I'm sitting here waiting listening to one of my favorite jazz tunes, My Favorites Things by John Coltrane and wondering what happened to that autiobio essay I started on the paper table cloth at that fancy restaurant in Carmel in 2000. Carmel used to be an artisit colony and the restaurants put paper table clothes on the tables so the artists could sketch or write as they ate. So I obliged and started writing a piece called "A Life Lived Through Jazz", which was about having the most important moments of my life magically explained while I was listening some jazz record.

There is something so wicked, so cityish, so sinful, so delightful about listening to jazz for me. I think of streets I walked at night in Manhattan, DC and San Francisco where I heard some guy on a street corner wailing away on his saxaphone, the sound eerily echoing through the scrscraper caverns. Or the time we cleared out a college party by playing John Coltrane's A Love Supreme. Or sitting in countless bubble baths with glass of wine or champagne in hand and listening to jazz music on the radio. Or that senior I slept with occassionally in college, when I was a freshman, with the huge jazz record collection. He would ply me with ouzo, carefully select a jazz record to play, and then we would have sex. Afterwards, I would watch him meticulously clean the record in his birthday suit. He would then carefully choose another one and come back to bed, not to make love, but just to hold me. I would lay my head on his chest and listen to his heart beat in tune to whatever record he was playing. An interesting way to get a jazz education, I suppose. I think I was attracted more to his record collection than to him. He lived right down the hall, drove a Mercedes, supplied free drink and demanded nothing of me until I showed up at his door in the wee hours of the morning; he was the perfectly convenient college lover. And when I did show up at his door in my sleep attire, which I seem remember was just a tshirt, all I had to do was smile and listen to him talk about jazz music and his beloved collection. But what man wouldn't want a willing 18 year old to show up at his door wearing nothing but a tshirt and panties? And always so agreeable and pleasant too!

There used to be a radio station devoted completely to jazz, called KJAZ (what else), when I first moved to San Francisco. That station has long since gone and now I listen to classical music while I bathe.

I've trying to slog my way through John Henry Days. It's a good book but the reading is slow. I wanted to finish it in West Virginia since we were actually going to go John Henry Days, but I got sidelined by Confederated in the Attic. I love that book. It was so much more easier to read than this John Henry book. I don't know if Confederates is so good because it was written by a former war correspondent who is used to writing for the media and well versed in the art of keeping the reader with a limited attention span interested or if it's good because it's a non fiction book and sometimes, true life is better reading than fiction.

I want to finish John Henry Days only because I hate starting a book and not finishing it. There's something very bad for me about starting a book and not finishing it. It's kind of rude, since the author spent time on his creation and it's a dishonour for the reader not to finish it. I'm the same way with movies, even bad ones. I have to watch it to the end, just in case the film gets it together and redeems itself.

So I'm playing my favorite jazz tunes to get me through, but even that's not working. I sat in a different chair to take a break and I fell asleep and woke up to Take the A Train. And now I'm getting de ja vu, like I've written a whole thing abuot jazz on my blog before. Oh well, I guess it doesn't matter. It just shows that jazz music does permeate my thoughts alot or just that I play jazz music from time to time. What's the difference?

On the way to screenwriting group on Tuesday, I twisted my right ankle. I was wearing my oh so comfy dankso clogs and mindlessly walking down the sidewalk to my car, fantasizing about something or other, when I felt my ankle buckle and then sharp pains shooting through my ankle. I do this all the time, so I didn't think anything of it. I even did a 45 minute workout later that night in guilt for eating like a pig vacation.

On Wednesday while getting out of the shower, I look down at my right ankle and I notice it's a little swollen but still I shrug it off, thinking the swelling will go down during the day. I even went on my usual two mile walk at work during my morning and afternoon breaks.

On Wednesday night I'm at my chiropractor and he starts freaking out because my ankle is really swollen and he tells me I need to ice it. He keeps asking me if it hurts and I say no, it only hurts when I bend it or stretch forward. Still, he freaks out some more and begs me to ice my ankle.

I spent the rest of the night watching my Ken Burns' Jazz series which I taped last year with my ankle elevated and an ice pack on it. Still no pain.

Not today. Today my right ankle is killing me so I have a brace on it that I remembered I had. My left leg and knee are now also hurting because I'm walking funny and not putting that much weight on my right leg, so my left leg is taking all my weight and it's protesting in a serious way.

I can't believe this! I've never had my ankle swell like this before. So weird. I feel old and like a total invalid. Is this what I'll have to look forward to when I grow old? If it is, I'm definitely going to find a way to die before my god gets totally messed up.

Then this morning, I had a dream about Nazis. I don't think I've had a dream about Nazis since high school and college, when I was into my Holocaust phase. In my previous dreams, I was always running from the Nazis and they were always chasing me. They never caught me though and in some of the dreams, I even joined the resistance.

In this new dream, I'm in some kind of prison or concentration camp and we're putting on some kind of play or circus for the prisoners and the Nazis are watching, but it's really just a front for some big escape we're planning. How strange to have a Nazi dream after all these years and to be caught and in a prison camp? I wonder if this means something. At least I was trying to escape and I looked pretty healthy.

Maybe I had this dream because I finally watched that italian movie "A Beautiful Life" a few weeks ago. I had no idea it was about a Nazi concentration camp. Or maybe it's all those years of watching Hogan's Heroes as a child coming back to haunt me. I'm not sure.

So today I'm not walking and I'm bummed, so I'm eating my new comfort food, lentils and rice and tabouleh. I love this dish and it's part of new kosher levitical diet so I can eat as much of it as I want.

I'm bored at work today. I'm supposed to be working on some project that's due next week, but it's very hard to do and I don't feel like doing it. Instead, I'm surfing the net trying to find a video store that carries Ken Burns' Civil War and Baseball series.

A friend of mind recommended I read "Confederates in the Attic" while I was on vacation in West Virginia and I did and I loved it. The book made me want to watch Ken Burns' Civil War series. I think I am slowly getting into a civil war kick. I even bought a civial war book at a library book sale in West Viriginia. The name of the book is "A Stillness at Appomattox" by Bruce Catton. I definitely want to read all of Shelby Foote's books too. In fact, I want to read all the Civil War books, the good ones at least.

I've been thinking I will use the Confederacy as a model for my Elf Kingdom series . The Confederacy was basically a rural/aggrarian region making war with the industrialized north. Unlike the confederacy, the Elf Kingdom people were enslaved after they lost the war and I can use the black slave stories of the south as a model for the elf people enslavement. I'll use my knowledge of Holocaust history too, so I'll probably combine both the black slave south stories with the jewish concentration camp stories and come up with a totally new enslavement story for my elf people. I have a feeling that enslavement of human beings by other human beings is the same, no mattter what the time and culture.

In Confederates in the Attic, Shelby Foote said something like the worst thing, the tragedy of the civil war was the North freeing the black slaves. The idea of freeing the black slaves was a grand one and a right idea, but then the north didn't have a plan for what to do with black slaves and left them on their own. We're still suffering the effects of this failure. This point was reinforced in the first episode of Ken Burns' Jazz series. The narrator of episode 1 said that after reconstruction, the northern republicans and the southern democrats made a deal and out of that deal came Jim Crow laws and segregation. The narrator then went on to say that segragation would rule the south for the next 50 years and with segregation came regular lynchings of black people and the emergence of the Klu Klux Klan.

This fact made me sad, very sad. It made me think that the Civil War was all for nothing. So many people died in that war. In the north 1 out of 10 northern soldiers died in the Civil War. But for the south, the death toll was worse. 1 out of every 4 southern men died during the civil war. And all for nothing because about 20 years later, Jim Crow laws took slavery's place.

Interestingly enough the deal was brokered by Northern republicans since Lincoln was a republican too. Didn't that movie "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?" make a point about the betrayal of the south by the southern democrats?

And when the Jim Crow laws were finally dismantled in the south and integration took place, the public school system went from okay to really, really bad. History is very complicated isn't it? When you do one good thing, along comes another bad thing that is sometimes even worse.

I'm probably the only woman in America who doesn't like "Sex in the City". I don't have cable premium channels so I don't watch it, and from what I've seen of it, I didn't like it. It's boring! Why would I want to watch skinny women dressed in what looks like very ugly clothes and shoes and their totally boring lives?

Honestly, I tried to watch it and I did try to relate to it, but I couldn't and I love clothes and fashion and have been a serious Vogue reader since I was 13 years old. I think their clothes are pretty trashy and those shoes! Do they have jobs? I wouldn't be taken seriously in any fortune 500 company meeting worth their salt if I walked in wearing shoes like that.

But maybe that's the difference. I actually work for a living and spent time climbing the corporate ladder where I competed with men and sometimes other women for position and power. If I behaved at all or dressed like any of the girls in Sex and the City, I wouldn't be sitting in my cushy office right now in my cushy office job.

I guess people like watching fantasy shows, but isn't that what soap operas are for? And didn't people get enough of wanting to watch fantasy shows with old shows like Dallas, Falcon Crest and Dynasty?

The pink section on Sunday had all these articles on the Sex and the City girls. BORING! This is one cultural phenomenon I'm glad I'm missing and I don't think I'm alone.

I was listening to the radio on the way home from screenwriting group tonight and I heard this voice that sounded to me like Robert Smith from The Cure and so of course I fell in love with the guy's voice and song.

The name of the group is called Dashboard Confessional and the name of the song is called "Screaming Infidelities".

You gotta love a line like this one "Your hair, it's everywhere. Screaming infidelities And taking its wear." I was of course, singing along in my car.

