Addiction

How do you manage your addictions? If you don't have any, that's great. (Or maybe they are good ones like a healthy diet and exercise.) My big three are crosswords, coffee, and cocktails. In that order. I can go days without drinking and not miss it. Notwithstanding the custom glass at my neighborhood bar. I really miss the first cup of coffee (or two) if I can't get it, but the others, like the one I'm having now after lunch and at almost two in the afternoon are not so craved. (And since I don't use cream or sugar they are not as bad for me as they could be.) 

But I can't pass up a crossword grid easily. I get up in the morning, excited to make a cup of coffee and work the puzzle in the New York Times. Later in the day, I'm likely to give a whirl to 1-3 others in the other papers we get. Not to mention a Ken-Ken or Jumble or Suduku.  When I should be doing chores, I tell myself I'll just finish this puzzle, then I'll be productive.

I guess I'm addicted to Facebook, too, I'm always putting something on there and trying to start a conversation. (Sometimes it's a picture of my cocktail, crossword or coffee!) I like seeing my friends' activities and opinions. (Although some are frustrating for sure.) 

Sometimes when I feel I've been drinking too much I purposively don't have any alcohol for a couple of days. (My dad used to say that he would stop drinking for a few days to see if he would have the DTs. He was kidding, but he saw plenty of delirium tremors working for the VA for three decades.) 

Sometimes when the "I'm going to get around to reading this pile" of newspapers gets too high, I make myself go through them and not work any puzzles. (I will sometimes cut them out and save them, however! Maybe I'm a hoarder, too.)

I never go without at least one cup of coffee in the morning. But I often drink green tea or just water in the afternoon or evening. Or...cocktails. Or wine. Or beer. I didn't choose cocktails above just because of the alliteration. I drink lots of different things, but first and foremost on the list is my Manhattan on the rocks. (Rye Whiskey please.)

So, am I managing my addictions well? I guess. I probably have some others, too. Jeopardy and some other TV. Reading. (Although I don't find reading as meditative as crosswords. Something about the interaction of it and seeing the finish line.) Walking. (I feel like I have really accomplished something if we go for a walk. If I record it on Facebook with a few pictures, I feel even more accomplished. If we stop for a meal or coffee (!) or a snack, I might...work a crossword at the table!)

It's good to recognize your addictions, their purpose and how to deal with them, I suppose. Most addictions are for escape. If I was addicted to pain killers, I wonder if I could distract myself with the three C's. Probably not. Fortunately, I'm very averse to swallowing pills or taking any kind of drug. I have some low-dose phenylephrine and diphenhydramine that I take to relieve allergies. I almost never take anything else and I hate having to take those. (I take the phenylephrine to fly, too. Otherwise, my ears will not pop and its painful.) I get a flu shot once a year for the herd's sake. 

Retirement Routine

Retirement is 'doing whatever you please,' I suppose, but really every life needs some routines. One of mine (when I'm in town and sometimes when I'm away as well) is to get up every morning and have coffee and work the NY Times crossword. If it is Monday-Wednesday, I copy it first and try to get FFP to play along. If it's Sunday, I copy it a couple of times just so I'll have worksheets and won't interfere with FFP reading the NY Times Magazine where it appears.

I find myself looking forward to getting up at 7ish and doing this coffee and puzzle ritual. I often work other puzzles in other papers. (We get the local rag, The Austin American-Statesman. and The Wall Street Journal.) If it's a weekday, I turn the TV on to CNBC to see how the financial markets are doing. If it's Sunday, I've recently taken to turning on a Sunday morning jazz station. I record CBS Sunday Morning and watch it later.

Another routine I have when in town is to go to my club and play casual tennis on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

A lot of days, after the coffee and the stab at the puzzles (I also do the nearby Ken-Ken puzzles in the Times), my day is shaped by things we've agreed to do: entertainment, meals, events. Sometimes with others, sometimes just us. Sometimes we take a walk and have a meal or snack and see what's happening within the three-mile or so radius that is our limit. But the routines, the things we usually do, give life some shape. Sixteen years after retiring from the life defined by work routines, it gives some comfort.

