Austin, TEXAS, January 17, 2006 — Well my dreams had these big caverns under the house that you could walk through. I slept fitfully.

All through tennis (which involved sun and gusts of wind) I was thinking of what I should be doing. How I should clean up this or that, do something or the other. Occasionally I'd lose track of the last point.

I was in a definite funk. Tennis went quickly because whoever had the vision-impaired partner never managed to muster a game. Because the wind was unpleasant everyone was more than willing to quit when three fast sets had been completed.

I went to the gym and read my book while riding the recumbent bike for forty-two minutes.

I have to say that when I'm down, I always know that I will probably feel better soon. But it didn't help my mood to go home and read an e-mail from a friend that had to take her dog for a long and expensive emergency surgery.

The only think I know to do for a funk is to just do something. I'd promised to take my dad to Houston to visit some relatives in February and I'd promised my aunt I'd make her reservations for a motel, too. So I found a WEB site for the chain my cousin recommended and made the reservations and mailed the confirmation to my aunt.

I called my dad.

I wrote e-mails to friends of a friend after her sister called with news of a medical procedure.

I printed out the placecards for our charity dinner in February.

I made a lunch date.

I made reservations to see a set of five minute plays tomorrow night that includes one by my friend I made the lunch date with.

I went through the glassware to make sure we could serve the dinner with the drinks we plan.

I thought about other things that I would do when the maid is not in my way.

It wasn't much. But I'd moved forward on a couple of things. And while there was still some funk, I felt I was reaching funk escape velocity. Not that I'd reached that 'unreasonably happy' stage.

We got ready and left deadly early for the 6:15 cocktail call for the Anti-Defamation League dinner. We were the guests of a friend who had purchased an entire table, front and center. Ballet Austin was being honored for its Light: The Holocaust and Humanity Project last year. Since we were someone else's guests Forrest said we should not make the host worry for a minute if we were going to show up and we should be there when he arrived.

This left us on the veranda of the Four Seasons before 6:15 discussing how we wanted to divest ourselves of many things and move downtown. Soon, though, people arrived in droves. People we knew from here and there and everywhere. I don't know what our host paid for the table but we were seated next to Michael Dell's table and in front of a long table that had Tom and Lynn Meredith (who were also being honored) and their entourage, including Liz Carpenter. I know that Forrest had gulped when we received the invitation and offered to pay the pro rata price for our seats. It wasn't out of the question for us, although it would equal our annual donation to some outfits that we consider pretty generous. Our host had graciously refused, however.

The event was well-orchestrated and there was much table-hopping between speeches and presentations. On the way out of the ballroom they had placed photos from genocides as a reminder to not forget. The last one showed a scarred torso of a living person whose arms had been cut off. "Rwanda," I said.

We need to be reminded in our lives of two things: how much pain and hate exists in the world and how lucky we are. Sometimes that is enough to escape the funk. No reason to rue not having Michael D's billions or our host's millions. We have reasonable health, adequate money and a chance to help others. And the brains not to hate.