AUSTIN, Texas, September 8, 2005 — I know I'm selfish, but at least I admit it. There I am again swatting tennis balls with my mature friends while others struggled to put their lives back together. When I woke up I was, for some reason, clicking off in my mind all the trips abroad I'd taken and what years. Weird. And self-centered.

Oh, I stopped by the gym first, too, and lifted a few weights after giving the old but working graphing calculator that I'd gotten from Freecycle to the instructor whose daughter left hers in the dorm room...at Tulane.

After tennis, I came back and goofed off, checking out some doubles tennis and showering, making the bed, stuff like that. I did dig out a TV and test it and find some plates, glasses, bowls that I could give away to people needing to set up in apartments. We had a message from the apartment people that we invest with that they needed these things because they were housing a family. I e-mailed with the gal coordinating it to see if they still needed the stuff and they did so I raced over there and dropped it off on the way to my lunch date. A few cubic feet of stuff I wasn't using anyway. It's not like I've gone out and bought stuff for people.

Lunch. I have a regular date with a friend, also retired. We meet at Fino. I have a delicious hummus sandwich with a tabouli salad. The sandwich has a very fressh tomato and the taste of everything is lemony fresh. My buddy and I talk about trips and movies and articles in The New Yorker about global warming. We talk about the hurricane and how we appreciate our lives, dry and safe. We speak to Lisa and Emmett on the way out.

I rush home to be there when Mr. Ray (of Ray's Electronics) and his side kick (who does the actual work while Ray helps lift and gives out trivia) come to put the boards back in to fix our TV. They put the ciruitry back in and wrestle the whole thing back into the tight cabinet and get everything connected. Our TV in THE room works again. Not that we watch it that much.

FFP comes home from his interview. We discuss investments, expenses. I comment that it looks like Hewitt is headed to the semis in the U.S. Open. We decide to eat at Fonda San Miguel tonight since they are donating a percentage to the Red Cross. We are such giving people. (Yeah, I know. Going to a benefit or dining out so a few bucks go to a charity is a cop out. If it makes you feel better, I don't think I'm really doing much.) We'll probably dine out Monday, too, and benefit AIDS Services Austin. Yeah, we are the selfish well-off people we used to hate. I have a couple of glasses of wine and a spinach salad and the stuffed zucchini (calabicitas rellenas). With some rice and beans. And a bunch of chips and hot sauce, too.

We get home early from the restaurant and I settle in with newspapers and my tennis coverage. Federer is so good he isn't exciting. Must go to sleep. And do.