AUSTIN, Texas, August 4, 2005 — The only hard and fast thing we have to do is go to a luncheon. It's part of an all-day thing but we are just going to show up for the keynote, lunch, awards or something.

I have trouble getting up. I let the dog out and go back to bed. I'm having strange and interesting dreams and just feel like I have to go back to them over and over to see what will happen. Weird, huh? Of course, I don't remember much about them actually when I get up. I was finding stuff in the mud, riding a tricycle at one point in what seemed like a familiar setting and activity. My dead mother

appeared. It seems that people who are dead appear in my dreams more often than live ones. Only they are alive in the dreams. Live people I actually know don't appear as much.

Anyway, I got over viewing my dreams like movies and got up and dressed for a workout. We discussed when we would actually go to this event. I wasn't sure what we decided but I headed off to the club (after FFP left in his own car) and did forty hard minutes of bike and some leg things. Just a few lunges and some balance lifts. I headed home thinking that probably I should do more workouts. We are busy today later. Well, I said we just had this luncheon but it goes on for a long time with speeches and awards and then there is the West End gallery crawl tonight we might do and also another art show at the same time over at Chez Zee. So, see, we might be busy the rest of the day. So I can't fool myself that I'll come back to the club. Tomorrow we have to take the Accord to the shop to actually get that new computer which they allege to have gotten in. That means I'll be on FFP-time tomorrow. So even thought that's all we have to do tomorrow (take the car in) we will probably go to the club together. I always feel my workout is cut short when he wants to leave. When I'm by myself I often cut it short all on my own by just suddenly walking out but that's different. Anyway, I headed home thinking about needing to get in better shape, find time for more exercise, maybe watch fewer AFF films or not waste time in front of the computer surfing. And I wonder how much gas we waste making two car trips to the club every day instead of one. Of course, it's only about three miles.

At home it's time to clean up and go to this luncheon. In my mind the thing will be tiresome. I'm not sure why we are going. Ballet Austin people had something to do with it. Maybe someone from the ballet organization is getting an award. It will probably be entertaining given that I don't expect it to be.

So we go out to the Renaissance Hotel and get checked in for the luncheon. We are sitting with some of the people from Ballet Austin and some other folks. The executive director, Cookie Ruiz, is nomintated for the awards. As are some forty other people. I eat too much of the food. A salad followed by a 'something for everyone' dish which contains on one plate chicken, salmon with diced tomatoes, a red pepper, mashed potatoes, bok choy and carrots. I mostly leave the dessert. While I pick at it the president of SBC Texas, Jan Newton. She speaks on turning stress into a postive thing. FFP confides to the woman next to him later that we can tell people how to avoid stress: quit!

They announce 'finalists' then. Of the forty-two nominees, twenty-five are finalists and given a certificate. Then there are a handful of 'winners.' Cookie Ruiz is one of them. There are short videos about each of the winners. That's great PR for the ballet.

We hustle out of there after that and FFP says on the way home that he is going to take a call at three from someone collecting info about his memories of the Whitman Texas Tower shootings in 1966. Nineteen sixty-six. Long time ago.

I check my e-mail. There is a note about a film meeting for next week from the programmer at AFF. It's clear from the note that he needs people to turn around movies...and fast. So I decide to watch some. I develop a new category. Movies I should have been paid to watch. But I find some things to like in a couple of them.

Our bookkeeper (who was here earlier in the day to work) returns and the three of us go to Chez Zee. They are having a reception and selling art for CASA (court-appointed special advocates). I got an e-mail that there would be free food and drink. We were consdiering going to first Thursday down in the west end (west Fifth and Sixth) and seeing art and scouting for free food and libation so why not start here? The food is indeed wonderful. We aren't stunned by the art but I hope they sell some for a good cause. Another friend meets us there. I pretty well get my dinner there and have a large glass of free white wine. I even eat a brownie. Outside the wind is picking up and it's raining a bit. We dash out. Our bookkeeper wants to stop by the house and get her car. Our other friend says she's going home and then changes her mind and follows along and gets in with us for the downtown portion. We park on Baylor and go to F8. We encounter the artist Jennifer Balkan on the way, pedaling her bike. Says she is going to the East Side for someone's opening. We tour F8 which is showing a few pieces from a bunch of different artists from their past shows. I just drink some water. We take in Wally Workman where a tall, willowy woman stands among her bright watercolor works and compliments FFP on his new orange shirt. In the back are a few pieces from other artists including some Julie Speeds. She is awesome but also very, very expensive. We wander through Urban Roots, which is sort of connected, and go down to Artworks. Nothing startlingly new there. We decide to cash it in.

At home, we have something to drink and our friend stays a while watching some mindless reality show about lawyers and a Without a Trace that I've seen before. (I still have trouble following the plot.) My friend leaves and I finish up reviewing my other films from AFF. I figure I can return them tomorrow and get some more to review over the weekend. This process must be completed by the end of August. Time flies. But now it's late. Sleep.

Two things mark the passing of the days: the calendars around you and the keeping of a diary of some sort. One calendar in my office is still set to June. Nevertheless, time flees. One has a page for each day with a French sentence on it. It often falls behind. (Today's sentence is "Avec moi, vous ne risquez rien." With me you risk nothing. Or "You're safe with me." As the translation says. Ripping off these pages, going through the steps to post an entry, the days peal off and run away. I am powerless to stop the march nor to adequately remember the past. Why do I bring this up? I'm not sure. Except that today I got an e-mail from an old high school and college (heck...we met in Junior High School) friend. She was visiting the Dallas area and had tracked down a couple of other friends (another Linda and a Lynda, everyone was Linda then but I had not yet resorted to initials but they would have been LE and LR) and was trying to put together a little get together between Dallas and Ft. Worth somewhere for Sunday. I thought about it, but it was too far to go and get back around obligations I'd already made. My friend (she was my best friend for a long time) lives in Portland. I confess that when I've visited Portland I haven't looked her up. The email exchange, though, made me think of those times, so long ago, of the unbelievable changes and, yet, how I'm the same. I also thought of all the things I'd forgotten from my younger days. Which of the Linda/Lynda crew had that car that nearly floated away as we were going to school one day in a rain storm. And what all has happened to these people. My old 'best' friend's history I know a little bit about. But these other people (for whom married names were also cited) I know nothing about what happened to them. Careers, marriages, children? I was corresponding with another school friend the other day and we were saying that we didn't much care to go to the reunion next year but that we would like to know what had happened to everyone. All well time passes.