The Visible Woman...April 26, 2003

aspects of the weekend

I don't want to get up. FFP doesn't feel he has to get up. It is Saturday. Meaningless if you are retired, you might think. But not so, really. Other people work. Not just FFP. The whole world works to a rhythm and, one way or the other, it honosr Saturday and Sunday differently than the rest of the week. Even people who work on the weekend, mark it differently. Lacking employment and religion, I still feel it. We need to divide our time into night and day, spring and summer, fall and winter, and into chunks of responsibility, leisure, etc. We invented the clock to fine tune this need which maybe helped our species survive.

We finally get up, a little after eight. That's late for us. Let the dog out, feed the dog, get the papers, have coffee, brush teeth, find hat to cover goofy hair.

I work on this very journal a little. FFP goes to the club. I want to get in sync. I take my own car but go soon after. I just ride the bike for 45 minutes. He's already gone home to shower. After I've showered we go out to eat. We end up at New World Deli. Here's how: first we think we will try Maudie's because everyone at Westwood is always talking about Maudie's. The parking lot is full when we arrive. The tiny place is packed. It's greasy Mexican. People's food we pass by doesn't look that appetizing. (By the way, I mentioned Tres Amigos last night but not the pile of chips, enchilada, guacamole and queso I had. And the Dos Equis. Yikes! Perhaps that is why I don't have my mouth set for Maudie's this morning.)

An older woman sitting on the patio asks us if she should go inside to pay.

"We don't know. We've never been here," FFP answers.

We look inside. "Want to go someplace else?" I ask.

"Yes," he says.

As we get in the car (which we had to park on the street) I say, "It looks like a place people would go because they are too lazy to go to east or south Austin."

"You read my mind," says himself. Yeah, I always do.

So we still don't know from Maudie's. FFP suggest Cisco's. (This place, on the east side, was the site of our wedding day breakfast. I'm not kidding. Haven't been there in a long while, though. Rudy Cisneros was probably alive last time we went. Maybe not.) I suggest (kidding, almost, not) Four Seasons and FFP suggests Threadgill's. He mentions the new place Zin in our neighborhood. We don't know if it will be open on a Saturday at noon, but we decide to try. Meanwhile Central Market, 34th Street Deli, and New World Deli have been thrown into consideration. We drive by Zin. They aren't open but have a sign for Sunday brunch.

By then, New World has won the competition somehow. I am thinking a Reuben but I actually have a half curry chicken sandwich (which is, trust me, a whole sandwich) and tortilla soup and FFP has some broccoli-cheese soup and a curry chicken salad. It's good. I drink water and more water. I'm feeling very thirsty.

We think we will go to Half Price but they are having a tent sale and the place is overrun with cars and people. We decide against it and decide to go to Book People.

I have trouble relaxing. There is always this urgency coming from somewhere. But I succeed in relaxing a little, just walking around the first floor of the store, looking at new issues, bargain books, gifts, magazines. I don't buy anything. Probably because I saw about four books I want to read and have waiting on the shelves at home. FFP picks up some little freebie magazine.

All this driving around, going places and not going to them, gives us ample opportunity to bitch about Austin's interminable road work blocking paths we like to take. We also get to see what people are up to around town. We pass close to Pease Park and it is Eeyore's birthday and, if you've ever lived here, you know it didn't surprise us to see a body with a giant eye on its shoulders walking down the street. There was also something called flugtag (flight day in German) going on where contraptions 'fly' (or fall) into Town Lake. We didn't see any evidence of that but I read about it in the paper. We did see that the tent sale (all tomes therein were one buck, I think) had attracted hoards and those hoards were walking away with many books. Austin is weird, why in the world would we need a campaign to keep it that way?

