I'm very blue today. Maybe it's the blue meanies? I'm listening to Chant by The Benedictine Monks of Santa Domingo de Silos. I'm hoping the monks' Gregorian chants will soothe my nerves. I used to love to listen to Gregorian chants in college, and this music brings that part of my life all back. I probably need to rebuild my Gregorian chant collection again, since what I have is all on vinyl and I haven't had a record player in years.

I've got new upstairs neighbors, and they're totally noisy. My apartment building has hardwood floor and ceilings and floors are very thin. The couple walk around in their shoes when they're in their apartment at night and in the morning, and these past two nights I awoke in the middle of the night to crashing noises. Either someone fell out of bed, or they're doing it at 3 am in the morning and their bed is bouncing up and down. I can hear every step they take, and it's so horrendously annoying!

The whole thing makes me depressed about my living situation, and I haven't been willing to admit it to myself, but my apartment is just not a fun place to live anymore. I was having trouble writing in my apartment, and I attributed my malaise to me needing to sometimes change my writing environment.

It's now beginning to dawn on me, that my apartment is to blame. It's just too small, and it's noisy and I need more space. Now comes the part where I sometimes wish I didn't live in one of the most expensive cities in the world. If lived anywhere else, I could afford to by my own place.

I have a friend who lives in Portland, Oregon. She and her husband own their own home, and have two sons. She's a stay at home soccer mom, and her husband supports all of them on his salary, and I make 25% more than he does. I make more money than he does, and I can barely afford to support myself living here.

The city and county of San Francisco is just such an expensive place to live. I know if I lived outside of the city, my paycheck would stretch much further, but I hate living outside of the city.

The only reason I stay in my place is it's very cheap, and everyone says I should stay here until I can afford to buy my own place. But I don't know. Is it worth it to stay in a place and be miserable? If I move to a bigger place, I wouldn't be able to save as much money as I would want, but I'd still be able to save. It would just mean my plan to purchase a place would be delayed a year or two. And what's a year or two?

I was thinking about my housing situation at work today, and I got the feeling deep in my heart that it's time to move on. I've never gotten this feeling about my apartment before, and the feeling was very sure and strong.

This is partly why I'm so down. I think moving places is traumatic. I used to move every two years, and this is the first place I've been in for longer than two years. I love the location, I love the neighbourhood, I love my view, and I like all of my neighbors, except for the noisy freaks of nature upstairs. I have an odd feeling of comfort about where I live, which probably stems from the length of my stay here.

But it's time to move on. I'm definitely staying in this neighborhood though. I just have to find a bigger place that has lots of windows and light, a view, and is on the top floor so I don't have to hear lead foot smegheads shagging above me in the middle of the bloody night.

I just finished reading one of my favorite astrology websites, and it said that Sagitarius is a hidden epicure. The oh so beautiful screenwriting marina hottie boy whom I had a seriously secret major crush, was somewhat of a sommelier. The boy seriously knew his wine, and I think his food as well, although he said he was lactose intolerant.

I wonder what my favorite crush is doing these days. I wonder if he ever finished his screenplay. He didn't seem to be very good at finishing projects. I wished we could have stayed friends and kept in touch, but it was destined to be.

I'm caught up with my nanowrimo novel through Tuesday. It's getting harder and harder to write, because now I'm on the part where the women are going through four trials that they need to pass to become the Head Priestess.

The first trial was to build an a makeshift village, in case of a tribal disaster. This trial came out of the history of the tribe, when the tribe was attacked and their homes were destroyed. The Head Priestess at the time, put together a makeshift village in another location that the tribe moved to until they could rebuild a permanent village. The village had to be put together in 8 hours, which is how long it look that ancient Head Priestess to complete the makeshift village.

The details of the first trial actually came pretty easily to me. I saw it as kind of emerency camping. You put together tents, fire pits, a cooking space, and you gather food and herbs.

