Christmas is a Day of Rest

I missed writing anything yesterday. I was going to scoop up goofy pictures from facebook and put them here. Today will be a day of rest from many things. The picture was taken Friday of the long-suffereing husband (FFP) at Austin's Headliners club. They have a party on December 23 every year. It's from 11-2. I had several Bloody Marys. That's me in the mirror, post eating and drinking. We didn't do anything much after the party. Before the party we walked over to the bookstore (our local independent, BookPeople which is about a half mile away) and got a book we'd ordered. (Because we don't have enough books.) I think, after drinking in the middle of the day, I was pretty well finished. We read and watched movies.

Our Christmas Eve was jam-packed because we made it so. We went to the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar and heard a set from a band we like (Albert and Gage) and then we had an enchilada lunch at El Alma. It was a balmy day so we walked across the river to do this and, after lunch, walked up Doug Sahm Hill and through the dog park to say 'hi' to Stevie Ray Vaughn.

We read until time for our early reservation at Fixe. We had biscuits, steak tartare, pork roast,and barbecued beans. The roast was enough for six people (or more), but we knew going in that we were going to take a lot home. (If I ever get hungry again, it will be breakfast or lunch.) We had a bit to drink. A cocktail, some wine. We bumped into someone we knew who was alone at the bar and the three of us dined and dished.

It was still early when we packed it up. Fixe is a block from our apartment. We sat down and read a bit and were dozing, but, yes, we roused ourselves and went out again! We walked the five blocks to the Elephant Room and met up with our friends Butch and Linda. I drank a Guinness. FFP was down to diet Coke at that point. We lasted a set and Butch sat in for the final number and it was all we could do. The late show at the Elephant usually goes to 1:30 a.m.

By midnight, I was reading David Foster Wallace's "String Theory" (a collection of heavily foot-noted essays about tennis) in my bed. I fell asleep a few times squinting over the footnotes. And sleep.

Today is Christmas. And Sunday. I plan to publish this without editing and curl up in my chair with The New York Times magazine puzzles and CBS Sunday Morning. Maybe at the end of the day I'll write about my Christmas Day. I bet I don't get out as much as I did yesterday!

Seasons Greetings, Postal Division

I almost never opt out of the mailing of physical missives to people during the holidays. I think I did in 2010, an odd and distressing fall just didn't give me an opening for such things. 

I'm not religious. I've come to think of the New Year coming along as just a more intense month and quarter end for taxes and forms and such.

 But I do think it's a great thing to trot out our list and send something physical to people. See if the thing gets returned by the P.O. and you've lost track of someone. (This happened once this year so far but the address was perfect. Resent and it didn't come back.) Maybe include a little note for people that you infrequently (or never) connect with via email or social media or, whoa, 'in person.' 

This year I took a professional shot I'd purchased from a photographer with us and our building and some of the other skyline behind us, had Snapfish print it with "Season's Greetings from our backyard. Forrest and Linda." I ordered a couple of hundred, with envelopes. As of today (the day after Christmas) I have prepared  89 cards. Some I sent after receiving one from another party. Some I sent one day and, in a sort of mind meld, got one from those folks the next day. I have received, as of Christmas Eve, 57 cards for people and 15 from organizations or businesses. 

I used various 'forever' stamps with patriotic images but a lot of people used Christmas stamps.

Of course, we received cartoon animals (always at least one cat). We got various sort of not really holiday cards with swan or boat or deco design or reference to Mayan Apocalypse.

And we got our share of traditional themes and even some religious ones.

There were plenty of personalized ones with pictures of people with their kids or just pictures of the kids, some with elaborate multi-picture chronicles. Some included pets or obvious future children in baby bumps.

And a couple were just pix of the dog part of the family.

A number included elaborate recounting of 2012, often illustrated. I managed to read most of these to be end.

I'm sure we will receive a few more in the coming week. And I'll mail a few more, too. And then I'll start to wonder if I should do it next year. I've thought of saving the ones I received and making collages on blank cards next year. Or going back to a really mechanized approach with no hand-written notes, pre-printed labels, rubber stamped return addresses. This year I hand-addressed them and hand-wrote the return addresses. I used (and verified and corrected entries in) a database with 626 entries some of whom I'd never send a card to and a few of whom I don't remember who they are. I usually have to delete a few entries (or remove one name) this time of year to acknowledge deaths. Haven't had any break-ups (that I know of) lately but that happens, too.
It seems to be a lot of wasted effort in this era of electronic things, but still I go on and so do many others. For me, it's always a diminishing return in shear numbers (I send more than I receive) but there is a positive psychic return. And in the 'you just never know category' someone I once exchanged cards with but who is now just a facebook acquaintance from the past, found one of our cards from 28 years ago and published it on my timeline. So, I leave you, dear readers with this old sentiment from a time when these dogs were alive and we wore strange glasses: "Have a Warm and Cuddly 2013!"