I Wish I'd Paid More Attention to Mythology

I am attacking my problem with sloth. It was next in line after gluttony. I think I conquered that in the last few weeks. (Oddly, I do better with my eating and drinking during the holidays than other times.) However, I still allow myself to work the crossword and Ken-Ken in The New York Times before I do much of anything else but make coffee in the morning. In today's crossword, there was a 40-down answer 'Atropos' which was clued 'Fate Who Cuts the Thread of Life.' I did not know this. It's Tuesday and I expect a little easier ride. Plus every time there is a question about Greek mythology, I think of a little drama from a Junior High English class. We were studying all these myths and there was to be a test. I thought it was a very useless study. After all, these were silly beliefs of the ancients. I liked that teacher, and if I'd realized how much that study would matter vis-a-vis word origins (I loved words) and literary tropes (I was starting to love literature) I would have been happy to learn it. I flunked the test, but the teacher, who also liked me, I think, told my mother to make me study it and retake the thing. I got a better grade. But there was a block there still to retaining stuff about these myths. Now I wish I'd learned it all much as I wish I'd learned the Christian Bible, the myths of my own tribe. And not just to do Crosswords and excel at home yelling at Jeopardy. I really think it's useful to know what people once believed and, for that matter, what they believe now. I tell myself I'm going to read the King James Bible and Bullfinch's Mythology. But I probably won't do it. By the way, the Roman equivalent of this Fate is Morta.

And while I'm off on this tangent I remember this same teacher giving us an assignment to make a poetry notebook. We were supposed to copy poems out of various anthologies she made available. I didn't mind doing this one so much and typed up my notebook very neatly, carefully selecting the poems.  But I couldn't resist putting a unique touch on it and the last one in my notebook was this:

Crowds may cheer
But never fear
They also jeer
And rarely hear what is intended
Or recommended
These uncivilized masses
English classes.

I think I got an A on the notebook.  And I do think she noticed. I may or may not have put 'by Anon.'

Addiction

Over the weekend, we stayed two nights at the Austin Four Seasons. It's about ten blocks away. It's an interesting thing to do and we had one free night (charity auction) and another at a reasonable price. It's instructive to get away from the normal view of things and to see just how expensive things are. We watched some old movies and one of them was "The Lost Weekend." It kindled something I've been thinking about lately and that is addiction.

First, let's just say that I'm not an alcoholic. Now a perusal of my facebook page might lead one to believe otherwise as I have a habit of putting pictures of food and drink there, particularly Manhattan cocktails. But I don't wake up in the morning craving a drink. In fact, although I may sometimes say at 5 p.m. "I need a drink," that 'need' is more social and metaphorical than a draw of addiction. Seeing drinking doesn't trigger anything and I easily stop. (There is a scene in "The Lost Weekend" where the Ray Milland character sees a drinking scene at the opera and is overcome with the desire to drink. It's "Traviata" maybe?)

Which is not to say I'm not addicted to anything at all. I think we all have addictions. It might be drugs or alcohol or some classic thing like that. But, if not, there is something in everyone's life where resistance seems futile.

I'll talk about three things for me. I've indulged two already this morning and will no doubt dip into the third soon.

Coffee

The idea of my first cuppa is one thing that gets me up in the morning. Two or three cups later or maybe a cup of iced coffee taken to tennis and the desire is more or less satisfied until next morning.

This machine is one of my prized possessions. It is the third one I've owned (the first two were a bit more massive). It grinds, tamps and pressure-brews each cup. It was expensive but it's so worth it. I've probably made hundreds of cups with this one.

Crosswords

Another thing that makes me rise in the morning is my daily newspapers and, I'll admit it, even more the prospect of doing the puzzles. I like the Ken-Ken, too, but crosswords really call out to me. I worked one this morning before we left the hotel (accompanying the activity with a cup of coffee I got from the downstairs coffee bar).It wasn't the one below...this is just an example I found in my picture file.

So, yeah, I find the puzzles irresistible. The empty squares make me ache to fill them in.

Cheese

I like to say that I would consistently weigh 20 pounds less if I didn't eat cheese. I don't know if that's really true but hardly a day goes by that I don't consume some. Either on a salad, in a sandwich, with crackers or just a bite by itself. Or maybe queso or cheese enchiladas. If fact, the husband just asked if I'd like chicken chili for lunch. My immediate thought was, "yeah, with a bunch of cheese on top."

So, addictions. We all have some. Some people are addicted to exercise, I hear. I could use some of that.

Keep Learning, Keep Doing, One More Day

Another Pithy Quote from the rocks at Butler Park.

The Visible Woman...learns.

When I am wasting time I try to pass it off as something useful. 

