AUSTIN, Texas, August 18, 2005 — I wake up dreaming some kind of strange travel-related thing I've now forgotten. I am a little blurry but I get going and get coffee and go to the computer. I wish I could say I did something more productive than just publishing yesterday's journal before I drug myself off to the gym.

It was 11:30 when I got back. As I walked out of the gym a tiny girl in a swimsuit, couldn't have been much over two, sauntered by me and up to the counter at the snack bar. She climbed up the steps in front of the counter (intended to elevate young patrons to order their ice cream and chicken fingers

and such). She stood there gripping the counter and turned her head back over her shoulder and said "Mommy!" I couldn't see Mommy anywhere but all the adults around including the guy behind the counter were really laughing. Soon she'll know the family's membership number and she'll have an ice cream bar before Mom has a chance to veto it.

I did OK in the gym. Rode the bike over fifty minutes while reading papers from the last few days. Did some weight things for chest, shoulders, triceps, biceps.

I headed home thinking I'd have cereal and yogurt but himself had purchased a rotisserie chicken with cole slaw so I had a bit of that and then ate a peach.

I got a shower, watched an episode of Jeopardy off the DVR. Then I said I was going to do something useful and I did. I went to my office and updated the OS and virus scan on my laptop (newspapers report bad guys attacking WIN2K and the laptop is running it) and then took it upstairs where most of our paper files are. While I was updating the laptop, I played with a BASIC program that I downloaded. It was recommended by another journal writer, John Bailey. I've been wanted something more straightforward and cheaper than VB. Not that I really need to program, I just wanted to see how it worked.

Upstairs, I plugged the laptop into the LAN, connected to the Internet and our online brokerage account and I spent several boring hours putting basis values in for stock we moved from another account. This is the first baby step to getting better control over some of our finances. I have started down this path before so it wasn't as hard as it could have been. When there are spin-offs, splits, reverse splits, name changes, stock issued for debt, well there can be complications. And entering the stuff is fraught with potential for typos so I cross-checked lots of stuff. I brought up a deal on Excite where I'd entered some of the info and I got out sales slips and the latest statement from the brokerage where the stocks came from and arranged myself with the paper trail, the calculator, the screens. I used a site that has split information to confirm that stuff. Our diversified savings in stocks and bonds allowed up to retire, but it does take some management. In contrast, I found in the journal box I'm going through a piece of paper dated May 19, 1975. This is before I met Forrest or married. I owned no real estate or really any personal property of value. Here was my entire Balance Sheet, if you will. Apparently, I wrote down each individual charge slip in my desk, the balances from some savings accounts and, with probably ten minutes labor, I had a complete picture of my financial position. When one has little, it is easy to tally it up. However, I was constantly for the next twenty plus years scrambling to make sure the money covered the bills even as the complication escalated. Two years later I'd be married, keeping books for a business. But wasn't life simple at this moment?

Anyway, I get to a stopping place with the financials and I'm hungry. FFP has made fish stew so I eat that with one of the rolls that he got with the chicken. I eat a couple of slices of provolone cheese, too.

We head down to Dobie. We seem to get stopped by every light. We are very lucky by the time we park (three bucks in a lot) to get seats for Grizzly Man. It's a preview showing. But we do get them. They aren't bad seats given that odd Egyptian theme theater they have which makes the audience look like their heads are in that odd hieroglyphic pose. The movie's scenes of bears doing their own things (fighting, getting fish) are great. The landscape shots are great. But Grizzly Man (Tim Treadwell) and his weird friends are nuts. The filmmaker (Werner Herzog) used too many minutes, in my opinion, of the guy's histrionics. Less of that would have still conveyed who the guy was. As far as whether this guy 'protected' the grizzlies before one of them thoughtlessly ate him, I'd say "no, not really." Not so you could tell from the film. There is footage he took of 'tourists' throwing rocks at the bears and photographing them. But he seems to have done nothing that stopped that. If you like nature flicks, though, some of this footage is really good. If only the nut case wasn't in the foreground of so much of it! But really it's a pretty good character study of one man's obsession. He's not the hero he wanted to be. (Although he wanted to be famous and got that.) But he did something and went out in a dramatic fashion. Have to feel sorry for the girlfriend who was with him though.

We go home. I make a plate of nachos and have a beer. I know...bad. FFP has a snack and some of the nachos, too. We watch a film submitted to AFF. Time travel is a popular device for several films I've reviewed.

We read a bit and sleep.