A Month Ends

AUSTIN, Texas, July 31, 2004 — Summer is really over when July ends these days. Kids seem to go back to school earlier. In my day the first term ended after Christmas vacation. I think to avoid that schools start in August. I don't really pay much attention to back to school, really, but it affects a lot of things even if you have no kids and no classes. School zones, people's schedules. Instead of seeing day campers around the club there will be new scheduling problems for parents. It will be assumed that people won't be going on vacation because school session is in. All that.

I don't have much to show for my July. (Does thirty-one journal days count for anything?) I can't believe that we've been back from our vacation for over five weeks.

I know people who are oh so productive. They work fifty or sixty hours a week and in their spare time (weekends, holidays, evenings) they single-handedly remodel houses, plant elaborate gardens, tear down, reconstruct, clean and, in addition, cook elaborate meals and volunteer. Me, I fill cyberspace with unwanted pixels and move some of my junk around, sometimes dusting in its wake. I have becoming devoted to the gym although my body doesn't really show much for it. I read books, making wrinkles on my brain, I guess.

So, yeah, ah August. Another month to waste as I slide into a milestone in the fall...two years of retirement with nothing much to show for it.

Condiments

AUSTIN, Texas, July 30, 2004 — It's a big joke that single people have nothing in their refrigerators but beer and condiments. Funny word, that, condiment.

We always seem to have a wind array of condiments. It's just that fresh food spoils so it either gets eaten or (eventually) expunged. The bread, the meat, even long-suffering cheese (cut off the mold and eat) evenutally go by the by. But how very stable that jar of mustard or relish. We once bought a gallon of relish at Sam's. It lasted a decade, I swear. And they last bite didn't make us sick. Although perhaps we have been toughed up over the years, eating condiments past their prime.

There are three bottles of ketchup and several seafood cocktail sauces in our frig. Pickles, olives, salsa. Salad dressing, mayo, capers, anchovies.

They stand ready to spice up your life or just stand there in the frig and hide the fact that the only fresh food is some lettuces, a tomato, some onions, zucchini, broccoli, carrots, cheese and leftover chicken. A large jar of yogurt. Oh, and eggs and butter. But these last a long time, too, don't they?

Accidents on the Periphery

AUSTIN, Texas, July 29, 2004 — Things are always happening to people and bad things at that. Don't you sometimes wonder at all the chaos and pain and suffering and 'being in the wrong place' that you personally avoid? Is it bad karma (in the loose sense of that word in our language) to even talk about it?

This has been on my mind lately. The other day when we were leaving Jo's coffee shop on South Congress a car pulled out from the stop sign and collided with a van. No one was hurt but parts of car hurtled around the street. I felt FFP pulling on my shirt trying to get me back so nothing would hit me if it flew up on the sidewalk. (Nothing did.) When an accident happens there is generally that explosion of metal and glass. That sound was familiar to me from accidents I've been in and stuck with me for a day or two. (Oddly, when I was forced off IH35 by a pickup truck I don't remember that sound I just remember being suddenly off the road. But the last time I was rearended, in an ice storm, I remember the sound well.) The very afternoon we witnessed the accident in front of Jo's, we were going to the Barnes and Noble in the Arboretum. We were on 360 (Cap of TX) and FFP had just said that he was going to turn on Great Hills because there was a light. Up at the Arboretum boulevard turn we then noticed a couple of cars with people outside them and in the bright sun a large area of the pavement glistened with glass. Good decision not going to that intersection.

Wednesday of this week when SuRu and I were running errands she was going down the access road of IH35 and trying to decide where to turn to get to her destination. She chose MLK when we noticed most of the road blocked by an accident.

Now that isn't a lot of accidents to see in a few days, really. Although it's not like I was out that much. Not like my old days of doing Mopac every day and thinking there must be an accident somewhere. But it was enough to set me thinking on how lucky one is to avoid life's slings and arrows. Now I wonder what lightning strike is coming my way tomorrow.

What's Your Shirt Say?

AUSTIN, Texas, July 28, 2004 — Clothing that says something about you...quite literally...in English or some other language. Hmmm.

This is an artifact that has emerged in my lifetime. When I was a little kid, screen printed or embroidered sayings or pictures that advertised places, events or affliations were almost unknown. An exception was probably bowling shirts and uniforms. Mostly I wore clothes in 100% cotton, sewn by my grandmother.

Now though there is a commemorative T-Shirt for everything and plenty of opportunities to express yourself without actually speaking. Companies pass out T-Shirts and polos in lieu of raises so you can advertise the company and products when you are long past caring. You can get almost anything on a T-Shirt.

I'm not too discriminating about what my shirt says. I like black and gray shirts and even if the messages and pictures don't have anything to do with something I'm promoting I may wear the shirt to sweat on or run errands.

I will admit, though, that I find myself eschewing the polos with my old company's name now. I'll just wear a plain one or one with that little embroidered horse.

