions can't be explained, like my obession with eggplant. I've loved eating eggplant since I was a kid. I crave eggplant and have to eat for it at least a month or two nonstop once a year. To Live and Die in LA and eggplant. Go figure.

Signs, which I saw on Friday, and Yoko Ono's art exhibit, which I saw on Saturday, are topicsI know I need to write about. I still haven't completely digested either event yet so, I'm not sure what I want to say. Maybe later.

A new phrase I wrote, made up, read or heard somewhere, who knows - cheers and all that.

I'm listening to Live105, one of my favorite radio stations, because I feel a little out of touch with new music. God, LA has the best radio stations. It's a bigger city, so there are many more radio stations than here in the SF Bay area. While I was in LA in my hotel room and working out, I found two great rap/hip hop stations and one radio stations that played nothing but dance music.

In West Virginia, we listened to this radio station in Virginia, that I think was called 94.9 Star Country. I tried googling the radio station, but I couldn't find any information, so who knows if it's the right name. Anyway at 10 pm every night, this radio station would do a call in request line called Tuck Ins. You call up and say who you want to tuck in and the deejay would play a country song. What we loved about the radio station, was listening to caller's accents. Their southern accents were so cute.

I think the best southern accent comes out of Hotlanta. At one job, I regularly spoke to a sales director in Hotlanta. His accent was so cute, I was tempted to ask him to marry me. I just wanted to listen to that accent for the rest of my life.

Speaking of accents, people who were born and raised in West Virginia say the out and about like Canadians. It was very strange to hear. The West Virginia accent, at least in the part we were in, was like a softer virginia accent but with a canadian out and about.

I wish I could find information on Star Country 94.9. Why don't they have a website? Why can't I find any information on Tuck Ins? I am being driven insane. I hate when the internet doesn't have the information I want.

Some song called "Rock Star" by N.E.R.D. was on earlier. I really liked it. I love rap and hip hop infused with heavy metal type music and power chords. Love those power chords.

What my life is like right now from To Do List for the next few weeks.

Reread Possession by AS Byatt. I read this book in the early 1990's when it first came out. Although the movie is getting so-so reviews, I'd love to see it, and I think rereading the book would refresh my memory of the story.

Buy more Brahms cds. I'm listening to Brahms right now. He was such a fantastic composer and I only own two of his cds; Concerto No. 2 and Cello Sonata, op. 78 and Sonatas for Piano and Violin, op. 78-100-108.

Go to Macy's to buy eyebrow pencil color no. 3

Start rewrite of screenplay, "Playing Catch with Dad", renamed to "Going Home Again".

Decide which yoga class to take and where on Saturday mornings.

Try out the Pi-Yo class, which is yoga and pilates techniques combined into one session.

Plan picnics for Free Opera in the Park and Free Shakespeare in the Park for September.

Buy tickets to see Puccini's opera, "Turandot". David Hockney, one of my favorite artists, created the sets and I have to absolutely see them.

Go through the 2002-2003 SF Opera schedule and decide what other operas are worth seeing besides Turandot. Maybe Madame Butterfly?

Make plans to see the Egyptian Exhibit from the British Museum, now showing at the California Legion of Honor. I spent hours in the Egyptian art rooms at the British Museum during my stay in the London.

Think about buying the new Enrique Inglesias cd, because I'm Iove with the english and spanish versions of "Escape". I cannot escape this song and it's stuck in my head on repeat.

Think about buying more jazz cds from people like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane.

Think about buying cds from Zero 7, Linkin Park, The Strokes or System of a Down.

Keep on working on second draft of "Crazy Eddie" short story.

Sew the buttons back on which fell off three of my sweaters. Pain!

Start new diet. Not again!

Continue walking 5-6 miles a day for 35+ miles per week.

Go to the gym and lift weights because the month fee keeps coming out my checking account, whether I go to the gym or not.

Buy Fortnum & Mason Royal Blend tea, the best tea in the world!

My favorite baseball player, Barry Zito from the Oakland A's, is being interviewed on the radio. He is so cute! Plus, he's young, he's got the best pitching record in the American League, he does yoga, he's smart and he's nice and large at 6 ft 200 pounds. Now that's alot of boy for a girl to love! Ronn Owens said that all the women at the radio station are falling in love with him. He is definitely the bomb!

Seven Ways to I Avoid Commas with Apparently Great Skill
It’s nice to know after all these years, that I do something with great skill. Read on, so you too can acquire this lovely and wonderful skill.

1. I think my blog is my own private journal and nobody else reads it.
2. I’m a lazy writer and never read over anything I’ve written very carefully.
3. I try to write the way I speak.
4. I spent some of my youth in Southern California, where talking takes the form of one long run on sentence with no pauses.
5, “Like commas. Like oh my god, that’s like so grammatical! Like barf me with a spoon!”
6. I burnt out those brain cells that stored all my grammar memories, by drinking too much and taking too many drugs in my youth. Or if I didn’t destroy them, they’re definitely misfiled because I can’t access them anymore.
7. Part of thinks I’m a genius like ee cummings, and I’m inventing a new form of writing.

The joys of blogging. Someone actually read me bloggie and noticed that I have no idea how to use commas. Wow! I have been trying to work so hard on my grammar too, and it looks like I have very long way to go. Still, someone cared enough to take the time to read the bloggie and get that my grammar skills are atrocious. I wish I had this skill. It would be very valuable seeing as how I want to write for a living.

I know that part of me thinks that my bloggie is like my personal journal, and that I'm the only one who reads it. If someone does read it, they sort of just skim the site and move on. So, I don't really care how I write. It's rather shocking to think that someone actually took the time to read and notice my lack of commas. I am floored, flattered, dismayed, a little pissed, and hopeful. Someone actually read and paid attention to what I've been writing and then wrote me a critique. COOL!

I wonder why people are so obsessed about whether Shakespeare wrote his plays. I think it’s a class thing because there are no records of Shakespeare having ever attended school. What about my love of writing? I haven’t been obsessed with writing all my life. Many writers talk about writing stories when they were kids. I wrote stories only for school assignments and for my journal. I was assigned journal writing from grade school through high school and writing stories in my journal was a way to keep the journal filled when I didn’t want to write about my life or when I got behind in my journal writing. I would write a story and then break it up for a week’s worth of journal entries. I don’t think any of my teachers ever cared what I wrote about, they just wanted to make sure I was writing. And making up stories was so much more easier than writing about my actual life. I even got into poetry writing as another way to keep the journal filled.

I wished I had kept those journals. It would have been interesting to read what I thought or what stories I wrote during grade school, junior high and high school. Unfortunately, I destroyed them all when I left for college because I didn’t want to take them with me and I certainly didn’t want my mother or anyone else in my family discovering and reading them. I had such a lack of vision back then.

Looking back, I have to thank my schoolteachers. They got me into writing at a very young age and years later, I’m still writing and I still keep a journal written and online. Life is funny like that sometimes.

I saw my friend Marilyn tonight and her husband Warren. They are such nice people. Marilyn wants me to attend this growth and development course in Florida in December. I would love to do it, but as always money is a big concern. The course itself is $3,000, and I'll also need money for airfare to Florida and for the hotel.

I know it would be such a great course to take and it feels like it's next step in my development but it's hard to think of spending that amount of money right now when the economy is so shaky. I have so many friends who are unemployed and who tell me the job market out here is really bad; there are just no jobs right now.

