I have always wanted a Tizio lamp. Here's what a few websites have to say about this lamp.

"Tizio desk / table lamp is perhaps the most recognizable lamp in the world."

"Tizio Lamp, Large Black, Richard Sapper, 1972
Probably one of the most famous modern lamps of the century, this lamp is notable for the absence of visible wiring, its counterweighted arms and adjustable head. It is constructed of aluminum and thermoplastic with a matte-black lacquer finish. Made by Artemide."

"The Tizio lamp (1972) has probably made an appearance on the desks of more architects and designers than any other object since the lead pencil. Richard Sapper, its designer, has provided a model for product design that combines the rational approach and technical sophistication of his German homeland with Italian flair and originality. After receiving an engineering degree from the University of Munich, Sapper began work for Mercedes Benz and then moved to Italy to work in the design studio of Alberto Roselli and Gio Ponti.

In 1959, he received a Compasso d’Oro for his Static table clock, subsequently collaborated with Marco Zanuso and finally, opened his own design office in Stuttgart in 1970. He continued, however, to team up with Zanuso and together they produced a number of notable products including a plastic child’s chair for Kartell which doubled as a construction toy. They also created the highly styled Doney television for Brionvega, a sewing machine for Necchi and the compact Grillo folding telephone. These products represented state of the art technology, elegantly housed and designed to convey function with a visual clarity that was eloquently modern.

The Tizio lamp was created for Artemide in 1972. Matte black and minimal in form, it had not only a new look but operated in a completely new way. It was equipped with an inner balancing mechanism that allowed users to alter its position by the lightest touch of the hand. It won the Compasso d’Oro in 1979. Since 1981, Sapper has been a design consultant for IBM, designing portable computers like the minimalist "leapfrog" computer. He has also given his high tech style post-modern inflections, creating successful designs for Alessi including the Caffettiere coffee maker and Bollitore kettle. Sapper is an impressively versatile designer who can create compelling visual images for sophisticated electronic technology, and still respond to the simpler challenge of making everyday objects like flatware or a child’s chair."

But having a famous lamp does not come cheap; it's a $300 something lamp. But maybe that's why God invented eBay. So I'm bidding on a Tizio lamp now. You gotta love eBay.

I think I had a visitation from an angel on St. Patricks Day a couple of weeks ago. I was on the train going to work, and I was reading a book on Remote Viewing (Mind to Mind by Rene Warcollier). I had closed my eyes to nap, and when I opened them this man sitting on the side of me asked me if I liked the book. We started conversing and he said something about synchronocities and then he got off at the next stop. When I meditated on the experience a few days later, I got the feeling that he was an angel reminding to pay attention to synchronicities.

The guy looked kind of strange as well. He kind of reminded me of this Amish guy I saw at Chicago Greyhound station. He had kind of odd haircut, like really old fashioned and cropped, and his features were ancient, like he could have a monk in the movie "The Name of the Rose". If you've ever sent that movie, you'll know what I'm talking about. Some of the guys they had in that movie looked they were from another century and it wasn't just their costumes, it was their facial features. You just don't see men with those kinds of features walking down the street of a modern city. I'm not quite sure how to explain it either, but again if you've seen the movie you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

If he was an angel, this was my second angel visitation. My first one was in 1990's sometime. I was walking home from church and it was raining and I had forgotten to bring my umbrella. I was really depressed that day too. I was dating someone at the time whom I really liked, but he was your classic "bad frat boy". I knew it was not a good relationship for me, but the guy was so much fun, really really smart, so charming and really, really cute. I spent all service telling JC I needed a sign that every was going to be okay.

A woman asked me if I wanted to share her umbrella with her as she was going in the same direction I was. I looked at her and was shocked because no one had ever asked me that before. She has a nice smile and friendly face and kind of reminded me of a nun, although she wasn't wearing a nun's outfit. So we walked up the hill to my apartment together, didn't actually chat at all, and then at top we said our goodbyes. I turned around a minute later to check her out again, but she was gone.

I don't know who that woman was, but her gesture of generosity really, really touched me deeply. I don't know. Maybe I looked so incredibly depressed and pitiable that when the woman saw me, she felt she had to do something. I don't know. In a big city like San Francisco, her gesture was just so unbelievable. This experience hasn't happened to any of my friends who've lived here all their lives. And I've yet to repeat the experience.

The woman had to be an angel. She looked so otherworldly too, like familiar and yet not familiar. Totally nunlike, but she definitely wasn't in the outfit.

So now I'm into angels and am attending an angel seminar this Sunday being given by Doreen Virtue, who's written all these books on angels. I found out about the seminar by accident, by sychronicity, and I'm going and I'm excited. Maybe my muni angel boy will be there, or others angel boys like him.

I moved my desk yesterday in my bedroom, in preparation for my lapptop. I'm moving my computer to where my work computer used to be and my laptop will be in my bedroom so I can still listen to internet radio in bed or other internet programs.

My desk is now facing west and when I'm typing at my computer I can look out the windows and watch birds fly across the sky or the clouds move or the stars twinkling in the night sky. I really, really like it. I wished I thought about moving my desk earlier. Speaking of birds, I always see two crows flying across my windows. Crows and raves are my animal spirit totems, and I love to see them.

How weird! I just realized I dreamt around March 7 that I had a desk facing a window in a two story house and I didn't know what it meant at the time, and now my desk is facing the window. I just came up with moving the desk on Friday, but perhaps my dream inspired me. In my dream I had a home office with a desk facing the window on the bottom floor of a two story house, and I was sharing the home office desk space with my husband and we were living out in the suburbs. Like what a nightmare! In the dream I was living in the house but I didn't feel very comfortable there and I wasn't sure why. The house was nice and big, with four bedrooms upstairs, but it didn't feel like my house. It was "his house" (meaning my husband's) and not mine, which I think means he was already living in it and then I moved in. It was such an odd dream.

I finally ordered and received my copy of "Harry Potter and The Order of Phoenix." I wanted to read it before the new book comes out. I only read the British version, and my copy from amazon.co.uk cost me $30. Gotta love that falling US dollar.

While driving around today I saw a gas station with gas at $2.57. I'm so glad I don't drive to work anymore. One journalist I read today said that they didn't know why people were moaning and groanig over the price of gas, when they willing to play the same amount of money for daily designer coffee.

Speaking of designer coffee, are times getting desperate for Starfbombs? They were giving away freebies the other day. They never do stuff like that. A favorite jewelry store closed their branch in Pacific Heights. I was surprised because the store was always so packed, but I guess there were not enough people buying.

We went out to brunch today in Pacific Heights and it wasn't even crowded. No place looked crowded actually which was shocking because usually Easter Sunday is a big brunch out day. Either people aren't eating out as much or they're eating at home.

My family always had a huge feast on Easter. We'd be doing the not eating meat thing every Friday, so on Easter Sunday we pigged out and ate tons of ham. Some childhood traditions never die. I still buy myself a new easter outfit to wear to church, the way my mother did in my childhood. But I had a filet mignon steak and swiss chard yesterday instead of ham for my pre-easter meal. But I did have an omelette with ham, goat cheese, bacon and avocado this morning. Goat cheese in a omelette is divine by the way!

I was talking to a friend of mine about Terri Schiavo today, and seh reminded me that Terri was a bulemic, which caused her present condition. All that barfing up of hydrochloric acid rotted away her stomach and other body parts. She was only 26 when her brain damage happened. How ironic for a bulemic to be forced to eat food ... talk about karma.

On my favourite radio station, Live 105, they're having a "What would Jesus play (WWJP) weekend". How funny! Would Jesus listen to alternative rock music for the Gen-Y generation? They play the music of the band in three, like the trinity, cute huh?

From the Live 105 website: "All this weekend we give up the wheels of steel to the one man who we're sure could do justice to our crack weekend team... The Man himself... JESUS H. CHRIST. And because of His Lord's fondness for the number 3, he'll be playing sets of 3 song from his favorite Alternative Artists... U2, Queens of the Stoneage, Green Day, and many more."

I went to two office supply stores to buy some office supplies, and they were both cloese for Easter. I didn't know stores closed for Easter anymore.

Church was crowded, but uplifting. The pastor preached from 2 Timothy on Christian values, but thankfully did not get maudlin about Terri Schiavo. I missed going to this church as I haven't gone in awhile.

So scary, I thought I saw my old ex-Steve as I was coming through the door. I'm like what the heck would he be doing there? He's a Peninsula boy. It must have been a Steve haunting or something. The Steve-lookalike was so cute too!

I went to Easter service with a friend of mine, and she told me that she had just auditioned for a play, got cast and was about to start rehearsal when the 25 year-old director was killed in a car accident in the East Bay last week. Shocking, huh? The guy was driving on a rainy day, got hit by another car and ran into a tree going 60 mph and was killed instantly. I'm like where were his airbags? My friend didn't know any more details other than the guy was killed. So sad and right before Easter too.

I hate Howard Dean, so I'm not at all amused to be receiving letters from him now that he is the head of the DNC. It will be a very long time, probably not until the next presidential election, that I'll be donating money to the DNC with Dean as the Chairman. And if Dean is the next demo presidential candidate, he's definitely not getting any money from me. And the next time I get another letter from Howard Dean, it is going straight to recycling.

I suppose I should comment on the Terri Schiavo case, although unless the rest of the nation I'm not that traumatized. I've been hearing about this case for about six weeks now, and I don't know, I'm not really moved. Callous isn't it?

It just makes me think that if you're that concerned about it, you should make sure that you have a written directive about what should happen in case you're in Terri's position. My brother knows that if I ever am brain dead, I would want him to pull my plug or let me starve to death. What is life without the mind anyway? I wouldn't want to be an emotional or financial burden to my family.

