I wrote the following as a note to my writing group, but I'll post it here as well.

1. I met with my screenwriting teacher tonight to talk about writing the second draft of my screenplay. She suggested that I enter my screenplay into the American Screenwriters Association/Writers Digest International Screenplay Competition October 31, 2002 (late). Julie O said it would be a good date deadline to work towards. And OH MY GOD, I think I'm going to do it! It's $55 to enter ($50 plus $5 later fee). What the hell, right? It'll be done and off my desk, and I can get on with my other writing projects, since I don't consider myself a "real screenwriter". Julie O said I'd be ready to enter with the second draft of my screenplay, which is radically different from the first.

2. I entered the National Novel Writing month contest again, where you write 50K words in the month of November. I entered under my pen name, S Brenda S. I'm calling my novel "Wallowing in the Dark".

Oh my living lord!!! I'm going to be busy writing these next two months.

Anyone care to do NANOWRIMO with me? Check the site, National Novel Writing Month. It's a blast, and really good training on how to just get through that tough first draft. Last year's competition helped me finish my screenplay.

Now with the screenwriting contest thing I'm doing, I think I'm going to go through a crash course in rewriting and polishing, and scary thought, "the real art of writing as a craft". I never thought I'd be at this point so soon. Maybe I'm not even there yet, and it's another one to two years away, but I guess I'll find out with the process of writing second draft of my screnplay, which I've renamed to "Going Home Again".

Wish me luck!

Experimenting with colours ... wanted the page to evoke fall leaves against the sky ... not sure it's working though.

I've been cleaning my apartment all day and defrosting my refrigerator. I have one of those ancient models. I plugged it in, but I think it's finally busted because my food is still warm. I ran to the store and bought a cooler and some ice. I've been hoping it would break down, so I can ask my apartment manager for a new one, but it's such a bother. I think I'll have to throw all the refrigerator food away because it will probably take awhile for me to get a new one. Guess I'll be eating out every night or at least not eating food with any cold food components.

I'm fine for breakfast and dinner since during the week I'm at work. It's dinner that's a problem.

It's all stressing me out, so much so that I'm skipping the potluck party I'm supposed to attend tonight. I was going to make a cake to bring, but if I buy eggs and milk, I won't have any place to store them.

I've never had anything break down in my apartment before, except for a problem with my sink that happened while I was away on vacation a few years ago. Nothing major anyway, except for drains being clogged up and having them change my toilet seat. I hate when things break down. I wonder if my apartment manager will replace it for free? I have no idea. There's a Sears near where I work, so if I have to buy a fridge myself, I'll buy one there. I've also seen them at Costco. I wonder how my fridges cost.

This is my second disaster in two months, counting the problem with my car windows.

On a brighter note, I'm having a meeting with my screenwriting teacher at her office tomorrow night. She's been in LA doing Hollywood type things, I guess. I'm excited to hear her feedback about my screenplay. I received email feedback, but not in person feedback. I'm supposed to pitch her the new version of my screenplay, which seems so far away right now. I'll have to work on my pitch tonight.

I want to finish my screenplay by the end of the month, and then do the National November writing month (NANOWRIMO) again. I'm going to be very busy writing for the next two months, which is very good for me.

A friend convinced me that I needed to see Baz Luhrman's "La Boheme" with her. He's the guy who directed and produced "Moulin Rouge" with Nicole Kidman and Ewan MacGregor. I totally hated that movie, but my friend adored it. She said that this production of La Boheme should be excellent, because the cast is coming straight from Broadway. Broadway type shows are so darn expensive. The good seats are $90. The cheap seats are really bad and cost $55, and you're in the last row of the third balcony.

I told her I couldn't afford $90. I've seen Broadway shows really close up, and from far away, and unless you're sitting in the first five rows in the orchestra, it's not worth paying top dollar. I'm afraid the show will be like the movie "Moulin Rouge", and I'll have paid $90 for a show which I thoroughly hated. I'd much rather see the opera, St Francis of Assisi, then a Baz Lurhman frenetic broadway musical production.

My friend thinks that if I had seen "Moulin Rouge" in the theatre, instead of at home on a rental, I would have loved the movie too. I don't think so. I just hated that the characters' dialogue was all just snippets of songs and tired and worn cliches. The only good things about Moulin Rouge were the english actor, who played the manager, and who was also in "Iris", and course, Ewan MacGregor. But even my attraction to Mr. MacGregor didn't prevent me from despising "Moulin Rouge". The movie only became interesting when Nicole Kidman started dying, and then only just.

