I just got through reading a post over at Dietchick's Blog about losing weight. It made me think about why I'm losing weight.

I decided to lose weight, primarily because of health reasons. I used to have very low blood pressure, 110/70 and a very low resting heart rate, 60. About two years, my doctor noticed that my blood pressure was slightly elevated (130/90). He was very concerned for my health, because it had been below normal for so long. He basically told me to lose weight and exercise, or he was going to put me on high blood pressure medication. He told me normally he wouldn't be concerned because it wasn't like I had really high blood pressure, but because my old pressure was so low the increase was too much to ignore. A normal blood pressure is 120/80.

I got so freaked out. I also started to notice that I was having pains in the bottom of both heels, when I walked. My left hip, which is a little high because of my scoliosis, started to really hurt. I told my doctor about these various pains, and he said my increased weight was causing all these problems.

I've never believed in losing weight just for the sake of appearances, and I'm a big believer in accepting yourself for who you are, but I also noticed that I wasn't as self confident as I had been when I was thinner. In fact, my self confidence around men was practically zero, and I would freak myself out whenever I went out on first dates or met really cute guys. I couldn't help but think, why would anyone be interested in me at this heavy weight person, especially now that I was unhealthy and having pains all the time. Talk about feeling geriactric in a serious hurry.

So I went about trying to lose weight last year, and I took off 20 pounds, and my blood pressure came back down to normal, not my normal low pressure, but normal enough, and the pains in my heels for the most part disappeared. And my self confidence improved a wee bit, but not enough where I felt that good about myself. Still, I felt a whole lot better than did the year before.

It wasn't until I met the really cute guy in my screenwriting class in the spring, that I realized my self confidence was still too low, I still felt totally unnattractive, and sadly, very unworthy around a man I was wildly attracted to. I didn't put it all together until around July or August, but once I did, weight loss became essential not only to continue my journey towards better health, but also towards feeling better about myself. I don't think I would have even contemplated losing weight, unless my health and my general well being about myself weren't being threatened somehow.

Losing weight is so not easy. It's much easier for me to eat all the food I want and not worry about my body. I envy people whose bodies can take all that extra weight, and not feel physical pain or have their health or their self esteeem compromised. I'm not one of those people. My extra weight put my health in jeopardy, and put me on a totally bad trip about who I was, what I was, and what I looked like. I can't believe I let "my weight, my fat" take control of my life like that, and threaten the very things I had always taken for granted; good health and well being.

That's my weight loss story for now. Maybe it will change in a few months when I finally reach my goal weight, maybe it won't. But I already feel better with the weight that I have lost, and although my left hip still hurts (will probably always hurt a little), all the little physical pains that I thought were part and parcel of life are gone. And that's been the biggest and best benefit of my weight loss plan so far. Everything else after that for me right now, is gravy, extra. And what's great is how much happier I am, knowing that my body works again without pain and that I'm doing something to make my life better.

My company just hired four temps last week. They've all come from well paying jobs, and things must really be hard out there if they're taking temp jobs in a call center. I don't blame them. If I was in their position, I think I'd take any kind of temp job I could get just to make rent or have extra.

I have a friend who's been out of work since January, and now she's working in a retail store for the holidays since her unemployment checks stopped. She can reapply unemployment next year, but she has to make a certain amount of money this year or she won't qualify. She seems to be taking it all in stride, but I wonder.

God, I hate downloading software from the Internet. I was trying to install this book/cd I bought a few years ago called "Wingmakers", and I kept getting a failure message. From the research I've been able to do, I have to make sure all the drivers on my pc are updated.

I have an Nvidia GeForce sound and graphics card, that have pages and pages devoted to they mess up other games. Nvidia just put out a driver fix on 11/20, and I've been trying to download it all day. Me and everyone else who owns the Nvidia graphics/sound card. What a pain.

I found the ebook/cd on my old hard drive, and I can actually run it from there, but I'd like to install it on my new hard drive. I'd like reformat my old drive just to clean it out, but I may just leave it just in case there's something else I can't install.

While doing my research on my pc problem, I found a website called www.annoyances.org. It's a website for people who use Microsoft products. People post rants and tips on how to solve various Microsoft annoyances. Very funny but frightening due to the large volume of messages. Spooky!

