Thanks for all the words of encourage everyone. It's very highly appreciated!

I know I'm pretty lucky that I've gotten to the age I have, and having never been in an accident with another car until now. It's so shocking when it happens. There I was driving along, when I all of a sudden I felt another car hit mine. It felt like just a bump, but my passenger door got scraped and dinged up badly.

I didn't think I was hurt, but now the left side of my neck is hurting and my right arm is a little tingly. I think I have a pinched nerve. It just so happens I have a chiropractor appointment on Monday, so maybe he can fix it. I can still move my arm, it just feels tingly, like I slept on it or something. My health plan offers self referral chiropractic care, so now's the time I guess to use up those visits.

The car accident feels like the way I get half flus. I get the symptoms, but I never get sick. Bad things seem to happen to me, like they do to everyone else, but then when I look back at the incident I think to myself things could have been alot worse.

Okay, but now I have catholic/presybeterian guilt because I skipped Good Friday service to go shopping at Ikea. Someone at church even asked to be part of the service on April 9, but I wasn't into it so I said now. Now I'm thinking if only I'd said yes, I wouldn't have been in my accident. How weird though isn't it? Like maybe I was meant to be on the bridge and to have an accident, but why? What was the point of that?

My friend who met me at Ikea told me it meant to be because now I can't buy the desk at Ikea that I wanted. I wanted this closed workstation at Ikea, but now with having to pay the car deductible, I don't think I want to spend the money. I just hate having to tap my savings, even though I know it's for emergencies like this.

My friend hated the desk anyway, and said it looked like a coffin. Now I'll just buy some cheap desk and hide it away with a screen. I'll save $200 this way, and my friend said I won't have a coffin in my apartment.

I'm one of those types who think that everything that happens in my life happens for a reason, so of course now I'll spend a considerable amount of time trying to figure out why I had to have an accident on the Bay Bridge on Good Friday during rush hour.

I got into a fender bender on the Bay Bridge last night driving to Ikea in Emeryville. It was a frightening experience, and my passenger door on the driver's side got scraped and dinged. I'd go into it it more, but it's a long story and I think I'm still in shock and trauma. This is my first car accident, and I wish someone would put out a manual on what you're supposed to do, because obviously I'm stupid and clueless. Thank god for car insurance.

I have to go down the CHP on Monday because the driver who hit me didn't get off the freeway with me. Isn't that what you're supposed to do? Pull over to the side of the road when you can to exchange insurance company info and names. There was no place to pull over on the bridge, and I was so freaked out that by the time I was looking for a place to pull over, I was already on the 80 split heading towards Berkeley. I pulled over at the nearest exit thinking the driver who hit me would follow me, but he didn't. It was a big semitruck hauling something so maybe he couldn't do it. I called my insurance company and waited for the guy to show up, but he never did.

Then my car insurance company told me to call 911, so I did that. I was so shocked, I didn't even think to write the license plate of the vehicle down before I drove off the bridge. I just thought the guy would follow me off. Now I'm thinking I should have just stayed in my car and waited for the CHP to show up, and cause on hell of a traffic jam on the bridge. I didn't because the truck driver guy, who didn't even get out of his truck to talk to me, waved me off and I automatically assumed he was telling me to drive off the bridge so we could pull over and talk. It was so all so confusing, and it was Friday rush hour traffic.

The 911 operator said I was a victim of a hit and run, since the truck hit me and I have to file a counter report. I wanted to wait for the police to come and talk to me, but she said there were already so many other accidents already that I might have to wait two hours before the police showed up. I was so unnerved I think I started freaking out on the phone, and the 911 operator tried to calm me down and told me that the best thing was to file a claim on Monday.

I went to Ikea, where I was supposed to meet my friend. She came and we ate in the Ikea cafeteria and I told her my story. I was in shock and babbling, and she just listened me me and let me talk. She said she had had a bad day at work, so she could only listen and I was fine with that. I just needed someone to listen to me. She shopped and I whined and babbled on for two hours.

I was so afraid to get back on the freeway, that my friend suggested I come over and have a drink with her to her house. I went to her house, but decided I couldn't even have half a beer if I was going to drive, so I just drank some juice and we talked some more, or rather I whined some more.

I wanted to spend the night at my friend's house because I was so afraid of gettting back on the freeway, but I made myself leave and somehow I drove home, parked my car and went home. As soon as entered my apartment, the tears fell. I just felt so sorry for myself, and so stupid like I did the wrong thing getting myself into an accident.

I think what happened is the truck driver and I were trying to get into the same lane from opposite sides. My car is so small, he probably didn't see mes so he ended up hitting me. I like to think of myself as a very careful driver, but I guess accident happens.

