AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 28, 2005 — Naturally (I guess it's natural) we don't think of ourselves aging. But we see others do it. Today I thought about the whole process way too much.

I got up early and watched young Roddick and young Hewitt slug it out. Poor Andy. He couldn't get his head around it. By the time tennis players get smart they aren't as young as they used to be. A battle of head and body. The young usually win. But not always.

I bumble around, have coffee, watch a Northern Exposure, shower, dress, mess around on the computer (rendering some jpegs out of a PowerPoint for FFP) and then head to my dad's church. He is already there with one of the widows.

They are putting out food. I add some deviled eggs to the mix and also put out some chocolate we got for Christmas. I watch these seventy-, eighty-, ninety-somethings eating donuts, chips, dip, chocolate cake, chocolate candy, tuna sandwiches, drinking coffee (the caffeinated is most popular) and, gosh, you wonder about the food pyramid. One guy had an operation on his thumb. One guy has had a stroke. One lady has had a neurotransmitter inplanted in her brain, kind of like a pacemaker for the brain! They are playing games. Toward the end two guys engage me in a game of Moon. They are a couple of of very nice guy, Lucky and Ed. Sharp and funny. Their wives come over from a different game and watch us finish up.

After I finish, I should go home, change and go work out. But I don't. Nope. Stave off aging? Nah. I go home and do what? Clean up a little in the kitchen, talk to FFP and the bookkeeper, make a run to the bank. FFP rushes off to the ballet to meet with some people on the Humanity and Holocaust project Ballet Austin is involved with. I decide, what the heck, I'll use my randomizer to decide how to spend the time. I hit the 'choose' button. First I go upstairs and pay our personal bills at FFP's direction but it turns out there is only one, a cell phone bill for Dad and I.

I decide, what the heck, I'll use my randomizer to decide how to spend the next hour or two. Organization turns up. So I clean a path to my bookcase and organize the stuff in another corner of my office and clean out a file of clippings, mostly from '93 and '94 and '95 although a few are in this millenium. I make myself decide what to save and toss without stopping to read everything. I spend an hour thus engaged. And I hit the randomizer again. It comes up 'reading.' Yeah!

I figure it's OK to have the TV on if I don't pay much attention to it and I let some stuff run off the DVR while reading some papers.

FFP comes home after a while and I look through some pictures he took and we discuss our going out plan. I have purchased tickets to Million Dollar Baby at Alamo at the Village online. We think we are getting there early but it's crowded. We get some OK seats, though. They show old Clint Eastwood stuff while we wait for the official previews of the show and order bad (for us) food and beer (I get a Shiner and a Reuben, FFP some beer and pizza) and then we see Million Dollar Baby. Whoa! I didn't see that coming. I'm not sure what I think about it. I think it's overrated, really.

FFP stops at Randall's for a cherry pie. Why quit when you are already eating too much? We get home and settle in. I can't get the pie into focus. No I don't have pie. That would have been a fitting end to this day's eating (and lack of exercise). I just drink some water. You know that feeling? The feeling that you will never be able to eat again? Yeah, that one. That is such a false feeling.

We watch some tube and go to sleep.

Here is a summary of the clippings from that file that didn't land in the recycling bag. These I'll continue to keep for the long or short term.

1. A clipping from a '94 The New York Times Magazine showing tasteless Russian matryoshka dolls. (I visited Russia in '93.) Saved for potential collage use and general amusement value.
2. An article from The New York Times (Aug. '02) about reading local literature as a guide to travel. Saved to reread. This is something I like to do (although I include memoirs and history as well as literature, things beyond the guidebook).
3. Article from June '95 from The New York Times about the Reichstag wrapping. Saved to reread in anticipation of the trip to NYC for The Gates.
4. Picture from '98 The New York Times showing a waiter cutting a piece of a cake in the shape of dead Lenin. (On that '93 trip my friend and I waited in a line to see dead Lenin and he looked exactly like this cake.) Saved to photocopy because it just doesn't get any better than this. I already copied it in '98 and gave it to my friend from the '93 trip. Can't believe it's been that long.
5. Facsimile copy of The New York Times from August 7, 1945, printed on August 6, 1995 in the same paper with a story about the anniversary of the first atomic bomb. Saved to remember and reread.
6. A clipping from The New York Times book review, date unknown. About the town of books in Wales named Hay-on-Wye. Saved because I really mean to go there at some point.
7. A clipping from The Austin Chronicle (see, I don't just read The Times!) by Michael Ventura about writing with computers and other implements. Saved to reread.
8. Recipes ripped from a '94 The New York Times Magazine. Saved because mushroom recipes and a potato and olive stew still sound good, over a decade later, in the saved by uncooked recipes.
9. An essay (from a '94 The New York Times Magazine need I say) about engineers renovating the Panorama of New York (a miniature city first exhibited in the '64 World's Fair) and about what could be said about the box of ripped out miniatures (because, of course, the real buildings were gone). Saved to read again because I like miniature cities and I'm going to New York. Wonder what the essayist would have thought of the changes wrought downtown seven years later?
10. Undated clipping about the first retail transaction on the Internet. I'm guessing '95? How far we've come.
11. Another article about the wrapping of the Reichstag, after the fact. From The NY Times, of course. Entitled "It Was Big, It Was Fun, That was Enough." Saved for above reasons.
12. An article from (guess where?) about Traveling Light. Saved to reread and because I'm always going to write my philosophy and packing treatise, Traveling Light, A Guide to Packing and Life.
13. An article from that same publication about body weight set points. Saved to reread.
14. A 1995 article from need we say where about the solving of Fermat's last theorem and how the professor who did it turned to another mathematician and former student for help when a gap surfaced in the complex solution. Saved to reread. I enjoy reading about mathematics. (By the way, I watched the second episode of Numbers and it isn't doing it for me. The plots have more bullet holes than the FBI people and equipment and the math stuff isn't giving me intellectual thrills. I'll probably give it another chance, though. But I'll probably get more pleasure from rereading this decades old article.)
15. And, in a clipping sans date from the same old pub, an article about a guy who specializes in palindromes. On the back is part of an article about the controversy over Pentium mathematical errors. Saved to reread. Reread, si, Otto, is dearer. Which would be funnier if Otto were a Latino-sounding name. Anyone know a Spanish name that is a palindrome?

Yeah, I'll save these for a while. And years from now I, or someone, will riffle through them again. I'm getting so old that my clippings and souvenirs are showing the age. And these are some of the more recent ones.