I feel bad for the Terri's husband and for Terri herself. Her husband had been trying to do this for 15 years and this the third time she's been starved to death. Why would her family want to subject her to 15 years of this is a mystery?

And you know, everyone assumes that Terri's parents treated her well while she was alive. What if that wasn't true? What if they were bad parents in her youth, and this is their guilt trip way of making it up to her? No one ever talks about that. It would be like that scene at the end of "Chinatown" where the Faye Dunaway's grand daughter goes off with the incestous grandfather. Or the people who insist that if a woman who gets pregnant from a rapist, that the woman should carry the baby to full term.

You know the only people who ever benefit from a national traumatic event like this are the laywers. They'll be making money from people wanting to put together living directives so they don't end up like Terri Schiavo. Lawyers always make money in times like these.

What's a girl to do on Saturday while cleaning up, but bid on expensive french shoes. Here's what New York Metro has to say about the Stephane Kelian shoes I just bid on and won for about $25:

Shoes, Women
The art crowd swears by these dowdy-chic, fuss-free shoes that are edgy enough to be seen on the gallery circuit and sensible enough to walk around in—like suede ankle boots ($555) and leather boots with an accented heel ($585).

Another web page I found has this to say about these shoes:

It's not easy to design shoes that keep Parisians looking casually chic and ahead of the next trend, but Stephane Kelian continues to do just that. The shoes balance a European minimalist, fashion-forward style with a comfort and practicality that keep Parisians walking all day long. Kelian shoes are sturdy, but beautiful--not for the princess who likes to totter around on spindly heels. Both the shoes and the store, located right off Rodeo Drive, reflect a clean and modern style. The helpful staff will assist you in narrowing down the search for a pair of shoes, usually gorgeous, buttery leather creations, that will have you placing your best foot forward.

I bought a pair of black loafers with a 2.25 inch heel, which normally retailed for about $400.

Red-headed boy was a shoe salesguy and he thought I was wearing a pair of these. I didn't even know what he was talking about till I googled the shoes and found out they were very expensive french shoes that you can only buy in shops in LA and NYC. I was wearing a pair of 3 year old black Dansko sandals by the way when he said this which cost me under $100 and are shoes Dansko doesn't even carry anymore.

Well, now I have a pair and I bought them on Ebay for $25. I'm bidding on another pair as well just for fun.

So I think the advice about not buying things during the beginning of a Mercury retrograde are true. The astrologers says don't buy things at the start of a Mercury retrograde because you'll have problems.

I bought some underwear at Victoria's Secret on Saturday, and already I found a hole in one of them and on the second one, the cute little decoration is coming out. What a jip! Now I have to decide do I go back to Victoria's Secret to replace the one I accidentally ripped and the one with decoration coming off. I could just sew the decoration back on, but what a pain! And I do need to replace the one with the tear because it's matches something else I bought there.

Decisions, decisions ... but if workmanship wasn't so shoddy or perhaps if I hadn't bought them on first day of the Mercury retrograde maybe I wouldn't have to make these decisions.

Somehow I got pulled in to work on a project with my company’s foundation. Now I’m being pulled into all these meetings and if this project is funded, it has the potential to generate a ton of publicity which will make it a highly visible company project. I hate projects that generate a ton of publicity. Your work gets scrutinized up and ying yang, and you end up going to a ton of meetings to brainstorm and plan a strategy. This project will involve not only my company board of directors but also the foundation’s board of directors. Talk about people breathing down your neck.

Okay it’s not like this is the first time my work has been presented to a company’s board of directors, but I just hate the pressure of it all. I’d rather just do my work and projects anonymously, and not draw a lot of attention to myself. I stopped speaking up in meetings, so I would get disinvited off the meeting lists. And it looked like my no meeting strategy was working until now. Meetings are such a waste of time. If you start volunteering your opinions in a meeting, you end up being sent to more meetings because “people value your opinions.” I know, I know, it’s a compliment to be thought of so highly that people keep requesting you to be part of their projects, but it’s also a complete waste of time. Plus you still have to do your regular job and now do much more extra work. Talk about recipe for spending a lot of nights in the office.

I don’t mind doing the background research, preparing the opinions and briefs for my boss so they sound intelligent and look like they know what they’re talking about when they go to their meetings, but that’s about all I want to do. I don’t want to go the meetings and get assigned to do more work along with my regular job.

I had the weirdest dream this morning. I was out body surfing which I haven’t done since high school, and I was far away from shore like maybe out a mile. There were these huge waves that were coming out towards me, but instead of coming from the ocean they were coming from the shore. It’s like the ocean was backwards or something in my dream. When I woke up the first think I remembered was that the waves were backwards.

Anyway, the waves were huge and usually if a big wave like maybe a 10-12 footer is coming towards you, you need to dive under the wave to not get caught up in it. Instead of diving, I just kicked my legs back and forth like a ballerina and rose up above the wave watching it crest beneath me. In the dream I did this a bunch of times. Very strange! There was some surfer guy there next to me on an orange board and he commented on how huge the waves were. He ended up diving under the wave like you’re supposed with his board, and I just kicked my legs and fluttered up above the wave.

The water was also green and not blue. Not sure what this means and I can’t remember what color ocean water is when it’s really warm. I think the water was warm because I was wearing a swimsuit. But why the waves were originating from the shore and not from the ocean is so puzzling to me.

I haven't been writing much lately. Last Tuesday I had a midterm for my greek drama class. I'm not sure how I did because it was all essay. I'll find out tomorrow.

It's allergy season and my allergies while not too bad, leave me exhausted at the end of the day. By 5 pm, I'm tired and I want to sleep. I've been meditating again, this time in a completely new and different way that I'm thoroughly enjoying so much I try to do it for an hour when I come home.

I meditate on JC. This is completely new for me and something I didn't think was possible but it's definitely working and so, so cool. I was thinking today that maybe if my I hadn't been so depressed these last four months I might never have discovered this new way of meditation. I hate that though, that my heart has to break into a million pieces before I learn to make any kind of progress in my spiritual life. I wish I didn't have to learn everything the hard way.

I generally go through life thinking I'm a little aware and evolved and a little better off than most people walking around on this planet, and then something like this happens where I get the giant, hurtful, painful cosmic slap upside the head to make progress on something that should have been a no-brainer. I cannot help but wonder if my life would have turned out better had I learned to meditate on JC sooner in my life, which bums me out because I hate having regrets.

Oh well. I guess I wasn't ready and didn't know that I was seeking was always available to me from my own past and childhood. Now that I could have surrendered at any other time than right now, because I am forever "a doubting Thomas". I think I must have matured enough to have enough faith to believe in what I cannot touch or see. That was always my favorite player from my catholic girls days, "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you but only say the word and I shall be healed." I never felt worthy and I never felt I would ever have that kind of faith, and as a little girl I knew it and saying that prayer used to always make me cry. Still does actually, even now.

So another announcement regarding a highly visible exec leaving was in my company email this morning. This means my company has been chopping one exec/VP a month since December. This new exec reorged my division, and I have a feeling that my division is about to go through another major reorg come April.

I keep asking my boss what is going on and she doesn't know. I don't think anyone knows at this point, and we just all have to wait till we get to work in the morning and see what email brings. Interesting huh?

I saw "Constantine" on Friday and totally loved it. The movie critic for my local paper panned it, but I totally loved the movie. Okay, yes it had Keannu Reeves starring in it and the movie was great just because he was in it, but the special effects were spectacular as well. And at the end the people in the theatre clapped, so they must have liked the ending. All my psychic friends who see "things" said that the movie depicted what they see some of the time.

I used to wish I was clairvoyant and had visions, but after seeing this movie I’m glad I don’t have this gift. Some things in this world are just not worth seeing since they’d probably scare me to death. It’s bad enough that there are some people I just won’t talk to or interact with because their "vibes" freak me out. It would be much worse I think, if I could actually see what they’re really like and why their vibes freak me out.

I am a comfort shoe snob. I went to Union Square to check out Nordstrom and Macys to look for shoes, but only saw f-ugly shoes! They look like silly little torture chambers for unsuspecting women who want to walk with a sway in their hips.

Yes, they're pretty if you like trashy f-ugly shoes but they look so uncomfortable. I don't know. Maybe if I didn't have that stupid problem with my feet a few years ago, I wouldn't be so down on uncomfortble shoes but I did and once you start wearing comfortable shoes you can't go back to uncomfortable ones.

But I don't want just comfortable shoes, I want stylish comfortable shoes with more than a one-inch heel. I hate flat heeled shoes.

Most women who start wearing fashionable stylish shoes in their youth, start only wearing athletic shoes in their old age or ugly Birkenstocks or Dexters or other old lady type shoes. Talk about feeling like you are seriously over the hill and going down the drain in nanosecond whenever you look down at your shoes.

I think it's better to wear comfortable yet stylish shoes with 2 inch heels, so you at least look and feel young.

I should start a list of the things NOT to do to look old.

1) NO SHORT MANNISH HAIR - all women over a certain age have short hair, it's like a disease or epidemic or something. Okay, maybe Annette Benning can get away with it, but if you don't look like Annette Benning or a Hollywood movie star or a Hollywood movie star, forget it. Keep the hair shoulder length or longer. Besides, hello, it's not the 80's anymore and that Dorothy Hamill do went out a really, really long time ago.

2) NO OLD LADY SHOES - another dead give away about your true age, especially those Dexter shoes!

I'm sure there's more for this list, but these are my major pet peeves about women over a certain age. They look so, what is the word, Stepford wifeish, only worse. It's like after you what, turn 40 or old, you get this list on how you're supposed to look, and boy do most women follow it. It's like they cloned the middle aged woman look all over America. It's so frightening. Don't succumb! And if you're not over 40, don't start the look early!

