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Sunday September 24, 2000
"There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any over-large concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause." P.J. O'Rourke, Parliamnent of Whores
newly-discovered neighborhood art |
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biorhythm for physical dexterity hits low The promised cooler weather has not quite arrived. The eXtreme team sets out for Hyde Park. It's a little hot and humid, but not as bad as Friday. We actually wander some new streets. Some streets near IH35 and east of Red River and some new ones north of 45th. Well, new to us. It's nice to go someplace the team hasn't been, ambling down streets doing house, remodeling and landscape critic imitations. We see some (amateur?) yard art that I've never photographed because of this straying. Who is to say who is an amateur, of course? We bypass sitting outside with a cup of coffee. I've been stumbling along, at a physical low. Repeated tangles occurred for the eXtreme team and Chalow tied a knot around a pole at one point. Chalow is full of burrs and leaves, a general mess. I shower up and dive into doing a few fun and needed things around the house. FFP and I test out the tripod we bought for the video set-up. It's been out of the box with the instructions spread out for days. Weeks maybe. After we make a test video with camera on tripod of me explaining some of the junk on my guest room shelves, we pack it all away for another time. (I realize that I should pack away most of the junk on those shelves, too!) I decide that the way to get ready to travel is to clean out my two travel drawers and sort out things I actually use so they are convenient to grab. I end up with neat piles of travel size shampoo, band-aids and other supplies in the guest room drawers. I find two lost dual-voltage travel hair dryers. I have a choice of three sizes, all probably equally ineffectual when used at higher current. I find the tiny umbrella that I can carry as a talisman against rain. I put things like a never used travel poncho and shoulder straps replaced by Eagle Creek Ultimate straps in a drawer of interesting but unused stuff. I get all the shoe 'socks' and packing containers into neat piles. Now if I can just sort out my clothes to locate them quickly, I think I can pack for any trip in short order. (Especially given the patented LB master packing list, a WORD document that I customize for each trip from the master and then print out in three columns of six point type on one sheet so that I actually know what I did pack.) I give my wrist another treatment of heat and FFP gives me a hand and foot massge. While transferring my pampered selfishness to the couch, I manage to spill an entire cup of coffee and stub my toe. A low day physically, for sure. Of course, I always try to do too many things at once, carry too many things. I try to stop doing that but after 52 years I guess it's just my unrelenting desire to be a klutz. It begins to rain and the temperature drops. We get into suits and take off for a Austin Lyric Opera donors' party. It is at a lovely home in Lost Creek. We've been there enough times that we are no longer awed by the size and the paintings and merely walk around knowingly. We are early and we chat with the caterer's staff, all of whom we seem to know. A concert is given with three of the young artists from ALO. They are great. A cup of coffee, a little more chatting with friends and we visit on the porch while waiting for the valets to get many cars. Everyone is energized by the cool and happy with the rain.
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