I finished the beat sheet for my screenplay and now I just have to type it up and write the first 10 pages. I'm still deciding about whether to leave all the baseball stuff in there and just start with my character in the locker room after a shitty game. But I like the baseball stuff. Julie, my screenwriting teacher will probaby cut it out anyway. I don't even have a scene just with the character and Pac Bell park, which is part of the reason I wanted to write a baseball story. I wanted a hometown player who now plays on a different team to come to Pac Bell Park and freak out, thinking this park could have been his, if he only stayed put. I might put that scene in yet. If I do that, I think I'll put a scene in act 1, where my character runs into his old little league coach. The purpose of that scene will be reinforce the idea that the ballplayer is pretty damned bummed he's not a part of the team, he rooted for as a child.

I like the idea of Pac Bell Park as symbol for renewal. Certainly, that's the way the ad people for the SF Giants pushed the park during that first year. Baseball, the way it used to be played, in downtown stadium and played by homegrown little leaguers. It's so not like that in professional sports anymore, but hey the marketing people can push the dream, the lie, can't they? Can I help it if I'm going to help to push the lie and use Pac Bell Park and symbol of redemption and renewal for my baseball character? Since I'm writing fiction, I think I can use a lie or two in a story that's all made up.

Walking three miles a day is really hard on my left foot and my left hip. I just walked two today and will be on this schedule for another week to give my left side time to get used to walking again.

I can't wait to get started on my next story, the one I'm calling Texas Dreaming, kind of like California Dreaming, only it's so not. But I like the play on words. I also got an idea for a story about a woman who's about to have a nervous breakdown. I remember writing a story about this in junior high. Another old story coming back to haunt me. Then other story about a woman whose brain is sick, like my friend Amy and in that movie Iris. Maybe if I write about my brain dying, I'll be able to get what Amy went through in those last days. Of course, it's so fictional because a real person with this disease wouldn't be able to write anyway.

I got a whiff of it while walking yesterday. A panicked voice saying, "can't stop, must be keep going, can't stop, can't stop, can't stop, can't ever stop, must keep writing, if I write, I can keep it at bay. I can fight it, I know I can. Damned doctors, what do they know, they can't even cure the common fucking cold. Witch doctors, all witch doctors. Keep writing, don't stop, don't stop." It will be interesting to explore what the panicked voice is trying write about. Portents of my future, maybe? Who knows? They say we're all going to end up with some form of brain degeneerative diseases one day, when we're really old. Maybe it's time to look into to the future, my future to see how bad it's going to get, like my own time machine.

I'm glad Halle Berry and Denzel won, but bummed as all heck that The Lord of the Rings didn't win anymore awards. I thought for sure it would get best picture. The picture has two more installments so there's two more chances to go.

I think a Beautiful Mind got best picture because of all the negative campaigning that went on against it. There were articles in all the papers, even in the NY Times that John Nash was a homosexual and an anti-semitic and then days before the Oscars, they had to report that they weren't true at all. It just reinforces my thought that you can't believe the media anymore. I wonder if the NY Times gets how much their credibility slipped when this incident happened. People probably voted for A Beautiful Mind in protest of all the mud slinging.

I liked that picture. I saw it with a friend and we both walked out of it wondering if we were delusional. It was a feel good movie and I think after 9/11, people want to see movies of a person triumphing in the midst of difficulties. This type of personal heroisem makes people feel that if somebody happens to them, they too will be able to triumph over any adversity. And The Beautiful Mind was about the enemy, the disaster, the calamity within your own heard. I mean how do you fight that? But John Nash did. He willed himself to sanity.

I also think there are more people in this country running around on prozac, prozac derivatives like paxil and other anti-depressants than the media is willing to report on. Seeing someone crazy on screen isn't that far off from real life. I know a few people who are kind of like John Nash. Maybe not as bad as him, but definitely not altogether there. People in droves went to see this movie and I think it's because people related to his craziness. I did and I've never bene on an antidepressant.

On to other topics. For research for my baseball screenplay, I bought a book called Baseball's Greatest Short Stories. Who knew there were that many short stories about baseball. The first story is Casey at Bat, which I seem to remember reading a long time ago in junior high.

What else. I'm walking 45 minutes at work now. Taking my two 15 minute breaks, which I've never done ever, and walking around the neighborhood, which is about a mile. I'm also trying to walk at lunch time. With these three walking breaks, I'm walking three miles, burning 300 calories since you burn 100 calories whether you walk or run one mile, and taking 6,000 steps out the recommened 10,000 steps that the authorities are now recommending everyone to do.

It's nice to be outside and walk and take a break from work. It feels so strange though, since I've never ever taken my breaks at midday or at mid afternoon on my own. The only time I've ever taken breaks is when I've been in jobs where I'm forced to do so or I've been so unhappy or angry at a job that I had to take a break to stay sane and not freak out. But that's been awhile since that's happened. I've always seen people at my job taking a break in the lunchroom, and I've always thought these breaktakers were like factory workers or union people or government workers. But now I'm one of them. It's so my karma to become what I've sort of always despised. I'm sure someone who sees on my walks is despising me now.

Thank god for discussion groups on the Net about how to do things with your computer. I was starting to freak out about transferring files from my little laptop to my desktop. I read one the help boards and someone posted a message saying to get Microsoft's ActiveSnyc. I installed this free utility on my pc and it worked. YEAH!!! I thought I was going to have spend some money on getting a card and card reader, but the ActiveSync transferred my files so fast. I think it helps that I'm not transferring large files but just Word files. Nonetheless, I now feel completely secure in writing on my baby laptop anywhere and then coming home and uploading the files to my desktop.

I have to work on my baseball screenplay beat sheet tonight. I have this beat sheet where I'm supposed to have the location, characters and purpose of each scene in my movie from beginning to end. It's a skeleon, an outline, but I have to do for my screenwriting class before I can get on with writing the screenplay.

This beat sheet method is so odd for me. I usually just write and write till I get to an ending. With the beat sheet, you have to have your ending, two plot points and midpoint first and then fill out the scenes between them. Once you get the beat sheet done, you just have to write out the scenes. I don't know if I can do this either. My screenplay idea got butchered in class and it was recommended that I start the movie 2/3 of the way into the story I had written and do it in real time. I have to get this beat sheet done though if I want to take the second section of the class. I won't be able to write my screenplay until my screenwriting teacher blesses my beat sheet. What a pain! I don't understand why you can't just write and write till you get to an end. But, since this is a new writing genre for me, I'm trying to follow all the rules and use the tools that I've been taught. Whether this obeying of the rules makes a difference to the quality of my stories is still yet to be seen.