My journal entries from the first days of my West Virginia trip. The tenses are all off. This is what happens when you write late at night when you're on vacation. I'm too lazy to fix it. Besides it's a good exampe of why you should never try to write seriously while on vacation. Vacation is about having fun and relaxing and not writing. Unless of course, it's a working vacation, then well, that's different. Some of it may seem repetitive.

More Day 1 - July 1
We rented a mini suv instead of a compact car. Thought that a chevy tracker would somehow look better on country roads than a Hyundai. For $3 more a day, it seemed a good bargain. I was bummed that we had virginia license plates instead of west virginia ones. Didn't want the locals to think we were tourists.

The people at the rental car place call Charleston "Charley-West", we think to distinguish it from the other Charleston in the Carolinas.

Day 2
My friend and I take a walk to see horses on someone's farm. It's along the country roads. This is my first real view of West Virginia. The road is windy and the hills are rolling. We feed the horses grass. How bucolic!

My friend's aunt was flying into the Greenbriar Airport and we go to meet her. It's raining on the way there. One of those emergency alert services message comes on. Only it's not a test; it was real. My friend and I had never heard a real emergency alert service message before. The message said there was a thunderstorm approaching with heavy rain and hail and to not be afraid to pullover. The message said to be alert until 2:30. We don't know if it's for 2:30 pm or 2:30 am. The car clock said 2 pm. We both looked at each other both saying we'd never heard a real emergency alert service message before. My friend tells me that we needed to count the seconds between the thunder noises because the number of seconds will tell us how many miles away the storm was. We stop and count and it's 10 seconds, but we still aren't sure if the storm is heading our way and if we were driving into it. We see other cars driving in the direction of the airport, so we decide to move on. The emergency alert services message comes on every 5 minutes.

We get to the airport and the plane we are waiting for is delayed. Finally the plane lands and my friend's aunt is okay. She didn't know why her plane was circling. Guess they don't tell the passengers what's really going on.

Later than night, we go to a brass concert at Carnegie Hall in Lewisburg. The concert is supposed to be outdoors but because of the rain, it's moved indoors. It's the event of the evening in town and many townspeople show up. Afterwards, we head over to a small bar call the Hobnob. They tell us it's the hippest bar in town, in Lewisburg West Virginia that is. Four old white guys play jazz in the front. They tell us the literati of the town hang out there. The bar is full of locals and young kids. There is even a table full of women wearing hats like in The Divine YaYa Sisterhood book. There are about 30 people in the bar and they tell us it's a swinging night there.

Day 3
Another walk this time on my friend's sister's property. She lives in a holler. From the air, it looks like a wedge shaped strip of land in the forest. We see deer, possums and the beaver pond that the pesky beavers made when they tried to flood the farm out. There's a barn on the property full of hay and another one where the cows come to escape the heat. My friend's sister rents her land out to a farmer for his cows to graze. My friend thinks she sees a snake. She calls me over to look but I told her I didn't need to see a snake. We pick green apples to take to the horses. The horses love the small green apples.

Next, we drive to my friend's mother and stepdad's property which is beside Droop Mountain. They live up on the next mountain over. The farm is a 150 acre parcel of land. It's beautiful up there and they live in a two bedroom house that they built themselves. We walk around and talk and eat dinner. My friend and her family talk about old times. I think about the joy of my not so close dysfunctional family.

Day 4
It's the Fourth of July and we're invited to my friend's sister's boyfriend's cousins' house in another small town called Renick for a holiday lunch. He says he's obtained bikes for us so we can bike along the Greenbriar trail and then go swimming in the river. The Greenbriar trail is 76 miles. We bike about three miles and then swim in a muddy murky river. We see lightning on the ridge in front of us and we worry about the lightning hitting the water, so we head back.

At the picnic, we have home made bread and butter pickles which are divine and authentic west virginia barbecue pork. We also have two different kinds of potato salad and a baked bean dish. The meals is a very authentic West Virginia type of meal. Since I don't normally eat this kind of food, I eat way too much and ended up sitting in a chair on the lawn outside bloated from my gorging. Everyone else seems to have done the same, so I'm not embarrassed.

We hear the Shrub is in West Virginia that day giving a speech in some town called Ripley. We speculate that maybe he came here in case the terrorists bomb DC. There's a former bunker nearby. Maybe he wanted to be close to the bunker. The whole point of our trip was to be somewhere safe where the terrorists wouldn't dream of bombing and the Shrubmeister comes here. So much for planning.

To see fireworks we drive to the Greenbriar Resort. The local people park their cars along the road and invade the golf course. The Greenbriar resort security patrol is there so the riffraff like us don't get too close to the hotel. My friend and I settle on a spot, which turns out is directly in front of the fireworks launcher. We're also close enough to the hotel to hear the music they're playing and the sound of people clapping. The fireworks show, surprisingly, lasts half an hour. The Greenbriar must have lots of money. Some of the fireworks are like strobe lights and we're definitely too close because we have to shield our eyes. We're so close that we can see the dud fireworks that don't go off and crash to the ground instead. The local townspeople are there with their coolers and lawnchairs. Children run around the perfectly manicured golf course while the security patrol looks on.

Day 5
Rest day. Our hostess made us a typical West Virginia breakfast. I had cheesey corn grits for the first time. It tastes like cream of wheat only grainier. We also had the totally fatty bacon that people in San Francisco would never dare admit they eat and crave and homemade fresh out of the oven biscuits. Our hostess is known for her baked products. We sit around and laze in the West Virginia sunshine, since the storm has since disappeared.

Later, we go to a party in Lewisburg that our hostess is invited to. The party is at a country type mansion and it's obvious that the people there have alot of money, since there's a brand spanking new grand piano in one of the living rooms. The people pretty much look like they could live in California and are at some hot summer party out in the suburbs, that is until they open their mouth and speak to you. California we are definitely not in.

Since we have a 45 minute windy road drive back home, I decide not to drink. The drive normally makes me a little nauseous with all its twists and turns and I could see myself having to hurl my cookies if I drank too much. Besides the weather is very muggy now and it's just too hot to drink.

On my afternoon walk I started making a list of the crazy things I've been doing for love since February.

1) I started a collection of pinot noir wine because I found out it's hottie boy's favourite wine. Now that I am seriously out of love and don't drink that much wine anyway because my accupuncturist said I'm allergic to red wine, what am I supposed to do with all this wine. Pinot noir isn't cheap either.

2) I bought books by one of his favorite authors, Michael Chabon. This decision I don't regret.

3) I watched the movie "Wonderboys" because he said it's one of his favorite movies and totally hated it. Maybe the book will be better. This episode reminds of going to a restaurant on a friend's recommendation and hating it and then wondering the whole time while you're eating the bad tasting food, whether you need to contintue your friendship with someone who can't tell good food from bad.

4) I watched "The Legend of Bagger Vance" because we got into an argument about it and actually totally loved this movie and even got a wild thought in my head the hottie marina boy was really my Krishna, my guru in disguise. NOT!

5) I fantasized about all the fights we would have, because he's a bit of a slacker and a flirt, and I got right away that these traits of his would drive me off the deep end. I sympathized with his other aquarian girlfriend, the one who he says "ripped his heart out", thinking that if I were her, I'd probably boot his butt out of my life too.

6) I created a database on my palm pilot to track good wines, especially pinot noirs. Never mind that the only time I drink wine is when I'm at a party or at a restaurant and I never drink wine at home anymore ever. This is okay I think, because now I can refer to my list when I go shopping for wine presents.

7) Thinking I was so in love with someone without really getting to know them, just because well, they're as cute as heck! I mean, movie star cute, not rock star cute like the hottie man in the Witchblade episode, but totally movie star cute. Think Charlie Sheen with beautiful blue eyes. And he does yoga too! But I don't know him and somehow while I was in the mountains of West Virginia where people live simply and do things like falling in love for what seems like more practical reasons, like my hostess who is now dating a guy she's known for 20 years, being in major crush with a guy I barely know, did not seem like a good thing.

Maybe that's what vacations are for; to clear your mind of the junk and nonsense of your life. Anyway, screenwriting marina hottie boy was at the end, what I thought he was, a distraction to my writing. And I don't need his kind of distraction in my life right now. Not if it's not going to contribute to my writing career.

It's not that I don't count him out, and don't secretly fantasize that someday we'll get together, but I'm not worried about it now. Besides if I do really well in my writing and publish and have my Andy Warhol "five minutes of fame", who knows what beautiful men I might meet. I read somewhere that a good question to ask yourself about a guy is "if you could have anything you wanted in life, would you still want the guy?" It's not that I wouldn't want screenwriting marina hottie boy, it's just that I don't him well enough to make an informed choice. I don't think I can be very much in love if I'm not informed. It's a sad but true fact.

It's weird to be back at work after two weeks of vacation. The traffic on 19th Ave and South 280 was slow as usual. My office looked the same and when I asked the receptionist if anything had happened while I was away, she said "nothing important".

I didn't listen to my usual radio shows while on vacation, so it's kind of odd to hear Jim Rome ranting about something like he's doing now. Somehow The Jungle and vacation in West Virginia weren't very compatible. The house I was staying at was so far away that I couldn't get good radio reception anyway. And the time zone thing threw me off since the two national radio shows I listen to are West Coast based and instead of listening to them at my regular time, I had to wait three hours.

