I may have good news on the job front, but I don't want to write about it and perhaps jinx it till it happens. In this shaky world of ours, I'm not going on anything till it happens in real time. Talk is cheap and action is the only thing that really counts.

Check this book out, The Game of Life and How to Play It by Florence Scovel Shin. I read this book whenever I'm looking for a new job, and it helps, it really really helps somehow.

I wonder if San Francisco Supervisor Matt Gonzalez's announcement that he won't run for reelection is just some ploy to get his supporters to beg him to stay in politics. Talk about a great way to get publicity.

Announce your leaving politics forever, have your supporters start a campaign to beg you not to leave, and then tell the media how everyone loves you and supports you too much for you to leave. Announce your triumphant return to San Francisco politics.

We shall see.

I was on the 41 Union bus that goes through the Marina tonight, on my way to a roastery to buy coffee. A chick gets on the bus with another girl carrying a Coach shopping bag.

The two women sit down and the chick takes a shoe box out of the bag, and starts to show her friend her new Coach brand flip flops, ie rubber slippers. They're called the Carin Sandal.

Okay, so I know it's like Coach and all, but $70 for rubber slippers with a 1 1/4 inch heel. Come on. How Marina girl can you get?

I spent most of the weekend in bed with allergies. I'm getting desperate, and if the allergies won't go away I'm going to try Claritin. Claritin can be bought over the counter now, and everyone I know says it's great.

I have a second midterm exam for my film history class on Thursday, so I did end up studying on both days. Still it's so not fun to cooped up at home afraid to go out, because being outside makes me sneeze and stuffs up my nose.

The hot weather here is such a drag for my allergies. But I'm not the only one. There are a ton of people at work complaining about their allergies as well.

I hate that I feel like such a loser at work. I think this feeling stems from the fact that I'm contracting, and not a permanent hire. I've got meetings scheduled through the week of April 5, and then if the job doesn't work out I'm gone the next week.

My bosses keep acting like I'll be there forever because I'm schedule to be on a project team that ends May 31. Then my big boss today told me I have to replicate this study that was done in the fall of last year. I can see that study taking at least three weeks to complete. Then there's training I'm supposed to have to use some software tool they bought for $200K. And then we had a meeting today about some work that's supposed to start in July.

I hate that everyone is treating me like I'm a full time employee, when I'm actually not. I was in a meeting on Wednesday when one of my bosses announced that some person on his floor quit after three days. He said it was a mutual decision.

I feel like quitting my every day, but I know I can't because I need income to live. I just feel so overwhelmed 90% of the time. My big boss is tossing my name around in meetings, and volunteering for me to do all these projects.

Remeber that analysis that I made a little mistake on yesterday? I received an email this afternoon saying that the VP I sent it it was forwarding my analysis to another VP for his input and review. And I'm like great ... more people to notice that the titles of the chart aren't quite right.

I found out this morning that another file I sent to the VP last night was missing some information that I thought the IT guy had sent. I should have checked it more thoroughly before I sent it off, but I thought the IT guy was going to just replicate what he had sent me before and that dataset was perfect.

I really need to double check my work and slow down. I feel such pressue to perform and perform well. And I don't perform well under pressure at all, as you've no doubt noticed.

My new job is so tiring. I come home exhausted every night. I have so much to do and so many meetings to attend. It's such a change from my old job, but it's a good change.

The head of my department came over to my cube and said she was very happy with me so far. Her exact words were "it's like night and day between you and the person you're replacing." I hope her opinion doesn't change when it comes time for me to go permanent. I really like my direct boss; she is such a nice person. Everyone is so nice.

I had back to back meetings with these guys I met in a meeting last Thursday. They were helping me with a presentation for the head of my group. These guys were so sweet and nice and so helpful. The head of my group told me that the presentation was successful, and she got what she wanted.

I went to a vendor presentation at a hotel this morning. There were supposed to be nine people there, but only three of us showed up. Me and two guys from PBGH. From their site, "Founded in 1989, The Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH) is a non-profit coalition of major California employers that is nationally recognized for its efforts to improve the quality and availability of health care while moderating costs. "

These guys were really smart and from what I could gather, big wigs in the California healthcare scene. I felt like such a nobody being at the presentation with them. I didn't say anything the whole time. I'm still too dazed by my new job to feel comfortable. I wish my boss had come with me, but she was in a usability study this morning. She would loved shooting the breeze with these guys.

