So being bitchy and whiny sometimes does really work. I called CompUSA to find out about the progress on my new PC, only to find out that the tech who is supposed to build my computer didn't get the order till today. I put the order in on Friday, and I was a little put out at finding this piece of information out. Okay, I admit I was damned pissed as hell. So I'm trying to hold my temper with the poor tech guy, and he's profusely apologizing and trying to calm my whiny, bitchy self down. My mother is the ultimate whiny bitchy princess chick, so I've had terrific training.

The poor tech guy then says that for my trouble, he'll upgrade my 1.6 gig chip to 1.7 gig, and he'll also give me a faster hard drive for my trouble. I guess I should be happy, because hey - you can't knock faster equipment, but still. I now won't get my computer till Sunday afternoon.

The tech guy said something about Friday night, but he said he would have to rush to get it done. So I'm like, no way, I don't want any more mess ups. I told him I'd pick it up Sunday afternoon so he didn't have to rush, and he could make sure that my new PC is in perfect running condition when I come and get it.

Man, I hate to pull the whiny bitchy routine but if I don't do it, I never get the results I want. But when I act like a screaming crazy banshee I get my stuff and I get an upgrade. Go figure!

Books and Authors referenced by Russell Targ and Jane Katra. I'm adding them to my reading list.

Ingo Swann – any book
Carl Jung – Dreams, Memories and Reflections
Herodotus - The Oracle of Delphi
The Vedas
The Patanjali Sutras – Isherwood translation
The EPR Effect – Einstein, Podolsky, & Rosen 1935 - the theory of non-locality
Larry Dossey
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Victor Frankel – Man’s Search for Meaning
Carl Sagan – The Demon Haunted World
Longchen Rabjam (Longchempa) – Dzogchen Buddhism
Joe McMoneagle
Ian Stevenson
FW Meyers
Father Thomas Keating

I think I'll start on Herodotus first. I haven't read him in a long time.

My programs took forever to run today, so I had some down time. I'm now caught up in my Nanowrimo story, and my word count is at 20,132 words. YEAH! I'm back on the word count schedule for now. I have to keep up, because knowing me, it would be so, so easy to fall behind.

Maybe I should be happy our servers and systems at work are so darn slow!

One person from San Francisco has already finished Nanowrimo, and wrote 50K words. This person must not work for a living or something, because that's alot of writing to do in lesss than 15 days. Even if I try to write all day on the weekend, I can only write so many pages before I get burnt out. I really admire that person's amazing productivity.

I just read a Tolkien fan fiction story. It was so strange. I have never felt the urge to write fan fiction. Why would I want to make up a section for someone else's story, when I could write my own story? But that's just me.

Fan fiction is so interesting because you have to really know the characters from the story inside and out, to write a totally made up story about them. There's never been a fictional character who has inspired me enough to want to ever write fan fiction. I think fan fiction is a strange thing, but I do admire the people who do it. Some of them are terrific writers and have incredible imaginations.

I wrote all night last night and was almost caught up for Monday's word count, but then sleep overcame me and I went to bed. I'll be caught up by tonight, and I'm happy about that.

The story is kind of going all over the place right now, but I think that's okay. It's just a shitty first draft after all.

The weekend was so hectic and tiring, that I'm now two days behind in my word count for my novel. YIKES!!! I'm really going to have to sit down and write like a fiend these next few days to get caught up. They're still builidng my new computer, and I probably won't get it til Wednesday, so I'm still typing my baby laptop. I shouldn't whine so, at least I'm not handwriting my novel.

The seminar on Sunday by Sean David Morton was quite good. I learned more Tibetan meditation techniques and now have a new book called "The Tibetan Tradition of Mental Development" by the Dalai Lama. I was able to do a yoga position called "the wheel or upward bow pose or backbend" that I haven't able to do in a long time. You lie on your back and lift yourself up by your hands and your feet till you look like wheel basically. I was happy that I finally felt I had enough strength in my arms to do this position.

There were other things I learned in the seminar, and I may write about them one day.

Other things I did. I rented three movies to relax myself and saw: Blade, The Virgin Suicides and Hollywood Ending. I loved The Virgin Suicides. I thought Blade was a fun and modern twist on the vampire legend, and there were parts of Woody Allen's Hollywood Ending that were quite funny. Treat Williams was great as a movie mogul in the movie. Woody was his usual whiny self, and god sometimes that whine is just so boring. I loved Tea Leoni's clothes but thought she wasn't quite up to par for the movie, as say Helen Hunt. Leoni was almost too serious for the movie, and should have probably played it more tongue in cheek like Treat Williams.

