AUSTIN, Texas, November 17, 2005 — I didn't want to get up this morning. But I'd promised to play tennis and I like to keep my promises. I got up and put on a polo, sweats, my new tennis shoes (a 'Christmas present' to myself, they arrived yesterday). I fooled around on the computer a little and went to the club. I tried to organize everything in my new tennis bag (another present to myself). It has too many pockets, though. I will have to make sure I remember where everything is so I'm not always unzipping every one before I find the sun screen or Kleenex. Still, it's cool.

One of the other people who is supposed to show

up for this casual game didn't show. So we played California. It was fun but by the end I had a congestion headache. The weather was so nice, I didn't want to feel bad. I didn't want to be 'under the weather.' (Why do we say that?) Instead of going to the gym after the tennis, I went home. I swallowed some elixir and an hour later, I felt better.

I sat down at the computer to look at mail. Info about various events. One I'd really like to go to, but the cheapest tickets are a table for ten for $5000! That's $500 a person even if you find people to buy a table with. And those are the cheapest tickets.

I goofed off. I read other people's journals. Our handy couple (a cousin of Forrest's and his wife) showed up to power wash the stone where we had the yard man pull down some dead vines. You'd think with all the help that we'd have plenty of time to do something constructive ourselves. Water seeped under the front door and we had to mop it up with some old towels. I started thinking about things I needed to send to my relatives in Denver. A birthday present for my sister and some Christmas presents. I promised to send some spare Compact Flash cards to my niece so I decide to download all the pictures instead of just removing them to make sure I have them all even though I'm sure I downloaded them all at least once. It is amusing to look back at some of the pictures I've forgotten. I need to organize all my pictures that are stowed away on the computer (not to mention the hundreds of prints I have). This lack of organization depressed me.

I also dug through stuff in our storage room. I'm embarrassed to admit that in my recent adult life I accumulated an enormous pile of toys. There is my bendable, posable, collectible figure collection. And there is a large collection of Lego parts. I am considering divesting myself of a large part of the latter collection and bestowing it on my great nephews. So I sorted through some of it. It was depressing. I had no business owning this stuff and not playing with it. Some stuff is too advanced for the kids now. Sorting through it seems essential and a waste of time at the same time. I got depressed so I stop working on it.

The maid came and I grabbed the day's newspapers and went back to my office. But I only read a paragraph or two. The mail came. There were some prints I ordered from SNAPFISH that I was going to use to make a gift for a friend. So I did that. Then I was still thinking about that short story I'm not going to write. The one entitled "December at the Top." Really all I have is the title and the idea of the "calendars in people's heads". The calendar in my head is a strange and amazing thing. (Well to me anyway.) I didn't even know consciously that I had a calendar in my head until I read the following in The Mythical Man-Month Anniversary Edition by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.

I have long enjoyed asking candidate programmers, "Where is November?" If the question is too cryptic, then, "Tell me about your mental model of the calendar." The really good programmers have strong spatial senses; they usually have geometric models of time; and they quite often understood the first question without elaboration. They have highly individualistic models.

I read this a decade or so ago, I guess. I immediately realized that a year in my head looks like this:

The little flat part at the top ends up at December 31. I guess that flat part can be a week or two. I think when I was in school it was the Christmas vacation. The flat part at the bottom is the summer. It's a very school-term-oriented view but it persists in my head (although I wasn't that aware of it until I read that paragraph). When I visualize the calendar year the dates are arranged along this figure. It isn't clear what happens when you've made a round trip and get into a new year. I think you just trace the same figure, piling up and up. For the record, I think I was a good programmer and a good designer but I have awful spatial sense. And I didn't initially get "Where is November?"

I have asked this question of other people. Some saw cubes for days, arranged by months or not. Others saw a long endless line, the timeline model. One guy saw a conventional wall calendar...with pictures of castles for each month.

Anyway, I became obssesed thinking about this paragraph in that book. I wanted to read exactly what it said again. Because to write the story, I'd have to have it as background, right? But I would have to find the book! I immediately found two copies of the first edition of the book. Which did not contain the quote. It was part of new material in the Anniversary Edition. I looked in a database I have and verified that I did own the Anniversary Edition but it wasn't where last seen when recorded in the database. I thought, "It has a darker color cover than the original one." I tried to search for the quote on the WEB. Which led to numerous tangents reading bits of articles about computer programming and interviewing people for programming positions. Interesting but depressing because many would ask people questions I couldn't answer! I decided to look harder for the book and did find it. A yellow sticky actually marked the page with the quote. So I had tilted this windmill before.

Having successfully located the quote, I was out of the mood to write the story. However, it should be clear (are you still reading this??) why the story is called "December at the Top." And next time I tilt that particular windmill, I will only have to search my own journal to find it. I have searched my journal recently to find things. In one case, the location of an Airstream trailor that was once (is it still?) right in the heart of Austin on a deadend street. In the other case, to locate scans of Austin American-Statesman pictures of young FFP on the UT campus on August 2, 1966.

Both the maid and FFP were gone by five. (FFP had a board meeting.) I was out of the mood to write the story and decided to look for more Legos so I could get some of those sent off and accomplish something more in the old downsizing goal. I had this idea that if I could find all of them that are stashed around here then I could decide what to send to my great nephews more easily. Which is silly. I could just send whatever I found. Anyway, I thought there were some in the garage as opposed to storage and started digging around there. I found some but I also stirred up dust and I'm allergic to dust and remember I'm slightly under the weather with a cold or allergy anyway. So I dumped the stuff in the long-suffering guest room (staging area for all my messes that are too big for my office) and gave up.

I ate some salad with salmon on it and later some nachos. I drank some non-alcoholic beer. I read papers and watched stupid TV shows. I felt useless, lazy and low. FFP came back from the meeting and he wasn't in the best of moods. He cleaned up stuff the maid had missed. He is retired but he treats his non-profit organizations like they are PR clients and worries and worries about them and their media exposure and development. Which is great for them. Bad for his mood sometimes because it's like he's working again and wheels are flying off and he's taking responsibility for everything. But I digress. This journal is all about me.

I stayed awake until one o'clock. Which sabotaged my idea of starting to get up earlier in the morning and getting a start on my day.