Well, I guess there's no way to the other side but through it, especially if you can't get around it or come up with a workaround.

So much has happened to me since my last post. I've been trying to write for half an hour a day at cafes and it's been working. I wrote 3,000 words and finished a short story I've been working on since February 1999. It started out as a free write in February 1999. I left it alone and didn' think about it till April 2001, when I decided to submit it for a writing class assignment on bad free writes. At the same time, my writing group was talking about writing from a weird character's point of view. For whatever reason, I let my writing group read the freewrite, thinking we'd all get a laugh about what I bad piece I'd written. I was so shocked when my writing group members said they loved it and thought it was the best piece of writing I'd ever done. I was so intrigued by their comments that I decided to try and flesh out the free write into a story.

That free write, called Crazy Eddie, is now finished. YEAH!!! I haven't finished a story since April 2001, when I was in that writing class that I ended up totally hating. That's 11 months without finishing a story, which is way too long to go without finishing a story.

The hardest part is still to come for me, the editing and the rewriting. Right now, Crazy Eddie is about 20 plus pages. I think the story can be told in 15 pages, maybe 16 or 17 pages, so I've got alot of cutting to do.

I also finished writing the opening scene and first scene for my screenplay. I still have to rewrite the beat pages, do the outline and then do a character study for all of my major characters. That's going to take some time and much hard work.

What I've found out from all this cafe writing, is I'm not blocked with my writing. I just can't, for whatever reason, write at home. I can only write in librarie or cafes or in malls. I thought my writing block and laziness was due to another serious reason, but I just needed a change of writing location. I'm sure I'll get sick of writing outside of my home and then be able to write at home again, but until then, I have to do what works.

I don't even write with headphones and music. I can concentrate with all the noise through all the noise that goes on. I used to do all my homwork in the college grill, so I'm no surprised I can concentrate in a crowded cafe. Writing is such a solitary pursuit. You sit at home all alone, at your computer or writing table and you're by yourself. Even with the TV on or the stereo blasting, you're still by yourself.

When I take personality tests, they always say I'm a social person who needs to be around people. When I read this conclusion, I usuall get a chuckle because I consider myself a shy and reticent person, who needs alot of alone time. Maybe those personality tests were right after all. Who knows. All I know is that since I can write outside the home, that's where I'll have to write for now. At least until the need subsides.

In between all this writing, I saw Training Day and Iris. I loved Training Day. I hope Denzel Washington gets the Oscar for Best Actor. He should have gotten one for The Hurricane so the academy is obliged to give it to him this year. They're not going to give to Russell Crowe. He's been acting like such a jerk lately and Hollywood is very provincial about stuff like that he probably alienated many voters. He's also an Aussie and the only actors who've gotten two Oscars have all been Americans, Spencer Tracy and Tom Hanks. And both of these guys were "nice" guys who never made any trouble for themselves or Hollywood. They'll never give it to Tom Wilkinson either. He's a Brit and although his performance was great, it was so understated, too understated maybe. Best actors winner performances have always been larger than life. Sean Penn is too much a Hollywood renegade, so they won't give it to him either. Now Denzel, he plays by the Hollywood rules and is a nice guy.

Denzel's performance was so against the good two shoes type he usually plays. He was a mean, bad ass black, ghetto talking cop. And he was so damned believable too. You'd think the guy was playing bad guys all his life. Ethan Hawke was no match for him, but I could see why Ethan got nominated for best supporting actor. He was also playing against his normal type and academy voters, most of whom are actors or failed/wannabe actors love that kind of casting.

The movie itself was very violent and there was a major gratuitious sex scene shot with some naked hispanic chick Denzel was bonking in the movie. The woman was butt nekkid in the movie for absolutely no reason, other than the fact that she had a great body. Since the movie was obviously geared towards boys, I guess you have to have a naked chick scene in there somwhere no matter how far fetched it is.

I loved Iris. They really got the Alzheimer's deterioration right. I was reminded of my friend Amy who died recently and how the nurse told me that she was like an Alzheimer's patient. Judy Dench was great and so was was Jim Broadbent. Kate Winslett was good too, although I got tired of looking at her nekkid body. I loved the actor who played John Bayley as a young man. He looked so much like this guy I had crush on in college named Drew. I met Drew when I was a freshman and I had a crush on him for two years. We became friends but he made it clear to me that he wasn't interested. I was so bummed but we still managed to emain friends.

Drew took a year off from college but visited school off and on, since he was living in the area. Then came the last semester I was in school. Out of the blue, Drew told me he was now in love with me and wanted to go out. And I was like huh? I was so over him by the time he declared his undying love. Talk about bad timing. He freaked me out so much, I hid out from him at a girlfriend's house one weekend to avoid him. My girlfriend told me he was asking everyone where I was. I thought he'd given up and went back to my apartment Sunday night, but as luck would have it I ran into him.

We talked and it was so hard. I really still liked him but as a friend now and not as a love interest and I had to explain it all to him. Somehow he ended up spending the night at my place and we tried to have sex, but it was so so useless for me. I was so not into him. Then I got so mad at him for stressing me out that I treated him really badly the next morning. I regret that now, but at the time, the situation completely frustrated me to no end. Thank god, we managed to remain friends even though it was so awkward for the longest time.

I lost touch with Drew when I got married but always looked back at our relationship fondly. I really did still like him. We got along so well and we could talk for hours. We were even into the same kind of music and liked so many of the same things. Drew was also a bit of anglophile like me. He was also the most charming and the most polite man I've ever met in my life. He was always in a good mood and so cheery. I loved this quality about him because I couldn't be in a bad mood around him. Part of me wished that I didn't rebuff him when he offered his love, but then there's the other part that says, he deserved it. He rebuffed me when I was in crush with him and I was in crush with him for two whole years. When you're 18, that's a damned long time.

I got back in touch with him a few years ago, when I saw his number in the college alumni directory. I just called him out of the blue and I was surprised that he still remembered me. He was living in Iowa at the time. He even told me he had spent a couple of years trying to find me. I felt bad that he did that but so flattered at the same time. I had no idea how into me he was and his slavish devotion to finding me was proof. Too bad I changed my name, although if he did find me, he would have found me married.

We traded letters for the next year and he was just like I remembered and I found myself falling in love with him, and wishing he would move out to California. I couldn't see myself moving to Iowa. In one of his last letters, he said that we blew something really special that we had in college. I cried when I read that because he was right in a way, although I still had hopes for us. But I guess he gave up on us because he stopped sending letters. I kept writing letters to his address but I never heard anything back. To this day, I don't know if he's dead or if he just decided to move on because he couldn't rekindle the feelings he had for me in college or if he met someone and got married. I don't know.

