I just saw "8 Mile" with Eminem. The reviews were right. It's a standard Hollywood plot, updated for the Detroit 313. What makes this otherwise boring movie a standout is Eminem. He has the same kind of intensity I've seen in Sean Penn's film, and which I saw up close when Penn was in a Sam Shephard play with Nick Nolte at the Magic Theater a few years ago.

Eminem is very watchable. You see all these emotions wash across his face, which is great for a movie audience. I loved the guys arguing in the car about the difference between west coast and east coast rap styles, and how Tupac Shakur influenced rap style. I'm sure half the people in the audience with me, had no clue what these guys were talking about.

And Kim Basinger. She looked almost too natural, too familiar playing Eminem's trailer trash mom role. The music was great, but I wished it had more of Eminem's own music. I'm not sure Eminem would do well in another kind of movie role, but he was great in this semi biopic of himself.

"Contact" the movie was on TV last night, and every time it's on TV, which seem like once a month, I have to watch it. I love the Ellie Arroway character. I so relate to her focus, her single mindedness, her intensity and how her driven qualities lead to her inevitable incredible loneliness. But in the movie, she's at least got her JC man, Palmer Joss, the ruggedly beautiful Matthew McConaughey. I'm like so jealous! Like where's my spiritual, beautiful JC man?

WOOHOO!!! I finished National Novel Writing Month a day early, and wrote 50,184 words. I'm not even done with my story, but I do intend to finish it soon.

I even figured out how to post a graphic to my bloggie. I'll have to post more pics soon.

I'm exhausted from writing like a fiend this whole month, but now I have to get back to writing my screenplay. I'm taking a class from Richard Schultz, who I believe is the head of the screenwriting department at UCLA and has taught most of the current screenwriters who have Hollywood films out. The class is in two weeks, and last year in a radio interview, Schultz said he would read screenplays if people brought them to class. I would so love to get feedback from him on my screenplay.

I can't believe I completed another year of Nanowrimo. It's so hard, so maddening, yet in the end I always feel good that I've pushed myself and accomplished something really cool like write 50K plus words in 30 days. Now that's great writing production.

I've got the day off, and I can't decide if I want to venture outside and brave the shopping hordes. I need a new watchband for my Timex Ironman triathlon watch, and would love to pick it up today but I'm not in the mood to deal with crowds.

Today is the supposed to be the best day to shop for deals at the stores, but it's you and everybody else in your neighborhood doing the same thing.

I feel like such a slug though. I finally made myself take a shower, after lounging around in my jammies for most of the day and picking at my leftover Thanksgiving food. I feel like I should at least get out, and do something like maybe go see a movie or something or run some errands. But I've got two more days of my weekend to do it, and part of me just wants to kick back and relax like a stuffed whale at the beach. Too bad there's no blazinlgy hot sun for me lie around in, to make the image complete.

There are three movies I want to see; Die Another Day, 8 Mile, and the new Harry Potter. But even these aren't temptation enough for me to want to leave the comfort of my own home.

There's a Mervyn's up the hill from where I live, and I'm pretty sure they sell watchbands, so I might just take the bus up there. If I go to Union Square, it will be a crazy zoo and crawling with way too many people. I feel to do just one productive thing today.

God, and I really have errands to do. My company Christmas party is next Friday, and I want to see if there's anything out there that I absolutely need to wear for Christmas this year. I want to see what's in style, what's hot and trendy, and then decide if what I have in my closet is still okay for another wearing. Now that I've lost some pounds, I can wear some holiday clothes that I haven't worn in a few years. Maybe they'll look kind of new because no one has seen me wearing them for quite some time.

I also want to look at Christmas decorations. I always buy at least 4-7 ornaments every year, just to have new things on the tree. But those darn crowds!

And then there's christmas shopping. I haven't even started that yet, although I did buy some stocking stuffer type things a few months ago.

Maybe if I just go for an hour, it won't be so bad. I just hate shopping when it's crowded.

Wow, Stars Wars Phantom Menace is on TV. God, I love Ewan MacGregor as Obiwon Kanobi! He is so darn cute!!! And I so don't care what the politically correct people say, I love Jar Jar Binks! Bring back Jar Jar!

I just got back from my aunt and uncle's house in San Jose. It's nice to see the relatives, since we don't get together very often. I brought a green bean and onion dish that I found at Epicurious that I debuted last Christmas. It's simple, easy to make and very tasty.

I arrived at my aunt's house at around 1:00 pm, and helped her with some last minute preparations. We ate at 3 pm, watched the football game on TV, and gossiped about the family. My other aunt and uncle from Oakland also were there, and it was nice to see them as well.

