I used to hear on the news stories about people who never received their absentee ballot, and had to vote on a provisional ballot. It used to make me wonder what was up with these people, like did they lose their ballot or accidentally throw them out.

Well, now it's happened to me. I went to the polling place, and they told me that I was supposed to have voted by absentee ballot. I was so shocked because I never got one in the mail. I tried to explain my situation to the polling people, and after much discussion they let me vote by provisional ballot.

While I was waiting for my ballot, one of the workers said I was the 5th person today that didn't receive their absentee ballot. When I heard that I didn't feel so bad, but they told me to make sure to call the Department of Elections to make sure.

When I talked to the Department of Elections, they said they had sent one to me on October 6 and that my ballot probably got lost in the mail. I told the person I received my absentee ballot for the Recall election, and I wanted to make sure I received an absentee ballot in case there's a run-off election in December.

I was assured that they had my correct address, and if there is a run-off election I would get an absentee ballot. I hope they're right. I totally flustered the poor polling people.

But I wasn't the only one. As I was leaving, some woman was in there wanting to vote but forgot to reregister when she moved. They told her she couldn't vote, and she was making a big fuss. Poor polling people. I'm sure it's going to be a fun day for them.

Time to vote for the next Mayor of the City and County of San Francisco. Yes I'm a real San Franciscan, and not one of those people who say they're from San Francisco but live in some other part of the SF Bay Area. You're only a real Frisco person if you get to vote in the city elections.

And I'm bad and can be a tough as nails fiscal conservative when I feel like it, because I'm voting down any proposition that increases city spending. The City is financially strapped, yet there are props on the ballot to increase spending.

How whacky is that? Where the hell is the money going to come from? Silly people!

Day 3 Nanowrimo word count - 5,096 (day 3 should be 5,001).

I'm in the middle of chapter 2, and it's okay. The beginning went well, and then I kind of got bogged down in a conversation I wanted him to have with his ex-wife.

Now I just have to figure out how to end the chapter tomorrow. The first two chapter are supposed to introduce the two main characters, so the reader gets a feel for the two different viewpoints of the story being told.

I'm not sure if I'm getting their personalities across all that great, but I'm writing too fast to worry about it. The writing for each chapter sounds different anyway, so I think that's a good thing considering they're supposed to two totally different characters.

It's an opposites attract love story after all.

A friend just signed us up for a 3-performance ballet subscription for the San Francisco Ballet next year.

We signed up for their two full length features, Don Quixote and Sylvia, and a short program with ballets we don't think we've seen yet.

I love ballet. It's so beautiful to watch.

Stephen J Cannell said in his writing lecture that if what you conceive in your head doesn't match what you've written down, then it's just a matter of improving your writing skill and craft. I've been thinking about what I've been writing these past two days, and I can see that my writing skills are improving. Maybe not by much, but they're definitely getting better.

What I'm coming up with in my head is kinda sorta starting to look like what I'm writing. It's definitely not 100% there, but it's so much closer than it's ever been.

Maybe it is true what all the books and writers have been saying. To write well you have to write a tremendous amount, more than you thought you'd ever want to.

Day 2 Nanowrimo update - 3,388 words. Still ahead of scheduled word count total of 3,334, but not by much.

I think I'm at also at the end of Chapter 1, which is where I expected to be. I start the story from the guy's point of view next. I get to be a 5th generation west Texan man for a couple of days. Lucky me, huh?

I was supposed to start writing my Nanowrimo novel last night, but went to bed instead. It's a good thing, the novel started writing itself in my head yesterday on the train ride home.

I was trying to think about what I was going to write about last night, and then all of a sudden my main character Jane started talking in my head and dictating the novel. I think about the character, and all of a sudden it's like I hear them talking in my head and telling me their story.

My first chapter is on Jane and introducing her character. The second chapter will be introducing Marshall, the other main character. I actually have how his chapter starts in my head as well.

So this morning I sat down at my computer, and tried to remember and type up what Jane said last night. I ended up typing up 1,811 words, which is way past my daily word count of 1,667. I need to type another 1,667 words this evening for my day two count.

So far so good with the novel. I woke up freaked out that I didn't start it yesterday, but now that I've started writing I think it will go okay.

I had the worse headache yesterday. I kept thinking I needed to drink some coffee or have some kind of caffeinated drink, and I was even craving a latte which I have done in ages.

But I ignored by caffeine craving, thinking that maybe I had a hunger headache instead because I had a busy morning and hadn't really eating anything by 5 pm.

