My last Dine About Town 2004 experience was at Roy's Restuarant, located on Mission between 1st and 2nd streets. I ate there last night with a friend of mine.

My friend had been there before, and wanted me to try it since it was Hawaiian style fusion food. I had never heard of the place, so I was intrigued.

The restaurant was crowded, and while there were hawaiian sounding dishes on the menu, it wasn't exactly what I would call Hawaiian food. It's more east and west fusion food, with a Hawaiian accent. They did have butterfish on the menu however, which was cool because butterfish is like a staple in Hawaiian eating.

Anyway, the food was excellent and probably a notch below Chez Panise. Considering the prices and the quality of the food, it's a heck of a bargain. Chez Panise has unbelievable food, but it is so not cheap.

Here's the what I had from from the Dine About Town menu:

Appetizer:
Roy’s Hawaiian Fusion Sampler - Shrimp Stick, Szechuan Baby Back Rib & Kalua Pork Lumpia

Dinner:
Charred Garlic Honey Mustard Beef Short Ribs with Hanalei Poi and Lomi Lomi Tomato (I had to see what the poi tasted like. The colour was off, but it was real poi.)

Dessert:
Caramel Macadamia Nut Almond Tart With Our homemade vanilla bean ice cream (what's a hawaiian meal without some macadamia nut?)

My friend says the Szechuan Baby Back Ribs are her favourite. She had the Roy’s Classic Roasted Macadamia Whitefish with a Lobster Butter Sauce for her dinner choice.

They play cheesey loungey Hawaiian music, so it's like you're eating in a hotel in Hawaii. You can't escape cheesey Hawaiian lounge music when you're in Hawaii; it's everywhere.

Still, the food is so good that it warrants a return visit. Supposedly they have their own hawaiian cocktails on the menu, but we didn't try any of those and I'd go back just to see if they can get a cheesey Waikiki mai tai right.

So I saw the movie Mystic River yesterday, and it was interesting to watch the movie after having just finished reading the book. I was curious to see how the film screenplay and adaptation would compare to the book.

The movie faithfully sticks to the plot of the book, with some minor changes, and dialogue from the book is lifted into the screenplay. The novel was a crime novel, and like the book the movie is dark and gloomy.

There were a couple of what I would call schmaltzy scenes in the movie complete with sentimental loud music, where I'm looking at the screen and thinking what was that shot about.

I was surprised to see Kevin Bacon and Laurence Fishburne in the movie, because all you hear about is Sean Penn and Tim Robbins. It's an ensemble movie, meaning there really is no one character that stands out and the book as told from the point of view of the three boys.

Sean Penn was his usual explosive self. Having seen him on stage, you only get a hint (albeit a huge one) of the force of his rage and his powder keg personality. I'm not sure if it's his best performance since "The Sweet and Lowdown" and "I am Sam" I thought were better, but it's a good one. I've been told his performance in "21 Grams was fantastic, and the two combined might have led to his nomination.

Tim Robbins was fantastic. He really managed to inhabit his character very well, and his facial expressions and bod postures were so believable. Technically, Robbins gave a superb performance and probably his best.

It's not his usual character, and he probably got kudos from Academy voters for playing the role. I kept contrasting Robbin's character in Robert Altman's "The Player" with his "Mystic River" character, and I was amazed at how he was able to transform himself.

Robbins is a tall guy for Hollywood standards, and just by virtue of his height he has a commanding presence when in the room with most male Hollywood characters. Robinns managed in this role to make himself small, physically and emotionally, almost disappearing in a scene, and that kind of skill got him his oscar nomination. Plus his Boston accent was probably the best of the three main characters.

Marcia Gay Harden was very good as well, and by the end of the movie you could really feel sorry for her character. She was so tragic.

"Mystic River" is a damned good movie, but I don't know if it's Best Picture quality. Those schmaltzy musical shots gave the movie a subtle over the top feeling, like it's saying "look at me wink, wink, I'm an american tragedy". Those scenes were unnecessary because the characters themselves were all emblematic of the failure of the american dream and how one choice in life affects you for the rest of your life.

Catholics beware! I'm not sure if it's deliberate, but I thought there was not so subtle slap at the Catholic church in the movie especially in the light of certain recent scandals that have rocked the church. It might be just my imagination, but I got message.

And I guess other people did too. Check out this review from Newsday, Mystic River: Effect Eastwood shows a slow, sure hand in tale of revenge.

I thought this would be a lazy lay about the house day for me, but I ended up doing my taxes. I'm getting a huge refund! YEAH!!!

The refund is much more than I was expecting, so I think I'll buy a new TV, a dvd player and new vcr with the extra money. Maybe even a mini stereo as well, depending on what kind of deals I can get.

I'm going to wait another month just in case more forms come in, and then I'll get do some serious entertainment shopping.

So my weight loss is going ever so slowly, but I just measured myself and I lost an inch off the bum, one inch off my thighs, and an inch off my waist.

My clothes are fitting better, but they're still tight because gaining 10 pounds added two to three inches practically everywhere. To think that back in April I was complaining that my jeans were too loose and I was so not happy at having to buy smaller jeans since I'd just bought my jeans two months ago.

Maybe it's true what they say that every five pounds that you gain means you go up one size.

The loss of inches are coming from the walking and my light workout. Perhaps if I just increase my workout, I'll lose two inches off my thighs and two inches off my butt. And cross my fingers, my jeans should fit again. If the scale stays the same, I'm fine with it (although not very happy) as long as the inches keep coming off.

I made myself finish "Mystic River", even though I was sort of bored by the story. It's a good story, it's just not the type of story I like to read. Oh well. Now I can go and see the movie.

I don't consider myself a romantic. I rarely cry at movies, but this movie just made me ball. It's an Australian film called Innocence.

I saw the trailer for it while watching another video, and I decided to rent it. I loved the premise of the movie, which is about rekindling your first love after 40 years. I have a thing about my first love so I had to see it.

I was in tears the whole time. It made me wonder what it would be like to see my first love again after 40 years. Would the guy still even remember me? He was my first love, but who knows where I ranked in his life.

It makes me teary eyed to think about rekindling a first love. Is it possible to start again, start all over? Can you pick up where you left off 40 years ago?

I've tried to answer this question myself, and tried to write a play about running into my first love. The play was hard to write, so I didn't finish it. I wanted my characters to have a happy ending, but I couldn't do it.

It made me wonder if I believed in second chances in life. I don't think I do. Once an opportunity is gone, it's gone forever and you can never get it back, not in the same way anyway. The play started to be about how there are no second chances in life, and even if there were, my characters wouldn't choose them. What couldn't work in the past can't work in the present. The thought depressed me so I stopped working on the play.

Watching the movie made me want to work on the play again. Maybe my characters can't have the happy ending they've always wanted, but maybe they can have happy moments. And perhaps a few happy moments are better than no moments at all right? I hope so.

Check out this Victoria's Secret link, Victoria's Secret Sale page. You can find some really good deals on clothes for under $20 under Clearance. I love shopping for marked down clothes on the Net. It's like digging through the sales racks at stores.

I picked up two Victoria's Secret matching lounge outfits to wear at home, each for under $20. They're cute outfits, 100% cotton, the top and pants match, and they're terrific when you want to look good but still be comfortable.

It looks like John Kerry won, and Chris Matthews and the Hard Ball gang are saying Howard Dean has a stint and and a 1 in 10 chance of winning the democratic presidential nomination.

I've turned the TV on just in case Howard Dean decides to give another "I have a scream" speech. God, I love that phrase. I wonder who coined it. People are so clever aren't they?

I never liked Howard Dean. He was too much angry talk and no substance on his policy issues. I still think the 2004 presidential election race will be close, with the Smirkiemeister coming out on top.

I'm a democrat, but I'm also a pragmatist at heart. Political pundits have been reporting lately that the republican party is united behind Shrub giving 90% support. This the real story of why the Shrubmeister will win. 9 out 10 people in his own party support him.

The democrats are fighting amongst themselves, and when there is too much infighting there is no unity. Demos just don't get that, and until they do people like Smirkiemeist will be running the country.

It's that theory of if you give people enough rope, eventually most people will hang themselves. The demos are hanging themselves, voting Green in local elections and saying it doesn't matter. Of course it matters.

It's the effect of living in a very connected world. What one small part of the world does really affects another. You can't be a demo and vote green in a local election, and not expect there to be consequences on the national party and national politics.