Exploring the Neighborhood

The wonderful Gail Chovan, designer and owner of the South Congress shop called Blackmail, does some fabulous windows. This Christmas it has a black tree and across the panes it says 'I see a green tree and I want it painted black...

I love shooting interesting shop windows reflecting the street scene and, of course, us in our walking garb.

One of the joys of walking SoCo are the wonderful shop windows and the variety of people there. You not only get a little validation for your odd feeling about the holiday from Blackmail's window but you can ponder who might like to receive a silver head for Christmas as you check the windows at Tesoros Trading.

And you can go inside Uncommon Objects and imagine who'd rather have a hand or two.

Yep it's definitely weird shopping. You can find some great stuff, though. I love going through the old postcards and photos and seeing toys I had as a kid fetching big prices at Uncommon Objects. (They say not to take pictures, but I do anyway. So sue me.)

I have this idea that I will carefully explore all the places within two miles of our house. That I'll explore the shops and restaurants and hotels and sidewalks and shortcuts and construction. That I'll visit the museums when they have new shows and catch performances at the theaters. And note the interesting houses and yards and yard art. There is too much to really keep up with, of course, within two miles of my house. Within walking distance. That amazes me.

Home for the Holidailies

It's Day 5 of Hoidailies. I arrived back in Austin in the wee hours of this morning. But I managed to post four times while I was on a majorly decadent vacation in New York City. Will have to go back and see what those posts look like. The picture is a reflection of us in a Christmas display on Madison Avenue. We were headed to eat at one star Michelin meal restaurant The Modern.

It's nice to be home, of course. Disappointing that the maid won't be by to tidy up, but nice to have all your computers and tools and sartorial choices and stuff around. We stayed in a ridiculously expensive hotel. But no hotel will ever have the satellite system we have or the DVRs handy. Oh, sure there was a little TV imbedded in the bathroom mirror where you could watch CNN while you brushed your teeth. And the thread counts and mattress quality was over the moon. And the shower and tub beats ours big time. The maid would leave the TV on the smooth jazz station when she turned down the room, though. Ugh. And we love the la crema coffee the Nespresso machine made but we couldn't seem to get enough of the most robust pods to suit us. And when will they learn to bring us more hangers? (Although, to their credit they did detach from the rod! And they brought more when we asked.)

So...yeah, one day hotels will figure out how to make it just like home, only more so. Maybe. But I digress.

We are home for the holidays. FFP is very involved with Ballet Austin and its "Nutcracker" production this time of year. We've said yes to a few holiday parties. I will send some holiday cards. (And enjoy receiving some.) FFP and I will exchange presents. (He already got me one so I have to find something for him.) I don't think I'm going to do much decoration. Or serious celebration. Although the bendable, posable Santas and other Christmas figures may make an appearance if I feel like digging around in my storage cage. And we'll eat at some nice restaurants and wander through the hotels and see their decor.

I do look forward to some days when nothing is happening and I can sit down and read newspapers and books and take long walks around the neighborhood. We do plan to travel next year but we haven't made a single reservation. And, of course, my most hated time of the year looms after the holidays. Tax time.

Maybe I'll recount our NYC trip in the next few entries. It will bore you terrifically if you don't care for fine dining, jazz, museums, cabaret music, a Mamet play and strange NYC encounters.

The Beginning of 'Philanthropy'

That is your faithful journaler and FFP shaking hands with Dr. William Cunningham, the former president of The University of Texas. It is 1985. You are spared the 1985 glasses by our profiles. Twenty-four years ago. Wow. We were presenting a small endowed scholarship to UT for a female athlete studying advertising or communications. They have been good stewards of our money. We added a few small amounts but they have distributed scholarship money and, even after this year's economic woes, they have a large corpus of three times that initial investment or so. (I'm not sure exactly because I couldn't find the statement they recently sent. I did find a sales tax form I have to send in with a deadline in a week, though, so that's good. Even though I collected no sales tax, I have to file it. Writing service charges aren't taxable and that's all we book these days, no printing or other taxable stuff. But I digress.)