But by 9 pm, I had the worse headache and went to bed. I don't even think I drink that much coffee, just two cups a day every morning before work. But if I don't have it every day, I sure as heck get a headache.

Because I'm trying to watch how I spend my money, I had to stop myself from going out and buying pumpkin lights which I've been seeing ighting up windows all over the city.

The orange pumpkin lights are so cute, and I so wanted to have them to hang up in my window. They are so festive, and I love the little jack-o-lantern faces on the pumpkins.

I get enough crap from friends about the halloween turtleneck (it was on sale at a Talbot's outlet), the halloween socks and my "BOO" earrings I'm wearing, and how I spent money on an clothing and jewelry I can reall only wear one day out of year.

It's so not true that I can only wear my Halloween clothes one day a year, because if I plan it right, I can wear them at least three more times before the big day.

I know if I got the so dang adorable orange jaco-lantern pumpkin lights, to go with my scarecrow man, bat and pumpkin statue (it was gift), indian corn and the little baby pumpkins that are strewn around my place, I'd really be in trouble.

I found an online version of Krapp's Last Tape by Samuel Becket on the net. It's a short play, and very famous and if you feel like reading it, here it is.

One reviewer of this play said, "Krapp does in eight pages what took Proust 2,000".

I went to see Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett at ACT last night. Where I sit is normally pretty empty on a Thursday night, but I was surrounded by kids from Sonoma State on a field trip to the city to see the play.

One of the girls told me they were all in a general theatre study course, like a 300 level course, and that they made regular field trips to the city to see plays.

I wonder what their teacher told me about Samuel Beckett and his famous play. I took a whole course on Samuel Beckett in college, and we studied and even acted out "Waiting for Godot", since my theatre professor was a Stanford grad Beckett scholar.

I had already seen the Gate Theatre of Dublin's production of "Waiting for Godot" a few years in Berkeley along with "Krapp's Last Tape", which is a play about an decrepit old man listening to tapes he made of himself as a young man. Talk about a frightening and depressing play!

Imagine yourself as a toothless lonely drooling old codger listening to tapes of yourself as a young man, where you talked about your life and the girlfriends you had. So scary!

I liked this version of "Waiting for Godot" because they really concentrated on the vaudevillian aspect of the play. You could see echoes of Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, and other famous vaudeville routines which Beckett loved. I'd never seen a production emphasize the more comical aspects of the play, although when you start to really listen to the play you realize how depressing it really is.

Didi and Gogo together for 50 years, waiting for Godot in some god forsaken place, doing anything to amuse themselves to make the time pass and then continually saying "Nothing happens".

If you think about it, so much of life is like that really. Nothing happens, and we keep waiting for death, some say God to save us, to tell us that all of it has been worthwhile. That we haven't been traisping around in the barren wilderness for nothing, that the promised land is somewhere out there for us to get to, if only "God-ot" (this is how the irish say it" will come.

But he doesn't come and so we wait, and we go on, and nothing happens.

A friend called today, and I mentioned to her that I thought my dead grandma was visiting me. My friend, who grew up catholic and even graduated from catholic high school, told me that my grandma was visiting me because she wanted to me to go to mass on either Day of the Dead or All Soul's Day and light a candle for her.

She said I should go to the Mission and find a catholic church, but then she said I may not find any candles to light so I should just pick any catholic church and go to a service and light a candle.

Grandma always did lov e buying those candles and lighting them. I checked out a couple of services. The Mission Dolores Church in the Mission has a Saturday vigil service at 5 pm on Saturday, and the huge St. Mary's Cathedral near Civic Center has an earlier service at 12:05 pm.

I'll decide on Saturday which one to attend. I think my grandma would have loved both churches.

Do people still flock to Georgetown to party on Halloween? When I lived there it was place to party on Halloween. They closed the streets down, so even if you drove you had to park far away and walk. People really get dressed up.

The Castro used to be fun to go for Halloween, but in the last ten years it's become so touristy, crowded and violent. More people are going just to gawk and drink, and they don't even dress up.

From the History Channel, Halloween around the World.

Another history of Halloween site: The Real Origins of Halloween.

I rented "Kate and Leopold", and was glad I didn't see it on the big screen. The movie is cute and all, but so not worth a big screen movie ticket.

Hugh Jackman was so adorable, but Meg Ryan. Oh my god! I kept thinking the whole time, what happened to her face. She used to be so cute, and now she just looks old and haggard. What's up with that bad haircut of hers too?

