I had my first full four hours of sleep last night. I've had the worst insomnia since my return from vacation. It feels so good to sleep. When I woke up I felt rested for the first time in months.

Maybe my insomnia means I'm not as depressed anymore, because last month I was sleeping more than 8 hours a night and still not feeling rested. Hopefully my life is turning around.

Last night on a whim I went to the Starfbombs across from the Hyatt at Embarcadero to write and while I was there I heard a big crash like there was some car accident outside. People ran outside to look at the commotion, but I didn't. When I finally left the place and walked outside, I saw police and car up on the sidewalk with its end into the wall near the Walgreens. How the car got onto the sidewalk like that is beyond me? Just another couple of feet and it would have crashed into the Starbombs where I was sitting.

I went to Carls Jr to get a bite to eat, and there was bunch of people playing scrabble there. Tuesday must be scrabble night at the Carls Jr located at Embarcadero 4. Like who knew?

Okay, so I don't like getting that excited about money but check this out. I bought into a gold mutual fund in December, and already I've made about $200 in capital gains. Isn't that like so fun? Money isn't everything, but when I learned I made $200 in a month from capital gains I got why people are into money and investments. And the stock market is not doing that well so to make money like is doubly more exciting.

So after this bit of good financial news, I decided to buy into a specialty natural resources energy fund. I know they say gas in going down in price, but so what. It will go up again because winter is coming up and any break in the supply chain of oil should send my mutual fund through the roof. Goodbye cheap gas and hello tons of capital gains for me.

If I have to play the capitalist pig dog investor, I might as well make a ton of money doing it.

I'm going to try and get back on the schedule today that I think seemed to work pretty well for me last year. From 5 to 7 pm, I sit in a Starfbombs somewhere in downtown San Francisco and write, and then from 7 to 9 pm I head to the gym. Boring as hell I know, but I get the two things done that I need to get regular about; writing and working out.

I've found three Starfbombs downtown that are open till 7 pm and where it's comfortable to sit and write. My gym is close by and after 7 pm, it clears out and I can get on a machine or lift weights without having to wait in line.

The only bad thing about this schedule is dinner. If I wait to eat till I get home, I'm starving and about to pass out. Usually I just have a latte, but it's really not enough food for dinner. So I'm adding dinner this year.

With all the writing I've been doing, I can either write tonight or spend my designated writing time typing up the 8 pages of handwritten text I've accumulated. Typing is a nice change for me and even if I do end up buying a laptop, I'll still have the option of handwriting or typing and I'll skip the step of transferring my text from my PDA into a word document on my home computer.

I've been tracking my writing since December 16 through today, and I've written for 11 of those days, spent two days reading a new book on writing and skipped six days. These results are good for me. I've not gone longer than two days without writing, and on those days I didn't write I could have written if I wanted to. I just didn't feel like I could make the time.

I've playing a little game with myself as well that I learned from this book called "Immediate Fiction". I set the timer on my watch for 10 minutes, and I tell myself that I only need to write for 10 minutes. If I'm not into writing at the end of the 10 minutes I'm allowed to stop. It's a good trick, because invariably at the end of 10 minutes I'm still interested in writing and can usually get four pages of handwritten scribble down before I feel the urge to stop.

The 10 minute rule is supposed to be done every day, but I'm not at that point yet. I'd like to get there. I'd like to be able to sit down every day and do a 10-minute write, but I'm still at the point where if I don't feel like writing I won't do it. But taking no more than a two-day break is real progress for me, real progress.

I had a good day on Sunday. My clueless brother sent my christmas present to my old address, and thank goodness my building manager was kind enough to call me and hold it for me till I got back. As I walked by my old apartment, I wondered who was living there.

Then I went to the Starfbombs near my gym to write. Some older dude was there staring at me the whole time. He was kind of alright looking, and was there with his grownup son having coffee. I suppose it's a good way to start the new year with a guy who was making it very obvious that I was a hottie.

I'm doing the Graham Greene method and writing 500-700 words a day, which is about four handwritten pages for me. I'm also thinking of going on Graham Greene binge and reading all of his stuff. Loved that New Yorker article on him which I finished over my vacation.

Next stop was to the gym for a run. I started to panic when after a mile, my left knee started hurting. I walked for a few minutes, and then started running again and the pain was gone. My body was rebelling and telling me you just can't start running hard after not running since early November. After my knee pain, I decided to quit while I was ahead and not do another half an hour on the bike or weights.

Then it was laundry and grocery shopping. Sunday night is the worst night to grocer shop. The veggie shelves at Trader Joes and Safeway were so empty!

Final stop was home for dinner and a movie from Netflix - Zatoichi, Volume 7. Yes, I'm still on my japanese samurai movie kick. I'm still getting a thrill out of the watching the blind guy kill tons of people. I think I'm going to have to purchase Kill Bill Volumes 1 & 2, so I can get my kung fu movie kick whenever I want.

I was thinking this morning that it's sad that good days for me lately have been few and far between these past few months. It used to be the opposite. Guess I'm going to have spend 2005 reversing the trend.

I had a good day on Sunday. My clueless brother sent my christmas present to my old address, and thank goodness my building manager was kind enough to call me and hold it for me till I got back. As I walked by my old apartment, I wondered who was living there.

Then I went to the Starfbombs near my gym to write. Some older dude was there staring at me the whole time. He was kind of alright looking, and was there with his grownup son having coffee. I suppose it's a good way to start the new year with a guy who was making it very obvious that I was a hottie.

I'm doing the Graham Greene method and writing 500-700 words a day, which is about four handwritten pages for me. I'm also thinking of going on Graham Greene binge and reading all of his stuff. Loved that New Yorker article on him which I finished over my vacation.

Next stop was to the gym for a run. I started to panic when after a mile, my left knee started hurting. I walked for a few minutes, and then started running again and the pain was gone. My body was rebelling and telling me you just can't start running hard after not running since early November. After my knee pain, I decided to quit while I was ahead and not do another half an hour on the bike or weights.

Then it was laundry and grocery shopping. Sunday night is the worst night to grocer shop. The veggie shelves at Trader Joes and Safeway were so empty!

Final stop was home for dinner and a movie from Netflix - Zatoichi, Volume 7. Yes, I'm still on my japanese samurai movie kick. I'm still getting a thrill out of the watching the blind guy kill tons of people. I think I'm going to have to purchase Kill Bill Volumes 1 & 2, so I can get my kung fu movie kick whenever I want.

I was thinking this morning that it's sad that good days for me lately have been few and far between these past few months. It used to be the opposite. Guess I'm going to have spend 2005 reversing the trend.

I had a good day on Sunday. My clueless brother sent my christmas present to my old address, and thank goodness my building manager was kind enough to call me and hold it for me till I got back. As I walked by my old apartment, I wondered who was living there.

Then I went to the Starfbombs near my gym to write. Some older dude was there staring at me the whole time. He was kind of alright looking, and was there with his grownup son having coffee. I suppose it's a good way to start the new year with a guy who was making it very obvious that I was a hottie.

I'm doing the Graham Greene method and writing 500-700 words a day, which is about four handwritten pages for me. I'm also thinking of going on Graham Greene binge and reading all of his stuff. Loved that New Yorker article on him which I finished over my vacation.

Next stop was to the gym for a run. I started to panic when after a mile, my left knee started hurting. I walked for a few minutes, and then started running again and the pain was gone. My body was rebelling and telling me you just can't start running hard after not running since early November. After my knee pain, I decided to quit while I was ahead and not do another half an hour on the bike or weights.

Then it was laundry and grocery shopping. Sunday night is the worst night to grocer shop. The veggie shelves at Trader Joes and Safeway were so empty!

Final stop was home for dinner and a movie from Netflix - Zatoichi, Volume 7. Yes, I'm still on my japanese samurai movie kick. I'm still getting a thrill out of the watching the blind guy kill tons of people. I think I'm going to have to purchase Kill Bill Volumes 1 & 2, so I can get my kung fu movie kick whenever I want.

I was thinking this morning that it's sad that good days for me lately have been few and far between these past few months. It used to be the opposite. Guess I'm going to have spend 2005 reversing the trend.

Observations I made while at DFW airport on New Year's day.

I went to Wendy's to get a bite to eat. Nothing look appetizing except a burger and a soda. There were four University of Tennessee football players there, with bags that were embroidered with the logo "SBC Cotton Bowl". They were huge and all wearing black velour Addidas track suits. Guess they were hungry for Wendy's burgers too. Some guy saw them all sitting there and said "great game guys!" and they waved. So I'm sitting there thinking who won the Cotton Bowl? I know it was Texas A&M and some team. The Tennessee players didn't look unhappy. On the news monitor later, I saw a report which said Tennessee won.

Speaking of football. There a town of people walking around with Purdue clothing on. There some guy sitting in back of me as I was waiting for my gate. He had a Purdue jacket and on and was telling someone on the phone that he was in El Paso. Then he talked about the Sun Bowl in El Paso. I don't think Purdue did well because the guy didn't sound very happy on the phone.

Want to recharge you cellphone? Go to the women's restroom next to gate C36 and DFW airport. Plug your cellphone charger into the socket on the left side of the sinks. Block the sink and stare at yourself in the mirror and pretend like you're doing something totally normally by charging your cellphone in a public bathroom.

American Airlines is doing their patriotic duty for the war on Iraq. There's a huge sign at the Admirals Club, which says if you're in the military and you can show ID and I guess that you were in Iraq, you can hang out in the club.

Dell had a kiosk there. The only people that were using it were American Airlines pilots. It must be the place for airline pilots to check on their email and surf the Net.

