AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 5, 2005 — Wake up around five. Must have more sleep. Wake with a start at seven. Go to water aerobics, do a few things in the gym after. Go home. Eat. Shower and watch a little TV.

Then I concentrate for a while. Well, except for the interruptions. The task I'm working on is a review of all our finances, preplanning (what happens when you die), etc. I decide that the first thing I should do is go through the important papers we have in our safe and make an inventory. I am only interrupted a few times...by FFP because our ISP has a mail server problem and because he's doing something with radio spots that isn't working. And by my dad.

Dad has discovered that I can log into his gas lease account and get reports and he can't find one for a month earlier in the year. But I concentrate on looking over the important papers and things in the safe. I spend a little time looking over our balance sheet, too, and our estimated income and the some statements showing individual stocks and bonds. This is the kind of thing, sort of like exercising and cleaning house, that you never really finish with. Things are always changing and you have to keep up with it. Every month you have to pay bills, figure expenses. Every year figure out the taxes. Constantly decide where to place investments. But there is staying on top of it and just coasting. I've been doing the latter. Fortunately, FFP has taken up a lot of the slack. Time to do better!

After I finished my safe inventory and my initial review of our overall finances, I decided I would reward myself and watch some TV and glance at the catalogs that came in the mail. And snack. And that's what I did. I didn't feel bad about it however. After all, I put in the time. Probably two hours on the whole. Well, I haven't put in my creative time for the day but I have another short story I've worked out in my head today. Does that count?

We went early to the Women's basketball game tonight. To get good parking. The weather was turning colder by quite a few degrees. We sat around in the club room downstairs and then went up to the arena. We read our books and then watched the action, reading at timeouts. The Lady Horns managed to beat Kansas in an odd rough and tumble game with some puzzling calls.

Home again I worked on my journal a bit and then watched TV and a DVD with FFP reading the papers including a long article in The New York Times about choucroute garnie.

Joan Didion's book tackles a sense of California by talking about seemingly diverse people like Jack London, John Muir and Thomas Kinkade. Yep, Thomas Kinkade.

Garden State. We watched this tonight. There was one scene I'd seen somewhere. Preview? Hmm. Anyway, I liked this movie. Bizarre but not impossible stuff. Very creative.