I need to read the book The Virgin Suicides. What a strange and beautiful movie. I loved the 70's soundtrack and Josh Harnett, was like HOT!!! as a 70's stud complete with puka shell necklace, fuzzy 70's rock star long hair and a velvet tux. I never thought of Josh Hartnett as very good looking until I saw him swaggering down the halls in The Virgin Suicides. YOWSA!!! He'd turn my head double time if he was walking down the street. I think I'd be like women in the movie, and follow that boy with my tongue hanging out of my mouth. He was so darn cute and sexy!!! Hartnett looked almost too clean in his previous movies, even for my tastes, but in The Virgin Suicides he was a mouth watering treat! He was almost as hot as Vin Diesel, but in a completely different way.

What's weird is I kind of understood in a strange way, how the girls could kill themselves. I was disturbed that I could sympathize with the girls wanting to kill themselves, but being a teenage girl is the weirdest thing in the whole wide world. At least that's my memory of those years.

I think Sophia Coppola as a first time film director and screewriter adapter did a fantastic job. I wish my own screenplay was as visually expressive as hers was. I definitely could learn a thing or two from her.

Blogging via email. Written on Saturday November 9 at around 8pm, but this post won't show up till sometime on Sunday.

I'm listening to my new cd, Edgar Meyer - Bach Unaccomopanied Cello Suites 1, 2 & 5, performed on double bass. The music is beautiful, sublime, and heavenly. The cello sounds so melancholy and plaintive and it suits my mood right now.

I just came from a seminar called "Remote Viewing and Spiritual Healing, Experiencing Expanded Awareness." The seminar was taught by Russell Targ and Jane Katra, who cowrote the books, "Miracles of the Mind: Experiencing Non Local Consciousness and Spiritual Healing" and "The Heart of the Mind: How to Experience God without Belief".

Russell Targ was great. Targ is a physicist so his part of the seminar was like a mini-lecture on physics and religion. We learned about the EPR effect (Albert Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen 1935) or non-locality , quantum mechanics, Ingo Swann, the Bhagavad Gita, the Patanjali Sutras, and Dzogchen Buddhism. Here's what his bio says. He's a physicist and author who was the pioneer in the develoment of the laser and its applications; and co-founder of the Stanford Research Institute's investigation into pyschic abilities in the 1970's and 1980's (x-files type stuff). Targ recently retired from his position as a senior staff scientist at Lockheed Martin, where he developed airborne laser systems for the detection of wind shear.

I never took physics in hig hschool my senior year, and took art instead, but I understood everything Targ talked out. He made physics sound so interesting, that I think I might try and take a physics in the spring if I can find one.

Jane Katra (from her bio) holds a doctorate in health education, and has been a spiritual healer for mor than 25 years. She taught nutrition and health classes at the University of Oregon. Jane was also very good, and I got the feeling that she's a true mission worker. I read somewhere that about 1% of the world's population is on mission from god, and she's definitely one of them. She talked a lot about Christ's healing miracles and the Holy Spirit, and we did a long healing session in class and then we all got to go up to her and have individual healings. I'm not sure if I felt anything, but I know it all helps in some way.

The Showtime Cable people came in at the end and were filming the Q&A session for some documentary, so I may show up on Showtime one day. It's too bad I don't get Showtime, because I'd love to see what Showtime says about all this stuff. I love learning about stuf like this. It's so strange and I think very cutting edge, and I love learning about the new and in things, although Targ said that healings and remote viewing (think Oracle of Delphi) have been around for thousands of years.

No time to blog today, and over the weekend I'll be in seminars most of the day.

I bought a new computer today, and I'm kind of freaked about the whole thing, only beacuse I go all wonky when I have lay out a very large amount of cash. I spent about $1,500 for the new pc. Oh well. I think I bought myself a stable and fast machine that should last me another five years. The new PC won't be ready till either Monday or Tuesday, and part of me is very happy about having a PC at home again. And the other part, well, I'll let you know next week.

I may blog via email over the weekend, if I have something very important that needs to be on here.