I sent my first analysis off to a VP this afternoon. My boss keeps telling me that my analysis is for this "high profile" project. I'm definitely working way too fast, and need to be more careful. After I sent the analysis off, I noticed that I had some table headings wrong. It's not a big mistake, but it's still a mistake and it just doesn't look good.

The analysis is sound, but now I feel like I'll get dinged because I messed the titles of my charts up. I'm so mad at myself. I should have just left it to the morning so I could review it again when I was fresh. I had my boss and this other manager review it, but nobody noticed it. It's not their job to notice it I guess, it's mine to make sure it's correct.

I hope the VP I sent it to isn't nitpicker and just doesn't notice it. I wonder what the chance is of that happening? I'll just have to be more careful next time, and not rush myself. It's better to be late in sending things off than to send things off with mistakes right?

A friend got free tickets to see a play that was the hit of the San Francisco Fringe Festival. It was supposed to be an absurdist musical, and the reviews said it was really funny. It wasn't all that amusing and it wasn't that great, but at least we didn't pay for it. The woman who is the owner of the theater was sitting next us, and I'm not even sure if she liked the play because she hardly laughed.

It's probably one of those plays that are good if you see it when the theatre is full, and everyone is a little rowdy and a little drunk. You end up laughing and enjoying it, only because everyone around is going crazy over it and so you get into it so you don't feel left out. It's like theater peer pressure. If everybody else is laughing, it must be funny right?

Then we went to Original Joe's to have some dinner. The food is italian dinner and old fashioned, but for a cheap price they serve you huge portions of food so you always feel like you've got your money's worth by eating there because you have enough for a meal for the next day.

As we were leaving the restaurant and turning on Eddy Street, we see these police cars on full siren driving down the street. Then we saw two cops running down the street. It was like a scene out of "Cops", and automatically I heard the "Cops" theme song in my head. "Bad boys. what you gonna do, what you gonna do when then come for you."

The theater and restaurant are in the bad part of town called the "Tenderloin". It's the red light district with hookers, seedy hotels, drug dealers galore, and assorted junkies and freaks hanging out on the street.

My friend didn't want to walk down Eddy, so we headed down Taylor and the scene there looked dicey as well. Then I suggested we go up a block to avoid the police melee. and she said no because the next street up was even worse because of the drug dealers.

Of course secretly, I wanted to go walk down Eddy Street and watch the cops do their thing because whenever I see cops on the street arresting people it makes me feel like I'm in a movie or in a police crime drama show on TV. I told my friend that the cops running like that made me feel like I was in a movie, and she said it wouldn't be a movie if we got caught in the crossfire of a gun battle.

But Eddy was the only safest street to walk through that night, so we waited to see what the police would do. There were four cop cars lined up on the left side of the street with their lights flashing, and the two cops whom we saw running down the street, were now returning in the direction they had come from.

So we cautiously proceeded down the street trying to be hyper alert for gun sightings and or gun shots. When we passed the two cops, I heard one of them say it was a code 4.

I was wondering if code 4 was MDK, or murder-death-kill, and then I annoyed my friend because I started chanting murder-death-kill, murder-death-kill. Then we saw two different cops running up the street, but by then we were a block away from Union Square and anxious to get home.

It's so weird to get back to the cable car turnaround at Union Square thinking there might a possible police shootout two to three blocks away. My friend talked about tourists getting lost and ending up in the Tenderloin. Will they feel like they're in an episode of "Cops", or maybe a movie or a police crime drama tv show?

Yes, stress, travelling and changing jobs is not good for my weight loss plan, but at least I've only gained 1/2 a pound. I've lost 10 pounds since February 4, but I have so much more to go.

It feels good that with all the new job stress I'm under that I'm not pigging out and self medicating myself by eating. I haven't been working out either, but I hope to remedy that next week. I want to work out at least three times next week after work, and spend an hour to 1.5 hours writing prior to going to the gym.

I'll leave work, find some place to hang out and write, then by the time I've done my daily writing hopefully the gym will be less crowded and I can go work out. It will be good to have my writing and exercise completed before I get home, so then I have the rest of the night free to relax or go straight to bed or even read a book.

