AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 25, 2005 — The calendar is blank today. I don't have a thing typed in on the calendar FFP and I share online. It turns out he has at least one appointment. I have none. Nothing.

I went to bed last night knowing this. As we all know, a bit of a schedule is helpful to me for getting things done. Left to my own devices, I don't always do well at accomplishing things. Nor do I also enjoy the leisure. Nevertheless, I look forwad to it. I love seeing those blanks even as I book us for things on many future days and fill them in. I'd like to tell you that today was, somehow different.

And maybe it was. I stayed in bed a little late. But when I got up I enjoyed the leisure of getting into my sweats, gettings coffee and papers and settling in to watch some more tennis (and a few other things) off the DVR. FFP came back from the gym, showered, got my digital camera, said he had a press conference to go to. He was disconcerted because I had today's papers out of the kitchen. There is an unspoken rule that I will leave them in the kitchen until well into the day, possibly until evening. I wasn't really reading that much anyway but I was enjoying having the crisp copy of The New York Times and my cup of coffee and the remote to fast forward the commercials or rewind and watch a scene or tennis shot again. He pointed out an obituary to me (not someone we knew but a relative someone we know). He pointed out an article about the press conference today for Light: The Humanity and Holocaust Project and its surrounding tolerance lectures and activities.

I wound up my leisure and read my e-mail. That triggered me to make a dinner reservation before a show we are going to next week and to call a restaurant in NYC and make an adjustment on the number for a meal we are having there. I sent an e-mail buying tickets for a tennis and music benefit, answered an e-mail saying we'd go to a preview party tomorrow for a gourment take-out opening in the neighborhood, called my dad to check in. (He wasn't home.)

And thus it was eleven and I hadn't done anything useful except social secretary stuff. I'd posted my journal, read a couple of other journals. And, since the day was blank, totally blank, I didn't fret. Plenty of time to workout and to accomplish something. Right?

I decide to do one more thing before going to the club. I do a post something on the Freecyle site to give away a small stack of weaving books and monographs that my dad has discovered at his house. I need to spend some time over there helping him organize. But he comes up with stuff to get rid of on his own quite often. Within minutes, an offer to take the stuff arrives but I've learned to set a deadline and then respond to the best sounding new home for stuff by that deadline.

So, it's time for me to go workout. But then FFP comes home and he wants some pix downloaded from the digital camera. And he took a lot of them, too.

So, finally...I go workout. It has warmed up into a summery day outside and I strip off my sweats and leave them behind going to the club in shorts and a T-Shirt. Houses may be frozen into solid blocks of ice in Massachusetts but it is warm here.

Workout. When you wait so late, there is the danger that you will feel like you have 'spent enough time' when, in reality, you haven't. I do fifty minutes on the recumbent bike and I do some other weight work, too. I have started just doing whatever weight or ab stuff that I can't remember doing for a few days. Not the best strategy, I expect.

When I get home, the maid is there. Of course, it's Tuesday. This throws me a bit. I've only had a can of V8 and it is after three in the afternoon. But it's hard to work around her cleaning (and her lunch strewn across the counter in the kitchen). The house smells of the bleach in cleaning products. So. I don't eat anything and retreat into my office. I've suggested a stock sale to FFP. We discuss it, talk to the broker. I retreat upstairs with my laptop to review more financial stuff. No more 1099's have arrived, however. FFP suggests he might like to go out to dinner. Wow, I'm hungry. And sweaty. The maid leaves and I go shower up and get ready to go out. I'm watching some tennis off the DVR. I snack on some cheese. He comes down, fresh from completing on online newsletter about the press conference and says he'd just as soon stay home. I agree. I eat some cereal and yogurt and a banana. It's bad to get so hungry before you eat.

I watch some things off the DVR. Game shows, tennis, Northern Exposure. I make a plate of nachos and drink a beer. We settle in to watch various TV shows, some in real time. Such a waste, real time. FFP wants to watch Law and Order in real time. He finds some cookies in the pantry and brings them out. I have coffee. I end up watching a very exciting tennis match off the DVR with Lindsay Davenport and Alicia Molik until quite late. The play out a 'decisive' set at the Australian and this one went to 9-7 in a cliff hanger. I guess I'm kind of getting into watching tennis again. It's the danged DVR. I finally get off to sleep.

Today as I goofed off around the house I was thinking: If this were a resort, I would be impressed. A beautiful garden where the dog is welcome (also in the rooms...in fact the maid gives her a dog biscuit). Not just cable TV all over but a DVR in the bedroom with stuff I want to see and DVDs I'm interested in. A library of thousands of books. High speed Internet all over the place. A push button la crema coffee machine, any kind of alcohol or soft drink you could want. A lovely shower and tub and walk-in closet. (Stayed in the Four Seasons in NYC once and the closet was actually bigger than my new one. But it wasn't full of my clothes!) Yeah, it's a pretty wonderful life. It is.

Reading Günter Grass' My Century and the WWI years are covered by a series of supposed encounters between Remarque and Jünger, the authors of All's Quiet on the Western Front and The Storm of Steel. Which, of course, made me think I should read both of them. I have a new paperback copy of the former that Dad for some reason bought recently and read and gave to me. Books lead to books. And maybe, sometimes, to deeper understanding. I have been oh so slowly reading Gilbert's book about Ulysses. (OK, it's my bathroom book.) I'm about a hundred pages in and he is finally talking about the chapters specifically. This is a book that quotes French and even Greek without translation here and there.