Playing tennis? Every day I can stay on my feet is good, right? "Trot over and pick up that ball," I tell myself. "It's cool you can still trap the ball between your tennis shoe and your racket and smoothly make it bounce into your hand," I marvel. It may seem to others, and some days to me, that I'm not learning anything new. But I am, I swear. My 82-year-old companion for tennis (it is almost always us and two other people) has recently (in the last year I think) begun to aggressively play the net biding her time and making a great angle volley. On her serve I have her go forward. We are old ladies and we are stuck in many habits, but we can evolve.

Wasting time on the puzzles in the newspapers? But...you can learn a new word or fact. Yesterday's The Wall Street Journal crossword (Friday is the only day The WSJ  has a puzzle I like) reminded me of a word. 

abscissa, n.  Mathematics (in plane Cartesian coordinates) the x-coordinate of a point: its distance from the y-axis measured parallel to the x-axis.

I say 'reminded' because, with a degree in mathematics surely I knew this word at one time! I love knowing this even if I only remember for a few hours or until it pops up on Jeopardy! 

Clearning? Around here a lot of cleaning is dusting and straightening books and magazines. I stop and open them at random occasionally just like I do in the book store and read a paragraph or two.

As long as you are learning (and forgetting and learning) you are alive. I know it won't keep the grim reaper (18 down in yesterday's WSJ puzzle: death personified) permanently at bay. I read the obituaries. Mortality is always at hand. No, it just makes still being alive worthwhile.

The Curse of the Newsprint

Next to my reading chair in the house we moved out of over five years ago. This has to be the biggest the pile ever got!

The Visible Woman...reeds.

I want to be well-read and informed. When I retired (11 years ago), I wanted to learn new things. I wanted to keep up with the news and learn about news I simply missed while worrying about work and school for over three decades.

We take three newspapers. We take several magazines including the word-rich weekly The New Yorker. We buy books. We give each other books.

I read rather slowly and when I'm interested in an article or book I like to savor it until the end. I discovered years ago that FFP reads about four times faster than I do. We were propped up in bed reading. I looked over at his book and started reading along only to see the page turn when I was halfway down the left-hand side.

We have shelves for books to pile up on. I don't care about most of the magazines and while The New Yorker issues multiply we can usually get rid of a lot of them, knowing that the articles are on the electronic edition.

But I have trouble controlling the newspapers. Even since I retired. (I was, in fact, retired when that picture was taken above. Note the paper sack filled with papers? I was preparing the discarded ones for recycling.)

Some sections I throw away straightaway without reading a word. Mostly sports. Business sections if they are a day or two old and a headline on the front doesn't grab me by the throat.

But certain sections can take me down the rabbit hole for hours. The Arts section of The New York Times. Not only will a couple of articles about plays, movies, dance and visual arts intrigue me, but there are puzzles. The puzzles are like candy or crack. I can't resist them.

One wonders why I don't just read or reference all this online. But there is nothing like holding the day's offering in your hands, all of it right there. And doing the puzzles on paper, doodling in the margins. I still get irritated at continued articles (especially to other sections!) but I love the format. I love the predictability of where the news and features are placed on certain days of the week. That there are food sections on Wednesday and Science in The New York Times on Tuesday and a crossword I like in The Wall Street Journal on Friday.

I bid you a good Monday morning now. I have a (relatively thin as is appropriate for Monday) stack of papers and my first cup of coffee to deal with. And I always wake up thinking "the Times puzzles will be a pleasant cakewalk and the crossword will have a theme, possibly a clever one ." (They become progressively and devilishly harder through Saturday.)

I'm easily entertained...

...but also easily bored.

In the presence of words (almost any book, magazine or newspaper will do but spare me the Sports section with no news of tennis and Romance novels) I am almost always be entertained. I may be distracted by something else and lose track of the reading, but I won't be bored. I read the program at concerts and events before they begin (assuming I haven't taken a magazine). I read ads. Pictures are nice, too.

Give me a keyboard and the right mood and I can type until the cows come home. My dad used to whistle for them to do that on the old 60-odd acre home place at about dusk. But I could type on until midnight. I may not say a thing but I will produce a stream of letters formed into English words but the sentences may make sense, alone or together. I will even invent initialisms like HQWF (How Quickly We Forget). Even though I hate them. Laugh out loud! Not going to abbreviate it.

I can people watch endlessly, browse the WEB and, even, read old online and handwritten journals by yours truly for hours on end.

Unless I get distracted.