I have not done any reading at all. When I'm stressed as I have been these last two months, I can't even read. Reading takes way too much effort when I'm freaking out. I am so far behind on my monthly reading plan, but once I get back into a routine and the job goes into permanent status I'm hoping to jam in some major reading time to get caught up. Then I'll be back on track with the number of books I'm supposed to be reading per month.

I went to my office half an hour earlier because of the protest, and the building was locked and surrounded by tons of police people in riot gear. They weren't very many protestors, but the building security people and the police were not letting anybody through.

My new boss called me and we met and sat in a coffee shop for about 20 minutes, and then tried again to get into our building. By around 9 am, they were letting people in again as long as you showed your badge ID. My new boss took myself and the guy I'm replacing out to lunch, and when we left the building the security was still tight and we weren't sure if they were going to let us out.

By the time we came back from lunch, it looked like all the protestors were gone. When I left work, the police barriers were still up and there were guards and a few police outside of the building just in case anything else happened.

There weren't very many protestors, but I guess enough to spook people out. I saw a bunch of protestors dressed in pink ballerina tutus, but I had no idea what they were doing. There such a feeling of violence in the air, something I've never experienced before in any protest I've ever been in here in San Francisco, back home in Hawaii, and even in Washington, DC. It just felt like people were waiting to hit something, somebody, anything.

When did protestors become so darn angry and violent? I've been in protests with over a quarter of million people in Washington DC, and I never felt the violence I felt on the streets of downtown San Francisco this morning.

At my writing class on Monday during a break, I was expressing some concern about the protests because I knew it would be just my third day at my new job and I didn't want to be late for work since I work hourly and needed the money. One of the women in class, who just assumed I had been in previous anti-war protests, told me lighten up because "didn't I remember how fun the anti-warprotests were last year?"

I just looked at her and didn't say anything. I was like so shocked and deeply offended that she just automatically assumed that all people in San Francisco feel the same way politically about everything, and that of course I would be at the anti-war protests. I would never make that kind of assumption about anyone, especially about political issues in the San Francisco Bay Area.

It's such an arrogant San Francisco Bay Area mindset to think that everyone thinks the same way politically. I think people here think that the rest of the country feels exactly the same way we do about political issues, or if they don't they should. It's such a fascist attitude to me to just assume that everyone thinks the same way about everything, and if they don't then they're either stupid or there is definitely something wrong with them.

I never expect anyone to have the same opinions I do, especially political opinions. Politics is so deeply personal, like religion and sex. And since everyone on this planet is unique, it makes perfect sense to me that every single person could have a totally different political opinion than mine.

My assumption, and it's probably a wrong one, is that every single person thinks deeply about politics and has informed opinions that are uniquely their own and no one else's. I think about politics very deeply and try to stay informed. I would never adopt or parrot a political opinion without studying and researching it first, just because my parents, my friend, my family, people I admire, and the media have that certain political opinion.

Politics is way too important to me for me to not think deeply about an issue and to look at an issue from all sides before forming my own individual and unique opinion.

I've only been at my new job three days, and I've already brought work home because I have a 9 am meeting on Monday that I need to prepare for. It's a good project for me because it's something I've done before so I kind of feel like I kind of know what I'm doing. I'm in familiar territory because the project involves clinical analysis, and that's been my main job for the last three years. This project is a little more involved, but at least I'm used to looking at clinical data.

My boss has never done clinical analysis, so I am on my own here but at least I feel qualified to actually do this project. My boss feels put out because the project was dumped in her lap from some VP, and it's an area she has no expertise in. It's kind of like the VP heard a new analyst was being hired, so she thought "great, let's see what the new analyst can do and if she really has healthcare experience and is worth the salary we're forking out for her."

OY!!! I've had a hard three day start to my new job. I feel like they expect me to hit the ground running, and I'm like sitting there wishing I could have a job where all I did was answer the telephone or some mindless activity like that.

The clinical analysis stuff I can do, the financial data modeling I'm not so sure of only because I haven't done any real finance work since 1997. Back then I built my own sales financial models, but I was used to doing finance work.

I did a search on Amazon.com and will probably buy some financial modeling books just to refresh myself. I think I'll feel more comfortable once I do some research. The guy who I'm replacing built a very robust financial model that I'm hoping will last for a couple of years before a new one has to be built.

