Austin, TEXAS, December 1, 2005 — I often wonder if other people torture themselves about trivial things like I do. Do they try to do holiday cards for hundreds, get gifts, take on time-consuming family projects while neglecting doing what they really should be doing. Like trying to work on their on finances so they don't run out of money in retirement. Cleaning the house. Getting fit. Whatever. To say that I don't think people appreciate the efforts at all, is wrong. My aunts love the simple family calendars with all the birthdays and anniversaries. People like getting cards. Some even say so. But still. Is it worth making it such a duty? Is it as important

as I try to make it? One thing I try to do is get it all done early so that I can enjoy the days closer to Christmas as a time to kick back. But this morning, it all felt kind of futile. FFP wanted to get on with some financial stuff and I was trying to put it off until I got this other stuff out of my way. Which is silly.

Of course, I had agreed to play tennis with the older set and that meant if I wanted to work on real fitness I'd have to go to the gym after that. Of course, I want to play tennis, too. I used to dream of retiring and playing Bridge and tennis and at least I'm half there. I dreamed of getting fit, too, come to think of it and I'm not doing all that well on that one.

I did get up pretty early but I wasted the time before tennis fooling around on my computer with my journal and e-mail. Not even getting some progress on the calendar project.

So we played California Doubles until 10:30 and instead of going to the gym, I went home and worked steadily on my family calendar project. I had many false starts with the software, finding errors (almost left my sister's birthday out of the new version!), trying to figure out how I wanted to print it out. But I was very close to finished when I had to shower and get ready to go downtown.

We went downtown and parked and went to the new Capitol Brasserie. The bar was packed as if the old Mezzaluna crowd had suddenly showed up again. It was early and not too many people were dining. I liked the menu. I liked my mussels in Pernod and Pommes Frites. I had a few quibbles. Like the cappuccino cups used for serving the French Press coffee. The French would never use that cup for black coffee. They'd use a medium one. (Or a tiny one if you got espresso.) Of course, I've never been served French Press coffee in France. They do eat French Fries but the they call them Fried Apples (Pommes Frites) because Pommes de Terre Frites doesn't roll off the tongue. But, I digress. I will be back to try the other preparations of mussels, the steak tartare, steak frites and other good-sounding brasserie stuff. Places like this are all over New York (and, of course, France) but Austin really didn't have one.

We walked back over to Halcyon and looked at a photography show mounted by one of the ballet dancers. Her work was really good and a crowd of arts and ballet supporters (including many dancers who appeared in the work) were there. We looked around, FFP bought a photo and we went home.

No more crime shows. Swear off crime shows. And maybe doctor shows, too. I got sucked in again tonight. I even got sucked in to watching Oprah appear on David Letterman as if that were actually a big deal. Should I give up TV? While watching I tried to work the Thursday New York Times crossword. I actually made some headway on it although I couldn't finish it. And I read some sections of the paper. I am worthless. And my condition is not being helped by CSI and Law and Order and all their progeny. Perhaps I should restrict my TV watching to movies, The Simpsons and Jeopardy? At least I don't watch reality shows. Or Lost. That's something. So, yeah, I feel asleep when they'd finish chasing down a homeless guy who killed a housewife pretending to be a stripper or something. And I'm surprised when I have weird dreams.