Wow. I'm under the 150 pounds mark. I'm showing big weight losses because of all the cleanses I'm doing. Cleanses will clean your insides out, and if you have a tendency to retain water like me, it gets rid of the water as well.

After last week's cleanse, I was afraid I would gain all the weight back but I didn't. YEAH!!! I'm also going strictly vegetarian for awhile, except for the Thanksgiving weekend and possibly Christmas, and my company Christmas party. When I go strictly vegetarian, it's easier to stick to my eating plan,

One thing about this weight loss that I totally love is I now can wear some of the tighter fitting clothes in my closet. The necks on my turtlenecks, even the really tight ones, are loose, and it's so cool.

I'm dying to buy some clothes, especially now with all the christmas catalogs flooding my mailbox, but I feel like I should wait until I'm done. Everything looks baggy on me, except for waistlines which are loose but not that loose.

My extra large sweaters are definitely going to have to be thrown out or just used to wear around the house, because those sweaters are just hanging on me now. The loose necks on my turtlenecks is definitely the coolest thing though.

I did another cleanse yesterday. This cleanse is from the"The Cure for All Diseases" By Dr. Hulda Clark. This juice cleanse is designed to cleanse your liver of gallstones and cholesterol.

Who knows if cleanses really work, but it's amazing what I've been passing out of my body, and I say it's got to be much healthier to have the stuff outside of my body and in the toilet bowl, than inside of my body and cause who knows what kind of cellular damage.

The ingredients for this cleanse are 3 cups of fresh squeezed apple and grapefruit juice, 4 tablespoons of epsom salts, 1 big grapefruit and 1/2 cup of olive oil.

You start Friday and by Saturday afternoon you're done, so it's relatively painless except for the taste of some of the ingredients. The cleanse instructions tell you what to expect to pass, and sure enough I passed exactly what it said; tan and green tiny stones and tan colored chaff which is supposed to be cholesterol crystals. It's scary to think my body is storing this stuff, but it's coming out.

You can repeat the cleanse, which I'll probably do it once a month until I don't see that stuff coming out anymore. Your allergies are supposed to decrease as a result of this cleanse, so I'm hoping this will be my personal result.

The other cleanse that looks promising and not to difficult is a kidney stone cleanse, which is supposed to dissolve your kidney stones. That cleanse will have to wait until December.

This is old news from 9/19/2002, but a friend of mine told me to buy Apple Computer stock. He said that Apple is coming out with a 64-bit chip. This friend said it's the same chip that Silicon Graphics uses to do all the movie effects, and it will be the equivalent of having a cray supercomputer on your desktop. He said it will blow Intel and all the other chipmakers out of the water, and should boost Apple stock big time if they release it in 2003. But then he laughed and said, that Apple is notoriously late about delivering products to the market. But then he said, buy the stock now so when they do release the chip, I can make money when the stock shoots up.

This news make me cringe, since I just bought a 1.6 gig chip and a pc last week. I hate techhnology sometimes, don't you?

All the layoffs are starting to scare me. Do they frighten you as well? So many people being laid off, and I don't think they're done yet. Look to first quarter 2003 to see some real bloodletting if the economy doesn't pick up.

I'm very blue today. Maybe it's the blue meanies? I'm listening to Chant by The Benedictine Monks of Santa Domingo de Silos. I'm hoping the monks' Gregorian chants will soothe my nerves. I used to love to listen to Gregorian chants in college, and this music brings that part of my life all back. I probably need to rebuild my Gregorian chant collection again, since what I have is all on vinyl and I haven't had a record player in years.

I've got new upstairs neighbors, and they're totally noisy. My apartment building has hardwood floor and ceilings and floors are very thin. The couple walk around in their shoes when they're in their apartment at night and in the morning, and these past two nights I awoke in the middle of the night to crashing noises. Either someone fell out of bed, or they're doing it at 3 am in the morning and their bed is bouncing up and down. I can hear every step they take, and it's so horrendously annoying!

The whole thing makes me depressed about my living situation, and I haven't been willing to admit it to myself, but my apartment is just not a fun place to live anymore. I was having trouble writing in my apartment, and I attributed my malaise to me needing to sometimes change my writing environment.

