I'm going to a barbeque tonight in the burbs filled with some friends who are total wine snobs. They love to talk about which wines they've bought, their cellar, which bottles are almost "fit to drink", etc. BORING!

Anyway, so I'm looking at my haphazard wine collection and trying to decide which wine to take. It's a barbeque, and they asked me in advance if I wanted to eat red meat or chicken/fish. I said chicken/fish, so I'm thinking I should probably bring a white wine to go with my meal.

I used to be really into chardonnay, but I'm not that into it anymore so I mostly buy pinot noirs, cabernet sauvignons and merlots.

The only whites I have that don't look that bad are a french white wine called sancerre and a chardonnay. I don't even remember why I bought the sancerre or where I bought it or how much it cost. I bought the chardonnay after having it as a restaurant, and I remembered that it didn't taste too bad.

Next, I tried looking up both wines on Google but could only find the reviews and prices for the chardonnay. I was surprised to find the chardonnay selling for $20. Did I even pay that much for the bottle?

I so want to bring "Chuch for a Buck" white wine, that Charles Shaw wine that was in the papers and retailing for $2-3 and is so hip to drink in the SF Bay Area right now. It's supposed to be really good wine for the price, but I don't think my wine snobs friends would appreciate this fact.

I think the best piece of information I've ever heard about bringing wine to party was "when in doubt, bring the wine the costs the most." Guess it's going to be a chardonnay night - La Crema 2000 Chardonnay.

So I thought I weaned myself off of Craig's List Missed Connections, but it's so easy to get hooked. I almost got hooked on watching Real World Paris, but I didn't watch on Tuesday so maybe I'm saved.

I forgot how fun MTV's Real World is to watch. They've got some southern guy from Georgia who is really cute. They've also got a guy who says he's the son of someone from that group "The Commodores", for the star connection. Then there's the usual assortment of people; a slutty cute chick with a hot body, an inncocent cute chick with a hot body and that tough city guy with a rough background who is sort of cute depending on my mood.

It's fun watching them hook up or try to hook up, break up, freak out, and then confess and whine to the camera. It's like watching "Jerry Springer live in a house".

The show has gotten so slutty and sleazy over the years, that it's almost become campy and kind of fun in a very sick, sick way.

Googlism for: elfgirl

elfgirl is very cute
elfgirl is magnificent
elfgirl is a 1/8th scale kit from kitbuilders/mojoresin kits
elfgirl is becoming an advocate for the anti
elfgirl is off at a consignment sale spending my paycheck

On my lunch hour I decided to watch the new reality tv show I taped last night, "Boarding House: North Shore". It's from the guy who created the "Survivor" show, and it's about 7 professional surfers living in a house on the North Shore of Oahu and competing in this famous tournament called the Vans Triple Crown of Surfing.

Wow, watching it made me feel like I was back in high school again when I used to dream about dating surfer boys and wore barely there bikinis.

All the guys in the series are so cute, but I think I have like a genetic weakness for surfer boys because I was born in Hawaii. The women are all young and blonde and can surf too.

But what I like most about the show is the surf scenes! Oh my god, they are so killer! I love watching surfers surf. I spent most of my life watching surfers surf, and it reminds me so much of home and growing up.

I love the way the guys talk too. They all sound like guys I went to high school with or guys I met when I spend that one summer down in San Diego. Guys don't like that up here, or if they do I'm not meeting them.

I did go on a blind date with a surfer once, and I probably only went out with him because he said he surfed. He wasn't really my type, and I was so disappointed because I thought he would be like the surfer guys I knew in high school.

I thought he'd be tall, tanned, have that valley boy voice like he could be in the Jetsons cartoon or something, and have this great body and looked like he worked out. Instead, he was short, not tanned and didn't even look he lifted weights or went outdoors in the sun or anything. It was such a bummer!

I'm sure the guy did surf at some point in his life, but like not in the last five years of me meeting him.

Even if he was true surfer guy, dating him would probably be an un-fun as it was high school. Surfer guys live for surf. Surf comes before anything else in their life. Say for instance you'd had this date planned for months in advance. If killer waves were breaking, surfer guy would dump you to go surfing.

