More revelations this month it seems. More of me making peace with my past. It's funny how you sort of get stuck in this view of yourself as a certain kind of person and that you think of yourself this way, even though you might have changed. I caught a glimpse of this recently and I was surprised. The me I thought I was no longer exists and it seems I've moved on to a different view. I didn't know it though and I wonder when the change happened because it wasn't that visible to me. I didn't even know I'd changed until I recently came across someone who reminded me of how I was five years ago. And I only recognized myself in that person because I was now so radically different from that person.

Poor Greg. What I must have put him through and how he was right about so many things. He put up with me for all those years. How I must have just tortured him with the minefield of problems that surrounded me. But even love and friendship couldn't hold us together. I still have that memory of us driving over the Bay Bridge in his white saab and us both singing Elton John and George Michael's duet song "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me. And I knew we were singing about our relationship and how neither of us wanted to lose the other. But it was already too late at that point. We had started to go down separate paths slowly and inexorably.

I thought about contacting him today just to tell him I'd changed, but then I remembered that he hated that I changed so much, so I didn't call. But I have changed and I know he would have liked the new me better.

I've been thinking about whether my novel, "Following in the Dark", should be erotic or have erotic writing. I mean it is about a woman's sexual adventure so it's already erotic right?. But I don't know. I think what makes something erotic is so individual, so personal. Is punishment erotic? Is pain erotic? Most people would never readily admit that sensations such as pain and punishment give them sexual pleasure anyway. I also don't want to make pain and pleasure necessarily that erotic either, it just is what it is. And for me, that's erotic enough.

You really can't believe the mainstream media news anymore. They go on and on about the dotcom bomb and it's effect on the national economy. What they don't report is what's happening in the telecommunications industry and how $2 trillion dollars have been lost by companies such as Cisco, MCI, Lucent, etc. Thank god there is such a thing as the internet where you can read news reports from all around the country and really find out for yourself what's happening in the world.

Mainstream media would have you believe that everyone in the SF Bay Area worked for a dotcom. Well, they're wrong. I don't work for a dotcom and most of my friends don't and we live in the City and County of San Francisco and have lived here for a very long time. We love San Francisco and certain other parts of the Bay Area and would never think of leaving for any other city, other than maybe NYC, Paris or London. The whole dotcom thing sort of passed us by or affected a few of our friends. The dotcom bust hasn't really affected our way of life and we still still live the same way. It's like the 60's all over again, where the mainstream media would have you believe (if you werent' there) that the country was full of war protesting hippies. Wrong again. The hippies were in certain pockets of the country but not everywhere.

The only thing the mainstream media got right was to call all the people moving here "the new oakies coming to the SF Bay Area to dig for internet gold". These oakies didn't come to the SF Bay Area because they wanted to live here. No Way! They came here for one reason only; MONEY. And the media was again right, because now that the money is gone people are moving back to where ever the hell they came from and we say goodbye to them and good riddance.

I told people around me who were buying into the media hype abou the dotcoms that the price per earnings ratio for most dotcom stocks were unrealistic and the stock was hyperinflated. I told them to sell their stock while the stock was still high and get out of the market. There wasn't anything financially wrong with what happened in the markets. Wall Street is full of highs and lows. The problem was that people got emotionally attached to the highs and didn't sell when the market was high. Good times never last forever in stock and neither do bad times. The people who lose money are the people who are emotionally attached to the mood of the country and follow that instead of following good financial principles, which means investing to make money, which means constantly selling and buying and knowing when to cut your losses.

But this whole telecom financial crisis ... that's got me worried only because the future of the internet depends on companies finding a way to move information across the net faster. My friend B from Dallas has this theory that all you needed to do to move information across the wires faster was to have a bigger pipe. The consultants at Microsoft and IBM were sceptical about this theory. but I think he was right. And what's great is that the technology is already out there. But ... with the slowdown in the telecom industry, investment into this new technology is now delayed a couple of years if not more.

Or is it? People are greedy, dont' you think? Greed is what drove the market and the Nasdaq into the dizzying highs and now very dismal lows. If new technology is out there to create a bigger pipe to move voice and data faster, then I'm hoping some greedy investors will sell the hype to the mainstream nedia and mainstream media will report it, and greed will once again rule the markets and drive them back up. Since I've got money invested in this new technology, I can only hope.

Picnicing in Stern Grove was so much fun! The second celtic band was from Donegal Ireland and played great music. It was quite a sight to see everyone trying to do the jig or their version of Riverdance. I found a great scone recipe and another friend made lemon curd from her Yorkshire Cook book, so we had a very english first course. Our second course was bagels, with cream cheese, sliced heirloom tomatoes, chopped red onions, capers and smoked salmon. The third course was tortellini in a balsamic vinagrette with chopped red, yellow and green bell peppers. Fourth course was fried chicken with coleslaw and sliced carrot and celery sticks. And for dessert, we had shortbread with milk chocolate chips cut out in shape of 3 leaf clovers and chocolate yorkshire pudding. We also drank champagne mimosas and ate champagne soaked strawberries.

For our next picnic at Opera in the Park, we decided to have quiche bake-off. People around us must have thought we were insane as we debated whether James Beard, Martha Stewart or the Moosewood people could kick Julia Childs' butt in the quiche department. I think I have a quiche recipe from the Findhorn colony that was pretty good and those Sunset quiche recipes are also killer.

Alas, I didn't see any beautiful chubby red haird/strawberry blonde men there. But then I think I was having too much fun with my girls arguing about quiches and dancing irish jigs.