I did the usual office thing and distributed gifts to the few choice people in my office, the receptionist since my office is near that area and the only other person in my group. Thank god there's only two of us and I didn't have to worry about buying a whole bunch of stuff. Then there's the present for "the kitchen", which is usually food. You put the food in the kitchen and magically it disappears. Who eats is is unknown, but in any office news of food in the kitchen travels fast.

For my kitchen gift, I bought some fudge made in West Viriginia and since I didn't buy any for myself, I had to eat a piece. It was very good. Authentic too since I bought some homemade fudge at John Henry Days in Talcott, West Virginia on Saturday July 13.

I stepped on the scale this morning and I gained the four pounds I lost in June, so now I have to go back on my strict eating plan to get back to the weight I was when I left. I'm also doing alot of cleansing remedies since I did nothing but chow on pork in all its glorious forms in West Virginia. From fatty tasty bacon, to pork sausage, sugar cured ham, countless numbers of shredded barbeque pork sandwiches, pork everything actually. Our hostess is also a fabulous baker and so of course we sampled all her cakes, corn pone, biscuits, and her homemade truffles.

I was so off my new kosher/levital diet, but I rationalized it by telling myself I was on vacation and it's not like I eat food like this all the time, if hardly ever. I think I'm going off meat until August just to get the pork and pork fat out of my already clogged arteries.

I drank my usual lemonade cleansing drink yesterday and had the worst headache. It freaked me out. Did I really eat that many toxins while on vacation? But it's so much fun to eat like a pig on vacation! It's like a free pass into the world of food and I never stick to my strict eating plan while far away from home. It's way too hard! I'm not a food nazi either and I don't ever want to force my weird way of eating on anyone, except my next husband. I'm hoping I marry a food freak like myself so I don't feel so strange about my odd food habits or guilty either.

At least it's warm where my office is. Our last few days in West Virginia were drizzly and raining and quite cold. Where the usual summer vacation weather is, god only knows. It wasn't in West Virginia. There were quite a few very muggy days, but not as many as I was told I should have had. Oh well. I hate muggy hot weather anyway. Maybe I brought the cold foggy weather from SF with me.

A two week vacation is great. It's just weird to be back in one's normal life when it's over.

I watched Witchblade tonight and OH MY GOD, there was the cutest looking guy on the show. He's supposed to be Cartaphilus, the Wandering Jew, who Christ condemned on his way to Golgatha. Man, the actor they picked to play him was soooo cute. I wonder if every woman watching the show thought the same thing. He was beautiful like the beautiful elf man in The Lord of the Rings. He was like the love god himself Jim Morrison from the Doors only modern.

And of course, he was the bad guy, a demon, who killed and maimed without a conscience. But still, god was he cute. I taped the episode and had to watch it again because Mr. Demon was so darn handsome. It just reinforces my theory that the bad boys for me are often the major hotties in my life.

And it was love at first sight, like how every girl fantasizes, meeting some guy in some weird place like at a restaurant bathroom, and you both stand there and stare into each others' eyes, where you're half expecting the earth to move. Then of course, they make Mr. Demon, such a guy-guy and he drives a motorcycle, but he's into art and he puts the seat down in the toilet. Now if the guy did yoga, he'd be a dream come true.

I don't believe in first love myself, but it's my total fantasy that I meet a guy at some weird place and we stare into each other eyes and the next thing you know, you're married. I thought I had a love at first sight experience in February in my screenwriting class with my beautiful marina hottie boy, but the only eyes that were sparking were mine. His were turned away and surveying all the available chicks in the room, not including me. Ah well. He was a beautiful man and there's nothing like have a pretty boy in your class that you can stare at if class is boring. So he was good at least for that.

I have no idea why I thought this particular actor playing demon boy was so attractive either. But god, he sure was and he also had a great voice. His character was also plain speaking which I liked. When the witchblade chick told demon boy she had fallen in love with him, he replied that he had fallen in love with her too. God, what a totaly fantasy! An honest man. The only guy who ever admitted to me what he really felt was Brian and I think that confession came not of his own volition, but out of a need to explain our relationship, which of course was incredibly unexplainable. When the witchblade chick said to Mr Demon guy that she'll never get used to watching him leave, he turns around and says, you won't have to, ever. Well the guy has been wandering around since the days of Christ, so you'd think he'd have picked up a few tips on what to say to a woman to make her happy and how to treat a woman. He's practiced, that's all.

Then of course to complete the total chick fantasy, Mr. Demon says at the end when he's dying that the witchblade chick is the only woman he's ever loved. Nothing like a guy dying in your arms and saying you're the only he's ever loved, which of course is true because now the guy is dead. How convenient.

Mr Demon guy reminded me of Anne Rice's The Mummy. Of course, you'd want a guy who's been wandering around this earth for centuries. Think of how many sex tricks the guy knows and how many positions. I'm bad, I know.

I wish I could fall in love at first sight but I never have. I don't know if it's because I don't believe in it or it's just never happened. I've never met a guy who had eyes I wanted to stare in for a very long period of time. Except there was this one guy at some outlet store near Jackson Square park a very long time ago. I couldn't take my eyes off him and he couldn't take his eyes off of me. I ran out of the store blushing and embarrassed about doing that, but I had the distinct feeling that the guy might have "the one" and I passed it up. But then again I was married at the time and it didn't make sense that there could be two "the ones" and I wasn't willing to think that maybe I had married someone who wasn't "the one." That would have been way to depressing. And I never ran into him again and I put the whole episdoe down to me salivating over some beautiful man in a store.

Finally at home, dreading over reading the 66 messages on my personal email. On my junk mail hotmail account, when I last checked there were 76 messages and counting and god only knows how many emails await me at work.

God, I love being home in San Francisco. I love the fog and the salty smell of the air. I just love being in a big city and close to an ocean.

So many things to think about. I've been writing a diary for my trip to West Virginia which I'll to post tomorrow. I'm only up to day 5 though and I have day 6 to 14 to work on. I just wish I could have blogged every day, but when on you're on vacation, it's hard to find the time. Plus, I felt so guilty logging on since each log on was a long distance call for my host. I left her some money, but I don't think it's going to be enough. I'm sure she'll email me if I need to send her more money.

The one fun thing about West Virginia which is so unPC of me is I started my mammy collection. My friend who has relatives there has one and I've been dying to start my own collection. I bought a picture from the 30's with a mammy which needs to be framed. The tag said it's from the 30's but who knows whether that's true or not. Then at a flea market on Tuesday near Lewisburg I bought a cast iron mammy. Then this girl Cindy whom we met and who lives next to the General Lewis Inn in Lewisburg and who is also a friend of our hostess, gave me her salt shaker mammy. I scored three mammies on this trip.

My friend was kidding me about me starting my racist collection. A mutual friend of ours also has a mammy collection. but since she lives in Berkeley proper, she has to hide it for fear of reprucussions we think from Berkeley PC nazis.

I wonder if I will be subject to the same PC scrutiny. I love my mammies. They're so cute.

We visited the Homestead Resort in Virginia and that was a shocker. Talk about days of the old south. The serving people were all black. The whole thing freaked me out a bit since I'd never seen anything like it, only read about it in books or seen it on TV. But Virginia is definitely a different state than West Virginia. Virginia is so much more formal and West Viriginia, more laid back, hippiesh and country hillbillyish. I'd been to Virginia before but I never noticed the formality of the state until I crossed the stateline from West Virginia.

Any way more to come. Sleep awaits after my long flight from back east. I'm very, very glad to be home.

I'm flying home tonight. Blogging on the road has been difficult on vacation for two reasons. Lack of time and where I'm staying, logging on to the internet is a long distance call. It's so different from home where logging on to the internet is a local call and I can stay on as long as I like. Here I've had to worry about logging during the cheapest time rates, which means I've either had to blog after 11 pm or early in the morning before 8 am. Either time has been difficult.

I tried to write something up in Pocket Word and then tried to copy it into my blog but for whatever reason, I couldn't do it. Just as well.

It's been a strange trip.

I just read a newsletter from an astrology site that I check frequently. There was this whole thing about the eclipses and how it affected the astrologer's life. I think I've been affected too.

Things, people that I thought that were very secure in my life, I found out on this trip aren't. It's kind of like being adrift on the ocean of life without the safety of what you thought was your life raft. It's kind of what I was expecting anyway, but still it hurts deeply on some level.

I had seen the signs earlier last month so I was prepared, but still ... The only good thing is that when your old life gets stripped away like this, it just means that another new life is starting. I also have a feeling that the new life will be so much better than the old. Maybe I'll find get the support I so want and crave in my life, which right now is sadly lacking.

It's not anyone's fault either. I'm just on such a different trip that most people. It's the sad but true life of an artist I think. Only other artists understand and then only just a litttle.

Most people, maybe 99.9% of the world is so caught up in having their needs fulfilled, that this is their whole life. With me, most of my needs have been fulfilled enough, so I'm content with my life. Not that I haven't struggled, because I have and I wasn't given any break in my life either by having very rich and loving parents who gave a big fat never ending trust fund. No, my contentment has been of my own making, my own design, my own hardwork. Sometimes I think that I'm content because I have such low expectations, but then again I think, it doesn't matter. It's contentment and happiness that count.

I mean sure things could be better, they always can. But I've got life pretty well damned handled, finally after all these years, and thousands of dollars, thousands of books, thousands of hours in therapy, seminars and classes, and thousands of bucketfuls of tears.