The second trial is much more complicated. Keep in mind, that I'm making all of this stuff up as I go along. The second trial consists of two parts. The first part is Magical Potions. Each candidate will make up several random potions. The second part is to prepare a feast fit for a Head Tribal Chief. The second part of the trial stems again from the function of the Head Priestess and their history. If the Head Tribal Chief is without a spouse, the Head Priestess becomes the Queen, the consort sometimes, until the Head Tribal Chief takes a wife. The Head Priestess must be able to demonstrate that she can prepare a feast for a Head Tribal Chief and any visiting Head Tribal Chiefs. In the tribal history, several Head Priestess had to fulfill the function of the Queen, and the trial is insure the candidate will make a good Queen.

Don't ask my why I put this part in, but it made sense at the time I was writing it. But the hard part now is trying to come up with the random magical potions for the test and the food for the feast. I don't think I can just sit down and write this part, without giving it some serious thought.

I have all weekend to get caught up, so I'm actually not that worried. And then I have two days off for Thanksgiving, so if I really get behind, I have that last weekend to write like crazy to get to the 50K mark. I'm at 32,000 words, so I'm not that doing that badly yet. I just hate falling behind like this, because then if I keep doing it, it gets harder and harder to get caught up again.

I finally got around to watching the movie "Clerks" the other day. God, the acting was very, very bad. I think I could have even out acted these people, and I'm not a very good actress myself. I think if the acting wasn't so bad, I would have really liked this movie more. Some of it was very funny that it made me laugh out loud, but in between the laughs was horrible, horrible acting. The Dante character was good, and at least he could deliver his lines. Veronica and the odd assortment of store customers were also quite good. It was the Randall character and the Caitlin character that made me feel like turning the movie off. Too bad too, because the Randall character had some great lines; he just delivered them in the worse way possible.

God, talk about unattractive people in a movie as well!

The other thing I noticed was how chatty some of the scenes were, and how utterly boring they were. Now I know what my screenwritng teacher meant when she said to not have pages and pages of dialogue. Oh my god, it's so boring to watch people talk and not do anything. And even if they are doing something, don't have them talk for very long because it just doesn't play well on a big screen.

I also decided to watch "The Fast and the Furious". I wished I'd seen this movie in a big theatre. Some of the car racing scenes were very thrilling, and would have looked great on a big movie theatre instead of my TV screen. The movie also had a great soundtrack, which again would have sounded great in a movie theatre.

I was supposed to see this movie with a guy friend of mine. We kept trying to come up with a date to see it, but something always came up, and he ended up seeing it by himself. Now I'm bummed, because he was right. It's a darn good movie.

Vin Diesel was of course fascinating, although not as sexy without those great tatoos from Triple X. Still, there's some very intriguing about him as an actor that make you want to watch him.

I loved how all those Nissan Sentras, Hondas, and Jettas were turned into very fast cars. My boyfriend in highschool was a car nut, and I learned to love fast cars and powerful engines from being with him.

There was a whole thing in The Fast and the Furious about driving at 140 mph. I can say honestly that I was in a car that was going 140 mph, with my car crazy highschool boyfriend driving.

There's one straightaway on the island of Kauai that is great for racing. The road is completely straight and flat, and people would often race down this little strip, or at least they did when I was in highschool.

My highschool boyfriend and I were taking a member of this singing group visiting my highschool from Spain to some event. I was in Spanish class so I was a hostess for one of the spanish singers, which is how my boyfriend got roped into being our chauffer. We were running late, and my boyfriend drove like crazy to get us to the event on time.

We were speeding down the straightaway, when I noticed that the scenery outside the car was whizzing by more quickly than what I was used to. I glanced at the speedometer, and it read 140 mph. I registered the speed in my mind, but my boyfreind was such an excellent driver that it didn't really bother me that we were going that fast.

It wasn't until we were getting out of the car at our destination, that the spanish musician asked about the speed of the car since he noticed the speed of the car as well. He just thought we were going 140 kilometers, and not 140 mph. When my boyfriend told him we were driving 140 mph, the guy kind of freaked out and had a hissy fit about the danger of driving so fast.

I remember my boyfriend looking at me like, I was trying to help, you got me into this mess now get me the hell out. I smiled, interrupted the spanish musician and told him we were late so we had better get inside.

When I saw the 140 mph come up in the movie, it brought an amusing incident from my past back that I hadn't thought about in years.