On the way home from West Virginia, I met a couple with two kids who also lived in San Francisco. They both worked for United Airlines and they told me that they were worried about their jobs and the state of the economy. I told them I thought our economy would recover, but it was going to take longer than what people expected. I think of that conversation I had with them now that United Airlines has said they might have to go into bankruptcy. I feel bad about that nice couple with their two darling children and thinking about them both out of work, especially here in San Francisco, which is the most expensive city in the country to live in.

Personally, I think United Airlines made that announcement so they would get the loan guarantees that they applied for from the government and I think they were right to take that strategy. Sure it's a scare tactic, but if United Airlines has massive layoffs because of bankruptcy then the country as a whole will be in a whole mess of trouble.

I know taking Marilyn's course would be good for me because I know I have alot of beliefs that are stopping me from getting what I want in life. Like take finding the man of my dreams. I have this thing where I don't want to be with someone who's more enlightened and aware than I am. This belief is so stupid. Screenwriting marina hottie boy is a prime example. The boy is beautiful and totally perfect or so I thought. I even thought he was my Krishna for awhile. But when I got to know him better, I was so wrong. The guy is kind of depressed alot and is really scattered and runs from one emergency to the next. Being with someone like him would be such a nightmare for me. He's way too unstable and wild. Plus, he's one of those types who says he'll do something and then never does it. That kind of behaviour would totally drive me insane and it's way to stressful I think, to live with someone who can't keep their promises on the littlest of things. I thought he was so much more developed and enlightened and it was so damned disappointing to find out he was kind of a loser, at least in my eyes.

I mean, probably to every other woman on the planet, this guy is the bomb. And I know he has no trouble getting women. But I can't be with a guy who's not happy with his life or himself. I'm basically a happy and sunny person, who gets things done, most of the time. It would kill me to partner up with some guy who was depressed and morose and couldn't get anything done to save his own life, let alone mine.

I think that if screenwriting marina hottie boy were more enlightened and aware, he wouldn't so damned depressed and flakey about everything. Maybe if I got rid of my belief that I don't want to be with someone who's more enlightened and aware than I am, then I might actually meet a happy and charming guy, who gets things done, who's stable and steady, is way fun to be with, is cuter than heck and does yoga.

I'm listening to an interview with Dennis McNally, who wrote a history of The Grateful Dead. He said Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont is a deadhead and so is Bill Walton.

I like The Dead, but I'm not a deadhead. I like their music and I've been to their concerts, but that's about it. I liked their concerts because it was so entertaining from the village scene outside, to all people on drugs, to the oldsters sitting and just watching it all, the families with all of their kids, and who can forget the veggie black bean burritos and giant chocolate chiop cookies that they used to sell after the concerts. Plus I did really like the music and dancing to it too.

The girls at dead concerts were so pretty and young. Too bad the majority of the men were just scruffy, not very attractive and just looking like they were way too wasted. It was laughable really, all those beautiful young nubile chicks and all those really old looking scruffy men. I gave up finding the man of my dreams at a Dead concert a long time ago and just went to be with friends and enjoy the music. I wonder what all those Deadheads are doing now for their music fix.

A band made of the rest of the Dead plus other people are touring now. They call themselves "The Other Ones". I'm sure it would be fun to go, but when I went to a concert with the rest of the Dead and Bruce Hornsby, it just wasn't the same without Jerry.

This is interesting. The senior vice president of business development and network operations for my company left me a message asking to meet with me when flies out here the week of August 26. I've only ever talked to to this guy on the phone, since he works out of our Pittsburgh office. I wonder what he wants. He said our president, whom my boss says is a tight-fisted freak, wants him to discuss the client projects that I've been working on. Great. What does this mean for my job?

It's all my boss' fault. Since he and his wife had another baby, he decided to only work part-time because his wife makes more than him when she works full-time and she wanted to go back to working full-time. So now I'm reporting directly to the CIO, which is okay since we have a good relationship, but what does it mean for my job. I hate changes at work. Whenever there's a change, it's like the suits take it as green light to make changes in the organization. I hate that.

I've been so comfortable here at this job and the job market is so bad out here now. Honestly I don't think my job will change that much. My projects are in demand by our clients, so they can't get rid of me. But they can make my work life less comfortable, and that's what I'm afraid of.

I guess change at work is inevitable. I've stayed longer at this job than I've stayed at any job since 1997, which I thought was a good thing, but maybe not. Maybe I've gotten too comfortable and I'm now afraid of change. When I was changing job every 18 months, I wasn't afraid of change, I was used to it. I've definitely gotten too comfortable here.

Wow, the commenting thing is so cool. Thanks to all who leave comments, because they're all so helpful.

So now I have a suggestion of how to add images to my bloggie, but now I'll have to figure what to add. I'm thinking the most fun thing to do is go through my own collection of photos and see if there's anything in there that would be fun to see on my blog. The first picture that comes to mind is the picture I took of wellies from London. I love my silly green shoes. I wish wearing Laura Ashley dresses with wellies was still fashionable, because I might just wear that look again. Okay, so I haven't worn any Laura Ashley in years because it's just not my style anymore, but it was a cute look.

Speaking of fashion tastes changing. I don't know if it's me or Nordstrom, but I so do not like their clothes anymore. I used to buy the majority of my clothes at Nordstrom. I couldn't walk into that store without spending a ton of money. But now it's a different story. When I was in Nordstrom on Monday and I left without buying anything. Nothing appealed to me. It's really sad, I think. I think I still wear the same kind of clothes I've worn when I used to buy all my clothes there. In fact, I pretty much wear the same type of clothes I wore in college, which I know is another issue altogether. What has happened to Nordstrom? Or is it me and I'm just growing old and not caring about my fashion sense anymore?

I try to keep up. I went on shoe shopping expedition last year to find comfortable shoes with two inch heels and ended up with two pairs of dress and two pairs of casual shoes. I can't wear shoes unless the heels are 1.5 inches and up. I seriously hate flat heeled shoes. They make me feel like I'm wearing old lady shoes and it freaks me out. And what about my trendy turqouise jewelry that I shopped all over the SF Bay Area for in July?

I don't wear up to the minute trendy wendy clothes; I never have. God, I finally broke down and bought a pair of cropped pants while I was in LA and I only bought them beacuse they were on sale for $18 and were in black linen and I've been wanting some new linen pants.

Maybe Nordstrom is too hip and trendy for me, like the Gap. Now there's another store I can't shop in anymore because I hate their clothes. And what's up with peasant clothes. Okay, I know the whole peasant look is in, but god it's so retro. I never liked the style when it in, whenever that was and I'm certainly not a fan of it now. Plus, most of the new clothes is made of polyester and I hate wearing polyester. Polyester traps smell and every time I wear a polyester piece of clothing, I feel like I'm wearing a stinky polyester bag on my butt. Yikes!!!

I'll have to figure the fashion thing out because it's bugging me and I'm a hankering to change my look. It's been awhile since I've updated my look, but it feel like it's about time to do it again. And my goal for a wardrobe update is "I want to look expensive and I want to look like a lady who lunches." I won't give up my baggier than baggy embroidered jean overalls that I bought for less than $20 at Target because well, that's my weekend slob around town look. But I think I need to look a little more coordinated, never mind that I've never looked coordinated in my life. I just want to look that way just to see what it's like.