I'm resigned to it all. We were obviouly never meant to be, me and Drew. We tried three times and each time, the timing was so totally off. I wished we could have stayed friends though, but maybe when you're older that's harder to do, especially when you live so far away from each other. But in my heart, Drew holds such a special place in my heart. He's not the guy who got away, but the guy where the timing was off the worst for both of us.

To this day, I think he would have been a most compatible marriage partner. I think part of me is still looking for a very charming and incredibly polite man, who is always cheery and in a jolly mood, like Drew. And one day, I hope to find him.

I saw I am Sam tonight. It wasn't as schlocky as I thought it would be. The previews made me think the movie was going to be tearjerker and who wants to sit through that. But, since Sean Penn was nominated for Best Actor for this movie, I made myself watch it. Penn's performance was very studied and controlled. You can see his brain thinking away, trying to figure out his next move. But other than that, his performance was stunning. His physical gestures, Sam's way of walking, the way he held open his mouth all the time was rivetting. I liked the fact that he played the character of Sam without judgment and the movie filmed Sam that way. The director could have easily made the audience feel sympathetic to the Sam character, but it's not that easy. Sam is retarded and you get to feel the embarrassment and shame that his mental handicap causes the pepole around him. But Sam is not to be pitied or glorified. He's just retarded and like most people, just trying to get by in ths world with a kid.

The filmmakers really made the social services people come off like the cruel heartless liberals that the right wing media says there are. Those social services people were drawn so one-dimensional and just plain mean and nasty.

I'm not sure if Sean will win. I still have yet to see Ali and Training Day. Ali is no longer in theatres even though Will Smith was nominated for an oscar. I'm thinking it might be Denzel Washington as the winner only because he did get overlooked for his performance on The Hurricane. But Sean Penn, I don't know. His character work was flawless, controlled and very complete.

I thought I was doing so well on my candida killing diet, but I made the mistake of eating bacon today and the yeasties totally love it and started multiplying again. I totally forgot I cannot eat smoked or processed meats. This is the first time I had a yeastie reaction so this is good. I also had regular coffee instead of decaf and I don't know if the caffiene was a contributing factor to my yeastie breakout.

I just have to be more vigilant. I read the website again for the woman who's on the same program I am and her yeasties came out after 20 days. I'm only on day 15 but I don't know how far back eating bacon set me. The woman with the website said it took her 40 days to clear out her yeasties. When I went I went to the doctor he said I had dropped from severe to moderate, a good 10 point drop. I just have to keep dong this.

The woman with candida website also stayed on the eating program for 3.5 months. I might just do that too, which means I'll be eating this way till the middle of June. Going off sugar has really changed my tastebuds. Things just don't taste the same anymore. Sometime I crave sweet things but I drink herb tea with artificial sweetener and that seems to help.

I just want my yeasties to go away permanently, so I guess I'll have to be as strict as I can with this plan.

I saw In the Bedroom today. I did not expect the ending it had, which is good. I like to be surprised in a movie. Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson were very good, although their performances weren't Oscar winner quality. I think the Oscar should go to Halle Berry, although I have yet to see Iris. Halle Berry played against type, cried and did the hysterical woman thing alot and Oscar voters like those kinds of performances. Sissy Spacek's performance was almost the same type of she played in Affliction with Nick Nolte. I still remember Tom Wilkinson from that bizarre movie The Governess with Minnie Driver. I liked him much better in this role, although that performance was very good. He was so creepy in that movie.

I also Black Hawk Down and totally loved it. I will definitely have to buy the DVD for this movie. It was so realistic in it portrayal of war. One of my favorite scenes was when one of the soldiers looks down and see's a man's hand on the ground and just picks it up and puts it his pocket. That was so cool because to me that scene is the reality of war. I also liked all that blood just gushing out like that, again very realistic.

Black Hawk Down was another feast for the eyes with all those beautiful young male Hollywood actors. I liked that it was an international cast with lots of Americans, Brits and Aussies playing the soldiers. Ewan McGregor did a great American accent. Jason Isaacs' American accent wasn't that great but everybody else's was terrific. The beautiful elf price, Legolas, Orlando Bloom, was in this movie and he played an american quite well.

As everyone else has said in reviews, you cannot help but be reminded of the US soldiers in Afghanistan, while watching this movie. Our boys out there fighting for our country and they're also so young too. I get mixed feelings when watching a war movie. I hate war and I don't endorse war, although for 9/11 I made an exception. I couldn't help but get caught up in this movie about US soldiers but half way through, one part of me said it was disgusting to even be watching and cheering these soldier on in their failed mission in Somalia. I got the same reaction watching Top Gun, another movie I loved. The peace loving part of me freaks out that I'm cheering on soldiers.

But it's hard to be hate soldiers, especially after 9/11, because they're people out there protecting my country's interests and dying in conflict. I don't hate soldiers, I just hate war. I hate that we have wars and I just wish the world could find peaceful solutions to its problems.

I found a website that talks about why the Somalia mission failed. I was watching the movie and I even thought the tacticals were all wrong. The people planning the mission did not even take into consideration that there might be hostile forces trying to shoot them down. And god, they went out in the middle of the day in attack formation like that wasn't the big tip off that they were coming. There was no backup plan in case something went wrong. They just went it, arrogant as all hell, thinking the Somalis were just going to roll over the play dead.

These guys were supposed to be rangers and delta forces, elite troops, but their tacticals were so bad. Maybe I've been watching too many episodes of La Femme Nikita, where every mission was meticulously planned with backup and contigency plans in case something went wrong, but even I didn't watch that show I still would have had a backup plan. The guy planning the mission had none of that. Then they didn't even tell the Pakistani General they were going in, so they could have even more backup in case something did go wrong.

There's an adobe acrobat file I found on what went wrong on that mission in Somalia that inspired Black Hawk Down. I'll have to read it to see what a military expert thought. Still, Black Hawk down was a fantastic movie and it made me realize that my country's soldiers deserve alot of my respect for the role that they play in the country's defense forces. I don't like war, but it's a necessary evil and I'm honored that there are young men willing to die for my country.

Mercedes must be really not be doing well since they have so many commercials on the radio. I hate those Mercedes commercials. You know these companies pay alot of money to advertisers to come up with advertising campaigns and all those ad companies can come up with are those stupid ads. It makes me think that anyone who would buy a mercedes is a total idiot or a gold digging materialistic freak.

Then next worse ads are those Pacific Bell DSL commercials. God, they're just really dumb. It's always some guy who can't control the guy next door from using their DSL line. Like one kind of idiot lets the guy next door take over their DSL line? In the commercial on TV, the guy is always in their house. It's very weird! I think the message of those commercials came from the fact that people can build wireless networks and it's an attack against people who have wireless networks. Businesses like SBC Pacific Bell obviously hate the whole wireless network idea.