Then armed with leftovers, I drove home. I would have stayed longer, but my aunt wasn't feeling well so I decided to leave. I think she has the flu that everyone is getting. I hope she didn't cough on the food. She made a ton of food, and there was so much desserts to eat, I kissed my eating plan goodbye for the day.

I was so sleepy on the drive home, probably from the turkey. I was glad I only had a glass of wine with appetizers and a glass of wine at dinner, and no beer during the football game, even though I really wanted one. We were done eating by 4 pm, so I had a couple of hours to sober up before the drive home.

Maybe I got sleepy from the pumpkin pie, apple pie, chocolate cake, pumpkin cream cheese cake and ice cream that I had for dessert. Yes, I really did eat all those desserts and they were so heavenly and yummy. I thought I was going to burst at the end, and felt like a distended fat cow couch potato watching the football game .

Thank god I wore stretchy waist pants. I had better exercise double tomorrow, so I can work all that dessert off. I don't know how I fit a plate full of thanksgiving food and all that dessert into my tummy, but I did.

Speaking of football? What is up with Steve Spurrier and the Washington Redskins? Wasn't he that great college football coach who was supposed to make a splash in the NFL? At least, that's what all the sports talking heads were predicting about him. My uncles were bitching about their fantasy football league teams, and how they thought for sure Spurrier was going to be a winning coach in his first season. One of my uncles was pissed because he picked a couple of players from the Redskins teams for his fantasy football team.

Fantasy football sounds like such a trip. One of the companies I worked for had their own Fantasy Football League. It was run out of the Finance department that I was a part of. The draft was like such a big deal, and was very serious business. All the VPs played, and the directors, and what other football nuts they could find. Everyone took it so seriously.

I asked if I could join, and the director that I worked for said I could join up with him and this other guy. But then he started telling me about all the work involved and I was like "NO WAY". You have to watch the games, and keep track of the stats. Then when your players are doing badly, you have to research trades. Everyone did their research at work of course, but then you have to watch a ton of football games. So much work, and for what? A little money and prestige. It's such a guy thing.

Pet peeves of mine this morning. God, I hate that SF Chronicle radio ad for classified ads, only because it bugs me that the woman answering the phone says “chello”? I mean who the hell says “chello” Isn’t it Hello? Is this some new way of saying Hello that I’m blissfully unaware of?

I hate when people say “often” and they hard pronounce the “T”. This is a relatively new phenomenon. No one in England says often with an over annunciated “T”, and no one said the word this way ten years ago. Why are people saying it now? I asked my acting speech teacher, who was a stickler for speaking correct English, and he said it was so totally wrong and people are over annunciating the “T” to sound intelligent. Whenever I hear someone saying it, and everyone seems to be saying it lately, I think of that person as snooty and snobby, and trying to prove to other people that they’re intelligent. And if they’re trying to prove they’re intelligent, it must mean they think they’re stupid. And you know what, they’re right.

I'm at 41,881 words for Nanowrimo and back on schedule. Unlike last year when I only was behind a couple of times in my word count, I've spent most of this year's Nanowrimo always being behind and having to play catch up. The loss of a fully functioning computer for three weeks didn't help me either.

So many participants have already passed the 50K mark. I have half a mind to write more every day, just so I can finish early. My writing limit seems to be 5,000 words. I think Stephen King said in his book "On Writing", that he wrote 10K words a day. I don't know how he does it, and the only explanation I can come up with is 1) his only job is to write and 2) he's been doing it so much longer than I have.

Working a full time job really does take up alot of my energy, energy that I could be devoting to writing. Still, 5,000 words a day isn't that bad for a day's worth of writing, but those 5,000 words don't come easy. The first 3,000 words pretty much flow out, and the last 2,000 I have to really figh to get out. 1,667 words a day is by comparison relatively easy compared to the 5,000 word days I've been forced to do.

And on November 30, I still won't be done with my novel. I think the Nanowrimo folks wanted a fully completed novel, and my novel will be completed, but the story just isn't finished yet. By November 30, I will have finished the the first part of the story, but I still have parts 2 and 3 to go. Part one of this story could stand on its own as a mini novel or be part of serial novel. Dickens wrote this way I believe.

I definitely intend to finish parts two and three though, only because I'm curious to see how it all works out. I mean I know how the story ends, I just don't know the details and it's the details that I'm most interested in knowing.

Interesting article from the National Revie Online about The Possible Collapse of the Government in Iran. There are many whispers around the net, that the true source and supporter of the all the muslim terrorists and Bin Laden, is Iran.

The following was taken from a DOD transcript of Secretary Rumsfeld En Route to Prague, Czech Republic. It's interesting to hear Rumsy speak about what other countries are offering to do, in the event we go to war with Iraq.

