I'm back to reading my novel out loud into a tape recorder and then listening to it to see if it sounds alright and if there are any obvious gaps. I really like my guy character. He is such a hoot. He is so arrogant and full of himself. I modeled him after someone I knew from Texas, and I made a note that I have to change more details. I don't want that guy, if my novel ever gets published, to get mad that I took details of his personal life and gave them to my male character. You'd think he'd be flattered, but I can't take any chances.

My guy character has such a distinctive voice and speaking style compared to my female character. That was the fun part of writing this novel, writing in a guy's point of view. I have my doubts if the conversations I wrote between my guy character and his best friend are authentic, but it sounds really good even with me reading it out loud. I made a note that a conversation between two guys wouldn't be complete without some sports reference. How could I forget about men and their sports obsessions?

Other than that I think the only thing I need to be careful of is repeating myself and the usual, which is my worth thing, telling and not showing. I also made a note to myself to make sure I was revealing new information in this chapter and not repeating stuff from the first chapter. Although I kind of like the idea of repeating information but with a different spin each time, depending on what's happenning and who is speaking and to whom the character is speaking to.

I'm back to reading my novel out loud into a tape recorder and then listening to it to see if it sounds alright and if there are any obvious gaps. I really like my guy character. He is such a hoot. He is so arrogant and full of himself. I modeled him after someone I knew from Texas, and I made a note that I have to change more details. I don't want that guy, if my novel ever gets published, to get mad that I took details of his personal life and gave them to my male character. You'd think he'd be flattered, but I can't take any chances.

My guy character has such a distinctive voice and speaking style compared to my female character. That was the fun part of writing this novel, writing in a guy's point of view. I have my doubts if the conversations I wrote between my guy character and his best friend are authentic, but it sounds really good even with me reading it out loud. I made a note that a conversation between two guys wouldn't be complete without some sports reference. How could I forget about men and their sports obsessions?

Other than that I think the only thing I need to be careful of is repeating myself and the usual, which is my worth thing, telling and not showing. I also made a note to myself to make sure I was revealing new information in this chapter and not repeating stuff from the first chapter. Although I kind of like the idea of repeating information but with a different spin each time, depending on what's happenning and who is speaking and to whom the character is speaking to.

I took a friend and her friend who was visiting to Ikea last Saturday. I'd always wanted to see the newer Ikea in Palo Alto so we trekked down the peninsula instead of to Emeryville. I was really good last Saturday and only walked out with $20 worth of stuff. But the Ikea bug bit me big time and this Saturday I went to store again in Palo Alto just to check it out and ended up buying all kinds of stuff.

I bought this shelf thing for my hallway didn't like it where I thought it was going to go, and ended up putting it my bedroom where it has made an incredible difference to the room. That got me into a huge decorating kick on Sunday which led me to rearrange my closet and my drawers and get rid of a dresser. I've had that dresser for over 10 years so it's gotten alot of use. It didn't cost me much money, but it's lasted so I definitely got my money's worth. Now it is sadly falling apart and I've been wanting to get rid of it for awhile, and I finally took my chance. My closet actually looks a lot better I think and for whatever reason it feels like I have more room.

Now I want to throw out the desk that I have in my bedroom since I never use it. I think I've had that desk for a few years as well. It's not falling apart of anything, but I bought another desk when I was working at home and I don't need two desks.

I've decided to make my bedroom more of a bedroom and move all my paperwork stuff to where my work desk is. The only paperwork stuff I want to keep in my bedroom is my wriitng stuff because I write in bed alot and my financial papers. Everything else will go towards my designated office space. And Ikea is going to help me achieve this goal because I think, I"m not sure yet, I'm going to buy one of their larger shelvie things. It will be tall and have lots of room for files in baskets and book and all my other paperwork stuff.

But I'm not done yet. I need another cd tower thing to hold dvds and videos as I don't quite have a proper place for them, and because I took a bunch of kung fu videos from my dead uncle's collection. My aunt was going to throw them out so I took a bunch I'd never seen before.

And then I decided that the space in my hallway which I was trying to fill with the book case that's now in my bedroom, needs to have something there after all and I'm thinking it needs a bench with a cushion and a place for shoes. I heard some guy say in the Ikea store that the bench would be a great thing for his hallway so he could have somewhere to sit when he took off his shoes. And I'm like, you know, that's not a bad idea. I'm running out of shoe space anyway, so the shoes that use everyday could go in the shoe shelves, there are 8 of them, and I could have a place to sit or set things down in the hallway.

I was thinking of an armoire because I need more hanging space, but I don't know. My friend whom I took to Ikea last week now thinks she could use an armoire, and I told her I was thinking of buying one as well.