So a friend of mine warned me and I didn't listen, but staying this long at a relatives is proving way too long. I am so bored and I think we're kind of getting on each other's nerves. I'm counting down the days till I have to go home.

The holidays are stressful enough without having a relative like me overstay her welcome. Maybe family visits should be like a cold, very short. Oh well, I'll know better next time.

So my blog isn't broken after all, but on my cousin's browser it just doesn't show up right and I don't know how to fix it. I'm blogging from my work laptop which I brought with me to do some work, and my blog looks fine with my work browser.

So Happy Belated Christmas from Fort Worth Texas. I deleted my last post in an attempt to fix it.

The weather here is mild and in the 60's. Fort Worth is definitely not Dallas, and I am definitely not in a big city anymore.

My cousin has been taking me shopping, and it's not fun only because I can't find clothes I want to buy. I'm starting to realize why people freak out when they shop in Union Square in San Francisco. There is just so much clothing to choose from there than there is here. I love shopping in NYC only because I think NYC has way more clothes than I can ever find in San Francisco, but not so in Fort Worth.

I felt bad because my cousin took me to a mall and I went into a couple of department stores, Foley and Dillards, and I'm like okay where are all the brands of clothes I'm used to buying. I saw brands I'd never heard of and in styles I've never seen or want to see ever again. I finally had to go into Nordstrom to buy a lighter sweater. I didn't want to buy anything in Nordstrom, but they were the only store who had anything I wanted to buy. So scary too because the Nordstrom in Fort Worth pulled me up in their database and they knew I was from San Francisco.

I bought another lighter jacket at another mall at Tommy Hilfiger. Again, I didn't want to buy something from there but it was the only store that clothes I would want to buy.

All the teenagers here wear clothes from this store called "Hollister", so I went in there to check it out. It's like so funny because the store markets the southern california surfer lifestyle and clothes to teenagers in Texas. The line in the store was so long. And the clothes aren't that great either. It's like thrift shop surfer dude threads with sweatshirt hoodies that say "Hollister" or "Laguna Beach".

I was in the store and it was so packed and the line was so long. I wanted to buy a long sleeve t-shirt just to have a shirt that would remind me of the Texas teenybops I was seeing, but I couldn't handle the line.

I did get to check out a Dell Inspiron 700m, and it's a great laptop. I've been wanting to see one for a long time and I'm pretty sure it's the computer I want to buy for myself. It is so small, like a Sony but not so expensive, and it looks like it could easily fit into my purse.

I'm have a relaxing vacation, but I think my decision to stay here through New Years was a mistake. There's really not much to do here except shop, and my cousin hates to drive into Dallas. Oh well. At least I'm relaxing and doing some writing.

My blog is broken and I don't know why, and I'm not at home to fix it. If you can tell me how to fix it, please email me. It's so annoying!

I can't sleep. I'm flying to Texas for the holidays to see my cousin and her daughter tomorrow, and I can never sleep before flying. I'm too amped up.

I talked to a friend of mine who considers herself a "psychic" and she did a reading for me. She wants to do it for a living, but she doesn't know if she can make a decent living at it. Anyway, she said a new man was entering into my life in the next four months. She confirmed that the RHG hasn't given up, just as I thought, but if I can just say no for another couple of months he'll eventually give up.

My friend's hit rate is about 50% so if either of her predictions come true I'll be happy. I have been feeling that a new love is around the corner, but I don't feel that the RHG will ever give up. But a friend from writing group said that the RHG can't give me up because of his ego, because I dumped him first and he only wants me back so he can be the one to do the dumping. Whatever.

My friend's reading really, really cheered me up and inwardly I felt there was some validity to her reading. She said she kept seeing February as a turning point. If I can tell myself that I'll only have to put up with these RHG feelings for another couple of months, then I think I can deal with it. And with the way time seems to be zipping by, March is not very far away.

I think I made myself think I was in love the RHG because I didn't want to admit to myself that I was just having a fling. I'm really not a flingie kind of girl. So I think I told myself it was one of those doomed romantic kinds of love so I could deal with it and not have to feel any guilt. Of course, the love thing didn't stop the guilt but it was better than saying I was in it just for the sex, and didn't give a hoot about the RHG.

I'm pathetic aren't I? I'm sure he did the same thing and made himself believe it was love so he could justify it to himself as well, so he wouldn't think he was some kind of Don Juan. I wonder how bad karma is that? Using love as an excuse to justify bad behaviour. Love made me do it! It's so lame isn't it, and really cheapens love. My only excuse is I never said love first, he did, and I just followed his lead. And before the very end he told me he loved me three times on the phone and I didn't say it back. It was an awkward silence. But I couldn't do it anymore, I couldn't lie to him or myself.

I hope I never have to go through that experience again. That was bad. Hearing a guy say I love you and having no urge to say "I love you" back. Talk about "real" moment.

Work these last two days has been kind of fun. I was in a Microsoft Project class taught by a guy who was one of the original programmers of the software. He really knew his stuff, and I learned some good tips on how to make the software work.

It was kind of bad timing to be in the class though. My boss lent me out for a project last week and after the project manager found out I was in class for two days, she took the task I was working on back. I had done about 25% of it and I thought I could finish it, but she wanted it down this week. Whatever. Then I had to turn over something else I normally do for client presentations to someone else and I felt kind of bad about doing that, but my boss said I can't do everything.

After work I went to get a manicure and pedicure and to get my brows and lips waxed to death. No big deal right? I hadn't been to the salon in about two months, which my manicurist reminded me of, and I wanted them done for my holiday trip.

In the middle of my pedicure, I felt an incredible wave of anxiety. Like where it came from I don't know, but since I was at the salon I couldn't just sit there and start crying. It wasn't until I came home that the anxiety started again and the incredible sadness I felt most overwhelmingly on Monday came back. Where it came from or what triggered it is a mystery to me. I was actually in a good mood all day until then.

I'm such a sad sack. I put on my pj's, crawled into bed and cried myself to sleep, only to wake up every few hours and wonder why I was in this mess with RHG, when it was ever going to end, and why I can't just shake the idiot free. It's so maddening to have to go through this, to feel like it's never going to end, to feel like I'm going be going through this for a long time, that the man will not give up, and that somehow I caused this all to happen only because I wanted to have a little fun.

I've been on such a writing roll too. I've been writing every day since last Wednesday. I took Sunday off, and then had to take Monday off because I was depressed. I wrote for 1.5 hours on Tuesday and was full intending to write last night when the depression hit.

These last two episodes are somehow different too. I was in heart-break these last few weeks, and now I'm just feeling sorry for myself. I hate feeling sorry for myself. I have a great life, had a great life until the RHG showed up. I wish I didn't have the feeling that he'll come back, that he'll never ever give up, and that someday we'll end up together. These feelings freak me out. I don't want him back honestly. I'm so sick of the whole thing that I just want it to be over! Like at this point it doesn't matter what I feel about him, I just want it to end, to be finito.

It was probably a mistake to want a clean break, to leave while I still had feelings. I should have just stuck it out like I normally do and let it get really bad, so bad, that by the time I wanted out we would have hated each other so much that there would be no contact. Or conversely, wait for RHG to dump me like a hot potato. Then I could hate him, and rag on him to all my friends, and just go on and on about what an jerk he was and how he didn't deserve me.

This is the third time I've tried to leave a relationship like this, and this is the third time it's been just another huge disaster. I don't care what anyone says; there is no good way to leave any relationship. What works best is to leave like any normal person would; just wait till you get dumped or you mutually really hate each other. Most people know what to do and how to feel when a relationship ends that way. If you try to end it any other way, people get confused and messes like the one I'm in happens.

So Monday was a bad day, but then Tuesday was so much better. Whatever anxiety and unease I was feeling melted away with the Tuesday morning sun. After work I typed up the last of my what I had written for chapter 10 of my Texas novel. Handwriting stories is easy and often very convenient, but then typing them up can be a pain sometimes. I probably need to do a combination of both, handwrite the stories sometimes and then type them into a computer the other times.

Then I went to a writing group meeting, which was fun because we hadn't seen each other in ages and it was great to get caught up. It was also the Winter Solstice that day, so it was like we were celebrating the ancient holiday.

I was also able to talk about RHG (the red-haired guy) with my group, and had a bunch of great insights into the whole thing. It's good to hear many different perspectives on your life sometimes. The bar we were at was also playing 80's music, and it was so nostalgic for me. 80's music and trends are so in right now. I can't believe I still know the words to almost every Elvis Costello song, not to mention The English Beat songs as well. If they had played Pere Ubu or Joy Division, I would have been in 80's heaven.

So my anxiety ratcheted up on Sunday, which was bad. I managed to get myself off to see the Mayan exhibit at the Legion of Honor before it closes. The Mayan stuff is cool and so ancient. They had the cutest little statues with these adorable faces. Of course there was nothing about the Mayan calendar ending in 2012 which pepole are just obsessed about, but I guess it has nothing do with their art.

I had a really bad night on Monday. I felt so sorry myself, getting into this mess with the red-haired guy. I've been so good, trying to be so careful about who I get involved with, and I feel like I really let myself down this time all because I just wanted to have a little fun. It's so unfair because other women can have fun flirts with guys, and end it without the guy constantly calling and wanting more. I always seem to get the obsessive types who are stubborn and can't spell.

I think God is punishing me by sending me a freak so I never do this type of thing again. And I'm like, okay, okay, I learned my lesson, enough already, make him go away, I won't ever do this type of thing again, I promise.