The GOP has disciplined itself to understand this theroy. They've learned to put their differences aside and present a united front. Arnie's win in the governor of Cali's race is testament to that.

But the GOP had to suffer a long time in politics to figure that one out. And their takeover of the federal government has been in the planning stages for years, and it started out in local elections all over the country. The GOP started connecting with all kinds of people, and well look where they are now.

Demos, I'm starting to think, are so insular, thinking that everyone is crazy and stupid except for them. That's not a great strategy for getting people over to their side.

So maybe it's the demo's turn to suffer. The only problem is, how long are people willing to suffer? It looks like to me another four years.

I'm glad I saw "Master and Commander: The Far side of the world" before it left the theatres. It got so many oscar nods. I'm bummed however, that I missed "Seabiscuit", but hopefully the studio will redistribute the movie now that it's been nominated.

Okay, I saw "Lost in Translation" and while I thought it was a good movie, was it really "Best Picture" oscar worthy? I don't think so. I think Sofia Coppola got the nod because her movie is one of the only movies that is making any money. It was made with a low budget, and it's raking in the big bucks relative to much it cost to make. It's movies like "Lost in Translation" that are financially propping up the Hollywood film industry.

I likes LinT because it's an indie movie that appeals to a commercial audience. Coppola proves you don't have to make artie fartie movies that are self indulgent and that don't make any sense to be an indie, and you can make an indie type movie that does sell commercially and is entertaining. She breaks the myth that a movie can be artie and good, only if very few people have seen it, it loses money and it's not in the least entertaining.

"Master and Commander", which is also not a great movie, got the nod for Best Picture because technically it's a difficult movie to make. Academy voters like epics, and M&C is an epic. From a technical point of view, M&C was a difficult movie since they filmed on an actual ship. For all its techincal prowess, M&C did not make money in its run at the USA box office although DVD sales and its overseas box office, may help the movie to break even.

M&C, while not a great movie, is the type of movie that Hollywood used to make in its past. It's the kind of movie that really looks great on screen, and worth seeing in the movie theatre. It's also the kind of movie that generates a ton of jobs for Hollywood people, actors and techs.

Since Academy voters are all union members, it makes sense that they would vote for a picture that insures for them a sort of job security. Vote for oscar films that employ a ton of people, so those kinds of film keep getting made.

I'll watch "LOTR: Return of the King" and "Mystic River" this weekend.

"Mystic River sounds like an actor's movie, and "LOTR" had to get nominated because it's a box office smash, the story is great, and it employed a ton of technical people.

Everyone is weighing in on SF Supervisors Daly and Gonzalez wanting to rename SBC Park, 2 supervisors say hey, why not Mays Field? SBC, Giants unreceptive to name change.

But what no one seems be talking about is I think it's a reaction to what our sister city on the other side of the Bay San Jose is doing.

From a SJ Mercury News article on 1/21/2004;

**Facing an $85-million-plus deficit and anxious to find new revenue, the council unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday that allows City Manager Del Borgsdorf's office to seek out donations and sponsorships of up to $100,000. ... The new policy "is not intended to supersede or modify'' San Jose's ability to name its facilities, said a memo from Borgsdorf. It does not grant the city manager the authority to rename buildings, parks or services -- a power that rests with the council."**

I'm sure these supervisors are wondering whether San Francisco is going to do the same thing.

Like this for example. Snapple has agreed to pay New York City $100 million for exclusive rights to be the Big Apple's official drink.

Most cities are going broke or about to go broke. It's not just the federal government and states that are cash strapped, but the cities as well.

What's a city to do for money except sell itself for corporate sponsorship. Athletes do it all the time. Every sporting event on TV is awash with advertising signs. Why not cities and everything they own?

I read the following in a NY Times article on 1/25/2004 entitled Whoop, Oops and the State of the Political Slip;

**...consultants for Mr. Bush tried in vain to get him to control his smirk. Still, the smirk slips out from time to time, as it did last week during the president's State of the Union address when Democrats clapped at Mr. Bush's warning that the Patriot Act, an antiterrorism law, would soon expire.

"Bush is vulnerable when that smirk rears its ugly head," said a Republican strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It comes across as not only cocky, but arrogant, and nobody likes an arrogant politician."**

It made me chuckle that people were trying to get the Smirkiemeister to control his smirks, because obviously it didn't work.

I heard the new interim pastor at my church preach today. He's a nice older guy and his sermon was actually quite good, but it's his prayer for the people that I think shocked me and I think quite a few other people in the congregation.

The pastor is old, between 70 and 80, and he's been around. He even mentioned in his sermon that it was his greek professor who was one of the people responsible for the New Revised Standard Version translation of the Bible.

Okay so he's old, which means he's kind of old fashioned. Anyway, in his prayers he prayed for the president of the USA, "George and Laura Bush". Talk about shocking! I've never heard anyone pray for the health of George Bush ever in my church. It's just not done, not at least in my church.

As soon as words came out of the pastor's mouth, people were coughing and going "ahem", like they couldn't believe it either. I think if he had gone so far as to pray for "Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne", some people might have walked out. He also asked that we pray for the people of New Hampshire so that they make a good decision in choosing the winner of the democratic presidential nomination, and the congregation seemed to like that idea.

Poor guy. He'll probably get an earful for doing that. It is kind of odd, but I think it's just because the guy is old and old fashioned, and in his day you did pray for the president of the country as a matter of course, no matter what you felt about him. It's just weird to hear somebody pray for the health of a person many people in my San Francisco congregation would consider "the most hated man in the world, the next Hitler and the possible anti-christ".

I don't care either way. I mean, maybe we should be praying that the Smirkiemeister see the light and come to his senses and change some of his policies. It can't hurt.

It's odd that the new interim pastor prayed for him on one level, and it's odd on another level that I don't remember anybody else praying for the Shrubmeister before either.

Has my church congregation become so partisan in its views that we don't pray for someone that some people in the congregation don't like, even though there are other people in the congregation who think the Smirkmeister is God's gift to the world?

Shockingly true but yes, there are some people in my city of San Francisco church who totally love W and everything he's doing.

Went out with another friend of mine for a post birthday lunch at The Beach Chalet. I forgot how great the view of the beach is there. It's the only place in San Francisco where you can eat a good meal and get a great view of the Pacific Ocean.

There were so many people at the beach, and The Beach Chalet was packed! I even ran into a friend from writing group there. San Francisco is such a small world!

It was such a beautiful day out at the beach. If you didn't know it, you'd think that living out on the coast of San Francisco was really nice and sunny all the time. It's not.

The second apartment I moved into in San Francisco was on the Great Highway. We were on the second floor, and we could see the ocean from our living room and kitchen. Oh my god, the weather down there was foggy all the time and freezing. At night, the wind would whip right off the ocean and into our apartment.

There were maybe 10-20 days out of year where it was a sunny and the weather was nice. The rest of the time, it was miserable. One week out of the year, the sun would set directly in front of our living room. That was cool.

And when you live out at the beach, public transportation sucks. It would take 45 minutes to an hour to get downtown. If you lived outside the city, you could get to downtown faster than I did living down there.

When I lived out there I never felt like I really lived in the city, even though my address said San Francisco. I was so far away from everything. It's like you're living in a foggy beach town.

We shopped at the Safeway at the end of Fulton, and it reminded me of grocery stores in San Diego, LA and Hawaii. I started calling it "the LA beach Safeway". There were always surfer types in there, beach bums, and the kinds of people I remembered seeing in beach town groceries.

Even the food they carried catered to the beach crowd. They had alot of vegetarian types of foods, stuff you'd never see in other Safeways in the city. The "LA beach Safeway" is still my favorite Safeway to shop at in San Francisco.

I think it's still one of the few Safeways in San Francisco that has a perpetual supply of Red Stripe Beer. Talk about the king of beach beers. Red Stripe is one of my favourite beers!

Best Red Stripe beer memories ... walking along South Beach in Miami with friends, watching the sunset and drinking Red Stripe beer ... dancing and drinking Red Stripe beer at the reggae festival in Washington DC at Malcom X park.

Happy Birthday to me!

A friend took me to Grand Cafe, and the restaurant was so cool. She made the reservation and told them it was for a birthday. When we arrived, there was a happy birthday card on the table from the restaurant. Inside it said thank you for choosing Grand Cafe to celebrate your birthday. How sweet is that?