I don't why the finance aspect of my job is freaking me out, because in my finance work life I used to prepare information to go in 10Qs, annual reports, shareholder reports, and quarterly earnings releases. I even worked on an IPO once, and had to sign SEC agreements not to divulge company secrets because I was considered an "insider" and could be held liable for "insider trading". What a laugh!

But that was years ago, and I'm just not used to doing that kind of work anymore.

Being in a new job is so draining. I feel so inadequate for my new job. It's not that job is that hard, difficult yes, but not impossible. It's just that I keep having this feeling that I'm overwhelmed. I know I've felt this way at other new jobs, but I just don't remember it ever being this bad.

I don't know. I feel stupid. I shouldn't feel stupid, but that's the way I feel. My intuition tells me that I'm just having first week jitters at my new job, and that everything will be fine. The first month of any new job is difficult because you're learning new things and getting used to new people, new work and different routines.

I remember being at one job where I kept wanting to quit during the first month, but I stuck it out and that job turned out to be one of my better jobs. I hope that I'm just having first week of job freakout and that it's not something worse.

My first day of work in an office, and I'm like so stressed. My boss called in me in the afternoon and said I have to attend a meeting with her tomorrow and her boss, even though I probably won't understand anything that's going on.

So I'm back to cube land with no privacy, which is such a change from my office with a view in my last office. People at the office seem nice enough. There's good water and the company has its own cafeteria, but no free coffee. There's hot water in the good water dispenser, so if I bring my own tea bags I can drink tea.

There's a payphone on my floor. Is this a hint about not making personal phone calls on the company dime? Thank god for cell phones. I have a picture badge ID which gets me from floor to floor. I'm going to need it on Friday for the anti-war demonstration on Friday.

My new building is right at one of the major demonstration sites, and a memo went around about the tighter security and advising employee to try to get to work early in case of demonstrators. I've managed to avoid the anti-war freaks since the war started, and now I'm at ground zero for the next demonstration.

I am so nervous about going to my new job tomorrow. I don't remember it being like this before, or maybe I just forgot because it's been so long since I've had to start over.

Starting over is so hard that I think most people stay in jobs that are not quite right for them because of the stress of having to begin again. Who needs that added stress in one's life. It was so much easier when I was changing jobs every two years because I was never really settled in one place, and starting over became so routine.

I hope this job works out, and I'm at it for a long, long time. It's always been my dream to find a job that I'll stay at for more than five years. It would be so nice to settle down and be comfortable at work finally, but I just don't see that happening even with this job.

My intuition tells me I'll be at this job for a quite awhile, but it won't be my last job ever. Something will come along to take me away, and I'll be sorry to leave the job but the opportunity coming will too hard to turn down. It's kind of an odd way to go into a job situation, knowing it won't be forever. But what job is forever is this kind of economy anyway?

My experience has been that even the best of jobs don't stay the best forever. Your group changes, your boss moves on or gets promoted, the company moves in a different direction, and so on. I know someone who's been in their job for over 20 years, but I think that's really rare. It's just not the nature of business these days.

People change and businesses change, and it seems like every year and the changes come faster and faster. Of course, I'm putting the cart before the horse. I mean, who knows, maybe I'll find out in these 30 days that this job is not a good fit. I hope not, but that is always a possibility.

I'm just hoping that the 30 days will fly by and everything will work out and I'll have some semblance of job security so I can go back to concentrating on my writing, getting to my goal weight, and working out.

I have the day off today before I start my new job tomorrow. I'm looking at my wardrobe and thinking, I so don't have any work clothes for this kind of hot weather. It never gets this hot in San Francisco.

My boss said the dress code is business casual, but when I was interviewing the people I saw were quite well dressed. Aaarrggh!! I need some new clothes.

All my really nice work clothes are kind of too big, but I don't want to start buying stuff till I get to my goal weight and they hire me on permanently.

I haven't worked in downtown San Francisco in years. Who knows what the prevailing fashions are these days? I was thinking of wearing short skirts all week, but I'm going to be training with a guy and I want to be comfortable. Guess it's long skirts till I figure the lay of the land out.