The last time this happened, which was about 5 years, I almost lost a friendship over it. Some guy got interested in me, who as the object of my friend's crush, so I stepped aside. He was mean to me for a long time after I rejected him, but he kind of never stopped trying much to the annoyance of my friend. I don't she ever quite got over it.

Same kind of circumstance. We had partner in class for an hour, and in an hour the guy decided I was someone he wanted to get to know in a serious way. I wasn't even really that interested in him, but he was in me. I mean, he would have been a good friend and all that but that was the extent of my interest.

I swear to god, it never works for me to talk to a guy for an hour unless I'm really interested in him. It just causes so many problems. I just felt so sorry for myself last night and cried myself to sleep. I felt better when I woke up this morning, and decided to just relax. I mean, what's the worse that can happen right? And I'm a survivor, I've been through worse than this. I can take care of myself. I just hope these are my famous last words. Red-haired guy is just darn unpredictable and stubborn. He must have some Taurus in him, even though he's a Virgo. The Taurus men in my life have been famous for never getting over me ever.

If you're into cars and you're in San Francisco, go to SFMOMA. They have a beautiful 1965 jaguar car in an exhibit on Glamour. They also have a 2004 Bentley. Those cars are just so cool. They also have some couture gowns which are fun to look at. My faves were the Christian Dior and the Chanel gowns. Couture gowns are all about fabric and architecture, and you better have the perfect body to show those concepts off.

So like a bad penny that keeps showing up red-haired guy called me at my work number on Thursday. He hasn't called at that number since we first met. He is such a piece of work. I knew he was going to call back, it was jus a matter of when and sure enough he did; 29 days after we broke up.

He said he missed me and wanted to get together for some christmas cheer. God, the man is just hard to shake. I read him the riot act and told him to never call me again, and then I felt bad for doing that, so I sent him an email and said he could call but not too often. But then a friend said that was worst.

The man is just so confusing. Everything I've tried to get rid of him that would have worked on any guy has not worked. I called my boss on Friday from home because I was at an offsite meeting all day Friday and she thought I was coming back into the office. I told her what was going on and she gave me a new way to try. So I took her advice called red-haired guy's blackberry and told him.

15 minutes after I called I felt like everything was over between us, but then something in my mind shimmered and then I received the feeling that he hasn't given up yet, that he's never going to ever give up, and I think I made the situation worse somehow. It's kind of been freaking me out because I've been in such a better mood since December 9.

But this morning I decided that it doesn't matter if he calls back, I'll just figure out another way to shine him on and one day one of those ways will work and he'll be gone forever. Either he'll be gone or we're going to end up married. I don't care either way actually. If he could fix his issues, I think he'd be a good match. And if we don't end up together, I'm fine with that too because I got the feeling again this morning that I'm going to have a new love soon.

Talk about a voice from the past. I just received a call at work from a woman who attended a year-long seminar with me seven years ago. She works for a company who sponsored a webconference I attended last month. Then the woman tells me she interviewed for a couple of positions at my company. What a small, small world.

This woman gave me the best advice when we had lunch at Farralon which moved to cocktails at Postrio later. I had just taken a job at my first healthcare company and I was freaking out because I had taken a pay cut for the job, although my boss gave me a signing bonus to make up for it. I felt like I was really taking a step back in my career development paywise, industry wise, blah, blah, blah.

Terry told me sometimes a step back isn't that bad and that good things will come of it. And you know what, seven years late she was right. That move to the healthcare company turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me, and I made up for the financial set back in pay in my next job. I learned so much from that job down the Peninsula, knowledge I probably wouldn't have gained any other way.

I've actually been thinking about the lunch I had with Terry and wondering if I really took a humongous step back in my emotional development with my silly flingie with the red-haired guy. But now hearing from Terry after all these years, I'm thinking maybe not. Hopefully I did learn something which will help propel me forward into my next and hopefully better relationship. It's a sign, I think, a good sign.

My second somewhat blissful day. No anxiety and I went to bed last night thinking I'm going to have a new love. Not sure what this means because the feeling was "new love" not "new boyfriend", so the "new love" could be anything.

I threw out all my old magazines from 1998-2000. I love keeping my old magazines, but they take up so much room. It was an emotional experience, like throwing out a part of myself and all my memories from those years.

Red-haired guy showed during up in my tibetan buddhist meditation session. I used to hate when he did that and stopped meditating because of it, but I was okay with it last night. He was standing next to JC, and I'm not sure what that means. I kind of muttered a complaint, but JC said it was okay that he was there. Whatever. There's a part of the meditation where you visualize leaving a temple and red-haired guy tried to hold my hand. That's never happened before and it was really sweet. I hope it's a good sign of something.

Okay, this insight is now freaking me and bringing tears to my eyes. Anxiety is all about doubt, doubt that God is there in your life and taking care of everything, doubt that you have the ability to handle whatever situation you're presently facing.

I didn't get this one, and it's so simple it's like DUH! I thought my anxiety was maybe everything else that was going on in my life but not doubt. I thought I had pretty strong faith, but I guess not.

Maybe faith is like listening. The extent to which you listen is about the extent to which you know you don't listen. I always thought I was a good listener, until I watched how much my wondered when I was listening to someone.

So having a strong faith would be the extent to which you have faith is about the extent to which you know you don't have faith, which would mean paying attention to the times you doubt. But doubt is so subtle and it sneaks up on you, and all the great spiritual teachers say that doubt is the last to go, always the last and the hardest to give up.

Not having doubt would mean complete surrender and I've never been able to achieve that ever, because I'm too smart and I think I always know better. And I love being smart and thinking of myself as smart and just thinking in general, and yet it always stands in the way, always shows up as a huge weakness in my life. But how you can stop doing something that comes so naturally? It's like so painful and so hard.

I just got what I think is a cool insight today. There's this thing I've been fearing might happen or might not happen. I wasn't really looking forward to either result, and it was driving me crazy. But then today I realized that if the thing happens that I fear, it will be fine because my life always works out and I can adapt easily to all kinds of situations. And if the thing doesn't happen, then that result will be fine as well that means the situation has ended and I can look forward to another thing starting up.

So like whatever happens I can't lose really, and I'm like so glad because I like to think of myself as a person who always lands on their two feet. I might be a little wobbly at first, maybe a little more than hurt and wounded but basically intact and able to move forward.

I heard a great sermon on TV this Sunday and the preacher kept saying that in the bible it says "This too will pass". And you know what, the preacher man is right. Life is always changing, never staying the same. If there's anything I can count on in life is that it's going to change, and this is a good thing. Change is good. Change means that bad situations get better. And isn't this a good thing?

I have been living out scenes like Mia Farrow's character in Woody Allen's "Broadway Danny Rose", which is one of my favourite movies. If you've seen the movie, you'll get the reference.

I don't want to jinx myself but I woke up happy today, happier anyway that I've been since November 29. I hope it lasts and lasts and lasts. This is my one christmas wish, that whatever anxiety I've been going through these last few months stop and I go back to being somewhat carefree and happy go lucky self who loved the life she was leading.

I went through my writing papers today, and I found 15 writing projects that I've started and are in various stages of completion. There are stories I finished, and I want to keep working on. There are stories I started, and I'm not even sure I'm even interested in writing them anymore. I found some notes for a weird story I was interested in writing called "The Unsettler", and I couldn't believe I had written this story about a group of murders taking place in the West Virginia hills. I'm reading my own handwriting and thinking, where the heck did I get this idea from?

I'm going to type up the notes for the story only because they're so bizarre, but I'm not sure I'm ready to write a murder story. I'd like the story to be a short story or maybe a novella, but not another long novel. Novels take so long to write, and I don't have the patience for writing them.

I'd like to at least finish one story this year and I decided that since I'm going to Texas for the holidays, I figured I might as well finish the novel I started in 2003 called "Texas is a state of mind". I've got 3.5 chapters to go. I managed to finish 1.5 chapters this year, which is sad.

My writing productivity for 2004 has just been really, really bad. The stress of having to find a new job, then starting a new job really took a toll on my writing. I started writing again just before red-haired guy came into my life, but then things went emotionally haywire for me and my creative writing practically ceased. I've been writing like mad in my personal journal, but not story writing at all.

I've got to really get a handle on that in 2005. I think my life functions much happier when I'm writing and I feel productive and creative. I have to figure out how to make writing a habit. Journal writing is a habit for me. Blogging is habitual most of the time. But I can't seem to make creative wriitng a habit.

Some people at Nanowrimo were blogging their novels online. That would be wild to post a novel entry every day for people to read. It would be bad first draft writing and who wants to come across that and read it on the screen. Yucky!

I'd like 2005 to be a big breakthrough year for me with my writing, where I develop good writing habits and start finishing stories and sending them out. I think it's the next step in my writing process, but I have no idea what I'm going to have to do, have to give up in my life to get to that point.

I had a really great and productive day yesterday. I went to see my kineseologist for my bimonthly visit and he brought my energy back up to 96%. Most people's energy is at 80 something percent, so to be at 96% is a good thing. Then I had a training session with my japanese Ki energy trainer. I've had four sessions with him so far, but I decided to discontinue it. I wasn't sure it was working, although I loved hearing about the philosophy of going with the flow. He said I was good at it, even though I never ever practice.

Then it was back to the city for a shopping and a haircut. Shopping at Union Square isn't all that crowded to me, and all the stores are having sales. I get the feeling that most people aren't really too many things. I see a lot of people without shopping bags. I mailed off three presents at the post office in Macy's basement. I keep forgetting there's a post office there, which is open on Sundays as well. I finished all my Christmas shopping! YEAH ME! Now I just have to send out the cards and mail more presents.