But it's this contentment with my life, that has allowed me the freedom to pursue my creativity, my art and now maybe finally work on it when I'm not working. It's been a long and difficult road to finding my true art, but I think writing may be it. At least I've made the decision at this point, that I'm never going to find out if writing is my true art unless I devote alot of time and energy to it.

It's like when I wanted run marathons. I devoted alot of time and energy into my running and I ran three New York City marathons before I decided that marathoning and long distance running wasn't my thing. But at least I had run three marathons to confirm my decision.

I need to do the same with my writing. I'm in year 4 of my writing quest and I've been pursuing it halfheartedly. I read somewhere that it takes five years for an artist to develop their style, their voice. I still have another year and a half to go, but this time I want to write with purpose and much more seriously than I've done it in the past.

When I was doing the climbing the corporate ladder thing, it took my five years to almost double my salary and responsibility level. And at the end of five years, I looked at my life and said being a corporate freak wasn't it.

I have a history of pursuing what I want and going for it in five years and being successful and finding out whether I want it or not. I need to do the same with writing. Except with my writing, I kind of think this is it. At least I hope it is. I don't know what I would do if writing didn't pan out. I'm sure there's something out there for me, I just don't what it is yet.

So it's writing for me until I decide that writing isn't it. My mission starts officially on July 20. I'm looking forward to what my new life will bring.

Trying to blog on a hot summer July night in West Viriginia. The mosquitos are eating me alive and moths are flying everywhere.

I'll try to review my trip from Day 1.

The airport shuttle arrives at my friend's house in Oakland at 4:30 am. Our flight did not leave till 7 am from San Francisco, but we didn't know what to expect with all the post 9/11 security.

The ride to SFO at that time of the morning only took at half an hour so we got there at around 5 am. To my surprise, we saw people doing curbside check in, which I thought was not allowed anymore. There were very few people in line. We looked inside and the line at the American Airlines counter was 100 people deep. There was an airline person there and we asked him where we needed to go to check in. He told us we should do curbside check in. Why more people weren't doing that is a mystery to me. You have to tip the guy about a couple of dollars per bag, but it was such a small price to pay to not have to wait in that very long line.

San Francisco is one of the few airports where there are no federal screeners. After all the mishaps with the private screeners, I wasn't sure if I felt very comfortable being checked in by non-federal screeners but what can you do.

The airport security at SFO is now set up like JFK and LaGuardia. If you don't have a ticket, you can't get to the gates. The screening process wasn't too bad, except that if you have a laptop, you have to take it out of your bag. A few people were getting extra screening with the security wand but it was hard to tell why they were getting picked out of line.

After awhile, I wanted to get wanded, just to see what the full security screening was like. But when my friend got wanded in Chicago, I quickly walked away, not wanting security to know that we were together.

The flight itself was uneventful. We had a 1.5 hour layover in Chicago and had fun trying to figure out how to get from the American Airlines terminal to the United Airlines terminal.

One thing I did notice was the presence of the oh so trendy turquoise jewerly that was worn by the majority of the women at SFO. At Chicago, I saw one teenager wearing something turquoise. Don't women in Chicago and the rest of the country read fashion mags? I mean, I even had my oh so trendy turquoise bracelet on and I'm not trendy at all.

The United Airlines plane we took to West Virginia was one of those small hopper airlines, that seated less than 30 people maybe, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the flight to Charleston WVA was only an hour.

The airport at Charleston is very small and the car rental places are right where you pick up your luggage. We were going to rent a compact car but somehow the lure of a mini SUV seemed a more appropriate vehicle for driving around in the country. The car rental guy told it was only going to be $3 more a day and so we rented a Chevy Tracker, which is kind of like a low rent Toyota Rav4. The engine is good but not that powerful. My Golf would leave the Tracker in the dust in a race, but for a rental car it's great. Plus we have 4 wheel drive should we ever need it.

We arrived at around 5 pm and my friend decided that we needed to go to one of those tourist traps to eat. We stopped at this eating place with shops called Tamarack. There were signs for it everywhere on the freeway.
The menu feature a more upscale version of WVA food and even had fried green tomotoes and bacon on the menu. I settled for a barbeque pork sandwich, which my native WVA friend said wasn't very authentic since the meat wasn't shredded enough.

The restaurant is surrounded by these shops which are supposed to represent the best of WVA arts and crafts. We decided to go back there on the way back to the airport when we fly home if we needed last minute gifts. I'm kind of bummed I didn't have the fried green tomatoes but we'll end up going back I think.

The 'skeeters are eating me alive now. More tomorrow.

Blogging from south eastern West Virginia, on a 100 acre farm belonging to my friend's sister. I can hear the sounds of bull frogs croaking in the stagnant pond nearby built by the beavers who tried to flood her out. Alas, the beavers are gone; it's kill or be killed here in the Appalachian mountains.

The farm, called the Rockdale Farm, lies at the end of a road. If I lived here, I would have a big barking dog and a shotgun so I could shoot any strangers who come on my property. If you love the silence of the country, this the place to be, but for me the isolation is hard to bear.

To get to town takes about 45 minutes on windy country road where deer, bunny rabbits, racoons and other animals dart in your path. Sometimes the road is paved and sometimes it's not. If you don't know where you're going, it would be easy to get freaked out and think you were lost.

This is beautiful country, unspoiled by industry, only because the windy roads make it impossible or any industry to sprout. Not that the state isn't trying. Everywhere you go, you see four colour brochures that sell West Virginia as the last great wilderness left in America. Perhaps they are right. You'd have to really want to live here to bear the isolation and the monotony of the trees and forests.

The people here are very friendly, which I don't find that surprising. I grew up in the country and most country folk are friendly on a one on one basis. My friend tells me it's the second to last poorest state in the nation; Mississippi being the poorest. Tourism is the only industry that West Virginia has and the country people know that.

In a general store near Droop Mountain, I had a fun flirtation with a guy whose car had Alberta license plates. He had a mountain bike attached to his car. There's a 76 mile river trail here that you can bike called the Greenbriar Trail. The trail runs along a river that you can swim in. We biked six miles of it on July 4th and swam in its muddy waters and watched lightning spikes on the ridge right in front of us.

Droop Mountain is the site of some civil war battle. We still haven't visited the site but we pass it on the way to my friend's parents' 150 acre farm which lies on the other side of Droop mountain.

Her mom says the weather is better on the top of mountain, especially in the winter time because the cold winter snow air settles down to the bottom of the valley. But when there are lightning storms, they're the first ones to get a bolt since there is nothing else on the mountain to hit.

We went to a luncheon today with authentic west virginia food. Corn pone, sugar cured ham, sweetened ice tea, baked beans, macaroni salad with mayo but no eggs, and cut tomoatoes from the garden. The ham was salty and fried to death but so delicious. Corn pone is nothing but a moister corn bread but it's what they eat here so it's native cuisine.

I had grits for the first time a couple of days ago. It tasted like a grainer version of my mother's lumpy cream of wheat. But again like the corn pone, it's authentic native cuisine.

There's so much more to write but technology seems so strange here in the Appalachian mountains. It almost feels sinful to be typing away on little baby laptop with pocket explorer that can't read javascript. Somewhere a West Virginian is having a laugh at my predicament. It's so typical of the state.

I've been trying to modify my blog so I don't use javascript to show my archives, because my baby laptop which I totally love, has pocket explorer and pocket explorer can't read javascrit. Damn! Much as I love my baby laptop which is great for writing stories on Bart, Muni, etc, it's got way too many drawbacks when travelling.

You can log onto the Net but the connection is so slow. And there's no way to tell what your connection speed is either. I also can't load programs like Final Draft, the screenwriting software that everyone uses, so I can't write screenplays while I'm on the road. I can't even use the template I found for Word because pocket word doesn't accept template.

I'm going to have buy a laptop and I think I might just buy an old laptop. I mean, I don't travel that much and it's usually for vacation. I just need to be able to get on the Net at a reasonable speed and maybe work on a screenplay.

As you can tell, I'm getting ready for my vacation to West Virginia. My flight is at 7 am tomorrow, which means the shuttle freaks will pick me and my friend up at 4 am. I'm leaving my car at her house in Oakland so I can avoid those damned SF street cleaning tickets. Actually, it's probably cheaper to get the street cleaning tickets than to park, since street cleaning tickets are only $25 each.

My apartment is totally clean and everything is in its proper place. I just hate coming bck to a messy apartment. I'm looking forward to drinking moonshine and seeing the hillbillies in their natural environment. I just like that it will be different than San Francisco, which I am getting very tired of lately.

I loved that Rob Morse column in Sunday's Chron about what it takes to live in SF. Things are easier when you have more money that everyone else. Not that money really matters, but you need alot of it to make your life very comfortable here.

Some people mistakenly think that money is not spiritual. My guru used to always say, you can't meditate well if you're wondering about debts, starving and where your next paycheck is coming from. Besides if you're working like a dog all the time, you won't have time to meditate, go on meditation retreats and all the other things you're supposed to do if you're spiritual. Not to mention you need money to buy the books you have to buy, the equipment, the outfits, etc.

My guru liked when his students were financially independent only because then you're not a burden on him, other students or society. He hated bums and freeloaders. He said being a bum and freeloader was bad karma. I think he was right. He said everyone had a god given talent, and being a bum, a freeloader and living off welfare and others is not a god given talent. If you're a bum and a freeloader, you're not using your gifts and that's definitely bad karma.

I hate that stupid 9th circuit court of appeals decision which says the pledge of allegiance is unconstitutional. Some guy on the news said the 9th circuit court of appeals gets overnturned more than any other circuit court. It's so embarrassing too, because it's some nut case from California, Sacramento to be exact who brought the suit. I'm sure this lawsuit has just solidified in people's mind outside of California, that our state is full of nuts and flakes.

