Melanie Anne Phillips

Productive day today.  Refined the design for the new version of StoryWeaver and sent the details to my exceptional programmer.  Worked with my friend, Sheldon to expand some of the things he helps me with in business (can't get by without him!)  Did a few chores around the place for Teresa.  Hung a picture, and sorted through a number of boxes of personal items we had in storage before we moved.  Finished uploading the last of the videos I took on our recent hike on the John Muir Trail.  Stuck to  my diet (8 pounds lost already) and made a lot of plans...  bwahahaha...... evil plans.....  Watching Paul Ryan at the Republican Convention - I'm an election junkie.  Hoping to catch another recorded episode of Game of Thrones tonight.  Tomorrow should be cooler up here on my mountain.  About 87 today but 85 tomorrow and down to about 80 after that for the next ten days, so they say.  Not much else, but the day ain't over yet.....

Got back from ten days backpacking on the John Muir Trail about a week ago.  Spent a few days recovering, then a few days uploaded and sorting all the pictures to Facebook, Google+, etc.  Just started putting the best of the pictures up here. Meantime, having some really successful business meetings regarding Dramatica, writing some deep theory articles on a new dynamic side of the Dramatica model, and having a whole new suite of software products programmed for my own company, Storymind. No meetings for a few days and a few dollars in the bank - finally caught up on everything including moving in to our new place from about three months ago. SOOOO - time to get a wiggle on and push some projects forward. Melanie

Teresa has been doing a lot of cooking lately. Tonight she made an extra thick New York steak marinated in sherry, olive oil and herbs, seared on the grill and smothered in melted smoky blue cheese crumbles and sautéed onions and bell peppers also marinated in sherry and grape seed oil, King Crab leg served with melted garlic butter, baked purple potatoes, golden acorn squash with Irish butter and brown sugar and a freshly baked sourdough baguette which was slowly crisped on the crust in a warm iron skillet. Egg Nog and pumpkin spice coffee for dessert. She cooks like this most every night. I think I’ll keep her.

The object of my passion is a thousand miles away. The subject of my intellect is how I fill my days. The logic of my feelings is a mobius sword, Cleaving self from selflessness quite of its own accord.

Everybody tells you to be yourself. Society proclaims that if you just be yourself, everything will work out. We get fed this crap from the moment we're born, as in the Disney animated movie Aladin in which Robin Williams (as the Gene, disguised as a bee) actually tells the unconfident hero, "Bee yourself!" Why this repetitive brainwashing? Because it is what we want to hear. We want to believe that who or what we are will be celebrated by people everywhere, if we're just honest about ourselves. Now while we all may want to believe that, none of us really do. Perhaps we might at first, but it doesn't take long to rid ourselves of that delusion. By the time we reach kindergarten (if we're lucky enough to retain our innocence of that long) we discover something called "teasing". And another wonderful social tradition called "bullying" follows closely in its wake. Teasing and bullying are hurtful, but they aren't unnatural. ...

I was born in California at the ripe old age of zero. Years later, here I am. The end. Well, it might have been the end, as I have been stuck here in Oregon for the last 3 1/2 years. Oh, I like Oregon all right - it has the gentlest people on earth. Considerate. Non-judgmental. Boring as hell. Here in Salem, the capitol of this great state, I think they add thorazine to the water supply. I always dreamed of living in Oregon. As a child I first became enraptured by the California Gold Rush. So, just before coming to Oregon, I ended up living in Gold Country, about fifteen miles from where gold was first discovered at Sutter's Mill in present day Coloma. That was boring too. Not when I first got there, mind you. In fact, I cried like a little child when Teresa first brought me to the Sutter Mill site. It was like Mecca - ground zero for that explosive Westward expansion that led to the rise of San Francisco and spawned so many tales of wealth, adventure, and villai...

Reverse Chronology: Waiting for a Momentous Event : "In keeping with the autobiographical approach already described in the ending of this tome, with a glance at the future and an eye on the pa..."

Reverse Chronology: An Ending : "After a lifetime of experiences and decades of considering the proposition, the moment has arrived. Today I end my autobiography. While I ..."

Just a quick update....  Flew back down to California for Christmas with my Kids and Mary (and a bunch of friends from business, USC and even a movie with Teresa's ex-fiance who's a very good friend of ours).  Had a wonderful time.  Mindi and Ed (my daughter and her husband) and I took in the Nut Cracker.  Strange at 57, but I'd never actually been to a ballet before! I always wanted to see the Nut Cracker, and this was in the Pasadena Civic Auditorium where years earlier I had attended the premier of a film I edited - the Official Tournament of Roses Parade film.  (I had worked for a fellow who had the contract for that production in the past, and that year he hired me to edit the film). There was a float in that parade by Honda with a working rollercoaster that had a 360 loop in the middle.  It really wowed the crowds!  But, we had three camera angles on the float so in editing I cut all three together so it looked like the coaster went around th...