Fight, fight the middle age woman cloning of America!

So I'm so upset. I bought a pair of $80 Born mary jane shoes back in 2003, and last night during greek drama class I noticed that the sole of my left shoe was split in half. I took the shoes to the shoe repair shop across the street from work, and the shoe shop repairman tells me that he can't fix it and it's a factory defect.

God, I hate that. I love these shoes. They are so comfortable and so cute, and now they're broken. What is up with that? I've never had a fairly new shoe split like that before.

So I don't know if I should go back to Nordstrom to see if they're still selling the shoe sand repurchase them, or just get another pair of shoes. And in the back of my mind of course I'm thinking, what if the damned shoes split in in half again a year and half later.

What is the point of paying $80 for good european shoes if they break?

I went to a seminar on Saturday in Moutain View at the East West Bookshop and had lunch with the couple sitting next to me. They were such an interesting couple. The man was a nuclear physicist in the Johnson Administration, who told me he quit along with a bunch of other scientists when Johnson wanted nuke North Vietnam. He left the government and went to work in the communications industry, and was one of the scientists responsible for coming up with the technology to put communication satellites up in space.

They were such nice people, and they even paid for my lunch as well. I often meet the most interesting people in Silicon Valley seminars.

So I'm thinking maybe I need an IPOD now as I filled my bag this morning with my Jimi Hendrix cd collection so I could listen to that song that it turns out wasn't even by Hendrix.

I'm listening "Electric Ladyland" and the song playing "Come On, Part 1" and I'm having flashbacks to stoner parties in high school and college. I haven't listened to Hendrix in a long, long time, and damn, the music is good, bitchin' really even it's just a tad too dated. But then a classic guitar riff never quite goes out of style does it? And I'd forgotten how good the bass lines are on his songs as well, pretty funky really considering it's classic hippie rock-n-roll.

I've been thinking of this song all morning that I heard awhile back on a TV show that I was watching. I thought it was a Jimi Hendrix song, but it wasn't. It's by a 60's group I've never even heard of called The Chambers Brothers, and the song is "Time has come today".

Here are the lyrics.

Time Has Come Today
performed by The Chambers Brothers

Time has come today
Young hearts can go their way
Can't put it off another day
And I don't care what the others say
'Cause they say we don't listen anyway
Time has come today, Hey!

The rules have changed today, Hey!
I have no place to stay, Hey!
And I'm thinkin' about the subway, Hey!
Love has gone away, Hey!
And tears have come and gone, Hey!
Oh my God, I have to run, Hey!
I have no home, Hey!
I have no home, Hey!

Now the time has come, Time!
There's no place to run, Time!
Might get burned up by the sun, Time!
Well, I've had my fun, Time!
Well, I've been loved and put aside, Time!
And I've been crushed by tumblin' tide, Time!
And my soul's be psychedelicized, Time!

Now the time has come, Time!
There are things to realize, Time!
Time has come today, Time!
Time has come today, Time!

Time!

Now the time has come, Time!
There are things to realize, Time!
Time has come today, Time!
Time has come today, Time!

Time!

I was in a good mood this morning, can you tell? I even danced around at 7:30 am to my favourite 60's I want to fall in love song "Get Together" by The Youngbloods. Haven't done that since the late 90's. I think I'm ready to fall in love again.

More disturbing information from this national health care report.

Between 850,000 and 950,000 individuals are infected with HIV in the U.S, an estimated quarter of who are unaware that they are infected. Each year, about 40,000 people acquire HIV infection. Since the use of the drug therapy to treat HIV infection became widespread in 1996, new AIDS cases declined among the mid-1990’s to 2001, but then leveled off in 2002. Since its emergence 500,000 Americans have died from AIDS, including over 16,000 in 2002.

AIDS incidences and death rates vary by race and ethnicity. Blacks make up 12% of the population in the U.S., but they accounted for 50% of the new AIDS cases reported in the U.S. in 2002. Hispanics also have higher AIDS incidence compared with whites. AIDS is the leading cause of death among black women 25 to 34 and black men 35 to 44.

I'm summarizing a report on National Health Care at work, when I ran across the following paragraph: Are you just a statistic in government health report?

Over 40 million people aged 18 to 64 had a mental disorder in the past year, and about 20 million had a serious mental disorder that substantially limited activities. In 2003, about 16 million Americans age 12 and over were heavy alcohol drinkers and about 54 million had a recent binge drinking episode. About 20 million people aged 12 and older were illicit drug users and about 71 million people reported the use of a tobacco product. The direct costs of mental disorders and substance abuse amounted to $99 billion in 1996; lost productivity and premature death accounted for an additional $75 billion.

I just found out some disturbing news about my former meditation teacher. Talk about my world being rocked. He was someone I respected and trusted for his knowledge and wisdom and his spirituality. What was even more disturbing is one of the people involved was someone I knew and that without knowing it, I was part of the drama. Not that I knew what was going on, but I was there during the events she described in her allegations. I was there, I knew the names of the people involved, and yet I was ignorant to what was really going on.

Other people I know have corroborated the allegations, people I also trust. Talk about freaky! This all happened almost 15 years ago, and I'm only finding out about it now because I just happen to google my former teacher to find out if the group had a website.

In the shower this morning, I felt such a loss of identity that for a few seconds I didn't know who I was anymore. That group and my teacher had been such a part of who I was, who I became, and who I am to a large extent today.

The only good part of the whole incident, if there is a good part, is her allegations gave me insight into incidents that I had observed and that had happened to me 15 years earlier that at the time I didn't know how to comprehend or even process. Incidents that were so baffling to me that I never told anyone about them, not even my best friends. The only people who knew about the incidents I saw that particular year were in Bali on vacation during Gulf War 1.

Talk about a part of your self dying like a snake shedding another layer of skin. And why now? Why did it have to come out now? It's not like I was looking for it, it wasn't like I thought my life was damaged greatly by what happened.

A friend said I must have been traumatized by it because I've kept it secret for 15 years. Was I? I don't know. In my mind, I don't think anyone who wasn't there in Bali, who wasn' t part of the group, who didn't understand the group dynamics I was a part of would have understood it. I barely understood it myself. I lived through it yes, but some incidents in life I think are never meant to be understood, may be are never meant to be processed. Until last night, until today.

It feels like a veil was lifted, and that maybe I'm old enough and mature enough to deal with mentally what happened. I don't know. I keep going back to something I've always thought was nice but have never ever experienced for very long; ignorance is pure bliss.

I went to Well last night at ACT.

The SF Chron had the little man jumping up in his seat and clapping, and it was a big hit off-Broadway in New York and was name of the ten best plays of 2004 by the NY Times and other publications. It's also apparently heading for Broadway sometime soon.

It was a good play, funny as heck, but in the end I left vaguely feeling unsatisfied. I kept also looking at my watch, something I almost never do in a play performance. People clapped at the end and a few people stood up, but the audience response was less than what I've seen it for other plays.

Afterwards I kept thinking, you know the play should have worked and I should have walked out feeling like it was a good play. I laughed, I was entertained, but the ending left me flat. There was no big revelation at the end, no "AHA" moment, no lifting of veil to take a peek into the universality of human behaviour, no Aristotelian cathartic moment, just a gentle, gentle let down.

"Caroline or Change" had the same effect of me, only to a lesser degree. The character Caroline's last song was heartbreaking and really, really touching, and as she sang it I knew she was knocking for a few seconds on the door of some great universal truth, but then the truth wasn't sustained and the ending was flat.

Great art takes on a wild emotional ride, and at the end you feel complete, you feel full, and there is no flatness.

And it's not that these two plays weren't good, they were, they just weren't great and great art is such a mysterious thing.

I've had the urge to shop for weeks, and I finally gave in tonight. So I'm shopaholicking at Macy's and I find two silk skirts and two silk dresses that actually fit. They were all on sale and I was expecting to spend about $175 or so.

Much to my surprise, the bill came to $98.07. And I'm like "OH MY GOD!" I'm paying under a hundred dollars for four, count them four, 100% pure silk pieces of clothing, two of which are dresses. I'm buying silk housedresses to wear to work. You just pop them over your head, throw a jacket, pearls and heels on and you're ready for work. They are so comfy too!

I just love shopaholicking. I could have bought those trendy mini tweedy/boucle skirts that everyone seems to wearing, but you really have to have the right figure to get away with all that bumpy and textured fabric on your big old rear. And right now, I feel fat and I'm sure my bum does too.

You know the US economy is in bad shape when Thomas Friedman of the NY Times writes in his column about the dollar falling.

North South Korea's Central Bank is diversifying out of the dollar, which will probably have a domino effect through Southeast Asia. Once China decouples its currency from the dollar, it will be a wild ride on the markets. Sadam Hussein tried to do it before Gulf War 2 when he wanted Iraqi oil payment in Euros instead of dollars, but since his demise no other Arab country has followed suit.

Oil is heading up to $50 a barrel and expected to go to $60 by Spring, and my energy mutual fund is up $4 since I bought shares in December. Of course my nasdaq stock is tanking, but that's why I bought into an energy mutual fund to offset any losses that are bound to be expected when oil prices go up.

Noah's Bagels raised their prices and so did the cafeteria in my building. I would expect consumer prices to spike up in relation to how gas and oil prices rise. Is it any wonder no one is shopping? Once people stop shopping, prices will drop. I hear GMC has already lowered the price of their cars and trucks to get business going. Of course, they manufacture nothing but gas guzzling cars and trucks so I don't think their discounting will help their bottom line much.

I'm exhausted and cranky. I only got maybe three hours of sleep last night. I just couldn't fall asleep and ended up reading till 2 am, and when I finally lay down to sleep I passed out and the next thing I hear is my alarm going off.