At home, we find Dad reading our papers. He has come over to get the e-mails I've printed for him, I'm sure. Or just to have some place to go. I get us some water, get him the printouts of the long e-mails. (They are from his friend in Germany; it's a journal she posts to friends and family.) We settle in the living room. I climb in my old easy chair, the one I relaxed in for many years before THE ROOM became our common hangout. I read all the day's papers. Of course, it is Saturday which means that there is no Wall Street Journal and that the papers aren't so fat. And, of course, I really scan them mostly. I go to my office and get some aging papers and read those, too. This is the relaxing kind of reading I hoped retirement would hold but it mostly doesn't.

Dad is reading the journals. He's not wearing his hearing aids. Says he forgot. He says his sister called from Maine. He gets a little choke in his voice talking about a cousin who has died. (I think she's a cousin. Some aging relative.) I'll hear this same little hitch in his delivery when he calls later to tell me that a friend of theirs in Mesquite is ending dialysis and, therefore, shortly will end life. He's calling me about it because we are entertaining his friends tomorrow who also used to live in Mesquite and the woman has gone there to see this friend. Dad is getting lonely, I think, and is sometimes sad. He uses each little tragedy of friends and family to let go some sadness. I understand that. I sat through four services in two weeks last September and my grief at each was all mixed up with all the people and the sadness we all have to get through in life.

Dad says, about forgetting his hearing aids, "There is no one there to talk to and I forget." We will go on a trip in another month. I'm spend some of this month over there, helping pack up some of Mom's things. He'll get through it.

After Dad goes home I go into my office. The mail comes. Nothing much. Another proxy statement. This one from Southwest Airlines. I decide not to vote this one, even though I could do so online. We fool ourselves, I think, to think shareholders have a say. Especially if you are like us and own only one hundred or a few hundred shares. But maybe we should all rise up and have a shareholder revolution. But then we have to do something more than gamble with our investments which, at the end of the day, not many of us are willing to do. I had to go back and check that we actually did own LUV (Southwest's symbol) and, yep, we do. I'd forgotten.

I read a few more sections of old newspapers from my piles. These piles are rich with things I want to read because I often discard the front page, sports, business sections and save the sections on arts and travel and technology plus the Metro/State of the local paper which has the obits. I like obits. (See below.)

John (our putative son) calls. He's touring Napa Valley and wants to know the name of Texas wineries featured in the wine tasting we took him to the other day. "Llano Estacado, " I say. I forget that Fall Creek was there, too. He also says he and his son are going to come over in a couple of weekends and build me a new computer system. I want a new system to make back-ups to and to try some new software on and gradually get off this system and upgrade it (OS and memory and stuff). We will see. My son is a tinkerer and his son probably is, too. [Ed. note: Ms. Ball is really childless regardless of what this man says when you meet him around Austin. In fact, she is not old enough, shut up, to be this man's mother. Nevertheless, it will be Mother's Day soon.]

Cirque du Soleil. Allegria. Austin. In my capacity as social chairperson for SuRu, Gayle and FFP I have secured expensive tickets for tonight's performance. SuRu paid for hers. I offered to make it Gayle's birthday present. I always agonize over presents for her. She thought it was great. Her birthday is some time away. I may forget by then and she might get another.

These tickets are allegedly good seats and you get some grub and drinks before, a program, intermission desserts (and drinks), VIP bathrooms (only we didn't discover this until three of our party had waited with the masses) and a 'free gift.' Everyone assembles at our house and SuRu drives us. There is no VIP parking that goes with the tickets. It's five bucks and we will find out on exiting that it will take a while to escape.

We get tags to let us into the VIP room where sushi, dips, chunks of roast beef and other hor d'oeuvres are on offer, passed or on tables. There is wine and stuff, too. And an array of expensive souvenirs for sale. The staff is cheerful and generous in pouring wine and champagne and stuff. The food is pretty good. Certainly not the popcorn and crap the masses are paying for (six dollars for beer?). I have a few drinks of the bubbly (not really champagne, of course) and eat a bunch of different hors d'oeuvres.