One thing that the surf show got right, which was very surprising, is they have a christian surfer from Florida. There's a whole segment of the surfer population that are born again christians, and that group has been around since I was in high school.

You'd only this fact if you follow the surfing scene or have been around it for a long time. The producers must have done their homework.

From CBS Market Watch, another article on the chinese yuan and its effects on the US dollar and the global economy, The yuan heard round the world.

Art Imitates Life - Maybe...

This is interesting. A friend from screenwriting class sent me the following email.

"I’ve been thinking of you and your script as the Giants this season have had several personal scenarios similar to the one you have in your script: Barry bonds’ dad suffering from cancer; barry not hitting well because distracted by dad’s illness and dad not giving him hitting advice. Spooky close to your premise!"

I think my screenwriting friend was referring to the following article from SFGate.com, Re-living glory days Following famous dads offers perks, pressures.

Here's what the article said about Mr. Bonds.

"Barry Bonds, the most famous second-generation sports star in the Bay Area, declined to be interviewed for this story, saying after 18 years of baseball he's talked on this subject enough. But his father's influence on his baseball career is well-known.

Even as he battles cancer, Bobby Bonds has made two trips to Pac Bell Park this season to offer his son counsel and a few hitting tips. On the night following his dad's second trip, Barry Bonds broke out of a month-long hitting slump to homer twice against the Chicago Cubs on April 30."

This is so trippy to me, because one of the early criticisms of my screenplay was that a star baseball player's father would never give better advice than a hitting coach. When I heard that, I was like, why not? The father birthed the son, has seen the kid play from childhood on, and probably knows the star baseball player better than any hitting coach ever will.

So now I'm like relieved, because it's nice to know that my fictional story isn't that far off from what happens in real life.

I've always thought that real life is so much stranger than fiction. I mean who would've thought that we'd watching on TV, the LAPD chasing OJ and his friend on the freeway. If you were put that in a story, the critics would have a field day.

And what about 9/11? If a fiction writer were to write a story about jetliners crashing into the World Trade Centers, and then the buildings falling down, again the critics would have just laughed and said "NO EFFING WAY!". And yet it happened, didn't it?

Tonight was the last night of my kerygma bible study class, and all I really learned is that the bible requires more intense study. I think it would be fun to be a biblical scholar or at least know the bible backwards and forwards.

The Bible is referenced so much in western literature, in plays, on tv, even in the metaphysical arts like tarot readings.

We had to write a 150 words or less statement on what the bible is about. I spent two hours trying to write my statement up, and it kind of felt like I was writing a statement of faith.

I wrote about four different versions and ended up with a fifth one that I sort of like, sort of don't like, but decided to keep because I had other bible homework to do. My statement ended up being a bit longer than 150 words, but here it is.

**********
Through stories, songs and letters, the Bible shows and teaches us as individuals and a community how to be in a relationship with God as expressed in the trinity of God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. The Bible also shows us how to be in relationship with other people, the larger community and the world, through the teachings and examples of Jesus Christ

I’ve used the Bible as a handbook, a manual, and a roadmap to deepen my relationship with God. No matter where I am in my faith experience and journey, I’ve always been able to find someone in the bible to relate to.

For me, the two most important ideas that the Bible expresses are 1) “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (NRSV, John 3:16), and 2) “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you;” (NRSV, Matthew 7:12)
**********

I really like the idea of the bible as a handbook, a manual and a roadmap in how to be be in a relationship with the trinity of God the father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, for an individual and a community.

I think the last part is my statement of faith or at least what I think is bible's most important teachings. I probably should have added a third idea of Jesus teaching "to love God", but I didn't think about that part. If I had to write it up again, I would add "to love god" as the third idea, if I could find a biblical text I liked that expresses this idea.

If this is true, what will this mean for the american economy?

China may cut its link to dollar.

Spooning with My Mother - a freewrite short story idea from September 2002

Divorce is a strange thing. You lay awake in the middle of the night lying next to the stranger you thought you once loved and now passionately hate, praying that when you wake up the next morning, that he will magically disappear. And then one day you find yourself again awake in the middle of the night, wishing that the man you once loved and still hate passionately, was lying next to you, because even he was better than the pit of loneliness that you now find yourself drowning in.

