I got the car back from the shop and it looks pretty damn good. They detailed it as well ... I should have timed the accident when it really needed a good wash and wax, but I’ll take what I can get. They even shampooed the mats.

Now, about me. I’ve had this bronchitis thing going on for a while. I first went to the doctor on New Year’s Eve and he gave me a round of Biaxin XL and sent me on my way. Two weeks later I was still wheezing, so I went back and he put me on Advair and some Allegra to keep things from irritating me (yeah, like Allegra works on all irritants!).

Well, another couple of weeks and I get this horrible pain in my chest. At first it’s just behind my shoulder blades and I chalk it up to sleeping in the wrong position. But then it moves over to my left side and gets bigger and pretty much makes breathing rather painful. So, back to the doctor. He does chest X-rays to rule out pneumonia and pleurisy and they come out clear. So he says that I’ve probably just trashed those muscles from all the coughing and I should stop that. He puts me on another round of antibiotics (Zithromax) and this time I have to accept a cough suppressant - Phenergan. Now, I’m not one for taking narcotics. He offered me codeine, and I know most folks jump at the chance to get some codeine, but not me, it makes me nervous and anxious. So he gives me Phenergan, which as far as I can tell, is an anti-vomiting and general knockout drug.

That’s good, because I’m under doctors orders to get more sleep. He said nine or ten hours a night. Well, a spoonful of this stuff at nine each night and I’m out by ten and could go until ten the next morning. I haven’t been at the office much, mostly because I’m taking this stuff and I shouldn’t drive, and even when I’m there I’m either complaining about how much it hurts when I breath or totally zonked off my ass with the hangover this creates.

We’ll see how the next few days go. The worst news about all this is that I can’t see myself being ready to train again until March at the earliest, which means the LA Marathon is out of the realm of possibility. Oh well. There’s always a marathon somewhere. There’s no reason I can’t train for the one in Santa Clarita or maybe Big Bear.

I left my car at Moden Auto Body on Monday. I’m riding around in a Dodge Stratus ... which I wouldn’t really consider an approximate replacement for the Prius, but hey, the insurance is covering it.

See it as it happens.

So, I’m cruising around the ‘net looking at other blogs. I’m trying to figure out what other bloggers have that I don’t. You know, they post all the time, they say clever things and have multiple entries on one day. They look like they have interesting observations and they’re not afraid of sharing them. But I’ve also noticed that a lot of it is filler. There are the people that put a picture of the book they’re reading… is it a picture book? won’t the title do? They put little pictures of everything up, the CD in their player, a little pixie that is supposed to tell us what the weather is like where the blogger is. They take a lot of quizzes, and post the results. They answer a lot of questions ... Friday Five, Thursday Threesome.

I’m just not able to do those things on a regular basis and I wonder if that makes me a bad blogger. Sometimes I don’t think I’m a blogger at all. I have a blog. I keep a blog. Just like I write novels, that doesn’t make me a novelists. I write plays, good plays, and that makes me a playwright.

What’s the difference, and why do I care?

So, the new car is great. I love it. I love just about everything about it.

It’s attractive.

It’s so damn attractive it compelled a couch to come off of some car ahead of me on the 5 north just past the 170 merge. There I was, second lane from the left and it was tumbling towards me. I couldn’t change lanes, as it was taking up part of the #3 and some other car was in #1. So I took it on the chin. Well, Dyna (what I named the car) took it on the passenger side fender. It’s not a serious blow, but will require more work that a bottle of rubbing compound.

I think I’m taking it well. After all, I’ve had the car only a scant month and I’ve already messed it up. But I’m grateful that I didn’t hit anyone else and that Brett (in the car with me) and I are fine. And the car was driveable.

But I have yet to go to the body shop and get the real news.

I’ve decided that the repairs will take an inordinate amount of time and I will have to live with the dent so I’m going to name it. Dyna, meet Dent, Arthur Dent.

Because I’m not clever enough to have a page about me, this is just an entry about me. Unlike all the other entries on this blog that only pretend to be about me.

I am: happily married
I drive: a 2004 Prius
I am: liberal
I live: in Los Angeles
I react to: bee stings
I use: a PC
I type: 70 wpm
I am: the middle child
I have: one dog
I have: two blue eyes
I play: Scrabble online
I have: no tattoos
I have: two piercings - one in each earlobe
I like: chocolate, licorice, coffee (the dark flavors)
I earned: a BA
I earned: an MFA
I eat: candy, often to the exclusion of meals
I have: lived in three states (Pennsylvania, Ohio and California)
I lettered: in swimming in high school
I deny: that I know how to use PowerPoint
I read: non-fiction
I drink: at times
I prefer: gin
I love: mangoes
I vote
I walk
I sleep
I can’t sleep
I write: plays, first drafts of novels, emails, blog entries, photo captions, synopses, biographies, loglines, drafts, notes, about me.

Yes, when everything’s new, you feel like there are so many more possiblities.

New kitchen means that I can be organized and change my lifestyle into one of productivity and hospitality.

New car means I can drive with less guilt. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to drive more.

This of course rubs off on other parts of my life. Once again I am starting on The Artist’s Way program for myself. This means a bit of whiny journaling (called morning pages) and some other exercises. The goal is to dislodge those things that keep me from my writing life. Let’s face it, I’ve got the time to get things done, we all know that I can write really, really fast, so there’s no reason that I can’t conservatively churn out a play a year. But I don’t and I need to work through why that is and change it.

I used to think my lack of productivity was okay. There was still plenty of time. But there really isn’t. And even if there is, and half the stuff I write is crap, shouldn’t there be more of my stuff, so more would be good stuff?