I have one shirt (actually I have several of them) that has the more or less exact image of street art that used to be on W. Ninth Street in honor of a dead cat. You sort of had to be there to know why we had that screen printed in quantity. (Curious? Press here.) I don't wear those shirts (even though they are black, my favorite T-Shirt color and an appropriate color for a street art shirt from an asphalt street). The reason is the word a--hole which is faithful to the art but might offend people. We tried to print the shirts so the offensive word (conveniently at the bottom of the art) could be 'tucked in.' But the T-Shirt guys made it smaller to avoid this 'problem.' Apparently T-Shirt printers know to keep the art where it will be visible.

My favorite T-Shirt is black and has a Mona Lisa in neon strokes and is from the Museum of Neon Art (MONA!) which is somewhere in Los Angeles. I actually avoid wearing it to save it for special occasions. Several of my secondary favorites are from a local festival event that shall remain nameless and unlinked because I no longer have a friendly relationship with the group. However, I like the T-Shirts for their quality and art and color (black!).

FFP is very particular about his T-Shirts. He won't wear them if he doesn't support the sentiments. He mostly works out in Ballet Austin T-Shirts. BA is his favorite cause. He has another with a quote from Charles Rennie Mackintosh done up in the graphic style of Art Nouveau. ("There is hope in honest error - none in the icy perfections of the stylist.") He bought it at an exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago years ago.

I actually have a few T-Shirts that were given away at FFP birthday parties back when he liked to invite scores of women to celebrate with him. I don't wear these too often because they sometimes require explanation. I hate that blank little moment when someone asks about the message or art on your shirt and you have forgotten that you were wearing it.

The other day I was wearing a Fonda San Miguel T-Shirt. For the Austin Restaurant not the place in Mexico. I had that instant of blankness when the checkout girl at Whole Foods asked "What is Fonda San Miguel?"

I watch what's on the shirts of my fellow travelers through this world. It's sometimes hopelessly predictable (young people at the club with fraternity and sorority event shirts, athletic people with foot race and walk shirts, the usual assortment of athletic team promos) but other times it is quite surprising to see what event, place or silliness someone else promotes on their person. I think I'll keep an arbitrary scorecard of same for the next couple of days. Because, after all, what better things to I have to do?

Lure of Snacks

AUSTIN, Texas, July 27, 2004 — Sometimes I just like to eat and drink. While I'm watching TV or reading or driving. It isn't always about being hungry, of course. It's a kind of habitual thing.

Today in the afternoon I had an Irish Lager (produced in Canada) and some soy rice things (produced I know not where) and some hot tofu dip (made locally by White Mountain) while watching TV. Delicious and filling. This did not stop me from drinking a beer and having enchiladas and shrimp and chips and queso at Santa Rita. I eat though I'm full. Especially in the evenings.

I didn't actually finish the Harp Lager in the afternoon and I got it out of the frig to accompany me and my newspapers at the TV last night. I couldn't completely finish it, though.

Sometimes you eat (and drink) not for sustenance but because it seems like a good idea.

Sentimental Value

AUSTIN, Texas, July 26, 2004 — Today I made some hard decisions about getting rid of stuff. Some of the difficulty was eased by having made the decisions earlier and stuffing the things in bags and not looking at it again. But the hardest thing is to get rid of stuff that other people gave me. I had to do a lot of that when I quit work and moved out of my spacious office. I had things hanging on the walls and even on the hallway walls. I had the place decorated with toys and a bunch of flamingo-related stuff. I had to get rid of some of this stuff just to get everything in the house. I know people gave me some stuff and some of it had to go. This time around there was stuff that people had carefully selected for me to go with past moods of collecting amusing things. But these things were just taking up too much room. I need to downsize. Some of it had to go. So it was off to the Thrift Store with it. Other stuff, while in perfect shape was stuff I'd bought myself and knew that, if I ever wanted something like it, I could buy it quite cheaply. That was easier to dispose of.

In the end, there was a whole load in SuRu's CRV today. Some of it had sentimental value. But it was, after all, just stuff.

Am I Lazy?

AUSTIN, Texas, July 25, 2004 — Remember that old adage: if you have something you want done, give it to a busy person?

I've been feeling lazy. I have all this time and yet I'm taunted by the things I haven't done: exercise more, clean up the mess in the guest room (packing stuff and the extra stuff from my car some of which should go back into the car). I feel I should be reviewing lots of films because I have all this time. Maybe I should be getting some of the things done at my dad's house (arrange for carpet cleaning and finish cleaning out my mom's stuff in a closet and chest and dresser). Here is all this free time...I should be getting my office into order once and for all and getting that storage room shipshape. I should hold that garage sale and I should take what remains to the thrift store. I should get serious about organizing my archives both real and on the computer.