It's now beginning to dawn on me, that my apartment is to blame. It's just too small, and it's noisy and I need more space. Now comes the part where I sometimes wish I didn't live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. If lived anywhere else, I could afford to by my own place.

I have a friend who lives in Portland, Oregon. She and her husband own their own home, and have two sons. She's a stay at home soccer mom, and her husband supports all of them on his salary, and I make 25% more than he does. I make more money than he does, and I can barely afford to support myself living here.

The city and county of San Francisco is just such an expensive place to live. I know if I lived outside of the city, my paycheck would stretch much further, but I hate living outside of the city.

The only reason I stay in my place is it's very cheap, and everyone says I should stay here until I can afford to buy my own place. But I don't know. Is it worth it to stay in a place and be miserable? If I move to a bigger place, I wouldn't be able to save as much money as I would want, but I'd still be able to save. It would just mean my plan to purchase a place would be delayed a year or two. And what's a year or two?

I was thinking about my housing situation at work today, and I got the feeling deep in my heart that it's time to move on. I've never gotten this feeling about my apartment before, and the feeling was very sure and strong.

This is partly why I'm so down. I think moving places is traumatic. I used to move every two years, and this is the first place I've been in for longer than two years. I love the location, I love the neighbourhood, I love my view, and I like all of my neighbors, except for the noisy freaks of nature upstairs. I have an odd feeling of comfort about where I live, which probably stems from the length of my stay here.

But it's time to move on. I'm definitely staying in this neighborhood though. I just have to find a bigger place that has lots of windows and light, a view, and is on the top floor so I don't have to hear lead foot smegheads shagging above me in the middle of the bloody night.

I just finished reading one of my favorite astrology websites, and it said that Sagitarius is a hidden epicure. The oh so beautiful screenwriting marina hottie boy whom I had a seriously secret major crush, was somewhat of a sommelier. The boy seriously knew his wine, and I think his food as well, although he said he was lactose intolerant.

I wonder what my favorite crush is doing these days. I wonder if he ever finished his screenplay. He didn't seem to be very good at finishing projects. I wished we could have stayed friends and kept in touch, but it was destined to be.

I'm caught up with my nanowrimo novel through Tuesday. It's getting harder and harder to write, because now I'm on the part where the women are going through four trials that they need to pass to become the Head Priestess.

The first trial was to build an a makeshift village, in case of a tribal disaster. This trial came out of the history of the tribe, when the tribe was attacked and their homes were destroyed. The Head Priestess at the time, put together a makeshift village in another location that the tribe moved to until they could rebuild a permanent village. The village had to be put together in 8 hours, which is how long it look that ancient Head Priestess to complete the makeshift village.

The details of the first trial actually came pretty easily to me. I saw it as kind of emerency camping. You put together tents, fire pits, a cooking space, and you gather food and herbs.

The second trial is much more complicated. Keep in mind, that I'm making all of this stuff up as I go along. The second trial consists of two parts. The first part is Magical Potions. Each candidate will make up several random potions. The second part is to prepare a feast fit for a Head Tribal Chief. The second part of the trial stems again from the function of the Head Priestess and their history. If the Head Tribal Chief is without a spouse, the Head Priestess becomes the Queen, the consort sometimes, until the Head Tribal Chief takes a wife. The Head Priestess must be able to demonstrate that she can prepare a feast for a Head Tribal Chief and any visiting Head Tribal Chiefs. In the tribal history, several Head Priestess had to fulfill the function of the Queen, and the trial is insure the candidate will make a good Queen.

Don't ask my why I put this part in, but it made sense at the time I was writing it. But the hard part now is trying to come up with the random magical potions for the test and the food for the feast. I don't think I can just sit down and write this part, without giving it some serious thought.

I have all weekend to get caught up, so I'm actually not that worried. And then I have two days off for Thanksgiving, so if I really get behind, I have that last weekend to write like crazy to get to the 50K mark. I'm at 32,000 words, so I'm not that doing that badly yet. I just hate falling behind like this, because then if I keep doing it, it gets harder and harder to get caught up again.

