From my church's yahoo groups board, someone posted an interesting article from the NY Times on 9/11 and God, Searching for God During a Tragedy. I'm not sure if you have to be registed on the NY Times website to read this, so be aware of that.

The column starts "Where was God on September 11?" I've never read this column before, but from what I've been researching, Peter Steinfels comes out of the Pentecostal tradition, has a doctorate on religion, and has been writing this column called Beliefs for the New York Times since 1988.

To commemorate September 11, my church is having a 24 hour prayer vigil starting on September 10 at 7 pm, and then concluding with a 7pm service on September 11. I'm sure churches around the country are honouring this occasion in their own way. I think it will be a solemn day for everyone, probably akin to how Pearl Harbor Day is memorialized for people who lived through it.

I grew up in Hawaii, and Pearl Harbor and Memorial Day were big events in school. Each school sent flower leis to be placed on the graves of the dead soldiers. There were contests of every sort in my grade school yearly, on both occasions. Contests to see who could make the most leis, the most unusual lei, the most creatively designed lei, etc. Honoring the war dead was a big part of my childhood growing up. I wonder if it was the same for other children. Hawaii was the only state that was bombed in a world war. Perhaps only in the south with the war between the states, can you find the same amount fervor for remembering the war dead.

You coudn't grow up in Hawaii, at least on my island and during the time I lived there, without being acutely aware that you were in the past, and even now, a target for nations to attack, and attack first. My teachers in school made us vitally aware, that our state for all practical purposes, was a sitting duck in any world war. Still, I'm glad I grew up at a time, in a place, where the war dead were honoured, and memorialized year and year. I wonder if schools in Hawaii are still keeping up with the practice.

After two weeks on my low calorie eating plan, I've lost seven (7) pounds. Most of this weight I know was water, but it's a great psychological boost to know that the weight is coming off. I spent the morning trying on clothes in my closet that haven't fit for the last year and a half, and some of them actually fit. YEAH!!! I've still got a long way to go, but it's exciting to think that one day I'll be able to wear everything in my closet again.

I was going to go shopping to check out the Labor Day sales, but decided against it. I shouldn't buy any more clothes until I lose weight. I did buy a clearance sweater from both Lands End and LL Bean last night, but my top hasn't varied in sizes in years. I'll always be a large on top, maybe a medium, a big medium, but never a small. Nature has been generous with me with a certain body part, and I'm the size that some women are surgically trying to enhance. When I was younger I swore to myself once, that if I ever made a ton of money, I would get a reduction in size. But as the years have gone by, I've become grateful for nature's generosity. It's better to have something on top, then nothing at all. Besides, some women are dying, literally, to be my size. It would be stupid to give up what a lot of women want.

I'm hoping they do shrink a little, becuse fashion wise, being large on top makes shopping difficult. Whis is odd, if you think about it. The media would have you believe that a lot of women are getting breast implants. But when you shop for women's clothing, the up to the minute fashionable tops you find only really fit well if you're small on top. Unless of course, you're supposed to want to wear your tops snug. But if you wear your tops snug, then you ending looking really huge, and you get alot of unwelcome stares and looks from total strangers. Besides, then it totally looks you're wearing a top which is one size too small. This kind of thinking so doesn't make sense to me.

I found diet cranberry/raspberry juice at Trader Joes. I didn't know they made diet juice. I'll have to check out other stores to see what they have. I don't really drink juice straight. Instead, I flavor my mineral water with juice. Most juice tastes way too sweet for me most of the time. Trader Joes even had chocolate made without sugar, which I bought just to try. I'm curious to know how chocolate made without sugar tastes.

I rented a bunch of movie to watch for the long weekend: Amelie, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and The Big Lebowski. I'll watch them in between cleaning, ironing, exercising and writing. On Monday, a friend and I are going to Ala Carte Ala Park in Golden Gate Park. It's close to home, I can walk there, and there's a band playing that we both like, The Tommy Castro Band. This event will be an eating challenge, because you can buy scrummy gourmet food all day long. I'll have to stick to healthy low calorie choices, although I don't know if there's such a thing with gourmet food. Plus, I'll stick to a two drink minimum, if I'm drinkng beer and, 3-4 drink minimum, if I'm drinking wine. And then, red wine only. I can drink more wine, because it's served in 4 oz portion, unlike beer or bottled beer which comes in a larger size.

Actually, eating low calorie hasn't been too bad. I just have to really be aware of what I'm eating, and not mindlessly eat, which is what I think I've been doing for the last four years. I'm realizing that mindlessly eating for me, has probably been the sole cause of my weight gain. Ironic to realize this too, since I like to think I'm an aware person. I love how I've fooled myself into thinking I'm an aware person. I wonder what other areas of my life have suffered from my mindlessness.

I saw XXX tonight. First of all, my friend Mel was right. Triple Ex is a chick flick. Come to think of it, Black Hawk Down was a total chick flick too. Vin Diesel is damned handsome! I think if I saw this guy walking down the street, he'd probably scare me half to death and I'd cross the street to get away from him. In a movie however, Diesel is so yummy looking. I saw the previews for Triple Ex when I went to see Spiderman. The teenybop girls and I were oohing and awing over Diesel's bald head and tatoos. The movie did not disappoint.