What have I done? Muddled through my exercise, not doing as much as I should have. Wandered around Central Texas and Austin aimlessly. Wandered around bookstores when I have probably a thousand unread tomes in stock here. Watched videos but not as many films as I think I should.

When I go away on vacation, I feel productive. Up each day with a mission to see the sights. Get breakfast down, see something, plan for lunch. Take photos, take notes, plan what to see tomorrow.

When the evening comes each day when I'm home, I have the feeling I should be 'taking a break' or 'relaxing' although that's all I've done anyway!

What to do? Turn over a new leaf tomorrow, I guess. It's just that we have this work ethic thing that we can't shake.

Domestic Science

AUSTIN, Texas, July 24, 2004 — I've never been much for housekeeping and household duties. When I was single, I would let my apartment go. There would be dust bunnies, an umkempt bed, whatever. I didn't cook much. Occasionally I'd go all out and dust, mop, vacuum, wash clothes, scrub the kitchen and bathroom of my apartment. Then I'd look around and decide it was so clean that I should invite people over. I would have a big party and it would take a while to recover from that. I would shop for groceries occasionally buying stuff I'd eat right away and stuff I'd let rot. I also kept neat rows of different types of soda and juice and beer in the fridge since I didn't usually need the space for food. Once a guy was visiting and I was drinking a beer and he went to the kitchen on my invite to get one and he was overwhelmed at the choices and ended up drinking a Coke, I think. Often, when single, I'd go through food rotations. I'd eat milk and cereal until I ran out of one then not have that for weeks. Laundry? Well, when I didn't do it nearly often enough when I didn't have a washer and dryer back then. (I didn't have a washer and dryer in my own place until we moved into this house. That was twenty-seven years ago though.)

I am better now. No, really. And not just because a maid comes and does some heavy lifting now and then. And not just because I'm retired. Of course, when I say I'm better, it's all relative. I make up the bed when I get up in the morning and ever so often I strip it and change the linens and wash the dirty ones and fold them and put them away. I clean up the kitchen whenever I pass through, loading the dishwasher, washing pots and pans and other stuff by hand, wiping counters, taking out the trash. Right now the refrigerator desperately needs a good cleaning, though. Occasionally I wield a feather duster or rag (dusting isn't the maid's forte). I help FFP get out the trash and recycling. I pick up cups, glasses and water bottles whenever I go from my office or the bedroom to the kitchen. I get the papers and junk mail into recycling sacks. I am constantly engaged in sort of cleaning stuff out. Although I never really get done so there are always stacks and boxes of stuff around sort of in progress.

I'm not much at shopping either. I shop with a list or let FFP decide what to buy. We try to have a supply of stuff like soaps, paper goods, coffee, basic shelf-stable groceries so we can just shop for fresh stuff and backfill.

I have a young friend who recently switched to a DSL connection from dial-up AOL. He wrote:

And that's kind of the problem. I do domestic stuff in between the important things. Like typing about domestic science.

Free Time

AUSTIN, Texas, July 23, 2004 — I have the largest amount of blank calendar I've seen in a long time. It's the middle of summer, social events are put aside, friends are off traveling.

It sets up a bit of fear in me, though. While I have this time I should get some of the things done that will look especially daunting when I'm going to film festival events every day or packing for a trip or starting the fall social season. I should get things cleaned out and organized and I should do a few of the things that have been pending on my 'to do.' I should read and study some of the stuff I've been wanting to peruse and I should do some of that oft delayed writing.

But what I really want to do is lounge. Take the time to drink coffee and stare at a movie, read casually, gaze into space and think. And not think fast either. Maybe go to the movie theater and sit in the cool and the dark and immerse myself in a movie.

Maybe it's the heat. And maybe it's just too much free time.

Torrent of Words

AUSTIN, Texas, July 22, 2004 — I have ruminated a lot in this space and in my head about why I do this journal. Why is it, if not a first priority. as least a leading priority? I write the journal with the same sort of relentless repetitiveness that one eats and bathes and dresses.

Why this torrent of words, this typing ceaselessly, using my quotidian activities to fuel the fingers to tap letters and make words to make sentences and paragraphs that vaguely reflect the real?

I think I figured it out.

I want to capture the words before they flee. And I mean the words, not the thoughts or sentences although that too seems urgent. (Occasionally this program abends while I'm typing, before I've saved and I rue the loss of the 'brilliance' of the last few paragraphs. Heck, I even get upset if I've just inserted some punctuation.)

I believe actual words will escape me if I don't use them, pound the keys for them, drill them down. Simple words will defy me spelling them. Words I know exist to mean just this certain state of being will be nowhere in my brain. Words I've heard spoken a handful of times, will want to be written, looked up in the dictionary (push pronounce). They want to be savored, turned from side to side, analyzed, used in a sentence and saved on the Internet.

Typing, typing, typing. So the words stay in my brain. Just speaking isn't nearly enough.

Allocation of Limited Resources

AUSTIN, Texas, July 21, 2004 — Your time, your money, your attention. All limited.