I love reading the DOD transcripts whenever Rumsy speaks. You learn so much more about the Iraq situation by reading these transcripts, than you do reading or listening to the news. My college profs were right when they said, always use original source materials and never trust secondary sources.

<[Q: Mr. Secretary you said you'd been getting offers every day from other countries to help disarm Iraq by force could you talk at all about the details of those offers? Do you expect further such offers at the NATO summit]?

Rumsfeld: I don't know that I've said we're getting offers everyday. I may have, if I did, I think we're getting more accurately to say we're getting responses every day. And they fit into a variety of categories, one category is That we would like to be helpful and start planning now in the event that force is used with or without the UN resolution. Another category is we would like to be helpful and begin planning now but only if there is a UN resolution indicating that it's appropriate for member states to use appropriate force. Still others are saying we are not in a position to cooperate with Iraq but on the other hand we would be willing to provide assistance in other ways. That might be force protection in a host country. It might be back-fill and support for some of the things we're doing elsewhere in the world where as they don't feel they'd like to be involved in the event force is used in Iraq but they could be helpful to us and free up some of our capabilities.

A forth category would be we don't want to help. A fifth category would be in the event force is used and the regime is changed we would like to cooperate with a coalition of the willing after the fact to assist Iraq from a humanitarian standpoint, and that type of thing, like so many countries are doing in Afghanistan. So they're these various baskets and a large number of countries have responded to those and a recently some additional inquiries have gone out and there are a number of countries that are in the planning process.

I think one of the reason so many countries are currently involved with planning that they recognize that there would not have been a UN resolution absent the potential of the use of force. That the build up that's taken place and the cooperative arrangements that are being fashioned among a coalition or the willing reinforces the diplomacy and creates a much better environment for the united nations because it ought to persuade the Iraqi's that the united nations and the coalition countries are serious. >

I'm dying to know which country is in what basket. Like who would volunteer to rebuild Iraq in the case of a regime change, but wouldn't to get involved in the war? To the victor goes the spoils? Who is the victor in Iraq's case, and who would have the most to gain by being involved in Iraq's rebuilding. My guess is Iran, Saudi Arabia maybe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So being bitchy and whiny sometimes does really work. I called CompUSA to find out about the progress on my new PC, only to find out that the tech who is supposed to build my computer didn't get the order till today. I put the order in on Friday, and I was a little put out at finding this piece of information out. Okay, I admit I was damned pissed as hell. So I'm trying to hold my temper with the poor tech guy, and he's profusely apologizing and trying to calm my whiny, bitchy self down. My mother is the ultimate whiny bitchy princess chick, so I've had terrific training.

The poor tech guy then says that for my trouble, he'll upgrade my 1.6 gig chip to 1.7 gig, and he'll also give me a faster hard drive for my trouble. I guess I should be happy, because hey - you can't knock faster equipment, but still. I now won't get my computer till Sunday afternoon.

The tech guy said something about Friday night, but he said he would have to rush to get it done. So I'm like, no way, I don't want any more mess ups. I told him I'd pick it up Sunday afternoon so he didn't have to rush, and he could make sure that my new PC is in perfect running condition when I come and get it.

Man, I hate to pull the whiny bitchy routine but if I don't do it, I never get the results I want. But when I act like a screaming crazy banshee I get my stuff and I get an upgrade. Go figure!

Books and Authors referenced by Russell Targ and Jane Katra. I'm adding them to my reading list.

Ingo Swann – any book
Carl Jung – Dreams, Memories and Reflections
Herodotus - The Oracle of Delphi
The Vedas
The Patanjali Sutras – Isherwood translation
The EPR Effect – Einstein, Podolsky, & Rosen 1935 - the theory of non-locality
Larry Dossey
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Victor Frankel – Man’s Search for Meaning
Carl Sagan – The Demon Haunted World
Longchen Rabjam (Longchempa) – Dzogchen Buddhism
Joe McMoneagle
Ian Stevenson
FW Meyers
Father Thomas Keating

I think I'll start on Herodotus first. I haven't read him in a long time.

My programs took forever to run today, so I had some down time. I'm now caught up in my Nanowrimo story, and my word count is at 20,132 words. YEAH! I'm back on the word count schedule for now. I have to keep up, because knowing me, it would be so, so easy to fall behind.

Maybe I should be happy our servers and systems at work are so darn slow!

One person from San Francisco has already finished Nanowrimo, and wrote 50K words. This person must not work for a living or something, because that's alot of writing to do in lesss than 15 days. Even if I try to write all day on the weekend, I can only write so many pages before I get burnt out. I really admire that person's amazing productivity.