Despite what the reviews said, I thought the movie rocked. The action scenes were fantastic. The special effects were incredible. I got an adrenaline rush just watching the movie, which lasted for hours afterward. The head banging metal music was also just great. All action and special effects movie should have a headbanging metal soundtrack. Take the action, special effects, the adrenaline rush, the fantastic music, and stick a drop dead gorgeous only in the movies guy and you have the makings of total chick flick!

I can't get over my reaction to Diesel, because he's really not very good looking. He exudes this total animal attraction and charisma that totally reached out to me from the screen. My reaction to him is similar to my reaction to Prince. I don't think Prince is cute at all, but when I see him, he just looks like the most sexiest guy on earth.

Part of Triple Ex's attraction has to be those tatoos. I've never dated a man with tatoos, and probably never will either, but that doesn't mean I don't find men with tatoos totally attractive. I am definitely buyng the XXX DVD when it comes out.

I wonder if moviemakers know that some women love movies with beautiful men, and that critics are so wrong when they say Divine Secrets of YaYa Sisterhood is a chick flick. YaYa is not a chick flick. Triple Ex is a chick flick. What woman wants to see other women on screen, when they can see pretty boys. It's a no brainer!

Other total chick flicks are:

The Lord of the Rings - just for Legolas alone, but it's also full of pretty boys of all varieties including Sam.
Black Hawk Down - a movie with young and pretty military boys, come on, if this isn't a girl's movie, I don't know what is.
Any Keannu Reeves movie - because IMHO, he is the ultimate studmuffin!
Top Gun - again, young and pretty military boys, and a must watch over and over again beach volleyball scene.
Any Tom Cruise movie - since he's quite a dish as well.
I'll add Nicholas Cage, John Travolta movies to the list as well, because well, despite their less than perfect looks, these guys are really good looking.
Any Russel Crow movie - great actor, and wild and good looking in that untamable Aussie way
Brad Pitt and George Clooney movies are not chick flick movies, at least for me. Can't say the same for other women.
Any Ewan McGregor movie - another great actor who does a variety of roles, loved him in Little Voice and as Obi-Wan Kenobi, and he's got a very boyish pretty face.

I'm sure there are more movies to add to the total chick flick list, but I can't think of any right now.

I never saw The Fast and Furious, but I think Vin Diesel is in it. I'm sure the movie will make my chick flick list because Diesel is in it, but I'll reserve judgment till I see the movie for myself.

I'm still reeling over how good looking Vin Diesel was in the movie. Talk about total animal attraction for a movie star! Scary!!! Maybe the movie makers had subliminal messages placed on Diesel's body, which said things like SEXY, HOT, STUDMUFFIN, YUMMY, HUNK, etc. Nothing else explains my reaction, or that of my friends as well.

Here's my impressions on the MTV 2002 Music Video awards.

I loved Jimmy's Fallon's opening. He did a great impression of Enrique Inglesias and Dave Matthews. Enrique was with some girl, who I thought looked really familiar. That girl turned out ot be Anna Kournikova. She looked like your typical trashy rock star girlfriend. Didn't she just lose a match at the US Open, and get booed of the court? I guess she's finding solace in Enrique's arms. He really is quite dishy!

Bad trashy outfits

Gwen Stefani. What was up with that white undershirt and poufy leather black studded skirt? What about that rastafarian (yellow, red and green) wrist band she was wearing? What's up with that? Was she pledging her allegiance to the reggae/ska flag by wearing it, or was she wearing it on a whim?

Britney Spears - yikes! She's so scary, but I'm sure some people, especially men, loved that teenybopper dominatrix look.

Christina Aguillera - She is really thin, and rackless to boot. She's the kind of chick you see on the street who is wearing a skimpy top, and you think to yourself, "what's the point? there's nothing to show." No hips either. Was that the way she really talks or was she trying to sound ghetto? I liked her salute to the 60's with that silly cap she had on. Poor woman really needs a stylist, or if she has one, fire that person immediately!

Michelle Branch - Okay, I know the 60's looks are really trendy, but honestly that dress looked like a rug or something. A really bad looking rug. I don't think anyone would buy it for their home, if it was a rug.

The highlight of the show definitely had to be Guns-n-Roses! God, they rocked! They really showed the Hives, The White Stripes and The Vines what rock and roll really means. I am definitely buying the new Guns-n-Roses cd when it comes out. Axel Rose looked a little road weary, but hey the guy is old. He's still quite the looker though, and I loved his dreads.

The P. Diddy number was definitely over the top. I didn't know P Diddy could dance; that was a revelation. Michael Jackson looked like he was dressed as a hockey goalie, but for what kind of hockey game is unclear. What happened to his face? He was so cute as a kid! What was up with Lisa Marie Presley's voice? Is that the way she really sounds? It was so throaty and ghetto. Maybe talking like you grew up in the ghetto, even though you so did not, is the fad now?

I loved Pink. Was she really drunk? Probably. She totally looks like a party girl. Okay, her outfit was totally trashy too, but that's the way she was dressed in her last video so I wasn't quite so shocked. What was up with J Lo's hair? Perhaps she was showing her Bronx roots by that do?

Avril Lavigne is only 17 years old, and looked and dressed like it. What a trip to be that young and to have her fame? I hope she doesn't end up drugged out because of it, and we end up watching her sad life story on Behind the Music.

I loved Ja Rule. He has the sexiest voice! And the reviews are true. Justin Timberlake looked like he was doing a Michael Jackson interpretation. Bruce Springstein was fabulous, but then he always is. It was great to see him opening the show with that 9/11 song. Shakira's performance was great too, although it felt like she jumping on the garage band sound with her song.