My friends say it could have been worse. My car could have been totalled instead of just dinged and scraped. The truck could have hit and my car could have swerved and smashed into the car in the other lane, or I could have been seriously injured or killed. Instead, I'm just out $500 for the deductible on my car insurance and freaked out. I wonder if my insurance will go up. Probably. I wonder what the CHP will say on Monday. I am in such unfamiliar territory because this is my first accident.

I'm trying to look on the bright side, but it's hard. I have so many expenses from moving, that I didn't need one more. And to make it worse, my bathroom sink blocked up this morning and won't drain, and who knows when that will get fixed.

Bad things come in threes, and I think I'm up to number six since the year started. What a life huh?

So I had this thing in my head that since I will be working at home, I didn't want my home computer in the same room as my work computer. My home computer would be in my bedroom, because after all I don't need the distraction of TV when I write, and my work computer would be in the corner of my living room.

Now that I'm getting DSL though, it's all become complicated. The easiest thing to do would be to have my home and work computer in the same room, so I could share my DSL modem/router/hub. I could connect my home computer via a USB port to the hub and connect my work computer via ethernet connection to the hub. But I wasn't planning on this configuration.

I wanted to buy one of those computer desks where you can close the door, so at 5 pm at home I could literally close up my office and be at home. I wouldn't have to look at my work stuff or my work computer or even my work phone.

I don't know. I think having two computers side by side just doesn't look that good. How geeky is that?

One alternative is to keep the home computer in the bedroom, and either drill a hole in the wall and run an ethernet cable along the wall and under the rug in the living room to the work computer.

The other alternative is to buy an HPNA adapter, which costs about $50, to plug into the laptop's USB Port and then plug the laptop in the phone line. The home portal device I'm buying from SBC Pacific Bell turns your existing phone jacks into a home based LAN network. The only drawback with this method according to other users, is a loss in a download speed. Like I would even notice, since I've been accessing the Net with my 56K modem for years now.

I have no idea what I'm going to do. The cable under the rug solution is starting to look really attractive, and probably cheaper. All I'd have to do is buy a very long ethernet cable. How much can an ethernet cable cost? I might be able to even take one from work.

I'm very intrigued by the HPNA solution and being able to use an existing phone line as a home LAN idea though, but I'm not in the mood to spend the money to get the HPNA adapter.

It's just one more thing to think about.

A friend called today and wants to go to IKEA tomorrow night. God, I love IKEA but so does everyone else in the SF Bay Area. On the weekends, it's like everyone is there. The parking is horrendous, and it's wall to wall people. IKEA had to build more parking structures to accomodate the hordes of people who shop there. Like who knew people had to buy so much cheap scandanavian furniture. I think I even read once that the IKEA store in Emeryville is one of the best performing stores in the chain. I believe it.

My friend thinks Friday nights are the best night to go, since Ikea won't be so crowded. It's an idea, but then I'd have to drive over the Bay Bridge on a Friday night during the evening commute and I hate doing that. It's not a bad commute if there are no accidents, and I even drove from San Bruno to Vine Street in Berkeley in an hour once starting at 5 pm. But I think that trip time was an exception. There are always accidents during the evening commute.

There's a scene from the movie "Fight Club", one of my favorite scenes from a movie, where Edward Norton's character talks about decorating his apartment. He decorate his apartment with what looks like IKEA furniture, which he said he orderd all through a catalog. That scene makes me laugh everytime.

It's like the time I went to a baby shower at a friend's brother's house. The brother's wife was a Pottery Barn fiend, and the whole place looked like it came out of a Pottery Barn catalog. What looked great in the Pottery Barn catalog, looked sadly stark and unimaginative in someone's home. The house was in a good part of Berkeley as well, which was even more ironic, since I think Pottery Barn to so antithetical to the stereotypical left wing Berkeley life style. Pottery Barn? How consumer nation can you get?

Now IKEA, that's a different story.

Who is the Elfman that keeps commenting? Are you really an elf? There are no elves left. They were all imprisoned during the time of Atlantis, and made into slaves. We were a slave people, and when we died we were cursed and could no longer reincarnate (our light body template was destroyed) as elves but only as humans. We lost our 12-strand DNA, and all our powers since humans only have 2-strand DNA.

But in 2002, elfen souls who were banned from heaven for centuries were allowed to move into the light and rest in peace and be with god. If there are any of us left, we are now humans with health problems related to being elfen first. But we remember, we remember our elfen life when we had our own land, our own culture, our own society, before the great wars, before we were betrayed, destroyed, systemically hunted down and killed. Those who survived were enslaved, cursed for centuries, cursed for all time, with no hope until 2002 when a liberator by the grace of the god freed the elfen people, freed them from centuries of not being able to move into the light and be with the one who created us all.