I have to go to a play tonight, and I know I won't enjoy it because I'm exhausted. I had lunch with a friend and I thought maybe some Cadbury chocolate would cheer me up, but I ended up buying a dark chocolate bar by mistake and I hate the taste of it. I'm more of milk chocolate girl.

Another friend broke up with the guy she's been seeing off and on for about a couple of years. She didn't want it to get to the point where she hated him, but then it went that way. Sometimes I think that's the best way to break up with a guy. Get the point where you hate the guy so much and then when you break up with him you're not grieving and wondering if you've done the right thing. People say this is the unhealthy way to break up because then you can't be friends but you know, the whole "let's be friends" idea is so overrated. Who wants to be friends with an ex?

I wish I had broken up with the red-haired guy the old fashioned unhealthy way. I'm the one who broke it off because it was not a good thing for me, and I'm the one who is still grieving and wondering if I did the right thing. It's like been way too hard to break the pattern of unhealthy emotional behaviour because I don't usually break up with anyone in a healthy way and I'm not used to having so much regret about letting someone go. I hate the emotion of "regret". I've had very few regrets in my life,and I'm not used do dealing with this emotion.

I swear the next time I break up with some guy, I'm going back to how everyone else does it; unhealthy with no regrets because you hate the person so much.

I had a sleepless night and it's only 10 am and I'm already having a horrible, horrible work day. I put someone's phone number instead of their fax on a letter that went out to clients, and now my boss and his AA are so mad at me.

So my company just announced its fifth business unit reorg since December. Executive heads are getting chopped, but not anyone else.

The business unit that pays my salary reorged in December, but the business unit that I'm a part of has yet to reorg. I think our group is next, although no one is saying anything.

I guess the worse that could happen is I get a different boss, which would be a bummer, or my boss and I move to another section, which means I'll probably have to move to different floor.

Changes are definitely coming, it's just a matter of when.

A couple people in the department brought in homemade treats to eat for the whole group, and without thinking I gobbled the cookies and brownies up. Boy, what a mistake. I was sick as a dog last night! This is why I fear company potlucks. You just never know the cleanliness level of your fellow coworkers when it comes to cooking. This will teach me never to eat food at work unless it is packaged or from a store.

Silly isn't it ... but having the runs at 3 am in the morning is not a fun experience.

It was a work holiday today, but I woke up early to take my car into the shop to get my right headlight fixed since it was out. I thought there were going to charge me a ton for it and I was going to have a wait a long time, but they got it done in an hour. Times must be tough at my car dealership when they're handing out roses to their customers to thank them for taking their car in for repair. In the five years I've been dealing with them, they've never been that nice.

Then I was off doing errands all morning. I went to Target to buy some cleaning supplies and ended up with a new lamp and Brita water filter to fit over my faucet. I've been wanting a Brita filter for my kitchen faucet for a long time, and when I saw it on sale I had to buy one. I also ended up with a new paper shredder, since I burnt out the small one I had. So much for just picking up a few things at Target.

Then I went to pick up gas at $2.09 a gallon, and I'm thinking to myself I'm so glad I don't drive to work anymore. Gas is so expensive! I wonder how families with huge gas eating cars are doing with these gas prices. They're only going to go up too, and not go down.

I love Target so much! They've always had great stuff, and now they're stuff is so much better because they do knockoffs of the merchandise at stores like Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel. Since I regurlarly browse in these kinds of stores, I know an imitation when I see one. And Target does it for much cheaper and unless you're really looking close, sometimes you really can't tell the difference between the merchandise.

I actually saw a quilt I liked at Target. I've been wanting to change my bed quilt for a long time, and just can't seem to find a pattern I liked. Target had a lovely quilt, but only one pillow sham. I would have had to go to another store to find a second pillow sham, and I decided it wasn't worth the bother on the holiday even at Target's oh so cheap prices.

Then it was off to the mall to visit Nordstrom to buy some makeup, and then I was supposed to go to Macy's to buy a thank you present for someone but I decided it was better to buy it online so I could have the online retailer mail it for me, so I would one less errand to do.

And then it was back home to do my cleaning chores that I skipped all weekend, so much for a fun three days off from work.

Does it seem like the economy is really bad to you? It does to me. I don't think people are buying as much stuff, and shoppers aren't certainly out in droves like they used to be for a holiday. But I did my part today to support our consumer driven economy and came home with a ton of stuff.

Sometime I hate that I love to shop. I have so much stuff, and I keep buying more of it. I feel like paring down my stuff and just throwing everything out. I just threw out out a $80 shirt I bought years ago because it was looking frayed. I could have fixed, but I haven't worn it in five years and it's not really my style anymore.

I want to go through my whole closet and throw everything out, and just start from scratch. But it takes money to do that, and I really can't afford it right now. Besides I feel really fat right now, and I know I shouldn't be shopping for clothes until I lose some weight. I'm just so sick of all of my clothes right now.

For my Christmas/bday present, a friend took me to see the Broadway play "Caroline or Change". We had orchestra seats which were nice, and despite the fact that I'm not a big Tony Kushner fan, I really enjoyed the play. It's fun to see a Broadway musical in San Francisco, without having to go all the way to NYC. One of the characters in the play even won a Tony last year for best support actress in a musical for her role in this play. She's a local favourite, and my friend reminded me that we saw her in "Tartuffe" and "Resurrection: Changing History" at ACT. She even thanked ACT in her acceptance speech at the Tonys last year.

I liked the musical a lot, although the end left me very unsatisfied somehow. But all Tony Kushner's plays have that affect on me so I shouldn't be surprised. Sometimes I think he tries to be a bit too clever and intellectual for his audience, and it robs his plays of what the greeks would call a "cathartic ending." Oh well, whatever, it was a fun play to watch and singing was phenomenal.

I've been in a weird mood lately. Everyone at work has been out with the flu, and I've been tired and feeling like I'm fighting the flu as well.

I've been sleeping a ton which is weird, because I am usually a total insomniac and can only sleep for 5-6 hours at at time. Not anymore. Who knew I could sleep so much and not feel tired during the day?

My anxiety is back, but kind of at a low level. It was gone all of January it seemed and now it's back, or trying to come back. Every day it feels like something is going to happen, but nothing ever does. Just little things the right headlight going out in my car over the weekend, and then on Tuesday I lost one of the books for my greek drama class and had to repurchase the book.

I went out with a really good friend of mine on February 5, and we bopped around and went to the Asian Antique Art Show and then to China Town for the Flower Fair for Chinese New Years. I had a great time with her, but then I got kind of bummed when she told me she called her wedding off.

My friend told me she's been in love for like two years and last fall got engaged with a $6K platinum diamond engagement ring and wedding planned for June. I've been really sort of jealous only because I was wishing it could happen to me. But now the whole thing is off and my friend is freaking out because the guy is like living with her, and she doesn't know what to do with him. She loves him and all, but is having serious doubts about marrying him.

She had a laundry list of his faults, and I kept saying to her "didn't you notice these things in the two years you were together?" and she said no. It's only been since the engagment that she's noticed what an unsuitable partner he is. Part of her misery is driven in part by the fact that she's unemployed. It's amazing how lack of money can really put a damper on your life. But part of it is, and I didn't want to tell her this from the beginning, that he really is opposite to any guy she's told me she's ever dated. Her fiance is so not her type, and I knew that when I met him but I kept my mouth shut because she seemed so in love and like I was anyone to give advice to my best friend on being in love.

But like any good friend, I told her to stick with him because she loved him and maybe when she got her finances in better shape he wouldn't be so bad. And besides, breaking up is hard and painful especially if you've been living with a guy for over two years. I didn't know what else to say.

So I'm having a Marcel Proust "Remembrance of Things Past" week where I'm eating foods that I've loved in years past.

I had tuna sandwiches for lunch the last two days, which so reminded me of growing up and eating home packed school lunches. Then today, I went to Baja Fresh because I had a craving for nachos. I used to live on nachos and ate them at least once a week. I'm not sure why or when I grew out of my nachos phase, but I hardly eat them any more. Pizza is the same say. I love eating pizza but I hardly do it unless I'm with friends.

So I'm ploughing through my Baja Fresh nachos and I'm thinking to myself, I can't believe use to eat this dish regularly because it's really not that tasty. I get the same way with tuna sandwiches. I crave them for awhile and then end up thinking it's just not a very good lunch. It's kind of sad really.

I went to see the kineseologist I've been seeing every two months, and he said I was doing so much better with my health that I could stop seeing him every two months and had to only visit him once every three months.

This was such good news to me since I felt like all the work I've been doing with trying to be healthy was finally paying off. Not sure if I feel the difference healthwise but my kineseologist saw a big difference, which means less visits to him and less money spent by me.

So I've been a good couch potato and spent the last two Sundays at home being such a lazy girl, but this is a good thing. I haven't felt comfortable in my own place for a long time and definitely could not write there, which has been such a drag since I need to be able to write at home. Hopefully that's all changed now since last night I finally felt comfortable being at home for the first time in ages.

I think if I just move my computer to where my work computer used to be and get a new lamp, I'll be good to go. And when I get my new laptop which will be in a month, I'll put my laptop where my computer is now and have two places where I can write in my apartment.

It was the start of Chinese New Year's yesterday and it's the year of the rooster, so how weird was it when I walked out of the shower this morning and heard a rooster crowing. I'm like, did one of the neighbours buy a rooster for the new year or was that noise coming from the television? The weather report was on so I don't think it was coming from my tv, and the rooster crowed only once and it was already daylight.

So I'm like what is this supposed to mean? Is it like a good sign or what? Hearing the rooster crow reminded me of growing up because one of the neighbours kept chickens and roosters and I could hear them crowing every morning at the crack of dawn. I've been living at my place for almost two years and this was the first time I heard a rooster making a noise. Very very strange ...