What's up with all the mumbling? The Hives, The Vines and Sheryl Crow mumbled through their song. Was it my TV, MTV sound, or were they really mumbling. It was so annoying!

Eminem, what can I say? He can definitely rap, and his tally of VMA trophies says alot, despite what his critics have to say.

The major league baseball strike has been averted, but I think it's a band-aid to a problem that's going to keep continuing. I think the players and owners didn't strike because of the negative fan reaction. In 2006, I think we will be in the same position we are in today.

Skip Bayless is on the Jim Rome show, and he's calling it the luxury tax and revenue sharing a "quasi-salary cap". I don't know why they don't have a salary cap in baseball; it seems to work for football and basketball. Baseball is exempt from anti-trust laws, but not basketball and football. Why is this?

The Oakland A's are the only reason I'm happy about the baseball strike being averted. I think the A's can go all the way this year. The Yankees aren't as strong. The pitching is better. The A's on are on winning streak, and the Angels and the Mariners seem to be running out of steam. I think the A's could blow any team in the National League away, including the Diamondbacks.

I know I should be rooting for the SF Giants, but I don't think they have a chance of making the playoffs. The Dodgers are way too hot.

It would be great to have the SF Giants and the Oakland A's in a world series, but then my loyalties would be torn. I love the A's because the median age of the team is 25 years old; I love Barry Zito; I think Billy Beane is a genius; and besides the Oakland A's are the boy band team, the NSync of major league baseball. How could I not love them? But I'm a resident of the city and county of San Francisco, and the SF Giants are my team; they deserve my loyalty. My heart belongs to the A's, but when push comes to shove, I would root for the Giants against the A's.

More weird coincidences to prove the world is smaller than you think.

John Kruk and Chris Rose, from the Fox Sports show "The Best Damn Sport Show Period", are subbing for Jim Rome on his radio show. I tried watching their show, but wasn't that impressed with it. Chris and John together however, are quite funny.

Anyway, John Kruk was born in Charleston, West Virginia. There's that West Virginia connection thing going again. Chris Rose when to Miami University in Ohio. Paul, the exboyfriend who died in May, went to Miami University too.

I wonder if this means I need to give that sports show another chance. Chris and John do the guy talk thing, and they're very funny.

My horoscope for the week from a favorite astrology website. It sounds like good things are supposed to be happening to me. I hope so. I was little down yesterday when I started thinking about my writing. I think writing is my life purpose. I was even told by that spiritual medical intuitive, who I was seeing for health problems, that writing is my life purpose. But I don't know. Some aspects of writing are so easy for. Other aspects like grammar are hard, difficult, horrific, an assault on my psyche sometimes, only because I feel that I have zero ability in grammar. Okay, I know that's not completely true. I think I write in complete sentences most of the times. But God, the gap between where I am, and where I think I need to be seems gigundous! Gigundous, such a strange word isn't it? I have a website linked at home that's called gigundous.

Stephen King said, in his book on writing, that the level of writing is like a pyramid. There are few people at the top, like James Joyce and Aldous Huxley, then there are few people at the bottom, like maybe genre writers like Danielle Steele, and then everybody else is is the middle. The big middle.

I definitely know at this point, I'm not at the top of the pyramid. I'm not trying to invent a new way of writing. I'm not trying to push the limits of language, tradition and convention. I don't even has aspirations to be a scholarly writer, or write what a friend of mine would call, "high brow" books.

I guess my dilemma is I don't know if I'm even I make the bottom part of the pyramid. God, I wouldn't mind writing books like Danielle Steele. Her books are great for reading at the beach and on the trips. It's all too depressing to think about right now.

I think I'm at the point in any process, where you don't see any progress happening. You know progress is happening, but you don't see it. Instead, the only thing you're aware of is the gap between where you are and where you would like to be.

I have to remember that just because I don't see any progress, it doesn't mean that I'm not moving forward. That a day will come when I'll feel like I took a huge leap forward, that I just skipped a bunch of steps, that I made evolutionary progress. But the truth is I didn't skip steps and I didn't make evolutionary progress. My progress was slow and steady; I just wasn't aware of it most of the time. I hope I'm at this point that progress is happening, and that I'm not just now aware of it.

AQUARIUS
August 29-September 4
© 2002 Linda Rankin

Forecast
With Mars making a sign change to get this week rolling expect to find new outlets for your ambitions, new ways to act out your ideals and a more compelling focus on passion to greet you, Aquarius. In that ever-wonderous way the universe works this steady, diligent, decidedly intellectual new tone Mars wears suits your own desires and passions perfectly. Think about it....think some more...than do it.

Consider where a life dream has changed. Consider how you have changed. Consider how the outer components of your world have changed and where necessary rewrite those dreams. An adjustment may be called for and is worth any effort you put into reworking ideals that need reworking. A passionate focus on your truth grows in intensity as the days go along. Ask yourself...how clearly you are living your truths.

Falling in love or like or lust. Finding a fascinating new possibility or person or idea to become enchanted with are all possible as Venus trines your own ruling planet...Uranus later in the week. Unusually objectives might lead to changing plans. A new friendship could be born in your world. A new mission could surface. Keep your eyes open...and stay flexible.

