This will just be a quick update, although I always think that will be the case…

Quit Macy’s on Friday. Just couldn’t handle the pacing around in a circle for such a little amount of money. Initially, I thought I could "use" the boredom as some sort of literary foreplay, whereby I would be throbbing with anticipation of getting home, firing up Microsoft Word, and unloading all of the mental work I had done on the book. But instead, it was this new level of boredom that was heretofore unknown to me, and just dredged me down into this listless muck that prevented anything of quality to come out of it.

So, that’s over anyway.

The plan is to dive head-first into the book, although I’m not saying anything else about that for now. I’ve cried wolf about that being near-completion long enough now. Time to just shut up about it, do the work, and just deliver already.

Other recent things…

Took a Chinese cooking class at Millennium on Sunday. I think I’m done with the cooking classes. As much as I enjoy them,  I have become confident enough in my cooking ability to  not need them. In fact, I’m actually debating  whether to pick a cookbook (possible Millennium, maybe not), and just  blog my experiences working through each recipe, end to end, with pictures and such. I think a lot of people fear trying some of these recipes and it’s unwarranted. Even when you screw up a recipe from a vegan cookbook, it still tastes good.

Might start a new gig at the end of March, we’ll see what happens. In any event, I need to have some new income stream by that point.

Planning to head to Pennsylvania in mid-March, either in advance of that new gig, or in advance of my really needing to find a serious job again. We’ll see which way all that goes…

Been doing extra cardio after Millennium and some other things that pulled me off of my eating plan, although all of the diversions were delightful. So, hopefully, I’ve overcompensated enough and there will still be weight loss this week, if not my calves are screaming for nothing.

Meeting a new guy for the first time tonight, seems too good to be true. But I’m fine with that remaining the case after we meet.

The weight loss continues trucking away, with another three pounds this week, which means last week’s 7.2 pound loss was not some dehydrated fluke (as there was no correction today). So, I’m well on my way to reaching goal as soon as next week?! Yikes…

Got an early start today, did the workout before 8 a.m., in time to get to the 9 a.m. weigh-in at Weight Watchers (though bailing on the meeting), then shipped some eBay things out to people (DVDs), and decided to keep my streak of productivity alive… which is where things took a downturn.

I have been meaning for a while now to go see my doctor. I don’t need a checkup, but rather just to weigh-in. When I signed up for health insurance after getting fired by Macromedia, I used an online insurance broker to find the best plan/rate. At the time, I was about 240ish pounds.

When I filled out the online application, I put down that I was 230, as I was losing weight at the time (the yo-yo was heading down at that point). Little did I know but 220 was the weight at which I would have to pay $10 extra per month because I was at risk for weight-related medical conditions (Type-2 diabetes, and the list goes on…)

When I finally got down around 200, I got a checkup by my doctor and then went to call my insurance provider to tell them to change my rate. Of course, this wasn’t as easy as it sounds. They said they needed to verify that I was maintaining my lower weight, so I would need to go back to my doctor in six months time, get another reading, and then they would adjust things.

It’s been well over six months, and it just keeps falling off my to-do list, so today, i decided to just drop-in at my doctor’s office, jump on the scale, and make that part of today’s morning activities.

From the get-go, it was clear that the staff at my doctor’s office wasn’t keen on the drop-in. But, since I was there, they would try to accommodate me. In addition to the drop-in, they have never heard of my request from an insurance provider to just weigh a patient to verify continued weight loss maintenance. We joked that the insurance company seemed to not care about my weight being verified when I bought the policy, but now that I was trying to reduce its cost there were all kinds of hoops they would make me jump through. She smiled and said, that’s the way it always works. Needless to say, I didn’t realize at the time that the insurance company would be the second hoop that would need to be jumped through. I was standing in front of the first.

So, I sat there for 15 minutes (which seemed like 40), while they answered phones, assisted other patients, and every so often, returned to talking about my case at a level at which I heard everything.

Finally, they call me back up to the window and tell me that they don’t think they can do anything for me today, because they aren’t sure how the insurance company will verify the information. They made need written confirmation, just a phone call, they don’t know. Now, I let them continue their explanation despite the obvious flaws in logic. I mean, the nature of their concern is what will happen AFTER they record my new weight, only… they aren’t taking my new weight. It seems like we’re getting one step ahead of ourselves here. Not to mention, I told them that my insurance company already said the procedure: I come back, get weighed in, and then my provider will contact them to verify. So, no matter how my provider chooses to retrieve this information, their role seems limited to having this information.