I was bored and I changed the look of the blog page. I'm not sure the yellow works but it's definitely a sunny, bright and happy colour. I wish I could add a graphic or two, but I don't think I can do that while my blog is on blogspot.com. Oh well, yellow is okay I guess for now. I wanted to add a turquoise colour too since turquoise as you know is so in right now.

I went to my regular informal Tuesday screenwriting group tonight. I usually just sit by myself and write, while the rest of group discusses their plans for when they sell their first screenplay, which camera angles to add, indie versus commercial mainstream Hollywood films, etc.

I'm so new at the screenwriting thing that I never feel like I have anything good to add to any discussion. Plus, I know I'm a total scumbag when it comes to money. I'm like, I'm selling my screenplay to the highest bidder and that usually means Hollywood studios, who will probably never ever make my script into a film, but may pay money just to have it as a future project. Hell, I'd even sell into television since one of my reviewers said my script felt like a TV script. You know, unlike most writers who write screenplays, I still have fantasies about writing a TV movie of the week or Hallmark family drama or Lifetime movie. God, I love these kinds of movies and watch them all the time. I would be so proud to have one of my scripts be accepted by any of these television companies.

So I've been going it on my own, which feels kind of lonely and antisocial, but tonight when I stopped by to say Hello to the bigger group, I found out that a fellow screenwriter was told to write the backstory for each character in his screenplay. I felt so damned validated because that's exactly what I've been doing. And backstory for each character in your movie no matter how minor takes alot of time. I can only do one a day and I'm doing it for every character even the minor ones who have only two or three lines. I thought I was going to start writing my screenplay on Sunday August 11, but these character interviews are taking way longer than I thought they would.

So I'm thinking maybe my gut instincts about my screenplay and what to do aren't so off base after all. Plus that book I've been reading by Richard Walter, who teaches UCLA, has been invaluable. I mean Richard Walter should know about screenplays since some of his students have written scripts like Highlander, Backdraft, etc. In the interview I heard with him a few months ago, Walter said that he taught screenplay writing to at least half the screenwriters that have movies out this year.

I really like Richard Walter and plan to follow the advice in his book. In the book, Walter says to read Aristotle's Poetics, which I bought a few month ago on a recommendation from some other website about screenwriitng. I read Poetics in college years ago, but don't remember any of it. I guess I'll be ploughing through Aristotle for the next month. How fun. Maybe reading it wil make me feel like a shallow and vapid 18 year old space/basket case again. Maybe not.

Check out my friend's blog page and site http://hooray.blogspot.com or www.hoorayforanything.com. The link is at the left under Hooray for Anything. He is a very funny writer. He's snarky as heck but wickedly, wickedly funny, so funny that it makes me even laugh out loud and there are very few writers published and unpublished who can do that.

Well, emailing a post to my blog was sort of a failure. All my apostrophes turned into question marks and the formatting was all off. I've fixed it, but what a pain.

The idea of buying a full size laptop maybe just for travel becomes more attractive every day.

I'm testing the email feature of Blogger Pro. You're supposed to be able to post by emailing. If this function works, this means I can post to my blog while traveling and using pocket explorer.

These past two nights I've woken up dreaming that I was at some Hollywood party. God, what a frightening dream. I have no interest in achieving that kind of lifestyle. My sister loves partying with the Hollywood people. I think the only reason she married that record company guy, who she's now separated from, was because he lived in LA and he went to parties with Hollywood types like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not me. Maybe I've been dreaming about being a Hollywood party because I was in LA last weekend.

Flying to LA was fine. It only takes an hour to get there. To get to my hotel, I got in line for the Super Shuttle and it only cost me $15 with tip. The hotel I booked, the Wyndham Checkers, was reasonable at $129/night. It's not the best hotel in the downtown area but for the price I paid, I got a great deal. My room was little small, but there was a small pool and a Jacuzzi on the roof. The rooms were also richly furnished and I even had a flat screen TV with speakers, a separate modem and desk in my room. The only major drawback was the workout facility which was pitifully small for a hotel in downtown LA. I did manage to workout in gym on Friday night and even hung out in the Jacuzzi in the morning, only because the workout room was packed.

The Wyndham Checkers even had a top 20 restaurant downstairs, which served excellent food although a tad expensive. Dinner for one set me back $60 with tip, but the food was great. My salad had flower petals mixed in. Gotta love a restaurant that serves flower petals on their salad. The halibut I ordered was cooked well and sat on a bed of garlic mash potatoes surrounded by a dressing of scallops, corn and red and green bell peppers and was very very yummy. Paying $9 for a glass of okay pinot noir was the only low point to the meal.

Since the Checkers is the middle of everything, I wasn't that far away from the MOCA, lots of restaurants, a Rite Aid, and even a downtown shopping mall with a Macys. I walked to Rite Aid to buy a bottle of water for $1.50, instead of paying the $6 they would charged me in the room for same amount of water. The only bad thing about my trip was walking around with my backpack all day. I had to check out of the hotel at 12 noon so I carried by backpack with me everywhere after that. Next time I will pack more carefully because after a couple of hours, I felt like I was carrying at least 50 pounds on my back. I'm sure my pack wasn't that heavy, but it sure as hell felt like it.

The great thing about my trip, other than seeing the Andy Warhol exhibit, was how I got back to the airport. I took the LA Metro. LA has their own transit rail system and you can take the Metro to a station and shuttle takes you to the airport.

LA's Metro is strange. You buy a ticket but then you don?t have to show it to anybody or put it through a machine. There are signs everywhere which say that every person must have a ticket to ride the train, but there is no enforcement. The fare to the airport was fantastic at $1.65 for a one way trip with transfer. I had to transfer to another train to get the LAX stop. And like the Metro in London, the trains are color coded, so it's hard to get lost on the system.

The only problem with the Metro if you're not using to being in a big city, it might scare you. Riding the Metro in LA isn't the pleasant experience that it is here in SF and the Bay Area or in London. Riding the Metro in LA was more like riding public transportation in a not so great part of NYC or in downtown DC. There were people riding the train that I would be deathly
afraid to run into late at night and maybe just a little less so during the day. I think the LA Metro went through some of the bad parts of LA like Compton and Watts, where the racial riots took place a number of years ago. Not that I would know because I don't know LA that well, but I thought I saw signs outside of the train for those neighbourhoods.

I mean, I don't really care. I've lived in DC and spent a lot of time in NYC and I had to get around on public transportation so I was used to less than ideal public transportation situations, but if you're not, I think taking the Metro to LAX would be a very scary experience. To me, it was just interesting to rid the Metro only because I started thinking about my favorite stops on the DC metro system like the Dupont Circle stop.

Once I got to the airport drop off stop, which is called Aviation, taking the shuttle to LA was fine because it was full of airport employees. I guess there aren't very many people who have discovered the joys of taking The Metro to LAX.

And Saturday night is great night to fly because it's a slow time. My flight back to Oakland wasn't crowded and neither were the airports. This was so different from my experience the day before when I flew to LA at 11:00 am on Friday morning and the flight was completely full and airports were overflowing with travelers.

I definitely plan to go back to LA, now that I know it's easy, actually quite convenient and I had such a great time. I just have to figure out the backpack thing.