I have Chopin's Preludes playing right now. I love Chopin. I am in a classical music mood tonight, and will listen to Debussy's Etudes next, then maybe some Beethoven or Mozart. Or, for something completely different, Bryn Terfel's "The Welsh Album". I heard him sing in a Stravinsky opera in 2000, and really liked his voice. Then later before I go to bed, I'll listen to one of my favorite pieces, Chopin's Nocturnes. It's perfect music to listen to late at night.

I was craving junk food this evening, so I went to Burger King. I had a whopper jr without mayo, fries and onion rings. I feel completely stuffed now. I should have just had either fries or onion rings but not both.

I'm bad. In my Palm, I have a list of what I can eat all the fast food restaurants. It's not like I even eat at fast food restaurants all the time either; I probably have a craving for fast food about four times a year. I just needed to know that I could eat at a fast food restaurant if I wanted to. It makes me feel psychologically, that I'm not on any kind of restrictive starvation diet. Never mind that I'm eating 1,000 calories less than I should be eating if I wanted to stay at my current weight, which means that for all practical purposes I am on calorie restrive diet. It's the psychology that counts.

The music stopped, so I put on Debussy's Etudes. All this piano music. I'll put on Muzio Clementi next. Seeing his headstone at Westminister Abbey in London gave me quite a thrill. The ex-hubbymeister didn't much care for classical music, but loved Debussy for some reason.

I think tonight I will write up the character interviews for the three little boys in my screenplay. Once these interviews are finished, my next step will be to rewrite my outline. Once the outline is rewritten, I'll be able to start rewriting the second draft of my screenplay. I plan to start rewriting the screenplay on Sunday September 1.

I want to finish writing my screenplay by September 30. This means writing 3-4 pages a day for a 110 page screenplay, or about 28 pages or so a week. This may be a tight schedule for me. I wrote the first draft of the screenplay in five weeks, so this new schedule is considerably shorter. I'm thinking, that since this rewrite is the second draft, the writing should go faster than the original first draft. I'm following my screenwriting teacher's advice, and writing from scratch on the second draft instead of just revising the first draft. Her method makes sense for my screenplay, since I've changed major parts of the story. I've never done this second draft total rewrite method before, so it will be interesting to see what first draft scenes survive.

I'm tired today. All I really want to do is go to bed, listen to my classical music CDs and read. I think the burger, fries and onion rings have stolen all my energy. I wonder if my body has to work harder to process junk food, since I hardly ever eat it. When I used to be really good about my eating, and eating naturally and cleanly, eating frozen and canned foods used to send my system into shock. I'd feel so sick afterwards. I wonder if I'm having the same kind of reactions now, as I did back then. I don't eat that cleanly anymore, but I also don't eat that much junk food, so I may be having a reaction. It's scary to think that junk food makes my body feel this way. What's in the food anyway? I used to think that processed and junk foods were full of sulfites, and it was the sulfites that made me sick. I wonder if my sulfite theory is correct after all.

Most writers are slaves to words, grammar and sentences. I’m not. I’m a slave to storytelling, plot line and characters. And let’s face it, most people do not speak or think in writerly prose. I despise stories that are written well, but have underdeveloped characters, don’t tell a good story, and have a bad plot line. I have to figure out a way to merge the two ways of writing, since both are essential for great stories.

Writing Gifts I may have:
Downloading a character or characters telling a story
Organizing the downloaded information into a plot line
Being able to see through to the end of the story and what needs to happen to get there

Writing Gifts I totally know I don’t have:
Words – vocabulary
Sentences and Structure
Grammar

I’m reading Sin and Syntax by Constance Hale. From looking at my own writing process, I need to take these steps to write a good short story, novel, or screenplay.

Story Idea
Outline of plot from beginning to end
Character biographies and interviews
First Draft
Second Draft – clean up story line and characters
Third Draft – clean up grammar
Fourth Draft – clean up sentences
There could be several drafts in between first four and final draft
Final Draft – final check

Easier for me – story idea, outline
Easier for me – character biographies and interviews
A little easier for me – First and second draft
The hardest part – Third to Final draft.

My process is probably opposite to how every other writer works. I should have known. I do everything backwards. Why did I expect my writing process to be any different?

I can't believe they picked San Francisco and New York City as the two finalists for the Olympic games. My bet is that it goes to NYC because of 9/11. I'm just so shocked we got picked. As a resident, I'm happy and at the same time freaked out. I hope only good comes if we are picked as the Olympic host city. I hope that they figure out the traffic mess here, because it's bad now and in 12 years it's going to be worst. I hate leaving the city on the weekend. No one who lives in San Francisco leaves the city on the weekend because the traffic is so bad. The traffic is worse on the weekend than it is during the week.

On Pete Wilson's show, they're already speculating about the protests that will happen if SF ever gets picked as the finalists. In a city where everything is political, the olympics would be the lightning rod for every freak group to protest about whatever the hell they happen to be protesting about this week. People protest so much here that as a resident, you don't even pay attention to them anymore. In fact, you come to hate the protestors fervently for the traffic jams they cause and then after awhile, you start to hate the groups they represent for the group's bad behaviour and insensitivity.

Faith is a strange thing for me, because I have had it since I was a kid. I have always believed in the existence of God. Sometimes when I get really freaked out, I doubt that he’s paying attention to me, doesn’t hear me, doesn’t want to hear me, doesn’t care, and is mad at me for whatever reason. When I have hit those bad bottoms in life that you sometimes do, I have even toyed with the idea that maybe God does not really exist. As soon as I get a thought like this, I always get the cosmic slap upside my head that I am dead wrong, and that God does exist but I’m just too caught in my own BS to know it.