We ordered the Dine about Town menu, and I had a the seafood soup, and the pan roasted petaluma chicken with lemon thyme braised carrots & yukon gold potato puree. I was going to get the pumpkin creme brulee for dessert, but the waiter said since it was my birthday I could order whatever I wanted off the dessert menu for the same price.

I ordered the banana creme pie, and when it came it was a mini pie with sugar covered macadamia nuts and caramel drizzled all over. Yummy, yummy!

The restaurant also served us a free mini crab cake each as part of our appetizer. I totally love restaurants that give you free food.

I think I'm definitely a "Blair Democrat". I'm not sure who coined this phrase, but Thomas Friedman of the NY Times used it in his column on 1/22/2004 - War of Ideas, Part 5.

**"It was a good night for the [Tony] Blair Democrats in Iowa," said Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute. By "Blair Democrats," Mr. Marshall was referring to those Democrats who voted for the Iraq war, and conveyed "a toughness and resolve to face down America's enemies," but who believe the Bush team has mismanaged the project. **

I was just about to sign for a writing class on February 1, when I realized that's Super Bowl Sunday. I'm torn. I really want to take this class, but I also want to see the Super Bowl commercials. Watching the Superbowl is so fun, so traditional, and such a world wide spectacle.

I was just talking to a friend of mine tonight, and we were talking about getting together to watch the Superbowl at her house. Watching the Superbowl with friends is the best, although some nookie, a quick little shag actually, during the half time after the music program when I'm watching it with a SO runs a close second. As one of the ex's used to say, "isn't that what the half time is for?"

Okay, yes I do watch the football game as well, but I have no feelings for either of these teams.

I'm torn, I'm torn! How weird is that to hold a class on Super Bowl Sunday? The class instructor is my screenwriting teacher and she's a Brit, so maybe she can be forgiven for holding a class on a party day.

I hate this! I've been watching the Superbowl for years. It's like so traditional. Oh well. No writing class on Super Bowl Sunday for me.

Listening to The Cure's Wild Mood Swings.


It's his voice I love. It's so achingly heartbreaking!


Goth Girls of the World Unite!

So like the World Economic Forum doesn't have enough to worry about without this issue, World Economic Forum meeting is addressing the issue of aliens.

You know if the aliens are going to invade the earth soon, I wish they would tell us.

Just in case you've joined the world wide web hunt for Howard Dean speech remixes websites here's one, Dean Goes Nuts. MTV.com has an article and links as well, but their bandwidth isn't handling the demand well.

The Ozzy Osbourne remixes are the best, although the AC/DC remixes are a close second.

I was discussing weight loss with a friend of mine who does weight watchers, and she said there's a program on weight watchers called Wendy's plan. With Wendy's plan, you vary your points every day to fool your body into thinking it's not starving. She said it's a great way to break plateaus and when your weight loss is going extremely slow.

I like to eat the same amount of calories every day, but maybe I need to try this Wendy's plan. My weight loss is going so slow, and I seem to need fewer and fewer calories to lose weight. My body is stingily holding on to the weight, and maybe I'm in starvation mode and don't even know it.

I'm going to try it, and maybe even have a free day once a week where I can eat anything I want. My weight loss is going so, so very slowly.

I think I'm going to have to vary my workout as well. My body has adjusted to me walking 4-5 miles a day, so at this point exercise isn't doing a thing for my weight loss. I'm either going to have to vary what I do, up the aerobic amount or walk more miles.

It was strange to look at the Diego Rivera mural in the City College SF theatre tonight having finally watched the "Frida" movie a couple of days ago. There was Friday in the mural, I was trying to imagine him painting her and if she was here in San Francisco to pose for it.

It was also a strange coincidence that at the art exposition I went to on Saturday, a gallery was selling drawings made my Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. I heard the gallery person telling someone that the drawings were hidden away, and were only recently just found.

It's a trip to watch a movie about the life of an artist and then to see their work.

Frida and Diego had such a bizarre marriage, but in the end they were together for almost 25 years. That's a long time. Rivera treated Kahlo very badly, but she knew what she was in for going into the marriage.

And at the end of the movie, Rivera redeemed himself by taking care of Kahlo when she was sick and out of money. They didn't have the greatest of marriages, but at the end he took care of her.

Their situation made me wonder what's really important in a marraige; someone who loves you who's faithful or someone who will take care of you when you're sick. Hopefully you get both, but I wonder if we're all just looking for someone who will take care of us when we can no longer take care of ourselves, and that love and fidelity may be important but not really necessary in the long run.

I went to see A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen at ACT tonight. The play is amazing and very modern, even though Ibsen wrote it in 1879.

When Torvald yells "Nora, Nora!", it made me think of Stanley in "A Street Car Named Desire" yelling "Stella, Stella!", and Tennessee Williams ripping on Ibsen.

I studied this play in college, and have seen it several times before and tonight the play seemed to be about choice. Two women, two perspectives on marriage and a women's role in it, and the idea of choice.

Is it better to choose to be in a marriage for several years, never knowing it's a prison and being cheerful about it and blissfully unaware, and then one day waking up to the realization that it's a prison from which you must escape at all costs?

Or, is it better to choose to go into a marriage with eyes wide open, knowing you're going into it because you have certain needs like money, or like being needed, or because you're lonely, or because you need someone or some cause to live for and you die at the thought of being in the prison of having nothing to live for but yourself ?

Ibsen presents both scenarios, and maybe it's my modern girl thinking, but either choice seems bleak. There are two love stories in this play; Nora and Torvald and Krogstad and Kristine. And is in real life, there are no victims only choices which can only be judged in hindsight as good or bad.

I spent the whole day moving files from my work laptop to my home computer and to the company network and as always, I deleted files that I thought I had already moved.

This happens to me every time! I don't even know which files I deleted because I was moving so many of them. I'm really kind of upset about the whole thing, and I'm trying to tell myself that I didn't delete anything really that important. And if I did, I could easily recreate the file or get the information.

I should have it emblazoned on my brain, always check to make sure the files are the same in each place before you start to delete.

Yikes! I hate it when I do boneheaded crap!

Howard Fineman on Chris Matthew's Hard Ball show uttered a scary prediction. Fineman said that Howard Dean maybe 2004's Ralph Nader. If Dean decides to fight to the finish for the presidential democratic nomination, he could drain democratic election coffers. Pat Buchanan said as much as well. There wouldn't be enough money left in the demo war chest to run against Bush. Plus, like Nader, Howard Dean would split the democratic party.

The split part has already happened, and the war on Iraq did that. It's the emptying of the democratic war chest that has me worried. Whoever wins the democratic nomination if going to need a ton of cash to run against Bush.

I saw the clips of the speech of Howard Dean that people were kicking around today. On David Letterman, they showed the clip and had Dean's head explode. The guy was definitely about to come unglued.

I can't stand Peggy Noonan, but she did have the funniest comment about Howard Dean. Noonan said that Howard Dean would remind every American woman of the husband or boyfriend they had to slap a restraining order on. Sick but definitely very, very funny!

It's bad and I can't help myself but I watched American Idol last night. And the only reason I watch that show is because of Simon Cowell.

Yowza, that man is attractive! And I don't know if he's attractive because he really is cute or because I like that's he's nasty and honest. I can't tell.

I was sitting there blowing kisses at my television to him every time his face appeared. Sick, sick, sick! I'm going to turn into one of those people who rearranges their life so they can watch some damned television show. There are very few network TV shows I would schedule my life around, and I guess this will be one of them.

Of course, it is deliciously fun to watch those contestants who absolutely can't sing but go ahead and audition anyway. I sit there and wonder, what were these people thinking. But hey! Maybe they purposefully are bad so they can get on TV, since they'll probably never get on any other way.

I'm already rooting for the red haired boy who did the Dean Martin impersonation and who has the old fashioned voice, and I'm hoping the anorexic scooter chick gets booted quickly. God, I just wanted to slap that woman and I don't know why either.

What was it with Dean's speech after the Iowa caucuses? People on talk radio are talking about it like mad. Some lady said it was like a scene out of Dr. Strangelove. Maybe they'll show it on TV again, and I can see what people are talking about.

The funniest comment was by a guy from Burlingame who watched Dean's speech and said you wouldn't want that nut with his finger on the big nuclear guns.

I'm not surprised Howard Dean didn't win in Iowa. All that anger and he's negative to boot. Plus, all those Hollywood types campaigning for him and outsiders coming in to the state probably upset people.