I loved the Leopold character, and I hated Kate. The ending would have been better if I could have figured out why Jackman's character fell in love with her, because Kate was a stereotypical nasty career "bitch". Why any mad would want to sleep with her character much less marry her is a mystery, other than she's your typical blonde blue eyed girl.

Updated the site with the National Novel Writing Month 2003 logo. Yes I'm doing it again, writing a novel in 30 days. I've got an outline, characters, and I think I can write it from start to finish this time. It's love story, and those stories are short.

I also updated the two new books I'm reading:

Paradise Park by Allegra Goodman and
I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven.

Someone told me that I write like Allegra Goodman, so I decided to check her out. I wanted a shorter book to read on the train, so I picked up the Craven book from the paperback rack at the library. Smaller books fit better in my purse.

I'm still slogging through the Kafka book. He does take time to read.

I read somewhere that on Halloween, All Soul's Day and Day of the Dead, the veil between the realms of the living and dead become loosed. I wonder if it's true, because I've been missing my dead grandmother a whole lately.

It started on Tuesday, and every day it gets worse. Maybe she's trying to visit me or something. I was going to go out and hang out with friends on Halloween, but I think I should stay home in case my grandmother is trying to visit.

My cousin said grandma was haunting and visiting her when I was at home for the funeral. My aunt said the same thing was happening to her, and we were sharing a room together. I never had the feeling I was being visited or haunted. Why would grandma visit them and not me?

But maybe Halloween is my chance, especially because I'm missing her something awful right now. I just want to see and talk to her one last time, even if she is a ghost.

I'm addicted to this online game called Hexic. I started playing it last night, and I couldn't stop. I have no idea why I like the game or why it's so addictive, it just is.

So I thought I'd blown my modern art history mid term and gotten a B or some other lower grade, because the last part really threw me. I thought I had studied everything I was supposed to, but I was I wrong.

The last part consisted of writing one of two essays. I thought he was going to give an essay on comparing AbEx-Colour Field and AbEx-Action, so I studied for that question. He said he was going to give an essay on comparing AbEx NYC and Art Informel, but I didn't study for it. I thought the AbEx movement comparison was a more compelling argument.

Why study for two, when you only have to do one right?

So I was right about the AbEx NYC comparison to Art Informel being on the mid term, but I wasn't expecting the other question to be about Pop Art. And of course, I didn't really devote much time pop art.

I could have written the Art Informel essay, but you had to compare works of art and I couldn't remember the names of any of the Art Informel pieces at the time.

So I wrote this two page BS rant on Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, where I said Pop Art was not a reaction to AbEx or fulfillment of NeoDada, but was brought about by changes happening in American and British Culture. I cited the invention of television, the media and Hollywood, and the growing interest in Hollywood stars and stardom as birthing Pop Art stars Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol.

Talk about making it up as you go along. I thought for sure he wouldn't buy my argument and give me like maybe 5 points on a 20 point essay.

So it was so shocking that I got 100/100 and an A, and a comment that he agreed with me and that I really understood pop art.

He even held on to my test along with a few others, and said he was going to read from some of them as examples for what people should have written, but thank god he ran out of time and decided not to do that. That would have been embarrassing to hear my own BS read out loud in class. How scary is that?

But I guess I shouldn't be so surprised by my grade. I managed to convince my art history professor one night after class, that Jackson Pollock's AbEx Action paintings birthed conceptual art because of how Pollock showed tme in artwork.

You don't have to right about art, you just have to argue it well.

So I told a bunch of girls in art class to go see Kill Bill, but I did warn them that if their only exposure to kung fu movies was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix, they wouldn't like it.

Maybe I should have warned them about all the blood and gore, but oh my god, those were the best and funniest parts of the movie. Of course, I was the only one in the theatre laughing my head off but still. Gotta love a movie with tons of squirting blood and cut off limbs flying all over the screen.

People take stuff so seriously. It's just typical asian movie crappy special movie effects. It's so fake looking, that I can't believe people think it's real blood and get all grossed out. See this is what happens when you watch a movie that's an homage to a genre that you know nothing about, or you've never been exposed to.

You don't get how cool the awful special effects are. You don't get how great the stitled dialogue and sappy music is. You don't get how hard it is to actually write stuff this bad on purpose and not by accident or because you're in a hurry.

But if you have, you realize that Quentin Tarantino is an absolute genius!