So I think from now until the end of the year, I will be on a huge Ikea spending binge trying to bring some order into my apartment.

I think I am going to go through withdrawals now that the only show I watched regularly on tv, "The 4400", has ended for the season. Thank god it's been renewed for a fourth season. The writing is brilliant plot wise because it's all twisty and turny and how they end things really make sense. I might not like them but the payoff makes sense to me. To have to be thinking that far ahead all the time seems unimaginable.

I wonder if JK Rowling did the same thing with the Harry Potter series, where she had to think that far ahead to have things pay off. In the first screenplay I wrote, reviewers said I paid things off well and answered questions that they had in the screenplay. I didn't do it deliberately though, it just kind of happened that way. But a 110 page screen play is easy compared to a seven-book series for three seasons of a 13-episode show.

Conferences are so disorienting. My health care conference was at the Omni Hotel on Montgomery and Calfornia and was only for 1.5 days, and I didn't think it would be a big deal to attend. But it really was. You're in an enclosed environment for that time period, so you're participating in your normal world which means coming back is like so weird. I didn't travel to the conference, I took the train to work like I normally do, but it does feel like I've been away for a couple of days. It's a very, very strange feeling.

I do like conferences though because they do feed you very well. We had breakfast, lunch and dinner at The Waterfront Restaurant on the first day, and then breakfast and lunch at the half day. The food at the Omni Hotel was very good and I was surprised how good the food was at the Waterfront. There was also a constant stream of snacks and drinks, and the hotel even had a basket of Power bars, Luna Bars, and Cliff Bars for snacks and Numi teas. Talk about a swanky hotel. They were were real cloth towels to dry your hands in the bathroom along with nice smelling soap and lotion. And they must have drained a whole quarry of marble because it was everywhere in the hotel.

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.

Decided to try this technique tonight I'd read about, where you read a chapter of your novel into a tape recorder and then listen to it to hear how your wriitng sounds. First of all, I hate listening to the sound of my own voice but you know I didn't sound too bad. I don't sound like the Valley Girl I've been accused of being and maybe that semester of Stage Speech actually helped because my voice actually sounds decent and normal.

My first chapter is good but needs some fine tuning. The first part has to go because it's boring. I know it's a cliche to open up stories saying "here's an event that changed my life", but I love this technique. Maybe it's my acting background coming through but I want the narrator to reflect in written form this part of her life. She is looking back, kind of like she is almost speaking into a tape recorder and preserving her own memories. She knows this momentous thing happened to her which was life-altering, but she's still processing it. The novel then becomes a story of her trying to understand this part of her life, what part or role she played in what happened to her, what was in her control and what as not. The telling of the story is like a kind of therapy for her. If she tells someone else the story, she will be able to figure it all out. If one can ever really figure anyting out that is.

Listenng to the first chapter read out loud, I also saw how to add an obstacle into the story that I never thought of before. My character has to do her job well because her boss has promised her that if she nails the story then he'll promote to her dream job as in investigate journalist.

Now there's a great dilemma for you. Do you do well in your job and get promoted or do you chuck it all for love, for a crush, for a childhood fantasy that was importnant to you only you'd forgotten it until he came along. That's got to be a romantic story. Good looking rich guy reawakens your childhood fantasy and dreams, only thing is you are interviewing him and your boss wants a hit piece. I was after all trying to write a love story, you know.

I don't know, I like the conflict. It's mild and interesting. God, I hope I'm not writing chick lit. I never read books like that, but I'm a chick and it would kind of be natural for me write chick lit. Maybe I need to go back to writing science fiction and fantasy. I kind of don't want to be known for writing chick lit. I am so jumping the gun here thinking I'll even get the darn thing published. Haven't the book people called for the end of chick lit? How exquisitely like my bad instant karma karma to be writing in a genre I really don't know anything about.

It's been awhile since I've posted and so many things have been happening.

I had some minor surgery last week to have some things growing on my body that shouldn't be growing. It was all very quick and took only an hour in my doctor's office, and did hurt a bit. It's a pretty common procedure and tons of people have had it.

What else ...

I went to a gem and mineral show on August 6 in Golden Gate Park and bought all kinds of fun stones. I will never buy beads in a bead store again after seeing the prices. There was a woman selling pearls for 60% off. I haven't take the class on how to knot pearls, but I think I will so I can make my own pearl necklaces.

Afterwards a friend met me for a late lunch and we went to this italian place on Judah and had a New York maffioso experience. There we were sitting in the restaurant when a bunch of italian maffioso types walk in. Who knew there were maffioso types in San Francisco living in San Francisco. Those people are everywhere!