I lived in Iowa for four years. They're country people. They don't like outsiders coming in and getting into their business. Nobody likes that kind of behaviour actually, but midwesteners hate it with a passion. Midwesteners are also common sense and pragmatic people, and Howard Dean as a presidential candidate makes no sense.

Now that John Edwards is another story. He's starting to look very interesting, and that great Vanity Fair article didn't hurt either.

On the way to the dentist today on the N Judah, I think I saw Craig from Craig's List sipping what looked like a red drink outside a coffee shop called The Beanery on 9th Avenue between Judah and Irving. The Craig's List office is right down the street so it could have been him, but who knows.

I've never actually seen the guy in person, but only catch him occassionally on TV being interviewed.

I love how people say the Inner Sunset is affordable, because it's not. My hood is way cheaper, and you get more bang for your buck out here in the fog belt even though I'm only about 10 blocks away.

Some people have said that the US went to war with Iraq because of its oil. Still others have said that the US went to war with Iraq because Sadam Hussein was asking to trade oil for euros instead of the dollar.

With the dollar's slide against all major currencies, I've begun to speculate whether the latter reason for the US war against Iraq might be just a little bit true.

And now there's this story which the American mainstream press isn't even touching, Sell oil for gold, not dollars, Mahathir tells Saudi Arabia.

What angers me sometimes about the left wing press is that they unceasingly advocate the failure of american corporate business and the dollar, without having any idea what this would mean for their own livelihoods. If american corporate businesses were to fail in large numbers and the dollar were to continue its slide, things here in the States are going to economically get really, really bad not just for the poor, but for everyone including the left wing press and media.

No one on the left seems to understand that though. When business is bad, it affects almost everyone except the very very rich. The left will not be excluded from an economic downturn. In fact, they will probably be the ones most affected as their revenue streams will the first to dry up. Except for the lucky few who are supported I suppose by businessmen like George Soros.

If oil stops being traded for dollars, and instead is traded for euros or worse gold, well, hold on to your hats beause it's going to be scary ride to economic hell.

After the art exposition, I decided to walk from the Marina to the gym on Van Ness along Polk Street. The walk was nice, and I even found a new wine merchant and bought some very expensive sauvignon blanc.

When I got to the gym, I was feeling tired again so I decided to just bike for an hour. I ended up watching some stupid show on gym TV called Mutant X. I couldn't hear anything, but I watched it anyway. It looked like such a cheesey rip off of the XMen movie and comic book series, but I couldn't stop myself from watching it.

The actors were good looking and had powers but even without sound, I could tell that their acting was really, really bad. And it wasn't just bad acting, but the plot of the episode was awful as well. The writer made the Mutant X people come off like brainless pretty dummies with powers. It took them a whole hour to figure who the bad guy was, and they didn't even kill him at the end.

At several points in the plot, I wanted to yell at TV and shout "do a search on your computer for crying out loud!" Those characters were just so, so dumb. They were all stereoptypical dumb blondes, but with super human powers. How scary is that?

Still I had to watch it so I could see how the dummy Mutant X people would figure it all out and live, because it's a TV show and characters don't die. But for awhile I was rooting for the bad guy to just kill them and let Darwin's Law take over. Of course, no death for the dummy Mutant X people and they live to torture more people working out next Saturday.

Here's the episode I watched, No Exit.

I went to a party in Oakland on Friday, and woke up feeling really run down on Saturday. I only had 1.5 manhattans because I was driving, but now I'm thinking I might have picked up a flu bug of some sort.

Not to let illness mess up my weekend, I took a shower and headed off to the San Francisco International Art Exposition. If I had the money to do it, I could have bought myself a Chagall, a Picasso drawing, a David Hockney painting, or an Andy Warhol or two.

One gallery was even selling a polaroid picture that Andy Warhol took of Maria Shriver, in her younger days. I'm like whatever.

There were representatives there on Saturday morning from Bay Area museums on shopping sprees, and if there were stars and famous people there, and I'm sure there were, I didn't recognize any of them.

It was fun to check out what the commercial galleries were showing, and there were several galleries from New York, as well as galleries from Charlotte, Chicago, Houston, Moscow and Seoul Korea.

Some of the work coming out of Korea was really, really cool. One artist named Sung Tae Park worked in wire mesh, and showed horses sculpted out of wire running along a wall. The artist did the same thing with a wire mesh curtain panels sculpted into the shape of babies at the end. Very, very interesting stuff.

Aside from the famous stuff, the only other artist I really liked was David Bates, from the DC Moore Gallery in New York. I particularly liked a piece he did called Oranges. The paint was very lush and textured, and I loved his orange colours which reminded me a little of how Cezanne does his orange colours.

I was listening to a friend of mine tonight, who thinks I'm crazy for listening to conspiracy radio, regurgitate Bush bashing rhetoric that I've been hearing since 1999. She kind of got mad at me because I told her she wasn't telling me anything new.

She said "Don't you care?", and I said, "Of course I do, but you're telling me theories and stories that I heard two years ago." I wanted to tell her that it's not my fault that you're just finding out all of this stuff now, but I didn't. I wanted to tell her that all this stuff she's been hearing about Bush has been talked about to death on conspiracy radio since 1999, but I didn't. She was already so mad at me that I'm not outraged more by what's going on.

I don't know. I guess I'm not as outraged as she is because I've had two years to get used to Bush and all that he's doing to the country. And you know what, I'm over it. It's an old story to me.

There are a ton of other things in this world to get outraged about. How about the continuing devaluation of the dollar for one? Or the whispers of there being two currencies in the country - an international dollar to keep the world markets stable and a national dollar that the government can inflate the hell out of?

Or the political turmoil going on in Pakistan? Or the continuing nuclear problem in North Korea where analysts have been predicting for years that the country will be the first to detonate a nuclear device? Or the rumors of an upcoming draft because we need more soldiers?

"Forearmed is forewarned" someone once said. Information is power. Those who have it, use it and react appropriately. Those who are blindsided by information can only be reactive, and when you're reactive you often don't make appropriate decisions.

I had Film History class tonight, and it's like so karmic that there's a cute Kevin Spacey lookalike in class. I never thought Kevin Spacey was all that cute, until I saw him "Hurlyburly" with Sean Penn. And even then, I thought I found him attractive because he's such a great technical actor.

But the Kevin Spacey lookalike in class is really cute, which lends credence to a friend's theory that all Hollywood actors are damned good looking people.

Tonight we watched "Double Indemnity". Dennis Quaid looks like Fred MacMurray, and even plays the same kind of roles. Not sure who is the current Barbara Stanwyck though. Stanwyck's clothes and shoes in the movie were just fantastic.

I like Film Study, but wasn't happy shelling out $80 for the textbook. I didn't know this was a two part film history class, with my class being part two. The textbook is for both classes, so if I take part one of the class next fall I won't feel so bad about paying bucko bucks for a textbook.

Okay I know people love christmas decorations and the lights, but enough already. It's January 15, and there are still christmas lights, christmas trees, and christmas decorations up. I even saw a manger scene still on someone's lawn today, and there are still fake plastic santas in the windows.

I know the greek orthodox religion has a longer christmas season, but there can't be that many greek orthodox people in San Francisco. And it's not just my neighborhood. The Christmas stuff is still all over San Francisco.

I've been doing wall sits since Monday. It's a great exercise to strengthen your thigh and knees. I can't believe I used to be able to hold this position for five minutes.

The legs are the hardest part of the body to workout and get definition, because you're on your feet all day. I have to do a ton of leg exercises to get definition on my legs, and even doing leg presses of 200-300 pounds doesn't help much. If I do weights, I usually like to work my legs until they shake. It's the only way I know I've worked all my muscles.

Here's the basics of the wall sit exercise.

Wall Sit: While standing with your back against the wall, bend your knees allowing yourself to squat. Hold this position for as long as you can. You are working to increase the amount of knee bend up to a seated position and the length of time.

I can do the wall sit for two minutes and fifteen seconds, and after that my legs begin to shake. It's a great way to get rock hard thighs, at least on the front portion. It doesn't do much for your hamstrings though. I'd like to get back up to five minutes.

Of course all this eating at fancy nice restaurants is wrecking havoc with my plan to lose 20 pounds, but it's fun to eat out for cheap.

I've been wearing my pedometer again, and trying to walk 10,000 steps a day or about 4-5 miles a day. So far this month I've only missed two days, and had one day where I only walked 8,200 steps and one day when I walked 5,000 steps.