I finally got around to watching the movie "Clerks" the other day. God, the acting was very, very bad. I think I could have even out acted these people, and I'm not a very good actress myself. I think if the acting wasn't so bad, I would have really liked this movie more. Some of it was very funny that it made me laugh out loud, but in between the laughs was horrible, horrible acting. The Dante character was good, and at least he could deliver his lines. Veronica and the odd assortment of store customers were also quite good. It was the Randall character and the Caitlin character that made me feel like turning the movie off. Too bad too, because the Randall character had some great lines; he just delivered them in the worse way possible.

God, talk about unattractive people in a movie as well!

The other thing I noticed was how chatty some of the scenes were, and how utterly boring they were. Now I know what my screenwritng teacher meant when she said to not have pages and pages of dialogue. Oh my god, it's so boring to watch people talk and not do anything. And even if they are doing something, don't have them talk for very long because it just doesn't play well on a big screen.

I also decided to watch "The Fast and the Furious". I wished I'd seen this movie in a big theatre. Some of the car racing scenes were very thrilling, and would have looked great on a big movie theatre instead of my TV screen. The movie also had a great soundtrack, which again would have sounded great in a movie theatre.

I was supposed to see this movie with a guy friend of mine. We kept trying to come up with a date to see it, but something always came up, and he ended up seeing it by himself. Now I'm bummed, because he was right. It's a darn good movie.

Vin Diesel was of course fascinating, although not as sexy without those great tatoos from Triple X. Still, there's some very intriguing about him as an actor that make you want to watch him.

I loved how all those Nissan Sentras, Hondas, and Jettas were turned into very fast cars. My boyfriend in highschool was a car nut, and I learned to love fast cars and powerful engines from being with him.

There was a whole thing in The Fast and the Furious about driving at 140 mph. I can say honestly that I was in a car that was going 140 mph, with my car crazy highschool boyfriend driving.

There's one straightaway on the island of Kauai that is great for racing. The road is completely straight and flat, and people would often race down this little strip, or at least they did when I was in highschool.

My highschool boyfriend and I were taking a member of this singing group visiting my highschool from Spain to some event. I was in Spanish class so I was a hostess for one of the spanish singers, which is how my boyfriend got roped into being our chauffer. We were running late, and my boyfriend drove like crazy to get us to the event on time.

We were speeding down the straightaway, when I noticed that the scenery outside the car was whizzing by more quickly than what I was used to. I glanced at the speedometer, and it read 140 mph. I registered the speed in my mind, but my boyfreind was such an excellent driver that it didn't really bother me that we were going that fast.

It wasn't until we were getting out of the car at our destination, that the spanish musician asked about the speed of the car since he noticed the speed of the car as well. He just thought we were going 140 kilometers, and not 140 mph. When my boyfriend told him we were driving 140 mph, the guy kind of freaked out and had a hissy fit about the danger of driving so fast.

I remember my boyfriend looking at me like, I was trying to help, you got me into this mess now get me the hell out. I smiled, interrupted the spanish musician and told him we were late so we had better get inside.

When I saw the 140 mph come up in the movie, it brought an amusing incident from my past back that I hadn't thought about in years.

I've spent the last two days at work redoing an analysis I did. My boss said that something was off in my methodology, and I told him I'd already checked it, but to reassure him I said I'd go over everything again. Sure enough, I think he was right although my program was still running when I left work and I won't find out till tomorrow.

I was dealing with a file with 2 million rows, and it was hard to work with because of its size. I decided to filter the data earlier instead of later, so my table would be smaller. The early filter skewed the results. I could have sworn though that I took the early filter off and reran the data last week, and the results were the same, but I got a different result today. I won't find out for sure till tomorrow though.

Because of the new computer, I'm two days behind in my word count. I'm current as of Monday, and to be two days behind is not that bad.

I have a ring of elfin power in the story, and it's turning out to quite interesting. Here's a taste of it. Please excuse the shitty first draftiness of what you're going to read below.

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Mother was lying. I knew it and I attributed the ring's heat as an indication that told me Mother was not telling the truth. But would she lie to me? To this day, I do not know what possessed Mother to lie to me like that. When I was able to question her before her death, she just smiled and said she didn't want to worry me with her fears.