It's the only thing about divorce I really hate; the sleeping alone bit. I wish you could have an agreement with your husband, where he is excluded from every part of your life, except at night when you go to sleep. And it's not like you need him there to have to sex, because you have no desire to sleep with him anymore. No, you need him there because that king sized bed that your husband insisted on buying against your wishes, is just too big for one person.

Sometimes I tell myself that perhaps it wouldn't so lonely if the bed was smaller. But changing beds is almost as traumatic as getting a divorce. First of all, there are the king sized sheet sets I've managed to collect over the years. I'm afraid to think of how many sets there are, and worse, how some sets are incomplete. Who's going to to want an incomplete sheet shet? Not to mention all the stray pilllowcases, top sheets and fitted sheets that I've bought to replace the missing pieces of any sets, which only match if you squint your eyes to the colors run together. Then there's the bedskirts, the pillows, the comforters and blankets, all bought with a king sized bed in mind.

If I buy a new bed, all of this "stuff" for the bed will have to be sold, given away or thrown out. It's traumatic. It's like throwing out pieces of your history. Each sheet set has a memory attached, and most of them are good ones. There's the threadbare and slimy flannel sheet set we first owned, and which I swear my daughter was concieved on. We haven't used that set for 10 years, but it still manages to put a smile on my face on my face everytime I see it.

There's the red satin set that my husband Joe brought home one, on the advice of one his buddies that red satin sheets were a big sexual turn on. Those were the days when Joe was at least still interested in us having a fun sex life. We only used the sheet set once, but it's a reminder to me that once long ago he was trying.

Then there's the pink flannel sheet set with hearts that Joe bought me one christmas, which I thought meant that he still really cared about our marriage. He confessed me to one night that he had seen it on sale, and that it was just too good a bargain to pass up. He told me that sleeping on flannel was great because our bed was often cold at night. Sometimes honesty in a marriage is a drag. I thought Joe had finally really gotten to know me after 11 years of marriage and could read my mind. I still haven't forgiven him for destroying my illusion.

Maybe it was that night I realized that Joe had become a total stranger to me, and that we needed flannel sheets instead of each other's body to keep warm at night.

It doesn't matter anymore. Joe is gone now. Don't you just hate when certain memories make you go all teary eyed? Honestly, you'd think that after two years I'd stopped crying over my broken marriage wouldn't you?

It's that damned bed that's driving me to think thoughts that no longer mean anything to me.

I wonder around the house at night when I can't sleep. Sometimes I go to into the den and watch TV. There never seems to be anything one except infomercials or B-grade love story movies. Like I really need to see that when I can't sleep because I miss my lousy exhusband at night.

Sometimes I try to read in bed, and that works. Joe always hated when I read in bed, and I gave up the habit in our second year of marraige. Reading in bed still feels like I'm doing something deliberately wrong, but I tell myself that it's just left over feelings from my Joe as Master of his Domain experience.

Sometimes, I sit in the dark in the living room and look of our picture window. I study each of my neighbor's houses with their perfectly groomed lawns and the color coordinated color schemes of their houses, and I wonder about their lives. From the outside, Joe and I were the perfect couple. All of our neighbors said so. What are they thinking now? That one day their happy facade, their fake pretense of a life will be rippped away and set down in precise legal terms in their divorce agreement. I wonder if they're contemplating it even now. If some other woman is awake like I was, or some man, wondering about that unknown person lying on the other side of the bed.

Sometimes I just stand at the door of daughter's bedroom and stare at her sleeping face. Some strange biological thing happened, and she looks like a cross between me and Joe, but prettier and more refined than either of us were at that age. Sometimes I am tempted to crawl into bed with her, but I've always stopped myself. I don't think Melissa would mind, but it just doesn't feel right. It never has felt right until tonight.

I make my way back to the living room so I can think in the dark. Joe called me today, to rearrange his weekend time with her. When I asked him why, he casually mentioned that he was going away for the weekend with some woman he met. I told myself I would be prepared for this moment, but how do you prepare yourself to hear that your ex-husband has moved on with his life. I tell myself that he has probably had other weekends away before and this isn't his first time, but then Joe blurts out that this is the first time he's missed his weekend with Melissa, and that he's really sorry. Guess I had him pegged wrong all along, maybe even from the day I first met him.