I just read a Tolkien fan fiction story. It was so strange. I have never felt the urge to write fan fiction. Why would I want to make up a section for someone else's story, when I could write my own story? But that's just me.

Fan fiction is so interesting because you have to really know the characters from the story inside and out, to write a totally made up story about them. There's never been a fictional character who has inspired me enough to want to ever write fan fiction. I think fan fiction is a strange thing, but I do admire the people who do it. Some of them are terrific writers and have incredible imaginations.

I wrote all night last night and was almost caught up for Monday's word count, but then sleep overcame me and I went to bed. I'll be caught up by tonight, and I'm happy about that.

The story is kind of going all over the place right now, but I think that's okay. It's just a shitty first draft after all.

The weekend was so hectic and tiring, that I'm now two days behind in my word count for my novel. YIKES!!! I'm really going to have to sit down and write like a fiend these next few days to get caught up. They're still builidng my new computer, and I probably won't get it til Wednesday, so I'm still typing my baby laptop. I shouldn't whine so, at least I'm not handwriting my novel.

The seminar on Sunday by Sean David Morton was quite good. I learned more Tibetan meditation techniques and now have a new book called "The Tibetan Tradition of Mental Development" by the Dalai Lama. I was able to do a yoga position called "the wheel or upward bow pose or backbend" that I haven't able to do in a long time. You lie on your back and lift yourself up by your hands and your feet till you look like wheel basically. I was happy that I finally felt I had enough strength in my arms to do this position.

There were other things I learned in the seminar, and I may write about them one day.

Other things I did. I rented three movies to relax myself and saw: Blade, The Virgin Suicides and Hollywood Ending. I loved The Virgin Suicides. I thought Blade was a fun and modern twist on the vampire legend, and there were parts of Woody Allen's Hollywood Ending that were quite funny. Treat Williams was great as a movie mogul in the movie. Woody was his usual whiny self, and god sometimes that whine is just so boring. I loved Tea Leoni's clothes but thought she wasn't quite up to par for the movie, as say Helen Hunt. Leoni was almost too serious for the movie, and should have probably played it more tongue in cheek like Treat Williams.

I need to read the book The Virgin Suicides. What a strange and beautiful movie. I loved the 70's soundtrack and Josh Harnett, was like HOT!!! as a 70's stud complete with puka shell necklace, fuzzy 70's rock star long hair and a velvet tux. I never thought of Josh Hartnett as very good looking until I saw him swaggering down the halls in The Virgin Suicides. YOWSA!!! He'd turn my head double time if he was walking down the street. I think I'd be like women in the movie, and follow that boy with my tongue hanging out of my mouth. He was so darn cute and sexy!!! Hartnett looked almost too clean in his previous movies, even for my tastes, but in The Virgin Suicides he was a mouth watering treat! He was almost as hot as Vin Diesel, but in a completely different way.

What's weird is I kind of understood in a strange way, how the girls could kill themselves. I was disturbed that I could sympathize with the girls wanting to kill themselves, but being a teenage girl is the weirdest thing in the whole wide world. At least that's my memory of those years.

I think Sophia Coppola as a first time film director and screewriter adapter did a fantastic job. I wish my own screenplay was as visually expressive as hers was. I definitely could learn a thing or two from her.

Blogging via email. Written on Saturday November 9 at around 8pm, but this post won't show up till sometime on Sunday.

I'm listening to my new cd, Edgar Meyer - Bach Unaccomopanied Cello Suites 1, 2 & 5, performed on double bass. The music is beautiful, sublime, and heavenly. The cello sounds so melancholy and plaintive and it suits my mood right now.

I just came from a seminar called "Remote Viewing and Spiritual Healing, Experiencing Expanded Awareness." The seminar was taught by Russell Targ and Jane Katra, who cowrote the books, "Miracles of the Mind: Experiencing Non Local Consciousness and Spiritual Healing" and "The Heart of the Mind: How to Experience God without Belief".

Russell Targ was great. Targ is a physicist so his part of the seminar was like a mini-lecture on physics and religion. We learned about the EPR effect (Albert Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen 1935) or non-locality , quantum mechanics, Ingo Swann, the Bhagavad Gita, the Patanjali Sutras, and Dzogchen Buddhism. Here's what his bio says. He's a physicist and author who was the pioneer in the develoment of the laser and its applications; and co-founder of the Stanford Research Institute's investigation into pyschic abilities in the 1970's and 1980's (x-files type stuff). Targ recently retired from his position as a senior staff scientist at Lockheed Martin, where he developed airborne laser systems for the detection of wind shear.

I never took physics in hig hschool my senior year, and took art instead, but I understood everything Targ talked out. He made physics sound so interesting, that I think I might try and take a physics in the spring if I can find one.