Next stop was Trader Joe's in the Inner Richmond. The place is such a traffic nightmare. There is definitely not enough parking for that store. I parked a block away, and walked to the store since I wasn't shopping for that many items. I bought some St. John's Wort, which is like natural prozac. I used to take it when I working at the startups to calm my nerves, and it did help. I'm hoping it will help me calm my anxiety down.

My final appointment of the day was at my accupuncturist. Sad isn't it? I need a team of alternative healers to keep me functional, which costs a ton of money but which makes me feel good and happy. I don't have back problems, my energy is good, I only need 5-6 hours of sleep a night, my skin is decent, and I think generally my health is decent considering all the problems I used to have.

I even made a stop at the bank on the way home to deposit some checks. Then I spent the rest of the night watching "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring". What a great movie. I'm definitely watching it again tonight.

Damn! I was just in the middle of typing a really nice post when I accidentally deleted the whole dang thing. I hate that! Okay, here I go again.

I feel so much better tonight. I had a little anxiety when I came home tonight, but it was just a twinge.

Damn! Damn! Damn! I hate when I have to type over a post. I was into a roll talking about how I had no regrets in life. How my current job turned out to be a really good decision this year. It's not the perfect job, no job I feel will ever be that perfect, but I've got a great boss. The best boss I've had in a long time. Sure the woman gets on my nerves and I get peeved at her a ton, but she really is very good. This new job has also allowed me to meet most of my financial goals this year, while at the same time letting me spend money like it's going out of style.

I was kind of having regrets about the red-haired guy, but you know we had a good run. I knew my time with him was limited from the get go, and I did feel loved some of the time and I was able to let myself fall in love with him a little. And if I were to die today, I have nothing I need to say to him that I didn't already say. I left that relationship saying everything I needed to say so when I left I wouldn't have the feeling that I wished I'd told him this, I wish I'm told him that. I've been trying to do with all my relationships for a few years, because there is nothing worse than having relationship regrets.

The only thing I know I would regret if I were to die tonight, and I'm not sure what to think about this one, is I wish I'd written more. My list of accomplishments for my writing is about 10 plus items, and that's a piddly amount considering writing is something I think I'm actually good at and might want to do for a living some day. I have so many stories I wish I had gotten down on paper this year, so many short stories I wished I'd finished, four novels that I wish I'd finish, a screenplay that just needs 30 more pages to end, etc.

I never thought I'd ever have the thought that I had written more stories on my deathbed, but now I've had it. And it sucked and it was kind of sad. Sad because I keep thinking that if I could just sit my butt down in a chair and make myself write, I could have written more. I had the time, I just didn't have the discipline or desire maybe to do it. I don't know.

And with this now huge regret swirling around my head, I'm buying myself a laptop for my birthday in January. I'd buy one now, but I'm taking my work laptop with me on vacation in case an emergency comes up, and I don't want to be travelling with two laptops. I know a new toy like a laptop might really movitate me to write.

I keep telling myself it would be so much easier if I had a laptop, and now I won't have that complaint anymore. I mean I'm even contemplating going to be earlier so I could get up and write. Since I've been anxiety ridden these last few weeks, I've been going to bed at 10 or 11 pm, and waking up at 5 am. I can't sleep more than six hours without getting up. If I keep gong to bed early, I could experiment with writing in the morning. I've never actually made my myself write in the morning other than doing morning pages a few years back. Of course I'd have to fit in more writing after work before I go to the gym at 7 pm, but the more hours to write to better I say.

Last night I felt way better. I didn't hardly have any anxiety and this morning and today, I've been better. Not sure what is going on, but I'm glad the anxiety has subsided. I told my boss at work what was going on when she asked if there was "anything going on". I don't think I've been myself at work lately. She knows about my relationship with the red-haired guy and how up and down it's been. I think she was worried.

So I've been doing my list of accomplishment and under Money and Finance, I've come up with 24 things I can be proud of. I have not been paying attention to my finances at all these last four months and thought I was spending money wildly, but I haven't been that bad. I've really started to set up my life up so I save money automatically and it really, really helps. I fell short of my savings goals this year because I went on furniture buying binge, but I think I can make up for it next year if I go back to my tight wad ways.

I love having money in the bank! And I think by July if all goes well, I will be credit card debt free! Yeah me! Then I'll just have my car payment left and that will be finished by the end of 2005. I want to buy a laptop so badly and go on vacation, but I think I'll wait till after July. Not sure if I can wait on the laptop though.

If I can ever decide on which laptop to buy, I think it will be my only major purchase for next year. I'm thinking I need a new printer as well as my very old HP from 1998 is starting to not feed paper, but I saw one I liked at Costco for $200. My 1998 monitor is about to die as well and a friend of mine is trying to convince me to buy a flat screen monitor. I don't think they're that expensive, so I may just buy it one of these days.

I think I've done enough major apartment upgrading for now, and the laptop is the only thing that I really, really, reallly want.

I just started doing my 4th quarter accomplishments for work, and I'm always amazed by how much work I completed in three months. I always get this feeling at work that I don't do enough, but then when I look at my list of over 35+ plus projects I've completed, I'm like I work really hard. It just never feels like I work hard because I'm not doing any overtime and I book out at 5 pm every night on the dot. But my list of completed projects is really, really long!

I'm thinking I need to start a list of accomplishments for my life and my writing every quarter as well, because right now it feels like I'm such a lazy little slug. I know I'm not, but it sure as heck feels that way.

But I know I've done a lot like ...
1. changed jobs
2. bought a new bed and mattress
3. bought a new tv, dvd and vcr
4. bought a new stereo system
5. got published four times on the internet
6. opened a money market account
7. paid off all my credit cards except for one card
8. had dental surgery to correct bleeding gums
9. bought new glasses
10. bought a new lingere chest and new chest of drawers

And this is just the beginning.

The last few days have been bad. My anxiety attacks have just been unbelievable! I'm okay for the most part during the day, but at night I just start freaking and crying. I think grandma must have been worried about me since I had a particularly bad night last night, as I kept waking up in fear last night and decided I needed to say the "Our Father" prayer and some "Hail Mary" prayers thrown in just for good measure. It's amazing how that good catholic girl training comes in handy sometimes.

Anyway, when I walked into my kitchen this morning to make coffee the whole place smelled like grandma's kitchen at home on Kauai. I knew she was there haunting me and and letting me know she was worried about me. I usually completely freak out when I smell those home smells, but this morning I was comforted. I must have been in a pretty bad state for grandma to haunt me like that.

My sisters, who both suffer from anxiety attacks, said they've been going through this all their lives. I hate it, and I'm like why am I getting it now at this age? It's definitely an inherited thing, and I'm wondering if there's anything I can do about it or am I just going to have to learn to live with it. Both my sisters swear their anxiety keeps them at their svelte size 4 and under. My anxiety attacks aren't doing a thing for my weight. I'm not losing any weight, but at least I'm not gaining any weight and I guess that's a good thing. I usually gain weight when I'm stressed out.

Just to get caught up, here's a recap of my Thanksgiving weekend.

I drove up to Redding California to visit my aunt and uncle on Wednesday. Redding is about a four drive up North or about 223 miles. I totally messed the time up and instead of leaving San Francisco by 3 pm, I left after 4 pm. This was a HUGE mistake. I got caught in a typical Bay Area Friday night commute home, with added day before Thankgiving traffic. It took me two hours to go from San Francisco to Richmond California, which is only about less than 30 mile drive. The traffic was horrendous, and I don't know how people can stand to do this commute every day.

Once I left the Bay Area, the traffic got better until I hit a five car pile up in Fairfield. That was a scary sight. I'd never seen five cars smashed all in a row like that. You see a sight like that and you think, what's the chances of that being me?

Once I got off i-80and went on 505 and then onto interstate 5, I was fine. I was flying and doing about 80-85 mph. My car is so fun to drive and very, very comfortable to sit in. I wasn't even sore so I didn't even stop and just hoofed it up there.

Driving on I-5 is a trip because it's nothing but huge, huge trucks. I hate driving near big trucks; they scare me. My car is way too small, and the one and only accident I had involved a big rig truck so the trucks just freak me out. I zipped around them as much as I could and I held my breath each time.

The four drive turned into a five hour drive, but considering I was in rush hour/pre thanksgiving traffic I probably made good time. My poor aunt and uncle thought I'd be there sooner, so they waited to have dinner until I got there. I told them I didn't think I'd be there till 10 pm, but they decided to wait anyway. I didn't know this of course, so I stopped at the McDonalds near their house for my dinner and got food through the drivethru. What a waste of good highway junk food! I ended up putting my Mickey D food in their fridge, and going out to dinner with them which they paid for. My uncle always pays for dinner.

My aunt and uncle moved up to Redding to retire and now that they have all this free time, they do nothing but gamble at all the indian casinos that are mushrooming up there. So of course after dinner, they took me to their favourite casino. My uncle plays poker, and he gives my aunt money to entertain herself by playing the slot machines or bingo if they have it. Since I was with them, my uncle handed me and my aunt a wad of money and said "Here, go enjoy yourself. I want to play cards."

Now I'm not into gambling, but since my uncle gave me some money and they both obviously wanted to enjoy themselves and I was staying with them, I gambled with them till 3 am. I lost all the money he gave me, but my aunt was luckier and doubled her stash. She is a very lucky gambler, and had won $800 last week at a slot machine.