There probably aren't very many people weeping, but I'm saddened by Carly Fiorina's resignation from HP. Fiorina has always been a sort of role model for my corporate self. The crusty old HP board booted her out. If she was smart she built herself a grand old golden parachute to make her leaving very soft and cushy. I wonder how much they offered her to take a hike?

I still remember when she first got hired and she was scrutinized by the media up and down and all over, from her choice of husband to her hairstyle to her clothes. If she had been a man, the media would have kept the coverage about business and would never have made a comment about the man's choice of wife.

Thank goodness Oprah is still going strong and earning a ton of money.

I know the network wanted to play it safe and all with the music and even though I like Paul McCartney and everything, I couldn't help but think that I was watching teh "Geriatric Music Super Bowl". OY! I'm so bad, but god was that music old and dated. Okay, maybe not the Black Eyed Peas but everything else, come on! They even had had John Fogerty on. I felt like I was watching the modern version of The Lawrence Welk Show. So, so, very, very scary....

Well, my personal life may be depressing me as heck but my work life is looking a lot better. One of my bosses just assigned me back to an old project that I was working on when I first started, and I told him I needed training. He didn't bat an eye and said okay. So now I'll get either Business Objects or Crystal database training or hopefully both. Maybe even SAS if I'm lucky. I love learning skills like these that I can stick on my resume.

I'm excited because the doctor that I worked with last year specifically requested me saying I had good positive energy and was great to work with. She said this to my boss and I'm hoping this will help when it comes to my boss figuring out my merit raise.

Plus, what I'm really excited about is I'll be learning new things because the earlier project has springboarded into another new project and will probably generate future projects in years to come. And it's a cutting edge project in my business and that's always a fun, fun thing.

Maybe it's not just me, but everyone at work is saying that this week has been really hard and it's only Wednesday. Everyone here is in such a bad, bad mood.

Lots of people out with the flu, and thank god I've got zero symptoms.

Blogger is slow today ... guess the people at Google are too busy celebrating their great stock results to mind the servers.

Apologies for not writing. I had the worst dream on Sunday morning. I dreamt a friend of mine was dying and he was calling out to me to save him. It was so real and creepy, and it's put me in a blue mood that I can't seem to get out of. I've lost touch with this person, and have no idea how to get a hold of him to find out if he's okay.

I guess I'm spooked because I've three friends die in the last four years, and I was thinking a little about two of them before I heard the news of their demise.

I can't write, and I'm basically just holding on hoping to get through the day and then I go home and lie in bed all night. I felt like I was on the edge of a void, some kind of abyss on Monday night, and by Tuesday morning it felt like I had fallen in. Wednesday morning I woke up feeling like I was still hurtling down the hole like Alice from "Alice in Wonderland".

My intuition tells me to expect shocks, upheavals, and seeds of karma that must and will be harvested. I wish I could turn my intuition off because it's been so wrong before. And of course, my anxiety is going through the roof big time. It's not as bad as it's been in the past, but it's getting up there.

I wish I knew what was going on or how to dig myself out of this blue funk I'm in.

I was suppose to finish Chapter 11 of my Texas novel this weekend, which was one of my writing goals for the month, but it's only half written. I did manage to finish Chapter 10 of the Texas novel and then finish chapter 2 of my "Changing Timelines" novel. Still, it would have been nice to say I wrote three chapters in a month because it would have been a bang up way to start the new year.

Wow, did I spend a ton of money these last three months and I am so paying for it.

In November I took a trip to LA. Then in December I went to Dallas, and in January I went away for my birthday. Then I spent a ton of money on buying a new battery and tires for my car.

And I really messed myself up with my taxes this year. I claimed 2 on my exemptions and I'm barely getting a refund. YIKES! I really like getting a refund on my taxes. I think I may go back to one exemption depending on what my merit increase looks like. I probably would have owed money this year if it wasn't for my deductions.

I just can't spend any money till June now. I hate that. Not that I should be buying new clothes anyway because I feel so fat and gained some weight over the holidays. I'm wearing my fat jeans because they're so much more comfortable than my size 8 jeans right now.

I'm still buying a laptop because I really want one, but not till April when I get my little tax refund. In March my company bonus is supposed to come and since I get paid every two weeks instead of twice a month, I get an extra check in April.

If I'm careful, I will still be on track for paying off my car and all my credit cards this year. I won't be completely debt free because I'll probably go one some kind of vacation this year, but I'll be able to pay it off quicker once my major debts are gone. I think I'll also still be on track for my savings goals as well, if I don't buy anything other than my new laptop.

Thank god, I am pretty through with upgrading everything in my apartment. I still want to upgrade my monitor and get a flat screen, get new computer speakers, and upgrade my printer get a new printer/fax/scanner combo, and upgrade my operating from 256 to 512 because my home computer is just way too slow, but I'll be able to do that after June.

I shouldn't be too whiny about my finances. I'm in the best financial shape I've been in ever, but I hate feeling like I've overspent myself and I so feel like that right now.

I was supposed to work out on Thursday, but my anxiety started to kick in again. At least it happened after I had writte my four pages for the day. Then I just went home and watched TV all night.

"Queen of the Damned" was on and although the movie is sucky, the soundtrack rocks! I was going to buy it until I found out that the Korn guy who sings the vocals for the movie, isn't on the soundtrack cd. Some kind of contractual issues prevented him from being on the cd; what a drag!

I've been having wild dreams all week. I don't remember any of them except that I wake up thinking to myself, what a weird dream. I've been feeling so BLAH this week, and thinking that my life is do drecky! I don't think it's always been this awful. I seem to remember being happy not too long ago.

I still think of the red-haired guy, and I'm sure that's the main cause of my general misery. Honestly, thoughts of the freakazoid will not leave my mind. It's so maddening! I feel so haunted. A friend of mine whose mother was some kind of famous psychic in Paris suggested that he could do a clearing for me. He did it for free which was nice, but he didn't find anything. He told me my misery was internally driven. I hate that! Why would I want to make myself miserable?

Anyway the psychic clearing must have done something, because on the way home I stopped at Borders to look for a book that I need for my Greek Drama. They were out of it at the college bookstore, and a huge bookstore downtown told me that it was on backorder from the publisher for two weeks. But at Borders the book was half off, how great was that? Good thing too because the prof assigned a play out of it this week.

I'm reading "Philoctetes" by Sophocles. I'm also reading my way through CS Lewis' Narnia books. After my CS Lewis kick, I think I'm going on Graham Greene kick since he's my new writing inspiration. Did I mention this before? The New Yorker did an article on him and wrote that Graham Greene wrote 4 handrwritten pages a day.

I like that I'm writing a ton even though I'm fairly depressed. I just hope I don't have to be depressed to write because that wouldn't be a good thing for me.

I decided to count how many pages I had written to see what kind of progress I've been making with trying to establish better writing habits. And much to my surprise, I have written as of today 54 pages. Mind you it's all handwritten pages, and some of the pages are outlines for chapters I'm writing and a character interview as well, but still! That's a lot of pages. I am so impressed with myself!

I still want to get to the point where I'm writing every day, and not taking days off like I have been. Even if I just write one page on busy days, it would still be better than no pages at all. But I know I still have the attitude that if I can't fit in writing four handwritten pages, I'm not going to write all. I have to figure out to break this mindset because when I do take a break, it does take awhile to get back to writing. It's like I lose some momentum every time I take a break. I'd rather have the momentum build slowly and daily till it really starts cooking along.

What's surprising is how easy the 54 pages came. Oh sure I complained a ton and found the whole exercise completely onerous at times, but in retrospect I'm amazed at the number of pages that I've written compared to the amount of time I've put in. It really does all add up, even if you do it a little bit at a time.

It's like saving money I suppose. Even if you just save a little at time, over time the amount keeps growing. Speaking of money, I've been watching it fly much too quickly out of my accounts lately. January is always like this for me. I so freak out at the amount of money I've spent, what with Christmas shopping and holiday spending. I hate digging into my savings, but that's what the money is for right? To pay for things that are out of the ordinary expenses.

God, I can't wait till I pay off my car at the end of this year. I can't wait to have that money freed up. Of course it will all just go into savings, but it will nice to be able to save more money.

So considering I hardly put any effort into my new job and am now an official clock watcher and I scramble out of here at the stroke of 5 pm, I received a "Meets Requirements" which in the corporate world is grade equivalent of "C" grade. My boss said she was very happy with me, but that I needed to take more initiative and not be afraid to speak up at Board meetings. Whatever.

A "Meets" will still get me a 3% or more merit increase which is like a $100 more or less a month, and in this economy that's not a bad increase. At my last company, we didn't even get that much. I also get a $3,000 company bonus in March for our company's 2004 performance. If I factor the 2004 bonus in and the pay increase I received in this new job, I received the equivalent of a 10% merit increase in 2004. And that's incredible given the bad economy out here.

So I can't complain at all about how things turned out job wise, considering where I was around this time last year. I have a job where I work hard but not too hard and still get paid well, and where I can leave at 5 pm without guilt and work on my writing. Nope, can't complain at all.

Now if only I could say the same about my personal and my writing life. But I intend to get those two areas handled this year. I'm definitely laying the foundation for my writing life. It's my love life, I have the most doubts about and what's always been the hardest for me to get a handle on.

I think most people have the opposite problem. They seem to be able to handle their personal life issues better than they do their work life. I'm backwards. Work and other outside activities have always been the easiest areas of my life to control.

When I was getting my massage at Osmosis on Monday, the massage therapist told me that "you get into relationships with people to complete your issues from childhood." I was thinking about this last night and freaking out. My red-headed guy was like cross between my grandparents who raised me, and I'm like no wonder I was miserable. I was reliving my bad childhood with my boyfriend. What is up with that? There's got to be another better way to complete my childhood traumas without having to relive it with a boyfriend or worse yet in a marriage. I am so not having another unhappy childhood at this stage in my life.