I have come to believe that faith is a gift, and faith comes in varying degrees. Some people have it just a teeny tiny bit. Others breathe and live it. I think I fall somewhere in between, although I know some of my friends sometimes consider me a bit of a religious nut.

I don’t think I could ever run away from God. It’s like he’s got me in my palm of his hand and he won’t let go, no matter what I do. And believe me, I’ve tried to run, I’ve tried to hide, I’ve probably done a few things that aren’t very good in the name of getting away from God. It doesn’t matter. No matter how far I run, no matter how far I hide, no matter how far I stray, God always finds me and lets me know, I will never escape him. I can believe whatever I want about him, say whatever about him, but he knows that I know the real truth and he never lets me forget it..

Do other people feel this way about God? I’ve always wondered if I’m the only one. People never really talk about their faith. I don’t really like to either, unless I know the other person is receptive. I know a part of me feels that faith is private and personal, and really no one’s business but your own. So I never talk about faith unless it comes up in conversation.

I do know that despite my silence, I’ve been lucky about having people of faith around me. Over the years, I’ve come to believe that a person doesn’t stay in my life for very long or get close to me unless they have some faith in God. It’s not something I’ve consciously chosen, because it’s not like I wear my faith on my sleeve or vomit religion over someone as soon as I meet them, it’s just something I’ve noticed in my life.

It’s like I have faith-dar, a radar for people of faith. It doesn’t matter what kind of faith either, just as long as the person believes strongly that there is something, someone up there who looks out after us all.

Signs by M. Night Shyamalan

I loved this movie. M. Night Shyamalan is a genius. The story is simple, but it makes you think.

The following is an excerpt from the NY Times movie review.

“The real question, posed by Graham to his brother at an especially tense moment, is what kind of person Graham (and, by implication, everybody else) is. There are two kinds: those who believe everything happens for a reason and that we are therefore not alone and those who believe that we live in metaphysical solitude, our destinies governed by nothing more than random chance. There are people with faith, in other words (and the point is reiterated frequently), and people without it.”

This was the heart of the movie for me. I am a person of faith, but I do believe there is some randomness in life that cannot be explained.

Shyamalan shows that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to scare people. You can build tension and scary moments in a movie with every day actions, every day fears and every day assumptions.

I liked how Shyamalan opened the movie and got right into the action of the story. From the start, the audience is immediately sucked into the story. In Screenwriting class, one of the tips was to open on the “cusp of conflict”. I was going to open up the second draft of the screenplay with an exposition scene. In my first draft, I opened the movie up with a locker room brawl. I think I will stick with a locker room fist-a-cuffs scene as the opening scene.

All through the movie, I kept wondering how I would have reacted if I was in story. I like a movie that makes me wonder about how I would behave in a certain situation. I think Shyamalan also made me sympathetic for how each person in the movie was behaving. I could relate to every character in the movie, so I understood every rationale for each character’s behaviour. I want to mimic this in my screenplay. I want the audience to be able to relate to every character in my movie. How I am going to achieve this effect is unknown to me, but I think it’s worth trying.

The ending of Signs was a little far fetched. Perhaps Shyamalan couldn’t figure out how to bring resolution to his interesting plot. I understand his problem. I don’t think I would know how to resolve the ending of this movie either.

All the ufologists are up in the arms over the movie. I know they don’t like the assumption that the space visitors might be less than friendly, but who knows what the space visitors will do when they decide to reveal themselves to us.

What Shyamalan also does well is put conflict into every scene. Richard Walter, in his book Screenwriting, wrote that every scene in a movie should have some sort of conflict. Every scene of the movie is infused with two opposing forces, two opposing point of views, someone who wants something from someone who doesn’t want to give it to them, etc. There is tension in every scene, of varying degrees of course, but tension nonetheless.

I am going to try to add tension and conflict to every scene of my screenplay. I want to add tension and violence as well. I read somewhere that violence is the currency by which we spend our lives. I’m not talking gun violence or battle violence, but physical and emotional violence.

Violence in my characters makes sense. They are people who bottle up their emotions because they are afraid of them. I believe emotions are like energy, and energy cannot be contained and when it is not expressed, it finds a way to explode. My characters are at war with their own emotions, suppressing them, but to no avail. The emotions bubble up with a subtle and violent explosion, often at odd moments, sometimes for a reason, but most of the time at random.

I hope I can do all of this. The idea to violence just popped into my head after I saw Signs. I should probably watch Signs again to study how Shyamalan does what he does. Maybe I even need to rent some Hitchcock movies, the master of suspense. Is it weird to add this much suspense to my family drama movie? I keep asking myself this question.

I bought a new scale on Sunday. My scale at home was so off from my doctor's scale. What's great about having a non-working scale is you can fool yourself about how much you really weigh. I would go to the doctor and get myself weighed, and the weight would always be higher than on my scale at home. In my denial mode, I attributed the difference to clothing, shoes, coffee, breakfast, etc. What's worse is, I knew I was fooling myself but I didn't care. My scale at home reflected a weight that wasn't too bad and I was happy with that. But I don't want to fool myself anymore.