I’m listening to the Ronn Owens program on the radio and he has a guest on who is an expert on the real estate market. I feel like I’m listening to the same type of programs I heard about the stock markets during the dot com boom. It’s scary. I don’t believe all the hype anymore. Who is buying all these houses when unemployment is so high in the area? Did people not learn anything from the tech boom and bust? Do people believe all the hype about anything anymore, especially when it comes to the stock market and the real estate market? I can remember those pundits on CNBC saying how the Nasdaq was going to go higher, how the tech stocks and specifically the dot come stocks were the stocks of the future. Where are those pundits and those tech and dot com stocksn now.

People are putting their houses on the market because they’ve lost their jobs and they probably can’t make their mortgage payment. There are so many rental signs in the city right now, even in my neighborhood where I haven't seen For Rent signs in about 4 years. If people can't rent, how are they going to buy? And I don't think the people who have vacated their apartments, are buying real estate. At least not from the people loading their stuff into Uhauls that clog the city streets every weeeknd. Where are these people going? Don't the real estate agents and journalists see these for rents signs and the uhauls too? Don't they read the headlines in the paper or the news websites?

Why do people ignore reality and simple common sense when it comes to money? Is it greed? It’s like maybe just the thought of having all that money puts a spell on you and all your good common sense and your ability to see reality goes out the window. I think the real estate industry is pushing the hype about the market because they make tons of money when houses here sell for big prices. They have no vested interest in seeing home prices drop. They don't care if a homebuyer gets negative amortization on their home loan when the real estate market tanks. They've already made their commission. I'm sure the Wall Street pundits and the CEOs of all those failed companies had these same thoughts. Why should they care? They've got their bonuses, their stock options which they sold while the company stock was high.

I don’t get it. But then again, I haven’t lost any money in stock market since 1998 and my 401(k) and IRA are fine. Now as for the rest of my accounts, that’s another story. I have that annoying knack of walking into a store and only liking the most expensive item in the store. Where I got this skill from is unknown to me, but it’s wrecking havoc with the amounts in my checking account and my credit cards, not to mention my savings.

I went to Stonestown to write. Why I can write in the middle of a mall in food court, where people are talking and eating and they're blaring god awful music and not in the quiet of my own place where I can play my own music, is a mystery to me right now. But writing in very public loud places seems to be the only way I can write this month.

I interviewed the brother character Michael in my screenplay. After finishing up the interview, I decided to change the title of my screenplay to "Going Home Again". I looked up the word "going" in imdb.com and I couldn't find this title in their movie list.

My reviewers told me that I needed my title and I was opposed to it, but now I think they were right. My story is about a a guy going home again and I have him say "some people say the hardest part of leaving home is actually leaving. I think the hardest part of leaving home is going back home again."

On the way home, I also realized that this is my second story about failure. Art is Scary was about the fear of failure, or so says my acting director. I disagreed with him at the time, but maybe he was right. I had a fantasy of Roger Ebert talking about my screenplay and saying that "it was filled with pathos and a sense of failure, failure of parenting, failure of finding your dreams, failure of a father, failure of a son, failure of the american family and finally failure of american society."

And what do I have my movie family saved by? Baseball. How ironic since there may well be a baseball strike this year. I'm not sure what I am trying to say about society and baseball, but I guess I must be saying something.

I hate that I seem to only write about failure. I hate failure. I used to think that failure was not an option in my life, but I have had so many failures that I have proved myself wrong over the years. I love all the many ways people fail and that I've failed. And failure is sometimes accidental, sometimes driven by fate, and sometimes completely voluntary. Is it any wonder I am obsessed with failure as a theme in my writing?

God, I’m really lucky. I signed up to comments yesterday and today the commenting software place is no longer accepting signups. I wonder what happened. Oh well. Commenting seems to work though.

And what a miracle. The baseball players unions has decided not to strike. Doesn't it make you think that they were just testing the waters to see what a strike would do the sport. Guess the reaction wasn't very good. Even that freak Paul Harvey made a comment called millionaire baseball players "bums". It's like you know if you see a report saying that something is fashionable on CNN Headlines News, the item is so no longer fashionable. This is how people become fashion victims; BEWARE!

I'm adding comments. Let's see if this works.

Skip Bayless from The Mercury News says in his column that baseball fans will be back, even if there is another baseball strike. He says baseball in our American DNA and that there's too much shared memories that get passed down from parents to their children about the game. I'm not sure I agree with him.

I think the American psyche has really changed since 9/11. I think the constant stories of greed and hype from the dotcom boom and bust to the Worldcom and Enron debacles have taken a toll on America's wallet. What are these baseball players thinking?

The US economy was still reeeling from the tech collapse in 2000 when 9/11 happened. 9/11 didn't cause the US economy to tank, it was already on its way, but 9/11 definitely was the kick in the butt down the economic hell hole we are finding ourselves in today. Has the baseball players' union not been reading the news? Are they so rich that they're that immune from the current economic downturn? I guess they must be, because they are striking for more millions for their multimillion dollar salaries.

I hope the baseball players come to their senses, because Skip Bayless is wrong. Baseball hasn't recovered from the last strike. There are still teams who are losing money, especially the small market teams. To get the fans back into the stadiums, the owners have mortgaged their future to pay players exhorbitant sums. And I'm sorry, it's now working.

Sure, some fans will come back, but not all. And the ones who left because of the first strike will stay away, passing down different memories to their children. If you follow Skip Bayless' argument that baseball is in America's DNA and is kept alive by memories. what happens to baseball when fewer and fewer americans have those memories. Baseball might not die a quick death. No one does. Quick painless death are only in the movies. Most people die incredibly painful deaths that go on longer than they should. The same will be true for baseball. As the game, the players and the owners become more out of touch with the people who actually watch the games, the game will surely die. Slowly and painfully of course. And baseball will probably be around longer than it probably should, but it will end and die nevertheless. And that will be a sad day for America and it's favorite national pastime sport.

I've been upgrading my page and even added links to blogs of friends and acquaintances. I hope to find more blogs to add soon. I'm thinking of adding books I'm reading and music I'm listening to as well as favorites sites and shopping pages. One day.

Back from LA and I'm exhausted. I tried to post on Friday while in Lala land, but Blogger Pro does not support pocket explorer. Fortunately, they have a fix. Siince I can get into my regular email, I can post using email. I have to set it up first though. Blogging via email might actually be faster and more efficient than logging into the site, especially on my baby laptop.

So funny. While driving home over the Bay Bridge from the Oakland Airport, LA Woman by The Doors comes on the radio. I think I could easily live in LA. I used to hate LA because I always thought it was too big, too dirty and the traffic and the freeway sucked big time. Now San Francisco is just as worse with the congested freeways 24/7. The air isn't as bad as LA's because of the fog, but there are days when it gets close. SF will never be a big as LA simply because LA is just a bigger area, but if you count the whole bay area which is 9 counties, SF is just a tad smaller.

But if I live in LA, I would definitely have to totally lose weight. Everyone there seems small framed and rake thin. Fashion wise I didn't do too bad. LA people seem to dress up a little more than people here in SF. They're not as dressy as east coast/NYC people, but definitely slobness does not reign in LA like it does here. With my clam diggers and silk and rayon hawaiian shirts, I looked okay.

