AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 8, 2005 — I didn't win. But I put up a good fight and I had fun. It helped that my opponent was fun and nice. That the weather changed from steely cold to sunny and fine. That I could not worry...nothing else to do today.

When I got home I was sweaty and hungry. I didn't take a shower but I ate some of the leftover chicken, a heel of bread and leftover sweet potatoes. I didn't drink enough water because later my foot and then first one thigh and then another would cramp. Also, I managed to track the green Fast-Dri fake clay all over the house. And I used the cleaning tray!

I decided to dedicate an hour to my finances. I had a couple of interruptions (dog wants out, mailman comes) and so I tacked on time. The mailman brought new statements from the discount broker which merely put me into a quandry about whether to continue analyzing the November end ones. I spent a fair amount of time matching things to Forrest's spreadsheet where he tries to estimate income and trying to find and reconcile stock splits and name changes. By going on time and not what I was going to accomplish I found myself less stressed and enjoying it more. I found a WEB site that makes finding the split ratios easier.

I stopped at an arbitrary point and got some water. I tried to drink while playing tennis and I had a banana as soon as I got home. (See...I didn't mention that above but I did eat it.) But the cramps kept coming all evening. But they weren't horrible. I sweat a lot, I guess.

So it was after three and I had accomplished the following: posted yesterday's journal, straightened out records on some of our financial holdings, reviewed our life insurance policies and eaten. Besides playing tennis for two hours (2-6, 7-6 (9-7), 1-6). I did not tank in the first or third. I fought all the way! I used every trick I could think of. She decided to hit to my forehand in the last set. Smart.

Going over my finances I am reminded that if you don't have income of one mill a year or assets of greater than ten million, then it's chump change. If you have a negative net worth and are struggling to pay every bill (been there, I have), I'm sorry. It's sad but true. You really need ten million to be rich. Or a huge annual income that you can count on continuing. Not that you can't enjoy life without being rich. You can. I proved it when my net worth was in the hundreds of dollars and I'm proving it now.

I spent a little time on one of my short stories, but maybe not the full hour. I was getting ready to get a shower and FFP was, too, and he said we might go to Billy's later for some food. Although we weren't hungry. SuRu called. She was in town and she was thinking of wandering by. We got showers, SuRu wandered by and we talked and and read in the big room while FFP watched some football in the bedroom.

Later we went to Billy's. Bumped into some folks, some current and former Fonda San Miguel waitpeople. After the currents went to work, the former (who now works for an ad agency) game inside and talked to us while we ate and drank. (I had a vegie burger, fries and mustard and a couple of fried green tomatoes with a Shiner Bock and a little bit of one of FFP's Harps.) We took our young friend home with us. We had been discussing movies and TV and she said she didn't like to watch hour-long programs because it challenged her attention span. Nevertheless after giving her a beer we couldn't think of much to do while we hung out. She likes to read and she likes scientific stuff so I loaned her Seven Sins of Memory. We popped in a DVD of Lovely and Amazing from Netflix and she promptly fell asleep, proving that beer put her to sleep or that she really didn't have the attention span for movies. SuRu left, the movie ended, we switched to football and she finally awoke when FFP put a lap robe on her. She went home and we moved our TV watching and reading to the bedroom.

I didn't accomplish much today, but I did make some progress in managing our finances (I hope anyway) and I enjoyed my tennis, a movie, my friends, a bit of time on my writing project.

I had been gearing up to go to SP2 of Windows XP and feeling all out of sorts about it. Finally, I just decided to delay it indefinitely. I've got spamware, spyware, virusware, a firewall. I only have one machine on XP anyway. I can't see getting the grief from changing a running system for some nebulous extra security. I think I'll wait until I get a new machine. Maybe.

It was really a nice day. And what was nicer was that I knew that we had no obligations tomorrow. I went to sleep (so sleepy...was it the one beer and the shot of Scotch or the sweaty tennis match?) thinking I would have a very relaxing Sunday with the papers and TV and maybe at some point a trip to the gym.