I am easily bored in some ways. Playing tennis the other day with someone who never runs after an errant ball and who strolls into position to receive, back turned, holding up her hand and saying 'wait a minute' strains me. So I start observing things and entertaining myself. Noticing how the uniforms (all red outfits, all white visors) on some players down the way look, wondering what weeds have opportunistically poked through the cracks in the awful court we are using, considering the resemblance of the Lacrosse player practicing on the half court behind us to a send-up painting of a kid with a backwards cap on the cover of The New Yorker a few years back on the anniversary issue. (Supposed to be a Gen X version of Eustace Tilly he was.) And so it goes until I get a chance to touch ball to strings. Or to serve. I like serving because I get to hit more balls. Two aces Tuesday. I don't hit hard but I move it around. I've been writing a poem in my head about math, tennis and boredom. I work on it sometimes while I'm bored at tennis.

Fractal branches cast fractal shadows against the order of the lines.
Perpendicular lines and partial lines carving the court into rectangles.
Spaces of in and out and fault and ace. Rules about touching and missing.
Why twenty-seven feet? Or twenty-one? A three-foot net at the middle.
I see a pattern and yet not. Only one prime in sight. But I digress, interrupted
By caroms in three space, arcs predictable except for spin and striking
Nails in the tape to hold the lines to the clay surface. How far apart?
How distracted and yet focused the math makes the tennis and the ennui.

No, that isn't the poem. It's just random lines I constructed just now to illustrate.

I have been writing a short story in my head (although it might be a novel or a novella or a part of a novel) for a long while about a guy hitting tennis balls on the very court where I played Tuesday so I thought about that when things were going. too. slowly. I like how some online writers invented the technique of adding extra periods to slow you down as you read. The story has a bicycle rider and an SUV and so when I see a bike go by and then an SUV I visualize what the protagonist (a guy from Odessa, Texas, I'm not sure why) sees through the fence and wind screen.

Yeah, I'm easily bored and yet, sometimes, when I flip from running my iMac as an Apple to the window running XP under VMware and it has gone into a screen saver mode and is showing my own picture collection to me I just sit there, watching pictures I've already seen over and over for a few minutes. But in front of the TV with the satellite hookup and a DVR with captured episodes of this and that I can be so completely bored and unable to be engaged that I have to get up and get something to read.

I watch a lot of TV and movies at home. And sometimes they are pretty exciting and encompassing. But I get bored if I JUST watch them. And not just because of commercials which we usually skip anyway. I almost always read as well. Newspapers usually. So I'll be reading about Somalian pirates, Taliban areas of Pakistan, Obama's dog, Broadway revivals of "Hair" and "West Side Story", whatever, and sort of watching with one eye and listening. Makes sub-titled movies (which I love especially if they are French although German is sort of amusing, too) hard to follow. I also like to work puzzles while watching TV. I will learn a new word in a crossword (e.g.: marten; toque meaning a woman's hat instead of a chef's tall one) and not be able to contain myself until I look the word up in a real or online dictionary.

There is infinite entertainment in this apartment and yet I get stir-crazy to leave it now and then. Then when I'm out I get eager to come back and settle down with my computer, newspapers, books.

I stay engaged with movies, in a dark theater, although I like to have some food and I hate the food except for the Alamo where drinking beer and eating fried things and actually watching the movie keeps me there. Unless my mind wanders.

This restlessness, dare I say bordering on attention-deficit, makes me anxious. So, I guess I go from being entertained by many things to boredom to anxiety, all in the space of minutes.

When I was in school or at work in meetings with presentations by others, I had to write something to stay focused. It might be about what was being presented. It might be a 'to do' list or a grocery list or a doodle. It might be an idea only peripherally about the content the lecturer was presenting. One such segue produced an idea which is one of the few ideas that both received a patent for some of us at the company and actually made a bit of money in the marketplace.

I see people who are really focused on something. Maybe it is a very BIG thing like running a company or non-profit or a tiny thing like a very focused hobby or sport. Nothing gets my attention like that. I'm used to starting on things and never following up. Blogging and posting pictures online is something I've been pretty faithful doing (if that's the proper word) but, let's be honest, the form is constantly changing. And it isn't a thing you finish. It's the equivalent of notebooks full of non sequitur musings created during lectures and other entertainments that did not fully engage my dilettante mind.

Lately I've been watching people who focus closely on something, shutting out distraction. They are creating businesses, fighting for causes, writing books and plays. That will never be me, I guess. And my accomplishments will always be brief breakthroughs: an idea, a sentence, a paragraph, the short essay, the clever bon mot. The other day on twitter I said:

viswoman found blogging reduced her writing to a few paragraphs. Twitter to 140 characters. New service: Heartbeat. Nine letters or less.