I wonder if people actually buy these products based on these commercials. It's having the opposite affect on me, but that's just me and I don't have normal reactions to anything. I wonder.

I just finished reading a book of essays on Venice by Joseph Brodsky, who won the Nobel prize for Literature in 1987. Venice is a city that I've always wanted to visit, if I ever get married again I'm determined to honeymoon there, and I was keen to find out what he had to say about it.

One of his essays is about the autonomy of the eye. Brodsky suggests that the eye is "the most autonomous of our organs ... the eye keeps registering reality even when there is no apparent reason for doing this ... Why? ... because the environment is hostile and eyesight is the instrument of adjustment to an environment which remains hostile no matter how well you have adjusted to it."

It's an interesting way to look at the function of your eye, but I wonder if it's true. Brodsky then goes onto say that "the eye has an appetite for beauty and art because it's looking for safety ... beauty is solace, since beauty is safe ... when the eye fails to find beauty -- alias solace -- it commands the body to create it, or, failing that, adjusts itself to percieve virtue in ugliness".

Brodsky's essay on beauty made me think about this book I read by Gregory Maguire, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, a book from the point of view of one of Cinderella's ugly stepsisters. I wonder what it's like to be ugly. I mean, not that I think I'm that beautiful, but too many men's and women's appreciative glances over the years have told me that I'm not ugly either. God, what is it like to not have people look at you with appreciation in their eyes. That must be such a trip.

If people have thought me ugly, it's only been a few. I'm not a knock out anything, I'm cute, maybe even pretty sometimes, but definitely not ugly. And if Brodsky is right that the eyes seek out beauty, does this mean that ugly people aren't sought out by people's eyes?

I had a roommate in college, who was a total math genius, but not very pretty. She wasn't ugly really, just kind of big and homel. She told me once, while I was complainng about my life, that I should feel lucky because I never had to work at having men notice me. Not that having men notice me has added anything significant to my life, but I'm sure I would have a differen opinion if men didn't notice me.

And beauty is such a fleeting thing to me anyway. Something or someone can appear beautiful depending on my mood, my emotional state, what side of the bed I got up on, how much or how little sleep I had that night and in a bar, how much I've had to drink. And my own standards for male beauty are so different than most women. All the men that the media and Hollywood tell me I'm supposed to panting over, just aren't that attractive to me.

I've had saved for years a Far Side comic where this monster guy is coming through a door on one side. On the other side, are a bunch of women. All of the women have the thought of 'Ugly' in their head except for one, she has heart in her head. The caption of the comic says 'Someone for Everyone'. I wrote my name on the woman with the heart because that's me.

Sometimes when I see a really great looking guy, say in like a seminar, I don't even talk to him, especially when I noticed that every woman in the room has made some excuse to talk to him. God, with that kind of competition who needs the stress, so I just avoid those popular types altogether and don't even bother to talk to them. Most of the time, these hoties guys are so arrogant and jerkish anyway, because they know they can just walk into a room and have the choice of any woman in it.

Of course, there's always an exception. I saw a guy like that in a seminar I was taking and I was dying to talk to him, because the man was just drop dead gorgeous. But I wasn't the only one who noticed the guy's beauty, because I saw him get hit on by every woman in the room except me. I was bummed to because this guy was exceptionally fine, but it was way to stressful, so I drove thoughts of him out of my mind.

Much to my surprise, while I was attending a one day seminar given by the same company who ran the other seminar we were both in, Mr Drop Dead Gorgeous ends up sitting next to me. It freaked me out so much because I'd been dying to talk to him for week and there he was, a breath away.

He turned out be such a nice guy and we actually became quite good friends after that. He turned out to not really my type but he was so cute. If we were back in the south and that holiday, Sadie Hawkins Day, came up where you could ask a guy to marry you, I'd ask this guy. Nice, sweet, smart and cute, what a dynamite combo! Plus, he was always tanned and I'm very partial to a man with a tan. Never mind, that he's not my type, I'm very flexible when it comes to pretty men.

I wonder what that guy is doing now. He spent some part of the year as a ski instructor/bum and I got the distinct impression that financially, he was well taken care of. We lost touch a few years ago, but I often think of him since he seemed so damned perfect to me. Talk about beauty. I know I would never grow tired looking at that guy's mug through the years.

Just finished watching the movie Pearl Harbour. I liked it! It's a slow moving love story but I loved the special effects of the bombing of the harbour. This movie reminded me again that the USA wouldn't be the great power that it is, without our military might. I saw that in the church service they had in the DC after 9/11 when the military colour guard was there.

It is easy to forget that a military even exists, living here in the bastion of liberal thought. But the military is there and we wouldn't be the country we are without them.

It was weird to watch that Pearl Harbour movie because I grew up in Hawaii and you couldn't ignore the military presence. They weren't many on the island I lived on, but everytime I took a trip to the state's capitol, Honolulu, there they were. Bands of short haired young men, very young, mostly white and clean shaven from hometowns in the middle of the country, would roam around Honolulu especially on the weekends. They were all so strange and I was alway afraid to talk to any of them. Some of them were friendly, some weren't.

The other thing I got from watching the movie was how many people died. And most of them are buried in Hawaii at Punchbowl cemetery. Punchbowl cemetery is situated on one of the best plots of land on the island with the most incredible view of downtown Waikiki. And there are so many people buried there and a lot of them are from the Pearl Harbour disaster. You can't be buried at Punchbowl unless you served in the military or are the spouse of someone who served. My uncle served as a medic in Vietnam and he and my aunt already have their plots picked out.

I've been to the Arizona Memorial several times. If you go to school in Hawaii, every time you make a trip to the state capitol, a visit to the memorial is always on the agenda. The school board of education in Hawaii wanted every school kid in Hawaii to never forget what happened. The images of the bombing of Pearl Harbour are as familiar to me as they might be to someone who was alive during that time. When you visit the memorial you can't help but freak out at the thought of all the soldiers entormbed in the ship below. It's a trippy feeling and the Pearl Harbour movie brought it all back.

So I debuted my story at screenwriting class and I'm back to my original short story idea. The screenplay will be about baseball playing son who has to contront his estranged father and deal with his resentment and hatred of his father. My screen writing teacher called it heart felt family drama. GADS!!! I was the only one in class writing a heart felt family drama. Everybody in class was writing action films, films with lots of action or travel or comedies, dark humor, and I'm writing a family drama.

