I was just at a 1.5 day conference with a bunch of healthcare folks from around the country, and it was such a strange experience for me. I work in health care, and it's really a job and not a career for me, so it's really a bit uncomfortable for me to be in a healthcare conference when I don't necessarily believe in the efficacy of western medicine.

I am a big believer in alternative health care treatment because I don't think western medicine has all the answers to keep me healthy. Western medicine is great when you break a leg or when you have a chronic condition like diabetes, but western medicine seems to be completely clueless about how to keep a person healthy.

The cash incentive in the U.S. health system is to treat really sick people, with more than one disease. That's where the cash is. The pharmaceutical industry has their share in U.S. health care as well, because if it was up to pharma, every single person in the U.S. would be on one or more pills. Doctors don't make money on people who are healthy and not on drugs.

CMS is trying to change the medical cash incentive somewhat by paying more for preventive care, but we're talking a huge behavioural change in the way doctors do business. No doctor likes to see their patients get sick, but they don't have a lot of monetary incentive to keep their patients healthy either. And frankly, I don't think a western medical doctor would know what to tell their patients anyway about how not to get sick other than the usual crap of exercise more and eat healthy. I mean, lots of people do that, exercise and eat fairly healthy and they still end up getting diseases.

So if western medicine doesn't quite know why the body breaks down and gets sick, how can a person place faith in their dcotor for keeping them healthy? I mean, you can't. That's why I am open to alternative health treatments. It's not that everything western medicine tells you is wrong, they just don't have all the answers. After all, if western medicine had all the answers we'd all be disease free wouldn't we?

The work person I went to the health care conference with told me "well, you didn't drink the Kool-aid of western medicine and besides you're from California and it's hip to be into alternative medicine". I don't even consider myself being hip about my health, but instead just prudent and practical about my health.

But it is weird to be with people who have "drunk the Kool-aid of western medicine". And the assumptions of most companies is that the majority of the American population will at some point as they age be on a ton of medications and have any number of chronic diseases that need to be constantly managed. It's a bleak picture of the health of our country, but I have to admit myself, they might be right and that it's a future that most Americans will be realizing very soon.

U.S. News and World Report just released their college rankings for 2007 and my old alumni, Grinnell College, came in 10th for Best Value in a Liberals Arts College and 14th in Top Liberals Art College.

I just checked my Dell laptop batteries and found out that I do not have the exploding batteries. I entered by battery part numbers and they came up "no need for replacement". I was looking forward to getting new batteries but oh well.

So I had all these cherries that I bought and knew it would takes for me to eat, so I looked through all my recipe books and found a recipe called "cherry clafoutis". It's some kind of french dish I found out when I googled it later. There are apparently several ways to make it which is good, because the recipe I have is not very sweet. I'd love to eat it at a restaurant because I have no idea what it's supposed to take like My clafoutis rose but it was like so custardy in the middle. I thought it was going to be more like a light cake and not like clustard, but there are several variations on the recipe and it could be either way.

I should have stuck to what I know how to cook and made a cherry cobbler. Fruit obblers are easy to make every if you're making it for the first time, especially if you are using just picked fresh fruit.

As I'm typing this I am watching an Eagles Farewell concert in Australia. Those guys do have amazing harmonies. They're doing interviews of the band members and I'm like what is up with Joe Walsh's voice. The guys sounds so retarded. Did he like have a stroke or something? Or has the guy always talked like that. I mean, he sounds the same when he sings and everything, but he just sounds like he took way too many drugs or something.

Joe Walsh used to so cute when he was younger. The rest of the Eagles don't look like they aged that much other than getting older, but Joe Walsh looks like a completely different guy. I had a boyfriend who was such a huge, and I mean huge, Joe Walsh fan.

Of course "Hotel California" is their best song and I think my favorite. It's so weird to see these Aussies singing along to the song. I think of the Eagles as such a Cali band. Don Henley and Glen Frey have aged so well. I love that I live in "the hotel California". Henley's drums still sound amazing. I wonder if he tunes his own drums or does have someone do that for him.

Well Joe Walsh can definitely still play guitar, but his voice so reminds me of freaky "Brian Wilson". Now there's a guy who definitely fried his mind. Poor Brian Wilson. He was such a musical genius and then I don't know, the guy just went through something. I saw an interview with Brian Wilson once, and some blonde bimbo chick with an obvious fake rack was with him. I don't know who was more scary, him or her. The bimbo blonde chick was like channeling Yoko Ono or something because she never took her eyes off Brian Wilson. Girl must have thought that's how a rock star girlfriend needs to look and took page from Yoko Ono's playbook. Yoko looks like so spooky in the films of the Beatle recording an album, when she looked like she and John Lennon were literally glued at hip.

Didn't Yoko's behavior just so send feminism back like two centuries? Women as adoring pets who never leave their men's side.

Woke up this morning, very early this morning since I had to be in the office by 7:30 am, that I thoroughly enjoyed the process of listening to my novel read out loud. I hated hearing it in the sound of my voice, but it was a fantastic way to hear which parts of the chapter worked and didn't work. It was fun to do as well and it's been a long time since I've had any fun with my writing process.

Recently I read about a famous author who writes their first draft very quickly, reads it once, and then throws it away and then writes the story again from scratch. I'm not sure if I'm ready to do this, but it seems like an appealing way to rewrite your novel. The first draft, if you write it very quickly, is just a vehicle for getting one's ideas on paper. Quick first draft writing is never very good anyway and the plot always seems to need some major reworking. It makes sense to just start over sometimes instead of doing a lot serious surgery on your novel.

I rewrote my first screenplay like this and ended up altering the characters and the thrust of the story, although the plot was basically the same. I know I have to redo the plot for my Texas novel since it doesn't have enough drama to keep a reader interested. My main character doesn't have alot at stake and that makes for a very boring read. It's so funny because you hear people say all the time "too much drama in my life". However in writing, drama is essential to keep the story line moving and to make the story interesting enough for the reader to care what happens to the character and to keep reading.