On the days when I go to the gym I don't track my steps, but I work out for an hour. I've had two gym days so far.

I'm also doing Callanetics exercises at home. Callanetics is really great for tightening and firming your body up. These exercises are also really good if you have back problems as well.

I'm thinking January will be a washout as far as losing weight, but I'm okay with that as long as I can get back into the the habit of exercising and walking and eating within my calorie range on the days I'm not eating out.

And maybe if I really get into it, I'll start working out with my pilates and yoga tapes again.

Dine about Town San Francisco 2004 Experience # 2 - Rubicon.

Rubicon is a great restaurant, and definitely worth the price of its dinners, and a bargain for its three course fixed price meal. Their attention to detail and presentation is excellent, the food is fantastic and if you're a wine buff, they have an award winning extensive wine list.

I'd been to Rubicon for a business lunch before when it first opened, but never for dinner. For Dine About Down 2004, they are only serving dinner.

They were named as one of the Top 100 Bay Restaurants in 2003, and here's SFGATE.com had to say about them.

"Few restaurants are better known for their sommelier than their chef, but Larry Stone has made Rubicon a wine-lovers' mecca. Of course, the wine wouldn't be shown off nearly as well without the talents of chef Dennis Leary, and the handsome interior. The brick walls and sculptural earthquake support beams play against refined wood booths and Dale Chihuly glass sculptures. It feels like a big-city restaurant, and has celebrity cachet: It's owned by New York restaurateur Drew Nieporent, Robert De Niro and several other celebrities. Leary offers the traditional a la carte and fixed-price menus, including a vegetarian option."

Here's the Dine about Town menu.

choice of:
Organic Arugula Salad with Walnuts and Crescenza Cheese
or
Chestnut Soup with a Foie Gras Crouton

choice of:
Pumpkin Risotto with Pinenuts, Parmesan and Sage
or
Roasted White Bass with Herb Potato Purée and "Thermidor" Sauce
or
"Blanquette de Veau" Veal Stew with Winter Vegetables and Puff Pastry

choice of:
Rubicon Créme Brûlée with Housemade Cookies
or
Chocolate Fondant with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

I had the arugula salad, bass and the chocolate fondant. My friend had the soup, bass and creme brulee. Instead of "Blanquette de Veau", they were serving a duck comfit.

Since it's a school night we decided to just have one glass of wine each, so we asked the waiter to recommend a red wine. He chose an excellent light italian red wine.

The service was excellent and besides what we ordered we received a small appetizer of smoke salmon courtesy of the chef, and after dessert some kind of really light cannoli or profiterole, again courtesy of the chef.

It's these little touches like extra food from the chef, that make Rubicon such a great place to eat. They treat you well, and it makes you want to come back for more. The restaurant itself is beautiful, with a glass sculpture flower arrangement that my friend thought looked like the glass sculpted flowered ceiling of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. She was right. The glass sculpture were done by the samer person. Whatever you think ambiance is, Rubicon definitely has it.

Red Herring was okay, but it doesn't merit a trip back. Rubicon is a restaurant to go to for a great meal and for special occassion dinners.

I'm becoming the raging consumer.

I have a subscription to Vanity Fair, and my renewal notice came in the mail for $24.95 for one year and I paid it. I received what would have been the last issue today had I not renewed, and there was an offer card which said I could get renew for $15. This irked because I just paid the higher price.

So I called their customer service and told the operator I just renewed my subscription at the higher price, and it wasn't fair because if I had waited till the last issue I would have saved $9.95.

The operator agreed with me and credited me with 10 more issues. I'm glad I called. Usually I don't care or pay attention to stuff like this, or if I do notice it I just let it go. Not anymore. It pays to call customer service because the worse they can say is no. And if they agree, you save money and saving money is a good thing.

Some would say this is France's karma for their behaviour and opposition towards the US in the war on terrorism; The Beginning of the French Jihad?

I supposed I should say something about Paul O'Neill's revelations on 60 minutes. Everyone else seems to be talking about it, and are shocked by what he said.

Me, I'm not. As an avid reader and listener to conspiracy news and talk, O'Neill's assertions were not new. Conspiracy people have been saying for years now that it was only a matter of time before Shrub was going to finish what his father started in Gulf War 1. The events of 9/11 only added to the urgency. In fact, I remember even hearing that Sadam Hussein was even predicting it himself.

It's why I didn't vote for Shrub, but talk about similarities between the Shrubmeister and Clinton.

I remember having doubts about Bill Clinton because of that Flowers girl, and wondering if the allegations about him were true and if history was going to repeat itself. The conservative talk radio shows were harping on this issue, and yet Slick Willie got elected and sure enough the Monica Lewinsky debacle came along. I wasn't shocked then either, since I'd wondered myself if it was going to happen.

So now the same thing happens to Bush. His detractors said that he would go after Hussein, Hussein even knew it himself, and yet Bush got elected. And sure enough, a member of his administration said the plan to go after Iraq was in place before 9/11. And once again, I'm not shocked.

So the mainstream media picks up a story that's been around since 1999. Big deal!

And while I now think the 2004 presidential election will be closer than expected, like Slick Willie, the Shrubmeister will be reelected. History is repeating itself, and it's so spooky!

Being a semi-vegetarian, I've been shopping at Trader Joe's ever since I moved to San Francisco. They carried veggie burgers, and other vegetarian type food. Now Trader Joe's is popular and all over the place according to this Mercury News article, Specialty market carves out niche, FUNKY FORMULA: GOURMET FOOD AT LOW PRICES.

The kind of people that shop at Trader Joe's might be changing, but they haven't changed much at all. They still carry the same kinds of products they did when I first started shopping there.

The same can't be said for Rainbow Grocery. I remember when they used to be at 14th and Mission, and they were small and everyone was really friendly and nice. The lady at the vitamin counter really knew her stuff, and they used to even sell organic clothing. I still own clothes I bought from there.

Since they've moved and gotten bigger, they're just not the same anymore. The workers aren't as friendly, they don't sell the same stuff, and it's just not the friendly and comfortable place to buy health foods that I remember.

Rainbow Grocery better watch out. Whole Foods (whole paycheck) is moving into their neighbourhood; Finally, SoMa gets a supermarket: Whole Foods to open Wednesday on Fourth Street. Whole Foods knows they're known as "whole paycheck", and they've become very competitive on their pricing. Their prices are very close to the prices at Rainbow Grocery.

The LA Times has a really thought provoking article on the media, Trashing the Media. The LA Times requires registration, so be aware of that if it comes up.

This paragraph really stood out for me.

"The Left is sort of responding to a world that isn't even here anymore," Schechter says. "They tend to look at power as being government power, whereas the real power shift has been from the public to the private, which operates more subtly, with much less accountability, more in the shadows. The government is not the driver. Market values are the driver."

If politics is all about the payback, as a female voter I think I've gotten my money's worth by voting for Gavin Newsome.

Mayor Newsome is endorsing a woman to head the San Francisco Fire Fighters; Newsom names female fire chief: Historic choice for big-city department.

Mayor Newsome is also appointing a non-white woman to the Board of Education; S.F school board to get new member Bernal Heights consultant replaces departing Cruz.

More women in positions of power in the city and county of San Francisco is worth the price of my vote any day!

There's chatter all over the internet that the next terrorist attack will be in Europe. If that happens, I wonder what the European will say about it all.

Some in the world press said that 9/11 was the USA's fault. I wonder whose fault will it be if there is a similar 9/11 attack on Europe?

The following is from an article in the NY Times on classic alternative rock programming: "It is only natural to introduce a classic alternative format because people are usually most excited about the music they heard as teenagers, said Don Yates, the music director at Seattle's KEXP-FM."

This is where I guess I'm not not like most people. I mean, sure I love listening to music from my youth, but not all the time. It's fun to listen to music from college and even high school, because then the memories start and you can relive your youth.

But after awhile, I start to wonder if why I'm doing that. My best glory days aren't behind me, they're ahead of me always. Sure the past was fun, but it was also sometimes very painful. I like the present and the future much, much better. It's unexplored, it's new, and that's exciting. Besides too much nostalgia makes me feel ancient and used up, and who wants to feel that way.

So I listen to the new music and create new glory day memories every year, and no matter what the radio is playing I'm totally loving it.

I went to see "The Last Samurai" on Saturday. Despite the critics' reviews, I thought it was a great movie although it could have used some judicious editing. It's a long movie and sometimes not much happens, but I liked it anyway.

