AUSTIN, Texas, Feb. 13, 2005 — I hear rain during the night. I wake up with a weird little headache. FFP is up and then back to bed. I hear distant noise from the street---the race is going by. The neighbors are gathering to watch. But I don't care. We stay in bed. Finally the need for coffee wins and I get up. I make the bed, have coffee, have cereal and yogurt, half a grapefruit.

When I look out the window I see slow runners and walkers straggling by. And the neighbors gathering across the street. I don't mind missing standing out there. I'm more into my own thing today than being a spectator.

FFP's mail program is misbehaving and it takes what seems like hours to set things right. I work a little catching up my journal and then I eat a salad and some cheese and chips and hot sauce. I boil some eggs for later eating.

So it is well into the afternoon (a sunny and quite warm and welcoming one it turns out) before I'm at the gym. I manage fifty minutes on the bike and a few scapula squeezes and that's it. I am in a fog, the day is nice.

The only thing we have on the calendar for today is a UT Women's basketball game. We've decided to skip it. So when I get home I put away the clean dishes in the dishwasher and then chop two boiled eggs and an apple and a bit of onion and combine with two cans of tuna, mayo and sweet relish with a dash of salt, white pepper and curry powder. Voila, something else to snack on. Then I decide that I should (a) finish my journal; and (b) read the papers.

I put my dull week to bed, journal-wise. I sit in the bedroom sitting area with a pile of newspapers and watch first this and that. The UT Women's basketball game, for example.

As the day fades, we eat a few snacks and then watch crime shows. I read while FFP watches Desperate Housewives which is a story I just can't get interested in. We watch crime things and a DVR ER. For some reason that woman on ER with hip displasia (Cary? Kerry?) and some EMT on Third Watch both find their mothers. The thematic well has run dry. So...why do I still watch? I'm going to stop, I tell you. Yeah, just like I'm going to stop writing this journal. I'm obsessive, I know. Once I do something regularly it is hard to stop. Unless it's a good habit, of course.