The days for me are long for now. I am alone as everyone I know is dead. Mother's reluctance to tell me what her fears her is an issue that I cannot help but ponder over and over. The only conclusion that I have come to which makes the most sense, and which scares me still, is the strange blue ring was already starting to influence the people around me, without me or anyone else knowing it.

I still wear the ring. Now that everyone is dead, I do not see harm in wearing it since it can longer influence anyone nor can I use my powers for anything other than taking care of tired and broken body.

Mother was right to be afraid of the power of the ring. In her wisdom as a healer, she saw intuitively that the incredible power the ring offered would not just stop at herself, but would exert its power and influence over other people as well. I wish I had Mother's wisdom when I was her age.

But I was foolish, and the ring fed into my desire for power, and to avenge the family honour. The ring also fed into my hatred of Cashani, and used it against me.

That such a beautiful thing could be so deadly still amazes me. But what is still amazing is that there are no family legends about the absolute power of the ring. As Mother reminded me on her death bed, the family histories and legends were often written by the head priestesses in our family. I am sure that the power of the ring would not allow its wearer to disclose its power. So I went blindly into my destiny, and I cannot help but think how different things would have come out were it not for my ambition, my lust for power, and strange blue stone elfin ring.
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I saw Gerhard Richter's painting retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on Saturday. Gerhard is a german painter, and the exhibit showed thirty years of his paintings. Richter was an interesting painter. The man can definitely paint, and there two portraits, one of his wife and his daugher, that looked like photographs. His brushstroke work was amazing and very, very fine. When I looked closely at these paintings, I was amazed at how Richter achieved such fineness in his strokes. The rest of the Richter's paintings are abstract, and I could see how Richter was trying to explore the medium of paint. There was even a set of painting sthat was commissioned by the Vatican to depict St Francis of Assisi, that was on exhibit because the Vatican thought the five paintings were too abstract.

Richter often painted over canvases first, and then repainted them over and over again, and sometimes scraping off the paint. There was set of paintings from 1999 which exemplified this technique of Richter's. It was my favorite part of the exhibit, only because I did that witih my collages. I used to make collages, and sometmes I would take either a knife or scissors and just slash the collage up. It was a violent act, but I just felt the urge to do it especially for the more disturbing of my collages.

As a side note, there was guy walking around SFMOMA who looked exactly like Weird Al Yankovic. I didn't think it was him, but I kept seeing him. When I went into the SFMOMA store, I heard the clerks talking about meeting him and how he was here in San Francisco for some animation festival. I was right, it was him, and I was sort of tempted to go up to him and say "you're that guy who does all the songs spoofs aren't you?" But I didn't. That's so rude. Weird Al is very thin in person, and really does have longish very curly brown hair, and he really does look like he does in his videos.

I finished updating everything on my PC last night, except for a free printing program that came with my printer and a free graphics software program an Aussie coworker gave me in 1999. I decided to name my PC, just to give it a name. I named my care Siegfreid or Sieggy for short, because my VW Golf reminds me of german husky boy.

I've named my PC, Clive Lord PerCy, because my computer is my lord and master. Wasn't Percy the name of the Scarlet Pimpernel? I loved the Scarlet Pimpernel movies on A&E.

I found my screenplay last night, but it was bittersweet. I'm glad that I was able to retrieve it, but the last three critical scenes that I was working on right before my PC crashed weren't saved. I'll have to check if the program has ten minutes saves.

I still have to upgrade the virus software. I installed my old one, even though a message keeps popping that it might not work properly. I think I'm okay for awhile as long as I don't upload any files from a disk into my computer. My ISP screens my mail for viruses, so thankfully I'm protected from email viruses at least.

I'm listening to Amadeus, the soundtrack from the movie. I loved this movie, especially the music. I loved how Tom Hulce potrayed Mozart as hearing complete finished musical pieces in his head, and how he never made corrections on his music. I wish my writing could be like that. I also have Immortal Beloved, a movie about Beethoven's life, which I also love.