I loved all the samurai philosophy, the scenes of Japan and all those great samurai costumes. And of course being a kung fu cinema girl, all that great sword fighting and blood going everywhere battle scenes. I love watching squirting blood flying out all over the place.

They had fabulous shots of Mount Fuji and for the first time, I thought I might have had an incarnation there. I've been around japanese culture my whole life, and never once did I ever think I might have been japanese in another life.

But seeing Mount Fuji and the village life in the mountains gave me a dejavu feeling, like it was somehow home or something. Maybe I was like a japanese girl living in a village at the steps of Mount Fuji.

I've never been that keen on going to Japan but now I want to visit and see the buddhist and shinto temples, especially the giant buddha at Kamakura.

The Last Sumarai takes during the time of the Meiji period in Japan, which was fun for me because of the woodblock prints art exhibition from the Meiji era that I saw a few years ago. That exhibition was on the best art exhibitions I'd seen in a long time, and it made me want to own and collect japanese woodblock prints.

Tom Cruise's performance was good, but not as great as his performances in "Born on the Fourth of July" and "Magnolia". He can do bitter guy really, really well.

Poor Carly Fiorina. I feel sorry for her. Look at what SFGATE.com is saying about her; Economists back tech industry's overseas hiring Workers deny U.S. lacks qualified staff.

I think I mentioned this awhile ago, but at my last job in San Francisco, I drafted a plan at the request of my boss to move my company's IT programming staff and work to Singapore. Singapore gives companies willing to train and move programming jobs to their country, huge tax credits and all kinds of breaks and incentives.

Besides cutting IT staffing costs in half, my company would have saved more money with the Singapore government tax credits and breaks. Compaq has their operations there.

The presentation I put together was for the Singapore EDB (economic development board), which has an office in Redwood City. My boss gave the presentation to the Singapore EDB in Singapore in the fall of 1999, and the SEDB loved it.

The economic incentive to move our IT operations to Singapore were huge, and I had a Carly Fiorina type rationale going through my head when I was drafting the presentation. It was all about the money though, and I knew it. But I so relate to Carly Fiorina right now.

Red Herring was good.

The price fixed three course menu was:

1. Ceasar salad
2. Seared Pepper Tuna (raw inside) - smoked bacon, arugula, white beans + salsa verde or Jonah Blue Crab Risotto - grilled asparagus + marscapone cheese. Waiter told us there wasn't much crab in the risotto, so we got the tuna. White beans were a little underdone, but otherwise it was good. Loved that smoked bacon.
3. For dessert, mascarpone brulee with strawberries covered in a brown sauce which was either a burnt sugar sauce or balsalmic vinegar.

For wine we ordered a bottle of Cakebread 2002 sauvignon blanc. A good lite white wine, if you need one. And for cocktails, sauza margaritas on the rocks with salt, which was the drink of the day. Wished the drink was made with fresh squeezed lime juice, but very few places do that.

This is fun. I'm going to the Red Herring Restaurant for dinner tonight as part of Dine About Down San Francisco.

Before Red Herring that space was occupied by a restaurant called Roti, which had good food but went out of business or as the website says, evolved into Red Herring. Roti used to make the best onion rings in San Francisco, only they called them "onion strings".

These are so cute! I found this posted on a bulletin board I belong to.

A Bible Teacher asked her class to write notes "to God".
Here are some they handed in:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
I didn't think orange went with purple until I saw the sunset You made on Tuesday. That was cool.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones, why don't You keep the ones You already have?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
Maybe Cain and Abel would not have killed each other if they had their own rooms. That's what my Mom did for me and my brother.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
If You watch me in church on Sunday, I'll show You my new shoes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
I bet it is very hard to love everyone in the whole world. There are only 4 people in our family and I'm having a hard time loving all of them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
In school they told us what You do. Who does it when You are on vacation?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
Are You really invisible or is it just a trick?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
Is it true my father won't get into heaven if he uses his bowling words in the house?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
Did You mean for the giraffe to look like that or was it an accident?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
Who draws the lines around the countries?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
I went to this wedding and they kissed right in the church. Is that OK?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
Did You really mean "do unto others as they do unto you"? Because if You did, then I'm going to get my brother good.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
Thank You for the baby brother, but I think you got confused because what I prayed for was a puppy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
Please send me a pony. I never asked for anything before. You can look it up.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
I want to be just like my Daddy when I get big, but not with so much hair all over.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
You don't have to worry about me; I always look both ways.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
I think about You sometimes, even when I'm not praying.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
Of all the people who worked for You, I like Noah and David the best.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
My brother told me about being born but it doesn't sound right. They're just kidding, aren't they?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
I would like to live 900 years just like the guy in the Bible.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear God:
We read Thomas Edison made light. But in Sunday school they said You did it. So, I bet he stole Your idea.

Check this out. Some congressman freak from Sacratomato has submitted a bill to ban some of my favourite and cherished swear words from the airwaves.

Politician would ban dirty words from TV He's angry that FCC failed to act .

What the f@#ck? A plague of fbombs on that man's house!

Just for fun and because I'm in that kind of mood, I posted on Craig's list in Rants and Raves for San Francisco asking for a definition of the phrase "WMS (wild monkey sex)".

I'm curious to see what kind of definitions people will send me, if I get any responses at all that is.

I googled the phrase "wild monkey sex" and found the following definition.

The idea of wild monkey sex is to have abnormally passionate and/or hot, sticky, sweat-pouring-down-your-back SEX! with someone. Generally used in context to a particularily physically attractive person with whom sexual intercourse is desired or achieved.

Yeah! I'm writing again, at least for tonight, and just finished putting down 1,909 words.

I'm having my couple go horseback riding. How like typically harlequin romance story is that, having the couple go horsebacking riding. They'll ride together, get to know each other, later have dinner atop Reunion Tower and then boom, they're in bed having WMS (wild monkey sex). Sounds like a good date to me!

Sometimes I surprise myself in my writing with the phrases I come up with.

Like this one - his avaricious way of eating.

I'm like, where did that phrase come from?

I've been writing a little by hand every day. I just can't sit myself down to write for a long period of time.

250 words a day is such a small amount from the 1,667 words I was trying to write in November. Still I suppose, something is better than nothing.

A friend of mine told me awhile ago, after a vigorous discussion about local politics, that all my political problems stemmed from the fact that I don't fee downtrodden enough.

Apparently, I don't feel left out enough, not disenfranchised enough, not poor enough, not poverty consciousness enough, and I don't feel like the world has messed me over. I don't feel cheated by big business or corporations, and I don't feel angry enough about certain political policies.

He said I was too happy, too idealistic in my own merry way, way, and too optimistic to vote, in his opinion, the right way.

I've been thinking about what he said, and I'm like maybe he's right. I do feel like I've accomplished a ton in my life. I don't think I've been messed up by big corporations and business too much. Sure I've had job insecurities big time, but who hasn't experienced that.

And I am basically optimistic about my future prospects. Maybe I'm like so naive, and I'm still that country girl from Kauai which is a small rock in the middle of the Pacific ocean, but I honestly don't feel that downtrodden.

Maybe I am, but it sure has hell doesn't feel that way to me. I feel very blessed about my life, always have. Things could have gone so much worse for me and they haven't.

Does being happy and blessed about my life make me a conservative person? In my friend's eyes, it does. And I'm thinking, I don't care if I am conservative. I like my life. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Stupid windows xp! My windows explorer is only corrupted for my work profile, and not for anything else. How screwy is that?

If I log on as the administrator to my work laptop, windows explorer works. If I log on as myself into the corporate network, windows explorer doesn't work.

Bad morning at work.

First, a way too early conference call that I kept wondering I was asked to attend in the first place.

Then my windows explorer quit working, which means I can't search for documents. I tried to troubleshoot on my own but with no luck. Finally, I called the IT support desk at corporate and come to find out I have to reinstall Windows XP or at least repair it.

Damn! Three hours of troubleshooting only to come to the conclusion that I should just reinstall my operating system. Stupid windows XP! The IT guy is overnighting a cd to me, so he can walk me through the reinstallation or repair tomorrow.

I hate this! I hate computer problems.

One thing that I feel really bad about that happened during this mayoral election, is my loss of trust with The San Francisco Bay Guardian.

