AUSTIN, Texas, June 19, 2005 — Our main thing, of course, is to honor our fathers. I wake up amidst one truly complex dream. There is work and hotels and trips and all kinds of things like leaking water all mixed up together. It is early. The dog wants out. I let her out and catch some more Z's. I get to the gym, though, and do forty minutes on the bike and some ab and lower back things. I go home, shower, dress and I'm typing away on my computer when Dad comes. He's brought forms from the endocrinologist he'll see this week. "I tried to look at them but they gave me a headache."

He is way early. I finish up a few things for him, e-mailing one of his doctors and looking through the stuff from the doctor.

We went to the club for a Father's Day brunch. With both fathers relying on canes, FFP and I went to the buffet, looked, reported, filled up plates for them. A good time was had by all, I think.

We all went back to the house. We'd forgotten the camera and the gifts so we gave them gifts and took pictures. FFP turned the golf on TV, we discussed this and that and Dad decided to go home and take a nap. Then FFP's parents wanted to go home so FFP took them.

My mother-in-law remains amazed that my dad can drive and can see well enough to do it. "It makes up for some of his other problems, doesn't it?" I suppose it does. He is lucky that he can see and can still drive well. My mother-in-law never learned to drive and now can't see well enough to drive anyway. My father-in-law had to give up because of vision problems quite a few years ago. Before he was ninety, anyway. Because when I moved my parents here in 2000, I stored my mother's car for a few weeks in their garage. Dad wasn't letting her drive much at that point. He sold the car to our handyman later. FFP was talking about downtown living tonight and how we'd have to buy a second parking place. That we could never exist with one car. But is it true? My in-laws take cabs to the grocery store and doctor's appointments.

I did a few things on the computer and settled in reading the newspaper. Around 5:30, a friend of ours who is an on-air personality at Majic 95.5 came by and we took off to hear music again. We are gettting to be the live music fringe explorers. We found downtown abuzz with something. It was hard to find a parking place. Whatever was drawing crowds wasn't at Copa, a joint at 217 Congress that was doing a special Sunday opening for the Jazz Chamber Ensemble. They did draw twenty or thirty people, maybe, at the end of the day, but the group has ten guys: keyboard, tenor sax, alto sax, baritone sax, two trumpets, trombone, French horn, drums, upright bass (with bass clarinet, flute, clarinet, soprano sax and flugelhorn covered by the woodwind and trumpet guys). We gathered with people we knew and ate nachos and queso and such and had a few drinks. Wil Swindler and his pal Stephen Smith are these two impossibly young guys who want to keep the composition, arrangement and performance for large jazz groups going. So they write, recruit wonderful performers and scratch for a place to play. Wil plays with our pal, cool crooner Kevin Ahart sometimes as do a couple of other players in this group. Kevin and his entourage (which includes his father, briefly) show up and we all sit together. The group includes inspired playing by Elias Haslanger who, it turns out, is married to Amy Atchley who in turn has a fan in our friend who came along tonight. At a break we find out about a performance of hers that's coming up. We are almost, but not quite, disappointed that we will be out of town for the next performance of this group and an appearance at Elephant Room by Elias. You can't do everything. It will be good to get out of town if only to appreciate this amazing city where you can hear music like this for a $5 cover and visit with cool people. We may not be the live music capital of the world but we are the cheap live music kings and queens. Sadly, the muscians have to scrounge a living. I put $10 in the tip jar but that probably only bought each guy enough gas to get home. They can't live downtown. Too expensive.

When we got home, we watched a Simpsons off the DVR which was hilarious. We were going to watch Six Feet Under but we then realized the new episodes actually come out on Monday. I didn't finish the Sunday papers but did get to sleep at a reasonable hour.