I wonder if I totally looked like a tourist though. Everyone in LA was so friendly, especially the people in the musuems. The audio guy at the MOCA said my brand spanking new coach messenger bag was very fashionable and all the guards at the Geffen Contemporary kept asking me if I had any questions and the guard at the door asked me if I enjoyed the exhibit. I've never known LA people to be so friendly.

The girls in back of me in the long line at the MOCA on Saturday said Kathy Bates of Misery fame was in the line in front of us. The line was so long that she marched her butt up to the front, presumably to get star treatment. She never came back so maybe they let her get in ahead because she's a movie star. That's the thing about LA. There could a stars where ever you go, but if you don't notice, you totally miss them. I thought for sure there was a Don Henley lookalike in front of me in the MOCA line. And I swear to god some woman who looked like Melanie Griffith was there waiting to get her car from valet parking. But who knows?

I saw Robin Williams once here in SF at a movie theatre a long time ago with his wife and kids and the only reason I noticed him was because some people stopped him and asked if he was Robin Williams and he said he was. I totally wouldn't have recognized him unless he was pointed out to me. Robin and the family were going to see the Spice Girls movie.

More about LA later. I'm just glad to be home.

I've been thinking about food and being in a relationship. I have seriously strange eating habits.

1. If I do eat, I don't eat very much and I like to eat simply. I rarely ever eat a salad, a main dish, bread and a desert in the same meal. I like to have one small main dish and eat it.
2. I binge eat. Right now I'm in a sushi mode, so I eat sushi two to three times a week, sometimes every day. Then I'll get tired of whatever I'm binging on and not eat it for a long time.
3. I've been an off and on vegeterian since I was 18 and tend to eat this way out of habit.
4. Since I've been a vegeterian for a long time, I'm not very good at cooking meat. In fact, I remember that just smelling raw meat used to make me so nauseous. I'll cook chicken and small pieces of meat, but never huge chunks of it like steak or london broil. And if I do meat, it has to be thorougly cooked. The bloody stuff freaks me out. I do eat fish however all the time.
5. I eat a steak maybe every 5 years or so.
6. I really prefer to eat on the weekdays, but I'll cook on the weekends and Friday. If I do cook during the week, dinner won't be ready till 8 pm.
7. I don't really like drinking wine at dinner and if I do, it's just one glass and definitely not every day. Same thing goes for all alcoholic drinks. I'll drink wine when I go out to eat and drink more than one glass but only for special occassions and at parties or get togethers.
8. Sometimes I just eat salads for days on end.
9. I think I'm lactose intolerant, so I only drink soy milk and I try to stay away from cheese.
10. There are foods I hardly ever eat or don't ever eat like eggs, lamb, etc.
11. I have an obsession with eggplant and binge eat it all the time.
12. I usually just eat fruit for breakfast.
13. I'm trying to eat kosher so I have list of food exclusions and foods that I can't eat together like meat and cheese.
14. I rarely drink soda and only drink german or italian mineral water (they're cheaper at$0.89 a bottle) with a slice of lemon.
15. I only drink filtered water.
16. When I'm on vacation, I tend to throw out all my food rules out the window so I can enjoy the native cuisine. Since I'm on vacation, I'll also drink like a fish.
17. I'll also throw out all my food and drinking rules when I go to parties or get together with friends for restauarant dinnder especially if it's a once in a while thing, like twice a month, but definitely not once a week or two days in a row. I'll eat bad foods and drink like a fish.
18. After events or vacation days where I don't follow my eating and drinking rules, I will need to cleanse and will follow various cleansning routines from a day to a week, depending the amount of partying I did.
19. I'm into fasting, so I fast at least once a month for health reasons. My fasting lasts three days and consists of 1 day of no food, just water and tea, two days of just fruits or fruits and veggies, raw and juiced only. And I do cheat sometimes.
20. I'm trying to get rid of my caffiene addiction slowly, so I mix caf and decaf beans togther in equal proportions.

I'm sure I have more weird stuff about food but hey, 20 items is pretty good for a first time list, isn't it?

I'm getting excited! I fly to LA tomorrow to see the Andy Warhol exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art. I've been wanting to take a trip to LA to see art since last summer when I wanted to see the David Hockney photography exhibit, but the timing never worked out. This summer I decided to make it work and I did it. I fly to LA and then fly back to SF tomorrow night.

It's a quick in and out trip, but I'll have enough time to go to the Andy Warhol exhibit, check out the art at the rest of the MOCA and then take a shuttle to see The David Geffen museum, the MOCA's sister museum.

I found a hotel that's a couple blocks away from the MOCA, wasn't too expensive and has a gym and restaurant facilities. There's even a pool on the roof if I wanted to swim. I even get 500 points of frequent flyer mileage on my United Airlines credit card.

I've already have my ticket to get into Warhol exhibit and since I'm planning to be there on a Friday afternoon, I'm hoping it won't be too crowded.

God, I have not taken a trip by myself in a long time. It's at been least four years. I am so looking forward to it. It's fun travelling with friends or boyfriends, but when you travel by yourself you are absolutely free do anything you want. You don't have to deal with someone else's eating habits and their schedule. And I always meet people when I travel by myself so I never feel like I'm lonely.

This is a kind of test for me to see how easy or dificult it is to fly in to a city and see an art exhibit. The cost of insuring a travelling art exhibit is so exhorbitant that museums hardly do it. The art exhibit usually travels to only 2 to 4 cities and SF is very rarely on the list. If I can fly to LA easily to see art, then I'll think about flying to NYC, Boston, Philadelphia or Chicago to see other art exhibits. I will only fly for the large exhibits though, like retrospectives of an artist's works and it needs to be artist I really like or art I am absolutely dying to see.

I was lucky to see the Cezanne exhibit in London a few years ago. I was planning a trip to London that year and at the same time the exhibit was going to be at the Tate. I think the only other place the exhibit was travelling to was Philadelphia. I love Cezanne!

I wonder what the security at LAX will be like. I'm allowing for two hours on Saturday night to get through airport security. If it takes a shorter time, it's not a big deal. I can always use the time to read or write. I'm use to reading and writing in crowded places anyway and can get a lot of work done.

I wonder if publishing my stories or selling a screenplay will feel or making any kind of money from my writing will feel as good as my corporate sucesses, four of which are listed below. And all of this achieved in a short 8 years of full time employment. I can't imagine what other successes I would have had if only I had started working fulltime earlier in my life.

1. 1992 - 1996 - my job at the insurance company where I got a 15% plus raise every year and a promotion, not to mention year end bonuses, stock options, cash awards, etc. Not bad for my second full time job.

2. 1997 - interviewed at a startup in a company located in Silicon Valley North and was offered a signing bonus in cash to join the company. God, I felt like a professional athlete when this happened. How cool is that when a company offers you cash on top of your salary to sign up with them.

3. Dec 1998 - interviewed at a transportation company in SF and at the end of the interview, my future boss says "name my price for my salary". Shocking! It's the kind of thing you dream of and when it happened I freaked and then low self esteem and integrity kicked and I lowballed myself. Next time I'll know better. Still, it was worth it just to hear that statement. Plus I had a corner cube with a view of downtown SF, Pac Bell Park and my own conference table with chairs.

4. fall 2000 - at my current job, I finally have every corporate drone's dream, my own office with a view of a stream and trees. There is nothing like having your own office and being able to shut the door so you can have private phone calls, play your tunes and listen to the radio.