It's unbelievable how many people are gambling their money away in the wee hours of the morning in an indian casino in northern california. People are really into it. And unlike Vegas or Atlantic City, they don't serve you free booze drinks at indian casinos. You can get free soft drinks, but no free alcohol. The indian casinos aren't as nice as the ones in Vegas as well. No sports betting, no fancy games. Just poker, bingo, slot machines, and blackjack. I don't think I even saw a craps table. Not that I think I ever took an inventory of a Las Vegas casino, but the indian casino we went to was definitely low rent.

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would be spending the start of a Thanksgiving holiday at a dumpy indian casino, but it was fun only because my aunt and uncle are so nice to hang with. My aunt is really sweet, and she was giving me motherly advice during our slot machine games.

Just when I thought things were getting better on Monday morning, I received a phone call on Monday afternoon that kind of rocked my world for a bit and sent me into a depressing tailspin. My anxiety skyrocketed again and I was going to bed at 8 pm trying to not to freak out. My recent past was coming back to haunt me in a serious way, and I was deathly afraid of the circumstances. I was thinking some serious lifestyle changes for moi.

But it's Friday now and the expected consequences of the phone call haven't materialized yet, and I'm hoping I just panicked myself for nothing. My intuition says I still need to be ready for anything, but I'm hoping my intuition is just plain wrong this time. Usually my intuition is so bizarrely right and while my anxiety has yet to decrease, each passing day gives me hope.

You know for all my complaining and kvetching, I kind of really like my carefree neurotic not so normal life for now. It's comfortable and I have freedoms that I'm not sure I would experience in another situation, i.e. like with a boyfriend. I'm sure there's a way to do it and if I could find that "one comfortable fit", I'd be in a couple in a nanosecond. But relationships always end up being just another prison I have to escape from desperately, and I'm a hell of a jail breaker.

It's so hard for me to blog when I'm in a state of total panic. And people have been calling me out of the blue as well. My aunt from Minnesota called to get my address and tell me out her trip to Italy in the spring with her husband. I haven't talked to her in years, but ended talking to her at Thanksgiving when I was at my aunt and uncle's in Redding.

Then a friend from LA called out of the blue, and I haven't heard from her since September. It's so weird to get random calls from peoople I don't talk to normally.

Last night was the first time I felt like my old self again. I don't think I've been myself since before July 21. That's sad isn't it. I even started to get freaked out again that I wasn't working hard enough on my writing. This was a good sign.

I slept through the night, and woke up not feeling anxious and not thinking about the red-haired guy and all the problems we were having. This was such a great feeling. I think the anxiety is still there, but at least it's not as strong as it used to be.

I've been dreaming a ton lately. I wonder if my anxiety stemmed from me not getting enough REM sleep, because I was so freaked about what's his face and kept waking up every four hours. I read in an article once that if you don't get enough REM sleep and dream, then you get anxious.

Whatever. At least I feel healthy and more like my old self. It feels like everything is going to work out again in my life, and I haven't felt that way since I met red-haired guy back in late July. That's a long for me not feel joy, isn't it? He hasn't called, and I bless him every day for that. Maybe he did love me just enough to let me go in peace. That's what I'd like to think anyway. I'm starting to feel happy again, and hopefully it will continue. I'd like to go back to where I was just freaking about not writing and not everything else in my life. That would be nice, really nice.

And here's my update for this week on the www.sfist.com website. This week's update even had people commenting. People feeling schadenfreude for yours truly, my cynical self says. But my sweet self is so touched by all the words of encouragement by total strangers. Isn't it sad that totally random strangers can be so sympathetic, whilst the people who we think should love us don't care?

The Glory of Words.

On the dating front, I finally ended it hopefully for the final and last time with the red-haired boy on Wednedsay November 17. I'm going on 7 days with no contact from him (this is a long time for us), so hopefully he took it to heart when I told him "I hope that you love me enough to let me go and not call." Well that and I also told him that if he starts calling again and bugging me, my cell phone company said they could change my cell number in an hour and I'd still get a 415 area code number.

The boy was just stubborn and wouldn't take no for an answer when I tried to break up with him on October 1, and I don't think I was really ready to end it anyway. It was an impulsive break up on my part. But six weeks have passed since then and things weren't getting any better and in fact, they were getting really boring. My experience with him in LA didn't help either, and he thought LA sucked as well.

So I just cut the chord and yes it did sting, but surprisingly it didn't hurt too much. But I've been trying to end it since October 1, so maybe I've already experienced all the hurt I was going to feel. Whenever I think of him, it feels like it's out habit more than out of any real feeling. I don't even think I ever loved him, but I guess when I said it I did at the time.

He's definitely the first guy in my life that I'm hoping I never get back together with, which is so strange because I've always wanted to get back with guys I've been in relationships with. I never thought I'd ever date a guy I wouldn't want to date again just a little bit, but I guess there's a first time for every experience. It's not that I hate him or anything like that. He's a nice guy and all, but I'm just so over the whole thing with him big time, like really big time.

So just because I've been under the weather, doesn't mean I haven't been writing or writing about writing.

I've been doing the weekly updates to the www.sfist.com website about my Nanawromo experience. Here's my update for November 15, 2004.

An Update on our Nanowrimo Writer.

So today is the first day I actually kind of feel like my old self. Thanks to the herbs from my monthly acupuncturist visit, my phlegmy flu is gone. It wasn't really a bad flu. I just had a sore throat, which made me cough a ton. But my body must have been fighting off something fierce because I was tired all the time but still unable to sleep due to all the coughing.

I don't know about you, but sleep is how I cure all my colds. If I can force myself to sleep, I know I'll get over any cold. My problem is I'm an insominiac and have been one for years, and I normally only get about 6 to 6.5 hours of sleep anyway. If I get less than six hours of sleep, my immune system starts to break down. If I get more than 6.5 hours of sleep, I get depressed and cranky. It's a bizarre delicate balancing system that I have to go through just to keep myself "normal".

I wish I was one of those people who could sleep longer. Sometimes when I do manage to sleep for 7-8 hours, I feel really good which must mean I should probably sleep more. But when I sleep for that long, my mind starts to freak out and I start thinking that I'm sleeping my life away and must be depressed or something. Then the cycle starts and I start to reexamine my life, and then boy do I get grumpy.

I don't know if I'm a type-A personality who has to constantly go around with their hair on fire and running from one crisis to the next, but if I'm not constantly on the go or doing something to the point of exhaustion then life feels like totally boring to me. And god forbid I should lead a boring mundane existence.

Many apologies for the lack of posting, but writing about my life on my blog was not very appealing. But not to worry. I'm getting healthier every day, and soon I'll be back ranting about my life again.

Add to my list of job duties:

Writer and creator of monthly senior management newsletter on trends in healthcare quality measurement.

I am doing way too much writing in my job.

Did I mention I wrote up two tutorials to be made into cd-roms for a couple of tools on the company website. I am also the reluctant writer of the website FAQs for my program.

Again, I repeat. I am doing way too much writing in my real job. Is this why I can't write in personal life?

I've had a slight infection in my lungs since Monday. It's one of the hazards of travelling, 3-4 hours of sleep a night, and meeting lots of new people in a different city.

I noticed it on Monday morning when I woke up and my throat was very dry, and by that eveving it became progressively worse. It's not a full blown cold yet because I've been able to fight it off, but it's been zapping my energy so I'm not writing much and trying to sleep.

If I could just sleep for 8 hours straight and not wake up, I know I'd heal myself. But my anxiety is back up and so I sleep fitfully and keep waking up. Not the best healing condition for a infection that's just waiting to turn into a cold or the flu.

I think I'll spend the weekend at home, trying to get caught up with my writing and working on my film history paper that is due next Thursday; in between movie watching of course. It's time like these I'm glad I'm not in a full blown relationship, and I can schedule my time all for myself and what I need to do. I don't know what guy would put up with my schedule demands.

Memo to self:

Do not invite the current man you are seeing to next year’s screenwriting expo on Sunday night. Two weeks before, I know it sounded like a great idea, but it so wasn’t. We’re talking like an epic style disaster in the making. Just don’t do it.

The screenwriting expo is an escape into the Hollywood/Los Angeles reality of maybe, just maybe I’ll write that one screenplay that the studio executives will love and I’ll make wads and wads of money.

Never mind that Hollywood studio execs are fearful of losing their jobs and being the one to greenlight the next ‘Ishtar’ or ‘Waterworld’. Never mind that Hollywood studio execs are trolling thru the Japanese cinema to remake the next runaway Japanese horror flick adaptation. Never mind that the Southeast Asian market is starting to become exceedingly more profitable than the US market, and those audiences want ‘blood, blood and more blood’, which means Hollywood studio execs want ‘blood, blood, and more blood.’

But wait a minute … there are screenwriters out there who’ve made it. There are screenwriting experts galore who for three days teach you the screenwriting secret mantra, ‘Good characters and story still sell in Hollywood.’

But on Sunday night when you’re exhausted from:

1) having supershuttle pick you up at god awful hour so you could make the 6:30 am flight to LAX, then being in seminars from 1 pmm to 8:30 pm on Friday not to mention being up till 1:30 am chatting with the cute guy who says he’s optioned two films and is a budding Hollywood producer (everyone at the expo was a budding Hollywood producer), and marveling at the amazing gene pool of men who are at the party because Hollywood is always full of pretty people.

