AUSTIN, Texas, Mar. 23, 2005 — Yesterday was a home-centered performance. Today we are out and about in Austin. We begin the day by getting up and getting showered up. We go to Upper Crust and meet one of the City Council candidates to hear about his campaign. We come home, meet up with a young gal who is going to try to take over some of the business FFP is retiring from and go downtown. There is a press conference to introduce the new minor league basketball team to Austin (NBDL...NBA development league). We meet several people from one of FFP's client companies there.

Then we head to the Four Seasons hotel for lunch. I have the following conversation with the hotel on my cell phone:
"Cafe please."
"We don't have a Cafe. We have the Seasons Restaurant, I can connect you with them."
"You have called it the Cafe at the Four Seasons for years, you probably should answer to that."
"No, we don't have a Cafe."
Sure enough the cafe people mumbled "Seasons Restaurant" into the phone. One of the boyish managers made sure we were comfortable. We asked after his wife, a young friend of ours, away in New York at the Culinary Institute of America. "She's fine, she's enjoying it." I ask him after the meal about the name change. He knew nothing about it.

This is an example of rebranding gone awry. But FFP is no longer on a PR retainer with the hotel so what do I care? (That retainer was a money-loser, I tell you. We always spent far more down there than they paid us.)

Lunch is a discussion, mostly between our young PR friend and the client. The torch is passed. We leave, greeting some other people we know. Our young friend gives us some free passes to the art festival weekend next as she does a bunch of free advertising and PR work for them. Something free. I like it.

I fix some computer problems, do some review on the taxes and change and go to the club for a bike ride, reading old newspapers. (It's kind of interesting. I'm just now getting around to reading reviews of Motorcycle Diaries and I have just gotten around to watching it, too.)

At home, I talk to SuRu and decide to meet her in the Arboretum area for dinner.

I leave at six. Plenty of time, right? I think I'll go 2222 to Mesa to Spicewood to Great Hills. Plenty of time, just take the scenic route. Then I blow right by Mesa and I'm stuck going to 360. (Cap. of Texas.) Bad, very bad. The traffic is piled up at the light all the way up the steep hill that winds down to Bull Creek. Between that wait and the other lights, I'm late. When I get to Truluck's new location on Great Hills, we find out it's an hour wait. We go to Reed's where there are stacks of tables for dining (although there is a good crowd for drinks and food and live music downstairs.) We eat. I have one of those slice of iceberg salads that is an excuse for bleu cheese dressing and bacon consumption. And a glass of their cheapest Pinot Noir. (I drank Pinot long before Sideways, I'll have you know.) My sole dish seems a little salty. We have some coffee. We talk. We go back to the center on Great Hills and wander Borders for a bit. We have been discussing schadenfreude, although the word's exact spelling is eluding me. So we look it up in a dictionary. Then I pick up this words you should know book and, sure enough, it's in there. We wander around. I look at bargain books, computer books, new paperbacks. I see things I'm interested in but think of the unread books at home. I see books I have at home and haven't read.