My scale at home is eight (8) pounds off from my new expensive high tech scale called thinner. The blurb at the store said that the particular scale I bought, called "Thinner" of all things, is the most accurate on the market. I'm telling you though, stepping on the scale yesterday was so shocking. I was so freaked about by how much I actually weighed, I spent the rest of the night in a freaked out daze watching the Witchblade marathon on TNT, never mind that I've seen every show this season and have them taped as well.

As the night wore on, I calmed myself down and forced myself to think about what was happening. When I stepped on the new scale and it was eight pounds higher, I immediately thought that I had fooled myself into believing that I lost 12 pounds last year. How could I have fooled myself about losing 12 pounds and why did I do that to myself? But then I remembered that the weight the nurse wrote down my chart last March was 12 pounds higher than my current weight on the new scale. After realizing this fact, I felt better. Whew!!!

Part of my freak out came from the fact that I tried on a pair of jeans that used to fit me in 1999 on Satruday, and for the first time in years, I could actually button them. They were snug as heck, but at least it didn't hurt to button them or lie down to put them on.

I think this is a good thing, to have my scale at home match my doctor's scale. On the down side, I have way more weight to lose than I thought I did.

On the calorie counting front, for our lunch meeting we went to TGI Fridays. I had a salad. The salad was soaking with dressing, bleu cheese and pecan covered chicken, but calorie wise I don't think it was too bad. The TGI Friday's website didn't have a nutritional information guide, but the salad I had at TGI Fridays is similar to the one I get at La Salsa. I'm estimating the pecan chicken salad I had to be about 800 calories. That's alot for a salad, I know, but it was very filling and I'm still full. If I go home tonight and have a light dinner, I still won't be over my calorie total for the day.

I don't want to worry too much about salads. I ate fuzzy lettuce salads, covered in vinagrettes and chicken last year, and initally lost 20 pounds. I was on a carbo restricted zone type of eating. I tried restricting my carbo count to 10-20 grams a meals. Three months later I lost 20 pounds. I gained about 8 pounds of it back, but managed to to keep the 12 pound weight loss despite going to back to my regular eating ways.

I'd like to lose 30 pounds and then see how much comes back on, when I go back to regular eating. 40% of the weight loss I came back last year once I went back to regular eating. If this ratio holds true, I should gain 12 pounds back, leaving my weight loss at 18 pounds. At that weight, I'd be close to what I weighed in 1995.

My other plan is to lose enough weight until I see a body shape I like, lose 5-10 pounds beyond that weight, and then go back to regular eating. With the extra weight loss, when I do back to regular eating, the weight I end up with should be the weight that is perfect for me.

Just thinking this far into the future is dizzying and freaky for me. I hate the thought that I might be calorie counting for more than three months, but I know if I want to get to the weight I am happy with, I'll have to calorie count for as long as it takes. I wish I'd done this earlier. I could feel my weight creeping up, but I was in such denial about it. When companies I worked for went Business Casual, I didn't freak out so much about gaining weight. When I had to wear a suit every day, a suit that cost $500 and up, I would freak out if my suit was tight. When you wear business casual type clothes to work, replacing a $50 pair of khakis is no big deal. Business Casual clothes are also not quit so fitted, so there's alot of room to hide any weight gain.

Denial is amazing, isn't it?

Friends of mine are off to Burning Man. The idea of Burning Man sound interesting, but I don't think I could take the living conditions. I love the desert and all, but camping for a week in it does not sound like my idea of fun. Besides, my idea of camping is staying at Motel 6. I guess I'm getting old because the thought of car camping in the hot desert and being surrounded by people on Ex and other type of hallucinatory drugs, just gives me the willies.

I think they're shooting that new ABC drama, MDs near my neighbourhood. On the way home from an even tonight, the police had some streets blocked off and I saw huge trucks loaded with camera equipment. The producer said in the paper, he sets alot of his stories in San Francisco because he went to SF State and did his residency here.

I live here, so my screenplay is set in San Francisco, and so is my novel. The short story I'm working on is set in Pacifica and Death Valley. I used to live in Pacifica and I've been to Death Valley. It's fun to set stories in place you've either lived or visited. One of my completed short stories is set in London and San Francisco, and another one is set in Dallas, Texas. I started a story set in West Virginia, while I was visiting there, and hope to finish it one day.

It's great that movies and shows are filmed here, but they do mess up traffic. When the Hulk was filming here a few months ago, they film production crew really messed up traffic. They never usually film in my neighbourhood, but the UC San Francisco Hospital building is here and that's probably where they're filming. I'm going to have to watch this TV show now, just to see my neighbourhood. My neighbourhood main street was in that Keannu Reeves movies, "Sweet November". There's a scene where Charlize Theron and the scottish guy are walking down the street, and you see a Java Beans sign in the background, that's my neighbourhood. Seeing that in the theatre was so cool, because I had no idea that they filmed a scene here. I saw it and said to my friend, oh my god, that's near my apartment. It was so cool!

Life is full of strange coincidences sometimes. Check this series out. I had a crush on this guy in my screenwriting class in February. Screenwriting Marina hottie boy, my nickname for him, ends up writing a screenplay about a giy who used to play football at Marshall University in West Virginia. I don't think the Screenwriitng Marina hottie boy played football there though, but played for some school in his home state of Pennsylvania.

In July I went to West Virginia for two weeks on vacation wtih a friend, whose family is from there. While blogging one night in West Virginia, I received an email from someone who used to live there. That person is now a blog friend, and I have her blog linked on my blog. This new blog friend just happened to have gone to Marshall University, the school screenwriting marina hottie boy talked about in his screenplay.