That was our first bit of significant philanthropy. I've used quotes around it in the title because, really, our contributions hardly qualify. My joke is: "I always dreamed of being a philanthropist but I never had enough money." I wanted to go on fancy cruises, fly on private jets, eat in all the three star restaurants, too. Same problem.

But, seriously, that was the beginning of significant giving, such as it is, for us. FFP had dreamed of being able to give a scholarship at his alma mater. We'd become interested in the Women's Athletics and were impressed with the drive and the scholarship of a lot of the young women. We were young and we had never had a lot of money and we were very impressed with ourselves. We would later meet real philanthropists. People with millions to throw around. We never reached those heights, but I still enjoy the giving we can do, such as it is. And I wish that the UT people could have been convinced to handle some of my own money the last couple of decades!

Point of View

Last Friday, after Thanksgiving, I was thinking about how we all look at the world through a very limited point of view. (Isn't that a series on IFC: POV? Anyway.)

We stayed in most of the day, last Friday, getting out to do our errands and have lunch. I think we ate at home in the evening.

At some point, I was sitting in my chair in the living room. It might have been afternoon. I was watching the cranes at the Austonian and the W work sites. We are in a position to see some of the work and progress on these projects. Not like our friends in the new AMLI, though. Their POV is looking down into the W site from their balcony. The building will creep up past their balcony one day. We couldn't see the Austonian until it was about ten stories and got over the sight line interference of the old, shorter AMLI.

Anyway, I was watching. I knew the W was getting worked on because the cranes were swinging around. The Austonian didn't look active. I take heart every day when I see activitiy on these construction sites. I wonder what the workers are thinking. Some came here from Florida, I know, when work dried up there. Now, these buildings are still going up, but what happens when they are done? When they don't need your trade on your current job. Because not many new things are breaking ground. I have no idea what it feels like to be an itinerant construction worker. I can, in fact, only see the handiwork from one angle, usually, out my windows. When I ride the bike and workout across the hall, I can see a bit of the Spring and Gables construction. One day I happened to see them hauling two porta-potties to the top of the building. They were swinging in the wind. I wondered if they'd use the crane to take them down to service them. I'll never know I don't suppose.

We only observe such a narrow slice of what there is. We expand that knowledge by reading and watching films and television and listening and studying. Yesterday I was trying to picture the location of Nigeria. I didn't have a good picture in my head. I was pretty sure of the area (there's a Niger river there, n'est pas?) but the exact layout of it and other countries around there (Benin, Togo?) I couldn't picture. How can you understand people when you can't picture the boundaries of their country? For that matter, who remembers the geography of Canada and Mexico? I saw an episode of Jeopardy the other day and the contestants totally flopped on a bunch of questions about Canada. (Much to the chagrin of Alex Trebeck who was born in Canada. Isn't that a great phrase, "much to the chagrin of?" Or not. Depends on your point of view.)

Yeah, point of view is everything. We can divorce ourselves successfully from certain things by our choices of where to be and what to read and what to pay attention to. I've noticed that we are so well insulated from cold and wind here that I haven't turned the heat on yet. I check the temperature on my computer. When we lived in a 1950's drafty house on pier and beam, you could feel the cold under the floor and near the windows. I'm sure a prolonged cold will creep in here, but it feels isolated. I used to go outside, too. When we had the dog, I'd take these breaks to let her out and stare at the backyard, meet the weather and wind face to face. One of us (usually FFP honestly) went outside in the elements to get the paper. Heck, when we went to the office upstairs over the garage, we had to pass outside through the cold garage.

My point is? I feel sealed in here and feel a need to get outside every day. Not just on the balcony either. Somehow that point of view is so weird it's not 'being outside.'

So I'm just rambling here, that's for sure. I'm getting toned up for the Holidailies. I'm 'just typing' as a section of my old 'online journal' used to say. Fact is, I've been rereading that old journal, the entries from 2001. So maybe when I'm at a loss for something to write for the daily exercise then I'll just recount what I was doing and thinking seven years ago.

[Today's picture is of windows in the Whit Hanks complex on Sixth showing the wares of an antique shop with some excellent deco furniture I would have coveted before I decided to abandon collecting and abandon a cool deco bar in the process. That's us reflected, of course.]