I used to really respect their reporting and their viewpoints, but this last election has opened my eyes to their incrediable bias and myopic view of the world. They would value principals above common sense and people any day.

Oh well. Like I said earlier, what goes around comes around and with events in the world spinning faster and faster, what would take years for something to come around is now happening in months if not quicker.

Never again will I ever give any credence to The San Francisco Bay Guardian political recommendations nor their political articles and commentaries. They're way too biased to be read for fair reporting purposes, and I'm not interested in reading a propaganda rag.

The San Francisco Bay Guardian gives utter and complete evidence to the conservative claim of a liberal media bias. This goes for the San Francisco Examiner, The San Francisco Sentinel and The San Francisco Call as well.

So I received a call at my work number for one of those infamous KPIX Channel 5 telephone survey polls.

The question was what grade would I give soon to be former mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown for his tenure as mayor.

I wanted to give Willie a D, but I gave him a C. The man was a nightmare and practically ruined San Francisco, but the city is still here and although bruised and damaged, it's still alive and kicking.

Willie's biggest damage to the city was his lack of policy or direction during the dotcom boom, but everyone got that one wrong including the media.

People just got greedy, and greedy people don't make intelligent decisions. What's worse, greedy people think the wealth is going to last forever and it never ever does. Money does that 99.9% of people, so in that regard Willie was average and deserved a C grade for running the city by the bay.

I received an invitation last week to attend Gavin Christopher Newsome's mayoral innauguration tomorrow at San Francisco City Hall.

I've been thinking about going only because I've never been to one, and I did do some campaign work for the guy. I wonder besides reporters, what kind of people show up for these things.

I used to hear the Bush voters on talk radio shows say how they disenfranchised they feel because people say Bush is an illegitimate president, and that their vote doesn't count. I never used to feel sorry for those people at all.

Now as Newsome absentee voter I know exactly how those Bush voters feel. Talk about karma! I feel disenfranchised myself because the Gonzo people keep saying how my vote doesn't count and that Newsome and the downtown forces stole the election.

I don't even work in downtown San Francisco, and haven't since 1997, and I'm getting lumped in with the evil downtown forces.

Remember all those serious Clinton bashers? They're getting their political karma now because now we have serious Bush bashers. What goes around comes around.

All this politician bashng .... it's just bad karma, inappropriate, and not right on some level if you're not focusing solely on the issues and you're operating on the level of pure hatred.

What goes around comes around. Bush bashing will end someday, and if and when a demo becomes the president, then it will be GOP's turn to bash.

I started "Mystic River" by Dennis Lehane last night. It's a beach read book. Not sure I like the subject, but I want to read the book before I see the movie.

Lehane won an award for his first novel "A Drink Before War", and I should probably read that book as well. He's a very descriptive and evocative writer, but let's just say the story isn't grabbing me.

It was a slow day at work, so I was pondering my writing or lack thereof in December.

The last time I worked on my novel was December 5. After that I got caught up writing about the election on my blog. Then I had to write a five page paper for my art history class, and study for my art history final which was on December 15. And then it was the holidays and shopping and just major relaxing.

But no writing, which is not good, but maybe understandable since I spent all of November doing the 50K nanowrimo thing.

But on Sunday I got that nagging feeling that there was something missing in my life and if I didn't start doing it, I would start getting depressed. That something is always "writing". Writing makes me feel like I'm doing something with my life and that I have a purpose, other than just existing.

I can't just live and exist and not have a purpose for my life. Other people can live like that, but I can't. I wish I could, but I've tried it, it doesn't work for me and it makes me feel totally depressed.

I've always got to be doing something that makes me feel like I have a purpose, that there's a reason for me be living and existing, and that the "something" is contributing to humanity on whatever level.

This urge must be some kind of aberrant gene or something I have, because other people don't seem to have a problem leading a different kind of life.

So it's back to writing tonight and working on the novel, and a host of other items on my "writing to do list".

I finished reading "Golf in the Kingdom". Golf software guy, the one that got away, would have been proud of me. Besides being an art director for golf software games, he was an avid golfer. The boy golfed at least three times a week, usually with other execs from work. Must be nice!

I'm not a golfer, but it's fun to read these books because the writers talk about mysticism and hinduism and try and relate it to the game of golf. Michael Murphy even went to stay at Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry India. My meditation teacher lived and studied at the Aurobindo ashram, so there's that connection there.

I can't imagine Krishna playing golf though, can you? Shiva maybe, even Rama and Hanuman, but not Krishna, no way. Why would he play golf with the boys when he could be out playing his flute and hanging out with those Gopi girls and being the blue god of love?

Golf is a good game for guys. It gives them a hobby and something to do on the weekends without you, and they can hang with the fellas and have male bonding time. And all the best hotels have golf courses, so you end up staying at some really nice places. Golf software guy's favourite vacation spot was The Inn at Spanish Bay.

I stepped on the scale this morning and scared myself. I weigh way too much at 162 pounds. My size 8 pants are like so tight, and I saw myself in the mirror the other day and I had a poochy belly! Spooky! That poochy belly of mine wasn't there in November.

So now I'm back to counting calories again, and doing my 10,000 steps per day. I worked out on Friday, and finally went to the gym on Sunday. I had to force myself to go, since de-habited myself and didn't go the gym at all in December.

Maybe this time I'll get to goal weight of 135-140 pounds. I watched a Dateline NBC program on losing weight, and all the diets they tried worked even hypnosis. They rated the marathon runner number the winner and the Atkins dieter second.

I tried Atkins and since I've been a partial vegetarian since I was 19 years old, Atkins was really, really hard. My body just can't handle all that protein, and I was only eating chicken, fish and eggs. If your body can handle eating all that meat-eating, then Atkins does work.

Counting calories and exercising everyday worked for me the last time, and I'll stick to that. I'm going to modify my eating a little bit by consuming more salads and fruits as meals. I'm kind of on a raw food kick.

At least I didn't gain all the weight I lost back, and although my jeans and pants are super tight, I can still wear them. 27 pounds doesn't seem like much, but we'll see.

What a drag it is to be at work today.

I took the day off after christmas and new years, so I had two four day weekends off in a row. It was so heavenly.

But now I'm back at work and it will be my first full week of work in two weeks. I need more holidays!

Maybe if I print my monthly reading list, I'll make myself find the time to read more books.

For January my reading list is:

Golf in the Kingdom by Michael Murphy - I just started this book, and found it after reading reviews of "The Legend of Bagger Vance". It's written by the founder of the Esalen Institute at Big Sur.

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley - won the pulitzer prize in 1992 (for award winning books)

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane - the book is supposed to be better than the movie.

It's kind of fun and interesting to look back and go over everything I've done in the past year. Sometimes I think I do and see so much that if I don't write them down, I totally forget about them and they all become one big blur.

Plays/Operas/Art Exhibits/Concerts/Shows seen in 2003
American Buffalo by David Mamet - play
Arts of Pacifica Asia - art exhibit
Blue Window by Craig Lucas - play
Chano Dominguez - concert
Diane Arbus: Revelations - art exhibit
Goryeo Dynasty: Korea’s Age of Enlightenment (918 to 1392) - art exhibit
Henri Moore: Celebrating a Gift - art exhibit
La Damnation of Faust by Hector Berlioz - opera
Leonardo Da Vinci and the Splendor of Poland - art exhibit
Les Belles Soeurs by Michael Tremblay - play
Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos - play
Love's Labour's Lost by Shakespeare - play
Marc Chagall Retrospective - art exhibit
Modigliani & the Artists of Montparnasse at LACMA - art exhibit
Old Masters, Impressionists, and Moderns: French Masterworks from the State Pushkin Museum, Moscow at LACMA - art exhibit
Opera in the Gardens - concert
Opera in the Park - concert
Orchid Show - orchid exhibit
Paul Klee - art exhibit
Philip Guston Retrospective - art exhibit
Primary Matters: The Minimalist Sensibility, 1959 to the Present - art exhibit
The American Flag: Two Centuries of Concord and Conflict - art exhibit
The Changing Garden: Four Centuries of European and American Art - art exhibit
The Constant Wife by W. Somerset Maugham - play
The Dazzle by Richard Greenberg - play
The Ramayana by Ruben Polendo - play
The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov - play
Treasures of a Lost Art: Italian Manuscript Painting of the Middle Ages and Renaissance - art exhibit
Treasures of Modern Art: The Legacy of Phyllis Wattis at SFMOMA - art ehxibit
Urinetown The Musical - play
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett - play
Wicked The Musical - play
Winslow Homer: Artist and Angler - art exhibit