We get programs (SuRu finds out they would be $12 outside with the masses) and squeeze into our tiny seats. The seats are designed for the tiny gymnasts that are in the show, I think. No, maybe the contortionist! Nevertheless, the show is pretty enjoyable although during the swings stuff, I think I'll get a crick in my neck looking up but the alcohol helps in that regard.

The first act ends with a clown sequence snow storm that blows little pieces of paper all over the tent. Brushing these off we head for the desserts. Gayle and I have water even though the alcohol is still on offer. SuRu has some bubbly, FFP some white wine. I have a tiny cheesecake square, tasty and my idea of the right amount of dessert. The others are more into desserts and have several. We discuss our favorite stuff and mine, so far, is a gymnast deal where they reveal a rubber X in the floor and combined with mats do amazing acrobatics.

The second half builds dramatically, of course, and there is high swinging by burly acrobats and stuff.

During the contortionist act, I was reminded of the cheap circus I attended on one or the other or both of my trips to Moscow. There a contortionist folded herself into a box about two feet square. These people would do well sitting in these tiny circus audience seats or flying on aircraft.

We pick up our free gift. (The theme of Allegria has something to do with lights and lanterns and the gift is a lantern that holds a votice. I suppose the pair FFP and I got will make a nice table display for a party or a contribution to the thrift store at some point.)

We creep out of the parking lot. (If you are going to something at the old airport where everyone leaves at once, bring a picnic for the exit. Only we are full of the 'free' food and don't need it.)

By the time we are swinging toward Manor (oh, the memories of the old airport) we see people boarding a bus...the performers in street clothes waving at the cars as they go by.

Was it worth the $165 a piece for this show? Probably not, but it was fun. A circus without animals and just with gymnasts and clowns and fire eaters and costumes is really a brilliant idea. I don't think I'll become a Cirque du Soleil groupie though. If I were in Vegas, I might try to see O or Mystère. Because, if I were in Vegas, I'd be looking hard for fine dining or shows. Gambling isn't my cup of tea. I might also be looking for photo ops if I were there because when I last was there (2000?) I found they weren't doing much 'no photo' enforcement and there are certainly lots of digital photo ops.

Back home I sit in front of the computer, surfing a little and then go to bed. I'm feeling a little fuzzy...must be the bubbly.

I've been forgetting to mention an obituary I clipped from The New York Times back in January. Marcel Jovine died. His main claim to fame was producing the Visible Man and Visible Woman toys that inspired the title of this journal.

I'm at this stage of my workout regimen and activity schedule where I feel strong sometimes, sometimes fat and weak. I sweat like hell on that exercise bike. but don't feel I've upped the intenstity of the aerobic stuff lately. I can play tennis without much tiredness or soreness (although doubles is kind of a cake walk). I don't get weary climbing stairs as much. When I worked, I used to climb the one or two flights to get from floor to floor in the building where I worked. It never got any easier but I thought it expended a few calories. Now that I do some 'continuous' aerobic work, climbing a couple of flights feels easier and after a really steep hill or something on a walk, my breathing returns to normal very quickly.

So why do I mention this? I don't know, seven months of working out...I'm just thinking I should see results. My weight, however, is seriously leveling off. It's clear that I'll have to really diet to weigh less than this. My body shape has changed a little with developing some muscles, yes. But not much. The look is pretty much still fat, just a small amount less. The question is: what do I want to weigh? I'm thinking that it would be nice to get to 155 (about twelve pounds more, about the amount I've lost already, lost again). I suppose that I should try to do it slowly so take the next seven months to do it. After losing some, the next similar amount is much harder. I should probably consider cutting down on the alcohol, chips and cheese consumption. Hmmm...where do I have a reservation tomorrow? Fonda San Miguel. Brunch. Guaranteed to sate. Guaranteed to put on a pound or two. Sigh.

circus nostalgia

"I'm not big on adversity, but I'm lucky that the adversity I've had has somehow worked out well for me. "

Dr. Sherwin Nuland (born Nudelman) quoted in The New York Times February 27, 2003

