AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 10, 2005 — Not that I do anything usually but it is kind of in the schedule to do water aerobics with Dad on Monday. Only he needed some crown work and he is at the dentist's office.

I flail about a little on deciding what to do. First getting out of bed is a little hard and it's after 8 when I do. But I make the bed, remember some clothes in the dryer, go out and turn it on to fluff the clothes, make some coffee, fold the clothes. I am a little conflicted. Maybe I should work out in the afternoon. No, no, that would be bad. And I need to pick a new book to read on the bike.

So yeah I pick Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl because we are going to some seminar about Anne Frank tonight. And I get off to the club which is crowded with two classes going on and other patrons and private training. I do fifty minutes on the bicycle. I've gained a couple of pounds in the last few months and I really need to do five days times forty-five minutes of cardio. But I need to work with the weights, too. And I do. A little. Some bicep and tricep and back and shoulder stuff. Not enough but something. I really need to diet, too. But will I? Probably not. This is the time of year when we watch the lake (Austin) get lowered and then raised again. Mud has appeared under the Westwood Boat dock.

At home again I have breakfast/lunch over the papers. I have some cereal. I'm going to put whole milk on it (left from the party) but it's gone south. The half and half is still OK so I use it. Must buy some nonfat yogurt. Then I have a little of the leftover tuna salad. That fills me up. Whenever we eat a few meals in a row at home I'm reminded of how much trouble it really is to keep food in the house, prepare a few things, clean up.

I get my shower and do my grooming while watching the episode of The Simpsons where the town gets a monorail courtesy of a Music Man type shyster.

Overheard at the club. "He's just back from Egypt." And, separately a little later. "Can you believe we were both dependent on men?"

I spent over an hour looking over broker statements, comparing to our spreadsheets and also looking up stock information: dividends, prices, etc. It is sort of fun if you can avoid feeling bad about bad investments and avoid feeling too euphoric about good ones.

I spent thirty minutes organizing my to do list today. I always have to complicate things. But I decided to organize my list into sixteen sub-categories. Remember how I said I was going to do something off the 'to do' list for an hour every day? Of course, orgnaizing the financials is something on that list so I have been doing that. But I thought I might do something else occasionally and then there was the matter of choosing. So I organized the list into sixteen areas.

1. Travel Planning
2. Gifts and Correspondence
3. Shopping
4. Scheduling
5. Financial
6. Writing
7. Stuff
8. Cooking
9. Reading
10. Studying - Programming and Computers
11. Studying - Other
12. Organization
13. Computer Organization
14. Other creative
15. Journal and WEB stuff
16. Cleaning and Household

Then (you won't believe this...this is the ultimate displacement from actually doing something) I wrote a Visual Basic program that selects one of the sixteen and displays it at the press of a button. Although...is it displacement when learning Windows programming was a goal and the reason I took an online course in VB and bought a toy version of it and a book?

I realize, of course, that if I spend a hour a day on writing and an hour on something else from the list and over an hour going to the gym (there is the seven minute drive each way) and an hour at least fixing meals, eating, cleaning up that four hours are spent. Still...I have about twelve more for watching TV, reading the papers, socializing, going to movies. Notice that newspapers, TVs, movies, showers, socializing don't appear on the list. Although Scheduling does appear and this is the time it takes to RSVP, buy tickets, plan events.

Why analyze when you can over-analyze? Analyze to the point of doing nothing!

I gave myself time to watch some TV and read papers in the afternoon. I worked the crossword in The New York Times. I think it's silly that I love Mondays because I can work the puzzle but there it is.

From 6:30-8 we had signed up for a lecture on The Diary of Anne Frank. It was at the Jewish Community Center. We were early and it started a bit late but once it started it was interesting. The instruction was a UT professor who is from The Netherlands and is a Jew. Her mother escaped the war in hiding. Seventy-five percent of the Jews in The Netherlands died. The Netherlands provided no place to hide and many of the Jews were refugees from Germany and isolated in their communities from the rest of the community.

I didn't do any significant writing or anything today. After all I had to organize my to do list. When FFP and I got home, we ate snacks. (Before we went I was going to eat a salad but instead I cleaned out the crispers in the frig. Then when I got home I ate mozzarella and olives and the leftover tuna salad and some savory and sweet snacks we still had from the holiday.)