I kept having flashes of "The Godfather" movie because the mafia guys always knew where to eat at the best italian restaurants in the New York City/New Jersey area. I had always fantasized of eating in some obscure italian restaurant in New York city and having maffioso types walk in, which would be the clue that the food in the restaurant would be fantastic and authentic. I just didn't think I would be having the experience in San Francisco.

And yes, the food at this italian place was great! The portions were amazingly generous and cheap, totally cheap! I had a half sized order of spaghetti with marinar sauce and it was like a normal full order. I wanted to try the spaghetti to see how authentic it was. If an italian restaurant makes a decent spaghetti then you know the rest of the dishes will be very good. The spaghetti was very good and very authentic tasting. I am definitely eating at this place again.

I've seen this place for years and it doesn't look fancy but it's definitely a culinary gem of authentic italian food with maffioso types as an added attraction to boot. The italian boys were noisy which only added to "I must be in an italian restaurant in New York city somewhere". And these guys were big like you definitely wouldn't want to get into a fight them because they looked like they would beat the pulp out of you and then tremendously enjoying the experience of seeing blood squirt out of you.

I'm sitting in bed reading and all of sudden things started shaking. There was a 4.4 earthquake at around 8:12 pm somewhere in Sonoma County, which is about 2 hours away from San Francisco, but I definitely felt it here. I got up to look around to make sure nothing had fallen. It was short but things were definitely shaking.

The summer is zipping by and I'm in the process of editing my newly completed novel. Boy, does it need some major rework. Oh well, this is what editing is for right?

I was fantasizing about going to visit Jerusalem about a couple of months ago, but that's not going to happen now with the war and everything. I am not paying attention to news about the conflict because it's just too much for me to taken in right now. I've got my own horrid life to deal with without having to pay attention to world events.

Check these shoes out, they are so cute but so expensive!

http://www.coach.com/content/product.aspx?product_no=8507&category_id=159

Other songs I downloaded from iTunes this morning:

Obsession (no es amor) by Frankie J
One Thing by Finger Eleven
So Yesterday by Hilary Duff

Downloaded some new iTunes songs this morning. Listening to "The Diary of Jane" by Breaking Benjamin.

Chicago was fun, although the fun and glamor of travelling for work is definitely gone. I don't know how people do it because it really is very tiring, but it does have its perks. On Tuesday July 18, I went to the hotel gym and worked out for 30 minutes then sat in the jaccuzzi for 1/2 an hour.

Now listening to "The Kill" by 30 seconds to Mars

In morning, I went to the front desk to get a cab to take me to the conference at the Swissotel in downtown Chicago, and instead I get a car and a driver. Talking about living the high life. My driver was nice and gave me his mobile number in case I wanted to have dinner later that night. I thought that it was pretty funny that my driver guy was hitting on me.

I wasn't sure how people were going to dressed for this conference and was going to go very business casual, but at the last minute I decided to pack a couple of normal work outfits for me which is a silk skirt, shirt and sweater. Sure enough, I get to the conference and most of the guys are in suits and so are the women. I felt appropriately dressed and was glad.

There was a cocktail party after the first day and I indulged myself and had a couple of glasses of wine, and then the three women I ended up talking to invited me out for dinner and we took a cab to Navy Pier to have dinner and to see the fireworks show.

Navy Pier is right in downtown Chicago and was only built in the last five years. It's kind of like SF's Pier 39 but much more fun because they are more things to do. They had this huge ferris wheel which we all went on. For $5 you get on and go around once. The ferris wheel never stops so you have get and get off fairly quickly. It offers some amazing views of downtown Chicago which was very cool at night.

Now listening to "Beautiful Soul" by Jesse McCartney

From Navy Pier, you can take boat cruises. If I ever go back to Chicago again, I'd like to take an architectural boat tour of Chicago. It's weird because it looks like Chicago is on an ocean coast but it's on the shores of Lake Michigan. I never quite noticed that about Chicago before.

We at some restaurant called "Riva's" and then saw fireworks but it started to sprinkle so we cabbed back to the Swissotel. Those sprinkles were a bad sign but I didn't know it yet.

Thursday morning I'm watching the morning Chicago local news and it's storming and causing quite a traffic mess. The conference ended and I'm at O'Hare at 5:30 pm and the place is a zoo and a half. The thunderstorms closed down O'Hare for most of the day. Some girl told me they had only allowed three flights all day. My 8 pm flight back to SF was delayed and if I was thinking right, I should have realized that since the two fights in front of mine were delayed that my flight would be delayed as well, and that I should have tried to go standby on one of the earlier flights.