I thought I was so clever. Heartbeat. In some techie worlds it is a notice that some process or service is there, working, alive if you will. And the word has nine letters. And yet when I tried to label this post, selecting from labels used on some of the prior 638 posts, I ended up with more than two hundred characters which, apparently, is the blogger limit.

Not So Fast

I'm not feeling up to my life right now. Out playing tennis in the wind yesterday, I made a lot of mistakes. And when I did something right it didn't seem to matter to me.

Today's photo is a shop window reflection of a yoga place that was dressed up for the Marathon the other weekend. I don't run. Twenty-six anything? I don't think so.

Right now I don't have an injury. No excuse. No strained knee. No strained toe. No strained lower back. I was a little allergy dizzy yesterday morning but it was gone when I was playing tennis.

I've worked on my taxes. That's depressing. But I've almost got everything together for the CPA. Two partnerships haven't shipped K1-s. I have swithered over whether to bother to claim some non-cash donations. (What did you pay for the little antique table you gave to the Settlement Home? Why $200 I think, or so, there was still a tag on it. What is it worth? Who knows? And the wine the ballet and symphony auctioned off? It makes me tired.) Although in the post-Obama-appointee-we-will-vet-and-yet-what?-I owed taxes? climate I'm a little more cavalier than ever about taxes. And, oh, by the way, I'm sure that they will find a way to make me pay more taxes.

I'm feeling slow. And lazy. And useless. Probably because I am. I need to straighten and clean. I need to exercise. I need to get my car washed. I don't know why I threw that in, but that is one thing about our parking here which is open to the wind...cars get very dirty. I'd like to be reading and writing but I'm blogging.

Last night we had a real downtown stroll in the cold wind. We walked to a party room at Whole Foods for the release of the new issue of L Style/G Style and then to the Paramount to see Lily Tomlin. (Hmm...was it just me or was that sort of boring.) We wanted to get into the Elephant Room to see Jeff Lofton do a Miles Davis tribute but there were a couple of dozen people waiting on the cold sidewalk at 10PM. So we walked to Taste and ordered some sweetbreads and foie gras. Allegedly the chef saw the offal order and said "Is that Linda and Forrest?" He came out and talked to us. We enjoyed the organ meats. I had a little Montrachet and FFP had some Mouvedre which I also tasted. We were tired and we came home. And this morning we slept in until almost eight.

I sit here watching Face the Nation, having already watched most of Sunday Morning. I have the good life. No demands except the ones I'm making on myself to clean, organize, read, write, exercise. Well, the demands of the IRS loom but I'm on the case. So can I relax and enjoy my freedom and leisure? We'll see. I tried to work the Sunday NY Times magazine crossword but it completely eludes me today.

When I called my dad today he said a friend of his had died and services were Wednesday. I volunteered to take him. Next week is not a bad week with some expected and unexpected free time, time to get things done. But then things heat up with some social stuff and SXSW film fest and some promised relative visiting.

The Art of the Walk

Today I made a choice. OK, several choices. But one of them was to not go to the gym and really get up a sweat, maybe finishing reading Molly Bloom's soliloquy on the bike, lifting some weights. And instead to go down to the Hike and Bike trail with FFP and breathe in the fresh air and look at the blue sky and see people, running and walking and biking and pushing strollers. People sweating or strolling. Talking to each other. We saw several people we know. We really enjoyed it. Maybe it wasn't the optimum exercise for the body (because we don't run, race walk or even walk fast...we stroll, stop to look, take pictures). But it really feeds me emotionally.

It is fun to see things from new directions, to see people out there enjoying Austin's amenities. We noticed all the adjacent parking lots were crammed. We felt good we didn't have to drive to get there.

Another choice I made this morning was to sit, drink coffee, watch Sunday morning TV and work the crossword. Ah, yes. Sunday. A day of great choices.

Best Laid Plans

I was supposed to play tennis, but the organizers couldn't get up a game. I thought I'd work out before my walk/lunch date at noon then. But I got distracted by a project of FFP's and interested in finishing redoing a friend's WEB site. Then I thought I might do a workout after lunch (and walk). But then it seemed too easy to sit in front of my computer and finish the test version of the site and enter some receipts into my budget. Time ticked away. And I hadn't worked the NY Times crossword or done some accounting chores I needed to do. And I hadn't worked out. And I hadn't gotten a shower.