I don't know. It's my curse, it's my karma and it sucks! I don't know. The stories that I like nobody likes, the stories that I don't think are interesting everybody wants to hear about. I hate this. I swear to god, I can't tell what's good and what's not good. I can't divorce myself from my own work and step back to see whether it's good or not. I have to have other people tell me. I hate that.

I'm like thinking who the hell would pay $9.50 to watch a heart felt family drama. How boring!!! Do people really want to see dysfunctional families getting it together on the big screen. Haven't they had enough of that in our life? Or are people out there leading such broken and messed up lives that they have to fantasize about getting healthy?

I don't know. I'm a very whole person. I'm pro active as hell about therapy, personal growth and development and staying and being happy. I don't have a lot of relationships in my life that haven't been healed and the ones that aren't healed, I'm okay with them the way they are.

I feel like I'm 21 years old and my therapist is telling me I've got more awareness that 99.9% of the people in the world. I can hear my therapist's voice so clearly saying "most people don't look at their action and themselves the way you do and you have to remember that." I found it shocking then and years later I still don't understand that. How can people not be aware of how their actions affect others? I'm aware. Aren't there other people in the world like me? My therapist said no.

The last time I was in a seminar and dealt with my father issue, half the people in the seminar called their father on the break. I had people coming up to me after that for a couple of years to thank me for inspiring them to heal their relationship with their father. People who said they'd been in that seminar with me, most of whom I didn't recognize. People who thanked me for saving their life.

Is this heart felt father/son family drama that I'm supposed to write supposed to do the same thing? Inspire people to heal their relationship with their father? I don't know. I'm at the point now where I just have to write this story because it needs to be written. I have no idea how I'm gong to write this story. It seems so boring to me. But my writing teacher said to write it ike it's in real time. What does it all mean? Honestly I don't want to inspire people, I want to entertain people, make them laugh, make them think abou stuff. Is healing people entertaining? It's free therapy that's for sure.

I swear to god, it's my curse and my karma. Everytime I try to write about what I want I end up heading towards some drama with some spiritual message. It's not bad to do that, but I'm really not interested in writing about that. It's all so boring to me and old hat, like haven't most people made peace with their parents. According to my screen writing teacher, no. I don't understand any of my impetus to write anymore and I'm starting not to care either because I can't tell what people will like or not like. I only know what I like, what interests me, what compels me to write. Everytime I try to second guess what a reader or audience will like, the story falls flat on its face and people go how boring.

Does this mean I should follow my own intuition and just keep writing all the weird stuff that I like and to stop caring about what other people like? It's obvious to me now that I am totally clueless about the general public's taste. God, I just hate this. I'm tired of being weird, different and freaky. I honestly just want to be like everybody else, but everytime I try to think like other people I fail. It's such a lonely existence for me sometimes. It's so my karma though, and how can I fight my own karma?

I know, I'm complaining about this gift that I have. What I'm really interesting in writing about, other people really like, even though I always have the feeling that nobody would ever read or carfe about this except for me. When I try to write for an audience or a reader, I fail. So the lesson is I guess to just write to please myself, because everytime I think I'm writing to please other people I fail. It's all so confusing to me but if it works and places less stress on me, I'm all for it. It feels so weird to just write for myself without any thought to others, but I'm willing to give it a try. Writing to please myself and no one else, what a concept. I've gone done every road with my writing except that one and it's the last road, so I have to take it and see what happens.

Since there's been a discussion on my church Yahoo Group about the origins of liberalism and capitalism, I started researching books to read on the subject. I came across The Prince by Machiavelli and I was reminded of how my first love in college used to tell me I was "The Machiavellian Princess". I never knew what he meant by that since I had never read the book and when I asked him, he said that he saw me in the future as a chain smoking, three time divorced, corporate VP on my fourth husband and with three bratty kids.

As I was 18 when he predicted my future, I was naturally flattered. Me, corporate VP, how strange. As I grew older, I came to realized it was one of those backhanded compliments. But then I think he sort of thought of himself as the Machiavellian Prince, so of course, I had to be the Princess.

Funny isn't it, that being politically aware as I am, that I never bothered to take a political science course. If I had taken one, as all my friends in college did, I would have had to read Machiavelli. My first love said I would have aced Political Science, but at the time, I didn't know I was interested politics and politics was a boring subject to me since I had grown up in a politically aware household.

Well, I never did grow up to be the chain smoking corporate VP, although at some corps I worked at, I was on the periphery of that elite circle of employees. As soon as I started working, I knew i didn't want to be under the pressure of a management job. Oh sure, I was curious, but not curious enought to really want it and they're right when they say, to get to the top, you've got to want it bad, real bad.

At my job prior to the one I'm at now, I worked for a female CIO. She liked me and I was hired to be her financial analyst of sorts. It was my job to see that she didn't spend too many millions of dollars and to keep track of the millions she was spending. We liked each other and became very good friends, like sisters sort of. She was older and I saw her as my hardworking successful sister.

I got to see first hand what it was like to be a female in a top position and what I saw was frightening. People at the job knew we were close, so they loved telling me all the rumors they'd heard about her. Everyone thought she was incompetent and had slept with the CEO at a previous job to get this one, at least that was the rumor. Everyone below her wanted to be her or be close to her. I was close to her because of my job, it's not something I coveted, it was a function of my job. And I will admit, I wanted to be her when I first started, but after seeing how many people hated her and all the shit they said about her, I decided that being in a position of that much power in a corporation is so not worth the trouble.

Everything she did was looked at through a microscope. If she was too friendly to a male manager, everyone thought she was sleeping with him. Her clothes, her hair, her shoes, her choice of laptop and even her jewerly were all up for discussion. She was lucky she was a perfect size 4 or the discussion would have very nasty. My boss worked her bunnies off and she was still criticized. But she was a cool customer. She never lost her temper, she was always professional and I knew people in the office often remarked how professional she was at all times. She never let anyone hear her real opinions except for me and the director that hired me. She was always cheerful and optimistic and always coming up with new projects. And I knew the stress of the job got to her, because she told me she could only sleep 4 or 5 hours a night.

If I needed it confirmed again, why I didn't want to be a corporate VP, she confirmed it. My last love, Brian, like my first love, Michael, told me he could see me as a VP of some company. He kept encouraging me to get that kind of position. It's all so strange that he would say that, because he knew I hated the whole VP thing. He just kept saying I would be very good at it because I understood office politics and could drive a project to completion. Needless to say, I still have yet to become a corporate VP and have no intention of doing so, if I can help it.

So, I guess it's about time to read some Machiavelli after all these years. Maybe I will finally be able to see what two of the most important loves of my life have said I have a instinctive knack for. Besides, I want to be very well versed in the origins of capitalism and liberalism, so I can add some decent feedback to my church 9/11 discussion one of these days.