But I wasn't thinking and the monitor up until 7:30 pm said our flight was on time. What a joke! My flight didnt' take off from Chicago till 11:30 pm and we touched down in San Francisco at a little after 2 am.

Now listening to "Leave the Pieces" by The Wreckers. It's a country song and I only purchased it because I was perusing the iTunes top 100 list and playing every song and I liked this one instantly.

I had already decided to take a cab from the airport to home because my original flight was arriving at 10:30 pm and I didn't want to be stuck in Super Shuttle hell getting home. So at 3 am I was in bed and wondering what time should I get to work in the morning because it wasn't going to be early. I made it into the office by 11 am, and only went in because I had some analysis due that afternoon. Otherwise I think I would have just stayed home.

I was telling someone about my flight back from Chicago and they told me that if I arrived in SF at 2 am, with the time change, it whould have 4 am in Chicago, so I was basically up for almost 24 hours as I had gotten up at 5:30 earlier that morning.

So that was Chi-Town Trip. I was still in recovery all this week and my suitcase is still out waiting to be put away. I'm thinking it must get easier if you travel all the time because then you get into a routine. Travelling by plane somewhere almost feels like commuting if it weren't for the time change I think. I never used to think way and it's only lately that I've equated plane flights with commuting and thinking it's really not bad, except for waiting to get on a plane at the airport of course.

I am blogging from the Windy City - Chicago. I'm staying at a hotel right outside the airport and I can see the Chicago skyline from my hotel window. I was trying to stay in a hotel in downtown Chicago where my conference is being held, but every hotel in the downtwon area was booked.

I am exhausted as I am not a very good traveller. My work Outlook is taking forever to send and receive messages and I am hungry. I don't know why because it's only close to 5 pm in Cali ut it's almost 7 pm here.

I will blog more later ...

I went to lunch with a co-worker I've known for about 10 years. We worked together from 1997-1999, and she just started at the company I worked for a few months ago. We were both remembering how we loved our boss John. We liked him and he liked us, and how rare it's been for both of us since then to have a boss whom we like and likes us.

I hope I get one of these two jobs that are in front of me. The two people I want jobs with like me and I like them. It's not that I don't like my boss now, I just don't like her in the same way I do these two people. There's an empathy missing with my current boss that I have with the other two people. I think it's that I like my boss as a work boss but I'm neutral about her as a person, whereas the two people who are offering me jobs I like both as bosses and as people. It's so hard to explain because it's so intangible.

I know for sure that the new person my boss is reporting to does not get me at all, which so bothers me. I think it's such a post 9/11 feeling for me, but it so doesn't make sense to work for people who don't get you and whom you don't like in and outside of work. Life is way too short for that kind of B.S.

My coworker thinks it is very rare for an employee to really like their boss, and that we were so lucky when we met in 1997 because we both had a boss we respected and liked and who respected and liked us. If only John didn't get sick, I would probably still be working for him. But he did get sick, and I just recently found out he died about three years ago. I knew he had a very decidedly uncertain future, and I guess I was right. It's such a shame because John was so smart and so nice, and the perfect boss in a ton of ways.

I may have posted about this before, but in going thru my writing notes I ran across an idea I had for christian writer's class.

Class Title: Riffing on the Bible: Adventures in Christian Storytelling

Using well-known biblical verses and/or texts of the discples' interaction with Jesus as a jumping off point, participants will explore the art of storytelling by telling stories of their own or a character's faith journey.

I even wrote biblical verses to use:
Matthew 4: 18-22 - Jesus invites his disciples to join him saying they will be a fisher of people
This story could be about when you were called to follow Jesus, when you had an evangelizing moment, when your faith inspired someone to christian action, etc.

Matthew 14: 25-34 - Jesus walking on the sea, "Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid."
This story could be about witnessing miracles or when there was a miracle in your life, or when Jesus came to you and pulled you out of a dark situation.

Matthew 26 - Peter's Denial of Jesus
Maybe these are stories about the ways you deny Jesus in your ife, the way you deny your faith, your humanity, your higher self.

Luke 9: 18-20 - Jesus asks his discples who am I and Peter says you are the "messiah of God."
These could be stories of recognizing who Jesus is in your life, recognition of your level of faith.

John 20-21 - the story of Doubting Thomas (the biblical character I relate to the most next to Father Abraham when he is about to sacrifice his son
These could stories about what else, doubt, I'm sure people could write volumes about their doubts about faith and Jesus

Acts 9 - Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus
These stories could be about conversion, faith and doubt.