I love the character of Salieri. I think that every writer, composer, any kind of artist runs into many Salieris in their life. Art is a weird thing. It's sort of like money and food. One either has it and then some, or one does not, and there doesn't seem to be very few inbetweens. And what's sad is, the ones who don't have it often have the unfortunate gift of recognizing when others really do have "it". I think what is also the case, is the artist who has it, doesn't know they have it, and are constantly plagued by doubts and insecurities no matter how much money or fame may come their way.

I think everyone has talents, some definitely more than others, and then others, it's like it's their destiny or something that they are going to reach the pinnacles of their profession. Mozart definitely was one of those who was born with it, and seemed destined for greatness. I think of the Beatles in the same way. Musical Genuises.

I think I picked up the flu bug that everyone seems to be coming down with lately. I woke up, and my throat was all scratchy and I felt blah. I called in sick at work, which is just as well, since I can now spend the whole upgrading my computer.

I figured out last night that I probably didn't have to go through all the trouble of uninstalling IE6, just so I could keep my bookmarks. I could have probably just copied them, but that's not what the support pages would have you believe. There is so much disinformation on the Net about computers, it's amazing.

I installed Outlook 2000, and imported my old .pst files from Outlook 98. The support pages basically say you can't do that, but I did it. That's when I figured out I could have just copied my bookmarks. So I probably wasted two hours last night downloading "stuff" from the Windows Update. Oh well, live and learn. I should have just listened to my instincts.

After two hours this morning, I finally got my old scanner to work. I found some website called www.driverguide.com. It's database for all kinds of drivers. It took three tries, and four downloads of different files, but I finall got the thing to work. I have an old Optrox Photomaker 6E scanner.

I can't get my virus software or my fax software to work, both products of Symantec, who got smart and went the Microsoft way and started making their products obsolete so you're forced to upgrade and spend money.

Supposedly, Windows Office 2000 comes with some kind of Symantec fax software that you can use, so I must hold off on upgrading my Winfax Pro 9.0. My ISP now automatically scans emails for viruses, which is nice, but I think I still need to upgrade my virus software. I had McAfee for while, and there was this program called Guard Dog which I really liked. I think it was a simple prototype for personal firewall. I like having a personal firewall, and am debating whether I need to spend another $50 for a new personal firewall software and new virus software.

Now I know why people hate upgrading their pcs, and why businesses loathe it. Once you upgrade the operating system, everything else needs to be upgraded.

I wonder if I can donate all my now so obsolete software to some charity and get a tax write-off?

Woohooo! I picked up the new computer today, and everything is working. I'm bad though. I wanted to export my Favorites and Cookies from Internet Explorer, but the new machine has version 6, and I had version 5

I checked on the Microsoft Knowledge base, and I found a sheet that said I could uninstall Explorer 6, if I uninstalled Windows 2000 service 3 pack 3. So I did that, and like magic, I was able to unistall version 6. I copied my Favorites internet shortcuts and cookies from my old drive, which is now a secondary drive on my new computer, and pasted them into my new drive.

It worked, so I tested a few shortcuts and they worked. Then I exported all my Favorites and cookie into a file, and now all I have to do is reinstall Explorer 6 and Windows 2000 service pack 3, and I'm back in business.

I love all those support documents on Microsoft's support page, that says I can't do stuff like this and I do them anyway and they work. Now my only thought is, I wonder if I had just copied my Favorites and Cookies, would they have worked in IE6 without having to do all the uninstalling? The Microsoft support pages said that internet shortcuts in IE5 might not work in IE6, but how much can you trust those support pages. I'll never know. I'm probably going to be spending the rest of the night dowloading and reloading all my software.

I have to tackle moving my mail next. I'm sure that will be quite an experience too.

One thing. I had a bootleg copy of Microsoft Plus, and I miss my sounds, my pointers, and my icons. I think I might have to buy Microsoft Plus for Windows 2000 to get them back.

I'm half way through Nanowrimo and I've written 25,085 words. It has really been slow going, and I have ahd to force myself to write so I can make my word count. The story is really becoming interesting, and it's fascinating to see what's coming out.