Happy Birthday to me! Today's the day. My best friend and I planned a trip up north. On Sunday we went hiking up at Point Reyes and we saw whales spouting and elephant seals lying on the beach.

Then we headed to the Inn at Occidental, which is one of the top 100 hotels in the world according to Conde Nast. It was a very nice B&B, and my friend had a hot tub in her room so we hung out in the hot tub. We had dinner at Negris across the street, and passed out early Sunday night from too much wine and food.

Then we went to Graton to a jewelry outlet, an antique store with pretty nice antiques, and an art gallery with some decent art. We had lunch in Graton, and then headed off to Osmosis Enzyme and Bath. Osmosis is the only day spa in the U.S. that offers the Cedar Enzyme Bath, a rejuvenating heat treatment from Japan.

We sat in an enzyme bath full of woodchips and rice bran, then each had a 75 minute massage. It was very relaxing and supposedly very detoxifying.

It was great way to spend my birthday and I'm very grateful to my friend for planning the whole event!

I'm on a mini writing vacation. I haven't written for two days in a row, and it feels good to relax a little. On Wednesday I was too keyed after the board meeting to write and just had to relax.

I was going to write tonight before going to "Gamester" at ACT, but a friend called and we went out to dinner. The woman who wrote the play I saw tonight said she wrote for 20 minutes every night and finished the first act of the play. Was that like a reminder from the universe to me that I have the time to write. That if a woman can write for 20 minutes every day and have her play produced all over the country, surely I can find 20 minutes in my my day for my writing.

I don't think tomorrow is going to be much better since I'm attending a reception wtih a friend at 8 pm, and she's treating me to dinner using a gift certificate at a restaurant someone gave her.

This week has definitely been a busy week. After Wednesday of next week, my life should calm down a little I think and I can go back to my schedule of writing and going to the gym. I kind of miss it.

So I was sitting in our corporate divisional meeting this morning, and I was looking at the slide deck that I helped put together that our senior VP was presenting. I felt very proud to be part of this collaborative effort. It made me wonder if this is what I'll feel if and when one of my scripts becomes a movie. I'll be sitting in the audience thinking, I helped put that movie together. A script after all is just the structure, one small part of the movie making process.

It was a good feeling until someone in the back complained they couldn't see what on the bottom of the slide. The slide deck was chock full of information and many of the slides were way too busy, but I didn't have final approval. I was only one of many people who helped put the deck together. Still, I felt bad.

And then I thought well, this is bad part of movies as well. The critics, the people who hate your movie, the waiting every Sunday for your box office totals and knowing that if you can't fill them seats your movie will have a limited run at the theatre and go straight into the DVD abyss. Citizen Kane bombed at the box office and the awards and took many years to be considered "one of the finest movies ever made."

I've got another slide deck premiering tomorrow night at the Board meeting. Again, another collaborative effort that I don't have final control over. Maybe it's a good thing I'm not attached to when my slide decks get changed. It's kind of a relief actually to not be totally responsible for a presentation. All I have to worry about is version control.

So my good mood has continued into the night. It feels as if I've really turned a corner in my life, and how good I'm feeling is so radically different than how I felt say a day ago. Whatever is going on in my life today, I'm grateful for it.

I stepped away from my Texas novel today, and went back to the novel I started for Nanowrimo called "Changing Timelines". I printed it out, and although it needs considerable rewriting and tightening, it's not a bad story. I was really surprised at how quickly I entered into the action of the story. That's a first for me. Usually the first chapters are all about exposition, but this story got going pretty darn quickly. It was fun to keep writing for it, and I was able to produce four handwritten pages as I'm still sticking to my Graham Greene four page routine.

Sometimes when I read over my work, I feel like I'm reading the words of a stranger. I can't believe sometimes the stuff that comes out of my pen. Where does it all come from?

I printed out the start of a short story that I keep meaning to write, and the voice in the story is so authentic and I'm like, who is this character and where did I pick up this voice? It's such an odd feeling.

I've had a pretty good day today so far; knock on wood. My last two Mondays were bad, but today was relatively stress free. I even started to get the feeling that everything was going to be alright for a change, and that's a feeling I don't get very often anymore.

I'm trying to keep track of my writing progress, so I write more this year than I did last year. I was looking at the month of January and saw that two weeks have gone. I started panic thinking the year is already rushing by and I'm not getting any writng done, but then I realized I've been trying to write every day come hell or high water it seems and I do have something to show for it.

Chapter 10 of my Texas novel is complete. Chapter 11 is outlined and 1/3 finished. Chapter 12, 13 and 14 and half outlined. And I started a rewrite of Chapter 1 which I really, really like. Not bad for 16 days of writing time available.

I've not even started on my goal of doubling my writing output on the weekends. You'd think I'd have more time on the weekends to write and I do, but I'm not used to scheduling in double the time. Since the writing by hand thing seems to be working for me, I was thinking I could use the weekend time to get caught up on my typing.

I'm learning that as long as I keep telling myself it's easy for me to get my four pages done every day, I can do it. But the minute I think about how hard writing is for me and how I don't have the time to do it, I get stopped. I have to fool my mind into thinking that what I'm doing is easy and pain-free, never mind that it really isn't on some level, but as long as I tell myself it's easy I can do it. It's not the getting the words to come out that is hard, it's getting to the point where I can sit down and be relaxed enough to let them come where the difficulty comes in.

I can see why all the books tell you that you should write at the same time every day. That kind of structure forces you to relax after awhile because it's not like you'll be doing anything else and you get used to relaxing your mind and body at that particular time of the day.

What a frazzled day! I got up late and when I finally got in my car to head to a cafe and write, my car doesn't start. I call Triple A to get a tow truck to jump start my car, and the guy says my battery is dead. I didn't leave anything on, and my battery up and died. This was very strange because I had just gotten a reminder from the car dealership that it was time for my 40,000 mile battery vice. I didn't pay any attention to the notice because I only have about 33,000 miles on my car. But sure enough my battery dies.

After driving on 280 for about an hour, which is about the prettiest freeway in northern California, I ended up at Sears to have my batter tested and sure enough after the first test my battery died again. This confirmed what the tow car guy said so I had them change my battery. I've been thinking my tires needed to be changed and my car needed to be aligned and balanced, so I'm asking the mechanic guy about their tires and there's a sale.

We go out to check my tires and he said I had about 2,000 miles left on my front tires and that it wasn't a good sign that they were cracking. And I'm like I don't want to spend the money, but it's either now or later and with all the bad weather and rain it might as well be now.

So we're looking at the tire prices and I'm asking about just getting the same tires that were on the car before until I look at the price. Those tires were so expensive. The mechanic guy says he likes the next tire in price better because the handling is better. My other tires make less noise but they're not known for their handling. So I'm like okay, just make sure the tires are balanced and aligned.

Six hundred dollars and an hour and a half later I'm driving in my car and the new tires make such a difference in the drive. I was right about the alignment in the car, because the mechanics found that the car was off in alignment on the front like I thought. The new tires are so great. They handle the road much better, and the difference is so noticable.

But what a hectic and tense day. I hate it when I have car problems. I'm supposed to only get my oil changed every 5,000 miles, but I'm going to change it this weekend because I'm at 33,000 miles. The check oil light came on anyway, and I'm pretty sure my four hour drive back and forth to Redding ate up my oil, not to mention my two hour trip and back to Sacramento last month. Better to be safe than sorry with the oil changes I say.

I'm watching the Tsunami concert of hope on TV, and I'm getting flashbacks to 9/11 but the tsunami didn't affect me like 9/11 did. I was on vacation in Houston at my cousin's and the tsunami seemed truly like another world away even though I'd been in that part of the world.

That part of the world will never be the same ever. It will recover, but from the pictures it looks like the landscape has changed forever. I don't know why I'm not affected, because I know I should be. So many people have died, and a generation of people were wiped out. That's huge. I don't know. Maybe I'm in still in shock and one of these soon it will hit me.

The thing that's better about this TV concert is they decided to put the name of the people performing. They didn't do that for 9/11 and a friend of mine who's not plugged into all the new music, spent the whole night wondering who the heck all the performers were.

9/11 made me feel like life could wiped in a second, and I've never forgotten that feeling ever. I think this tsunami disaster did the same for the people who may have forgotten about 9/11. Life is short, and you've got to live like it's your last, but you've also got to make good choices because choices have consequences like anything else.

So I'm taking that class on "Getting Better Writing Habits" and I'm trying to write every day, and I'm like "OH MY GOD, this is so hard!" I had to force myself to write yesterday.

I went home early to have the appliance guy take a look at my heater, because my apartment wasn't heating up fast enough. But he found nothing and suggested I put my blinds down at night to trap the heat. I usually leave my blinds up for the view but if it keeps the apartment warm, then I'm going to start closing them.

After he left, I was so unmotivated to do anything. I had to force myself to sit down and write. Since I had a bunch of pages to type up, I typed pages instead of writing and mananged to transcribe and edit 6 pages.

I'm starting to think I don't have what it takes to be a writer. I'm not motivated enough, not disciplined enough, not whatever enough. I have stories I want to tell and maybe I need to start thinking about writing them just to write, and not think about publishing or getting a screenplay produced. I just don't know if I have the perseverance that's needed to write professionally for a living. I write a ton in my job already, so I have a job where I write maybe 40% of the time. It's business writing, but at least it's still writing.