Jane Katra (from her bio) holds a doctorate in health education, and has been a spiritual healer for mor than 25 years. She taught nutrition and health classes at the University of Oregon. Jane was also very good, and I got the feeling that she's a true mission worker. I read somewhere that about 1% of the world's population is on mission from god, and she's definitely one of them. She talked a lot about Christ's healing miracles and the Holy Spirit, and we did a long healing session in class and then we all got to go up to her and have individual healings. I'm not sure if I felt anything, but I know it all helps in some way.

The Showtime Cable people came in at the end and were filming the Q&A session for some documentary, so I may show up on Showtime one day. It's too bad I don't get Showtime, because I'd love to see what Showtime says about all this stuff. I love learning about stuf like this. It's so strange and I think very cutting edge, and I love learning about the new and in things, although Targ said that healings and remote viewing (think Oracle of Delphi) have been around for thousands of years.

No time to blog today, and over the weekend I'll be in seminars most of the day.

I bought a new computer today, and I'm kind of freaked about the whole thing, only beacuse I go all wonky when I have lay out a very large amount of cash. I spent about $1,500 for the new pc. Oh well. I think I bought myself a stable and fast machine that should last me another five years. The new PC won't be ready till either Monday or Tuesday, and part of me is very happy about having a PC at home again. And the other part, well, I'll let you know next week.

I may blog via email over the weekend, if I have something very important that needs to be on here.

So here's the news on my pc. My motherboard is fried, and my old Pentium 2 chip is probably damaged as well. As I suspected, the culprit was that power surge in my apartment that happened on Wednesday night (10/23). I've never had a power surge in my apartment before, and it not only blew out my computer but the fuse in my apartment as well. I have a surge protector, but the techie said that the one I probably have was too small to handle all the devices that I have connected to it.

I think my hard drive is okay, but I'll find out today when I go to the shop.

I have two options regarding my computer.

1) Find a Pentium 2 motherboard and 233 chip to put in my old computer
2) Have a computer built from scratch at the computer place, and have my hard drive if it's still alive installed as a second drive, so I can at least get the data off the computer.

Option 1 is cheaper, and it will take time to find these very old components. Option 2 is a lot more expensive, but at least I'll have a new computer and my old data.

After much discussion with friends, both techie and non-techie, I've decided to have a new computer built. My PC is five years and is on its last legs, and this whole experience has taught me that I need a stable computer system.

Damn! I hate spending money though, unless I absolutely have to!!! It's been one thing after another for me these last three months. In early September, my new car window broke. Thankfully I was so close to my warranty that the dealer fixed it all for free. In early October my refrigerator broke, but it was old as dirt anyway and the building manager replaced it for free. And now in early November, the trusty but ancient computer dies.

I'm like thinking, is there anything else that I own that is old and is ready to break and is going to break in early December?

I'm kicking myself a little because I wish I'd taken my friend's advice last year, and bought a new pc last year when my computer broke the first time. He would have built a computer for me for free, but I've lost touch with him now.

Because I'm buying a new computer, I won't be buying a laptop till I pay the computer off which won't happen till the spring of 2003. I'm still intent on buying a laptop because I don't ever want to go without a computer ever, ever again.

I keep telling myself it could have been worse and really, I'm okay, but I'm still a little unhappy about this new turn of events.

This is totally trippy. I had some down time at work, so I started writing from the point of view of Cashani. In my story, there was a Great Species War where the humans decided to take over the land and wipe out all the non human creatures. After the Great Species War, Cashani and Bianti's tribe decided to kill all the half human/half non humans to appease the gods and bring prosperity back to the tribe and land. It was Cashani's ancestor who advised the tribe to kill the mutant humans.

I didn't know this until I started writing the story from Cashani's viewpoint. I'm like, no wonder Cashani totally wanted to kill Bianti when she found out that Bianti was part elf and part human. It was an ancestor thing.

My stories are always so complicated and I don't know how complicated they are until I start writing them. Simple stories are easier to tell. Why this happens is so unknown to me, because I don't try to make my stories complicated on purpose, because then you have to work that much harder. But I know I need to go where the stories take me, I just sometimes wish the road to the end was just a little straighter.

So I'm writing my "Crow Priestess" novel, and I'm doing something I've never done before. Usually, I start a story and tell it from the protagonist's point of view all the way through. All of a sudden I'm getting the urge to switch it to one of the other character's point of view. It's a first draft so I figure I can do anything I want right now.

I have about twenty pages, two or three chapters I think, about the main protagonist - Bianti. She's 18 years old, and part elf and part human priestess. Now I want to start another chapter from the point of view of her main antagonist, Cashani. Cashania is 50 years old, and is the one who forms the alliance among the other priestesses to murder Cashani.

