a calmer approach

So, yeah, some of my weird attitude has diminished. But still I'm not in the best of moods. And my knees hurt. It's just the usual aches and strains of old age, I'm sure. I was wiping some water off the floor using the time-honored 'paper towel under shoe' technique. I twisted one of them a little. Nothing serious but it hurt a little through the day. And the other knee in sympathy.

I didn't do the lower body mahcines after my workout (which I'd intended to do) because the machines were occupied by one of these infernal classes. (All the ladies no doubt drive giant SUVs, too. Geez.)

After my workout today I go home and shower and dress. I pick up my dad for lunch and we pick up SuRu and go to The Cheescake Factory. Just to say I had. I have a tuna burger. It is fine and they cooked it like I said (rare) and the fries are good and they brought mustard when I asked. Dad has a burger which was on a long roll cut in half and looks like two burgers. SuRu had biscuits and gravy and it looks like a double portion, too. In fact, she takes exactly half home. Only mine looks normal size. Since it's the Cheesecake Factory, we split an original one. It was good but expensive (6 or 7 bucks, I think). Overall, the place is expensive. It is SuRu's turn to pay and I feel bad but not so bad that I don't have a coffee ($2.25) with the cheesecake. Maybe The Four Seasons charges more for coffee. Possibly. The food was a little long in coming, too. There is a crowd waiting for the experience when we leave. I don't get it, I guess. Anyway, it was fine but I wouldn't stand in line for it.

Dad and I sort through the contents of some drawers and removed material scraps into a box for me to give to a quilter. (Some of the material isn't really scraps but material for a complete outfit along with zipper and buttons and thread. Some of this stuff Mom had been keeping a while, I think.) I also find a few things for the thrift store and Dad finds some candles he will take to church. The result is a few empty drawers in the guest room so guests could use them. The closet still has boxes and stuff but there is hanging space also. We just have to deal with this stuff a bit at a time. I borrow three tablecloths from Dad for possible use next weekend for our benefit. He says he won't be using them. I can keep them. He still has plastic cloths from his New Year's party on the table but says he will take them off soon.

I sign a paper for one of his accounts and I'm off.

I got to Sam's with the ostensible purpose of getting a small fire safe for Forrest's parents. They had these once, I think. Not today as far as I could tell. I pick up some other stuff like dryer sheets, tuna fish, cheese, blank video tape. Then I go to Office Max and they have two small sizes of fire safe and I phone FFP while looking at them so he can decide. I pick up some fax paper, too, for him.

Home again, I unpack this stuff. Work a little on the interminable office cleanup.

FFP and I have catfish and salad for dinner. Fish day for me. This is breaded with cornmeal and condensed milk. The salad is spinach, green onions, tomato, broccoli and cauliflower with whatever scraps of salad dressing we found in the frig. (We are trying to sort through the condiments.)

We watchWho Wants to be a Millionaire? while eating. I fool with my office until eight (watching a couple of old M*A*S*H episodes while doing it) and am diappointed to find that CSI is a rerun. I think Without a Trace is, too, but I didn't remember it at first like maybe I'd seen the second half or something. We are in bed early. I don't know, it seems like another wasted day. Somewhere in there I fooled around with password protection for viswoman.com, I surfed for this and that, I finished my book (Paris to the Moon).

Whatever you have to do, it blows up to fill the time. When I get something accomplished, I don't necessarily feel that good about it. One thing I'm finding, though, is that spending lots more time at home has meant that my desire for new stuff and for keeping stuff is diminishing. I guess it's being surrounded by the mess all the time. Maybe it's trying to clean it out.