2) Waking up on Saturday at 6 am to iron your clothes for the next two days, then going on a run around the LA Convention Center at 6:30 am because all that great mexican beer you drank the night before made you feel fat and you’re afraid of not fitting into your clothes, then attending seminars from 8 am to 8:30 pm and then partying at the Networking party and wondering how much you need to speak to on the guys who wrote Shrek, and then ending up at another bar and chowing down on Domino’s pizza because it’s the only pizza place open in downtown LA that will deliver and getting to bed at 2 am.

3) And then finally it’s Sunday and you’ve slept in till 7 am and attended seminars from 10 am to 1:30 pm and attended the closing ceremony exhausted but happy that you came and swearing to yourself that you’ll get your writing act together and finish that screenplay and write three new screenplays to pitch at next year’s expo.

It’s like so anti-climatic to see someone from your 'normal real world' show up to take you to dinner, and all you can talk about is all the guys you’ve met, and how cute Aaron Sorkin is. And your guy looks at you like he doesn’t really quite like you right now and you feel guilty as hell that you’re talking about other guys, and mad as hell at yourself for even inviting him.

And then you end up flying back home on Monday morning and crying from sheer exhaustion and misery at 7 pm as you check your 80 plus personal email messages because now you’re thinking it’s totally over between you and your current guy, never mind that you’ve been trying to break up with him since October 1 and he doesn’t deserve any of your attention anyway.

Having your fantasy/dream worlds and real worlds collide like that on a Sunday night at 7 pm in Los Angeles in close proximity to Hollywood, maker of fantasy/dream worlds, is just such a bummer, a huge, huge bummer.

So my friend Jon got me a gig for the month of November as a guest columnist on the SFist.com website, doing updates on my Nanowrimo progress.

Check the link out: SFist writes about Nanowrimo.

I am "Brenda" friend of SFist. Thanks for the gig, Jon.

Back from my weekend in LA at the screenwritng conference. I'll blog more about it later. Interesting to note. In LA, my anxiety completeley disappeared. Now it's Tuesday morning at work, and my anxiety is back in full force and I can't feel my teeth.

Yes, LA is truly an escape from reality. Too bad it's too difficult to live and stay there.

I tried to post yesterday, but blogger was so slow. Everyone and their mother was blogging about election yesterday it seems. And in the midst of it all, I've been doing the National Novel Writing Month marathon again.

Here's a brief summary of my new novel.

My Nanowrimo novel title: Changing Timelines

The time is 35 years into the future. The world is on the brink of war, and a naïve scientist has sold to the US government the ultimate doomsday bomb, as a first strike mutual deterrence weapon. Tensions are high as the rest of the world feverishly races to arm themselves. His wife Tatsinda must travel back in time with the help of her husband’s greatest adversary to prevent the start of his research project which started when they were first dating. What’s at stake is the future of the world and future of her marriage with her beloved husband? Can she prevent him from starting work on his doomsday weapon without if affecting their relationship and eventual marriage? Will her attraction to her husband’s former best friend and greatest enemy in the future affect their relationship in the past? Can you change events in the past to affect the future? Can you change the timelines, or are some timelines, some loves, some relationships unalterable?

I have chapter titles as well. Mostly I use them as a trigger to let me know what needs to happen in each chapter and where in the plot I'm supposed to be. I have a plot and I know how it's going to end, I just don't know what my characters do to get there. I guess I'll have to write and find out.

Chapter 1 – What you love, you must now destroy
Chapter 2 – Love thy enemy
Chapter 3 – Every love has a beginning, every destruction a seed
Chapter 4 – Hate is the opposite of love
Chapter 5 – To love is a choice
Chapter 6 – Choice is sometimes a loop
Chapter 7 – Rewriting history isn’t what you think
Chapter 8 – The past affects the future, the future affects the past
Chapter 9 – A heart breaks across time and space
Chapter 10 – Some things can’t be altered
Chapter 11 – Two loves can’t exist in the same time and space
Chapter 12 – Sometimes love is almost too permanent.

I'm writing in third person instead of first, and I'm not used to writing from that point of view and it's hard.

So why the name Tatsinda? A friend from highschool told me she wanted to name her daughter that name. I have no idea where she got the name, but it's been stuck in my head since my teens. That friend went on college at Stanford; her father, brother and sister went to school there as well. I have no idea where she is now.

So the Shrubmeister won and I'm saddened, but definitely not surprised. I've been predicting it all along, but just because I'm an very amateurish political analyst doesn't mean I like the results I come up with.

What amazes me is the level of surprise in the media. I mean, is anyone really that surprised by the results of the presidential election, the senate races and the House of Reps? Hey, but I guess incredulity sells newspapers and tv time doesn't it?

Try this very soon, before someone gets Google to change its site:

1) Go to www.google.com (it also works with google.de)
2) Type in: weapons of mass destruction (DO NOT hit return button!)
3) Hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button, NOT the "Google search"
4) Read the "error message" carefully.

Someone at Google has a sense of humor. And will probably be fired soon...

Sunday October 24 wasn’t much better, except it did stop raining. My six-year old niece promptly woke up at 5 am, because to her little body she was still on Texas time and it was 7 am there. Kids are great because they’re like automatic alarm clocks, but if you’re tired then maybe having a living breathing automatic alarm clock in the house isn’t a good idea.

My aunt from Florida called and wanted us to meet them for lunch, so we hopped in the car and went to Oakland. The thing with having a kid is you have to build an extra hour into everything you do, because you have to make sure they get dressed and ready as well. Then there’s the let’s load up a bag with things for the kid to do because god forbid the kid gets bored and starts running around and wrecking havoc all over the place.

We picked up my aunt and uncle at their hotel and went to Jack London Square for lunch. Since my niece was with us we wanted to go to a kid-friendly place with kiddie menus, so we ended at TGIF’s. The place was loaded with families and their children out for Sunday brunch, so at least we were at the right kind of place. TGIF’s even had a menu and pack of crayons to give to kids to keep them entertained while they wait with their parents for their food.

At the end of the luncheon, my six-year old niece pulls out her lipstick, lip gloss and mirror and starts doing her lips. My aunt had this horrified look on her face as she wanted my niece. I had seen my niece do this the day before so I wasn’t surprised. Afterwards my aunt confided in me that she had never seen a girl so young put on lipstick before by herself. I laughed and told her, “They start them very young these days. You should see her perfectly manicured toe nails.” Did I mention that my niece gets manicures and pedicures from her dad when he comes to town?

The body viewing and wake for my uncle was at 2 pm, and at 5 pm there was going to be a rosary. Finding the funeral home was an ordeal. I hate driving in suburbs. The streets aren’t well marked and you can so easily lost, but after circling around twice we finally managed to find the place.

My six-year old niece is a trip. She had never seen a dead body in her life, and she just marched herself right up to the casket and touched the dead body of her grandfather. I’ve been going to funerals since I was little and I never did that. Everyone was kind of in awe and shock, because some members of the family couldn’t even walk to the casket let alone touch the dead body.

And since it was a funeral, the family traumarama continued. My departed uncle’s first wife, the mother of my cousin, showed up with her other two children. I didn’t think my aunt was going to show up because she had gone through a very acrimonious divorce with my uncle, and was still bitter and angry. My uncle was still with the woman who had broken up her marriage and family, and had been with her for over 27 years. Can you blame her? I don’t know if I could have forgiven the guy either. But hey we’re all civil and it’s funeral after all, and instead of the family-screaming match I had been expecting, my side of the family was very cordial and friendly. My other aunt’s family was smart, and they just stayed away. My uncle had been very vocal in his life about his feelings towards his first wife.

And this all happened in the first two hours of the body viewing. We still haven’t gotten to the rosary. More to come.

My Friday night wasn’t so bad. As soon as I told red-haired guy we needed to be friends, my anxiety stopped and it’s not come back. Not sure what this means or if what I said to him had anything to do with it, but at least my anxiety is gone for now.

On Saturday, I went to pick my cousin and her six-year-old daughter up at the airport. It was a rainy day in San Francisco and it was kind of depressing. They were hungry so went to Stonestown, a local mall on the way home, to eat and shop. My cousin said her daughter didn’t have any black clothes, so we went shopping for kids clothes.

My six-year-old niece is very talkative, very spoiled, and striking self-possessed for her age. We went into this shop called ‘The Children’s Place’, and I pulled out what I thought looked like a nice black stretch velvet dress. My niece took one look at the dress and said, ‘That’s not my style. The clothes here are all ugly too.’ I took one look at my cousin, and she said her daughter was very picky about clothes. So I said fine, let’s go to Nordstrom to see what we can find.

We headed up to the Nordstrom Children’s department. My niece saw a mannequin wearing a long black stretch velvet skirt, a glittery black tee-shirt and a black sweater with a fake black fur collar, and said ‘I like this outfit, it’s my style.’ I looked at the price of the outfit and it was about $100. I mean she was right, there weren’t other decent outfits in black in the whole place, but to hear that coming from a six-year-old was a little odd.

The same thing happened when we tried to get shoes. My niece was so picky about her shoes, that my cousin told the salesperson to just bring every black shoe out in my niece’s size. My niece looked at every shoe carefully before picking out a pair of black patent mary jane flats, pairing them with white sox with a glittery fringe. My cousin added a headband and forked out $150 for her six-year-old’s daughter’s outfit.

Kid’s clothes are so expensive. All the grown up shoe brands had miniature versions of their shoes in the children’s shoe section. I saw a couple buying a pair of Nikes for their baby in diapers. Manufacturers are smart. They start out brand loyalty on the very young.

My life these last few days have a tangle of emotions. I took Friday October 22 off because I kind of just felt like staying home and dealing with the news of my uncle’s death. I had scheduled to take two days off for his wedding in November, so I told my boss I was going to take the time off now. She was very nice, and said take as much time as I needed.

