So the red-haired marina frat boy called me at work this afternoon. I wasn't expecting to hear from him, and he caught me off guard. When he was called I was in very bad mood, and I think I was really mean to him. He was trying to be casual and flirty and I was so not in the mood and just fuming. I called him back later and apologized, and said something about how I wasn't sleeping well (which is totally true) and when I don't sleep I'm cranky.

And I was sitting there watching "Cold Mountain" alone on a Friday night, I'm thinking to myself that I was just happy to be at home alone and relaxing after a very hard and stressful week. And I'm like thinking, how the heck am I going to do this relationship stuff when I enjoy my own solitude so much.

I'm like a computer server, I need my down time. I need time to just hang by myself and watch movies and relax. I know it sounds lonely as all heck, but I enjoy it. Watching movies is part of my work as a screenplay writer. I don't feel guilty when I watch movies, I feel productive. It's like work for me because I'm sitting there enjoying the movie and analyzing it at the same time for what makes the movie work. And when it's movie made from a book like "Cold Mountain" was, it's interesting to see what the screenplay kept and left out from the book.

The red-haired guy, who is an extroverted people person, just can't imagine spending as much time alone as I do. He thinks it's lonely, and I'm thinking he's thinking he's going to rescue me from my loneliness. And I'm like, I don't need rescuing from my loneliness. I enjoy being alone. I need someone who's going to be a companion, someone to sleep with at night, and someone who won't make me feel crowded in or suffocated.

I feel like Mrs. Dalloway. I need a guy who's going to let me have my space, who won't make me feel like I'm trapped. This is an issue I always have in any relationship, and it's the reason why relationships are so hard for me. As much as I want togetherness and know that I do better in a couple situation than as a single, I cherish my individual space and freedom very much.

I'm bad because I'm hoping I don't see him this weekend. I just can't deal with it righ now. This is my first free weekend all month that I have to myself, and I want to enjoy it. On August 7, I was in a seminar all day, and then on Sunday I do errands. Last Saturday afteroon I was with him, and then I went to visit and have dinner with a friend in San Ramon and didn't get back till 11:30 at night. And Sunday is spent at church, running errands, going the gym and grocery shopping.

And my weekdays haven't been much better. On Monday and Tuesday night, I wrote and then worked out and didn't get home till 10 pm. On Wednesday I met with my writing group, and on Thursday night I started my Film History class.

Red-haired guy is always asking me why I don't date and I keep trying trying to tell him I'm busy and don't have time. Today he asked me again, and finally I said dating way more trouble than it's worth. I told him I'm picky, but I don't think he really understands quite what that means.

How do you tell a guy, "Look I have a full life where I barely have time enough to do all things I want to do. If a guy comes along who strikes my fancy and we hit it off, then fine I'll go out. The problem is the guy has to be pretty darn spectacular to make me even want to exert that much effort. And I'm a secret romantic at heart, and I figure if I'm supposed to meet someone I'll meet them. The universe knows my needs, and if there was some guy I was supposed to hang with, I'm a big believer in the universe getting us together."

I sound like a such a typical "San Francisco single girl freak". If I had cats, the picture would be complete. I think it's hilarious that I'm such a dang stereotype sometimes. Whatever.

I finally got around to seeing the movie version of Charles Frazier's novel "Cold Mountain." I meant to see it in the theatre, but I missed it. The violence in the early part of the movie was very horrific, and I was surprised by how well they depicted the hand to hand combat of fighting during the civil war. I'm thinking they probably got help from the people who do all the civil war reenactment stuff.

It was interesting to see how the novel was adapted into movie form. I liked how the ending was still as powerful as it was in the book, although I do remember thinking that I hated the ending of the book even though I knew that the ending was justified.

It's so poignant how people hold onto to the smallest things to get through the darkest of times. At what point Inman says in the movie that memories of Ada were like a bag of diamonds that he could hold onto and get through the darkness.

So much is made about the great civil war, the war of northern aggression. But like any war, the real victims were the people left behind who had to go on and rebuild and in some cases die trying. I think the Ada character at the end says you make peace with your past, and you try to heal or something like that.

I think it was Anton Chkhov who wrote that you go on because you have to, because there is work, there is always work to do.

Fridays at work are bad days for me. Most people in my group work from home, so it’s very quiet. I never feel like doing anything, even though I have work to do. This is when I wish I still had my own office, so I could just goof off all day. When I’m in a cube farm, I can’t exactly do that.

I have been sleeping well these last nights either, so I’m exhausted. I keep waking up between 4 and 5 am. Usually I sleep right through until my alarm goes off at 6 am, but not this week. I woke up at 4:30 am, managed to go back to sleep and then at 6 am, a crow started cawing loudly outside my window and woke me right up. I’m never sure if it’s good or a bad sign, when crows wake me up in the morning. Crows are my favorite birds, but when talk they sure are noisy. I wonder what they were trying to tell me.

I’ve heard crows cawing in the last three weeks, and I thought it meant that something bad would happen that day. Of course, nothing really bad happened on those days but you never know. At least my crows friends are still alive and not dying off from West Nile virus. The newspaper reports said crows are the first birds to die when West Nile moves into your area. I would be bummed if my crows disappeared. For awhile I thought they had because I stopped seeing them, but since I met the red-haired marina frat boy the crows have come back into my life.

What it all means is a mystery that I have no idea how to solve.

Been thinking about my flingie guy and the nature of love and what it all means and I’m down to one question, how do you know if you’re in love. Love is such a strange thing. I think “the Oracle” from the Matrix movie series said to Neo, “it’s like being in love, you either know it or you don’t”. But what the heck does that mean?

If someone had to told me last month that I was going to be having a rollicking good time with a 6 ft red-haired, 200 pound, not so young anymore, marina frat boy, virgo, with bad time management skills, not the greatest communication skills either, drinks a bit too much and hasn’t given up any of his childish frat boy tendencies, I would have said “NO WAY!”

If someone had told me last month that I would be completely into “public displays of affection”, and be kissing in stores, kissing in restaurants, kissing on the street in broad daylight no less, and kissing while trying to argue, I honestly would have laughed and said, “if I wasn’t into PDA in college, and other annoying things that “couples in love supposedly do”, I’m so not going to be into it at this age.”

And if someone had told me that last month that I would enter into a relationship and not know where it was going or care where it was going, I would have freaked. “Me, Ms. Control Freak, who has to have everything carefully planned with an end game to every action. I think not.”

And yet, I’m doing all these things and having a blast and I’m not feeling like I’m in college either. I’m feeling surprisingly mature, but not old or stuck in a rut. I feel like an adult, which is a somewhat scary but at the same time very comforting thought.