More thoughts on a "Paul Haunting". What is it with men with brown hair and vivid blue eyes? Every time I get to know one, I end up falling in love and sometimes even dating them and once I even married one. Here's the list.

1. The english priest who presided over my first communion. He used to come over to my house and lift me up in the air and walk around. I'm sure the catholic scandalists would have something to says about him.
2. The bisexual priest in high school who had a crush on me. Man, could that guy dance. Sadly though, he died of AIDS a long time ago. He always leaving the priesthood and coming back. I wonder what the catholic church scandalists would think about him?
3. My first love, my freshman year in college. What can I say about him? I thought he was the start of my brown haired/blue eyed men obsession, but he's number 3 on the list. He taught me about classical music and Bootsy Collins and the Ah Shit chorus and how to recognize a great bass line. Every time I hear a song by The Cure I think of him.
4. My poet/writer college boyfriend who went to Country Day School for Boys in St. Louis. I think this guy became a playwright. I still have the poem he wrote for me. I've been meaning to frame it.
5. My exhusband. Still think he's cute after all these years. Surprising, we're still still friends. The guy would take me back in a second if I asked.
6. The man I saw in the Aka Joe outlet near Jackson street. I think he was the soulmate but I was married at the time, so I freaked out and ran. I think I freak out and run from alot of men I find incredibly attractive. Nerdy, aren't I?
7. Paul, exboyfriend who died this year.
8. "I think I've found my Krishna" Screenwriting hottie boy. What can I say ... he's a jock, he does yoga, he looks like Charlie Sheen, he's absolutely beautiful and to die for, every girl in class had a crush on him, and he's read the Bhagavad Gita. How could I not fall in love with someone like him? Too bad I ran from him too, but we're sort of still friends I think.

Another group for the Paul Haunting list - Dada. They had that one hit Diz Knee Land. The whole album was actually quite good.

10 at 10 from 1982, heard last night on KFOG during my workout.

1. Bill Nelson - Flaming Desire
2. Flock of Seagulls - I Ran
3. Alan Parsons Project - Psychobabble
4. Jon Anderson - All in a Matter of Time
5. XTC - Senses Working Overtime
6. Marvin Gaye - Sexual Healing
7. Huey Lewis & the News - Workin' For a Livin'
8. Men at Work - Overkill
9. English Beat - Save it for Later
10. Split Enz - Six Months in a Leaky Boat

So many memories from that year. I forgot how much I loved the song "Senses Working Overtime". I'll have to figure out how to get it. I haven't heard Psychobabble since I was with Paul, my dead exboyfriend. Every time I hear a song I associate with him, I feel like I'm getting a "Paul haunting". Groups associated with Paul: Pink Floyd, Jesus Jones, Guns N Roses, 4 Non Blondes, Joe Walsh, The Grateful Dead, and the Wish album by The Cure. Other groups too but I can't remember them all. Only know I'm having a "Paul haunting" when I hear the song. I think I owned A Flock of Seaguls album. Whenever I hear "I Ran", I think of that summer I spent in San Diego being a nanny to my two nephews. I poddy trained my nephew Brandon and he grew up to be such a sweet young man. I still love The English Beat and wished they were still making hits. You can't find a good ska band or record anywhere. I heard a good ska band once at Miss Pearl's Jam House years ago. My girlfriend and I stood on our chairs and danced and nobody said anything. I guess pretty girls dancing on chairs at a nightclub is always tolerated, no matter how dangerous or how wasted the girls are. The bartender guys just stared at us and smiled as did every other man in the place. I guess we were quite a sight. Dare I admit I used to love Men at Work? My two friends from Australia, Maree who ran her own day care center and Cathy who worked for the government, hated them. They never understood what my attraction to that group was. Maybe it was the singer's voice. I never much cared for Huey Lewis and the News but they did make okay music if you're in that kind of mood. I don't remember who Bill Nelson or Jon Anderson were? I didn't listen to anything except new wave and techno pop and disco. But of course, I totally remembered that Marvin Gaye song. I think I even had sex to that song once. Whatever happend to Split Enz?

Three semi good-looking guys stopped by to talk to me in the coffeeshop while I was working on my screenplay. There were so sweet and I got the distinct feeling that they were very happy just to speak to me. The cutest of the bunch said to me "See ya later" as he left, like he really meant. There were very young though, probably too young for my taste, but hey, I still get a thrill when guys get a thrill just speaking to me. It's so cute!!! Never mind that I would never ever go out with any of them. It's just cute that just speaking to me made them so happy. Boys are funny aren't they?

It doesn't pay to be so spacey. I was trying to update my United Airlines Mileage Plus account today with my West Virginia flight information. I haven't flown on United Airlines in a long time and I haven't been paying attention to their Mileage Plus program. I was reading the brochure today when I realized that I could have earned mileage on car rentals. This bums me out so much!!! I had a car rental in 1998 when I went to Hawaii and in 2000 when I went to Carmel and last July when I went to Hawaii for that wedding. I could have been earning mileage the whole time. And they have hotel partners too, so I could have been earning mileage at the Hyatt in Dallas in 2000 and maybe even the hotels in Hawaii and Dallas that I stayed at in 1998 and 1999.

I'm telling myself I shouldn't feel so bad because I usually charge travel expenses on my American Express card and I earned points on their travel program, but still. I definitely missed an opportunity to get a free trip.

I used to fly at least four times a year awhile back and totally made out like a bandit on triple mileage. I earned free trips on all the airlines. I was really into my mileage plus cards then. But when I stopped travelling, I stopped paying attention and I'm paying the price. God, I hate when I get spacey about stuff like earning points for some program I'm on.

I was thinking that I could put in for the car and hotel rental in Hawaii last year, but I'm too late. You have to do it in a year or they won't do it and it's been about 13 months. Man, I'm bummed, so bummed. I could have had a free trip on United Airlines by now!

It so doesn't count to be spacey about your frequent flyer programs.

Information comes to me strange ways. On the way back to my place from doing laundry, the free magazine "Bay Area Parent" was strewn across my steps. The cover story was on Tim Hudson "Huddy", star pitcher for the Oakland A's and the caption read "A's Hurler Tim Hudson: On Being a Big League Dad". How fortuitious since part of my screenplay is about my baseball player dude's relationship to his young son. The article definitely goes into the research folder.

I read the headlines on SF Gate and was shocked to find out that Nasdaq was at April 1997 lows. I knew the stock market would tank and go down to 98 levels, but never in my wildest dreams did I think the Nasdaq sink that low. Just think in 1999, there were all these articles everywhere about how great the stock market was, especially the Nasdaq. In early 2000, the Nasdaq volume was at 5,000. Now in mid 2002 it's quarter of that volume at 1200.

I wonder how many poor people bought the hype about the stock market. I know so many peopel who lost money. I started telling people in 1999 to get out of the market while the market was still high. All my friends, even the really good ones, laughed at me. I wonder who's laughing now. I made money in 2000 and then got the hell out and switched everything over to a money market fund. My investment portfolio value is higher than it was in 2000 and keeping pace with inflation. I can't say the same is true for all of my friends' investment portfolio. Silly people!!!