I don't remember the rest of our conversation, or what I said. I just hope I didn't blurt out anything stupid or sappy like "I just want you to be happy Joe". It's not that I don't want my exhusband to be happy, I just don't want to hear about it ever. I wish there was a way so I wouldn't have to talk to him, but there's Melissa to think about. Every condom or birth control device should come with a warning label that says, "Having a baby with this person means you will have to see that person for the rest of your life, whether you want to or not. Be smart. Use birth control" I bet this warning lower the birth rate in half if not more.

Don't get me wrong. I love my daughter. It's so corny, but it's true; Melissa is the apple of my eye. Not that I have the foggiest idea what the hell that saying means, but Melissa is the most important thing in my life.

Is the way my mother felt with me all those years ago, when it was just the two of us? My mother was luckier than me though. My dad just took off one day and never looked back. At least she didn't have to hear how my dad was starting a new life, and watch her husband transform himself into the man she always wanted him to be. At least my mother didn't have to wonder a dozen times a day, what is "she" doing that never did. Did he tell her? Why didn't he tell me how make him into the kind of husband every woman dreamed about? Was it some secret book they handed down to only certain women? And why the hell didn't I get the book?

I walk over again to Melissa's room. Like any young child she sleeps on her stomach. I can see her long brown hair all tangled up, and I tell myself I need to remind her to braid it before goes to sleep. She'll look at me through her father's blue eyes and whine "Mom, I'm not a little girl anymore. Only kids braid their hair before going to bed."

Not braiding her hair before she went to bed, was Melissa's first attempt at independence from me since she had gone to bed with braids for most of her life. I didn't say anything, even when she told me I needed to buy her a better brush or comb and conditioner so she could detangle her hair faster. I just smiled at her, and bought the items she needed. Oh sure I could have gloated, but why bother. This was only a small squirmish into what I remember as the long war called puberty.

The Oakland A's and the San Francisco Giants are playing each other for the next six games.

I'm torn. I love the A's. They are a young good looking, Backstreet Boys team, with a genius of a general manager in Billy Beane and the best 3 starting pitchers in the game. They're young, scrappy, and they've got one of the smallest payrolls of any teams, yet they manage to be at the top of their league every year.

A's management are geniuses at developing players and picking up great players that have been turned down by other teams. They are an underdog player's friends, always willing to value skills above anything else. What's not to love? They're the underdog team of underdog teams.

But I live in the city and county of San Francisco, so I also love the San Francisco Giants because they're the home team with the great stadium. They're the team I've gone to see at least once a year with friends, they're the team I feel honour bound to root for, because they're something so cool about rooting for the home team.

But I love my A's, I love my babies. But I have to also love the home team.

Mark Purdy from the Merc News has a great take on the series, A's vs. Giants means much to both teams.

I hope they split the series, A's winning one, the Giants winnning the other, then I'd be happy. I wouldn't feel bad that I love two great baseball teams for two totally different reasons.

Go A's! Go Giants!

So in honour of Harry Potter mania, and inspired by my friend J's essay on The Hogwarts Club at the Hooray for Anything blog, I figured out which Hogwarts house the sorting hat would put me in.

I would definitely be in Ravenclaw, because 1) I love crows and ravens, so it's a natural I'd be in the house with the word Raven in it and 2) "Ravenclaw are all the geeks and arty types" - from Hooray.

Yes, I consider myself the geeky and arty type. I'm a writer, and on the enneagram test I'm a 4 with a 5 wing, that's 4 - the artist with a 5 - intellectual bent. For the most part, I'm weird and introspective and sometimes very clever only because I seem to have a knack for memorizing trivia galore.

I wonder what colour would my uniform be? Because that's the really important question.

Wow, maybe there is something to the writing by hand thing. I printed out a bunch of stories I had started, but never finished and took them with me to the library.

