Love Diary about America's Sweethearts With Notting Hill Girls.

Given that I am paying out the nose for a piece of art I could not live without, a really great surrealist abstractionist ode to Holocaust Memory complete with a very haunting inscription, I haven't been indulging in two of my favorite pasttimes: drinking Irish whiskey at the pub and buying DVD's. So tonight, I went to Blockbuster and did something I very rarely do anymore. I bought some movies.

I was rather surprised by my selections, really. After all, I am an unabashed, unapologetic, male chauvinist pig-dog of a man. First off the pre-viewed rack was Pieces of April, a movie staring little Katie Holmes (wolf, baby, yeah!) of Dawson's Creek fame. It's about her family coming to Thanksgiving Dinner and how the entire event falls apart. Second grab, Big Fish, a romantic comedy staring Ewan McGregor. First two in the bag, off the special, impulse-buyer's table, I make a bee-line to the two-isle paradise of films that others have watched and returned many times. Right there, on the first endcap, Something's Gotta Give with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton. Into my hands it goes. Final decision is a toughy. I'm torn between three films: Calendar Girls, about a bunch of British women who take their knickers off to raise money for a dying friend; In America, which has the really cool chick from Minority Report; or Camp, about a drama camp. And, as I decide on Calendar Girls, I realize that I've bypassed the typical Sopranos-meets-Billy-Madison fare of movies today. And with this realization comes a horrible discovery: I am a fan of chick flicks.

I guess I've always known that, really. But I've never quite grasped the extent of my condition. As if having seen Love, Actually about thirty seven times, and Moulin Rouge one-hundred and thirty-nine wasn't enough of a clue, I scanned the shelves of DVDs at my house. We have America's Sweethearts, The American President, Bend It Like Beckham, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Down with Love, Dangerous Beauty, and the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. I could keep going but I won't. Suffice it to say that I have a ton of tear-jerker's as well.

I don't apologize for my taste in music, movies, or art. I just enjoy what I enjoy.

....And yes, I'm sure I'm not gay!

I'm sleeping on the couch.

Until further notice, I am sleeping on the sofa.

I'm not married. I don't have a significant other who has shooed me from my bed. Instead, I chose to sleep on the sofa because I think my house is haunted. By whom or what I know not. I just know that I hear noises. Every since I cleaned out the office and stored the stuff in the garage, doors inexpliably slam in the back of the house. Windows rattle. And this morning, I woke up to tapping on the wall. Or more expressly, *in* the wall.

I'm not a big believer in ghosts. Well, I guess in a way I am. I've seen one before, but it doesn't freak me out. I attribute the things to some yet-explained natural phenomenon. I saw her. And I knew what I was looking at.

Here in my hometown, there is an old home, a heavily-rennovated plantation house redesigned to look like a castle. About two years ago, while I was staying in an apartment there, a friend who also resided in the castle had a barbeque. A bunch of us were sitting on the lawn, watching the night bugs. When it started to rain, we moved the gathering to the inside of the porch. We were talking about music, politics, or some other such nonsense and I looked just outside the archway and there she was. Maybe six years old, wearing a white dress, curly hair trailing down to just past her shoulders. It had just stopped raining and she was just there, wondering who these strange people at her house were. Our gaze locked and I'll forever remember the look on her face, the bewilderment in her eyes, like she was seeing for the first time people from another race, country, and continent. She was the Indian and I was the explorer at the moment of that first, wholy unexpected first contact. I glanced away to point her out to everyone and when I turned back, she was gone. The only evidence of her ever being there was the bone-dry patch of sidewalk...right beneath a rainspout. The rest of the sidewalk was drenched from the rain. But that one spot, where the girl stood, was as dry as a rock in the Arizona Desert during a drought.

It's one thing to see a ghost outside the place where you're staying. It's wholy another to have one in the bedroom of your home. Tap tap tap, it goes on the wall outside my house. Slam it goes with the door or rattlerattle rattle at the window. On more than one occasion I've heard it cough. On a couple, footsteps.

Luckily, it hasn't ventured beyond the door to the hall. So I'll just stay in the living room until I determine the proper course of action. Any suggestions in dealing with spectral phenomenon, please email advice to: michaeldevault@techbroker.com

md