Now, I don't mind care if people are aetheists, but in my experience, aetheists hate people who believe in god and try to attack them at every opportunity. Aetheists just aren't comfortable with the fact that anyone believes in god. Most people who believe in god are comfortable with aetheists, but not those oh so politically correct, smug, aetheists who think they're intellectually and morally superior to everyone else because they don't believe in god. Have you ever noticed that the people who advocate political correctness the most, are aetheists?

Anyway, you've got this aetheist nut case trying to impose his religious beliefs on the rest of the country. It's so typical it's not even funny. And you just know that the supreme court will take up the case and overturn the ruling. And that idiot from Sacramento who brought the suit, you just know that he'll come back a toad in his next life.

I'm so glad I don't work in Finance anymore, especially with all these accounting scandals going on. All finance and accounting departments for every publicly traded company will be heavily scrutinized from now on.

In the 12 years I worked in Finance, I worked for three publicly traded companies. They all has suspect accounting practices. Two of the companies were traded on Nasdaq and the other one traded on the New York Stock Exchange. All three companies used Deloitte and Touche as their accounting firms, so I was never exposed to the Arthur Anderson folks. I knew people who worked there though since people in Finance and Accounting go back and forth between public and private companies.

I even have a Worldcom story in my closet. Actually, it's about their subsidiary MCI. I worked in the MCI finance department for about a couple of years. I remember one quarter back in the 1989, or maybe even 1990, my boss told me that there was some kind of tax write off that they weren't going to report because it would materially affect the stock price. He said if anyone found out, he would lose his accounting license. He said they were going to report the tax write-off in the following quarter, just not this quarter. At the time, I didn't think anything of it, thinking everybody does weird stuff with their books. However in light of the Enron and now Worldcom scandals, I guess he should be glad no one found out.

At the next company I worked at, the one traded on the NYSE, we used to report earnings growth all the time in our press releases, even though technically, the company never really had enough revenue to cover expenses. All of that company's revenue growth came from investment income. Since the stock market was booming at the time I worked there, my company's investment returns were phenomenal. I asked my immediate boss about it and he laughed and said, "Sad, isn' it?"

I used to wonder why those brilliant Wall Street analysts never caught on and questioned us, but they let it slide. I have since come to believe that everybody does it and knows about it, and it's okay. My boss's boss told me once, he was glad I wasn't an investment analyst because if I was, he would be afraid of me. I wasn't sure if he was compilmenting me or not.

At the third publicly traded company, I worked in the IT department for the CIO. She basically hired me to do all the finance stuff since she had a worldwide budget of $30 Million. I think I used to do the same stuff that got Worldcom in trouble.

On the news, they said that Worldcom had improperly accounted for $3.8 billion in capital expenditures. The neat little accounting trick that got Worldcom in trouble is you can amortize capital expenditures over time. I don't remember how it goes exactly, but it's something like 3 years for software and 5 years for hardware and furniture. Anyway, simply what this means is, if you bought say $1 million worth of computer hardware in 2002. Instead of having to report or incur the expense in the year bought, 2002, you can report the expense over five years or the useful life of the product.

I used to jokingly refer to is as the "corporate credit card plan" because amortization of capital expenditures works like a credit card, especially if you're one of those people who never pay your bills in full every month. Corporations, especially publicly traded ones love it, because they can use the amortization to offset higher than normal expenses and still report an increase in revenue which translates into earnings growth and then stock growth.

All companies would have loved to amortize Y2K expenses, but the SEC put at a stop to that. They said that money spent to upgrade to Y2K could not be amortized and had to be incurred in the year done. Since Y2K was an upgrade, it could not be considered new software or hardware. If the SEC hadn't put their foot down on this issue, I think we woudl have probably seen more companies charged with improper accounitng methods.
I spent two weeks going over FASB, the Federal Accounting Standard Boards, and looking up accounting cases to see what expenses you could be legally capitalized and still pass a public audit. Because of new accounting laws for intellectual property which came about in I think, the early 1990's as a result of computers and technology, companies started capitalizing like crazy and not just physical equipment, but employees, consulting fees, conferences, etc.

Since you needed people to build software or build hardware, all of their time, even the food they ate sometimes or even their plane fares, could all be capitalized and amortized over 3 to 5 years.

God, the stuff I used to put in my amortization column was just amazing. But I did my research and I was definitely following FASB rules and accounting cases. And when D&T came to audit me, I had my paper trail ready and so I passed my audit with flying colors.

Those accounting/finance people at Worldcom probably got a little too carried away when they capitalized $3.8 billion. I'm sure they started amortizing acquisition costs, because you could technically say that cost to acquire a company is directly related to the cost of bring a piece of software or hardware to the company. There are no hard and fast rules for amortization, since computers and technology really added a new dimension to the amortization issue.

The problem is if you start capitalizing stuff and saying that it's for hardware or software, you need to make sure that the hardware or software project is viable, actually works, actually goes to market. If the project doesn't finish, you have to eat the expense in the year you abandon the project, sometimes even in the year you actually incurred the expense. I wonder if this is what happened at Worldcom. They over amortized on hardware/software projects that failed.

I mean, Worldcom couldn't help it I guess. The went on a huge acquisition binge, bought out all these companies and just at the time, they finished the buyouts, the bottom fell out of Wall Street and they couldn't sell their hardware/software. All those hardware/software projects had to be abandoned because there was no one around to buy them. In the meantime, Worldcom had started capitalizing all the expenses and spreading the expense out over 3 to 5 years. And when it came time to report their earnings, they pretended like the hardware/software projects were stll going, when in reality they were actually abandoned.

Poor Worldcom. I'm just glad I don't have to deal with Finance and money anymore. It's such a dirty business. And it's like that I think at all companies, especially at the public traded ones.

My favorite finance story is from the NYSE company I worked at for five years. Our beloved CFO, who was on the wagon/off the wagon alcoholic, would go to a bar with the CEo and over senior VPs in the afternoon, drink like fish, when he was off the wagon, decide some time while drinking what our earnings should be. Then they would come back, drunker than hell and hand my boss a paper bar napkin. The bar napkin has the numbers we were going to report that quarter. It was our job in Finance to get to the numbers on the napkin and make it all look legitimate and be able to pass a public audit. And we could do it too. Sad isn't it?

Most companies are having such a hard time, especially with a substantially lowered stock market. If you think people made money during the dot com stock craze, think about corporations. All corporations have money invested in the stock market. But when the dot come bubble burst, regular people lost money and so did most companies.

I think that's why most publicly traded companies can't report any earnings growth anymore. They don't have their investment income returns to help wih their earnings growth. There are very few companies whose revenue pays for their expenses. Corporations are like normal people; they totally spend more than they make.

Where these financial scandas will lead is anybody's guess. I'm just glad at hell i'm not in finance anymore.

That book on prosperity I've been reading is so great. I've been doing one of the exercises where you list out your wishes from the past, present and future. For the past, you wish that things that happened to you had gone a different way. For the present and future, you wish for how you want things to be.

It really works. Something about this exercise really works. I've been in such a good mood lately. Today while driving home in the car, the CSN&Y song came on called "Love the one you're with". That song was my theme song in college. Out of sight meant totally out of mind for me, when I was dating, and I was your typical american college girl who enjoyed whomever I happened to be with at the time. Didn't quite make my dates and boyfriends happy, but what the hell, I was young and it was college right?

I was thinking about my crush guy and how much I've been missing him, which is so uncharacteristic of me. That CSN&Y song made me realize that deep down, I'm still a part hippie chick from the 60's who doesn't believe in missing a guy. Out of sight means out of mind right? God, there are a ton of men to be explored, to be known and maybe even sometimes to be loved. In my old age, I've forgotten this well know fact of life.

So, one got away. BFD! Out of sight is out of mind and out of my life. Like CSN&Y say in their song "when you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with, love the one you'r with."

I saw the play Buried Child by Sam Shephard on Saturday. What a crazy, crazy play and so representative of the energy of Sam Shephard's early career, with the crazy dysfunctional family and images of food.

I wasn't sure if the Saturday audience at ACT liked it. There were two people, older, much older, from Monterey complaining about how they didn't understand the play. Did they even try? One of them, an older woman, she must have been around 80 years old with her frail bony body, lifeless white hair and papery thin blue veined skin, told the usher that she wished ACT would do more normal plays, plays that people could understand.

What was so great about this play, was the abundance of young kids, kids who probably know about Sam Shephard, maybe were even familiar with his work and came to see his pulitzer prize winning play. The five young girls in front of me, so young, bursting with fecundity, spoiled innocence and youth, loved it as did I.

Everytime I go to see a play now, I notice this odd generation gap. There was a show on PBS about theatre and the narrator said that theatre as institution is dying. He said the theatre needed to attract a younger audience to keep it going. I wonder if what he said is true.

The older grey haired qtip audience want plays that they can understand. The younger ones want to be shocked. Do the older ones forget that they too as youth needed to be shocked. Is that what happens when you get old, that after a certain point you can no longer accept new ideas, new things. That one day you wake up and you find that you only want to listen to music from your generation.

Isn't that what all those oldies music radio stations are about? Older people only wanting to listen to music of their youth. Older peope sneering at and hating the newer music and calling it noise. Didn't our parents say that that to us?