Friday is jeans day, but at the company before this one, my boss used to look down on people who wore jeans on Friday. She told me it looked too scruffy. She always wore nice pants and a blazer on Fridays, but then again she was an officer of the compnay, a Sr VP and a CIO.

It was a beautiful sunny weekend in San Francisco, but I spent most of it in bed because of my allergies. The hot weather must have upped the pollen count, and my body reacted accordingly.

On Saturday I went to my chiro/kineseologist in Berkeley, and he even said my body was not in the best of shape. He did some work on me to clear things up, and I was thinking of hanging out and shopping till dinner time and then visiting with a friend who lives out there, but by 11:30 am I had the worse headache.

My friend told me to come and watch her dance at her flamenco class, and I did that, but by that time my head was throbbing so badly. I did manage to drop by REI, which was right across from her dance class place, and pick up some new water bottles which was on my list of errands, but that was it for me other than grocery shopping.

I came home, took a nap, finally broke down and took some aspirin, went back to bed and woke back up at 7 pm. My headache was gone but I was still not feeling right, and I watched TV the rest of the night.

Slept fitfully Saturday night, and decided to skip church on Sunday. I slept till 1:30 pm, and when I woke up I felt better for the first time all week.

I spent the rest of the day and night, doing some light cleaning and watching TV. When I woke up this morning, I felt better and only sniffled a little bit. Hopefully this is a sign that my body has finally adjusted to the new temperatures, and the allergy symptoms will go away.

I only get allergy attacks the first week of really hot weather, and then they're gone and only come back when the news says the pollen count is going through the roof.

I've been watching the news reports on the terrorists bombings in Spain, and the people marching in the streets. Watching it all brought back memories of 9/11, and how difficult that time was, still is, for not only the victims and their families, but the whole country as well. Of course, there is chatter all over the Net that again the US is next.

Words of wisdom from Plato.

The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves. -Plato, philosopher (427-347 BCE)

My kitchen smells like my childhood kitchen. I think my grandma is visiting me from heaven, because she's so worried about me and my current job situation.

It's the weirdest feeling in the world to walk into my kitchen and have it smell like how I remember my home kitchen smelling when I was a little girl, a smell I think of as a grandma smell.

Since I don't quite have a real drop yet as I'll be contracting for 30 days, I know I really shouldn't be spending any money. But at Costco today I saw Dr. Phil's dieting book on the book rack, and broke down and bought it. Friends of mine who read it and loved it, people I really trust, kept telling me I need to read it. I hope they're right, since I had the buy the hard copy of the book.

I didn't really follow my eating plan while on my training/business trip. I was eating alot and knew it, but I was so stressed out that I didn't care. My stress level was so high, I was even tempted to smoke. Thank god I decided to stay in a non-smoking room at the hotel, where the fine is $50 if you smoke. Otherwise, I'm sure I would have been chainsmoking every night.

I feel better now that I'm home. But it's also TOM time, and my h-mones might be going haywire. I sometimes get really depressed for no reason the night before it starts.

Two more days of work, and then I'm free of the crazy place. This is the first job that I've left with such bad feelings. I dislike having such bad feelings about my current employer. They are so not worth me expending any emotional energy on, especially a powerful emotion like hate.

I don't hate them, but they've made my leaving experience with them not very nice. The two guys I trained started to remind of the dotcom people I interviewe with once; those guys were so arrogant. I was so happy when I found out the company went under six months after my interview. Those guys were so nasty.

The training trip was however good for gossip. I found out that the company is not doing as well financially as they're saying they are. They're making money, but just only barely. There's a rumor that a big client's business might be declining. The client just had massive layoff and if they're looking to cut costs, I can see them cutting my company loose. Should that ever happen, my current employer will be in a deep financial hole.

My evil twin side is praying for this scenario happen. I can't help it. Those people I met with made me feel like a stupid, worthless, lazy employee. They totally denigrated the work I do, even though I had to help of of them this morning write a report query. Afterwards he said it was so simple, and I'm like thinking well if it was so darn easy, why did you ask me to help you solve it. Dummy!

My stupid new GSM wireless phone doesn't seem to work very well. For the first time since I've had my wireless service, I had dropped calls. I hate that! I should have stuck to my more expensive plan, but I wanted to save some money. Sometimes saving money is not the best decision. The stupid phone doesn't even work in my room. What's the point of having a cell phone if you can't use it.