Here's the start of the Cashani chapter.

Am I bitter about what happened? I suppose in a way I am. Bianti is still alive, and me? I float around in the dark, disembodied, and dead to everything but the memories of what I went through that fateful summer. Would I have done it again knowing that what I did contributed to not only my death, but the death of my whole tribe? Absolutely. I was supposed to be the next head priestess, and not some child barely out of diapers. I was the one who should have been chosen to be the spiritual leader of the tribe, and not some subhuman mutant. But you must judge for yourself which one of us was justified, which one of us was right? If you were in my position, I know you would have done the same.

If you haven't heard the inspiring story of Jake Porter's touchdown, check it out. Jake Porter's TD.

I heard the coaches interviewed on Jim Rome's The Jungle, and what they did was so amazing and heartwarming!

The rain is affecting the internet connection at work, and sites are taking forever to load if they load at all. I can't even pull my up my own bloggie. Four accidents on the way to work as well. It's going to be that kind of day, I think.

No word on my computer yet. The techie working on it will be in tomorrow. I'm not optimistic at getting back my computer tomorrow, but I'm crossing my fingers. I can't take being PC-less anymore If my PC is repairable and I get it back, I am buying a laptop that day or soon thereafter. I hate this. I hate not having a fully functioning word processing program and PC.

I think Scarlett O'Hara said something like this, didn't she? "As God as my witness, they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be without a computer again! ... If I have to lie, cheat, steal or kill, as God as my witness, I'll never be without a computer again!"

Which Founding Father Are You?

I forgot to mention I got this test from Dark Star, one of the blogs I regularly read. I love TJ. He was my first love's favorite president.

Life during wartime. Election during wartime. It's not surprising that the Republicans gained control of both the House and the Senate, since Republicans have traditionally been seen as being better than the Dems to handle war and defense. It's the 9/11 effect on American politics.

But my father, who was a die hard union liberal democrat, would say that every democrat defeat is a time for the party to assess itself and plan for the next election. He would say that politics is like a never ending war and one lost battle does not mean you've lost the war. The Dems will have to go through a long overdue soul searching and learn from this defeat. The Republicans have planned their strategy for years starting at the grass roots level with reapportionment in the South, and concentrating on local and state races and governorships. The Dems, as was seen in the Florida race in the 2000 election, did not have the troops on the ground in Florida which was a telling sign of the state of the Democratic party at the grassroots, local and state level.

The Dems have been focused on winning the presidency and won with the election of Bill Clinton, but it was done at the expense of the local, state and governorship races. I was reminded yesterday that Tip O'Neill said that "all politics is local". The Republican take over of the house and senate in this election proved Tip O'Neill was right.

Not a good day for the Dems unless you live in California, but the success of the Democratic party in California Republic bodes well for the Dems. California has always been seen as a political bellwether; so goes California, eventually so goes the rest of the country. Although the GOP have won this battle, the future for the Dems is still pretty darn bright!

I got back on track with my novel last night, and wrote for three hours. I need to be steady and finish my daily word total every day because it's too easy for me to slack off and fall behind in my word count. I was originally planning to write the story from my female protagonist's viewpoint, but I think I will have chapters where the different characters speak and tell their story. Right now I'm finishing up a chapter, at least I think it's a chapter, on how the character's family came to have elf DNA. So much of this is backstory, but it's crucial to understand the history and how events from the distant, distant past are still influencing events in the present story, and eventual downfall of the society, of which this story is the first piece. It's very complicated.

It will be interesting to see what happens with the election results in San Francisco tomorrow. I think you will see a conservative backlash in the election results. And when I say a conservative backlash, I mean a move to the center and moderation and away from the left and the progressives. This is San Francisco after all, and if you're a moderate and in the center you're considered a conservative.

The left and progressives are so impractical to me. They want to throw money at social problems, thinking that money will solve problem, and you know what it hasn't solved anything. So much of left and progressive policy is rooted in ideology. Ideology only works in theory, in a vacuum, in an ideal world. And I'm sorry, there is no place on this earth that is ideal.

Take the homeless issue. If you take the progressive/left policy of giving money to the homeless and apply it to the family unit, you'd be thought of as a horrible parent. Imagine having a homeless child who is unable to find a job, and may or may not have substance abuse problems. As a parent, wouldn't you want to help them to get out of their situation? You don't just give your child money and expect to fend for themselves. You don't just throw money at your children, and then walk away. But that's exactly what San Francisco's homeless policy does. We have laws here where you can't find out anything about the homeless, you can't ask them their life story to find out what they need, why they live the way the do, etc. The left and progressives still think it's the 60's and the homeless are just hippies who like living on the street, and the city should support them in their chosen lifestyle.