They say it needs to be a scheduled appointment and not just a drop-in. Again, this is a 30-second procedure. The scale is three feet away from us (through a wall, but still) at the time of this conversation. They said it needs to be at a time when it isn’t conflicting wth other appointments, which seems to suggest that they will either bloat my visit up with something else, or I have to have a 30-minute block carved out on their schedule for this procedure.

Then, they finish off by verifying my phone number so they can contact me to schedule an appointment to do this. Finally, I can’t resist and ask if I am understanding them correctly. They want me to leave the office and go home, so they can call me to schedule an appointment, whereby I can come back to their office to stand on a scale for 30 seconds (and gather their $40 co-pay, I’m sure). And, not only am I unable to get my weight read today while I’m here, because there is no room in the schedule, they are also unable to schedule my appointment while I’m standing in front of them, but rather call me at home. I ask if I am understanding everything correctly.

And, as the conversation began, it also ended, with her saying it’s never a good idea to try and drop-in. At which point, frustrated, she just walked away from the window, dropped my chart in the stack to be refiled, and let out a huge exhale.

After this, I was famished (having not eaten before weighing in, natch) and knowing that the idea of going home and having to prepare food was not in th cards, I went to Crepevine to have my favorite Pumpkin Spice pancakes (hold the butter) with a side of fresh fruit. I have no clue whether they are vegan because to ask would provide answers I might not be ready to accept. So, basically you get three thick, huge pancakes, syrup, and a small bowl of assorted fruit (pineapple, mango, kiwi, grapes, etc.)

Toward the end of the meal, something happened that has never happened before. In mid-meal, I was knowingly eating too much food. It wasn’t a lot more, but before I had, say, the last 5 pieces of pancake, I knew I was full. Now, post-meal, this is not a new sensation. But the feeling has always been limited to "I ate too much," never "I’m full" and/or "I’ve eaten enough" and having it occur DURING the actual meal. So, that was a huge step forward, related either to my eating smaller portions and less food in general lately or just a heightened awareness of my body? Not sure which. I just hope my stomach and I start chatting like that more often. And, unlike today, I promise to listen next time.

Long time no post, or so it seems…

The best news this week was that for some strange reason, I lost 7.2 pounds. Now, I have been very diligent about the diet lately and they did get new cardio machines at the gym that are giving me a much stronger workout but, still, 7.2 pounds in six days? I’m going into this next week with some caution in case there is a slight correction.

I’ve also been having enjoyable baths this week now that the black mystery substance has been eradicated. It seems that the flexible pipe connecting my incoming line to the hot water heater was the problem, so now I can take a bath without any possible appearance of black particles suddenly floating all around me, so I’ve got that going for me, too.

As for the weekly check-in, this week, unfortunately, I was once again a retail clerk.

On the upside, I think I have a new strategy for the job. Basically, the job has gotten painfully, dreadfully boring. It is really just 7.5 hours of pacing around the sales floor with nothing to do. So, the goal starting Monday is to spend my breaks and lunch reading the chapter I’m working on (Sunday after work will be spent working on the new intro/chapter one) without doing any actual writing. It will all be gearing up with how it needs to change. This character needs to do that, make sure there’s some of this. Even write down certain things I want to do on the sheet. It’s almost like making the whole workday become an act of foreplay to the writing that will follow. So that, when I finally get home, writing is the obvious choice because I’m bursting at the seams to get everything down onto "paper." That’s the plan anyway.

One of the sad realizations I’ve been having is that I have a strong work ethic. When it was Macromedia, despite how much I had come to loathe the job, I always gave them quality output. Was I difficult and abrasive and talking about how much I hated being there? Sure, but you would never find a hint of that in what I wrote for them. Same with the new gig, it is so dull and boring, but when I work with customers, I am always fine, helping them with anything they want, and then sinking back into boredom when they leave.

A major curiosity for me lately is why I have an absolute distaste for anything "corporate." I have actual animosity toward very benign things once I smell a corporate stench about them. For example, when we had inventory recently, every sales associate had a section of the store to prepare for inventory. This makes sense and was rather necessary. However, they were called "Areas of Pride," and management would invariably ask how you Area of Pride was going. Whenever they said it, I saw the capital letters in Area of Pride hanging in the air and wanted to jab them with a pin.

