AUSTIN, Texas, Apr. 4, 2005 — I have this feeling of being adrift. It starts when I try to wake up with the missing hour problem. My dreams (which I can't remember as I write) are flying by, an enervating chase, a race, an effort to do something, maybe remember. Finally I get up. It would be an early start only it's DST. But it's OK. The first thing I need to handle is to get the proceeds from a maturing CD from one bank to put in another bank. And by the time I've gotten around to that, it's nine and the bank is open. It takes a while for the clerk to fill out a form by hand and cut a cashier's check. One of the branch manager wonks comes over offering a higher CD rate. I decline.

I take the check home. FFP is out and I need him to endorse it, too, so I fool around getting some computer glitches straightened out and then go to the gym. I do over fifty minutes on the bike while reading some old newspapers and then I do some ab stuff and about seven or eight sets of weight stuff.

I go home. I talk to my dad for the second time today (I think). He wants me to go to the store for some stuff and says he will think about what he wants while I'm getting ready. I shower up, eat, watch some TV off the DVR and call him back. I want to wait around for FFP to get the check endorsed so I can make a trip to the bank. Dad wants juice, Milk of Magnesia and cottage cheese. FFP does come home and he signs the check and makes some deposit slips and I go to the bank and then the Randall's near his house. I get a couple of extra keys to his house made and buy his stuff and take it to him. I deal with his recycling and talk to him a while, get some trash out of the yard, get his mail in. He is bending better. He got his feet washed, he says and got his socks on. He has a urologist appointment tomorrow and a dermatologist one Wednesday. He hopes, he says, they don't invent any more -gists. I remind him of things to tell the doctor tomorrow. This doctor is very close. I call the hospital to see about our handyman (Forrest's cousin) who is in the hospital with chest pains.

Satisfied Dad is doing OK, I go home. FFP and I discuss various things. The mail comes. Some sorry outfit has sent a corrected 1099-DIV but of course our return has been sent. Doesn't seem material. We fax it to the CPA. Geez. They should be horsewhipped.

We cook some salmon and make salad and eat and clean up and watch TV and somehow another day slips away from me. A day without accomplishing anything unless you count working out, shopping for Dad, making extra keys to his house, feeding myself, cleaning up the kitchen, worrying over finances, dealing with the banks, cursing a mutual fund that screwed up a 1099. It seemed like nothing and mostly was. We watch the basketball game as well as some recorded shows. And then bed.