I don't know. It just seems that if left/progressive policymakers would base laws on how they would treat a family member, then maybe we'd solve many of our city's problems. It makes you wonder how the left/progressive types were treated at home as children and how they are as parents, doesn't it? Then you have to think of John Walker Lindh's parents, and start to really wonder.

The post below was an email post I sent last night. It seems to take a day for an email post to get into Blogger. That's a heck of a long time, isn't it?

I'm listening to The Cure - Bloodflowers cd, and wishing I could dive into Robert Smith's voice and music and never come out. I love the music, I love the words, and I love his voice. The Cure's songs are so well produced, so well layered musically, and the words are so divine!

A Test from Craig’s List – Missed Connections
eye color: dark brown with a dark ring
what's under your bed: dust bunnies
favorite color: all
height: 5' 4"
what are you wearing: khakis, turtleneck, cashmere vneck sweater, argyle socks, Josef Seibel shoes, all perfectly matched in colour of course.
do you like cats: yes, but allergic
favorite mexican wrestle: don’t know any
weight: 155 lbs
hairstyle (note: this is really important): shoulder length bob
pumas or adidas: adidas
last show you went to: Baz Luhrmann’s La Boheme
last movie you went to: Rivers and Tide: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time
do you have back hair: no
favorite drug: love
puppies or kittens: both
coke or pepsi: diet pepsi
last book you read: Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie – still reading
five bands you dig: The Cure, Puddle of Mudd, System of a Down, Linkin Park, The Grateful Dead
last person you sent a postcard to: girlfriends while in West VA
did you buy any andy warhol stamps: no
if you could share a popcicle with benicio del toro or tom waits, who would you pick: benicio del toro
favorite smell: men, good food, KL by Karl Lagefeld, Coco by Chanel (my two fave perfumes)
favorite sound: rain, church bells
vodka or gin: vodka , gin and I had a falling out in college
jesus or buddha: both, but JC is my fave
favorite superhero: Spiderman
favorite hot sauce: Tapatio, Tabasco

Ebay can be dangerous for shoppers. There are so many choices, so many things you can buy, and then I can't help but think that if I wait long enough I might be able to get my item for cheaper than my budget. But then when you finally bid on something, you get into bidding wars with people up until the very last second and all of the sudden the price is way more than what you were willing to pay, and you're grateful that someone has outbid you. At least, that's been my experience.

I'm might try and blog from home by sending a post via email. I forgot I set up my account to do that while I was in LA. The formatting will probably be messed up, but I can fix it the next day.

I called CompUSA and a technician is "supposed" to look at my pc tonight. I'm not holding my breath that I'll get my PC until Friday or worse Monday. A little voice in my head keeps telling I'll get my PC back by Wednesay, but that little voice has been wronig before.

I'm definitely buying a laptop, if my PC is fixed. I found one I liked, and I can get it for a decent price. Even if my PC is fixed, it's an old PC and if it breaks again, then at least I'll have the laptop so I can work until I buy a new PC.

My laptop choice is an IBM Thinkpad 600X, with a 12 gig hard drive and a 500 chip brain. The laptop is off lease, was refurbished and is on warranty until July 2003, which is nice in case it breaks. I'll synchronize my email on the laptop and the PC. All my important files will go on a CD and be erased off my PC, and all current files will be synchronized to be on the laptop and PC. I think I'll also keep a daily copy of my current files on either a floppy disk or a cd, but I can't decide which media to use. I'll have to resarch how to deal with Palm stuff, but I'm sure business travellers have been able to solve this problem.

This double system will force me to do some major housecleaning on my email, since I know I still have emails from 1997. I'm an email packrat. I also have receipts of everything I've bought online saved as well, which I probably don't need anymore. I'm bad huh?

Busy weekend. On Saturday I went to the museum to see the Egypt exhibit, and I guess I should have known, but the hordes were there as well. People just love Egyptian exhibits. There were so many parents with children there, which was very cool, but the little ones were screaming and crying and throwing tantrums and fits, which is kind of hard to take at 9:30 in the morning.

Perhaps if I hadn't already been to the British Museum and seen their Egyptain room I wouldn't have been disappointed, but this exhibit was small as is the case with most travelling exhibits. But for people who have never been to the British Museum, the exhibit must have seemed fantastic. The exhibit had all the "greatest hits" of the British Museum's egyptian collection including the famous Ani Book of the Dead scroll and a giant egyptian statue head that had never left the British Museum before. Still, I did enjoyed the exhibit immensely only because you have to marvel that these artifacts are so incredibly ancient.

