AUSTIN, Texas, November 3, 2005 — My digestion was a mess last night.

I'm sure I'll feel better today. I've been racking my brain for some food that sets it off because while I was in South Africa, I had very little problem with it. What did I eat that was different? Anyway, exercise helps.

I went to the gym and rode the bike for 50 minutes and did some ab and lower back stuff and some pull downs that allegedly help strengthen the upper back.

I stopped and voted early for next weeks election. I voted 'no' on a lot of stuff.

I came home and showered up and FFP and I went

out to Dad's. His answering machine hasn't been working. I had to push the 'on' button. We checked out the painting and bush trimming that had gotten done and some things that needed to be done and hadn't yet been done. Dad showed us all the plants in the glassed in porch: his, some of SuRu's she put there when she moved and hasn't picked up and some we left last winter and never retrieved. A lot of them are really thriving. He described some of his techniques to FFP. Using Epsom salts and when to repot. I sort of feel bad about leaving the plants there, but it gives him something to do.

We went to Costco. FFP wanted a certain kind of razor and some cologne he'd seen there. Couldn't find either. We bought a smoked turkey breast and turkey gravy (for Thanksgiving at his Mom's), provolone cheese, a tub of barbeque pulled pork, tortilla chips, General Tsao's chicken, a lifetime supply of bar soap, a case of Ensure for his parents, a new stapler (the one in my office was kaput and I have to take one to a volunteer job this weekend), a couple of giant boxes of cereal, a pair of black micro fiber pants for me and a big packaged of individually wrapped frozen boneless skinless chicken breasts. We bought gas, too, since it was 2.26 a gallon. We were dismayed to see that Costco was offering The Complete New Yorker for sixty bucks when we paid a hundred. Wish I knew someone for whom I really needed to buy a gift who would love to have it. FFP says he never needs to buy another book again now he owns this. He says, of course he will buy more books, but.... Well, you know.

While we were in Costco, little kids kept throwing tantrums. One mom was just letting the kid writhe on the floor in an aisle. Others were contained in carts or in Mom's arms. I suggested to Forrest that they gather them all up in one place in the store. About then one of the tantrum-throwers came along being pushed by his Mom. He was all red-faced and teary but silent, straring at another tantrum in a cart coming the other way. I've seen that before where one kid's tantrum was so fascinating it stopped another kid's act. I wonder if you can show kids videos of other kid's tantrums? What is it about the big warehouse store that was so upsetting? Actually you can imagine a lot of things that it could be. All that Mega packaging and such.

We stopped by Forrest's parents on the way home to drop off the Ensure and the Thanksgiving stuff. She'll freeze the smoked turkey breast until Thanksgiving. FFP's Dad told me about the book on tape he was listening to and his mom was going to write FFP a check for the Ensure, but she couldn't find her glasses. We said no matter, had to get our cold stuff home. I found her glasses on the table on the front porch on the way out.

I was going to work on my journal but the afternoon kind of drifted away into trying to design a holiday card. Yes, I know. It's three weeks until Thanksgiving! But I like to be the first to get them out and there is a 20% discount from Snapfish to order before the 15th.

Finally got something designed. Have to see how FFP likes it. He has been hard at work on some charity things. He stopped in early afternoon and made a big pop of chicken and rice. He had Oprah playing but the people on it are too, too sad. We switched. I hadn't eaten much today so I 'tested' some of this at four o'clock or so. In fact, before that I think the only thing I had to eat was a tiny portion of that barbequed pulled pork at Costco on a bit of bun. You can eat a lot of samples there. I usually don't bother.

And back to the journal. A few weeks ago at a party someone said to me that they had come here and "felt like they were spying." That gave me pause. However, and this is weirder, I feel kind of naked when I don't post here. [Ed. note: Don't use the n----- word here. Now Google will like it and Austin and people will be showing up looking for actual skin.] Yeah, I know. I should censor myself. Who else can do it? But, of course, I do censor myself. This is no more me than any other lie or truth.

I later succumbed to some nachos and a bunch of drama TV. Ho hum. They get a chimp baby in the ER and fire a nurse? But not the one that's being playing vet? Why do I watch this stuff? Of course, I actually read newspapers while it was going on. As if that redeemed it.

OK...I've been working on the journal forward from November 1 and forward from September 21. If that makes sense. History has been chasing its tail. When one writes a journal one is always chasing the present. Even as you type things become history. Maybe that's why it's so hard to settle on a tense. I used to worry about this and try to maintain present tense. Then I tried to maintain past tense. Then I mostly quit worrying about it. I suspect bloggers don't worry. There is the notion of immediacy of writing but a floating present. So you might blog "I am looking at a sunset and thinking about George Bush and Iraq" because when you blogged you were actually in the present, the sunset right there. You might blog the next morning "I thought about George Bush and Iraq all night." And while we wouldn't forgive you for being one more blogger (phhht...hate that word) talking about George and Iraq, we would forgive the change of tense. My entries get put togehter this way, sometimes. Of course, everything from September 21 to October 31 got written here after the dates were clearly past. Sort of. I used actual journals to feed the pixelated one and these jump around in this same way. "I'm watching Japanese tourists throw French fries in the air." Or "Last night we had a braii at Sue's." [Ed. note: You actually wrote 'Japanese tourists toss French fries in your notebook. Did you think people were going to have a different visual?] Yes.

But, in spite of many digressions like the above, I have actually filled in every day up to the present one. (Which is November 4. See how the present slips away?) Now I'm faced with actually putting it on the WEB. I could proofread it again before I do that. Or I could just not do it. (If you are reading this, then I didn't choose that course.) After I went to all this trouble I should back it up if I'm not going to post it. (I consider my WEB server a form of backup of my life. If my hard drive crashes I could bring it back from the ether to my machine. That Memento guy needed that. Which reminds me that I need to see that movie. But I digress. Inside a digression from a paragraph wondering at how progress can occur with so much digression.) [Ed. Note: Using digression three times in a paragraph would have 'himself' the editor, as opposed to this inner voice, running for the thesaurus. Detour? Parenthesis? Departure?] Shut up. [Come on, you know you enjoyed wandering off to the online thesauras!] Yeah, OK, that was fun.

So...what I decided to do was post the whole mess and then edit it on the fly. So if you actually start reading the back stuff (who would do that?) then watch for changes if you reload.