AUSTIN, Texas, August 8, 2005 — I wake up with the dog begging to get back in bed with me after her breakfast. She tries to jump up a couple of times and misses. I pick her up, go to the bathroom, come back to bed. FFP comes back to catch a few more minutes. I get up, though, about 7:30, because my dad said he might go to water aerobics today.We make the bed. I throw on a robe and get some coffee. I call Dad but he doesn't answer. Maybe he's going to the club. I put on my bathing suit and throw my workout clothes in my bag with some newspapers to read. Sure enough, just after I arrive he shows up. We sit by the pool and talk. He says he is going to climb down the ladder in the deep end to get in

the pool. He does, no problem. So one excuse I have for not working out adequately today is doing water aerobics for an hour with him. And...he climbed up the ladder, too. I climbed up, thinking about the effort for me with all my alleged exercises and thinking that it will be hard for him. He did it and he didn't complain, though. We'll see if he goes back on Wednesday.

I go inside and shower the chlorine off and put on my workout clothes and do thirty minutes on the bike. Then I go home. Better than just doing the class, I guess, but I want to get in shape. Oh well.

I go home and have some cereal and nonfat yogurt for breakfast and, not long after, some mixed greens with sunflower sprouts, leftover salmon, green onions, mozzarella cheese and Eastside Feta dressing. I saw somewhere that a guy photographed everything he ate for a year and published it in a book. I have given up the food diary but I'm still in a mode of sort of noticing all the stuff that passes my lips. But now I don't confess in this space about every chip and piece of cheese I cadge from the frig. Photos, though, hmm. I have been known to photograph my food. In restaurants mostly.

I get a shower and do some backups and downloads on the bookkeeper's computer. I do a couple of other things in the office. FFP is so good to keep up with check writing and a lot of the bookkeeping and filing that the bookkeeper doesn't do.

I intermittently watch a Charlie Rose show with Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano and an architecture critic. I read some of the old papers.

Film meeting started at six but I headed down early to get through the paperwork of checking in and out films to take home. The movies we watched were all interesting in some way: technique, theme, acting. Nothing stood out and stunned us. It will be interesting to see if any of these make the festival. It is also interesting to hear the (mostly) young people talk about their lives. A couple of guys were talking about getting together on a project. One guy talked about another guy getting messed up on downers and he and a buddy having to 'practically carry' him home.

"It's funny to tell it now," he said, after recounting the guy trying to get his door open and discovering, belatedly, that he been spilling drinks on his shirt all night. "But it was scary."

We watched our movies eating bad pizza (Mr. Gatti's). I should lay off the bad pizza but I can't seem to do it.

We were split into two groups. When the upstairs people came down, they said they had just had a 'traumatic movie experience.' Turns out they'd watched a short about a very difficult subject that I'd passed on. I thought it was well-made and important. It was disturbing, though.

I went home and read some papers while FFP watched football. Football? Who knew it was time for football again. When I looked up from my papers and noticed that he wasn't there anymore (gone upstairs to his office, I guess) I switched to watching game shows off the DVR. Or half watching them.

He returned and sleep soon won although it was late, after midnight.

I need to accomplish something! Where does my time go? At one point today I was searching online for travel medical and evacuation policies. I wrote e-mails. I sorted through a drawer of last year's Christmas cards, tossing most of them. I watched a shorts program off IFC. (Some of them I wouldn't have passed on if they were in the festival.)