In college, there was a sign on one of the bathroom stalls in the Theatre building, which said "We are the people our parents warned us about." Perhaps it would be more fitting as we grow old for a sign like that to say "We are the people we hated as kids."

So this is what watching the Food TV network does for me. A few days ago, I watched a special on baseball park food. Interestingly enough, with all the great food at today's baseball parks, there are more hot dogs ordered than any other food item.

So today while shopping at Lowe's, I found a hotdog stand outside and what do I do? I buy a hotdog with mustard, onions, relish and sauerkraut and I wanted to buy two, which is what I usually do when I go to a baseball game, but I decided one was wicked enough for me.

No more watching the Food TV network!

The movie Endless Summer is on TV and I'm watching and I feel like I'm 13 years old, because that's the first time I saw this movie. I've seen this movie like about a dozen times all before the age of 18 and it brings back so many good memories of home and being in warm water and body surfing and laying out at the beach on Sunday afternoons.

I also decided tonight that I'm glad I didn't pursue acting. The fun of being somebody else and doing it in front of other people has definitely lost it charm for me. God, you're like a trained dog mouthing somebody else's words, telling somebody's else's truth and not your own.

Writing is so much better! You get to do what you do in private and you get to create and speak your truth and no one else's. No amount of applause and face recognition is worth the opportunity to speak your truth for the world to hear.

I just saw the play Angels Fall by Lanford Wilson and I feel bad because the play was for the most part really boring. I don't know if it was the acting or just the play itself, or maybe it's me, because I'm so used to watching TV and movies, but plays are just boring.

First of all, the characters never talk like real people. Dialogue must always be snappy and sparkling and I don't know about you, but I've never been in a conversation where the dialogue is snappy and sparkling like it is on stage, or if they have spoken that way, they could sustain it for more than a few minutes. In a play, the sparkling dialogue has to go for over an hour, maybe even 3 hours.

Then there are those long monologues and speeches. God, nobody ever talks for more than a minute in real life. And usually if someone does like that, they're like some stuffy professor type or something.

I feel bad because I go to plays now and I sit there thinking, this is the reason why the theatre in America is dying. It's boring, stuffy and unrealistic and the stories and ideas being put forth seem irrelevant somehow.

And this play, Angels Fall, should be relevant because it's about people stuck in a church after some disaster. It's so 9/11. But, I don't know. Watching it felt so artificial. Has 9/11 made me think that theatre is so irrelevant now? Granted Angels Falls did premier on Broadway in 1982 and 1983 and was even nominated for a Tony award for Best Play that year, so it it a little dated, but it was more than that.

I think I finally got tonight that the difference between plays and movies, is a play is about ideas and doesn't necessarily have to tell a story. A movie is storytelling in visual form and can be about ideas, but the movie's job is to tell a story. A play doesn't have to tell a story. And this play did not really have a plot.

Two couples along with a priest and a young boy are stuck in a church in some remote part of New Mexico after a mining accident at a uranium mine closes all the roads. Thatt's the whole plot. The rest of the play shows them interacting, having conversations and telling each other and the audience the story of their wretched lives. There's hardly any action, just people walking off and on stage. The only action is in the dialogue, that sparkly dialogue, that artificial way people talk only in plays.

One could even say the title of the play, Angels Fall, refer to the three male characters in the play, who have all been put up on pedestals by their groups and by each other. In the play, we see that they're just human, not divine, that they have free will and choice and they sometimes don't make very good decisions. And in a secondary theme, the play was also about doing what you love doing and not letting anyone tell you to do otherwise no matter how well intentioned.

I'm going to have to think about this play some more. I can't tell whether I liked it or not. The author is no slouch. He won a pulitzer pruze for a play called Talley's Folly". So he has to be a good writer. But I didn't like the other play of his I saw, Redwood Curtain either. It's definitely just me and not him. I think I expected more storytelling and instead I got exposition and ideas, And it's the lack of storytelling that makes for a me, a very boring play.

I've been reading this great new book called The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity by Catherine Ponder. It has this one exercise where you write about things from your past and present that you wished happened or could have happened a different way. Then you can also write out how you wish things to happen in your future.

I did the past and present part of the exercise on a break at work and afterwards, I felt like a big burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I don't have a lot of regrets in my life, not big ones anyway, but there a few things I do regret. I also wrote down incidents I had with other people that I wished had gone a different way and I got a few insights into why certain people might have acted the way they did. I felt very compassionate even for the people who I thought wrecked havoc on my life.

What else. I decided I needed more underwear for my upcoming trip, so I went to Victoria's Secret again. I was actually standing in line with my purchases, when I noticed the cashier ringing up a bra for a woman that cost only $10. Like a mermaid siren calling to a love starved sailor man, I was drawn back to the sales bins of underwear. And like the sailor, my hopes of finding anything in my size and in a colour I wanted was once again dashed brutally on the rocks of nothingness.

What is it about bins of sale items that make me want to dig through judiciously hoping against hope of finding something that fits in a color I like? You can go to 10 different stores and look through all their sale racks and bins and maybe find one thing you like after hours of hours of digging and combing through the ugliest pieces of clothing imaginable. There's a reason why the Victoria's Secret sales bins are full of thong underwear. NOBODY WEARS THEM! Despite what the media may be telling you, nobody wears butt floss. The sales bins and racks at any underwear department are proof of this widely known fact.

The other thing to know about shopping at underwear sales is all the big sizes are gone, which leads me to conclude that most women in America and in the SF Bay Area have huge rears! The small and medium bins are full of underwear in great colours. The large and extra large bins are full of thongs and other freaky coloured underwear. Why they make underwear in freaky colours is a mystery to me. The stuff never sold when it first came out and it's certainly not going to sell now when it's dirt cheap. Isn't it nice to know though, that most women do have beauty standards for their underwear.

I wish I could date my marina hottie boy. He's just so cute. But I'm so clueless how to even attract a guy like him. I think he might have been a little interested before when we first me and then I blew it and now we're just friends. I tried to get over him and I thought I was succeeding, but the guy just haunts my mind. He is like so amazing, so cute and so smart. Maybe we have some kind of past life/soul connection or something, because this crush is just way too strong to be an ordinary crush.

But I'm so clueless how to get a guy interested in me if he doesn't show interest right away or if he did, I missed my window of opportunity. How do you I get the guy to be interested in me again.

We're at least friends so I think there's hope. If I get my act together, lose a few pounds, buy some pushup bras and start wearing low tops, because he likes women that show their assets. I would love to just date him at least for 90 days just to see if we're compatible at all, if the's the fantasy man I've made him out to be in my mind.

I saw Lagaan on Sunday and I loved it. God, I love Bollywood movies and this one was a doozy and a half. A 30's musical in an isolated indian village complete with singing and beautiful people. The star of the indian epic looks like the Krishna portrayed in all the posters you see at hippie shops and at indian grocery stores. Which fits just right, since the village has a Krishna and Radha temple and there's even a Krishna and Radha dance.

Any spiritual chick worth her salt fantasizes, thinks actually, that she was a reincarnated Gopi girl who sat at Krishna's feet. At least, all my friends did. I never did, but that's another story.

The movie credits said it was a joint Indian and Brittish production. Which is interesting, since the Brits were played so one-dimensional and mean. I was watching the movie the movie and every time the Brits were mean to people, I was chanting Bande Materam, which was the chant used during the Ghandi revolution to free India from Brit colonial rule. Bande Materam which means Mother I bow to Thee, the mother being Mother India. That and my vague memories of the Indian national anthem going through my head. You almost want to yell at the screen, see, this is a perfect example of white people colonialism at its worst. And the Brits paid for their meaness too. Today, the Indians rule the cricket world and the Brits are horrible at it.

I loved the music. I think I'm going to have to try to get the soundtrack for it. I might even have track down the videos/DVD for this movie. It was that good.

And the cricket. Well, at least I now understand cricket. It's kind of like baseball in an odd way and I'm sure baseball has its roots in cricket. You bowl or pitch, you bat, and you score runs, except the Brits do it all wearing whites just like in tennis.

And the dance numbers. They were a riot. The whole movie was entertaining. You never see anything that campy, fun and overly dramatic in Hollywood cinema today. We need more Bollywood to come to America.

Then I saw Mulholland Drive. God, I love David Lynch. He is so strange and wonderful. This movie made me want to go back and rewatch all of David Lynch's other movies because images from his other movies are repeated in this one. This movie was one of the most thought provoking movies I've ever seen in my life. I would put this movie up there with Bulworth, another movie which I totally loved. I wish I'd seen this movie in the big screen. I mean, Being John Malcovich was child's play compared to Mulholland Drive.

David Lynch is so spooky and scary and I love how he weaves all his various scenes together to make one cohesive whole. The movie got kind of odd after the woman opened the blue box and I was like "what the hell just happened". But then while lying in bed, I got it. The last scene of the movie is the blue haired woman saying "Silencio" which is that weird theatre of the absurd that was in the movie. I mean, only in LA, will you even see such existential bullshit being done.

At Silencio, the announcer guy keeps saying that what you're seeing isn't real. Which is actually kind of funny in a movie, which also not real and fiction. So it's like, it's a fiction within a ficiton, within a fiction, within a fiction of someone's mind. BRILLIANT!

What's real in the movie? Who knows? Does it matter? It's a movie whose very nature is to tell a lie and not to tell the truth. But we sit there in the audience expecting to see truth. Why? It's movie, not a documentary. The movie is not supposed to tell the truth, it's supposed to lie, it's supposed to stretch the boundaries of reality further, further than real life ever could. So in a cosmically absurd way, it doesn't matter that the story doesn't make sense, especially the beginning, maybe even the whole thing.