So here's the news on my pc. My motherboard is fried, and my old Pentium 2 chip is probably damaged as well. As I suspected, the culprit was that power surge in my apartment that happened on Wednesday night (10/23). I've never had a power surge in my apartment before, and it not only blew out my computer but the fuse in my apartment as well. I have a surge protector, but the techie said that the one I probably have was too small to handle all the devices that I have connected to it.

I think my hard drive is okay, but I'll find out today when I go to the shop.

I have two options regarding my computer.

1) Find a Pentium 2 motherboard and 233 chip to put in my old computer
2) Have a computer built from scratch at the computer place, and have my hard drive if it's still alive installed as a second drive, so I can at least get the data off the computer.

Option 1 is cheaper, and it will take time to find these very old components. Option 2 is a lot more expensive, but at least I'll have a new computer and my old data.

After much discussion with friends, both techie and non-techie, I've decided to have a new computer built. My PC is five years and is on its last legs, and this whole experience has taught me that I need a stable computer system.

Damn! I hate spending money though, unless I absolutely have to!!! It's been one thing after another for me these last three months. In early September, my new car window broke. Thankfully I was so close to my warranty that the dealer fixed it all for free. In early October my refrigerator broke, but it was old as dirt anyway and the building manager replaced it for free. And now in early November, the trusty but ancient computer dies.

I'm like thinking, is there anything else that I own that is old and is ready to break and is going to break in early December?

I'm kicking myself a little because I wish I'd taken my friend's advice last year, and bought a new pc last year when my computer broke the first time. He would have built a computer for me for free, but I've lost touch with him now.

Because I'm buying a new computer, I won't be buying a laptop till I pay the computer off which won't happen till the spring of 2003. I'm still intent on buying a laptop because I don't ever want to go without a computer ever, ever again.

I keep telling myself it could have been worse and really, I'm okay, but I'm still a little unhappy about this new turn of events.

This is totally trippy. I had some down time at work, so I started writing from the point of view of Cashani. In my story, there was a Great Species War where the humans decided to take over the land and wipe out all the non human creatures. After the Great Species War, Cashani and Bianti's tribe decided to kill all the half human/half non humans to appease the gods and bring prosperity back to the tribe and land. It was Cashani's ancestor who advised the tribe to kill the mutant humans.

I didn't know this until I started writing the story from Cashani's viewpoint. I'm like, no wonder Cashani totally wanted to kill Bianti when she found out that Bianti was part elf and part human. It was an ancestor thing.

My stories are always so complicated and I don't know how complicated they are until I start writing them. Simple stories are easier to tell. Why this happens is so unknown to me, because I don't try to make my stories complicated on purpose, because then you have to work that much harder. But I know I need to go where the stories take me, I just sometimes wish the road to the end was just a little straighter.

So I'm writing my "Crow Priestess" novel, and I'm doing something I've never done before. Usually, I start a story and tell it from the protagonist's point of view all the way through. All of a sudden I'm getting the urge to switch it to one of the other character's point of view. It's a first draft so I figure I can do anything I want right now.

I have about twenty pages, two or three chapters I think, about the main protagonist - Bianti. She's 18 years old, and part elf and part human priestess. Now I want to start another chapter from the point of view of her main antagonist, Cashani. Cashania is 50 years old, and is the one who forms the alliance among the other priestesses to murder Cashani.

Here's the start of the Cashani chapter.

Am I bitter about what happened? I suppose in a way I am. Bianti is still alive, and me? I float around in the dark, disembodied, and dead to everything but the memories of what I went through that fateful summer. Would I have done it again knowing that what I did contributed to not only my death, but the death of my whole tribe? Absolutely. I was supposed to be the next head priestess, and not some child barely out of diapers. I was the one who should have been chosen to be the spiritual leader of the tribe, and not some subhuman mutant. But you must judge for yourself which one of us was justified, which one of us was right? If you were in my position, I know you would have done the same.

If you haven't heard the inspiring story of Jake Porter's touchdown, check it out. Jake Porter's TD.

I heard the coaches interviewed on Jim Rome's The Jungle, and what they did was so amazing and heartwarming!

The rain is affecting the internet connection at work, and sites are taking forever to load if they load at all. I can't even pull my up my own bloggie. Four accidents on the way to work as well. It's going to be that kind of day, I think.