It just seems that for some reason I am unable to fuse my work ethic with a job I don’t detest. As it has been very, very, very boring lately, it seems to have opened management up to ask us more often about things that used to be infrequent. The store is OBSESSED with us opening credit card accounts. They have a daily and weekly total, and are manic about hitting their numbers.

Now, having previously been in credit card debt, and seeing how godawful people are with cards over the holiday season, I can’t say I’m in any rush to sign people up. I ask if they want our credit card, but I never go as far as to sell them on it. The big hook is that if you open the account, you get to save 15 percent on everything in the store for the following two days, except the card charges a 22 percent finance charge each month, so unless you pay the bill off, you aren’t saving at all.

Today, I was asked if I opened up any credit cards as I was exiting the office after hanging up my jacket to start my shift. I told them that I usually don’t start a good groove with opening accounts until my fifth minute of work, so give it another four and see what happens. An hour later, any credits? Any credits? It was relentless.

It got to the point where the one floor manager was starting to sell me on the benefit of selling cards to customers (the irony being that we only have this much time to talk about this stuff because there are no customers lately). Their big hook is that I get paid two bucks cash on the spot every time I open a credit account. Now, I guess I’m just not poor enough for this to entice. In fact, given the choice between someone adding to their mounting credit card debts so I can earn two dollars and them getting in control of their finances and me not getting two dollars… I’m fine without the cash.

In any event, I don’t expect to be there more than a month and a half more, so the goal is to shift things as much as I can to novelist in that time, try and steer my work ethic to the book rather than the people who pay my meager salary. We’ll see what happens…

Week one of my diet challenge is off to a good start. My opening week’s loss was three pounds, so nice to get a jump on the "pound a week" thing. Maybe I’ll be into my six week maintenance period by the time it all ends… so, that’s a good follow-up for WHYTD.

I’ve finally stopped stealing phone book coupons in the street, now that I have a ridiculous amount. I think I can go to the store four times a month now, through November, and get 20% off, so that’s good enough.

Also, my movie trend is reversing itself, having seen "The ChumScrubber" (on DVD) and "Transamerica" (on the big screen), two really good movies. I also have "Me, You, and Everyone We Know" on DVD right now, too, so hopefully I’ll go three for three. Right now, I think I’m avoiding Hollywood unless I get a horror jones and check out Hostel.

I was also thinking of popping in on Macworld tomorrow and checking out the new stuff but, honestly, trade shows are so boring. And Apple stuff is really mainstream and corporatey lately (which is good, since that audience used to not take them seriously). But, walking around looking at ethernet hubs and printers? Blah. Who cares…

But, the main thing I want to write about is a new challenge for this site, one which I will post every…. Monday? That sounds good. Basically, it is time to start defining who I am. Far too many weeks lately, I have been a retail clerk, and I need to start tipping the scales back in the direction of novelist. So, every Monday, I will write whether, in the past week, I was a retail clerk or a novelist. No percentages, no grey area. One got more time and attention than the other, and just write down which one won last week.

To get the ball rolling (in the wrong direction), last week, I was a retail clerk.

Not much going on, just doing the work, workout, read, procrastinate about writing thing over and over…

Tomorrow, my store has its annual inventory, which runs from 8:15 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. And, just for the sake of comparison, it is almost 11:30p now and I’m deciding that it’s probably too late to put a movie on, because I won’t be awake for the end of it. Not a good sign for tomorrow. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to be walking around dead at three in the morning, is it? I mean, that’s when we would all normally be asleep. I’m just not joining the overcaffeinate yourself crowd to pull through it. I will be asleep by 4:45 a.m. tomorrow.

In WHYDT news, I wrote a letter to my landlord/property management company complaining about this mysterious black substance that loves to trickle out of my bathrtub and bathroom sink hot water faucets. They have tried fixing it several times now, all with their internal handyman and, he is in over his head, and I’m sick of swimming with whatever black, creepy, possibly carcinogenic substance that happens to join me in the tub every so often, so hopefully that will resolve itself.

Hmm, not sure I should feel "proud" about this, although it did make me happy. Every year, the local hippie grocery store where I buy a lot of my bulk foods, organic produce and such puts coupons in the yellow pages for 20 percent off. But they are one-time-use coupons with various restrictions, some are only good for certain months, etc. Well, on my way home from the gym this morning (which always ranks as a good thing in WHYDT), I saw volunteers distributing new yellow pages in my area.
So, I did what anyone with my mindset would do, I swiped one on my way home to see if the store had coupons this year. They did! So, well… suffice it to say that many of my neighbors will not be finding page 12 of their yellow pages coupons, and I have a nice stack of them here. So, again, it’s a positive thing, in that I’m sort of taking my finances seriously enough to actually stop in front of random houses, openup the bag containing their yellow pages, flip to page 12, rip it out, put the book back in the bag, and return it into place… but, at the same time, I can’t quite say it makes me proud to have done it. Although seeing that fat stack of 20 percent offs does make me smile.