JUST TYPING
whatever

			aspects of the weekend I don't want to get up. FFP doesn't feel he has to get up. It is Saturday. Meaningless if you are retired, you might think. But not so, really. Other people work. Not just FFP. The whole world works to a rhythm and, one way or the other, it honosr Saturday and Sunday differently than the rest of the week. Even people who work on the weekend, mark it differently. Lacking employment and religion, I still feel it. We need to divide our time into night and day, spring and summer, fall and winter, and into chunks of responsibility, leisure, etc. We invented the clock to fine tune this need which maybe helped our species survive. We finally get up, a little after eight. That's late for us. Let the dog out, feed the dog, get the papers, have coffee, brush teeth, find hat to cover goofy hair. I work on this very journal a little. FFP goes to the club. I want to get in sync. I take my own car but go soon after. I just ride the bike for 45 minutes. He's already gone home to shower. After I've showered we go out to eat. We end up at New World Deli. Here's how: first we think we will try Maudie's because everyone at Westwood is always talking about Maudie's. The parking lot is full when we arrive. The tiny place is packed. It's greasy Mexican. People's food we pass by doesn't look that appetizing. (By the way, I mentioned Tres Amigos last night but not the pile of chips, enchilada, guacamole and queso I had. And the Dos Equis. Yikes! Perhaps that is why I don't have my mouth set for Maudie's this morning.) An older woman sitting on the patio asks us if she should go inside to pay. "We don't know. We've never been here," FFP answers. We look inside. "Want to go someplace else?" I ask. "Yes," he says. As we get in the car (which we had to park on the street) I say, "It looks like a place people would go because they are too lazy to go to east or south Austin." "You read my mind," says himself. Yeah, I always do. So we still don't know from Maudie's. FFP suggest Cisco's. (This place, on the east side, was the site of our wedding day breakfast. I'm not kidding. Haven't been there in a long while, though. Rudy Cisneros was probably alive last time we went. Maybe not.) I suggest (kidding, almost, not) Four Seasons and FFP suggests Threadgill's. He mentions the new place Zin in our neighborhood. We don't know if it will be open on a Saturday at noon, but we decide to try. Meanwhile Central Market, 34th Street Deli, and New World Deli have been thrown into consideration. We drive by Zin. They aren't open but have a sign for Sunday brunch. By then, New World has won the competition somehow. I am thinking a Reuben but I actually have a half curry chicken sandwich (which is, trust me, a whole sandwich) and tortilla soup and FFP has some broccoli-cheese soup and a curry chicken salad. It's good. I drink water and more water. I'm feeling very thirsty. We think we will go to Half Price but they are having a tent sale and the place is overrun with cars and people. We decide against it and decide to go to Book People. I have trouble relaxing. There is always this urgency coming from somewhere. But I succeed in relaxing a little, just walking around the first floor of the store, looking at new issues, bargain books, gifts, magazines. I don't buy anything. Probably because I saw about four books I want to read and have waiting on the shelves at home. FFP picks up some little freebie magazine. All this driving around, going places and not going to them, gives us ample opportunity to bitch about Austin's interminable road work blocking paths we like to take. We also get to see what people are up to around town. We pass close to Pease Park and it is Eeyore's birthday and, if you've ever lived here, you know it didn't surprise us to see a body with a giant eye on its shoulders walking down the street. There was also something called flugtag (flight day in German) going on where contraptions 'fly' (or fall) into Town Lake. We didn't see any evidence of that but I read about it in the paper. We did see that the tent sale (all tomes therein were one buck, I think) had attracted hoards and those hoards were walking away with many books. Austin is weird, why in the world would we need a campaign to keep it that way? At home, we find Dad reading our papers. He has come over to get the e-mails I've printed for him, I'm sure. Or just to have some place to go. I get us some water, get him the printouts of the long e-mails. (They are from his friend in Germany; it's a journal she posts to friends and family.) We settle in the living room. I climb in my old easy chair, the one I relaxed in