I still have such a long way to to go on my studies. I want to read Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Adam Smith, reread Plato and Aristotle, Mills, Hobbes and Burke. And that's just the origins part. But Machiavelli is a good place to start since he and his theories seem to be an odd letmotif running through my life.

Monster's Ball is a good movie. I only watched it because Halle Berry was nominated for an academy award and I wanted to see her performance. She is playing against type, like Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich, and I think you get nominated just because other actors voting know how hard it is to play against your type. She did a good job although I'm not quite sure this performance is Oscar worthy. Halle did a much better performance in Warren Beatty's Bulworth and she wasn't nominated in that year, so if she gets an Oscar, I think it will be because she was neglected for Bulworth.

Bulworth was such a brilliant movie. Too bad the critics ignored it, although Warry Beatty was nominaed for the screenplay.

And Mr. Billy Bob Thornton. I couldn't imagine why women like Laura Dern and Angelina Jolie were so into this guy, but this movie showed me why. God, the man is hot! He was oozing southern gentlemanly charm; that little boyishness, the manners and the cruelty just below the surface but tempered by gentleness and those manners and that cute accent. Damn, that combination of traits is attractive in a man. He's like your father, your first crush in grade school, your first boyfriend and your fantasy caveman all rolled into one. It's a powerful combination. Nice body too.

Just for fun, I read all the movie reviews just to see what the critics were saying. I'm really starting the hate Salon.com. Their review of this movie was horrid. They rant and rage for no apparent reason over really stupid details of a movie and then give you three sentences about the movie. Maybe they don't undestand movies and that's why the rant and rage for most of it and then give you a 5th grade book report. Whoever is reviewing their movies should read some Pauline Kael and Andrew Saris movie review to see the real movie critics at work. Maybe I'm too old for their reading audience, but I like movie reviews to be philosophical and written from the perspective of someone who loves movies and knows them. I don't think movie reviews written by someone who wouldn't know a great movie if it sat down next to them and slapped them upside the head.

When a company doesn't make any money, you have to wonder why. People like to make excuses about slow business periods, not enough exposure, etc. They never tell you that the company isn't making any money maybe because they have a really bad product. Well, Salon.com isn't doing well financially because they have sucky product.

But I don't know. Maybe I'm not hip enough, not GenX enough like their typical reader but I know a bad movie review when I read one.

My flu or maybe it was bad allergic reactions from all the pollen are gone now. Thank god! This was Day 11. I slept through the night last night for the first time without having to wake up and cough for 10 minutes straight.

The new eating plan is going well. I had the worse caffeine withdrawal headache on Tuesday and I had to down tons of aspirin to get through the rest of the day. I still like drinking a hot beverage in the morning so I make decaf coffee instead. I'm a little more tired in the afternoon at work, bu I can't tell if my exhaustion is from lack of sleep or lack of caffeine.

I have my appointment in Berkeley tomorrow with my holistic healer. He's supposed to let me know if the parasite killer pills are working. I think they are. My jeans are looser this week but I don't know if the cause is from going off sugar, caffeine and carbos or from my parasites dying off. Maybe it's a combination of both.

I filed my taxes last night. What a drag! It makes me think about becoming a republican. I pay so much in taxes. I never wanted to own property, but it seems like the mortgage interest deduction is the only tax break left. I think I might have made a mistake in calculating my taxes because I didn't include my charitable deductions for the year. I'll check tonight. I don't think it will make a difference but I'll review anyway. If I can't get the deduction this year, I know I'll be able to take the deduction next year and add last year's charity giving to get a bigger deduction.

My church is starting to discuss the war on terrorism. Finally. I thought most of the church people would be left over peacenik hippies but I should have known better. They support the war on terrorism like me. Even this one woman who is the resident earth mommy in the church said she was called a "hawk" by her liberal friends. I was thinkig about finding another church, but where am I going to find a more educated and faithful group of people like the church members?

The majority of the members are very well educated, either through private school education and/or through Ivy League or Ivy League type colleges and universities. Many of them have two or three degrees under their belt. Most of them are fairly well to do. And they're pragmatic and centrists like me. This 9/11 discussion has quelled my desire to leave the church for now. I like these people and I'm afraid if I leave to go to another church, I won't find the level of intellect I have at my church.

The church members are just so smart. There's a discussion going on about the origins of liberalism and the free market and is the christian church compatible. Members are bringing in history, quoting Adam Smith and John Locke, recommending books to read and are seriously looking at the effect of 9/11 on faith. It's all so interesting. There are those few members who argue current events without any thought to history like we live in some kind of vacuum or who spout the liberal party line without any philosophical understanding of the origins of capitalism, liberalism and the free market. Their comments blaringly announcing their naivete, their ignorance and their immature way of trying to categorize everything down to black and white issues.

It's like HELLO! What kind of world do you live in? It hasn't been black and white world for a long time, if ever. They don't want to talk details because they say it's esoteric. Liars! They don't want to talk details because then we get to see that these same 60's type don't know shit about history or economic theory or the history of their own beloved liberalism. Whatever. Thank god, the rest of the church members aren't like this. They use their intellect and their faith to discuss serious issues. They don't buy the soundbites they hear on TV or the media hype. They know the world is complicated and in a zillion shades of gray. And finally, they know that you need faith to understand it all.

So the California primaries are over and it looks like it's going to be an interesting election cycle. I voted and you can thank my parents for that. My parents took politics and voting seriously. When they emigrated to this country, they never took for granted the right to vote, a right they didn't have in their home country. I spent much of my childhood listening to political debates on TV and in my own house. My father was a hard core democrat, working his way up the union ranks to a leadership position. He was often involved in local, state and national election events.

Although I think I remain true to my democrat roots, my own pragmatism has moved me more towards the center and sometimes even to the right on some social issues. I'm not sure my father would approve of my politics, but I know he would be proud that I am politically aware and that I eagerly vote.

When I vote, I feel like I participate in my small way in the running of this country. Voting gives me right to complain and to argue the political issues of the day. I think people who don't participate in this most simple act of democacy, voting, have absolutely no right to complain about the government. They don't participate, so they can't complain.

After the Florida voting debacle and the events of 9/11, how can you not vote?

Wow! After my descent into I'm not a writer at all hell, I was able to pull myself out of it somehow. Thank god for I spent thousands of dollarsand countless hours on growth and development seminars because I have tools to pull myself out of any funk. They never give you tools, at least I don't remember if they did or not, to never get yourself into a blue mood, but they gave you countless tools to get yourself out of one. Perhaps descents into writing hell is part of being an artist. I don't know.