One of my big problems with working retail was that it seemed to lead me into a split day, where I had three hours in which to do things both before and after work, but not enough at one time. But after some thinking on the subjects, I realized that I had started drinking iced tea at work.

Now, my history with caffeine is pretty long. Back at my old job, I used to just drink Diet Coke after Diet Coke. I never got a headache from not having caffeine because it never happened.

When I started the diet program more than a year ago, I stopped drinking aspartame, saccharin, basically any artifical sweetener, and caffeine. The caffeine restriction isn’t strict; when I go out to eat I always have iced tea. Every so often, I have a cup of hot tea at night. But I recently started buying more iced tea to have at home, and realized that it was because I started drinking it regularly again.

So, went cold turkey earlier this week and when I get home from work, like now, I go to bed almost immediately, within an hour or so. It also reduced my expenses at work down from $1.70 per day (for my iced tea, and unlimited refills) to $0. I’m still adjusting to the lack of chemical. I’m more sluggish when I get up, but that will resolve itself once my body realizes it isn’t getting regular caffeine anymore.

Oh well, that is the big item for WHYDT, in addition to the usual gym attendance.

Weight Watchers has a special promotion this year, whereby I paid $149 to cover all of my meetings between January 1 and April 29 (cheaper than any other method). I’ve decided to use this time period to reach my weight loss goal and begin and/or complete my lifetime membership (you have to maintain your weight for six weeks after hitting goal to become a lifetime member of weight watchers, which means you don’t pay as long as you don’t gain your weight back).

So, I created a chart to post on the refrigerator to keep track of my progress. It works out to my needing to lose a pound a week to hit goal by the end of that period. Ideally, I will hit it earlier and already be into my six-week maintenance period, but I’m fine with either situation.

For today’s WHYDT list:

• Sent in an application to be a Friends of the SF Library Volunteer (first step to becoming a Book Buddy, there is an orientation in February, so not much will happen until then).
• Worked out
• Weighed in, even though I knew this week was a bit dodgy (gained a pound)
• And, most importantly, I created and posted the above chart to track my future weight loss

This is usually my good movie season, when all of the atsry movies flood theaters to gain attention before the Academy Awards. Not sure if I’ve just been in some funk, but I think it’s the movies, not me, that has been funky lately.

Wednesday afternoon, with the day off, I decided to catch a matinee of King Kong. With its three hour running time, I have been trying to catch that as a matinee since that will be when my bladder is at its most agreeable to a movie of that length (and, surprisingly, I only bailed once for a restroom run). I guess I can’t say I was disappointed with King Kong, but rather that every hesitation I had about going proved to be accurate. First and foremost, I hated Lord of the Rings. If I had to choose between going to the dentist and seeing one of the LOTR movies, I would choose the dentist because while both are painful, only one choice is necessary.

So, going in not convinced about the storytelling ability of the writer/director based on his last writing/directing was strike one. And, much like LOTR, the movie seemed chunky. Entire segments could be excised and nothing would matter, which was also true of LOTR.

My hesitation about the movie was that… even if everything was done well, the story still kind of sucks. I am not sure why it is a classic, considering it is sort of a bad story. They go to shoot a movie, there’s a big ape, he falls for the girl, they capture the ape, bring him back to the city, he drags the girl up a huge building in NYC, and (spoiler alert) Kong falls and dies.

Even if this was done perfectly, it would still just be a mediocre story told very well. And that is what I got. I did have some LOTR flashbacks during some of the effects sections and, unlike everyone else, I chose the beginning of an action scene for my restroom run, whereas everyone else tended to go as soon as one ended.

But picking on Kong would be too easy when in fact movies I expect a lot more out of have also disappointed lately.

Munich is the new thriller from Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner. That’s what all the magazines are saying: thriller. Many go out of their way to say that beyond the politics and the message and everything else, it’s a great political thriller. Unless I’m wrong and we all agreed to change the definition of thriller a while back, don’t thrillers have to be sort of, oh I don’t know, thrilling? You know, keep you on the edge of your seat, can’t wait to see what happens next, all that?

