AUSTIN, Texas, May 31, 2004 —Haven't finished Normandy The Real Story and probably won't before the trip. Read a little book Ludqig Wittgenstein On Certainty on the exercise bike. Just thoughts collected in notebooks and edited and translated by a couple of scholars. This stuff is useful for the idea of (one of my never to be written except in my head) screenplays. Read some stuff about Paris and the Impressionists. Read the papers. Good article series in NY Times about the average citizens of Las Vegas.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 28, 2004 —Normandy The Real Story: How Ordinary Allied Soldiers Defeated Hitler on the bike. Newspapers. My Normandy Green Michelin which I won't take but I'll review before going.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 28, 2004 — Finished Ten Days Until D-Day. Started another book, Normandy The Real Story: How Ordinary Allied Soldiers Defeated Hitler. This one has a Canadian bent but quotes all sides and national origins.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 27, 2004 — Ten Days Until D-Day. Newspapers.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 25, 2004 —
Still reading Ten Days Until D-Day. Newspapers. Some guidebooks.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 24, 2004 —
Still reading Ten Days Until D-Day. Newspapers.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 23, 2004 —
Ten Days Until D-Day. Newspapers. Interesting article about people eating dirt cakes and grasshoppers and ant hills and leather (after days of soaking the tanning stuff out of it). We all read this while watching the kids not eat their pizza arond the pool. You have to keep things in perspective.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 22, 2004 —
Ten Days Until D-Day. Some Paris guide info. Newspapers.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 21, 2004 —
Ten Days Until D-Day. Some Paris guide info. Newspapers.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 20, 2004 —
Ten Days Until D-Day. Some Paris guide info. Sunday's The New York Times magazine. Other newspapers.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 19, 2004 —
Newspapers. Tony Randall died. Great obituary in the NY Times. Ten Days Until D-Day. This book skips back and forth among people preparing for D-Day. It may be the last book I read before I go that is just D-Day stuff. I may start concentrating on guidebooks and such for the areas we will visit this summer. It will be interesting to see what I read when we come back from France. I am planning a trip to Dublin, though, so maybe some guidebooks and, um, a bit of James Joyce? I read in the papers, by the way, that people in corporations are using time in meetings to e-mail on their phones or PDAs about other topics, doodle, write thank you notes. Yeah, I used to make 'to do' lists for unrelated work stuff or personal stuff, doodle, draw diagrams of potential solutions to programming problems, and read and correct technical papers or presentations off topic. I'm sure there were other things I did, too, like dreaming of lunch.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 18, 2004 —
Newspapers. Ten Days Until D-Day.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 17, 2004 —
Almost no reading today. Didn't even finish the papers.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 16, 2004 —
newspapers

AUSTIN, Texas, May 15, 2004 —
Finished The Fighting First, read newspapers. Started a book by David Stafford called Ten Days Until D-Day. Although it's more than ten days until the anniversary, it is getting close. Although this 2003 copyright book claims, like The Fighting First to be sort of an untold story, I don't know about that but it uses diaries in order to get a read 'you were there' feel.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 14, 2004 —
The Fighting First, newspapers. (There sure are lots of pictures of Brad Pitt in the entertainment sections these days. Indeed, with Cannes and the summer movies coming out, the entertainment sections are chock full of stories about movies I probably won't find time to see. I am determined to catch Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes, though. Because a film that gets an R rating and is just about people drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes cannot be bad. In fact, the rating is explained as follows: "It has some strong language and condones the use of tobacco.")

AUSTIN, Texas, May 13, 2004 —
The Fighting First, newspapers.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 12, 2004 —
The Fighting First, newspapers, some of a Normandy Green Guide.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 11, 2004 —
The Fighting First, newspapers, more WWII stuff and Paris stuff.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 10, 2004 —
The Fighting First, newspapers. Also some of the Normandy Green Guide and some of a course book for the UT extension course on WWII. Still watching my DVD course on WWII as well.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 9, 2004 —
The Fighting First, newspapers.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 5, 2004 —
The Fighting First, the newspapers. Ah, my newspapers. I noted that the MOMA will reopen in midtown Manhattan in November. And that Jim Morrison's grave at Pere Lachaise cemetery (in Paris) is permanently leased. These are things you need to know. (Besides that there has been the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners.)

AUSTIN, Texas, May 3, 2004 —
The Fighting First, The Untold Story of the Big Red One on D-Day by Flint Whitlock. The newspapers.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 2, 2004 —
Started The Fighting First, The Untold Story of the Big Red One on D-Day by Flint Whitlock. It's hard to believe much is left untold. Right away he quoted the book I just read by Ernie Pyle who told of the First in Africa just after they fought there. Still this seems to be a well-researched book with some corrections to the conventional treatises.

AUSTIN, Texas, May 1, 2004 —
Finished Ernie Pyle's Here is Your War. Read newspapers and looked at a commenorative Life Magazine for the 60th anniversary of D-Day.