detox is a bitch

Sleeping deeper is a plus but getting out of bed is tough. I could sleep for hours to make up for lost slumbers. The diet is a detox regimine and sometimes I seem to have boundless energy and other times I feel exhausted and weak.

I'm still listening to Don Wade and Roma WLS a.m. just to get my blood boiling to the point I have to get up in the morning. Also assists in early morning vocalization exercises: four letter words. I listen to them for that reason alone. Gets me up and ready to kick some ass. Ready for the good ol' CTA commute.

The CTA has been brutal lately. Especially in the heat. But with storm damage and all even worse. I rode the redline last week on the way somewhere after work and the we were packed in like sweaty sardines. Even the blue line these days is crazy. Recently, a rather large woman with an enormous purse tried to push her way in to out crowded car on the 5pm commute and there was absolutely no room for her. She kept pushing and pushing then she started bitching for people to make room for her. People insisted it could not be done. We could barely breathe. The woman persisted and held up the train. People kept saying as politely as possible "Ma'am there is NO SPACE to move." Then a lone woman's voice from the middle of the car screams to her, "IF YOU CAN'T CLEAR YOUR BUTT AND YOUR BAG THEN YOU DON'T NEED TO GET ON!" And the people said...

Amen. (Actually we all just stared at her for a response.)

The pushy woman stopped, looked at us- indignant, of course, and then and took a silent step backward. The doors finally closed. There were many sighs of relief and even a 'thank you' to the voice that spoke up what everyone else was thinking. Two stops later a woman nearly passed out on top of me. As it is I'm a true claustrophobic. I have to listen to music and mentally go to a happy place. I hate my train commutes when it's overcrowded.

I have not been able to write poetry lately. When I try, it sucks. Maybe I'm too happy to write poetry. Except in the mornings. Except on the train. Maybe I'm too distracted.

I am trying to watch a lot of films lately because I would like to try writing a screenplay and I'm looking for inspiration and a screenplay-mindset. If you have any good ones to recommend, please do. I know I should work on that novel of mine. I should. I think about it quite a bit. Too many options of ways to change it right now. I'm hoping something will strike me soon. Right now health is the priority.

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i overslept

by 2 hours today. Do you have any idea what this means?

It means I WAS SLEEPING!!!!!

It's a miracle!

Got a new doc and a new protocol that includes a temporary, torturous diet of no dairy, next to no carbs, and as little sugar as possible. I thought I would die after day one, but I'm hanging in there. And today...progress.

I woke up this morning and checked the clock this morning. HOLY SHIT. 8:30.

My alarm was set for like 9 am from the weekend, so I still woke up before an alarm sounded. But I've never had to actually rely an alarm because I wake up maybe every 15-30 minutes or so all night anyways. Funny thing- for most of my life I thought this was how everyone slept (half-awake, half-dreaming). Thought maybe I was just a lighter sleeper than people who need alarms. It wasn't until, a few years back, I got up one morning to the guy sleeping next to me exclaiming "OH MY GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? You never slept all night? You were tossing and turning constantly! I kept feeling like you were in pain and I couldn't do anything for you. How can you live like this?!" Grumpy from no sleep, of course. And I felt absolutely horrible for being such miserable sleep-company. But it was his reaction that made me first realize: I don't know what deep sleep means and this is not normal. I know what complete exhaustion feels many days, at the end of the day, but not relief from it. At the same time, I feel like I'm not a true insomniac. True insomniacs I think are far more productive. When they can't sleep they read or surf the net or write or catch up on movies or they clean. I have always aspired to be the productive kind of sleep-deprived person. But...things are looking up- me over-sleeping this morning. I was bouncing around the apartment as I got ready this morning thinking- I slept! I slept! And then I called my boss and left her a message, got dressed, put on face in like 15 minutes and grabbed a cab to make up for lost time.