Well, that wasn’t what I saw. Everything Spielberg is getting credit for is evident in the movie (both sides are treated like humans fighting for a just cause, there are parallels to the current quagmire we’re facing in Iraq and elsewhere due to the war on terror, etc.). But seeing this movie, I sort of felt like someone took a 900-page novel and, in the interest of serving the novel, refused to whittle down the narrative and the audience is left with this faithful yet muddled end result that only makes sense to everyone who read the book.

While this was based on real events and Spielberg and crew interviewed the real guy whose identity is still not public, much of it seems needless, whether it is true or not. The only reason I felt so apathetic about the movie is that there was no one empathetic in the movie. While the movie follows the Israel side of the equation, they had just as little justification for their actions as the Palestinians, save for revenge. There’s probably an equivalent movie that could be made following the Palestinians whereby we would see their perspective just as clearly.

Maybe the point of the movie is to raise these questions: how people can win if both sides are "right" and unable to change their viewpoints, why killing terrorists is useful when by killing them you inspire even more people to fill those vacant positions and join the other side’s ranks, and what is the human cost of vengeance to the people who do these acts even while believing they are right. All of that is in this movie, but it still didn’t come off as very compelling to me. Not to mention the lack of thrills.

The day before I saw Munich, I had to see Memoirs of a Geisha. I wasn’t really planning to see this, but Munich was sold out and I was there. I had trepidations about Geisha in advance, mainly because of my ongoing mirror/window debate. I prefer to see movies that teach me something about my life (mirror), not just something that shows me a segment of someone else’s life (window). Now, I do not find this practice restrictive. In fact, I think window movies with a touch of mirror are really when the level of artistic merit raises significantly.

But Geisha is pure window. And, beyond that, it’s a boring window. Again, I read about things in advance and find that what I read differs wildly from what I see on the screen. Many media reviews have gone out of their way to point out that geishas are not prostitutes, as is often thought here in the West. So, I go in with this new education, and figure this guy directed Chicago successfully as a film experience and not just filming a stage production (See: Rent and The Producers, both of which I adored, but they never rose above their origins), so I’ll give him a chance.

I think it was Roger Ebert who pointed out the absurdity of the narration in Geisha, although that was on his TV show and not his print review, so I can’t quote it verbatim. The gist is that it all sounds good, but is largely meaningless tripe. Something like: "My story is a story which should never be told," without explaining why it should never be told, not to mention… if it shouldn’t be told, shut up about it, no?

Anyway, this was just the first of my torturous long, tedious movies of late where nothing much happens, but it sure takes time to get there. And here’s the kicker: (spoiler alert) the big deal at the climax of the movie basically comes down to a bunch of Japanese businessmen bidding on who gets to deflower the lead Geisha. Now, call me old-fashioned and overly strict, but when people pay for sex… don’t we call that prostitution?

Another recent borefest was Syriana. I go in with hesitation, because it was written by the guy who wrote Traffic, which won a ton of awards and I found boring as all hell. (It was also overly obvious: the daughter of the president’s new drug czar (wait for it) uses drugs! Brilliant!) Critics praised Syriana as using his storytelling "technique" (taking three stories that would be boring on their own and cutting them together to make them seem more interesting, which is still better than taking boring movies and splicing them together out of sequence or backwards (See: Memento, 28 Grams)) to tackle the issue of oil.

Now, I hate the oil companies. Or rather, I am opposed to the rampant consumption of oil that has no regard for the global issues that result (the current war), the environmental impact, global trade issues (Walmart able to make things in China and ship them here cheaper than making them here), the rise of the suburbs (which require cheap oil to exist), and the list goes on. This is a huge important topic and one I would like to see an important movie tackle (a good documentary is The End of Suburbia). Instead, I get Syriana.

Syriana, like Traffic, has this amazing ability to make you think you are seeing something better than you are. That the movie is smart and riveting and important and if you aren’t understanding it, it is clearly you, not the movie, that has the problem. Well, at the risk of being wrong here and it really is me that is the dumb part of this equation, I am going on the record that this movie was boring and uninteresting while tackling the biggest political, environmental, and social issue facing us today. And, in keeping with the theme, it took a long time for it to say nothing. Is there some belef in Hollywood that the Academy doesn’t take you seriously unless you push the two hour and thirty minute barrier?