All I know is I'm glad I'm out of the hell for awhile and, of course due to those G&D seminars, I have a plan to turn my life around. Or let's just say, I decided I have more tools at my disposal than I know what to do with and can at least draw a roadmap back to normal happiness. And lo and behold, I've got two pyramids. You gotta have a pyramid, three things you need to for success. Besides you use the pyramid images because it's the most stable because of the base, and the most uplifting because of the third peak point.

One pyramid is for my writing self esteem, which as you have read is practically non existent. The second pyramid is for writing stories, just three tools I know I can use to finish a story.

Now, if I can just invent a pyramid to tackle my procastination, I'll be set for life. Or least, till my next writing crisis comes.

Okay, so now I'm on version 4 of idea # 3 story. I don't want baseball player man to be that aware. I had his goal was to make peace with his dying father. But it doesn't make sense somehow that he's this aware and conscious. I want him to still be in a slump and be forced to go home by his manager and deal with his personal life. Baseball playing man doesn't think his father's illness is affecting him, everybody else including the team's owners, the manager, the media, his team buddy and his team think differently. How can the death of your father not affect you? Baseball playing man has an attitude though and he's in denial and besides he hasn't been close to his father since he was 18.

Baseball player's new goal is just get out of his slump. And I want him to be an anti-hero in a hero's profession. I don't want baseball player man to be that likable. I want him to be kind of nasty but a damned good masher. I want to him to have a dicey relationship with the media, with his team, with the league in general. He's on his 5th baseball team. He's a pain in the ass, but the boy hits 30 to 40 homeruns a year so teams are willing to deal with him. But he's on the twilight of his career and he knows it.

The new spin on the story doesn't change the plot points of my screenplay but it does change some of my scenes. I think it's a bettery story. But does it make sense, an anti-hero in a hero's profession? I don't know. By making baseball player guy unlikable, I force him to go on a hero's journey. He goes from being anti-hero to hero, from unlikable jerk to likable hero.

I read a story from M in my writing group. God, it's very good. Much tighter than her previous version. As I finished reading it, I wonder again whether I should pursue from writing. M's story is so good. Part of me thinks, well she's an english major so she knows how to write and how to edit and I'm completely and totally handicapped because I'm a sociology major, who couldn't make up her mind on what to major in so I also have a concentration on Russian language and Theatre Lit. I'm handicapped because the state where I went to school didn't have core curriculum rules and I went to a college where you were encouraged to pursue whatever the hell you wanted and you couldn't fail because there was no 'D' or 'F' grade, meaning if you got lower than a 'C' grade it didn't show up your transcript.

College was like my very indulgent parents. I did whatever I wanted and took whatever courses I wanted. And I know it sounds like heaven, but I think it's handicapped me. I was never forced to read classic literature and sometimes if I think I did, I'd be a better writer.

I'm in such a 'poor me' mode this morning, it's bad. I am in my "why do I need to torture myself and write" mood. Do all writers feel this way? Do all writers wake up practically every day and think "is this what I really want to be doing for the rest of my life?" I'm perfectly happy to be a corporate slave. I'm perfectly happy to be a mom, homemaker with kids with no other interests other than the kids and the hubbie boy. I could even be happy being a working mom worry about the quality of day care and feeling guilty because I'm not spending enough time with my kid.

But no, I want to be a writer. I want to be in a profession that everybody and their mother thinks they can do. God, it's worse than acting, where I had classes that were so crowded with pretty boys and women with rack jobs and all other assorted types who just wanted to see their mugs on film or on the stage.

It's ill, totally ill. I am at the point where I think I should just write for myself and no one else and that should be it. Then writing can be my secret hobby and I can mentally masturbate myself for the rest of my life. And then I could be happy being in a job and writing on the side. And then I wouldn't wake up and think of myself as a total failure every other morning.

I'm nervous. I have to go over my screenplay in class next week. I was ready to do it tonight but my throat, but I decided it against it because my throat was still very scratchy.

My teacher and everyone in class will probably hate it. I just know they will. It's a simple story, father and son estranged with the only twist being it takes place in the world of major league baseball. But I love this story. I'v already laid out each scene of my screenplay from beginning to end. I think it's a good story, but you never know until you let tell other people about it. Other people can spot the holes, the obvious places you thought worked, where it should start as opposed to where you started it.

I'll probably end up telling my story and I'll get a hundred suggestions about how to do it differently. It's nerve wracking. Then I have this niggling doubt that nobody will get the story, nobody will understand why I want to tell it. I can even hear somebody say that I've written the summary for a third rate bad country music song. Self doubt floods my mind regularly the monsoon rains in Southeast Asia.

Is it possible to be so in love with your own story that you can't even tell if it's not good? The stories I've liked people haven't really liked. The stories I didn't like, people really liked. How can you win? How can you tell? Then I think maybe I'm not supposed to be a writer and this is just another stupid idea of mine, like acting. But I've been told since youtj that I had a talent, that I could write great stories, great dialogue, that I had a certain level of writing gift that most people would kill for. But what if everyone was wrong?

My acting director told me to write. He said I had a gift for telling stories and that I should pursue it. But he had a crush on me, so how can I trust him? He kept saying he wouldn't be saying it unless it was true and that I should know that he rarely praised anything anybody did. But sometimes I don't believe him. The guy really liked me. What if he was saying I was a good writer to seduce me, not that I could be seduced, but what if that was his intention?

Sometimes I wish my acting director didn't like the way he did, because then I could believe him. I wish his praise was given grudgingly because maybe it would mean more for me. Silly isn't it?

I don't care. I love my baseball man story. It's been kicking around my head since November 2000. I found a first draft of it on my PC. I even tried to write more of it in February 2001 but I couldn't. I didn't know where it was going to go and then I started thinking I had to do all this research about baseball to write the story. Then the story kind of left my mind for awhile, only cropping up at odd times in my head like it needed to let me know it was there.

This wasn't even my first screenplay idea. The baseball story is my third idea. But after screenwriting class last week, I saw the ending. In fact, I saw the mini movie version of it, flashing through my mind in lightning speed. I wrote the gist of the story down in notebook. Then the next day in the shower, the movie flashed through my mind again and I thought, BORING! Who would pay $9.50 to see this? Then by noon I had altered the story and upped all the stakes and made it larger than life, bold and daring and over the top.

I thought I was done with the story today, but on the way to screenwriting class I decided my baseball player man needed a buddy on the baseball team that he can talk to and who will represent what the members of the team think about him. Every guy needs a buddy, a best friend, to talk things over with. I wanted baseball player man to be a loner but now I think he needs a buddy on the team. Maybe not a best friend, but at least some guy on the team who likes him and takes his side.

So I'm on idea # 3, version 3, and hopefully this is the last version.