This new blog friend lives in Columbus, Ohio now. Ohio is where Paul, my boyfriend who died in May of this year, was born and is now buried somewhere in Dayton. Ohio is also where my first love, who I've been thinking about since April, went to school after he transferred from my college in Grinnell, Iowa. I wonder if Oberlin College is anywhere near Columbus or Dayton?

Screenwriting marina hottie boy is originally from Pittsburgh, PA. He looks almost exactly like my first love, only he's taller, bigger, played college football, isn't as articulate, doesn't play the violin and bass guitar, and isn't jewish. Pittsburgh, PA has largest museum dedicated to just Andy Warhol. I went to LA to see the Andy Warhol exhibit.

And last but not least. The VP, who I'm meeting with on Monday, works out of his home in Pittsburgh, PA.

Signs was all about coincidences and how they might or might not all mean something, depending on whether you have faith and believe in God. I grew up catholic, and I believe in signs from god. In fact, I crave signs from god. I ask for signs, coincidences, sychronistic events, and you know most of the time, I get an answer. It's a spooking thing. I'm not sure what all these coincidences I've written about mean for my life right now, but they're interesting to note. They also make me curious to know what other coincidences are coming next, and what they might mean for my future.

This song keeps popping into my head at odd moments. I like the words; they lift me out of the melancholy mood I've been in these last few days.

The Middle
Written by Jimmy Eats World

Hey, don't write yourself off yet
It's only in your head
You feel left out or looked down on
Just try your best, try everything you can
And don't you worry what they tell themselves
When you're away

It just takes some time, little girl
You're in the middle of the ride
Everything, everything will be just fine
Everything, everything will be all right, all right

Hey, you know they're all the same
You know you're doing better on your own
So don't buy in, live right now
Yeah, just be yourself
It doesn't matter if that's good enough for someone else

It just takes some time, little girl
You're in the middle of the ride
Everything, everything will be just fine
Everything, everything will be all right, all right

It just takes some time, little girl
You're in the middle of the ride
Everything, everything will be just fine
Everything, everything will be all right, all right

There was a full moon on Thursday August 22 in the sign of Aquarius, my sun sign. My favorite astrologer wrote, on her website, that this Aquarius moon will be about looking at the past rather than the future. This may explanation why I have been on a major nostalgia trip since Thursday.

The movie Sliding Doors is about how a seemingly random event changes the course of one person's life. In one life, the main character catches her subway train. In the second parallel life, the main character misses the train. The simple act of either catching or missing the train lead the main character two completely different futures.

In one of my favorite episodes of Red Dwarf, that hilarious Brit scifi show, Rimmer the hologram meets one of his selves. What' s interesting is the new Rimmer is the polar opposite of the hologram Rimmer. The new Rimmer says that every decision you make in life, creates another reality, a whole other you living a completely different future, in a different dimension. all stemming from the outcome of that one decision.

As look back on my past, as I have been doing these past few days, I saw three possible lives for me since 1999.

Life # 1 - Instead of freaking out and running away from the guy who is "the one that got away", I didn't freak out and I stayed. In that life, we followed the normal course of romance, got married and I'm a house wife on the Peninsula raising my one year old little boy. I am in love, but it's a comfortable and companionable love, which makes me feel very secure. Sometimes I have visions of him, this son that I know is alive and well in another dimension. He looks like his father with his strawberry blonde hair and hazel green brown eyes. I would have stopped writing, so there would be no writing group, no screenwriting group, no novel started, no short stories written, no screenplay, and definitely no blog. I think I am happy in that other life, because I have the child I always wanted, but I think a part of me is sad because the writing got left behind. I try to write, but with a husband and child to care for, writing is the last thing on my mind. I'm a mommy now. I have a comfortable, luxurious and secure life. My husband is a bit of workaholic, and travels two weeks out of every month. When he's not traveling, he's playing golf. He is kind and he loves me, but he's a little boring. His job always comes first, but he is a good provider and good father to my child, when he's there.

Life # 2 - Instead of being cautious and safe, I threw caution to the wind and moved to Texas to be with "the one I let go". I had a vision of myself living somewhere in some small town Texas. I am in love, and it is a wild, crazy and passionate love, which is exciting but stressful too. I saw myself happy, because I was with the man I loved, but I also sensed that I was lonely and sad. I left the city I loved, the ocean I need to feel comfortable and all of my friends. I am landlocked and living in a small town, which I swore I would never do again. I do not have a child, because the man I love doesn't want any more children, and this is a sore point between us. My husband is a workaholic, so I spend alot of time on my own. I write, because the man I love encourages me in my writing as he is a fellow writter himself when he's not working, but I feel like a fish out of water and there is no inspiration to write. I miss the ocean, I miss my friends, I miss city life, and most of all I miss the energy and creativity that comes from living in a place where breaking with tradition is a way of life. I love my husband, but he is a typical Texas guy and it's either his way or the highway, and he will not abide agreeing to disagree. It's too exhaustive to fight with him, so most of the time I give in. His early words of advise come back to haunt me. He told me, "Never move for love, only move for more money."

Life # 3 - My current life I lead. I am exploring my writing so I've written 7 short stories, started a novel and wrote 120 pages of it, finished a screenplay, am in a writing and screenwriting group, and I have a blog. I am happy 95% of the time and I still feel like I have all my options open and my whole future ahead of me. I am comfortable and secure, and I make enough money so I feel quite comfortable living in the most expensive city in the country.

