I bought a new scale on Sunday. My scale at home was so off from my doctor's scale. What's great about having a non-working scale is you can fool yourself about how much you really weigh. I would go to the doctor and get myself weighed, and the weight would always be higher than on my scale at home. In my denial mode, I attributed the difference to clothing, shoes, coffee, breakfast, etc. What's worse is, I knew I was fooling myself but I didn't care. My scale at home reflected a weight that wasn't too bad and I was happy with that. But I don't want to fool myself anymore.

My scale at home is eight (8) pounds off from my new expensive high tech scale called thinner. The blurb at the store said that the particular scale I bought, called "Thinner" of all things, is the most accurate on the market. I'm telling you though, stepping on the scale yesterday was so shocking. I was so freaked about by how much I actually weighed, I spent the rest of the night in a freaked out daze watching the Witchblade marathon on TNT, never mind that I've seen every show this season and have them taped as well.

As the night wore on, I calmed myself down and forced myself to think about what was happening. When I stepped on the new scale and it was eight pounds higher, I immediately thought that I had fooled myself into believing that I lost 12 pounds last year. How could I have fooled myself about losing 12 pounds and why did I do that to myself? But then I remembered that the weight the nurse wrote down my chart last March was 12 pounds higher than my current weight on the new scale. After realizing this fact, I felt better. Whew!!!

Part of my freak out came from the fact that I tried on a pair of jeans that used to fit me in 1999 on Satruday, and for the first time in years, I could actually button them. They were snug as heck, but at least it didn't hurt to button them or lie down to put them on.

I think this is a good thing, to have my scale at home match my doctor's scale. On the down side, I have way more weight to lose than I thought I did.

On the calorie counting front, for our lunch meeting we went to TGI Fridays. I had a salad. The salad was soaking with dressing, bleu cheese and pecan covered chicken, but calorie wise I don't think it was too bad. The TGI Friday's website didn't have a nutritional information guide, but the salad I had at TGI Fridays is similar to the one I get at La Salsa. I'm estimating the pecan chicken salad I had to be about 800 calories. That's alot for a salad, I know, but it was very filling and I'm still full. If I go home tonight and have a light dinner, I still won't be over my calorie total for the day.

I don't want to worry too much about salads. I ate fuzzy lettuce salads, covered in vinagrettes and chicken last year, and initally lost 20 pounds. I was on a carbo restricted zone type of eating. I tried restricting my carbo count to 10-20 grams a meals. Three months later I lost 20 pounds. I gained about 8 pounds of it back, but managed to to keep the 12 pound weight loss despite going to back to my regular eating ways.

I'd like to lose 30 pounds and then see how much comes back on, when I go back to regular eating. 40% of the weight loss I came back last year once I went back to regular eating. If this ratio holds true, I should gain 12 pounds back, leaving my weight loss at 18 pounds. At that weight, I'd be close to what I weighed in 1995.

My other plan is to lose enough weight until I see a body shape I like, lose 5-10 pounds beyond that weight, and then go back to regular eating. With the extra weight loss, when I do back to regular eating, the weight I end up with should be the weight that is perfect for me.

Just thinking this far into the future is dizzying and freaky for me. I hate the thought that I might be calorie counting for more than three months, but I know if I want to get to the weight I am happy with, I'll have to calorie count for as long as it takes. I wish I'd done this earlier. I could feel my weight creeping up, but I was in such denial about it. When companies I worked for went Business Casual, I didn't freak out so much about gaining weight. When I had to wear a suit every day, a suit that cost $500 and up, I would freak out if my suit was tight. When you wear business casual type clothes to work, replacing a $50 pair of khakis is no big deal. Business Casual clothes are also not quit so fitted, so there's alot of room to hide any weight gain.

Denial is amazing, isn't it?

Friends of mine are off to Burning Man. The idea of Burning Man sound interesting, but I don't think I could take the living conditions. I love the desert and all, but camping for a week in it does not sound like my idea of fun. Besides, my idea of camping is staying at Motel 6. I guess I'm getting old because the thought of car camping in the hot desert and being surrounded by people on Ex and other type of hallucinatory drugs, just gives me the willies.

I think they're shooting that new ABC drama, MDs near my neighbourhood. On the way home from an even tonight, the police had some streets blocked off and I saw huge trucks loaded with camera equipment. The producer said in the paper, he sets alot of his stories in San Francisco because he went to SF State and did his residency here.

I live here, so my screenplay is set in San Francisco, and so is my novel. The short story I'm working on is set in Pacifica and Death Valley. I used to live in Pacifica and I've been to Death Valley. It's fun to set stories in place you've either lived or visited. One of my completed short stories is set in London and San Francisco, and another one is set in Dallas, Texas. I started a story set in West Virginia, while I was visiting there, and hope to finish it one day.

It's great that movies and shows are filmed here, but they do mess up traffic. When the Hulk was filming here a few months ago, they film production crew really messed up traffic. They never usually film in my neighbourhood, but the UC San Francisco Hospital building is here and that's probably where they're filming. I'm going to have to watch this TV show now, just to see my neighbourhood. My neighbourhood main street was in that Keannu Reeves movies, "Sweet November". There's a scene where Charlize Theron and the scottish guy are walking down the street, and you see a Java Beans sign in the background, that's my neighbourhood. Seeing that in the theatre was so cool, because I had no idea that they filmed a scene here. I saw it and said to my friend, oh my god, that's near my apartment. It was so cool!

Life is full of strange coincidences sometimes. Check this series out. I had a crush on this guy in my screenwriting class in February. Screenwriting Marina hottie boy, my nickname for him, ends up writing a screenplay about a giy who used to play football at Marshall University in West Virginia. I don't think the Screenwriitng Marina hottie boy played football there though, but played for some school in his home state of Pennsylvania.

In July I went to West Virginia for two weeks on vacation wtih a friend, whose family is from there. While blogging one night in West Virginia, I received an email from someone who used to live there. That person is now a blog friend, and I have her blog linked on my blog. This new blog friend just happened to have gone to Marshall University, the school screenwriting marina hottie boy talked about in his screenplay.

This new blog friend lives in Columbus, Ohio now. Ohio is where Paul, my boyfriend who died in May of this year, was born and is now buried somewhere in Dayton. Ohio is also where my first love, who I've been thinking about since April, went to school after he transferred from my college in Grinnell, Iowa. I wonder if Oberlin College is anywhere near Columbus or Dayton?

Screenwriting marina hottie boy is originally from Pittsburgh, PA. He looks almost exactly like my first love, only he's taller, bigger, played college football, isn't as articulate, doesn't play the violin and bass guitar, and isn't jewish. Pittsburgh, PA has largest museum dedicated to just Andy Warhol. I went to LA to see the Andy Warhol exhibit.

And last but not least. The VP, who I'm meeting with on Monday, works out of his home in Pittsburgh, PA.

Signs was all about coincidences and how they might or might not all mean something, depending on whether you have faith and believe in God. I grew up catholic, and I believe in signs from god. In fact, I crave signs from god. I ask for signs, coincidences, sychronistic events, and you know most of the time, I get an answer. It's a spooking thing. I'm not sure what all these coincidences I've written about mean for my life right now, but they're interesting to note. They also make me curious to know what other coincidences are coming next, and what they might mean for my future.