When we give ourselves to a job or social activity we are carving chunks of time to give over and lose forever.

When we spend money on a book or a bottle of wine or the electric bill or a new garage door opener, we can't spend that money on a trip or a new shirt or a haircut. We can't invest it and compound the interest into our old age. (Now, Bill Gates can have all the shirts or garage door openers he wants but he can only attempt to cure so many diseases. With the cash payout, however, he can go for a few more diseases.)

Time and attention, though, are limited for us all.

Every day, every decision, is an allocation of limited resources against infinite choices. It's no wonder we fret.

Bringing up Daddy

AUSTIN, Texas, July 20, 2004 — The other day someone asked my dad whether I cooked for him a lot. He laughed. We can probably count the number of times I've cooked for him on one hand. Of course, we eat together. Meals out. Or throw together something at his house or mine. I have made stuff for him to take to church. No, he cooks for himself lots, lots more than I cook for him, that's for sure.

He takes care of his house (with a yard man and a maid and the occasional handyman). He locates and kills poison ivy, runs the sprinklers, keeps his house plants, washes his clothes and keeps up with his money. He keeps up with the neighbors, too. I've arranged a lot of stuff for the trip. Loaned him luggage, advised him on what to take. But he packed his own things. He made sure he had enough drugs, copies of his prescriptions.

I try to call my dad every day when we are both in town. I am always relieved when he answers the phone or shows up at the house or at the pool for water aerobics.

My heart has been in my throat when I was with him for doctor's appointments or medical procedures.

I'm not sure what this is all about. Dad seems to be doing well. But he is eight-seven years old. And not far from being eighty-eight. And one reason I retired was to have quality time with him. Maybe I'm not sure what that really means.

But today I left him in the care of his friend who is about my age. (I call her the 'good daughter.' No relation is she but the better daughter.) I tell my dad as I see them off at the airport, "Do what she tells you."

Dad hasn't really needed me that badly. He enjoys the assistance I give and calls me his secretary or assistant. When I leave town, my friends call him and have him over for dinner. He probably does better when I'm not here. We've had some good times together. I should just relax!

Sometimes you Lose Yourself

AUSTIN, Texas, July 19, 2004 — Sometimes I feel a little lost in my life. Like it is a movie or novel and I don't know what's going to happen next. (Maybe I read and watch too many DVDs?)

I'm making plans. I know there are things I should plan to do, things I should get done. But I don't even consult the ever changing 'to do' list I keep on my computer. Instead I sit down and open a newspaper and flip channels on the TV.

I am lost, I sometimes think, because things are happening to other people and I'm waiting to see what they are doing. Never mind me. A couple of friends are on a trip, my dad is going on one. FFP has some things up in the air.

And I find myself waiting for me. Waiting for me to assert myself in my head as the usual center of my attention.

Breakdowns

AUSTIN, Texas, July 18, 2004 — It is frustrating when things break down. You are depending on them. They sit there broken, taunting you. Your refrigerator, your computer, your car. Your need it. And it misbehaves.

We take it personally sometimes. But I try to think back to the days when we didn't have cell phones and AAA memberships that gave free 100 mile tows. I remember hitchhiking away from a broken VW bug, getting a ride with a gravel truck driver and getting to my college dorm to call my dad to help me tow my car to get it fixed. If that doesn't make me see the that my current situation isn't so bad, then I think about people in the those African countries we barely acknowledge the existence of who are being chased from their villages or murdered in them. And some escape only to die of disease and starvation. And if your frig or computer goes out...imagine having erratic electricity to run them. Like in Baghdad. Or imagine your car overheated as you raced to leave Paris when the Germans were invading. Yeah, it's pretty easy to see that an overheated car isn't so bad. Not with modern tow trucks, automobile clubs and cell phones.

Fitness

AUSTIN, Texas, July 17, 2004 —Fitness is a simple matter. Losing weight, too. Only...it takes constant attention and any interruption is a sliding back and back and back.

We want to be fit. To be able to be flexible enough to bend, to have the strength to lift, to have our heart and lungs be efficient and recover quickly from stress. We want to look good, trim, not fat; muscular, not emaciated. We want to feel good and glow with health.

And it's easy. Sort of. Only you can't get there in one day and you don't just arrive somewhere. It isn't like getting a gnarly errand out of your way...take an hour or so and it's done. It isn't like learning to play tennis. Once you learn to play, you can play. Maybe not well. And if you don't practice and stay fit your game will suffer. But you can play if you are able to get out there.

No fitness is a long road. There are detours for laziness and injury and illness. Maybe you take a trip or do an activity where you use you fitness without actually keeping it in top shape. You come back and find you are getting sore muscles again when you try to lift weights and huffing and puffing a bit more on some stationery this or that machine.

Losing weight is a simple matter of burning more than you take in and for a short time that's a snap. But you have to keep after it.