And what's worse is that I don't think people in general will make the connection to not believe what the papers and TV are telling them. No matter what the newspapers and TV people are saying, you've got to research the stuff and come to your own conclusions. I knew the market was overhyped. I had put together a financial business plan for a startup company before and had to predict when a company would make money. The thing that should have been obvious was none of these overhyped tech stocks had much of revenue stream but a hell of an expense stream. Way too much money being spent and not any money coming in. The tech people spent wildly and lavishly without revenue to pay for it. They were reckless and arrogant but the biggest fools were the people who bought their stock and believed their messed up business plans and models. These tech stock people broke every business rule on how to start a company, rules that have worked since humankind invented businesses. Is it any wonder they all failed and everything came crashing down in a serious way? Silly people who hosed investors and themselves and sillier people who bought the hype and the serious flaunting of basic business rules. Part of me feels sorry for the people who lost money and the other part says "there's a sucker born every minute" and I'mj ust glad that some of the time, I'm not one of them.

I saw Reign of Fire on Friday and I really liked it. Too bad the movie didn't have much of a story line, but the idea was great. I've always loved dragons and I like the fact that this movie mentioned that the dragons of legend were actually real.

I loved the special effects, even though some reviewers thought there were hokey. I loved the prayer they made the children say, which was eerie and spooky, because instead of praying to god they prayed to escape the dragons.

If that movie maybe had half an hour of exposition on how Matthew McConaughey came to England, how the chopper chick joined and how the Christian Bale character came to the castle. They had the characters tell you key elements of the story which was boring, but probably is a lesson to me for my screenplay. Characters telling you the important stuff is boring!!! Show don't tell. But it's hard in a screenplay because you want to avoid flashbacks at any cost. I think they could have fit it all in half an hour more of movie footage. Maybe tell two parallel stories of Matthew and Christian Bale.

Best part of the movie of course was when the dragon fried everyone on the outskirts of London. The movie was nice and violent and I loved it.

I'm debating on whether to see The Bourne Identity since I'm a big fan of the Bourne trilogy of books. I can't imagine Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, but the movie is supposed to different from the book. Jason Bourne was a totally brilliant southeast asian scholar turned assassin zealot in the book. He was the ultimate soldier and his intelligence made him totally lethal. I learned alot in that book. The first book especially read like a handbook on how to be spy and top guy terrorist.

I guess I'll break down and see The Road to Perdition since there's such a review buzz around it and maybe even Minority Report, only because it's Tom Cruise and I've seen all of his movies in the theatre. I'm debating Men in Black 2 but friends have told me the original was way better. I hate bad followup movies!

I went to the Michael Sweerts exhibit at the Legion of Honor on Saturday. I don't really care for flemish style of painting with so much of it being dark and flat, but Sweerts was brilliant at painting cloth. His portraits, which I think were revolutionary for the time, were painted with so much feeling and expression, like photographs. His portraits didn't just stare at your front and center, doing all dour, probably because they had to stand stock still for hours on end. Instead, his subjects were in action, looking off to the side, anywhere but staring straight at you. One guy was even getting dressed, the kind of scene nobody else was painting at the time.

The exhibit was small, but that because he's only recently been discovered as a great artist. Perhaps in the future, more of his paintings will show up and a museum will be able to mount a large exhibit.

I love going to museums and people watching. I'm alway amazed at the types of people who actually go the museums. You see the whole range from art experts to the people who are there because they think looking at pictures in a museum is a good thing. I suppose everyone has their reasons for going. I think I go because I like looking at art, having studied some of it but definitel not enough of it to be an expert, and I also love marvelling at artists who draw well.

I've tried to do the art thing by taking art and drawing classes, but I just ended up frustrated at my rather limited drawing ability. The best I ever did is I drew a coffee pot in charcoal that to me, actually looked like a coffee pot. I never got light and shading and I definitely still can't figure out perspective very well. So I envy people who have the gift for drawing and I love marvelling at their skills. Looking at art, great art is like reading a great book, because there is so much pleasure in seeing a master, a genius at work.

I feel the same way about people who can dance well and play instruments. Having tried to do both dance and playing an instrument and failing miserably on my own, I have nothing but great admiration for people who excel in these skills.

I also went to my holistic healer chiropractor who told me my life force was at 93-94% but that I still had some fungal infection in my stomach and kidney. I asked him what he meant and he said there probably fungal growing in those organs. Like how gross is that!!! He said there were no new infestations, but he needed to strengthen my stomach and pancreas to kill off the fungal eggs and larvae. Apparently, when he was working on me before, he didn't want to treat my stomach until I had gotten rid of most of my fungal and parasites, because my system was already in overload. But now that I was practically fungal and parasite free, he could strengthen the organs that he didn't heal completely.

I was happy that no new infestations were being hatched in my body, but when he mentioned the eggs and larvae hanging out in my stomach and pancreas, I freaked out. Just the image of what he said put me on edge. Who wants to go through the rest of the weekend thinking that your heart and pancreas are jam packed fully of fungal eggs and larvae?

Thank god he healed me!!! He also said that instead of the ADD that I had as a child, I had a different sort of brain dysfunction. He told me that the connection between my right and left brain was weak and what this meant was I was fine if I was given a project to work on, but wasn't very good at switching gears and being interrupted. This is so true. It's very stressful for me to being in a situation where I all of sudden have to switch gears and be creative.

Like say I was working on a project and then all of sudden, I find out that something has come up that has to be changed on the project. The stressful part comes in when I have to figure out a new thing, a new change for the project and then going back later and incorporating the new thing in my existing project.

I've had these type of experiences at other jobs before and I've hated them. I hate adding to something at the last minute when I'm on a deadline. I get sloppy and I make mistakes and I freak out because it' s hard and I know I just cannot work under that kind of pressure. I know some people thrive on being able to turn something around that quickly and easily, but I don't. It's just all one big stressing event for me. It's like trying to figure out left from right, which is a way stressful event for me. I have to really think about it sometimes and I hate that I just can't automatically figure it right out.

So, I'm glad about not having the ADD and I'm also glad that in a few months, he said he'll be able to fix this weak connection of mind between my right and left brain. I wanted him to do it but he said I need to get rid of my fungal eggs and parasite before he fixed my brain synapses misfiring. I was glad at least, that he said he could fix it. Not that I'm in a job that has last minute deadline pressures, but I don't think I need my brain synpases misfiring. That so doesn't sound so good.

My healer said the brain glitch happened from some mental trauma and scarring I had as a child. Was it all those horrible experiences I had in first grade of not being able to put together puzzles? Now that's an experience that will scar any child for life that's for sure. I wish I knew.

What's ironic is that now I'm very good at problem solving in my adult life. It's what I think I do best at work, solve problems. Someone hands me an outcome and then I figure out how tot get to that outcome. I even like the challenge of figuring out puzzles and problems because it's so satisfying to figure sometihing out. Will I still get the same thrill if my healer guy fixes my misfiring brain synpases? I hope so. Problem solving is the only thing that keeps my rather dull and boring job interesting.

I rented Oceans 11 and High Fidelity this week. A friend of mind said that Oceans 11 was worth watching because it was boy eye candy. And it is eye candy if you're a Brad Pitt and George Clooney fan. Unfortunately, I'm not. I mean they're good looking and all and I wouldn't kick them out of bed, but they so do not get my pulses racings. The person I loved in Oceans 11 was Elliot Gould. God, the man is so funny. I think I still have a crush on him from his performance in MASH. The guy has definitely aged, but he's aging very, very well.