I had a major, major anxiety attack on Friday morning, so major that my hand was shaking like I had Parkinson’s or something, and I was afraid to leave the house. I talked to a friend of mine, and she wanted me to call my primary care physician and get a prescription for an anti-depressant. In between all of this, my family kept calling telling me of their plans to fly into San Francisco and could I pick them up. Then my aunt and uncle who were already visiting from Florida were asking me if I was going to hang out with them that day.

I also spoke that morning to my dearly departed uncle’s wife and I asked her if she had called my uncle’s estranged children to let them know he was dead. She was understandably scattered, and told me "I’m sure somebody is calling them." I was concerned about my cousin, my uncle’s daughter who lives out in Texas, so I emailed her.

Next thing I know, my cousin calls me back and just starts wailing on the phone for five minutes. Poor thing. Nobody told her. I felt so bad for so I suggested that she could stay at my house, then I felt guilty because I knew if she took me up on the offer I was going to have to figure out how to get my aunt and cousin from the airport on Saturday night. My cousin said she’d let me know later that night if she was coming and all the details.

Then I got more freaked out and called my brother because I figured nobody told him either. My brother was his usual calm self, and did his best to ease my fears. He’s a good brother for that kind of thing. Then afterwards I called red-haired guy and told him we should be friends because life is short, and it hurt too much to not be friends at him. I was like "this close" to being okay with never having contact with him again for the rest of my life, and now I was like in tears on the phone telling the guy we needed to be friends.

And this was just my Friday day. More later.

So I decided to join the National Novel Writing Month group again, and I'm about to write a novel in November. I wasn't going to do it, but I think the exercise of writing every day will keep my mind off my roller coaster ride of a life. My life is one big trauma right now, and I need to do some serious writing to keep me from getting too depressed.

I got into this habit where I'm writing constant letters to my future self 20 years into the future, to ask advice about what I'm going through. It's really trippy because my future self writes back about a future I'm supposed to have which seems so impossible. My future self says she went through the same things I have, but she never wrote letters to her future self the way I'm doing right now. She keeps saying some things in a person's timeline can't be changed. Anyway it's kind of like having an running argument with myself, and it kind of keeps me amused and thinking about things.

But my future self letters have me really interested in writing a story about a character trying to change her future. So I titled my new novel "Changing Timelines", and it will be about a character who discovers a way to remote view into the future and who of course (like her creator) so does not like the future she sees that she tries desperately to change the timeline.

My future self keeps writing to me that while I do have free choice and free will in my life, some timelines cannot be changed. And when my future self says timelines, she means that a certain person will always be in my life no matter what I do. She says it doesn't matter what I do or don't do, if the other person does choose to take a different path, then the person remains in my timeline.

I hate her vision of the how the future works, because it makes me across like a passive victim and I don't believe I'm that. But my future self insists that there are other forces, divine forces at work, that brought us together and which I cannot tear apart. And I hate this interpretation! So I spend many letters arguing about free will, free choice, divine intervention, god's will, god's plan, and on an on with my future self. I am definitely at war with myself right now, and I guess it helps psychologically to argue with myself on paper.

Anyway, all this traumarama makes for an interesting novel about what a person would be willing to do to change a future they don't want. Like how far would my character be willing to go to change her future? Would she be willing to commit crimes, maybe even murder to change her future? I couldn't do that myself, so maybe I need to write about a character who does just to see how far I would really go in a fictional world.

I could explore the ethics lesson I had in grade school. Does the ends equal the means or the means equal the end? In other words, would I be willing to kill if it meant I would be preventing something equally horrible happening. And in grade school I told my teacher I don't know, it depends on the situation. And she just looked at me and said I was "situationalist" and that I saw the world in shades of grey and not in black and white. Looks like I was a post modernist thinker even in my youth. You can thank my hippie grade school teachers for it. They started us on the post modernist track very young.

It's definitely a sign of something that the Boston Redsox beat the evil NY Yankees empire. Yes, there are miracles sometimes in life, if only for a little while.

Pray for my repose of my uncle's soul who was sick back on memorial day. He passed this afternoon. My aunt said he knew it too, and even though he was serene and peaceful at the end, tears rolled out of his right eye. My aunt said it was sad, very sad. He was young too, only 61 years old and about to retire. He and my aunt were looking forward to spending their golden years together.

You just never know when you're going to go.

After all the dramarama of running into my ex-hubby, and then spending half an hour talking to a friend of mine in front of Blockbuster as she tried to calm me down about running into him, I did manage to get to Starfreaks and write for an hour.

I had some more things to write for Elf Girl story, mainly how my main character hated the younger brother for dying and leaving her to defend the kingdom and lead the armies. It's irrational to hate a six-year old for dying because it's not like he had a choice, but my main character is a child herself and she has to be angry at someone. So why not hate the younger brother for dying and leaving her to deal with the mess?

Plus there's the guilt she has for being unprepared to fight, the guilt for the irrational hatred of her brother, the anger for being robbed of her childhood, the guilt for all the mistakes she made in those first few years which almost led to the complete decimation of her army.

Irrational anger and guilt intertwined like challah bread is really weird and interesting to write about. And I wrote it all on my new Palm Tungsten E with my mini free foldup keyboard. I love it. I don't need to be near an outlet, and I can just type away. I probably should figure out how to get an extra power source, should I ever run out of juice. Writing for an hour wiped out about 1/3 of my battery power. Still, it beats having to lug a laptop around right now.

My past is coming back to haunt me.

Haunt # 1 - On the way to the movie rental place last night, I ran into my ex-husband. Talk about shocking! I hadn’t seen him in what, 14 or more years. We talk on the phone and we email, but I haven’t seen him in ages. I think the last time I saw him was at a gathering in Portland Oregon of mutual friends.

I was so freaked out, I think I was kind of rude to him and then when he wanted to me to meet his girlfriend, I was like "I don’t think so." It’s not like I’m jealous, it’s more like I don’t really want to know that much about his personal life. My ex-hub was his usual nasty self and he lashed out and said "she loves me more than you ever did", which was really quite uncalled for and very inappropriate. But you know, the guy was probably right. We were never a good fit, and we couldn’t love each other the way we each needed to be loved to make the marriage last. He’s been with his girlfriend longer than we were ever together, although they still aren’t married and don’t even live together.

Haunt # 2 – While waiting in the rain for the train to take me to work, this guy comes over and starts talking to me about how late the trains were. Talk about blast from the past. The guy looked exactly like the kind of guy I wanted to marry in college. He was your typical New York City jewish looking intellectual type with glasses, a little nerdy, tall with dark hair and brown eyes. He was the kind of guy I would fantasize that I would be married to, and living with in an apartment on Central Park West. We would go to old movies and argue about them like in a Woody Allen movie. We would take walks in Central Park, explore the Village on the weekends, go to the Met or the Guggenheim to see art, and hunt around furiously for cheap sushi places in little Tokyo. We’d spend hours arguing about finer points of harvard liberal politics, books, philosophy, and why jazz after 1970 isn’t as good as jazz in the 1950’s.

When we got on separate trains, I was berating myself for not following him. He got off at my stop, but took a different escalator. Maybe I’ll run into him on the train again.

I haven’t met a guy quite this one in a very long time, and it was kind of like having an old fantasy come to life and start talking to you. Very strange. Red-haired guy is the kind of guy that I would never have been attracted to in college, and up until a few years ago wouldn’t have even bothered talking to. Maybe red-haired guy was right when he teases that I’m at heart "a snobby girl". There’s more truth to what he teases me about than he’ll ever know.

Haunt # 3 – I received an email this morning from a co-worker at my last job. I haven’t heard from her in six months. She was just emailing to say hello, and said nothing has changed at my old company. It makes me wonder if there’s more to the email than what she’s letting on, but she hasn’t emailed back. I hope she’s okay. Maybe she wants to come and work for my company.

I'm in the trenches trying to fight off an impending flu. My boss had it, went on anti-biotics for 10 days which didn't help, and now she thinks she has pneumonia. This is bad.

Not to mention my anxiety level is at an all-time high, and I wake up every morning feeling anxious as all heck. Waves of anxiety hit me like a pulse wave hitting my protective shield. I get a little shiver in an appendage, and if it gets really bad like it is now, I get a horrible feeling in my stomach. Today I have an added symptom because I'm starting to grind my teeth at work. I can feel my jaw quivering like crazy, and I only get like this if I'm really stressed out.

The breakup with red-haired guy is not going well. He does not want to break up ever, and it's becoming a problem. And no, I don't think friendship is a good alternative for us and I've only ever said this to one other guy. I honestly didn't think I would ever have to go through this again either.

It's my karma to attract obsessive crazies!

I haven't thought about my Elf Girl Chronicles story in a long time, but I got this bit this morning as I waiting for the bus to go to my acupuncture appointment. I've been trying to figure out how the war started between non-human realms and the humans, and this is the reason.

*************
The reason the Elfin war with the humans started ...

I had a brother, a younger brother. I was seven when he was born. He was the son my parents always wanted, prayed for. He would be heir to my father's throne. He would be king, and I would be high priestess and share the duty of running our kingdom, just as my father and his brother my uncle had done.

I helped me to raise him, and I loved him as if he were my own. When I left for school I was heartbroken to leave him, as I felt like I was leaving a part of myself behind.

