AUSTIN, Texas, May 21, 2005 — If we had some free time, what would we do with it? Turns out we'd exercise a bit, I would research why some of my domains were hijacked by AT&T, we would do yard work. (Mostly I rubbed treatment into the teak furniture. But I also followed FFP's lead and mulched beds, trimmed stuff and got him to help me shovel weeds out of the french drain in front of the yard.)

What would we do after we'd worn out doing those chores? We'd stay home and watch videos and eat a dish FFP makes and calls 'fish stew.'

We'd have a Rhone white out of the wine cellar. We'd throw together a spinach salad. (Oh, yeah, I ate other things today. Nonfat yogurt and cereal, raw vegies, a few nachos. And late at night, watching videos and TV, I thought of eating some more. But didn't.)

We watched a video of this old 1960 Frank Sinatra TV show with Elvis Presley. Boy, those were simpler times. The singers (Frank, Sammy Davis, Jr., Elvis) were great. (Although the old audio left something to be desired.) Dancing was fine. But the production values were like your average high school production today.

Yes, we'd sit around, showered up, me in a clean pair of jeans and a TShirt, barefooted and I'd flip through TV and stuff recorded from TV on the DVR and read newspapers from the last couple of days, despairing at the pile I hadn't looked at. We'd stick on the Frank Sinatra video. FFP would fall asleep and I'd watch Under the Sand with Charlotte Ramping, paying enough attention to appreciate the acting, the interesting screenplay but sort of reading stuff and missing some of it because I wasn't paying attention to subtitles or I fell asleep. Finally sleep.

There was an article about FFP's Dad in the newspaper today and we had lots of calls about it. So did FFP's parents. The most interesting was a woman who called them to comment on the street photo taken in 1948 or so with FFP's parents walking down the street, his dad carrying him. There were a couple of soldiers in the background. A woman called and said one of them was her late husband.