I feel like the world had a meeting and I slept in late or something. Geishas aren’t prostitutes, they make their life an art of learning to be perfect companions and hosts… and then have sex for money. Spielberg’s movie is a thriller, save for nothing thrilling happening in a slightly-glacial two hours and forty minutes (I almost waited for the end credits to see if he let Gus Van Sant cut it). Syriana is an important movie about the global impact of oil, except the stories are all boring. It’s no wonder that the same media can cover the Bush White House, there really is no reality anymore, is there?

Because I saw Geisha on the weekend and was charged the insane new "weekend rate" for movies here ($10.50), I was forced against my will (but in accordance with my rules to not pay over $10 to see a movie) to follow up the slow, tedious Geisha with a double feature, just to bring my movie cost under six bucks. I chose The Ringer, where Johnny Knoxville pretends to be retarded to win at the Special Olympics. The movie was predictable, stupid, obvious, needless, and a waste of time.

For once, I got the exact movie I expected and the one critics promised. In a strange way, I felt satisfied.

(Just to show that I don’t hate every movie, some recent films that are just amazing are: The Squid and the Whale, Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, and The Family Stone (one notch down from the others in this list, though) And I can’t wait to see Match Point, the new Woody Allen, who is spotty but seems to have delivered this time around)

I don’t really have resolutions. Those are for the people who will be congesting the Weight Watchers meetings for the next few weeks, making it longer for me to weigh in and bolt.

My goals for the year are to wipe the slate clean, cross off my few remaining goals, and then rise up from the ashes and decide who I want to be afterward. Trying to question the looming identity stuff is just another form of procrastination, so my only two goals are finishing the weight loss and finishing the novel. Everything else is in the way.

The thing that I’m also starting to get serious about this year is family planning. I don’t think I have the finances/ability to raise a kid on my own, but I’m planning to take steps to start getting ready in some sense. I think phase one will be joining Book Buddies, a program where volunteers go and read to sick kids in the hospital. Might also look to offer nanny services to local gay couples, etc. We’ll see.

The other thing that will appear here regularly is based on the Oprah Winfrey show, of course. She recently had Heather Small on her show to sing Proud, which has been a regular rotation song on my iPod even before that appearance. It is usually the song that I play on the walk from the locker room to the cardio machine. Oprah sells T-shirts that read "What have you done today?" (the chorus of the song is ‘what have you done today to make you feel proud?’) that, were they in colors other than black and white, I’d already be wearing.

The Oprah idea is to come up with things you’re proud of every day, not necessarily huge things. Like today, I am proud that despite it raining and my lethargy, I dragged my ass to the gym and did my workout. Some days you’ll have a bunch of things, some just one or two.

So, I hope to post my WHYDT section on here every day. Oh yeah, I plan to post more often this year, as well. I’d love to say daily, but that seems so… optimistic. Heh. I’ll certainly try. I think the problem is that I always write a lot when I do post, so it seems hard to just pop on, write a few lines, and call it a day. If I can get over that, I’d post more often. Hell, my bubble tea place has a free Internet terminal I could even post from, but I don’t. (I’m obsessed with bubble tea).

I feel like I need to write this down now, part of my visualization. For a while now, I’ve kind of had this weird mental picture. It never used to make sense. I had this vision of writing my second book in public, for probably more than a year now. The idea was that I would have an office set up in a storefront, and every day, I would just go and write a book in a store window. Behind me, there would be an LED screen that displays the last couple of words I wrote (the idea beind that you could stand there and read things as I’m writing, if you’re bored or something). And, the whole thing would also be available as a webcam. This will be after the first book is published, and I’ll sign books when I go out for lunch, leave for the day, etc.

I always pictured doing this in a particular block of San Francisco, near Virgin Records. The strange part is there was no obvious place to do it. There used to be Virgin Records, then Planet Hollywood, then a Birkenstock, Ghirardelli chocolate, and a toy store. Then a few years ago, Planet Hollywood went out of business. It stayed empty for a while, but a few months ago, the lot was purchased by Cody’s Books, a local independent bookstore.

So now, right where I always pictured this happening, the perfect venue exists. I just wanted to post this now, so in 2007, I can seem all prescient and say I’d been planning this all along (even before a bookstore existed there). So, see you at Cody’s in a few years… I just read the Marilyn Manson autobiography this week, where he always saw things that would occur in his future, and they often happened exactly as he saw them, so… just figured I should write my visualization down now, rather than seeming surprised when it happens.

Anyway, there you have it. 2006 is the year where my old life ends, and the new one begins. First, I have some last few items to clear up (body, book, boy), all of which should occur well within the first half of the year.

Happy New Year.