While writing this I just got the following insight. The man who I dubbed, "the one that got away", would have preferred that I loved him in a wild and crazy way. The man who I dubbed, "the one I let go", would have preferred that the love I felt for him be comfortable, soothing and companionable. This may be why these two relationships never worked, and why there were subtle red flags from the get go both times. A politically inclined friend said that the two relationships would have also never worked, because well, they were both republicans and I'm a middle of the road democrat. I'm not sure I agree with him on this one, since deep down my values were similar to both men on the important things like family, money and religion.

I know I made the right decision in choosing life # 3, and that I was meant to make the choices I made. But, this aquarius moon has me wondering sometimes what life # 1 and life # 2 would have been like. I loved both men, although in very different ways, and it still hurts that I'm not with either of them. For "the one who I let go", I just miss him alot. He was a good friend too, a fellow writer, and I miss his discipline and his intelligence. For "the one that got away", I cannot help but look back at our time with more than a tinge of regret. I felt so comfortable with that man, so secure, and yes, I admit it, a little bored. But, what's a little boredom when you have an overabundance of security and love.

I cannot wait for this aquarius moon to end. I am tired of looking back into my past. I guess I want more confirmation that I did the right thing, that I made the right decision, that following my creative impulse was the best decision to make, is always the best decision to make, that a life without creativity is a half lived life, a sad life, that in the end it always works out for the best, it may not look like it at the time, but everything always works out for the best, all the time, like it was planned that way all along.

Tough day at work today. Client requests for information from reports I did a year ago. I hate looking at work I did in the past. It's like, OH MY GOD, did I actually do this? This client was the first client we did these particular type of reports for, and since they were the first, they were the guinea pigs. The reports have come along way since then, so it's painful for me to see these dinosaurs.

Looking at old programming coded, even my own, is scary. It's like looking into someone's brain and how they think, how their logic works, how they process information or don't process information. I'm sure if a fellow programmer looked at my code, they'd freak out. I'm looking at my own programming code I wrote a year ago, and freaking out.

The client is requesting detailed information from this old report, and because the report is a year old, the information has already been deleting due to space limitations on the server. I've been spending the whole day trying to recreate the report to get back to the same numbers I had a year ago. What a pain! I'm finding so many mistakes, mistakes that we corrected later for other clients and their reports. I hate this. How do you go back to a client and tell them? It's not that the information is that far off, I just can't get back to my original numbers. However you look at it, it just looks like one big damn mistake.

I'm like so stressed out. I would get killed in an audit, and I'm bummed because I've always been so good about making my work audit proof. You should always be able to get back to your original numbers, no matter how many years later you go back and rerun the job. Stress, stress, stress. Thank god, it's Friday!

H to the izz-O, V to the izz-A...

I'm watching great musical moments from MTV's award programs. I forgot how much I loved Jay-z's song IZZO.

H to the izz-O, V to the izz-A...

I'm going to have to buy Jay-z's cd Blueprint.

Then Staind came on and sang that one song that I had to listen to for hours on end, "Fade". And now Eminem is on. I know, I know, he's a bad and evil boy, but I like him He's got a way with words and I love his anger. He's controversial and he makes you think, and I think behind all the BS lies a very intelligent and incredibly angry young man.

H to the izz-O, V to the izz-A...

Good advise from from the Writer's Digest August 2002 issue. Tracy Chevalier, who wrote "Girl with a Pearl Earring", said the following when asked "Do you have any advice for writers starting out?"

"Write about what you're interested in, not about what you already know. Don't write about yourself--you're not as interesting as you think! There's a whole world out there to explore."

My thoughts exactly. I get alot of flak from well meaning friends, who want me to write about my life. My first reaction is, how boring. I'm not interested in writing a memoir or a biography. I'm a fiction writer, and fiction means the following (dictionary.com):

An imaginative creation or a pretense that does not represent actuality but has been invented.
The act of inventing such a creation or pretense.
A lie.
A literary work whose content is produced by the imagination and is not necessarily based on fact.

Word History: To most people “the latest fiction” means the latest novels or stories rather than the most recently invented pretense or latest lie. All three senses of the word fiction point back to its source, Latin ficti, “the action of shaping, a feigning, that which is feigned.” Ficti in turn was derived from fingere, “to make by shaping, feign, make up or invent a story or excuse.” Our first instance of fiction, recorded in a work composed around 1412, was used in the sense “invention of the mind, that which is imaginatively invented.” It is not a far step from this meaning to the sense “imaginative literature,” first recorded in 1599.

n 1: a literary work based on the imagination and not necessarily on fact 2: a deliberately false or improbable account [syn: fabrication, fable]

It is still difficult for me to write about what happened on 9/11. Right now, I feel like crying and it' hard to type, and I'm at work waiting for my query to finish.

It's almost been a year, but I'm not sure I've processed what happened that day and that week. I wonder if I ever will? I wonder if the tears and sadness will dry up some day, only because there will be no more tears left or sadness to feel. Strange how I have such strong feelings about what happened on that day. I don't personally know anyone who died, but I feel such extreme sadness mixed bitterly with the furious white heat of anger. My body and fingers shake, tremble with my feelings. Stranger still since I'm not the most emotional of people. I'm not quite sure how to explain my feelings about what happend on 9/11 to myself or anyone else for that matter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More later.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Live 105

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Start new diet. Not again!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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