I don't know. I'm confused. I'm thinking maybe I want to go back to thinking more about my career than my writing. Maybe writing should just be a hobby and not a serious pursuit. I don't know. I gave up acting because I wasn't that motivated to be on stage like all my other acting friends. Writing has held my interest more than acting and it is getting easier, and I could still do it for myself without having to think about pursuing it as a career.

Writing is so much like acting; everyone wants to do it which means very few people ever succeed. I don't know. I guess I'm getting discouraged when I think of the long term prospects of my writing career. I probably have more of a chance being a director at some corporation than I do at being a well-paid writer. It's a thought isn't it? I passed up two jobs that probably would have led to management positions, one of which placed me at number two in line to the top behind the IT manager and that was six years ago. The IT manager is now a director, and he told recently that if I stayed I would have been a director as well. Don't you just hate when people tell you these things? The people from my other job told me the same thing as well, since they're both directors now. Not that this kind of career growth might have happened to me, but it makes me wonder you know.

I write because I feel like it feels like it's "purpose" in my life, and I feel good that I know what my purpose is because there are a ton of people out there still searching for theirs. But sometimes I feel like a writer who dreams of being a corporate VP instead of a corporate drone who dreams of being a writer. Silly isn't it? And I know if I didn't feel that writing was why I was put on this earth, I know I'd seriously go back to climbing the corporate ladder.

I went to a seminar tonight given by a literary agent/manager about how to get published and produced. Earlier in the evening, I was at the adjoining bar/restaurant to the hotel called "Le Scene" and sat at the bar drinking wine and having dinner. I felt very driven sitting there at the bar eating and working on my novel. My dinner was good but expensive, and cost about $40 with wine and tip and I just had one entree and no salad or dessert. It was fun and a treat, and it did feel fun to sit and write. I was able to start work on chapter 11, and wrote two pages. I might have to sit at the bar of an expensive restaurant once a month and write only because it's a wild experience.

There was a party at the back of the restaurant, and there was a guy at the table wearing red cordurouy pants, a white shirt and leather jacket. Come to find the guy in the red cords was the literary agent guy from New York. I only knew it was him because another guy came in and sat with the party, whom I recognized as the person I took a screenwriting seminar from last year. The screenwriting guy was the one who said in the seminar if you're going to write a screenplay, you need to know about film history. And you know he was so right! I only took the two film history classes because of him, and I think the classes really added to my understanding of how a screenplay needs to be written.

The literary agent guy confirmed a lot of what I've thought about the book publishing business was like. For a book, he said you need a completed novel and it has to be a good product. Publishing is a business like anything else, and agents as well as publishers are looking towards the bottom line and need to know if your book is going to add to it. Alot of agents are also looking at books with movie potential or series potential, and want writers who want to write more than one book.

Literary agent guy said his company gets 200-500 submissions a week. That's a ton. They look at everything, but they're very picky and they only take on people not projects, meaning they want a writer who writes alot and can produce books. I liked this guy alot, and I got an intuition that this guy is going to be my agent someday. I hope it comes true. I have no idea how or why this would happen, but I like that I got the feeling. It means I'm thinking ahead for my writing.

But I'm really getting that I'm going to have to work a ton harder on my writing. I feel like my screenplay is 75% there, and my Texas novel is 50% there, and the only way my writing is going to improve is if I do more of it. No, more like heaps and heaps of it. Literary agent guy said he has a client who's written more than 100 short stories and can turn out a novel in 6 to 8 months. Now that's discipline.

I want that kind of discipline and enthusiasm for my work, and I think I'm getting there. Trying to write every day this month has been hard, but I think it's like anything else. You get used to it and the more you do it, the easier it gets. I definitely have to get a laptop. I love writing by hand, but writing by computer is just so much faster. I'm determined to make 2005 a breakthrough year for my writing, but I have a feeling that like everything else in my life, I'll do it backwards and it will still work. I'm not sure why, but it's just a feeling I get.

So this is weird. Last Monday and Tuesday I was a little down, and the same thing happened this Monday and Tuesday. What is going on?

I was in meetings from 10:45 am till 3 pm, and trying to get a project out the door in between my meetings. I didn't end up eating till 3pm and was so nauseated afterwards when I finally ended up eating. By 5:20 pm I thought I was going to seriously hurl, so I went home and got in bed and didn't wake up until midnight.

This always happens when I don't eat for 8 hours straight like I did yesterday. I get sick, so sick that I have to go to bed. I didn't write or work out, which I kind of felt bad about this morning. But I hardly slept on Sunday night, and on Monday night the wind was blowing so hard against my windows I kept waking up hourly.

I feel much better today, and am determined to write before my 6:45 pm seminar. No workout tonight for me, and no workout tomorrow either because I'm having someone come over to look at my heater. My heater isn't working properly and with all this rain, my place is freezing. But I'm definetly writing on Thursday night.

I wrote on Monday night when the rain was just coming down in buckets, and ended up reoutlining the last the five chapters of my novel. I thought I was going to end up with 15 chapters, but decided to combine chapters 11 and 13 and then chapters 12 and 14, which leaves me with a new chapter 11, chapter 12, and a final chapter 13 and 14.

I wrote the outline for Chapter 11, started the outline for Chapter 12. Chapter 13 and 14 are going to be short chapters, kind of like epilogues. I thought last night I would just nap and then wake up and type up the rest of chapter 10, but that didn't happen.

Next week is going to be worse. Tuesday night I start my greek drama class, Wednesday night is the Board meeting that I've been working on and need to attend to help with set up and clean up, and Thursday night I have theatre tickets. I'm going to have fit my writing quota in somehow on those days.

I can probably write on Thurday before I have to go to theatre since the performance doesn't start till 8 pm. On Wednesday night the Board meeting gets out 7 pm, and hopefully I'll be home by 8:30 pm. Tuesday is the iffy day where I'll have to figure out the logistics of when I might have free time.

I've been in a weepy emotional mood since yesterday. I just finished reading the last book, The Amber Spyglass, in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy and the ending made me cry. Poor Will and Lyra! I was surprised by the ending, and didn't see it coming, although I suppose the clues were there.

The ending just felt so heartbreaking to me. Love is such a fantastic gift, it changes life, it changes everything, it has the ability to heal the world, yet it doesn't always mean a happy ending like in a fairy tale and everyone lives happily every after. Sometimes you have to soldier on because it's the only way to make the world right again, and because you can't live in each other's world. It's just so, so tragic. And I'm like this is what my life feels like right now, so, so tragic!

I think I have a good workplan for my screenplay. I'm not really happy with it and it definitely needs a third and final rewrite, but I think I'm going to enter it into a contest just to see how it does. This guy from my screenwriting class entered a contest and he placed, and his script was not very good. I'd like to have the experience of entering a screenplay competition, and to see how my script ranks.

My screenwriting teacher Julie said my script was good enough into a contest and even pitch in Hollywood if I wanted. I wasn't confident about my writing or pitching ability at the time, but you know it can't hurt to enter a competition. I'd also like to send it to the screenwriting prof at UCLA, who said people from his seminar could send in their scripts and he would review for free. But the UCLA guy will get the third and final version, not this second version. Maybe I'll even get feedback from the contest. I hear sometimes they do that. One can only hope.

I'm taking an online class with this guy who was teaching seminars at the screenwriting conference I went to in LA last November. He also teaches screenwriting at UCLA and is active in selling his own work to Hollywood.

Anyway, one of the homework assignments was come up with a new idea for a screenplay and list the source. I wrote something about Zecharia Sitchin who writes books about aliens seeding the planet earth, and here's the messaage I received back.

"Very interesting stuff, Brenda. I'm familiar with Sitchin, he has a whole series of books on the subject of aliens seeding life on Earth, which happens to be a popular topic in Hollywood development. Unfortunately, the reason these projects are still in development may be because of the present religious climate in the U.S. which may not be receptive to alternative ideas. Food for thought."

So Hollywood is interested in scifi stuff ... I got a good buzz about his message because I'm thinking maybe my story ideas and Hollywood's aren't that far off.

I heard Jimmy Cliff's big hit today, "The Harder they come". Boy does that song bring back memories. I love reggae music! I can't believe I don't own any Jimmy Cliff cds. I love danced to reggae. I still remember that reggae festival I attended in DC in Malcom X park. Dancing to reggae in the hot fall DC sun within blocks of the White House. How cool is that?

I didn't write on Saturday. Actually I didn't do much of anything on Saturday, although I made plans to go out. When I finally got up and dressed, the darn rain would not stop and it was so hard. Not that I care about rain, but it's a drag to be wet. So I sat around and watched the "MI-5" marathon on A&E. I think they call it "Spooks" in the UK. I seem to remember sitting around and watching it last year around this time as well. I love "MI-5", have always loved spy shows and always will.

I loved the ending of the first episode of the new season. This is an only in the UK kind of ending. The head of the Joint Intelligence Committedd (an actor I seem to remember from the Black Adder series) is sitting in a club talking to someone from the PM's government. The head of MI-5 comes in, who is also a member of the club. The JIC guy says to the PM aide, "are you a member of the club, because you're not my guest." The head of MI-5 says "he's not my guest either", so the guy has to leave. The head of the JIC had attempted to take over MI-5 and had failed, but he and head of MI-5 are members of the "club", so despite their recent fight the two remain at least in public cordial friends. It's such a Brit class thing I think. The PM aide who obviously is not of the same class gets shunted aside like trash because class has so much more meaning in the UK. It's the same the same here, but they never show that stuff on TV because the US is supposed to be a classless society. Whatever.

I'm so happy about my writing progress this year. It's going like gangbusters! I finished Chapter 10 today, and I was so happy. I wrote the summary for chapter 10 on New Year's day while waiting for my flight at the DFW airport, and now the chapter is written.