Movies seen in 2003
2 Fast 2 Furious - theater
28 Days Later - theater
A mighty wind - theater
About a boy - video
About Schmidt – theater
Adaptation - theater
Agent Cody Banks - theater
Asoka - video
Austin powers 2- goldmember - theater
Bend it like Beckham – vdeo
Billabong Odyssey - theater
Blade 2 - video
Blood Simple - video
Bringing Down the House - video
Bruce Almighty - theater
Bulletproof Monk - video
Catch me if you can - video
Center Stage - video
Chicago - theater
Daredevil - video
Dark City - video
Down with Love - theater
Dreamcatcher - video
Elf - theater
Falling in Love - video
Far from heaven - video
Four Feathers - video
Gangs of new york - theater
Gettsyburg - video
Gods & Generals - video
Identity - video
Iron Monkey - video
Kate and Leopold - video
Kill Bill Part 1 - theater
Lara Croft and the cradle of life - theater
Laurel Canyon - Video
League of Extraordinary Gentleman - theater
Lilo & stitch – video
Lost in Translation - theater
Lotr-the two towers – theater
Luther - theater
Maid in manhattan - video
Metropolis - video
My big fat greek wedding - video
Once Upon a Time in China - video
Phone Booth - video
Pirates of the Caribbean - theater
Planet of the Apes – video
Possession - video
Punchdrunk Love - video
Queen of the Damned - video
Red Dragon - video
Requiem for a dream - video
Revelation - video
Road to Perdition - video
Rockstar - video
Roger Dodger - video
Scarface - video
Sexy Beast - video
Shiri - video
Snatch - video
Spider - video
Spirited Away by Miyazaki - video
Spirit-stallion of the Cimarron - video
Step into Liquid - theater
Sunshine State - video
SWAT - theater
The bourne identity - video
The Cable Guy - video
The Gift - video
The Good Girl - video
The hours - theater
The Hulk - video
The Importance of Being Earnest - video
The Italian Job - video
The Legend of the Red Dragon - video
The Man from the Elysian Fields - video
The Matrix Reloaded - theater
The Matrix Reloaded Imax - theater
The Matrix Revolutions Imax - theater
The Matrix Revoluions - theater
The Ninth Gate - video
The pianist - theater
The quiet american - theater
The Sheltering Sky - video
The Shipping News - video
Undercover brother - video
Underworld – theater
Waiting for Guffman - video
Whale Rider - video
White Oleander - video
Winged Migration - theater
Xmen - video
Xmen 2 - theater

Books Read in 2003 - Oy vey! I'm not reading enough books per year. Will try to make a To Read list every month to make sure I keep up with my reading. My goal is three books a month, and I'm focusing on award winning books.

A Writer's Time - Ken Atchity
Amazing Healing Foods - Marsh Morrison
And both were young - Madaleine L’engle
Angels & Demons - Dan Brown
Art since 1940 - Jonathan Feinberg
Blood Child & Other Stories - Octavia E. Butler
Cold Mountain - Charles Frazier
Dressing Rich - Leah Feldon
False memory - Dean Koontz
God talk: Travels in Spiritual America - Brad Gooch
I Heard the Owl Call my Name - Margaret Craven
Liars Poker - Michael Lewis
Making a Good Writer Great - Linda Seger
Miracle Body Tuneup for Rejuvenated Health - Marsh Morrison
Miracle Guide for Pain Free Health - Marsh Morrison
Misc vacation reading - read 2 harleqn romances & an organization book (how embarrassing but I was at my grandma's house and they were there)
Paradise Park - Allegra Goodman
Phantoms - Dean Koontz
Possession - A. S. Byatt
The Avatar Masters Handbook - Harry Palmer
The Cat who Smelled Smoke - Lillian Braun
The Da Vinci Code - Dan brown
The David story - Robert Alter
The Hours - Michael Cunningham
The Kitchen God's wife - Amy Tan
The Legend of Bagger Vance - Steven Pressfield
The Plains of Passage - Jean Auel
The Shelters of Stone - Jean Auel
The Time is Now - Rabbi Daniel S Wolk
The Whole Picture - Richard Walter

I woke up early this morning dreaming of aliens disguised as human. The dream was so interesting, I went back to sleep to see if I could reenter it. I was able to reenter my alien dreamworld four times, and each time the new dream picked up where the old dream ended.

I was with a group of people, and somehow we were the only ones who could tell who the martians really were. We were trying to infiltrate the martian community in the dessert.

But then I woke up finally and couldn't get back to sleep. Damn!!! The dream hadn't ended yet, and I didn't find out why the martians were on the earth or why they were disguised as humans. It's like not being able to watch the end of a movie.

On the way to the grocery store, I saw a double rainbow. I love rainbows!

I can't remember the last time I saw a double rainbow. I'm hoping it's a sign that good things are going to start happening in my life. Not that things aren't good, but they could always be better.

It's the month for Dine about Town 2004 again. For the whole month of January, you can eat for really cheap at some of San Francisco's finest restauratnts.

"More than 110 of San Francisco's finest restaurants will offer three-course prix-fixe menus at $19.95 for lunch and/or $29.95 for dinner. A la carte menus are available as well."

Enjoy!

I was glued to my television during the Iraq War, and now I've found out there were some unexepected consequences of watching the CNN coverage.

1) I really, really like Aaron Brown. His reporting of the Iraq War was so outstanding.

2) I want to vote for Wesley Clark for the democratic nominee for president. He was one of the Iraq War commentators on CNN along with Aaron Brown, and I came to really respect his opinions on a variety of topics. I'd vote for Wesley Clark for president in a hearbeat.

3) I watched alot of Anderson Cooper's coverage, and the man is starting to look more and more attractive. His white or very white blonde hair is kind of a turnoff since I don't do blondes, but he does have beautiful sparkling eyes that just twinkle at you.

Talk about embedded journalists. From the blog of H. Brown - SF Bulldog:

"I recall sitting in my office at Gonzo Central at 2am with 6 or 8 other reporters drinking strong liquor and comparing notes from the campaign field. … Adriel Hampton (Murphy’s right, Adriel is the press’s Journalist of the year), Carlos Petroni, Savannah Blackwell, Mike Sugerman, J.K. Dineen & Ethan Fletcher. … Matt Hirsch, Chris Finn, Chance Martin & Randy Shaw."

What were Adriel Hampton (political columnist for the San Francisco Examiner), Mike Sugerman (Reporter, Eyewitness News and Evening Magazine - KPIX Channel 5), J.K. Dineen (reporter - SF Examiner), and Ethan Fletcher (reporter - SF Examiner) doing at the Matt Gonzalez campaign HQ at that hour? There were San Francisco Bay Guardian reporters there as well, but that was to be expected. But the others?

Everyone in the media talked about there being a Gavin Newsome bias in the media, but what about these media people? And wasn’t KPIX Channel 5 the one releasing all those polls that showed Gonzalez ahead of Newsome? A media bias against Newsome? Maybe more like a white lie to cover the media’s own bias I’d say.

“Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice.” Just more evidence that the media is completely biased and won’t admit it, and one more reason why blogs are begging to be important sources of information.

“Liberal media bias” the conservatives whine, and I’m like hmmmm … perhaps there is some truth to that.

Media outlets to be suspicious about: The San Francisco Examiner and Channel 5 - KPIX.

I'm so naive that I used to think that The San Francisco Bay Guardian tried at least to be fair about their reporting. Boy, was I wrong! This last mayoral election so proved that.

Happy New Year everyone!

I had a grandma haunting this morning. When I finally got up and walked into the kitchen to make coffee, my kitchen smelled like my grandma's kitchen.

Talk about freaking out! I had to close my eyes and reopen them because I'd only ever smelled that combination of smells at home on Kauai. My kitchen didn't smell like that last night. It was so spooky! Even the cabinets smelled like her kitchen.

Why was grandma's spirit in my kitchen? How scary! I made coffee, cooked breakfast and then left. In the afternoon when I went back in, the smell was gone. Creepy, creepy!

It was raining so hard last night, I dreamt I was driving in a car on Kauai and one of the rivers had flooded and I couldn't get across.

In the 18 years I lived there, flooding happened twice but only after four to five solid days of non-stop monsoon rain. We were lucky as our house never got flooded out, but it happened to some of our neighbours.