I'm going to have read reviews of this movie just to see what other critics have had to say.

I finally got around to seeing Star Wars, going so far as to seeing it at a digitial theatre, one of only two in San Francisco proper. I think there maybe one more digital theatre and it's in Marin near Lucas Ranch.

First off, seeing the move on a digital screen was amazing, especially since George Lucas shot the movie in digital. The sreen is so huge and the sound is great. There's just one problem. The screen is almost too big and there's so much going on in the whole frame that you have to tell yourself to check out the whole screen once in awhile instead of just focusing on the middle. Then sometimes, something on the side would catch my eye and I would stop paying attention to what was happening in the middle. Maybe the answer is to sit in the last row so you're further away? We sat in the middle.

Secondly, what a familiar sight the whole Star Wars logo is and that blaringly loud theme music. I jumped out of my seat and my friend Kim was laughing at me. Honestly, that opening note is so loud it's like a thunderclap. And what about the opening where they tell you what's going on. How familiar is that and how paradoied is that set up too.

The special effects were fantastic, although I couldn't help but flashback to all those making of star wars documentaries and picturing those tiny scale replicas Plus, with the advent of computers, I spent the whole time wondering what's real and what's computer generated.

And some of those backdrops were so beautiful, although I couldn't help but think some of the prettier scenes looked like something out of Thomas Kinkade painting, especially the ones at the lake. Maybe George Lucas has been spending time at the Thomas Kinkade store in Marin, which I think is now out of business. My friend guessed the lake site was the Lake Cuomo area in Italy and she guessed right because it was in the credits. I knew it was a shot from some Italian vista. Aren't all romantic scenes, no matter what time and galaxy they're from shot in romantic Italy?

The actor playing Anakin Skywalker was not cute. He had those bulging eyes like Susan Sarandon. Ewan Macgregor is definitely the better looking of the two. And Yoda too. Christopher Lee was great as always. The guy makes such a great villian. He was great in The Lord of the Rings too, only this time he even got to fight with a light saber. The old guy can definitely still move.

Rachel Portman was cute and I loved all her outfits and that whole no bra look. She's got a teenage girl's body and not really curvy enough to be playing a mid 20 something, which I think is Padme's true age. And yes, the first time she greets Anakin, she does sound like a Valley Girl from Naboo and not a princess or a senator. But you can see shades of Princess Leia in her daringness and her ability and willingness to fight.

And what about that Bambi scene, with Anakin and his dying mother. Was George Lucas taking a cue from Disney Land? Very Freudian. I'm sure there will be a ton of high school and college essays written about that scene. I think even Steven Spielberg had a Bambi and his dying mother scene in one of his movies, but I can't remember which one.

Then there was the execution scene which was right out of Russell Crowe's Gladiator. It's nice to know some of my favorite movies were echoed in Star Wars. My friend said it was more like a bull fight scene, except this time with space creature bulls. Even Anakin got to do the cowboy thing when he tamed the crazy creature with the horn.

And what about Bobba Fett? Wasn' t he just the cutest little kid? Was there some mother of a serial killer or other deranged criminal in the audience being reminded of her cute little son and what he grew up to be.

Then the last scene was like right out of Romeo and Juliet being married by the friar in the garden. How romantic!

It's like George Lucas tapped on everybody' s collective consciousness and gave it all back to aka Star Wars. Is that why the Star Wars series is so popular?

I liked the parallels that I saw in Attack of the Clones with the three previous Star Wars.

Anakin and Padme's romance mirrors Leia's and Han Solo's romance. Both mother and daughter had a thing for rebel types I guess.

Anakin and Luke, both liking to fix things, both on the desert planet, both disobeying their Jedi masters to help out their friends.

I'm sure there more but I just don't remember them right now.

Then the final shot at the end of the movie is the all the clones and they're playing the Empire theme song. You know the old dude senator is an evil thing. Why else would he be encouraging Anakin like that, making him think he's the next best thing to Yoda. The guy's got to be evil. Nobody is ever going to be better than Yoda!

But George Lucas did get the whole how you turn to dark side of the force right. My meditation teacher even talked about it. Doubt is the first thing. Doubt leads to distrust god and question what's happening all around you. You start to get mad a god, the force when events go bad, because you don't trust that it's happening for the good. Anakin definitely had alot of doubt in his heart when his mother died. Doubt opens the door to you thinking you know better than god, then the force, that you and not god, the force is the master of the universe. Doubt is the cause of all evil. I think Yoda would say a Jedi does not doubt the Force, a Jedi has Buddha like attachment and is a servant of god, unconditionally obeying and surrending to everything that is happening around him. In martial arts, they teach you that it is better to yield to an opponent than to fight him, because when you put up resistance, you lose your balance. You yield then your opponent is off balance then you strike.

Then there's that whole pivotal scene where Anakin and OB1 are in the cave with evil Count Dokuu. If Anakin hadn't charged, the whole Stars Wars series would have ended right then and there. No Darth Vader. But because Anakin was arrogant and thougtht he was stronger than the old dude, he rushed and was blasted. A warrior does not react out of anger or arrogance. There will always be someone out there stronger than you are. A warrior can only winning by cunning and by his own intelligence. Anakin has yet to learn these things.

But you know, Anakin is like a typical teenage boy, full of raging hormones. Just think the whole balance of power in the Star Wars universe was thrown off because of the antics of an arrogant, frat boy type, teenage boy. I'm sure there's another story like this around, but I can't think of one right now.

Now the question remains, how does George Lucas wrap up the story. How does Anakin finally turn towards the dark side. The seed of doubt is alreading inside him. Doubt opens a door to all the evil stuff like anger, revenge, hatred. I mean Anakin already did the slaughter the whole village thing, so there's definitely going to be guilt for that. And you know if you can slaughter the a whole village, why not entire civilizations, why not the whole universe. Is it true when they say all it takes it one baby step?

Then how is George Lucas going to resolve Padme getting pregnant? Darth Vader did not know he had offspring. There will have to be a separation between the hero and heroine. And how long before Padme gets pregnant? She is a virgin I think. Will it be the first night or will several months or a couple years pass. I say, the next installment of the story starts shortly after this story ended, while Anakin has all those raging teenage hormones running his brain. Anakin will be not be allowed to grow up and mature.

What about the plans for the Death Star? That doesn't come till years later, but in this installment you already see the plans for it.

I almost want to see the movie again, maybe in a regular theatre to see if digital really makes a difference. I saw Spiderman twice, I should at least see Attack of the Clones twice.

Water fasting today. Water fasting is supposed to be good for you, helping to clear your body of toxins and to break your addiction to food like anything chocolate. I had never done a water fast before until last week. A juice fast maybe, but never a straight water fast. I have such a thing about food too because I think I maybe hypoglycemic, meaning if I don't eat, I get totally nauseous.

But when I water fasted last week, shockingly enough, I didn't get nauseous and I felt fine. I don't know if this means my health is better or maybe I just had this belief in my head that if I didn't eat every 3 or 4 hours, I'd die. I just don't know. It's weird to think you can survive without any food except for water because it goes against what all the health books teach you.

I told a friend of mine about water fasting and she said that water fasting has been around for years, it's even in the bible. All the other religions fast too and do it regularly. It's hard to know who to believe anymore as far as your health. The health and diet industry is a billion dollar business and when money is involved, it's hard to know if you're really getting accurate information.

It's not like I truly water fast anyway. I always cheat a little and eat small bits of food but it feels like I still get the same benefit. Tomorrow I eat only fruit and veggies. Last week, I ate fruits and veggies whole and not juiced. This time I think I will juice to see if that makes a difference.

Last week I ate a huge fruit salad and it was so delicious and wonderful in this hot weather. Then I ate steamed veggies and I don't know. I spent my 20's eating bushels full of steamed veggies and brown rice and I just don't know if I can do it anymore. But then in my 20's I was running 20-30 miles a week and yoga was a breeze.

Speaking of yoga, I feel like getting into it again. I first did yoga when I was high school because I knew people who were practicing it. I had incredible flexibility back then from my gymnastic background and yoga was this ultra cool way to twist your body into all these weird positions. I borrowed a book from the library that showed some homely indian guy doing all these amazing things and I just did whatever positions I could, which was almost 80% of the book.

I never got into it as meditation practice. To me it was just fun, like aerobics, like exercise, like an extension of gymastics. Even after I formally joined a meditation group and was meditating 3 hours or more a day, I didn't do any yoga exercises. If I wanted to exercise, I ran. Running was like meditation for me.

Every once in awhile, I still did the few yoga positions I did remember, mostly because they were fun and I liked being able to stretch my body and yoga is such a great way to stretch.

But it was until 1998 that I actually take a formal yoga class. Whatever flexibility I had in my youth was gone and I struggled through most of the exercises. Interestingly enough, after three months 1/3 of my flexibility came back. I still don't think of it as meditation though. Meditation to me is sitting still, quieting your mind, seeing colours and auras and getting that incredible high. Yoga postures are like fun exercises to see if you can twist your body into a pretzel.

Now I feel a sudden urge to practice my yoga again. Maybe even get back into a class. I'd love to take it from this ballet teacher that I know. If I want to take yoga, I like to take it from a dance teacher. They bring all their ballet training and most of them have also had Alexander and Pilates training too, so it's like getting all three disciplines in one class.