I really hate my job right now. It's hard to train people on what you've been doing for the last four years. I can only teach the basics because that's what we have time for, and it comes across as idiot work. Whatever. I'd like to see my replacement spend months developing a project from scratch and improving on it.

I overhead the two guys I'm training saying something like my work was so easy. That made me so mad. They also kept saying how I should have automated my work, but I'm like who has time. Then I went to lunch with this friend I know from the offfice, and I told what the guys said. She said that that the guy's been saying for a year how he's going to automate his own work, but that he's never done it.

So I'm like, how dare that guy diss on me for not automating my work. Whatever. I came back to my hotel room feeling totally horrible about my intelligence, my work habits and my job skills. I don't know what to think. I know what one of the guys does, and I don't think it takes a ton of brain power to do his job either.

When he was going to train me, he said it took a week to do this one task. I looked at the task and thought, what the heck is this guy talking about. It only takes two days at the most to do it. So I'm like, you know that guy can think what he thinks because it's not like he's any better.

I hate when I get affected by people at work. I know I shouldn't let it get to me, but it has. I don't even think I want to do consulting for these people. I feel so stupid for even offering it, even though financially it's a great idea for me. But I'm like if they say no, I'll be so relieved. I can't wait until I sever my relationship totally with this crazy company.

I'm at a Courtyard Marriot somewhere in Sacramento. I'm supposed to have a free internet broadband connection, but I can't get through my company firewall. I think it's set up so I have to go through the VPN, and I don't want to do that. So I dialed my standby ISP connection. Thank god I kept it.

I'm typing and watching American Idol. It will probably be the highlight of my day. The traffic was so bad this morning that it took an hour to get out of San Francisco, so I got to my office half an hour late.

I thought I was going to just train one person, but now I'm training two. At least they're nice guys. Still after about four hours, one of them said he had enough. And I'm like great! We've got 1.5 days of training to go.

I'm hoping we can go at least 6 hours tomorrow. Whatever. It's their loss if we don't get it all done. I can't believe I'm going to to be in another job by next Wednesday.

I had dinner with one of the guys I'm training from the corporate office in New Jersey. We had a very interesting conversation about company business, which made me really glad I'm leaving. He confirmed all my suspicions about the future of the company, which kind of made me feel good because it tells me my intuition is never that far off and it is definitely serving me well.

Yeah! My taxes are done, and I'm getting my refund in two weeks. I get another refund from the state, which I wasn't expecting.

I'm so busy today preparomg documents so I can train the guy who is going to take over my job. We have 2.5 to 3 days to do it.. There's so much to do and definitely not enough time. Oh well. Having done this before, I can only do what I can and I can't worry about it.

Most bosses think that they can so easily replace any employee. No one is indispensible but every time you lose an employee, you lose your intellectual capital. Oh well. That's a company's problem right?

I'm getting old. I actually kind of agree with Ann Coulter on her take on the liberal press and Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of Christ", The Passion of the Liberal.

I never thought I'd see the day where I would agree with anything that conservative harridan had to say. SCARY!!!

I was so happy red-haired American Idol boy John Stevens got through. I liked from his first audition and while I don't think he'll end up as the winner, he definitely has a music career ahead of him. He is so young.

I was surprised he got the highest vote count for the night, and I was almost tempted to call in and vote for him myself. He's got such a great voice, and his style is so different than what's on popular radio right now.

I know there are many people out there in America who want to be able to buy the kind of music that a singer like John Stevens might sing. There's a ton of people out there who hate rap and hip hop, and like music like Norah Jones. Someone on the American Idol chat boards said that perhaps Simon Cowell was thinking that John Stevens could be "the male Norah Jones." I remember even reading a interview with Simon Cowell where he said that the public was ready for singers like Clay Aiken from last year's show. Perhaps John Stevens is this year's "Clay Aiken".

John Stevens is just so amazingly adorable!

So I'm heading up to my corporate office in Sacramento next week to train some already overworked guy on how to do my job. I'm going to try and train this guy in two days on what I've been doing for the last four years. Whatever.

I feel bad for him because I was supposed to take some work off of his schedule, and now he's going to have to learn my job. They probably won't pay him any extra money either.

