Wearing the size 8 jeans is strange. A friend thinks they’ve made the sizes all bigger lately to make people feel comfortable. The butt part fits right, but everything else is loose. These jeans are low rise, which is nice because I don’t curve in at the waist. I keep thinking I need tighter jeans, and am tempted to go to Macy’s and try on the Ralph Lauren size 6 pair just to see how they would fit.

I hesitate though, because I honestly don’t think my hips are going to get any smaller. When I was 18 years old, my hips were a size 36. No way am I going to get any smaller.

It’s just a weird feeling to have loose jeans in a size 8. What a trip! What a frickin’ trip, especially since I’ve been stuck on a plateau since January and haven’t lost any weight. I am lifting weights, and a friends says that my body is now getting tighter. And I’m like great, but what about my weight? I was 145-150 pounds for a long time, and I think my body is like “wow, I remember this weight, I like this weight. No way are we getting any smaller.”

So after all the months of dieting and exercising, I’m at the point where I was before I got fat. I’m at the last 20 pounds that I’ve never been able to lose. Mindboggling. It’s like time has stood still somehow, and I’m right back where I started from and I don’t like it.

It freaked me out, and I had a crying jags off and on all weekend. I’m having crying jags, and wearing my new size 8 jeans a size I haven’t worn since college and totally depressed because it feels like I haven’t made any progress in all these years. I hate this.

But not to despair because I have a plan. I’m cutting out 100 calories from my daily count, and I’m going to starting running three times a week. I went to the gym on Saturday and Sunday, and ran for about 30 minutes both days. On Sunday, I upped my speed to 6.0 on the treadmill and ran this speed for 10 minutes. I think this means I ran a 10 minute mile, which is like really fast for me. On Sunday at the lower speeds (5.0), I felt like I could run for hours.

It’s good to feel that strong again. It won’t be real for me until I’m out on out in nature and trail running, and powering up and down hills without being out of breath or breaking a sweat. It’s an incredible feeling to be able to depend on your body like that, knowing that no matter what lies ahead on the road ahead you’ll be able to power through it, conquer it without the road freaking you out and wearing you down. One of these days, soon, this will be a reality again for me.

I'm watching Page to Screen, and tonight's program is on the movie "The Cider House Rules". The movie was more than 12 years in development, and went through 50 plus screenplay drafts. Unbelievable, but unfortunately I think very typical of Hollywood and the movie making process. I don't think John Irving will be writing another screenplay soon, although he did win an Oscar for his screenplay adaptation.

Bad news for the SF Bay Area, especially Silicon Valley,
Picture grim for job rebound VALLEY FORECAST: RECOVERY IN 2011.

For the Tolkien fans, 'Elric Saga' fantasy series optioned. Interestingly enough, the saga will be produced by Chris and Paul Weitz. The Weitz's directed "About a Boy", but this time they will just be producing and not writing or directing.

This is a sad story, Alleged murder-suicide in Concord. The news reporter on the radio said that the daughter was mentally disabled, and the wife had Alzheimers. The neighbours are calling it a mercy killing. The details are sketchy, but it's so sad.

Did the father and husband just give up on life and said screw it? The man shot the daughter and wife, and then himself. What would drive a person to do this? I think the man was probably taking care of the retarded daughter and the wife all by himself. What a burden. And now the daughter is alive, how messed is that? If she lives, who is going to take care of her. Is it a good thing that the daughter is mentally disabled because then maybe she won't have to freak out about her dad trying to kill her?

And I feel bad because the writer in me is saying in my head, "there's a story there, one heck of a story". But what a sad story it would be to write. I guess I would only be interested in writing the story so I could speculate what would drive a person to do this. It would be a fictional account of course, although it would be interesting to see if someone else wants to find out the real story behind the news headline and will write the true story.

What would drive a person to such depths of despair, that he or she would kill the only two people he or she loved?