No word on my computer yet. The techie working on it will be in tomorrow. I'm not optimistic at getting back my computer tomorrow, but I'm crossing my fingers. I can't take being PC-less anymore If my PC is repairable and I get it back, I am buying a laptop that day or soon thereafter. I hate this. I hate not having a fully functioning word processing program and PC.

I think Scarlett O'Hara said something like this, didn't she? "As God as my witness, they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be without a computer again! ... If I have to lie, cheat, steal or kill, as God as my witness, I'll never be without a computer again!"

Which Founding Father Are You?

I forgot to mention I got this test from Dark Star, one of the blogs I regularly read. I love TJ. He was my first love's favorite president.

Life during wartime. Election during wartime. It's not surprising that the Republicans gained control of both the House and the Senate, since Republicans have traditionally been seen as being better than the Dems to handle war and defense. It's the 9/11 effect on American politics.

But my father, who was a die hard union liberal democrat, would say that every democrat defeat is a time for the party to assess itself and plan for the next election. He would say that politics is like a never ending war and one lost battle does not mean you've lost the war. The Dems will have to go through a long overdue soul searching and learn from this defeat. The Republicans have planned their strategy for years starting at the grass roots level with reapportionment in the South, and concentrating on local and state races and governorships. The Dems, as was seen in the Florida race in the 2000 election, did not have the troops on the ground in Florida which was a telling sign of the state of the Democratic party at the grassroots, local and state level.

The Dems have been focused on winning the presidency and won with the election of Bill Clinton, but it was done at the expense of the local, state and governorship races. I was reminded yesterday that Tip O'Neill said that "all politics is local". The Republican take over of the house and senate in this election proved Tip O'Neill was right.

Not a good day for the Dems unless you live in California, but the success of the Democratic party in California Republic bodes well for the Dems. California has always been seen as a political bellwether; so goes California, eventually so goes the rest of the country. Although the GOP have won this battle, the future for the Dems is still pretty darn bright!

I got back on track with my novel last night, and wrote for three hours. I need to be steady and finish my daily word total every day because it's too easy for me to slack off and fall behind in my word count. I was originally planning to write the story from my female protagonist's viewpoint, but I think I will have chapters where the different characters speak and tell their story. Right now I'm finishing up a chapter, at least I think it's a chapter, on how the character's family came to have elf DNA. So much of this is backstory, but it's crucial to understand the history and how events from the distant, distant past are still influencing events in the present story, and eventual downfall of the society, of which this story is the first piece. It's very complicated.

It will be interesting to see what happens with the election results in San Francisco tomorrow. I think you will see a conservative backlash in the election results. And when I say a conservative backlash, I mean a move to the center and moderation and away from the left and the progressives. This is San Francisco after all, and if you're a moderate and in the center you're considered a conservative.

The left and progressives are so impractical to me. They want to throw money at social problems, thinking that money will solve problem, and you know what it hasn't solved anything. So much of left and progressive policy is rooted in ideology. Ideology only works in theory, in a vacuum, in an ideal world. And I'm sorry, there is no place on this earth that is ideal.

Take the homeless issue. If you take the progressive/left policy of giving money to the homeless and apply it to the family unit, you'd be thought of as a horrible parent. Imagine having a homeless child who is unable to find a job, and may or may not have substance abuse problems. As a parent, wouldn't you want to help them to get out of their situation? You don't just give your child money and expect to fend for themselves. You don't just throw money at your children, and then walk away. But that's exactly what San Francisco's homeless policy does. We have laws here where you can't find out anything about the homeless, you can't ask them their life story to find out what they need, why they live the way the do, etc. The left and progressives still think it's the 60's and the homeless are just hippies who like living on the street, and the city should support them in their chosen lifestyle.

I don't know. It just seems that if left/progressive policymakers would base laws on how they would treat a family member, then maybe we'd solve many of our city's problems. It makes you wonder how the left/progressive types were treated at home as children and how they are as parents, doesn't it? Then you have to think of John Walker Lindh's parents, and start to really wonder.

The post below was an email post I sent last night. It seems to take a day for an email post to get into Blogger. That's a heck of a long time, isn't it?

I'm listening to The Cure - Bloodflowers cd, and wishing I could dive into Robert Smith's voice and music and never come out. I love the music, I love the words, and I love his voice. The Cure's songs are so well produced, so well layered musically, and the words are so divine!