Little did I know then what role he would play in the destruction of our world, our kingdom, our people, and our realm. It was his death that would start the war. My uncle had persuaded father to sacrifice my brother to appease triumverate of evil. in truth, my brother's death was to show the triumverate our loyalty to their cause, but I'm sure my father had known none of this. If he did, I'm sure he would not have agreed to sacrifice his only heir, his only son, his royal progeny.

No, my father thought he was doing the right thing, thought he would appease the triumverate and avert more killings, more bloodshed, avert the harm that he thought would come to our people.

Blood sacrifice was a human ritual, such barbarism did not exist in our realm or any other non-human realm until the humans came and tried to take over the kingdom.

But my father, and especially my uncle, had not calculated the ripple effect of their blood sacrifice. Instead of appeasement, the triumverate then demanded that the king of each realm sacrifice one of their children to them.

It was then we knew, that the systematic destruction of our people, our realm, our kingdom, our people would not stop.

The fragile alliance that my father had built between himself and other kings throughout the land dissolved. They other kings abandoned my father, and he and my uncle became prisoners. And age 15 I became the defacto ruler of my kingdom. I had no choice then, I had to to fight. I had to lead what was left of my father's army, I had to avenge my brother's death.

I left school then and took what little knowledge I had learned in the two years of school about my burgeoning powers and use them to fight, to fight for our family, our honour, our people and our kingdom.

And my poor brother, perhaps he was lucky to die before the war started. Perhaps he was lucky that he was not witness the destruction and degradation that would happen to our world. He did not live to see our people enslaved, he did not live to see our beloved mother and father tortured and hung high above the castle walls for everyone to see and to serve as a warning to all those who chose to disobey the triumverate.

He did not leave to see what I had to become, what I was forced to become, an avenging killing angel,who killed in his name, in his honour, until I was hunted down and finally captured, and tortured and then enslaved, and then changed never to become or be born again into an elfin incarnation, but to always be born an imperfect human.
************

I didn't know until today that my elf girl character had a younger brother, but of course as I was writing it it all made sense. There had to be legitimate reason why the war started, and why not a blood sacrific of a child, which echoes Abraham sacrificing Isaac to his god, and then god sending his only Jesus Christ as a sacrifice to die for our sins.

But in Abraham's time, the God of Israel halted Abraham from killing Isaace, and JC died to save us from sin and to give us eternal life. But my poor royal elf boy's death will cause the ultimate destruction of the kingdom and world that he was to inherit. And somehow there is something very fitting in echoing the sacrific of the male heir and child, but twisting the outcome a bit.

So the presidential debates are over, and this is where the "real election" starts. This is where the rubber hits the road, and both parties must rally the base and the troops. And what the average voter who doesn't understand very much about the voting process in this country doesn't realize is the person who wins the election, as in any war, is the person with the most troops on the ground is the one who wins.

And if the 2000 election is any indication of the strength of the GOP vs. DNC, and how the Gore had no troops on the ground in Florida to tell him what was going on, then well, expect the person in the White House to remain the same.

The DNC is so fractured, with the party splitting off with the Greens and other alternative parties, that their ground troops base in all states are weak and ineffectual at best. All elections are local. Case in point. The Democratic party had to fight the Greens off during the last mayoral election in San Francisco, where one would think the Demos have a hell of foothold. So much for the strength of the democrats. You don't hear about the republicans having to fight off splitoffs from their party in local elections, do you?

It was strange to read in the news this morning that baseball great Ken Caminiti died. I remember hearing him in an interview on the Jim Rome radio show "The Jungle" just a few months ago. The guy was too young to die at 41 years old, but he did have problems.

Christopher Reeve dying was not shocking but sad. It was difficult for me to look at him whenever he was on TV; he just looked so "immobile". Was it relief for him that he died and for his family? The man was barely functional, although he did many good things in his altered state.

All my astrology website are saying that there's a solar eclipse on the October 13, and it's about about karma. Mine has been unusually good until now. I like to believe that I've lived a charmed life so far, and that I haven't been exposed to very many bad people. But the problem with leading a charmed life is I'm so unaware how many completely jerky people there are in this world.

Most people I've met have been so honorable, so full of integrity, that when I run across world-class jerk it's so shocking to me. Plus I have no coping skills to deal with people who aren't honest and honorable. These kinds of people don't exist in my world. Or maybe they always did, but I've managed to avoid them like the plague. But every charmed girl's luck has to run out sometime doesn't it? And mine has definitely run out these last few months.

Friends have told it's just life, that there are all kinds of people in this world and I've just been lucky and fortunate in never having to deal with worst kinds of people. But this charmed girl hates the "real world" life, and wants to go back to the world where people are all nice, honorable and truthful.

Because I'm in that kind of mood, and I don't give a rat's wazoo that it's like so wussy to post song lyrics, I'm posting the lyrics to one of my recent favorite songs.

"Blurry" by Puddle of Mudd - I love the excruciating anger in this song ... it so matches my mood right, and besides I just heard it on Live 105.

Everything's so blurry
and everyone's so fake
and everybody's empty
and everything is so messed up
pre-occupied without you
I cannot live at all
My whole world surrounds you
I stumble then I crawl

You could be my someone
you could be my scene
you know that i'll protect you
from all of the obscene
I wonder what you're doing
imagine where you are
there's oceans in between us
but that's not very far

Can you take it all away
can you take it all away
well ya shoved it in my face
this pain you gave to me
Can you take it all away
can you take it all away
well ya shoved it my face

Everyone is changing
there's noone left that's real
to make up your own ending
and let me know just how you feel
cause I am lost without you
I cannot live at all
my whole world surrounds you
I stumble then I crawl

You could be my someone
you could be my scene
you know that i will save you
from all of the unclean
I wonder what you're doing
I wonder where you are
There's oceans in between us
but that's not very far

[Chorus]

Nobody told me what you thought
nobody told me what to say
everyone showed you where to turn
told you when to runaway
nobody told you where to hide
nobody told you what to say
everyone showed you where to turn
showed you when to runaway

[Chorus]

This pain you gave to me

You take it all
You take it all away...
This pain you gave to me
You take it all away
This pain you gave to me
Take it all away
This pain you gave to me

What is it with me and guys? Every guy I've ever dated has like some kind of sixth sense or a break-up radar when it comes to me. They can tell when I'm about to break up with them, and they respond and pour on the lovey-dovey stuff, like just calling you to say hi and to tell you what a hottie you are. And I'm like, I hate you, I so hate you right now.

It's wimpy and cowardly as all heck, but sometimes the best way to deal with a problem is to run away, cut off the communication, and just not deal with it. And hopefully it will go away on its own accord without any more outpouring of emotion or drama or energy.

So I'm not going to deal with my feelings about red-haired guy. It's taking way too much time and energy on my part, and I have little of both to spare right now. I know I'm going to wake up one day soon and I won't feel bummed any more. At least that's what I'm hoping.

I wrote on Sunday, so maybe writing is once again my only salvation.

I received my official City and County of San Francisco absentee ballot today, and I'm like should I vote now or wait to see where things are headed.

John Kerry and John Edwards are fourth on my ballot, and the Shrubmeister and "Richard (not Dick) Cheney" are last on the list. There are presidential candidates from the Libertarian, American Independent, Peace aand Freedom and Green Party also on the ballot. And I'm like who the heck are these people, because I've never even seen their names mentioned anywhere until I opened my ballot.

And because it's California, there's a host of state propositions and measures as well as SF city propoisitons and measures, and even a BART proposition. Plus, you get the vote for the school board, where I think voting is most crucial for anyone living in the City and County of San Francisco. If we're going to turn around this city, it starts at who gets on the School Board.

I've been very blue this week. My good mood finally soured and I was missing my red-haired boy very much. He called to say Hi, but our conversation was very short and not very satisfying. He wants to be friends, don't they all? And I'm like whatever. Let's see what he thinks friendship means.

Work has been very busy this week, and looks like it's going to ramp up again and we're now preparing for our next Board meeting in January. Oh boy!

I need to get back to my writing and working out schedule. I'm dying to try to write on my new Palm at a coffeeshop, and then hit the gym. That schedule was so good for me and I got off it for the political conventions, and then it was so easy to not get into it. But it's time for my little vacation to end.

I'm trying to decide if I wanted to attempt the National Novel Writing Month next month. I'm going to try and write on my Palm. I don't really want to start another novel, and I'd like to use the time to finish the ones I already started. That is however cheating since the NANOWRIMO folks want their people to start from scratch. I could work on my dwarf novel. That novel is barely started and I could start from the beginning again. If I'm going to participate in NANOWRIMO, I'm going to have to decide soon.

Other than I've been tired, probably from depression more than anything else. They say time heals all things, and when I think back to all the times I've broken up with guys, I honestly can't remember much except for a few incidents. Either I blocked those experiences out, or they weren't that bad. Maybe all I need is time and then there's my trip to LA to look forward to.

I've decided I can't be objective about John Edwards. He looks like my first love, and I am just in love with him. He is just so darn cute. I know my first love would have aged as well as Edwards seems to have. My first love was born in Virginia and he had that slight southern twang in his voice, and I'm just a sucker for a cute guy with a southern accent.

Plus, you know Dick Cheney is just scary. I heard a commentator says Cheney looks like the kind of guy who turns you down for loans, or the nasty corporate boss who hands you your pink slip.

Anyway, I'm not a swing voter. Like the debates really matter to someone like who's never voted republican for president in their entire voting life. And if Howard Dean was the nominee, I just wouldn't vote for president. I've skipped voting for people before because I didn't like the democratic candidate. Take Senator Diane Feinstein, I've never ever voted for her. I never once voted for former mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown either.

But I'll definitely vote for Kerry and Edwards.