Finally catching up!

At last my decks are cleared enough for me to update my blog! I've met a friend, via the Internet, that I knew at Antioch College. I haven't seen her in 57 years! She was bridesmaid at my first wedding. Voices and images from the past! (She put out an album recently, and I ordered it.)

I bought a Blu-Ray burner for the computer. Now I can archive 25,000,000,000 bytes (25GB) of data on one disk! More importantly, when I make my next feature film (in the works) it will be in the highest resolution, 1080 vertical lines (the same as in a theater with digital projection), which my video camera produces. (A DVD has only 480 vertical lines of resolution.) Of course, no one will be able to watch it but me. People have been slow to adopt the new standard.

Five days ago I came down with some horrible thing that was made worse by me. It started as a sore throat, but, as I kept swilling martinis to ease the pain and relax the vessels, it escalated to mental misery, weirdness, vertigo, a profound desire to end it all, and an irregularly-pounding heart. Judi insisted it was simply the result of dehydration, brought about by the gin.

In any event, I made the decision on the spot to implement a long-planned change of lifestyle. I had been baking chocoloate-chip cookies several times a week, and eating them after meals and between meals. They were so good! Judi couldn't resist, even though they had devastating effects on her body. So much for creative cookery. Sorry, everybody, no more cookies.

My plan is to live simply, totally give up gin and cookies, cut down on coffee, go back to drinking green tea, and generally keep my caloric intake low enough that I am effectively on the life-extension diet and should live to 120 or more. While feeling peppy, of course.

By today my system has pretty well repaired itself. I fasted for one full day and ate lightly the next. So far in the past five days I've lost 8 pounds and now weigh 154.

But enough about my health, which has been excellent up to this point. This was a wakeup call, and I'm glad it happened.

In my life as a writer, I've uploaded my two novels to SCRIBD. They've been around for awhile, and only recently started charging for downloads, so if anybody buys my books through them, I'll make a few bucks. I'm listing each of them for $5. SCRIBD takes a cut, of course. It didn't cost me anything to upload the novels. (That's a funny name; I wonder if they pronounce it "scribed", meaning written or inscribed.)

I've also uploaded my two Vietnam War protest songs to my google website (sites.google.com/site/allthebowdenstuff) and copied a few live bars of one song to YouTube so it can be referenced on the website. Running across my old college friend with her album inspired me. Her album was actually recorded way back when, but only recently released.

A bunch of us watched The Unbearable Lightness of Being last night in my home theater, and were of decidedly mixed opinions. My thoughts (and Judi agrees) are that it's three hours of gratuitous sex hung on a very skimpy skeleton of historically-accurate violence (the Russians invading Prague).

Well, that's enough for now! I'm still regaining my strength and now I want to go out and hike in the hills for a couple of hours.