That crush on screenwriting cutie guy is totally gone. I think he's hooking up with some other girl in class and I'm glad. Watching them together, I know that we're definitely not meant to be together. Screenwriting hottie guy and this woman have easy rapport, always seem to sit next to each other and today I heard them figure out that they live near each other. Their getting together was so easy and the circumstances are all falling easily into place.

If screenwriting hottie guy and I had the same things going for us, then he would be the one. But we don't. I've never even spoken to him. Just as well. He's from the South. What would I do with a guy like that? I'm sure we're definitely not each other's type. But if I were to meet the one, I think our relationship would enfold like screenwriting hottie guy and this new chick. You know, easy going, everything going for us, talking together easily, living in the same neighborhood, etc.

But screenwriting hottie guy did get my creative spark lit again, so I'm glad I had my 15 minutes of crush on him. A guy who gives you back your creativity, your passion, what more could you from a guy? And this one was easy too because there's not awkward breakup, no embarrassing moments to have to contend with when it was over.

I think I am emotionally turning into a writing whore. I will do anything, including falling in love, to get my writing muse going. This is bad, very bad. And at the same time, I can't help bu think, no, this is good, very good.

Somehow I did it again. I wrote a long piece about my day, hit the wrong button and now it's gone. It was a damned fine piece of wriitng too. I think I'm going to have write my pieces in Word first and then transfer it back to blogger when I'm done.

This is the third time this happened and everytime, I'm sure I pressed the Post and Publish button. I guess no one is supposed to read my very good and intimate thoughts about my life, but just the boring and banal ones. It's like a curse, I swear.

And now I'm too tired to remember what I wrote, not that it matters anyway because I know I'll never be able to recreate it again in the same way. It's a curse, I swear it's a curse.

I may try again later, I supposed. Damn! I had a whole thing about reading through old newspapers and getting depressed and media hype, A&E Biography and hyped perfect lives and real unhappy lives underneath. And then wondering what my five plants would say if they could talk.

Well, that was most of it, the shortened version at least. I've got come up with a better process for writing my blogs than straight into blogger page because the way I'm doing it now is not working for me at all. God, I love the freedom of just typing into blogger though because then it's all like one giant, stream of consciousness thought, free write, mess. I have this vision that if I start in Word, I'll want to polish and rewrite and it's won't be this vomiting of feeling, stream of concsciousness ala Viriginia Woolf diatribe about my life.

But it's happened three times now. Is is a sign from god to not write out my most freakiest intimate thoughts on the Net or is a sign to just do it in Word as a fail safe in case clumsy stupid me hits the damned wrong button again. God, I don't know. It's a toss up either way. But three times. Three is such a biblical number! I'll try the Word first process and see how that works out. Damn! Sometimes I really do hate technology.

I watched 'On Golden Pond' tonight. It's an old movie from the 80's but I'd never seen it. Jane Fonda looked so 80's with her winged hair. Katherine Hepburn had that disease, Parkinson's I think, where your head shakes from side to side all the time. And Henry Fonda looked so old and was so doddering. Was he acting or was it real?

I can't imagine what it's like to be old. It's bad enough growing old now, I can't imagine what it would be like to be 70 or even 80 years old. I have no desire to live to a ripe old age. I know a friend who swore he was going to live till 105 and was looking forward to it. Not me.

To tell you the truth, I'm afraid of growing old. From what I've seen, it's not a fun experience. You're on so much medication, you can barely walk and your mind starts to deteriorate. But if you're one of the lucky ones, you're still strong, you're still fit and lucid. I once watched a 90 year old japanese woman chop a tree once when I was 13 years old. It was awesome. Somehow I don't think I shall be as healthy as that woman. She died in her sleep when she was 97. I've always wondered what she thought of life. She lived in an old dirty run down house on the edge of the town I grew up in and my mother, who was a social worker, was visiting her. That's when I watched her chop a tree from the car; a frail and thin looking, white haired, wrinkled japanese woman with a big axe. The axe looked too heavy for her to even pick up, but that old woman was strong. And her outfit. She was wearing a 60's style polyester white dress with small blue flowers, a navy blue sweater, that ugly brown support hose and thick soled black shoes. The outlines of old woman's body completely disappeared in the folds of dress like she was some stick doll.

I don't know why I still remember her so vividly after all these years, but I still love the thought that she could chop a tree at 90, that she was so strong and from a generation where women weren't tuaght to be strong. I liked that she lived all alone at the edge of town, in a small run down house. Did she have any children? Did she have a husband once? Or did she grow old all alone? Was she strong because she was that way inside or did she grow strong out of necessity and out of loneliness? I wish I knew. I wished I had asked my mom what her story was. Maybe I did, but I don't remember any of it now. I wonder if I will be as strong in my old age like that woman was. I wonder if I will end up as a memory in some other young girl's mind, a memory that will haunt her all her days as this woman's image has haunted mine.

First day of new eating program. I feel like I'm eating the way I used to in my younger days. Rice cakes, popcorn, lots and lots of popcorn, cereals that have no taste but lots of crunch and no candy. Too bad I gave up drinking diet pepsi because then I would have my complete way of eating from my 20's.

I saw the review of Blithe Spirit in the Chron today. The review was exactly my sentiments exactly. The little man was there just sitting in his chair. I've been agreeing with the Chron on theatre reviews these last few months and I'm surprised. I usually never agree with any theatre review of theirs. Maybe they've changed reviewers. Or maybe enough people complained and they finally are writing intelligent theatre reviews.

My flu symptoms showed up at work today. My throat was very scratchy and I kept coughing and sneezing all day. Maybe this is a real flu and not just cleansing symptoms. It doesn't feel like any flu I've ever had before though, where I'm usually as sick as a dog. This flu seems to come and go, which is strange.

I'm watching KTEH right now. Some show about the origins of Sherlock Holmes. What's so strange is they're producing a Tony Hillerman mystery and it's the one Hillerman book I've read. I'm beginning to believe there are no coincidences in my life anymore. Everything happens for a reason.

At Costco today while I was standing in the checkout line, a woman started telling me how the broccoli she bought there last week smelled really bad. I picked my bag and it did smell. The checker guy said he bought a bag of broccoli there and it went bad in a week. The woman convinced me not to buy it, so I didn't. Strange isn't it?

Then I saw a duckie couple twice. Once at work and then again while I leaving Costco. I love duckie couples, especially mallard green head ducks and their mates. They're my good luck symbol. Ducks mate for life and I'm hoping this is a sign that my soul partner is going to come soon. Earlier I saw a robin on the tree outside my window at work. I love robins. They are a sign of spring, hope and renewal. It's all good signs I hope.