I'm only agreeing to see "La Boheme" because it's rare for a show to come directly from Broadway to San Francisco. Usually, the Broadway shows go to other cities first like Chicago or LA. I had to do some serious budget rearranging to pay for the ticket, so I just hope it's worth the $70 or so dollars that I'm forking over.

I think I'm going through a paradigm shift with weight.

"Think of a Paradigm Shift as a change from one way of thinking to another. It's a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents of change."

I heard in a seminar that you can't dispprove a negative, you can't prove you're not something. When you do, you will always fail. I'm wondering if saying you're on maintenance is like saying you're trying to prove you're not a certain weight. Perhaps it's more useful to think of maintenance as proving you are the weight you are? There's something here. I just can't express it. I know it makes a difference and will decide for me, and maybe not for anyone else, whether I succeed or fail.

I went out to dinner last night to a restaurant called Ponzu. The restaurant specializes in mixing asian and western foods, or fusion cooking. This was the first fusion restaurant that I really liked. The food was fantastic!

Dining out while dieting is interesting. This was first dining out experience with someone, while on my new eating plan. I tried to keep my calorie count for breakfast and lunch pretty low, so I wouldn't feel so restrictive at dinner. Ponzu encourages family style dining, so my friend and I shared the food were ordered. The bill was $70 with tip, which is very reasonable for dinner.

I didn't order a drink, because liquor is just extra empty calories for me. I've never needed booze to have a good time, so not having wine or a cocktail isn't a big deal. I would have been content with the two dishes we ordered at first, but my friend was still hungry, so we ordered one more dish. We had scallops with some kind of salad, chicken, and pork with eggplant. I had two scallops, one chicken wing and one breast, and a pork chop and a half. I would have preferred to eat a fish dish, but my friend really wanted the pork.

My friend ordered rice, which I decided not eat to because of the extra dish. My friend also wanted to split a dessert, but I declined because of the extra pork dish. If we hadn't ordered the extra dish, I would have split a dessert.

Family style eating while dieting is difficult, especially if your with someone who eats more than you do. If we had gone to a regular restauarant, I would have ordered a salad and either soup or an entree of meat and vegetables, and I would have been happy. If I had just soup and salad, I might have even splurged on a dessert.

I was thinking about maintaining my weight loss this morning, when I'm at my goal weight. I don't think there is any such thing as maintenance, meaning the way I'm eating now is probably the way I'll need to eat for the rest of my life. The only difference is that at goal weight, I'll be able to eat about 300-500 more calories than I'm eating now. I'll never be able to mindlessly eat the way I used to. I'll always have to watch what I eat, and eat smaller meals when I'm going to a party or to dinner. And I'll always have to workout.

Eight weeks ago before I started my new diet, I freaked out at the thought of eating a certain amount of calories every day. I still freak out every once in awhile actually, when I have this thought. But after 8 weeks on this new way of eating, I think I'll be able to do it. I may not have to be as hypervigilant about every calorie that goes into my mouth, but I'll still have to watch my food.

I'm looking foward to getting to goal weight actually, because I'll be able to eat more than I do now. I'm starting to think maintenance is not a good word to use. Losing weight will never be just about maintenance for me. It's about eating the correct amount of calories for my weight. It's about changing the way I think about how much food I really need to eat. It's about a thinking and lifestyle change.

Maintenance connotes restriction. What am I maintaining? I'm eating the proper amount of food for the weight that I am period. If I'm eating over that correct amount, I'm overeating, not maintaining. I'm probably being picky about semantics, but maintenance sounds so horrible. I want to think that once I get to goal weight, there is no going back to the way I used to eat. Maintenance implies that there's a place to get back too, and that's not what I want.

I don't know. This is just an idea I'm having about maintenance. Maybe it's too soon to have this discussion, because I'm not at my goal weight yet, but I'm trying to make the idea of being at goal weight acceptable to me right now. I'm trying to see if I can live comfortably for the rest of my life eating this amount of food. Because if I can't find a level of comfort and acceptability with how I'm eating now, I know the weight will come back as soon as I get to goal weight. And I definitely don't want that.