So I guess it isn't suprsing that obesity has become a worrisome killer disease. And I guess I'm shocked that I got some of the excess weight off (I'm still fifteen or twenty pounds over where I really should be). I guess I'm shocked that in the last two years I've managed to pospone time on some parts of my body, parry the decline of the years and actually start feeling better in heart, lungs, joints, muscles.

It's easy really but you have to keep it up day after day, over and over.

Lives

AUSTIN, Texas, July 16, 2004 —Most people are head down in their own lives. No matter how much we read about other people, it is our own joys and troubles that really engross us.

Whenever I write an article to guest in Forrest's West Austin News column, I get interested in someone else's life. I wonder at the dangers they have dodged, the culture they come from and the ones they have embraced. But what I really know is how it feels to grow up in Texas, barely able to escape the state lines culturally. I know how it feels to have to discover the world, haltingly in the teens and twenties, ill-prepared for its vast variations. I know how it feels to conquer some small areas of expertise but feel mostly inadequate about many things. I don't know how it feels to have life and stability threatened by bombs and politics.

Watching a movie based on a true life tonight I'm thinking that no one really understands relationships nor the pain that others may experience. We view it through a prism that distorts and interrupts our understanding. The only life we really know is our own.

Off the Clock

AUSTIN, Texas, July 15, 2004 —I spend more of my time 'off the clock' since I retired. By that I mean that I'm just doing what I'm doing without looking at the clock.

I even fail to wear a watch a lot of time now. When I worked, I would go nuts if I didn't remember to wear a watch when I left the house in the morning. (Of course, I didn't carry my cell phone around all the time then so I didn't have a device with me that had the time. There were clocks in break rooms, I think, but you really needed a watch to be on time to the interminable meetings.)

Doing something without thinking about the time is a new sensation. And it's pleasant.

But the clock seems to intervene a lot anyway. I make a date for an interview or a lunch. We have social engagements and, as is usual for the Preece/Ball contingent, we have to be pathologically punctual. There is a class (water aerobics, tennis drill) or a tennis match.

When the clock isn't ticking, one thinks that one can just revel in the moment. Maybe just reading or watching a movie or savoring a meal or listening to a piece of music. My friend LG said the other day that she looked forward to getting to a place where she could do that. But it's hard. Time is fleeing whether or not you are retired. There is so much to do, so many links to follow, trips to take, books to read. You feel you are catching up on your education, your health, your experiences.

Maybe I'm not wearing a watch a lot of days. But I feel rushed.

Memory

AUSTIN, Texas, July 14, 2004 —My friend LG and I had a friendly argument about what year we went to le Mont–St.–Michel. The other day an older woman in the gym tried to ask me if I had been there. But she asked, I think, if I went to Mount Seurat (or Saurat or something like that). Later she said she meant Mont-St.-Michel. My friend today had just been saying that, when she retired, she was going to get all her trip stuff organized and write down who she went with and when. She said that for a long time she remembered every meal she ate on her first, months long, trip.

Our memories do fool us. What is the name of the place? Who was with us? Was that the time we got caught in the hail storm?

We talked about having a get together and bringing pictures to guess the location and time. Sort of a scavenger hunt through time.

Our memories are, at their best, unreliable beasts.

Keeping Up with Stuff, Or people

AUSTIN, Texas, July 13, 2004 —Today I was wondering where my Swiss Army Knife was. I used to keep it in a certain place and it isn't there. I don't know where I put it when I unpacked after the trip. I don't know why this occurred to me. Probably because I've been helping my dad pack for his trip. Sometimes I come up with a new, better and more convenient place to keep something. But then I have to remember what that place actually is! I still haven't found the knife in question although I found one that is similar but doesn't have scissors.

To keep up with things, you have to keep them in a predictable place. To keep up with people you have to decide on a technique: e-mail, mail, phone, meet-ups and then you have to really do it. You have to execute. Or else you will soon find your friends as lost to you as that Swiss Army Knife. Unless they keep up their end of the bargain and contact you. A friend (office mate from my first job in Austin) now lives in New York (state, not city although she once did). She recently dropped an e-mail saying some days she thought she and her daughter would visit Austin. I 'penciled her in' (that probably should be 'pixeled her in') so that I can consider setting something up with her when her plans firm up. When we visit New York (city, not state), we usually invite her to lunch (until recently she worked in the city). We also invite other denizens of New York City. Not everyone can always make it but we make the effort and have kept up with some people this way.

As my collection of stuff and my collection of people become more vast I have a similar problem of stewardship.

No Happy Endings

AUSTIN, Texas, July 12, 2004 —This phrase just occurred to me today. No Happy Endings. We wish for them and movies sometimes exit with one. And fairy tales. I was watching a snippet of When Harry Met Sally on cable the other day with a commentary block running at the bottom from Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron. They were 'talking' (their words ran like a streamer on CCN below the movie...first time I'd seen this) about the consternation at how to end the thing. Happy ending? Sappy? But really it's just a happy moment, isn't it? They think they will be happy forever and there is a little follow-up snippet where they are shown to be happy, later. Typical Hollywodd stuff. Reiner said he liked it better when, during filming, he met his now wife.

