Simultaneously M yelled, "Earthquake, Little!" (he calls me Little)

The house continued to shake. I white-knuckled the back and armrest of the couch and whimpered. I watched the precariously stacked electronic equipment sway and the water in the sea monkey�s aquarium slosh. The only thought in my mind was that this could be the "Big One". I prepped myself for the house to break apart and the couch to slide down the broken floor to the first level. All that was going through my mind was:

Hold on. Hold on. Hold on tight.

I wanted the movement to stop. And finally, after about 10 seconds, it did.

We turned on the news. The earthquake measured 5.2 on the Richter scale and the shallow epicenter was located about 3 miles outside of Gilroy.

After about five minutes of watching the news, we turned the movie back on. I must have had a look of terror on my face because about 10 minutes into the movie, he asked me if I was scared. "No. Are you?"

But I suppose I was scared. What if it was a larger quake? What if I had been alone? I didn�t know how to turn off the gas. What if I was in the subway on BART? What if I was in the east bay? How would I get home?

I never thought I�d be that afraid of an earthquake. In fact, previous to experiencing one, I kind of wanted to feel one. I thought it would be exciting. It�s not. It�s downright terrifying.

The movie was trippy, by the way. I really don�t know what to say about it. I used to consider myself a David Lynch fan, but not anymore. Neither M nor I understood the movie. It involved strange random characters and a blue box with a triangular blue key that vacuums people into what I consider to be a "third dimension". Yeah, confusing.

My body is giving me some problems. I realize I started a weight training regimen and that muscle weighs more than fat� but I don�t appreciate gaining girth. Now my clothes are a little tighter and I�m not very happy about that.

Whenever I feel I�ve slacked on my eating plan, I re-read certain books, namely Dr. Atkins� New Diet Revolution and Protein Power. I�ve been re-reading Protein Power since last weekend. I read it on the subway to and from work. I�m hoping to get strict again because this abuse can�t continue.

Yesterday marked the first day of Week 4 in my Buff Brides workout. It was also the first day that I did not work out. I�m really angry at myself for that. Monday nights are Date Night and I got home late (too late to squeeze in a quick workout before M got home) and M and I decided to go to my favorite Italian restaurant. I told M as we were walking to the restaurant, "Don�t let me have any bread. You know I�ll want some, but just keep the bread basket away from me."

Thankfully, he let me have one bite of his buttered slice of bread without much hesitation. I ordered the merlot and the chicken piccata. We split a green salad. It was all so very scrumptious.

Today, I�m going to be the best I can be. I had egg salad this morning for breakfast. I actually got up and hard-boiled eggs; a miracle with my anti-morning schedule. It�s now lunch time and I think I�ll go over to the Mediterranean place and get the Greek salad and lamb gyro without the pita. Delicious!

I had a nice time in Sacramento for the work training last week. For some strange reason, I woke up every morning at 5:30 without the help of an alarm. On my last morning there, I even got up and worked out before work! This is proof that miracles can and do happen.

But it didn�t help that I�d eat the Danish pastry offerings every morning, which were provided by the Academy. Maybe that�s why I�m so huge this week.

I had vivid dreams every night I was there. On Wednesday night, I had a terrible dream about the World Trade Center. One of the tower�s was still [mostly] intact. Only the very top floor was left, as well as floors 1-10. I don�t know if the floors in between were simply skeletons of a building... or if nothing � literally � was left in between. People still worked on floors 1-10.

The building was under high security surveillance, but for some reason they let me through. Maybe I was a hot-shot or something.

There was a restaurant on the top floor. That�s where I went. Being up there was really scary and unnerving, so I didn�t stay long. I got in the elevator with two other women. Getting into the elevator was scary � it was frightening crossing the "crack" because you could see that nothing existed through that crack between the floor of the restaurant and the floor of the elevator.

The elevator had been modified since the disaster, as in the buttons had been removed for the floors between the top floor and the 10th floor. I pushed the button for the ground floor. One of the women said, "Can you push 156 for me?" I responded, "Uhhh, that doesn�t exist. You can choose anything 10 and below." She didn�t say anything more.

The elevator descended with incredible speed. There was negative gravity inside the elevator, and I started to curl up onto the wall of the elevator, feet first, kind of like a backward somersault, but not on a level surface.

I awoke.

On Thursday night, I had another disturbing dream. M and I lived in a HUGE mansion. Only problem was that a thick sticky green sludge covered the second floor of the house, rendering it unusable. I even remember the way it smelled. My sister came over one day and thought she�d go on an adventure hike through the second floor. After she�d been gone a while, I went looking for her. While I was up there, something strange started happening, followed by a whooshing noise� and all the slime oozed toward the front door and out of the house!

I have no idea what these dreams could symbolize.

Zaugi came for a visit last weekend. We went shopping on Haight Street, then went to dinner at an Egyptian restaurant and watched a fantastic belly dancer. We had a lot of fun.

I bought some arch supports for my shoes which will hopefully ease the ball-of-the-foot pain I�ve been experiencing and take away the ugly callouses. So far, so good. It�s so much more comfortable to wear them than not.

Well, I think that�s all I have to say. Au revoir!