Follow the Bright Lights

After the Austin Lyric Opera performance last night of "The Bat" (with music by Johann Strauss as in Die Fledermaus and English lyric and hijinks by Esther's Follies) our friend Allan the playwright took this picture of us on the City Terrace with those alien looking lights on that little circular stage and a giant, thin tower of light that is on the building where we will have our future home.

I am incredulous that I have gotten so little done on the one hand and amazed at how much I have done on the other. Life is funny like that. I am in this state of pure euphoria, panic and confusion. I went out with some ladies and played tennis this morning which I haven't done in ages. It was fun and really took my mind off everything in spite of the fact that everyone was asking me about the stuff.

I keep packing up boxes for the movers to take and bags for me to take to the condo with various things I deem necessary to a civilized life. (Yeah, don't say it.) There will definitely be a many week period where whatever you want is wherever you are not. That may actually last quite some time because I think we will eventually store some things at our other house and, of course, the parking and storage being four floors down will mean that whatever you want is in storage or your trunk. But if we are lucky things will get simpler with every load of stuff that is tossed, preserved in its place or given away. Well, won't it? Won't life get simpler??? Really? Probably not. There will be new things to add to the confusion, new resistances to tossing newer things and, of course, the inevitable decay and obsolescence. So it goes. I suppose the important thing is to just take the next step. Or steps. And some of them will be trod next week.

Eyes Wide Open

FFP was shooting some pictures at a party last night for potential use in the neighborhood newspaper to which he contributes his weekly writing. The party was given by a young people's arm of the Heritage Society, Inherit Austin. We are honorary 'not so young people!' I guess they include us to do a little PR for them, but their parties are great. This was at the historic Littlefield House on the UT campus and the president of UT, Bill Powers, came by and met everyone. Lots of handsome young folks at this party. A tall friend offered to shoot us and he got a pretty good picture.

I'm still fighting allergies et al and yet I'm going to try to rescue a sick friend, play tennis and have lunch with another friend. I took a strong dose of cold medicine to alleviate the symptoms to get through the brief reception above. Worked pretty well. Have I mentioned that I hate being sick?

Choosing

Here I am yesterday at a friend's house for an old school party where people sang, accompanied by a piano. My young friend Kevin Ahart is posing with me. He does tunes like Frank Sinatra would do if he were in his twenties and not gone from this mortal coil for almost a decade. I thought I should choose this picture today because it took FFP three times to keep me from closing my eyes! Kevin is ready for the paparazzi and looked perfect in every shot.

This is the thirtieth day of Holidailies and I have only two more posts to go for a perfect record, posting every day. Which is no great feat for me because I am after all retired and often displacing from other things that I should be doing.

The writing prompt for the day is to write about your favorite Holidailies post (yours or someone else's). That's pretty daunting because of course I would choose someone else's but I barely scratched the surface reading other people's posts. I did read the ones chosen by the panel as 'best of' the portal. And I looked at the portal and wandered by random places. I found one contributor, Melanie, who was especially funny and made good use of the medium by showing a bunch of funny reject Christmas card designs. I like her sentiment when showing the world her real card, though: "Merry Christmas, Internet. I love you like a sister, or maybe a really pervy uncle."

I also found this gal funny, especially this entry which was admittedly, one of only a few I actually read.

Yeah, because it's hard to write and read on the Internet when you have new Christmas books, a pile of newspapers and, you know, other duties. Like holiday drinking and taking your dad on banking excursions and visiting with people who are only here this time of year and all. Also I had to put all the Christmas cards I received in a data base so I would know that I got 110 cards and 39 had family photos. Because I know what is important, right?

Hmmm...I never had trouble making an entry every day because I apparently don't need writing prompts or anything. I will just type and say nothing. I'm signing off and going to the gym and then I'm eating a huge brunch with friends without apology. Well...I know I'll eat the brunch. We'll see about the gym.

Us At the Mansion

We have gotten to go to a few events in the last year or so at The Pease Mansion. (Scroll down a bit on this link to find some info on it.) At one of these events our friend Vickie Roan (owner of an elegant gift shop, The Menagerie) took our picture and the other night she found it on her computer and sent it to us. I think I'll put this on on our putative 'home' page. Not that we really update that much any more what with the blogs.