No Happy Endings. After this phrase occurred to me I got into an e-mail discussion about religion with a friend.

I guess, if you are religious, you get a happy ending. (Or you can anyway. You might blow it. So getting martrdom in one fell swoop by crashing into a building might appeal.) You just don't get a happy ending here. No one really does. There may be happy moments but the end game of life is (pick one or more): sad, horrible, depressing. If only because it's over. My friend would like to retire, travel, leave some money to the kids. And she may get some of that. There may be happy moments. Even a lot of them.

But unless you believe in a glorious afterlife, there are no ultimate happy times. And maybe that's why so many people do believe in it.

Conquering Stuff

AUSTIN, Texas, July 11, 2004 —The helper I hired asked all the right questions:

Neighborhoods

AUSTIN, Texas, July 10, 2004 — Neighborhoods need people, stores, entertainment. Mixed use. Once you get out of town a bit, though, there are miles of houses and then big huge shopping areas. I prefer neighborhoods with convenient stores that are, um, convenient. In that you can walk there. From our house you may, if you wish and you can stand the heat or other weather, easily walk to a bakery and coffee and sandwich shop, a taco shack (soon, it's remodeling), a Mexican bakery, a drug store, two convenience stores, a pet store, a Chinese restaurant, a high end ladies' wear place, a branch library, an interior Mexican restaurant, two TexMex restaurants, a Greek Deli and bakery, a Chinese food and cooking utensil shop, several thrift stores and more. If you can walk a bit farther you can walk to another pet store, the best dry cleaner in Austin, another bakery and coffee shop (no Starbucks!), two full scale grocery stores, a shoe store, a doctor, an antique mall, a frame shop, more antique stores, more thrift and junk stores, an old-fashioned Texas-style saloon, a hamburger joint (not a chain!), a liquour store, a rent-car location, a barber shop or two and much more.

We do live in a neighborhood. I like it that way. The guy's house we visited today is near lots of things. The main library. A Starbucks. (Well, anyway.) A convenience store. Downtown isn't far nor the University. (He could easily walk to a big box book store.)

The point is you shouldn't have to get in the car to get a carton of milk. (Actually our neighborhood convenience store now stocks an assortment of good but cheap wine. There you go.)

Now, truthfully, I do take my car out when I run errands most of the time. But at least they are short trips! And, when I really want or need to do it...I can walk somewhere.

Your Mileage May Differ

AUSTIN, Texas, July 9, 2004 — Everyone has a slightly different experience in life, whether they are knocking about in the 'real world,' online, in their heads. I guess you can get a lot of the 'quality and quantity' of my experience through this journal although I leave out some stuff, of course. But I wonder about other people's lives. How they spend the day. Even what they eat. The little things. I'm curious. I'm one of those people who stares at the contents of other peoples' carts at the grocery store. I'll read your grocery list with interest if you leave it behind in a store.

A friend of mine said the other day, "I don't know what we do!" We were discussing my journal or something, my social events? And I had wondered. What they do. She reads this and told another friend that I tell 'everything including everything she eats' or something like that.

I do wonder how people fill their days who don't tell me in a journal. And I find it absolutely fascinating. Although finding time to read journals is also a feat.

People may wander the same streets and have the same opportunities to do things but choose a totally different path.

Online we all have the same stuff available unless we are surfing with blockers. And what different experiences we have! I wander to an online dictionary a couple of times a day, search google a few times, maybe follow a link to a sale on some site I shop with. Of course, if I go to Amazon or Netflix I see content tailored to me, to things I've bought or requested or reviewed. I may follow links recommended by FFP or friends or in articles in the newspapers. I also wander to a few journals, checking out what other people or doing. Their work, their pets, their pictures. Other people check stocks, blogs, news sites (I usually get my news in the papers although I have a stock portfolio set up on Excite!). A lot of people pop up a map with map quest. And I do that, too, although I use paper maps, too. I check and make airline and hotel reservations and I'm sure there are a million other people looking at all sorts of destinations. I'll frequently go to imdb.com to check out the details (date, actors, etc.) of a movie. Today I searched for an answer to this question: "When can you take money from an IRA or 401K without a penalty?" When you are 59.5. I don't really care about that age but FFP kept asking me. I know you have to take a certain amount out every year after you are 70.5 or else be penalized. While looking up the 59.5 tidbit I find out that, according the the life expectancy tables the IRS uses for minimum distributions, I should live about 29 more years. Will my money last that long? Will I use it wisely?

Once upon a time, for a short while, a search service (it might have been on Excite!) had a little running streamer showing stuff other people were searching for. This was fascinating but was also, it turned out, valuable information that they weren't going to give away lightly. I loved that, seeing what people were typing into that blank.