The classes with the ballet teacher doesn't start till the fall, so I gues until then I'll practice it on my own. I went through my video collection and I found a bunch of yoga videos that I forgot I owned. I wonder if it's possible to get 100% of my youthful flexibility back. I used to do the cobra position and be able to touch my feet to my head. This kind of flexibility is my goal.

So the search for the perfect leather bag to hold a tablet and my mini laptop continues. The bag I really want is a coach leather large duffle sack costing $300, but I just don't want to spend that amount of money right now. I have the money to spend, I just don't feel like spending a large amount right now. Not after I've spent over $100 on trendy turquoise bracelets and earrings for my vacation.

I went to Stanford Shoppping Center to check out bags and sitll no luck. I went to Stonestown and saw a Tumi bag for $245. The Tumi bag wasn't bad but it was black and contrary to popular belief, black doesn't go with everything. Then I saw a two bags at Malm luggage. A Tumi grayish green messenger bag on sale for $80. Too casual for me. And then a real messenger type bag. Again, too casual to wear with suits I think. Then into banana republic to the men's section to look at their messenger bags.

These bags weren't too bad. All brown but god, so boring because they look like briefcases and way too big for me.

Then to Macy's, where I saw a guess bag that was half way decent, but again only in black. What is it with all the black bags?

Checked online and found only one decent bag at Nordstrom.com. A leather bag in the right dimensions, a backpak which also turns into a shoulder bag. Went to Nordstrom to see if they had it there, but of course, they didn't

I'm going to have to bite the bullet and buy the coach bag. YIKES!!!

Missing my marina hottie boy alot. I think it's all residual left over feeling from the crush. I wonder what hot hottie boy is doing now? Does he miss me as much I miss him? Somehow I doubt that. He probably doesn't even remember my name and if he did, he'd think I'm just some freak of humanity who washed up on his shore like trash.

He said Fire and Air make for a great mix. Do they? Marina boy exhausts me sometimes, mostly because I can't forget him. But I will, one day I know I will. I just wish that someday would come sooner than later.

I've been watching movies these last two days. 61* and Wonderboys.

61* was financed by HBO films and probably shown on HBO because it wasn't rated. I liked this movie. I only rented it because someone in my screenwriting class said it would be a good movie to watch as research for my screenplay. I found the characters very engaging and since it's a true story, very engrossing. The guy they got to play Mickey Mantle was very cute, which is an added bonus for any movie I'm watching. But honestly, I really liked the movie.

A great sports movie and still pretty current considering it was supposed to take place in 1961. There was Mickey Mantle, a Hollywood gorgeous bad boy, drinking and whoring around who came from a pool family in Oklahoma. A seeming victim of too much fame too soon since he joined the Yankees as an 18 year old and didn't even go to college. There was Roger Maris, the stoic family man who just wanted to play baseball and didn't know how to handle the press. If you get anything at all from this movie, and there's alot to get, it's if you become famous you had better learn about media/press management. There's the media who hyped both players either up or down, depending on how much either player sucked up to them. After watching this movie, I am convinced more than ever that you can't believe anything you read in the media.

Listening to Jim Rome show again and they're playing the Mark Madsen tape about him thanking his LA supporters in spanish. I've listened to this tape so many times. I think I like it as much as the Jim Mora meltdown after a football game he coached.

Anyway, then there are the owners, who wanted the players to do anything to get the fans to come to the stadium. And you wonder why we have a steroid controversy in major league baseball right now.

61* goes to show you that real life is always so much better than fiction.

Then I watched The Wonderboys, which reviwers really liked in 2000 when it came out. It's also one of the Marina hottie boy's favorite movies, you know, the marina hottie boy I used to have a crush on. I've been meaning to watch this movie, and Marina hottie's comment, made me rent it. I don't know. Maybe because I watched it late at night, but honestly the movie made me sleepy. It was so slow moving. Some of it was really funny, I'll grant you that, but those funny moments seemed far and few between. And then the ending just got so stupid.

Michael Douglas' character reminded me of too many guys I've dated. Middle aged, stoned, angst ridden, white male, bitter and drifting through life, wondering what went wrong when in their youth they were superstars. BORING!!! And probably boring, because I've dated these types before. Hell, the ex husband could have stood in for Michael Douglas' character and I've owned a pair of red cowboy boots since I was 22 years old.

I read the NY Times review of the movie and I agreed with them. It's a great movie idea but somehow it's a dud when watching it. The NY Times reviewer said that the screenwriter, who adapted the movie from Michael Chabon's novel of the same name, lifted dialogue right out of the book. And you could tell too. That part where Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire are talking are so boring, so stilted, and not how real people talk at all.

I guess I could see how the reviewers liked it, because you hardly see this kind of subject matter made, but still. I don't know. Maybe it's because I watched Wonderboys the night after I watched 61* and the reality of 61* just seemed more real than the fiction of Wonderboys.

61* was so much more engaging about men and how they view and handle life. Wonderboys had too many made up plot devices like the dog dying, Tobey stealing the Marilyn Monroe jacket, etc. to make this movie very believable. I think Wonderboys was supposed to show the poignancy of a middle aged man, who needs to be rescued by some straight talking same age female. Michael Douglas' character came across as such a loser to me. He was a whining baby boomer, probably draft dodging male, who was wallowing in his own self pity.

The LA Times, sometime in the 1980's, had a article about the psychology of men who avoided the draft and went to college instead. The article said that these men suffered from middle class guilt about not going to war and had problems with commitment and avoided conflict and choice at all costs. Michael Douglas' character reminded me of this article.

What's probably true about Wonderboys is that there are many men in that baby boomer generation walking around like him. Like maybe some of the reviwers who liked this movie? Interesting theory huh?

God, do I really want to watch another movie about a seemingly privileged man freaking out about his life, which has all been a result of his bad choices? Rush Limbaugh would call Wonderboys, I think, the Oprahization of male movies. I mean, all the Oprah books were about women who made really bad choices in their life for obviously no good reason, at least the books never gave you really good reasons for why they liked fucked up their life. And Wonderboys is like an Oprah book, only it's a man and not a woman. But where Oprah books don't get a lot of respect, Wonderboys is considered a good movie. What gives?

Maybe I need to write the book, which reviewers said, is a tired old plot rescued by being very well written. Maybe not. I can't forgive a well written book if the plot is stupid. For most people, I know, it's the opposite. They won't put up with a badly written book even if the plot is good. I will.

As a writer of fiction, I am dishearted by what I'm discovering. Real life is so much better, so much more entertaining than a fiction book any day.

I went to the dentist today and I told my dentist that Paul, my ex-b who also goes to see him died. My dentist was so shocked because Paul had an appointment with him on Saturday and never showed up.

So strange to tell my dentist that one of his patients died. My dentist then told me one one of his other patients had a urinary tract infection and then died two days later. The girl was only 18 years old.

I guess you never know when your time is up. Then my dentist told me his sister died from lung cancer and she didn't even smoke.

Missed the whole eclipse thing because of my dentist, but I'll watch it on the news. I think I'm finally out of the Mercury Retrograde. YEAH!!! I can already feel it. I went to Macy's and bought one of those trendy tuquoise bracelets to celebrate. I love wearing oh so hip and up to the minute trendy pieces of cheap jewelry.

Other than my horoscopes freaking me out because it says some friendship with some guy is going to turn serious, which freaks me out because if it's who I'm thinking of, I'm like no way, the guy is way to freaky and creepy, even for me, I'm feeling good. Horoscopes are never right anyway, most of the time, except for stuff like the mercury retrograde. I wouldn't even consider this guy a friend since I've only know him a few months.

All the horoscope said was this:

There comes a point in any relationship when you realise that it has gone beyond mere friendship and become something else. If you are free to take it further, then this is an exciting moment; if you are not, then you have problems, because once this point is reached neither of you can simply walk away. The glue that stuck you together has dried, and it is impossible to pull the pieces apart without damaging them. This week's eclipse marks exactly this point for you; from now on whatever you are involved in will have important consequences, and you will be well aware of that. It's not a bad thing, by any means; but it's not a game any more, either.

God, how scary! That's why I almost hate befriending guys until I know that there's no danger of the friendship turning into something other than friendship. I am so sick and tired of losing male friends because they end up having a crush on me. It totally ruins the friendship and then they get all weird and can't talk to me because they want a physical relationship with me. And I just honestly want a friend and nothing more.

I hope the horoscope is wrong. If this guy is the one, then I'm totally fighting it every step of the way. The guy is nice and a good friend and all, but so not boyfriend material. He creeps me out for some reason and I don't even know why. He's weirder about food than I am, and I'm pretty weird about food. And I really only want this guy as a friend and nothing more. You know, it's always the ones you like whom you can't have and can't get and it's always the ones, that creep and freak you out, that you end up dating. What is up with that!

I went to watch the basketball boys again. It's funny how there's always one white guy who plays. Some guy asked me to play one on one again and this time I said, I was wearing sandals and couldn't play.

I'm thinking to solve the problem, I should take the locker room scenes out, but I think they're integral to showing the the state of my baseball guy's self esteem. I can also showcase his attitude and hot temper in a locker room fight with his team mates.

I rented the movie 61*, Billy Crystal's movie about Roger Merris' record. I bet this movie will have locker room scenes. The only other thing to do now is to spend all summer renting movies about guys playing on sports teams and studying their locker room scenes. What a drag! The locker room scenes are probably the weakest part of my movie, but since they open and close the movie, they have to be stronger.

Oh well, I guess I'll have all summer to work on baseball locker room scenes.