This is spooky. Here's my horoscope for today.

Have you ever seen one of those speeded-up films showing a flower opening? Such movement is taking place all around us. We fool ourselves into thinking that our situations are static. We imagine nothing will ever alter. For good or for bad, we have got what we have got, or so we figure. Thus, change, even the inevitable, takes us by surprise. The change you are going through, has been a long time coming. Finally, though, it is starting to happen in a big way.

I've been renting the HBO series "Band of Brothers", and when I think about what those guys went through I feel ashamed at my own meager suffering. I had this same feeling when I watched Adrien Brody in "The Pianist" last year. I felt ashamed for worrying about getting laid off, when the pianist character had to worry about staying alive.

My film history teacher is your typical political left wing college professor. He was denigrating the actions of the US in World War 2, especially after he'd seen Robert MacNamara in "The Fog of War". MacNamara was the one who ordered the fire bombing of Japan, and my film history teacher was ranting on about that.

And I'm sitting there thinking, okay, the Nazis bombed London, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and Robert MacNamara is a bad guy. I'm not about to defend Robert MacNamara, but come on. You can't single him out, and not talk about the Nazi bombings of Europe, the Final Solution and the Holocaust of the Jews, not to mention how many chinese people the Japanese army killed. The Chinese still bear grudges against Japan for those wartime atrocities.

I wouldn't mind that my film history professor was a left wing political radical so much, if he could argue his position logically instead of taking the moral high ground. What, like he doesn't think that the people in the class don't know their world war 2 history as well.

Of course no one in class says anything back to him. Why even bother? It's so not worth it. Why argue with someone who doesn't base his opinions on logic? The film history professor only softened his world war 2 stance when one of the guys in class brought his dad to class. He wouldn't have dared spout that illogical world war 2 anti-US rhetoric against someone who looked like they could have been a young soldier defending the country during the second world war.

Why he does it to us his class is so disrespectful, like we're so uneducated that we couldn't argue his butt into the ground if we felt like it. But it's a night class, who has the energy to argue with a left wing political nut? When he starts his political ranting, people just sit there frozen and no one talks and we pray that he shut up and just start the movie. This is a film history class, and not a platform for him to spout his illogical anti-US drivel.

And I sit there thinking, well, now I know why people don't want to fund public education. He wouldn't be so bad either, if he could just argue his opinions logically and use facts. I could respect him for that, because I would know he respected me enough to make sure his arguments make sense. But he doesn't do that, and he talks to us like we don't know anything about anything. It's kind of like getting an education at the DMV.

Wow, I'm like freaking out! Changing jobs is so stressful! I thought moving apartments and grandma dying suddenly last year was stressful, but this is one is right up there.

This is my fifth job in 13 years. When I was changing jobs every two years, the whole process was stressful but I was so used to doing it and it was happening so often that I think I became used to it. I've been at this current job now for four years, and it's kind of frightening to think about leaving.

The current job sucks and has majorly sucked for a long time, but I was used to it. Now I'm going to have to start over, and although I'm not looking forward to it, I am, sort of looking forward being in a new place and making new friends and doing new things.

So I just talked to the medical consultant I've been working with since 2001, another ex-boss, and he was really bummed I was leaving. He said he's going to call my new boss tomorrow and talk to him. That was nice. I don't know what good it will do, but it is sweet that he wants to call. He said he's going to recommend that I continue to consult with the company for as long as possible, because I helped to develop the product.

The medical consultant, he's a gastroenterologist actually, told me he knows someone high up in management at the new company, and that he'll put in a good word for me with his friend. Isn't that sweet?

This doctor is really nice, tough and a little difficult to work with, but really, really fair. He doesn't get along with too many people, so I think he is truly sorry to see me go. I'll miss him too. This guy was really smart, and despite his sometimes gruff manner, very, very easy to work with and for.

So I resigned from my job today. My boss was really nice about it, and I'm not one to burn bridges so I offered them my consulting services until they can hire someone else. I told my boss, "I don't want to leave the company in a lurch, and I want to make my departure a win-win situation for everyone." My boss thought it was a good idea, and we're going to go over more stuff tomorrow morning.