I read through them and decided to work on one I titled "Spooning with My Mother". It's a story about a woman who is divorced from her husband and feeling lonely, and trying to decide if she should sleep in the same bed with her 13 year old daughter for comfort.

Anyway, I read through the 3 page freewrite and decided that before I could finish the story, I'd write an outline so I could see how it would end. I started outlining the story I had written and was just about to write the outline for the rest of it, when I realized I didn't know what the story was really about because it had been so long since I wrote it.

I started to write a Q&A session with myself, which soon turned into a Q&A session with the main character. I just ended up asking her how the story ends, and I wrote what I popped into my head. Once I knew how it ended, I knew I could finish the story.

So after a 3.5 page outline and a Q&A freewrite, I wrote 16 handwritten pages and finished the story. YEAH ME! My first completed short story in a really long time.

Of course it's only a very shitty first draft, but at least it's done, and I can start typing it up and deciding whether I want to work on it some more or just leave as is.

This is good. This is exciting. A completed short story.

I'll post the opening for "Spooning with My Mother" tomorrow.

YEAH! I'm writing again!

Love and Darkness and a Sidearm - a scary freewrite

The cursed say they are damned for all eternity. Me, I say, sometimes it’s just plain dumb luck that you get caught and then people go ahead and make up a big fuss about it, when secretly you know they are happy you did it. Delighted, is even a better word. They are delighted that you rid the place of a bad human being. Sometimes people don’t get what’s coming to them soon enough and you’ve got to give nature a helping hand.

I didn’t mean to shoot him, but he just kept coming at me. Paul was always a little crazy, you know, especially when he drank. Liquor is like a demon, a gold liquid demon. When you drink enough of the demon, it makes you do crazy and mean things. It’s like there’s this little voice talking inside of your head and telling you to do things, thing you would never normally think of doing. And the devil, he’s like an old cowboy who’s bent on breaking you. He rides and rides you and you can’t buck him off and he digs his heels into your sides, till pretty soon you get used to the pain and the hurt. He knows and you know that it’s just a matter of time, before you become his, his prize. And Paul was definitely one of his prize specimens.

Poor Paul, he couldn’t go more than a couple of days at least as far as I could tell without a drink. And when he didn’t drink, the devil would dig his spurs into old Paul and Paul would get all mean. But nasty mean, even meaner then when he did drink.

Whenever Paul got mean, I poured him a whiskey in one of those little glasses with the oranges on them, that mama gave me years ago. I’d hand it to Paul and he’d look at me, the hate coming out of his eyes like an icy heart stopping wind. You know, the kind that whips right through you in the dead of winter and chills you to the bone. But after a minute, he’d laugh, take the glass and down the content in one gulp without spilling a drop. Then he’d be okay, at least for awhile.

Maybe I need to start surfing republican and conservative websites so I can find exorcism ritutals to get rid of my inner hippie. Maybe I need to discover my inner conservative and republican side more, so I'm a little more balanced.

I'm still having a hard time writing in front of my computer. I haven't done it in so long, that it feels strange.

I watched the 60 Minutes interview with JK Rowling, and it looked like she still writes her first draft by hand. I'm getting desperate so I think I'll go back to writing by hand. Maybe if I get used to sitting at my computer and typing things up, I'll be able to one day sit down and just start typing, which I how I used to prefer to write.

Most writing books have at least one chapter devoted to ways to trick yourself into writing, so it must be a common writer's problem. One book said that every writer has "inner writing child" and that you have to pamper it, cajole it, so it wants to write.

I'm like, I wish I could slap it and get it to work.

I mean, I know what kind of child I was. I was spoiled, moody, willful, stubborn and completely resistant to authority. I'm still that way, sort of, although I've learnt over the years to control myself so I can get things done and get along with people. This is what happens when you grow up basically as an only child of older parents, who are too old and tired to discipline you.

I think I was raised like any hippie child, except my parents weren't hippies, they were just too old and tired.

My friend Mellie Mel says I have an "inner hippie", which is just so gross, disgusting and embarrassing but probably totally true. Mel says it's because she and I grew up on the west coast (Hawaii and California and I think Oregon as well), and you can't help but be a hippie chick because it's all around you and it's in the culture.