for many years before THE ROOM became our common hangout. I read all the day's papers. Of course, it is Saturday which means that there is no Wall Street Journal and that the papers aren't so fat. And, of course, I really scan them mostly. I go to my office and get some aging papers and read those, too. This is the relaxing kind of reading I hoped retirement would hold but it mostly doesn't. Dad is reading the journals. He's not wearing his hearing aids. Says he forgot. He says his sister called from Maine. He gets a little choke in his voice talking about a cousin who has died. (I think she's a cousin. Some aging relative.) I'll hear this same little hitch in his delivery when he calls later to tell me that a friend of theirs in Mesquite is ending dialysis and, therefore, shortly will end life. He's calling me about it because we are entertaining his friends tomorrow who also used to live in Mesquite and the woman has gone there to see this friend. Dad is getting lonely, I think, and is sometimes sad. He uses each little tragedy of friends and family to let go some sadness. I understand that. I sat through four services in two weeks last September and my grief at each was all mixed up with all the people and the sadness we all have to get through in life. Dad says, about forgetting his hearing aids, "There is no one there to talk to and I forget." We will go on a trip in another month. I'm spend some of this month over there, helping pack up some of Mom's things. He'll get through it. After Dad goes home I go into my office. The mail comes. Nothing much. Another proxy statement. This one from Southwest Airlines. I decide not to vote this one, even though I could do so online. We fool ourselves, I think, to think shareholders have a say. Especially if you are like us and own only one hundred or a few hundred shares. But maybe we should all rise up and have a shareholder revolution. But then we have to do something more than gamble with our investments which, at the end of the day, not many of us are willing to do. I had to go back and check that we actually did own LUV (Southwest's symbol) and, yep, we do. I'd forgotten. I read a few more sections of old newspapers from my piles. These piles are rich with things I want to read because I often discard the front page, sports, business sections and save the sections on arts and travel and technology plus the Metro/State of the local paper which has the obits. I like obits. (See below.) John (our putative son) calls. He's touring Napa Valley and wants to know the name of Texas wineries featured in the wine tasting we took him to the other day. "Llano Estacado, " I say. I forget that Fall Creek was there, too. He also says he and his son are going to come over in a couple of weekends and build me a new computer system. I want a new system to make back-ups to and to try some new software on and gradually get off this system and upgrade it (OS and memory and stuff). We will see. My son is a tinkerer and his son probably is, too. [Ed. note: Ms. Ball is really childless regardless of what this man says when you meet him around Austin. In fact, she is not old enough, shut up, to be this man's mother. Nevertheless, it will be Mother's Day soon.] Cirque du Soleil. Allegria. Austin. In my capacity as social chairperson for SuRu, Gayle and FFP I have secured expensive tickets for tonight's performance. SuRu paid for hers. I offered to make it Gayle's birthday present. I always agonize over presents for her. She thought it was great. Her birthday is some time away. I may forget by then and she might get another. These tickets are allegedly good seats and you get some grub and drinks before, a program, intermission desserts (and drinks), VIP bathrooms (only we didn't discover this until three of our party had waited with the masses) and a 'free gift.' Everyone assembles at our house and SuRu drives us. There is no VIP parking that goes with the tickets. It's five bucks and we will find out on exiting that it will take a while to escape. We get tags to let us into the VIP room where sushi, dips, chunks of roast beef and other hor d'oeuvres are on offer, passed or on tables. There is wine and stuff, too. And an array of expensive souvenirs for sale. The staff is cheerful and generous in pouring wine and champagne and stuff. The food is pretty good. Certainly not the popcorn and crap the masses are paying for (six dollars for beer?). I have a few drinks of the bubbly (not really champagne, of course) and eat a bunch of different hors d'oeuvres. We get programs (SuRu finds out they would be $12 outside with the masses) and squeeze into our tiny seats. The seats