It's an odd story because I'm having the main character tell it after it's already happening. This allows my main character to comment on her actions as she's telling the story, and to have regrets that she made certain decisions, but having to admit at the end that even in hindsight her actions made perfect sense at the time. I like a character who wishes things were different, and saying if only I'd known maybe my life would be different, but then having to admit that they'd do it all over again or that circumstances were such that they were forced to make that decision. A friend of mine thinks this is a depressing view of humanity, but I think it's realistic. I think if there was such a thing as second chances, most people would commit the same mistake over and over again. It's human nature.

I saw "Lackawanna Blues" at ACT last night. It's basically a one-man performance, with a guitarist to accompany him. The play was performed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, with Bill Sims, Jr. on guitar. The performance was amazing! At the end, he received a standing ovation. It's hard for one person to be that entertaining for a long period of time, but Santiago-Hudson's storytelling skills were amazing. Having done a five minute story telling performance myself, I can tell you that it's the most difficult thing for an actor to do. The focus is all on you, and you're doing all the voices, and you have to be constantly be in high energy, otherwise you'd never get through the performance.

I saw Santiago-Hudson in August Wilson's "Seven Guitars" at ACT a few years ago, and when the production went to Broadway, Santiago-Hudson won a Tony award for his performance in the play.

L-Blues is the true story of his surrogate mother Miss Rachel "Nanny" Crosby, and it's a revealing look at a slice of African-American history in the Great Lakes region during the 50's and 60's. There is so much about African-American history that I don't know, that I don't think they teach in school, that I'm finding out through plays like his.

I decided I needed to do a juice cleanse starting today because I've been eating chocolate like a fiend since Halloween. The chocolate binge has not been great for my weight loss, and I've gained about 2.5 pounds since November 2. I'm a little freaked out about the whole thing, but it's been eye opening to see how much I really eat if I'm not keeping track.

I think the cleanse will get me back on track, and hopefully rid me of my chocolate binge. God, I love chocolate and I think I can still eat it, just not in the huge amounts I've been eating it since Halloween. Of course, it doesn't help that everyone at work brought their leftover candy to the office and I have absolutely no self control when it comes to free candy. Thankfully, the candy is now all gone, thanks in part to me.

A friend of mine says it's a mistake to try to eat right during the holidays She's given up herself starting right before Halloween. I told her I could handle it, but I'm starting to wonder. I saw an add for eggnog, and I'm addicted to eggnog. I only drink it at Christmas time, but last year I drank about a gallon a week until they stopped selling it in the store.

I'll have to figure out a way how I can drink eggnog, and still stick to my eating plan. I know there has to be a way.

I really want to see the movie "8 Mile" with Eminem. The reviews have been fantastic, and the critics are raving. I love the song from the movie, "Lose Yourself". When I listen to that song, I feel like I know what he means when says you only have one chance to make it and you have to lose yourself in the music. I feel the same way about my writing.

The kid has a gift for words and rhyme that is incredible. His song lyrics are controversial, but art is supposed to sometimes freak you out. Art brings out what is hidden in society, and it's not like Eminem is rapping about anything new. We all know people who have the same attitudes that Eminem has in his songs. The PC people want him banned, as if banning Eminem and sweeping him and his music and his attitudes under the rug is going to make the controversial issues he writes about go away. I think it's better that the controversial issues are out there front and center, so we as a society can look at them, talk about them, and maybe find a way to solve them or change them if we want. My attitude is controversial and so not PC, but I don't care. It's just my own personal opinion after all.

I'm trying to decide if I need to see more operas. The SF Opera is performing "Hansel and Gretel", which they haven't done since the 1930's. This version I think was done recently in Chicago, and is supposed to be a darker tale. H&G was one of my favorite fairy tales when I was a child.

SF Opera is also doing Handel's "Alcina". I really love Handel's music, and didn't know he wrote any operas. The flyer says it's a "baroque masterpiece", and I sort of like baroque type music.

Opera is so expensive, even the cheapie up in the rafter seats. And with Christmas coming up, I know my budget will be stretched. I've tried making a budget for Christmas in the past, but I always overshoot the amount big time.

I love opera so much! It's so cool and the music is so great! Maybe next year I'll get subscription, which I think in the long run is cheaper. I love the story lines in opera as well, and find them very educational for how to create a tight plot structure. These opera stories have been told for years, and people never get tired of them since they are so universal.