Yep, we all move in our own orbits. Any attempt to predict the whole from one experience is fraught with peril. Yesterday The Wall Street Journal ran an article about trying to lump everyone born between 1946 and 1964 in a group called the Baby Boomers. Very different arcs to the lives of the oldest and youngest. There is nothing like coming of age when someone else is born to separate you, um, like another generation.

Excess Production

AUSTIN, Texas, July 8, 2004 —At some point in the history of mankind industrial and agricultural progress reached the point where man didn't have to spend all his working hours providing the basic food/shelter/clothing and such. One may argue that many people in the third world are still engaged in a survival existence.

But man can't use this leisure just sitting around. Even the couch potato in the first world requires ever more refined and packaged foods and a plasma TV with access to two hundred channels oozing with the output of busy movie and TV production companies.

So we started making other things. Art. Geegaws. Electronics. T-Shirts with pithy sayings. To move the money around we have to make things and exchange things. We developed an elaborate medical system with machines and drugs and personnel to prolong our lives.

If man gets off the couch in his leisure, we make him bikes and ball gloves, special shoes, machines to simulate hard work.

So we use this excess production to make tons of things and we sell them to each other.

But. What if some people greedy for power wanted to just take things from others. Why then we could make guns and tanks, bombs and nuclear submarines. And often they'd be readily consumed and need to be replaced! And we could sell more. Why that couch potato might use his Dell computer or plasma TV (from Dell, too?) for years but an armored vehicle might get blown up its first day on the job. What a great business! What a nifty thing to do with our excess production!

It's all economics, isn't it?

I Find Myself Doing Odd Things at Odd Times

AUSTIN, Texas, July 7, 2004 —I haven't really talked about retirement for a while. When you go on vacation, retired life and real life are the same, I guess.

However, when you return from a vacation and you work you often throw the souvenirs, guidebooks, receipts and such into a box and forget about it. A retired person can write a travelogue, mess about with the pictures for a long while, organize and sort stuff. I've done a fair bit of this.

A retired person prepares for a trip differently as well. I read stacks of books about D-Day, thumbed through Paris guidebooks and generally prepared for my trip to France more thoroughly than for any trip before. Of course, there were still surprises and things I should have read before. Now I'm reading a Dublin guide book and reading a lot of stuff about James Joyce's Ulysses even though I may not read the book. (This is one that requires a commitment even my retired self may not have.) I always wished for this kind of time.

I find myself in other situations very uncommon for me when I worked, too. In the gym at ten-thirty in the morning. In my bathrobe at four-thirty in the afternoon. (Not because I haven't yet gone out, but because I worked out, sweated and then sat around until the afternoon before I took a shower. Then I couldn't decide what to wear after I did shower. So I sat in my bathrobe, first watching DVDs and then at my computer.) I often eat at odd times, too. I just do whatever comes to hand and then find it's after one and I haven't eaten or something.

Being retired doesn't mean no schedules because you have to yield to a scheduled world. But it can mean doing something that seems odd to the rest of the world, at least for the time you are doing it.

Does my Vote Count?

AUSTIN, Texas, July 6, 2004 —I was talking to a friend about politics...how we voted in the last presidential election, how we plan to vote in this one, how we describe ourselves politically. We agreed, however, that Bush will win Texas. (Although he will, undoubtably, lose our county.) He will win whether we vote or not, however we vote and regardless of the crowds queuing up to see Michael Moore's film.

My friend thinks Kerry will win Florida. Florida voters know their votes will count. (Unless they aren't counted. I think Gore should have gotten the deceased to vote in Tennessee and won LBJ-style.)

So does my vote make a difference? Probably not. But come November, I'll be voting.

Helpless

AUSTIN, Texas, July 5, 2004 —Some days your life doesn't seem to be in your control. I theorize that it is these days when we are seeing most clearly.

We are fooling ourselves, I think, when we are all happy and charged up and full of life's possibilities.

When we are down in the dumps...are we just seeing reality for a change, throwing off the rose-colored glasses?

Today I felt like I wasn't on top of my life. That I couldn't really control things and that, in fact, it didn't matter whether I did or not for the greater good of mankind. And I wasn't so sure that I cared about mankind. Maybe I just cared about me.

So my mood sank in direct relationship to my feeling of control over my life. The chemical rivers in my brain ran toward the helpless zone. I felt sad and at a loss.

Wearing the Flag

AUSTIN, Texas, July 4, 2004 —FFP says he remembers Abby Hoffman being interviewed by Dick Cavett when the network blacked him out because...he was wearing a shirt with the flag on it!

It's funny how our use of symbols morphs. Now you see the flag on shirts, pants, coolers, hats. It's patriotic, not offensive. It's Walmart America.