Then about ten minutes later I almost died, literally. The cab driver pulled out in front of another oncoming cab while getting off the expressway at Jackson. I was screaming "Whoa, whoa whoa what are you doing!!!" to the driver as the other cab abruptly steered away to narrowly avert our demise. I thought O-kay, I almost died just then and then I remembered...I slept last night. :)

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Jen: UNPLUGGED

So, five weeks ago my computer died. Trying to save my precious files between flashes of a blue screen and automatic shutdowns....it was terrible. It became painfully clear that time was short for my Toshiba harddrive. I knew I had to do what no computer user ever wants to have to do: decide what would be saved before the last flash of digital life. I had to choose between Writing Files, Graphic Files, and Music Files and which were going to make it onto my 1 G memory stick as the time between shutdowns grew shorter and shorter: it was the Sophie's choice of 'ones and zeros' files. In the end, what was lost was some of my newer music files. They simply could not be saved in time and the summer mix I started for my faithful subscribers will have to wait a bit longer while I collect these works...again.

But, alas, my plays and poems and novel draft remain in tact, my graphic portfolio is in good form, and from this, a lesson for us all: back your shit up as soon as you possibly can. I am not kidding.

I am told the computer may be ready as soon as tomorrow. (The one I am using now is my old rusty desktop that I finally dug out of storage to get my virtual fix.) Why has it taken this long to repair my laptop? Microcenter took a week to even look at it, then they had to ship it to a Toshiba authorized repair center for the warranty work which involved having a new hard drive shipped in. Then, I am told, it still didn't work. They discovered another part was needed and the part also had to be ordered, perhaps directly from Japan on a slow boat. Now they have the second mysterious 'part' and maybe they will get around to it tomorrow. Maybe. But, hey, it's all covered under the 1 year warranty,right? So, why rush it.

Aside from this, I have had ridiculously low battery life in both my cell and home (cordlesss) phones. And just when I think it couldn't get much worse...My television tube burns out. Twenty-year old machine finally kicks it. And today, at work, the copy machine started getting paper jams in ways and places I never thought possible that could not be cleared without having someone take the machine apart. Funny, worked like a dream for the guy in front of my in line to use it. Then I stepped in to make one copy of one page and that's all she copied folks...So, I'm technologically jinxed right now. I probably shouldn't touch anything. In fact, I probably shouldn't even be t

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Bringing you up to speed

Since I last posted, I have had:

4 events I had to coordinate within 7 days time (3 work-related/1 writers association)
3 fraudulent charges to my debit card from an online war games site
3 trips to the naprapath (I swear by naprapaths- they are a godsend)
2 friends give birth (both had girls)
1 meeting with a media company about making my play into a movie (I declined.)
1 injury to my back triggering the recent series of all too familiar inflammatory “episodes” (okay…I tripped over my dog while reading something and the pain at one point was nearly unbearable—where’s my Aspercreme? No, tiger balm…no, Traumeel! Still recovering…)
1 hour spent in a tattoo parlor (just looking, no ink to show for it)
1 dream that I was cast as Peter Pan in a musical production of Peter Pan against my will. I kept insisting that they could likely wrap my chest to get me into the costume, but there was no way they’d be able to hide my ass to pass me off as a little elfish white-boy. I insisted they call in Sandy Duncan. They refused.

Other stuff:
Been reading Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and I’m really enjoying it. Great characters, some fantastic passages. There are many critics of Ayn’s philosophy of Objectivism, most make it sound like she champions the antithesis to the Golden Rule, but I think she has some good ideas that are misunderstood. She’s very attuned to the nature people and I love that she’s unapologetic about calling things as they are. She also believes there should be “a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.” It’s likely my negative experiences with churches and charities and disgust with political corruption that are driving me right into the open pages of Ayn Rand. Also, I have an interest in exploring the life of a female philosopher in my writings and she is one of a few that are of interest to me. I'm already looking forward to Atlas Shrugged.

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Christ Hates Mike Daisey,

because he uses the word FUCK. Or so, 87 self-proclaimed Christian people in Boston would like you to believe by their protest of his show at American Reperatory Theatre.

Watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IeMtQ-SZtA

Mike jokingly refers to this as an act of terrorism, but if this isn't at the heart of terrorism, what is? 87 people of any religion believe in something so dogmatically that they behave in a way that represents the very antithesis of what they supposedly stand for. Cowards, indeed. An embarassingly poor misrepresentation of their very own Godhead.

The brightside? I'm assuming he was still able to walk away with their little Christian greenbacks. They sure showed him!

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