He was so weird too. He said "I was just thinking it was working out fine that you were working at home in San Francisco", and I'm thinking "yeah right". But I said, "You know if the new job doesn't work out, I can always come back right?". And he laughed and said, "Sure." I think he was glad to see me go, but he wasn't going to say that either since they still need to me to get some work done.

It would be so much fun to burn some bridges, but it's not good karma and I may need to come crawling back to them if the new job doesn't work out.

I start my new job on March 17, St. Patrick's Day. It's a 30-day contract to perm arrangement, but I've spent every day since last Wednesday talking to my new boss that it feels like I already know her very well. I really like her, and I think that's a good thing.

But I am freaked out! This job hunt thing has been happening so fast. I just started applying for jobs on February 6, and by February 27 I was offered a job. A friend who's a recruiter in Silicon Valley told me that I should feel so incredibly grateful that I was able to get a job right away. She said it's a very tough job market out there. I even got a 6% raise in pay, and that's a miracle considering the horrible economy right now.

And I am so grateful, but I'm dizzied by the speed of the events. I don't think what just happened will sink in right away, probably not until I'm in my brand new office building in downtown San Francisco.

I really need to write out my metaphorical reading of Mel Gibson's "The Passion" movie. In my own mind, it's kind of like vewing The Passion of Christ from a christian mysticism perspective. Like how would Bernard of Clairvaux or St. John of the Cross view Gibson's movie, if I could be that presumptuous.

I'll have to google the Net to see if somebody has written a christian mysticism interpretation of this movie. That's how I see this movie anyway.

With all this job stressorama going on in my life, I haven't even thought about voting and tomorrow is primay election day in California. Super Tuesday, as the media people are calling it.

I really like John Edwards, and I'm almost tempted to vote for him. I'll have to look at the polls to see where Kerry is at. I'd love John Edwards to be Kerry's VP, but not to be at the top of the ticket.

Then there are also those state and city measures to vote on. I'll look at everything tonight, fill out my absentee ballot and hand it in to the polling place tomorrow.

Wild weekend starting Friday.

I got a job offer on Friday, and I'm just trying to finalize the details. I'll blog more about this when it's more concrete.

I saw "The Passion of Jesus Christ" on Friday, and I cried the whole way through. I don't know why people are saying the film is anti-semitic, because Jesus is jewish, so is his mom, and his disciples and his followers. Or have people conveniently forgotten that part of JC's life? Jesus had a bar mitzvah and had to read Torah in the temple, get over it! For awhile, Christianity was on off-shoot of judaism until the religion broke off and went its separate way.

I've been reading reviews of the movie over the weekend, one movie critic said that it's the kind of movie that will illicit an individual reaction in each person.

I totally loved the movie. I didn't think it was too violent, gory yes, but not too violent. I knew JC had been scourged, but I didn't really know what scourging was really about.

For me the movie was about the the journey of a believer of God, and JC showed the way. If you truly give up your life to follow God's plan for you on this world, there are certain consequences that will happen. Maybe not as bloody as JC's, maybe you don't have to physically give up your life, but there will be a death of the ego.

I was really inspired by the movie because it showed JC making the ultimate sacrifice for God's plan in this world. It made me think that what I have to give up, if I'm following God's plan for my life, is nothing compared to what JC had to give up. And JC is of course, the ultimate role model.

The Satan character was spooky! The character was very androgynous, neither male or female but both. Not sure what that meant. The Satan character said it's not worth sacrificing for the stupid human people, that it's never been done. JC says no, it's worth it because it's his father's plan.

The parallel to the Torah/Old Testament story of Father Abraham willing to sacrific his son Isaac is made, but taken one step further. Father Abraham had so much obedience to his god that he would sacrifice his own son. God has so much love for humanity, that he would sacrifice his own son, and Jesus had so much obedience to his father, his god, and he loved humanity so much that he would sacrific his own life.

I've got a whole metaphorical way of looking at "The Passion of Christ", where each character or group of characters in the story represents some aspect of humanity. I'll have to write it out someday when I have time.

It's an interesting way to look at the story, because then the Jewish elders, the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees, become the part of ourselves that resists change, that will kill the messenger, that will resist anything new and unknown. You have to ask yourself when have I resisted something new and unknown, when I have I hated change so much that I have in my mind killed the person who was instigating the change.