This is new for me; writing a summary of what the chapter is supposed to be about. I usually don't do that, but it's really helped to keep me focus on what I'm supposed to be writing about. And if I get lost in the writing, as I tend to do since I write the chapter in more than one sitting, the summary ends up being a map as what I'm supposed to be writing about.

I even started a rewrite of Chapter 1 since New Year's as well. I edited Chapter 1 on the plane to DFW, and it just was not good. The subsequent chapters read much better, so I decided I needed to rewrite chapter 1. The voice was just not there, as I didn't develop the voice till much later. Since I'm now comfortable writing in the voice, rewriting chapter 1 was easier and I think reads much better. There's a real character now talking.

I'm like, okay the rest of my life kind of sucks right now, but at least the writing part is working. Usually the rest of my life is okay, and writing part sucks, or my life is bad and the writing is bad. It's never been where the writing is better than my life. Is this a good sign? I'm starting to think of myself as a storyteller, and it's a good feeling.

A coworker told me on the elevator on Friday night that it's been a rough week for a lot people. Not me I thought. I've been writing every day since December 31, which is 8 days in a row for me. I haven't done that on my own since I was doing the Nanowrimo back in 2003. I worked four days this week, and would have made it five except the gym was closed on Wednesday due to a power outage. And I have the feeling 2005 is going to be a banner year for me with regards to my writing.

But then reality intruded in my world when I was coming from the gym last night. A man passed out on the second Muni train of the two-car train I was riding. A woman on the train told me that the man had told her that he had taken a bunch of anti-depressants, and then she watched him lose consciousness before her eyes. One of the other passenger called 911 and she came up to my train to tell the driver. And so we had to wait there till the ambulance came to get him. The man who said he overdosed managed to wake up and walk into the ambulance.

I think there is some weird vibrational stuff going on in the world right now. I feel especially protected right now, like there's a gold bubble of light around me and it feels like god has me in the palm of his hands and is protecting me. It's a weird feeling, and something I haven't felt since 2003 after my grandma died. I felt very protected, loved and blessed then.

I'm happy again, and I guess that's all that matters. I still think about the red-haird guy a bit, and I'm pretty sure I haven't heard the last of him, but I'm okay with that. I've decided not to worry about till I have to cross that bridge, because I can't control his actions anyway and only have control over my own actions.

I just wish this rain would go away only because it's so cold. But we need the rain because of the drought everyone was speculating about. Hopefully the rain will alleviate our water problems.

These are my writing accomplishments for 2004. Sadly, there's not much here.

Took a science fiction writing class
Took a class on screenwriting from Michael Hague
Took a class on screenwriting and Aristotle’s poetics
Attended a screenwriting conference in Los Angeles
Published 4 times on the internet on www.sfist.com
Started a new novel called "Changing Timelines"
Started a short story called "From LAX to Oakland"
Started a short story called "Confessions of Chocolate Shiksa Goddess"
Started a short story called "Diary of a Robotic Sex Worker"
Started a short called "The Novel Life"
Wrote two chapters (chapters 8 & 9) for "Texas is a State of Mind" and typed them up
Started on chapter 10 for "Texas is a State of Mind"
Edited Chapters 1-3 for "Texas is a State of Mind"
Started a rewrite on Chapter 1 for "Texas is a State of Mind"
Started a new novel called "The Dwarf who heard voices"
Type up notes for "The Unsettler"
Typed up the short story "The Blue Haired Buddha on Union Street"
Redid the outline for "Spooning with my mother"
Took two film history classes
Edited my screenplay "Going Home Again"
Bought two DVDs on writing from Michael Hague
Signed for class on getting published from Learning Annex to be taken on January 12
Signed for Karl Iglesias’s “Mastering the Habits of Highly Effective Writers” to start on January 3

I've actually had quite a good week so far, except for some bad moodiness about my job.

On Wednedsay my group had a team luncheon, and I walked out of the meeting in such a bad mood. Sometimes I feel so unenthusiastic in my job, especially when I hear the enthusiasm of other members of my group for their job. I don't know if they're just better at faking it than me or if they really, really like what they're doing.

This job I have is just a job. It's not a career, it's not something I'm that passionate about and its basic function in my life is to give me a way to pay my bills. I'm not into career advancement at this company, I'm not looking to add any more responsibility for myself, and I definitely have no desire to play the climb the corporate ladder game. Of course, I want to make more money, I mean who doesn't? But I'm not willing to put the time and energy required to do it in this job.

But then again, it sure would be nice to make more money.

I hate when I get like this, when I start to question the career choices I've made with my life, but it always comes up for me only because I used to be the corporate ladder climbing type whose identity pretty much revolved around my job, how much I made and my upward job trajectory at my company. But I'm trying not to be like this anymore. I've made career choices in the last four years so I can have more time to write.

But maybe I'm just more the competitive type than I ever want to admit to myself. It's not like work and career was the only arena of my life I used to "strive" in. I've been a "striver" in any of the churches I've joined, wanting to get into positions of prestige and power. Sick isn't it? I was in a year-long growth and development seminar where you were graded, and I was "striving" to always get an "A". And it's not like I take classes for fun either and can be satisfied with a B or a C grade. I make an effort to get the "A" grade, and I get it 99.9% of the time.

I wish I could transfer more of my "striving ambitions" to my writing. I haven't yet because writing is like an "art" for me, and how do you grade art. But I think I'm going to have do it if only to ease some the sense of constant dissatisfaction that runs like a through-line in my life. I guess I'm one of those people who can't really be happy if they're not always trying to achieve in life. And I just hate having to admit that I might be an over-achiever. I hate over-achievers!

Here's my list of the movies I saw in 2004 - 108 in all. Many of the movies I saw came from the two film history classes I took last year. No wonder I don't have time for a relationship!

A Movie by Bruce Conner
A Trip to the Moon
Alex and Emma
Ali: Fear eats the soul
All About My Mother
Audition
Band of Brothers Vol 1
Band of Brothers Vol 2
Bed and Sofa
Big Fish
Billy Elliot
Birth of a Nation
Bonnie and Clyde
Butch Cassidy amd the Sundance Kid
Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Chinatown
Citizen Kane
City of Lost Children
Closer
Cold Mountain
Double Indemnity
Enemy at the Gates
Enigma
Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind
Finding Nemo
Frida
Grand Illusion
Hardball
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azbakan
Hidalgo
His Girl Friday
Hollywood Homicide
House of Sand and Fog
How Green was my valley
Ikiru
Innocence
It Happened One Night
Kill Bill Vol 2
Killing Me Soflty
Left Behind: The Movie
Love Actually
M by Fritz Lang
Marius
Master and Commander
Meet John Doe
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
Mr Smith Goes to Washington
Mystic River
On the Waterfront
Open City
Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes)
Pather Panchali
Paycheck
Personal Velocity
Princess Diaries
Rear Window
Règle du jeu, La aka The Rules of the Game
Ringu
Samurai Fiction
Seabiscuit
Secretary
Shrek 2
Spider Man 2
Spring Summer Fall Winter
Stagecoach
Steamboat Bill Jr
Stranger than Paradise
The 39 Steps
The 400 Blows
The Big Fish
The Blair Witch Project
The Butterfly Effect
The Chronicles of Riddick
The Crowd
The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys
The Day After Tomorrow
The Great Train Robbery
The Italian Bicycle Thief
The Kid
The Lady Vanishes
The Last Laugh
The Last Sumurai
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
The Manchurian Candidate
The Notebook
The Order
The Passion of the Christ
The Sea is Watching
The Third Man
The Twillight Sumarai
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
This is spinal tap
Throne of Blood
Timeline
Tokyo Story
Troy
Twilight samurai
Un Chien Andalou
Under the Tuscan Sun
Vanilla Sky
Wild Strawberries
Yi Yi
Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman Part 1
Zatoichi Part 2
Zatoichi Part 3
Zatoichi Part 4
Zatoichi Part 5
Zatoichi Part 6

Here's my list of books read in 2004 - I read 58 books this year, which is higher than my previous total from 2003.

A Bend ln the road by Nicholas Sparks
A Parallel life and other stories by Robin Beeman
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
Adulthood Rites by Octavia Butler
Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer
Clay's ark by Octavia Butler
Cowboys are my weakness and other stories by Pam Houston
Dawn by Octavia Butler
Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Finding Your Writer's Voice by Thaisa Frank and Dorothy Wall
From the corner of his eye by Dean Koontz
Genesis by Poul Anderson
Girl in hyacinth blue by Susan Vreeland
Girl with a pearl earring by Tracy Chevalier
Golf in the kingdom by Michael Murphy
I never promised you a rose garden by Joanne Greenberg
Imago by Octavia Butler
Immediate Fiction by Jerry Cleaver
James and the giant peach by Raold Daoul
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
K-Pax by Gene Brewer
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Left Behind by Tim LaHaye
Life Strategies by Dr. Phil McGraw
Living the best life you can by Joel Osteen
Mind of my mind by Octavia Butler
Minority Report by Philip K Dick
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane
One continuous mistake by Gail Sher
Seeing a large cat by Elizabeth Peters
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
Silas Mariner by George Elliot
South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami
Taken by Thomas Cook
The 60 second procrastinator by Jeff Davidson
The hitchiker’s guide to the galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans
The League of Extraordinary gentlemen by KJ Anderson
The northern lights by Philip Pullman
The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
The parable of the sower by Octavia Butler
The parable of the talents by Octavia e Butler
The Patternmaster by Octavia Butler
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren
The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds
The Red Pony by John Steinbeck
The Simulacra by Philip K Dick
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
The Ultimate Weight Solution by Dr. Phil McGraw
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Vittorio the Vampire by Anne Rice
When God Winks at Love by Squire Bushnell
Wildseed by Octavia Butler
Writing the Mind Alive by Linda T. Metcalf & Tobin Simon