You develop and "inner hippie, even though she and I totally detest the smell of patchouli. I know I could out hippie anyone at Rainbow Grocery in a serious second, even though I don't look like someone who would ever shop there, and I've been shopping there since I first moved to San Francisco

For example, I used to really be into eating clover sprouts and used them on everything from pizza, spaghetti and enchiladas. Worst yet, I actually thought clover sprouts added texture and taste to all my dishes.

I spent years eating basmati brown rice cooked in a pressure cooker, with steamed organic veggies and sprinkled with soy cheese. I've been an off and on vegetarian since I was 19 years old, and I've been cleansing my body of toxins since I was 22 years old.

I learned to meditate when I was 13 years old, and started doing yoga when I was 15, way before it was trendy to do and hardly anyone was teaching it. Now yoga studios are sprouting up all over like bad mushrooms after a rainstorm.

I participated in my first anti-government protest rally when I was 16 years old, and then spent my whole internship in Washington DC going to a different anti-government rally every weekend. Singing "We Shall Overcome" still brings tears to my eyes.

Plus the most hippie chick thing of all, whenever I start dating someone new or even just meet a guy who I potentially want to date, I immediately check to see if our horoscopes are compatible. I don't even think about it, it's so automatic, like of course you have to check if your stars are compatible and you have to read all about their sign so you know what you're dealing with.

And yes, I do keep a running tab in my head on what signs I've dated and which ones I haven't, which ones I'd love to date, and which signs are most compatible and the worst for me.

My "inner hippie", how gross is that. I'm an "inner hippie-ess". That's like telling me I drive a polluting gas guzzling SUV! It's so bad and evil!

I was having problems synching my palm pilot to my desktop, when I decided to check for a new upgrade. Sure enough, Palm had a new desktop software upgrade.

Once I downloaded the new upgrade and installed it, my palm started synching with my desktop again.

It makes me wonder if all around the world the palm software program started having problems all at the same time, and if that's why Palm had to issue an upgrade? Of course this scenario would only make sense if I could tell when the upgrade was released, but the Palm website doesn't give a date for the release.

The last time I upgraded my Palm software was in the fall when I bought a new computer, so the it's only been about 8 months since I've had the latest software download.

I saw "Bruce Almighty" on Friday, only because "2 Fast 2 Furious" was sold out. I'm glad I saw it on the big screen, because Bruce did have some nice special effects.

Jim Carrey is so funny, and the screenplay was so sweet. People in the theatre clapped at the end, which doesn't happen all the time.

"Bruce Almighty" is the kind of story, screenplay I wish I could write. It's sweet, it has a great message, and it was so funny without being schmaltzy.

Jim Carrey is a genius, but I think I sort of agree with a reviewer in the San Francisco Bay Guardian when he wrote, "Carrey has a dark edge". Carrey really skated the edge of something, I don't know what, when he was complaining about his life in this move.

I don't know. I detected maybe a little more bitterness than perhaps what was necessary for the character, maybe a little more ego than what the character should have had. I saw the extra bitterness and ego as more Jim Carrey being himself than being a character.

Carrey took the angry middle aged white male thing very close to the edge of sarcasm, but perhaps his genius is he didn't go over the edge, but just skirted it maybe a little too dangerously.

As a movie viewer, I did buy the ending of the movie, but the edginess of Carrey's portrayal of Bruce still stands out in my mind.

I received my car insurance renewal in the mail, and I called them and told them I wasn't commuting to work anymore. When they recalculated my policy, they told me I saved about $200 on my car insurance bill. YEAH!!!

Moving is so expensive. I just got my first phone for my new place, and it's like close to $300. My phone company charges you and arm and a leg for installing new jacks, and that new dsl modem wasn't cheap either.

Thankfully my boss said my company will pick up the charges for the dsl modem, the monthly dsl charge and all the set up charges. But still. Getting a $300 phone bill is shocking. My next two phone bills will be large as well, since the phone company said I could spread the charges out over three months.

I set my microsoft explorer security to high so I could receive links that people send me, and all of a sudden I couldn't do anything on blogger. That was so scary!

Once I set my security back to where it was before, all the blogger stuff started working again.