I liked High Fidelity, although parts of it was kind of boring. I think I need to read the book by Nick Hornsby to really appreciate this story. The two nerd boys working at the record shop just totally annoyed me. Especially Jack Black. Half way through the movie, I totally wanted to kick him to death. I guess he played the annoying music nerd very well for me to have that kind of reaction. The skinny guy, whoever he was, was annoying as well, but not as annoying as the skanky chubby guy.

The funny thing about High Fidelity was that John Cusak's character could actually have all those pretty women as girlfriends. I mean, yeah, like only in a Hollywood movie. His character did try to explain how he manages to get very pretty women by being a SNAG, sensitive new age guy, but he even admitted it was a total lie. God, I hate guys like him!!! I hate guys who pretend to be sensitive, which is 99.9% of all guys, and in reality really aren't. It's so bad!!! I'd rather know up front I'm dating an insensitive freak, so at least I'm prepared and there are no surprises.

Most women will tell you that the jerkiest guys they know are the ones they thought were nice and sensitive, and ended up treating them like shit anyway. Them boys are the worst, only beacause it's shocking. Better to date the non-sensitive types who are more honest about who they are instead of faking their personality to get chicks. I stay away from the sensitive types as a rule now, just for this very reason.

I knew that High Fidelity was originally set in London, so for me the american adaptation didn't quite work. American women just aren't like English women and anyway, two of the actresses, the actress playing John Cusak's girlfriend and Catherine Zeta-Jones had accents.

I liked the idea of the top five list, although I think alot of men use it as a line. I find it particularly suspect when a guy tells me after sex that I've made some top 5 list. Like I'm sure the guy says it to every woman after sex. I think there's the public top 5 list and then there's a a secret top five list that that only they and their guy friends know about. The public top five list is just a ruse to either impress chicks or convey some kind of false impression.

But does every guy have a lists of their top five whatever in their head? What a concept. Every once in awhile I think about what top 5 cds I would take if I got lost on a desert island, but my list keeps changing depending on my mood. Then I tell myself I wouldn't be so stupid as to get lost on a desert island, so making the stupid is futile.

I heard this song on NPR this morning. I love how NPR pimps CDs now. Frank Sinatra was singing this song from a 6-cd box set I think called "Sinatra at the Movies". The old guy had a great voice and okay, maybe the pimping does work or maybe because I'm in that "new class of people who listen to NPR", but I am seriously thinking of buying this box set.

*********************************
"Someone to Watch Over Me"
Writer(s): Gershwin/Gershwin

There's a saying old says that love is blind
Still we're often told, "Seek and ye shall find"
So I'm going to seek a certain lad I've had in mind
Looking everywhere, haven't found him yet

He's the big affair I cannot forget
Only man I ever think of with regret
I'd like to add his initial to my monogram
Tell me, where is the shepherd for this lost lamb?

There's a somebody I'm longing to see
I hope that he turns out to be
Someone who'll watch over me
I'm a little lamb who's lost in the wood
I know I could always be good
Someone who'll watch over me

Although he may not be the man some
girls think of as handsome
To my heart he carries the key
Won't you tell him please to put on some speed
Follow my lead, oh, how I need
Someone to watch over me
********************************

I would add to this song, make him a workaholic so I don't have to feel guilty about my own workaholic ways, make him love to watch football, baseball, basketball, tennis and hockey, well, all sports in general, make him smart and someone who knows how to write decently so I don't freak out when he sends me emails, make him someone who enjoys the outdoors but whose idea of camping is slow room service, make him tolerant of visits to art museums, ballet, opera, theatre, broadway shows, make him cute cute, clean, smell nice and not a sloppy dresser, make him love to travel, tolerates foreign movies but loves to go to movies in general, likes to read, doesn't have extreme political views that will freak me out, did not for Nader in the last election, pragmatic and fiscally conservative politically, idealists from either party need not apply, and please make him drive a car from the acceptable car list (either a bmw, vw, mercedes, saab or other european brand as first choice and japanese brand as second choice and please no suvs or american cars, although a jeep cherokee is borderline acceptable and definitely no trucks). A dog is a plus.

It's my pet theory that mediocre looking men become instantly cute and attractive in my eyes when they're walking my favorite kinds of pet dogs, like german shephards, giant standard poodles, pugs, retrievers, and of course, luscious chocolate brown labradors.

I just added another story to my ISP website. It's my infamous shitty first draft of a screenplay, "Playing Catch with Dad". I didn't inlcude the whole thing since it's 120 pages, but just my personal favorite scenes and other scenes my reviewers have liked.

I really just had one favorite scene in the whole thing, which is when my baseball player dude is walking around Pac Bell Park. I don't know, something about this scene is so great. I still remember my first thrill of walking around Pac Bell Park and how cool it was to see the Bay and downtown scenes from the park. I love that south of market view of downtown and looking out into McCovey Cove and seeing the people in their boats and the occassional ship that floats by.

The best way to see the park is get a seat on the bottom where they serve you food in your seats. Talk about couch potatoing it at the baseball stadium. With that ticket, you have an all access pass to all the levels. You also run into all the sports announcers in the hallway or the bar, if you're into that sort of thing. And there's no line for the bathroom. How hot is that!!! Then there are those freaks at the bar, who just sit in the bar and watch the game all night. What freaks! They can't even be bothered to go outside to see the game. I mean, what's to the point of being at the game? Plus, depending on your seat you'll see Larry Baer or maybe even Peter Magowan walking around, not to mention whatever famous and local celebs are watching the game. Sitting on the field level seats are the only way to go!

I added two more stories to my ISP web page, which can be found at the "My Stories" link at your left.

The first new story is an introduction to a seven volume story I'm planning to write one day called "The Elf Girl Chronicles". I posted the story in my blog sometime last year, but I decided it needed to be on its own web page.

The second story is one I wrote for a writing class assignment in 2001. It's called "Rodeo Spurs on My Heart". I know, stupid title but it's sort of a silly story anyway. We had to look through the paper and find an article that caught our attention and I picked one about rodeo cowboys. I think the rodeo was in town at the time. We then had to write a story using the article as inspiration. My story ended up being about a former cowboy from Texas now living in Cali. His childhood best friend is in town for the rodeo and my cowboy guy takes his family to see him. The two guys have always been friendly, and sometimes mean rivals. This story is a continuation of their childhood rivalry, only cowboy dude's best friend takes the rivalry a little too far. I think sometimes people do that, do things for silly reasons and then end up wrecking friendships and lives in the aftermath. But that's life isn't it?

I have another cowboy story brewing which I will finish one day. It's about an aging cowboy rodeo star who falls in love with a cowgirl horse trainer from Cali. He's about to retire when he falls in love and he has to decide whether to leave his ranch in Texas or to move to Cali. He's a 7th generation Texan native who loves his ranch and his state and she's a new age Cali bred horse trainer. It's like a clash of cultures story because I think Texas culture is like a foreign country. All that land, all that heat, all that history makes for a very different breed of man.

The story is still knocking around in my head and it's been about 2 years now since I came up with the idea and if a story sticks with me this long then I feel obligated to write it. When, I don't know. I'm writing a screenplay and a short story at the same time and both projects are taking up all of my writing time. I have two more short stories scheduled to be completed in the next two months and then there's the novel I started last November that I would really like to finish. But the aging rodeo cowboy story is definitely next in line.