AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 7, 2005 — I stayed in bed until after eight. I sort of decided last night to just clean up this morning and go to my lunch and then work out later. There is always that lurking danger that later will be never.

I got cleaned up and decided to make a marinade for some chicken thighs I bought at Costco. It was loosely based on a recipe that was in the local paper a couple of days ago. It involved fresh lime juice and minced garlic and getting out the blender. But I finally finished that. I worked on another short story and took a couple of interrupts from Forrest on this and that. A proofreading job, finding forms for a handicapped parking permit for my in-laws.

I had lunch with a friend at a Vietnamese sandwich shop on North Lamar. It was celebrating her birthday which is, actually, in November. The big sandwiches (which were described as tangy pork) were good and only $3.50. I've had their two buck sandwiches, too, and their spring rolls...both great. We talked and gossiped. The pork on this sandwich was shredded and pickled and looked more like a vegetable. I put a bunch of the fiery sauce on it and ate the jalapeno that they put on the side.

On the way home I stopped at HEB. I got a tomato, some apples, some zuchinni and some garlic. (I'd used up the garlic on that marinade.) I wanted a 'small papaya' as called for in this recipe. They had only giant ones and not too good-looking ones either. Well, maybe we will do without. Maybe I'll go somewhere else. Why the sudden interest in cooking? I didn't even make a New Year's resolution about it.

At home, I fool around. I put away dishes and put the Capresso through the cleaning cycle. I call a restaurant in New York but they don't take reservations so far in advance. They start exactly a month ahead of time. FFP and I discuss various possibilities for entertainment and meals while we are there. I work through lists of our assets on spreadsheets FFP has prepared and on statements from our brokers. It's tedious.

But I didn't work out this morning. And, suddenly, it's five o'clock.

I go to the gym. I do forty-five minutes on the exercise bike and some sit-ups. It is getting late.

The chicken calls for browning a little in a hot oven, baking a bit more, then baking in the marinade with the papaya we don't have. We don't even have any canned pineapple to substitute. That's OK. I think it will be good. I read papers and let the kitchen TV blare while timing the three stages and basting during the last. I steam some zuchinni and red onion in lemon pepper. We eat. FFP finishes off some leftover wine and opens another inexpensive one. A couple of pieces of chicken didn't quite cook that red next to the bone so we throw them back in. I clean up. We go and watch TV and DVR. I put away the chicken, clean up some more. I bus the wine glasses, wash them. I try to read the paper but the TV distracts me. Third Watch, Cold Case, Without a Trace. This last one showed the FBI spend your tax dollars to find a teenager who would have decided to come home anyway. They didn't even really speed things up that much. Does anybody think the FBI would get involved when a fifteen-year-old is missing one night without any definite evidence of foul play? I watch a couple of game shows. Must stop watching all this TV. DVR is a disease.

Having a Friday night with no obligations used to be a real treat. And it still feels kind of interesting. But it isn't the same as arriving home from work and knowing that you can just kick back for once, with a weekend of no work ahead of you. In fact, because I don't have the job I never really consider that I should be just lounging around. Doesn't seem right. I do it. But it doesn't seem right.

Worked on the second in my cycle of short stories that I'm calling the Mary Chronicles, I find that I seem to have found a soft spot between telling the truth and being true. I'm using a lot of things that really did happen but freeing myself from exact time sequences and changing things or eliminating things to make it ring a sharper tone or at least the tone I'm after. I'm finding the exercise good for me. Whether I'll publish the result is questionable.

The Holidailies pledge ended yesterday. Does that mean that yours truly will not continue posting daily? Probably not. The new, fairly easy to maintain, page-a-day format with no demands to write down all my food and keep up with anything I don't feel like discussing may save the day. And I know some of you do care whether I write this silly thing. Three or even four of you. The meticulous recounting in separate areas was helpful sometimes...reviewing books I'd read and forgotten the titles of for example. The food diary was less helpful than I'd hoped. Today my digestion was in disarray. I looked and looked for correlations of food and these occurrences. Today, I could still wonder...was it the black beans (I had them twice yesterday) or the Mexican food? Was it the weird Vietnamese sandwich? I felt bad before the chicken dish. I am now in the habit of remembering what I eat. But it never seemed to help me control what I ate anyway. I'm not necessarily refraining from recounting meals. You know me too well to expect that. I'm certainly going to mention reading, writing, food, exercise. I'm working on another essay. This one involves reviewing 2004 and is going a little slowly. The pressure to produce one every day was good in a lot of ways. But the work on the fiction, out of public view, for the last few days has been good in its own way. Just typing was a mind-clearing exercise and quite easy once an essay topic was chosen. (Except when I tried to rhyme.) I will probably find a way to incorporate those little exercises in my page at times. I do think that the constant writing, even this journal, helps develop chops and keeps one's spelling on target and such.