AUSTIN, Texas, Mar. 17, 2005 — I don't realize it's St. Patrick's Day until I see that my Frenchie phrase a day calendar says "Vous êtes d'origine irlandaise?" I'm too wrapped up in my reading, workouts, films and other pleasures to keep up with that.

I'm not keen to get up at first but I'm not really sleeping so I do. I worry that my life has become full of obligations. I worry when I go spend an hour at the gym and feel guilty I didn't do enough. I worry that I feel guilty that I'm not seeing enough movies in the film festival. Geez. This is ridiculous. And I'm worried about the mouse...or is it a rat. But more on that later.

When I get home from the gym, I take the time to write in my journal which is, after all, my raison d'être. It is all mine anyway and I'm creating it not just consuming. I guess the gym is a similar deal...I'm doing something. Making my body different, a little, making my heart healthier, maybe. Although I read old newspapers and magazines and my book on the bike. Consuming. The work and lives of others. I finish The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester today. Words, madness, the Civil War, World War I. All woven into a book. I love nonfiction the way I love documentaries. Why make up stories when real life is so interesting?

In spite of this feeling of consuming, consuming...I shower up and get ready to go see some more films. We know the music people are going to be swarming over downtown but we are going to brave it nonetheless.

So we have in mind to see a reel of shorts at Alamo Downtown. And to see a documentary at the Paramount. And to get some pictures, maybe of the Coexistence Art Exhibit on Auditorium shores as a backdrop of the Townlake Stage of SXSW. But first to park. We find a spot in a lot for $5. We walk to a part of W. Fourth that is closed for St. Patrick's Day (the part that includes Fado). We dash into Halcyon and get a couple of their great panini sandwiches with a bit of salad and some bottles of water. We are among the first in line for the shorts. One seems very familiar and I realize I screened it as a submission to AFF. The theater filled up. We signaled to Sean Ackerman, the director of the film Straight Line that we went to see at Dobie, that a seat was available next to us. The kids from this film seem to be enjoying the festival.

There is still time before we go to the Paramount so we wander over to Tesoros Trading. They seem to be doing a good business with SXSW people. FFP buys some milagro-like trinkets for a mixed media painting he has in mind.

We've heard good things about this documentary, Rock School. So we line up at the Paramount and see it. The guy featured in the documentary is there as well as the film makers. It's a great flick about an interesting school for kids to learn rock music. The guy is opening them up all over now (his home one is in Philadelphia), including one in Austin and one in San Francisco.

While we are waiting for the movie to start I've finished my book and I'm reading the October 13, 2003 issue of The New Yorker. I read something about Albert Ellis, a psychotherapist of some reknown that I've never heard of. Hey, here's some philosophy I can get behind. "None of us can change the fact that we're going to get older and die—too fucking bad." Must learn more about this guy who believes that childhood trauma means little, that people are fallible and must be made to realize and that people are all well, sort of crazy. (Although this latter is questionable to me: crazy is just a distance from the norm and mathematics tells us that we will only see a few as crazy no matter what.)

I'm starting to feel better than I did this morning about my life. I'm on permanent vacation. I want to be reading and watching movies. I'll be creative another time. (Like now as I type this. Well, hmmm.) Heck, it's been a beautiful day and we've enjoyed walking the streets (which are starting to fill up with SXSW people who are a little weirder looking than the film people with more piercings, tattoos and a propensity to jean jackets) between dark theaters. We head over to the car and put our backpack in the trunk. We walk over to the ballet building where they are selling the parking. (Even the P.O. is selling the parking.) We say 'hi' to some ballet folks in the parking lot and hustle over to Town Lake. We walk across the Congress pedestrian bridge and all the way into the enclosure for the concert. As the light fades we get some pictures of the festivities with the Coexistence exhibit as a backdrop.

We know that the dog has probably been inside too long. And then there's the mouse or rat. But we decide to stay downtown a while longer. We walk back to Thistle and settle in for apps and entrees while watching the UT Men's team fall out of the NCAA in the first round.

Downtown is crazy now. Live music sounding from everywhere. People in St. Pat's Day garb. Lots of traffic. Time to escape.

Home again, we find no further evidence of the rodent. (I haven't gotten around to explaining that, have I?) The dog doesn't seem to have had an accident either in spite of the long time we've been gone.

We settle in to read and watch TV but I find I need sleep. I'm getting it before eleven. Maybe I'll just sleep in tomorrow.

Oh...the rodent. Night before last, I think it was. I was in the bedroom watching TV or reading. FFP said 'come here!' in a desperate voice. The sound he would make if he discovered a leak or something. "Shut the dog in the bedroom!" I did that. He explained that he'd seen a shadow of a critter in my office and 'heard it bump' my trashcan. Now, my uncle saw dogs in the house when he was failing from Alzheimer's but FFP hasn't shown any signs of decline. We got flashlights and poked in all the crannies of the room. We didn't find anything. But still. I didn't see it myself. But I'm on guard now. And I'm putting some poison in the attic.