are designed for the tiny gymnasts that are in the show, I think. No, maybe the contortionist! Nevertheless, the show is pretty enjoyable although during the swings stuff, I think I'll get a crick in my neck looking up but the alcohol helps in that regard. The first act ends with a clown sequence snow storm that blows little pieces of paper all over the tent. Brushing these off we head for the desserts. Gayle and I have water even though the alcohol is still on offer. SuRu has some bubbly, FFP some white wine. I have a tiny cheesecake square, tasty and my idea of the right amount of dessert. The others are more into desserts and have several. We discuss our favorite stuff and mine, so far, is a gymnast deal where they reveal a rubber X in the floor and combined with mats do amazing acrobatics. The second half builds dramatically, of course, and there is high swinging by burly acrobats and stuff. During the contortionist act, I was reminded of the cheap circus I attended on one or the other or both of my trips to Moscow. There a contortionist folded herself into a box about two feet square. These people would do well sitting in these tiny circus audience seats or flying on aircraft. We pick up our free gift. (The theme of Allegria has something to do with lights and lanterns and the gift is a lantern that holds a votice. I suppose the pair FFP and I got will make a nice table display for a party or a contribution to the thrift store at some point.) We creep out of the parking lot. (If you are going to something at the old airport where everyone leaves at once, bring a picnic for the exit. Only we are full of the 'free' food and don't need it.) By the time we are swinging toward Manor (oh, the memories of the old airport) we see people boarding a bus...the performers in street clothes waving at the cars as they go by. Was it worth the $165 a piece for this show? Probably not, but it was fun. A circus without animals and just with gymnasts and clowns and fire eaters and costumes is really a brilliant idea. I don't think I'll become a Cirque du Soleil groupie though. If I were in Vegas, I might try to see O or Mystère. Because, if I were in Vegas, I'd be looking hard for fine dining or shows. Gambling isn't my cup of tea. I might also be looking for photo ops if I were there because when I last was there (2000?) I found they weren't doing much 'no photo' enforcement and there are certainly lots of digital photo ops. Back home I sit in front of the computer, surfing a little and then go to bed. I'm feeling a little fuzzy...must be the bubbly. I've been forgetting to mention an obituary I clipped from The New York Times back in January. Marcel Jovine died. His main claim to fame was producing the Visible Man and Visible Woman toys that inspired the title of this journal. I'm at this stage of my workout regimen and activity schedule where I feel strong sometimes, sometimes fat and weak. I sweat like hell on that exercise bike. but don't feel I've upped the intenstity of the aerobic stuff lately. I can play tennis without much tiredness or soreness (although doubles is kind of a cake walk). I don't get weary climbing stairs as much. When I worked, I used to climb the one or two flights to get from floor to floor in the building where I worked. It never got any easier but I thought it expended a few calories. Now that I do some 'continuous' aerobic work, climbing a couple of flights feels easier and after a really steep hill or something on a walk, my breathing returns to normal very quickly. So why do I mention this? I don't know, seven months of working out...I'm just thinking I should see results. My weight, however, is seriously leveling off. It's clear that I'll have to really diet to weigh less than this. My body shape has changed a little with developing some muscles, yes. But not much. The look is pretty much still fat, just a small amount less. The question is: what do I want to weigh? I'm thinking that it would be nice to get to 155 (about twelve pounds more, about the amount I've lost already, lost again). I suppose that I should try to do it slowly so take the next seven months to do it. After losing some, the next similar amount is much harder. I should probably consider cutting down on the alcohol, chips and cheese consumption. Hmmm...where do I have a reservation tomorrow? Fonda San Miguel. Brunch. Guaranteed to sate. Guaranteed to put on a pound or two. Sigh.
	circus nostalgia "I'm not big on adversity, but I'm lucky that the adversity I've had has somehow worked out well for me. " Dr. Sherwin Nuland (born Nudelman) quoted in The New York Times February 27, 2003

	JUST TYPING whatever