Okay then, a diary!

Today I cleaned the kitchen. The hard part of the kitchen. I mean the – all those papers and pens and old sticky-notes-with-some-piece-of-important-information-on-it kind of stuff. It was awesome. I am totally into organizing. I love to organize and I can’t keep it up. I completely go through some area and set it up for optimal organization and then let it all slide for six months.

Mulan went through all her old school papers and we reduced it down to 20% of it’s original size. YES!

Now that the Jill and Julia Show is done for the time being, (we think we'll open the show for real in later August or September) I am concentrating on writing my pilot and working on wedding plans. That’s it until the end of May when I am traveling. I am going to this Science Festival in New York at the end of May, just before I do Letting Go of God in Connecticut. I would post what I’m doing there, but it’s a bit up in the air. I should find out the dates for the Seattle Film Festival soon too.

Tonight I’m going to a friend’s house who has a screening room and occasionally has parties. We are going to eat pizza and watch “Bonnie and Clyde” which I haven’t seen since college.

Wow. Charlton Heston died. I didn’t know that until just now. He hosted SNL while I was there and he and Al Franken had the most wonderfully enjoyable contentious relationship. I think they truly enjoyed it too. I really liked Charlton Heston after that.

Things are looking up for the radio show on NPR. Of course most things fall apart, so we will see. But I am feeling pretty good about it. Stars are aligning in this regard!

I loved the comment on my last post about the baptism for a conversion to atheism. The poster asked if salt might be used. That made me laugh. Yes, it’s so funny how we pre-spin the conversation with the way we word things. When Ken Star referred to my lack of belief as a “conversion to atheism” it sets the tone immediately. I think other people have said that to me to and I let it slide. I don’t think I will the next time. I don’t mind the term “de-conversion.” People have said that too. But when you grow up in a religion, there isn’t really a conversion moment like there is described in religious literature or amongst fundamentalists. But I probably spin the conversation revealing my opinion too by how I describe things. I often toss around “critical-thinking-skills” when talking to religious people. And I suppose you could say that by using that particular set of words I am pre-setting my view that the religious abandon their critical thinking skills when it comes to God. I mean, I admit it, I do use that phrase deliberately and pointedly. But I probably wouldn’t use that phrase if I were moderating a panel about religion. I think I would try to use the most neutral words I could. Although I am not complaining. It was really more interesting to me. Curious phrase: Julia’s conversion to atheism.

I am reading “Cool It” right now – Bjorn Lomborg’s book. He also wrote "The Skeptical Environmentalist." The jury is still out in my own mind about his view, but I agree with him that the environmental movement is getting promoted with a lot of misinformation. And while global warming due to human activity appears to be real and accepted by everyone, including Bjorn, (although he didn’t admit this in his previous book) what we do about it is clearly up for debate.

I listened to R.E.M. all day today. I don’t have the new album yet, but I’m getting ready for it by listening to all the old ones. I am still not finished loading all my music on the computer, but I think by the end of the week. I also listened to NPR and “The Splendid Table” about making pasta in Bologna and the show was so delightful I wanted to drop everything and go to Italy.

Mulan has been listening to “Letting Go of God” – the song – the one that Jill Sobule sings (and you can download it from my homepage) and she asked me, “When she sings “Mary looked up yearning” what does that mean, like she looked up “yearning” like she looked up that word in the dictionary?” Absolutely serious, straight faced. Oh! That is awesome.