Then I went to see Merci Pour le Chocolat and Rivers and Tides, the documentary on Andy Goldsworthy. More on those movies later. Then I went to see the San Francisco Symphony. A friend who works for them called me on Friday and said she had tickets and would I like to go. Of course I said yes, and we heard Mozart's Piano Concerto # 23. Ivan Moravec played the piano and Jiri Belohlavek of the Prague orchestra was conducting. She had great tickets too and we were in the orchestra, where the seats normal cost $70.

I was non stop from 9 am and I didn't get home till 11 pm. By Sunday I was exhausted. I went to church, came home and watched the 49ers/Raiders game and would have gone to library to get on a computer and blog, but the game went into overtime and by the time it was over, the library was closed.

I'm a little behind in my novel at 4,245 words, instead of the 5,001 word target I needed to be by end of Sunday. Pocket Word doesn't have a word count feature, so my word count is just an estimate based on the number of words per average line and the actual number of lines. Such a pain. I'm calling the computer place today to find out what what the status is my computer. I really miss it, and although I'm grateful to have the baby laptop to write, it's a not ully functioning word processing program. This whole computer failure problem has been such an eye opener on how dependent I am on my computer, and how I have to make sure I'm never in this situation ever, ever again.

After a stressed out no writing break, I'm going back to the too busy to do anything else but writing schedule tonight. I need to write 1,666 words a day for 30 days to reach the 50,000 word mark for the National Novel Writing Month.

Since my computer is dead, if I want to blog I'll have to do go to the library and get online. I'm lucky because the local public library is just three blocks from my place, but Saturday will be a full day.

Besides needing to write my daily 1,666 words, there's an exhibit of egyptian artifacts from the British Museum at the California Legion of Honor that I'm dying to check out. The Egyptian section was my favorite part of the British Museum. Then it's off to the movies to see "Merci Pour le Chocolat", a froggie-french movie which is supposed to be very, very good, and "Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time", a documentary about a Scottish artist and his ephemeral works of art.

But there's always Sunday if I can drag myself away from watching the 49er/Raiders football game on TV.

Things are getting better in my world. My company finally handed out our merit raises, which we were supposed to get in April. No retro pay though because of the bad economy. Oh well, at least I got a decent raise. It's nice to have the extra money every month.

I watched the news reports of the Halloween in the Castro on TV last night. Some of it got violent and that's sad. When I first moved to San Francisco, I lived a couple blocks from the Castro and on my first Halloween in San Francisco my boyfriend and I dressed up and walked around the Castro. Back then it was a neighborhood event and every one dressed up, no gawkers at all, and it was low key and fun. The streets weren't blocked off, and it was more like a parade of dressed up people but not alot of drinking and no violence whatsoever.

Now it's totally crowded and hardly anyone dresses up, and most people go to gawk at the few people who are dressed up, and they drink and party and things get out of hand, and people get violent. Where's the fun in that?

Nanowrimo starts today and I'm excited. I'll be able to participate because I can write in pocket Word on my LG Phenom. Thank god for my baby laptop.

I think this year I will outline the story first before I start writing. From screenwriting, I learned how important it is to have a well thought out plot and an outline, just so you don't get lost while writing. I'm not sure if I'll stick to a straight three act structure however, because in a novel I think there is a little more freedom to be looser with your plot. You don't have to be so linear, and you can have flashbacks, have way more background and backstory, etc.

I'll review Aristotle's Poetics to refresh my memory about plot structure. In a movie, they say you should "start late and leave early", meaning I think, begin on the cusp of conflict and end your movie leaving your audience with a sense that there's future, just in case you want to do sequels. Or something like that.

This will be my first stab at fantasy type literature. I think it makes sense that I would eventually gravitate towards this kind of writing. I love science fiction (love Red Dwarf), and I love stories and movies about magic, witches, and other world type phenomena. I'm an avid listener to the Art Bell program, and I totally love conspiracy, one world government theories. My favorite show on TV was Witchblade, and the other two shows that I really liked, Alias and La Femme Nikita, had fantastic elements in them. I even got hooked on The Charmed Ones for awhile, although I stopped watching when Shannon Doherty left the show.

It will be interesting to see how easy or difficult it will be to write a fantasy story. I'm going to have to create a whole new different world, with its own rules, its own creatures, etc. I want to start to play with my brand of elf lore and mythology, and have my main protagonist be a half elf and half human. If elves have 12-strand dna and human have 2-strand dna, then would a half elf and half human would have 4-strand dna?. It's issues like this I'm going to have to start thinking seriously about to make my story credible.

But I think it will be so interesting and fun to try and do this. It will be a challenge to my imagination and my logical mind, and I'm so looking forward to mental stimulation and exercise.