AUSTIN, Texas, June 14, 2005 — The calendar is completely blank. I don't get up until 8:30. I don't realize it's that late. FFP has already worked out. He has an appointment at ten. He is getting showered and cleaned up. We make the bed.

I get some coffee and call my dad. No answer. He was supposed to go get blood drawn. He probably did that. I don't worry about him so much any more. Of course, I call back in a bit and he's back from doing just that. Says he's just 'sitting and rocking.' I say I'll come over later and put his garbage can on the curb. He says he thinks

his maid is coming, maybe she'll do it. I say I have plenty of time, nothing else to do.

I edit a column for Forrest and work on a guest column I'm writing for him about our trip to Normandy last year. He's trying to stockpile enough so we can go out of town for a couple of weeks and he won't have to worry. I take a call from our bond broker and another call for him.

Finally, it's about 10:30. Time to go to the gym. I have nothing to do today so I have no excuse for not having a good workout. But after fifty-two minutes on the bike (but who is counting?) reading about Chinese people immigrating to cities I only do some ab stuff and a few static lunges. I go pick up a couple of twelve-point weights and I'm walking across the gym when I just want to go home. It's around noon and I'm caught up in all the SUVs picking up little kids from tennis and play camps.

At home I work on a couple of things, sending the column I wrote off to someone to check, trying to plan a visit to a local museum. It's almost one and I haven't eaten anything. I heat up some leftover chicken (a big piece) and have broccoli salad, too.

I make a couple of 'thank you' notes, for my friend who brought us a gift and brought Château d'Yqueum to our dinner on Sunday and for the guy who picked up the tab for food. I get a shower and go down to AFF and exchanged the films I'd watched for some different ones. I thought about going to take some photos of shop windows, but it was nearly four and hot out and getting to be a time of heavy traffic. I headed home.

I got stuck into trip planning, putting little maps printed from the WEB and reservation confirmations and such in a notebook and going over each leg on trip tix and other maps. FFP was off running errands. He'd had a busy day with errands and an interview. The doorbell rang. It was someone he'd interviewed, here to pick up copies of the column published in The West Austin News. I invited her in, offered her something to drink and FFP came home and we gave her a tour of the house, talking about art (she's an artist).

It was dinner time. I went back to the travel planning but FFP heated some fish stew and I ate that and some chips and cheese. We watched one short film and then started watching the basketball game and then we watched Six Feet Under and QE for the Straight Guy and it was late. Must get out of this pattern of getting in bed late and sleeping late. It's not the best for traveling. Oh, well, I seem to slip around the clock anyway.

I know I spend most of my time just writing here about eating leftovers and working out and such, but I do like to write more focused things from time to time. I have in past formats even tried to bang out a short essay almost every day. Now, I do essays quite rarely these days. But it isn't that I don't like focused writing. I do. I was pleased to finish a piece recently about my experiences visiting Normandy for the D-Day commemorations and even more pleased when a shortened (and probably better) version was fact-checked by someone and I could straighten out a couple of very incidental factual errors. (This shorter version is going to be published in the neighborhood newspaper FFP writes for, probably, accepted by his editor as a guest piece in his column.) I know truth is elusive but I think striving to tell the truth especially about individual lives is the only thing that might save us. I'm not saying what I write about myself is profound or complete. I just think it is on the truth target somewhere: the almost, the partial, the incomplete truth but still the truth if not the bullseye. I don't think my life is particularly important but I do think it is important to understand all lives. The life I accidentally landed in is the one I know best.