Sure sometimes in the sixties we wore shirts with the peace sign instead of stars. But some people found just the flag or just stars and stripes on clothing outrageous. We decorated our apartment with old flags and stuff. It was considered cynical and anti-something.

These things change over time. It's the same symbol, viewed differently.

We should be careful when dealing with offenses involving such subtleties and distinguish carefully between symbols and speech and real violations of others.

Until you Part

AUSTIN, Texas, July 3, 2004 —The populace as a whole would seem to either take marriage very, very seriously or to dismiss it as trivial. Depends on how you look at it. People have a 50-50 chance of making a marriage last and society is pretty accepting of second families and unmarried couples and on and on. And yet people are up in arms about the 'sanctity' of marriage as between a man and a woman. As if giving a gay couple a shot at a joint tax return or a tax-free estate or a spousal pension or Social Security check was a shot across the bow of the religious juggernaut. I theorize that our country is based on not making a national religion. Therefore any favoritism toward citizens who subscribe to a religion is wrong. And marriage is a religious issue. It only becomes a government one if we let religious issues restrict who gets certain privileges.

But I digress. Whoever gets married, most promise love until death. (Today I heard some 'modern' vows, but they still said 'death alone shall part you.') But mostly we get until you shall part for whatever reason. In spite of this, marriage is this huge business and weddings can be almost as big an expense as college for your kids. The current generation seems to disregard marriage more and more (living together, having sex and even children before marriage, divorcing easily) while spending more and more time and effort planning their ceremonies.

It's as if the weddings are expression of the self-importance they ascribe to themselves and not one of the high hope that they have for marriage in general or theirs in particular. It's big business for florists, caterers, bakers, hotels, apparel makers, planners, musicians and religious institutions. They trade off the self-importance of a generation that wants all the perks at prom time and wedding time before they've earned much and really become independent. (Of course, in the old days such extravaganzas were reserved for the upper class who had money to burn. I think anyway. Now lots of middle class folks go into debt for these things.)

My wedding? Three friends, our four parental units and a Justice of the Peace. In the living room of FFP's tiny house. My dress cost $35. We had a one night honeymoon. In San Antonio. It was about what we could afford. So, yeah, I hold everyone's 'big day' up to that light. Our cake was made by one of the friends (an Italian Cream cake), my mother-in-law made pimento cheese sandwiches and we had a bottle of Andre or something.

The wedding I attended today obviously found a few corners to cut. Wine and Budweiser were free and a half a glass of champagne for toasts but other alcohol was your own expense. There was a DJ, no band. The bridesmaids wore tasteful black gowns, all slighty different. (Something they already owned?) I welcomed the corner-cutting, it gave me some hope. Although I don't know about the cash bar thing. Whether Miss Manners would consider it proper. I know Miss Manners expects you to send the gift ahead of time for these things. But there are always piles of gifts brought to the event. I wondered if my gift had been received. (I don't know if it's bad luck to send a note before the ceremony. Maybe. Don't need any bad luck with only a 50-50 chance to start with.) However, I don't need to wonder any longer. The bride's mother mentioned my gift when we were introduced. I don't know if that's OK by Miss Manners but it comforts me to know they got it just in case that thank you is a long time coming.

Nope, I don't like big weddings. If I get invited, they are usually too big! But I enjoyed seeing my old college buddies for a few minutes.

Happy

AUSTIN, Texas, July 2, 2004 — Have you read those articles about how people report being happy and the questioners are always suprised that people they'd expect to be happy don't report it so or people you'd think wouldn't be say they are?

I'm in good health, have no kids who might have to go to Iraq, have a reasonable income (i.e. enough disposible income to have fun and not worry much), have good relationships.

But I am surprised on a day when I really feel happy. And when I do feel happy there are always undercurrents: worry that I'm doing the right things, worry about people who are not in the best of health and, of course, worry about this sorry world where people hurt each other to get power and money or because they think there is a god who is telling them to do it. Yeah, read the papers...that'll straighten out your mood.

Still occasionally I feel happy for an hour or a day. Just pleased to be alive and to have books to read and fun activities. Happy to know that Iraq and many other places are scary and inhospitable but that I don't have to go there. Happy that I can go to places like Paris and New York City.

Then, of course, it drains away. And I'm not happy and even less happy to know that I'm not happy but have no good reason for it.

The Illusion of 'Catching Up'

AUSTIN, Texas, July 1, 2004 — There is something about finishing a task that gives you a little boost. Finishing a book or putting a month of journal entries to bed. Filing a bunch of stuff. Or taking out the trash, leaving all the cans inside nice and empty.

It did feel good today to finish a book and to send June out into cyberspace for my, at last official count, three readers.

But you never catch up. Every day brings entropy that creates new tasks and just bringing the mail in creates new things to do. We are in a stream, swimming along catching things and we will never rest until we die. Even the seemingly idle folks at the rest home are going from meal to meal, treatment to treatment, haircut to haircut. They are never 'done.'