The comments website is still down, which is a bummer.

It's been foggy in my neighbourhood all weekend, so I headed downtown just to see some sun.

I saw 28 Days Later, the movie by Danny Boyle of Trainspotting fame. I liked it, but it had nothing new to say in terms of survivalist type films. The Trigger Effect is the best survivalist movie in recent times, and that old Brit scifi series "Survivor" was good as well, showing all the different groups of people that will probably emerge if a disease wipes 99.9% of the planet out.

I loved the opening of how the disease gets spread though. It was an evocative political commentary.

On Saturday, I went to see an exhibit of "Italian Manuscript Painting of the Middle Ages and Renaissance." I love this stuff. I saw a ton of it England at the various museums I visited.

The colours are so vivid and I love all the little painting they artists put in letters and those amazing borders. If I had oodles and oodles of cash to burn, I would love to buy and have the stuff hanging in my house.

I have a friend who owns a couple of museum quality pieces of italian manuscript, and I am so totally jealous. To see them up close and unframed is just fantastic. The colours are so alive and beautiful.

On Sunday, I ran errands, worked out, even wrote for a bit, which was nice. I'm still recovering from my cold, and I've been feeling too tired in the evenings to write. My cold is over, but the cough is hanging for dear life.

If I don't leave the house and go somewhere and write, I don't write. It's just too tempting to watch TV, zone out, or putz around the place when I'm at home. I have to leave and go somewhere and make myself sit down and write.

I was invited to go see Shakespeare in the Park on Monday, but I just couldn't stomach sitting in the freezing fog and being sick for another week.

I went to see "Step into Liquid" the surf movie instead. What a great movie! If you love surfing, you have to see it. I'm definitely adding it to my surfing movie collection when it gets released on DVD. The surfing footage is just spectacular and beats anything on TV or that movie "Blue Crush".

I also finally watched the movie, "The Shipping News". Cate Blanchett was amazing, and overall the movie was good but not great. All the reviews say to read the book, so I might just end up doing that because I loved the story.

Below are links to pictures from my cruise sailing down the California coast line to Catalina Island and then to Cabo San Lucas and back.

The Celebrity Cruise ship

Catalina

More Catalina

Another view of Catalina

Typical Catalina Car - they use golf carts to get around

Cabo San Lucas

A famous Cabo site

A Cabo beach

A little blurry but the famous Cabo San Lucas Arch

I don't why people are making such a big deal about Madonna kissing Britney Spears and Christina Aguillera.

The kisses were sorority girl type kisses, the kind of kiss you have with your girlfriends to have fun, experiment, to tease the guys at a party, or when you've had too much to drink and just want to kiss someone.

Like girls kissing girls was so normal, so standard in college, nobody thought twice, cared or thought the girls were lesbians.

As a society, it seems like our collective minds are in the gutter if people can't be a little too friendly with their own sex and not have people automatically assume they're having sex. What is up with that?

The Christian Science Monitor has a quiz to see if you're a NeoCon; Are you a neoconservative? Take this quiz to find out.

My results were: Based on your answers, you are most likely a neoconservative.

Neoconservatives…

Want the US to be the world's unchallenged superpower
Share unwavering support for Israel
Support American unilateral action
Support preemptive strikes to remove perceived threats to US security
Promote the development of an American empire
Equate American power with the potential for world peace
Seek to democratize the Arab world
Push regime change in states deemed threats to the US or its allies

Historical neoconservative: President Teddy Roosevelt
Modern neoconservative: President Ronald Reagan

Wow, surprising but the questions aren't easy ones and I gave very conservative answers. I thought for sure I'd fall more in the middle, but I guess not. And I so can't stand Ronald Reagan. Teddy Roosevelt I like, but not the actor president, no friggin' way!

I think I need to rethink my american foreign policy views if I end up on a silly newspaper quiz in the same group as Uncle Ronnie. SCARY!!!