While we were having lunch, my companion indicated that normally he would go for a workout in the afternoon but that the pot pie lunch he was having might mean he'd have to go to a movie. (Being retired is having some cool choices, I admit it.) He also asked me how the writing was going. I said it was going along in my head, that my fictional characters went right along doing stuff in my head if not on paper (or pixels). I also told him that since I'd developed a sense of humor about not writing it made the idea of writing easier. Not that I'd done much.

So time ticks away. And many things are undone. But, it's time to take a shower and work that puzzle. And go out to dinner.

The Physics of Tennis and Walking

I got some new tennis shoes in the mail this week. I feel a little bad for not buying them from a local place. But my pro shop at my club doesn't carry my brand (New Balance) and I know exactly what I need (10 B, slightly larger than my dress shoe size) and can get it so easily online. My others had developed a very, very thin spot on the sole and when that happens a toe injury is soon to follow. I'd reverted to shoes -1 because the sole was smooth but intact. So, I wore them for the first time yesterday and played three not very hard sets of doubles on hard court. So they are fine. It's amazing that we humans (even this uncoordinated one) can play tennis. Moving around the court and arranging to have the racket strings strike the fuzzy ball and go over the net and stay in. (Well, sometimes.) It's just amazing, really, what we can do. Like I say: even me. Oh, I miss of course but even in missing your body is conducting an amazing array of spectacular fine and gross motions.

I took a walk yesterday, too. I just felt like getting out and so I walked over to Congress and sat in the Hideout and drank a root beer and worked the Thursday crossword in the NY Times. All but one square without any Google checks or such. I also wrote a little in a notebook and pondered great questions of the world. Like "what is the story of the weird guy who seemed maybe a character, maybe homeless and then engaged the girl nearby with the Mac laptop about Flickr accounts?"And "How is there enough bad art in the world to decorate all the coffee shops?" Things like that. It's good to get away from watching the stock market or wallowing in techno-land turning your thoughts into pixels and just sit in a coffee shop.

Walking back and forth I was struck again by how we walk, adjusting to bumps in the terrain (easier in my hiking boots than in heels, I thought, as I saw one gal teetering across a street). Stepping nimbly over curbs and around obstructions, most of us go along without a hitch. It's really no wonder that sometimes we fall. And sometimes we can't get up.

Speaking of which (falling and not being able to get up) my dad left a message on the phone last night that the Lifeline people had sent him a new phone (which has the antenna and speaker built in to communicate with the Lifeline button). His did not survive its encounter with the Shiner Bock. He was wondering this morning how he could set it up so he could use the phone from his chair (it doesn't buzz his hearing aids and has nice large numbers that announce themselves, etc.) but possibly avoid his liquids. We decided that maybe it could go on another table. Of course, the next misstep won't involve the phone. That's how these things go.

It's amazing how we can do all these things with our bodies without thinking much about them. Until they disappear. Or we do. Dad can still walk and take care of himself (eased by the accessible house and canes and walkers, of course) and after over nine decades that's amazing.

In other random thoughts from yesterday: it's too bad our computing environments are so powerful and yet so difficult to back up. I was anticipating a visit from my computer guru today to look at updating some stuff and why we get some random errors here and there. I decided to record briefly the changes I made to my computing environment on the Windows XP Virtual Machine. I updated spreadsheet cells, downloaded and edited photos, wrote in a journal I keep in a Word document, updated QuickBooks with a stock dividend in one of my accounts and with some checks we'd written, etc. That's not counting, of course, updating my Austin Daily Photo blog. Who knows whether that blether will be 'preserved' or not.

It's too bad that we can't register all our software including versions and option settings, record our file structure, get versioning on all files, be asked to rank the importance of data, etc. without having to develop our own elaborate schemes for not losing stuff when our media and computers so down. It makes me so tired, making backup schemes, making sure they work, upgrading software, looking for files, organizing. I just want to use the computer to make words and pictures and to read stuff. I want it to be there with my calendar, mail, journals, financial software and spreadsheets. There just is no scheme that works flawlessly. Apple has this 'Time Machine' thing but I don't know how well it really works especially if you lose your whole environment. It seems more suited for recovering from your own faux pas. I guess Apple offers some off site backup, too, but I don't know how that works. I think my main problem is that I create too much stuff. Too many e-mails, too many downloaded pictures, too many words. I think it's interesting that I've entrusted all the blog entries to some free service without much of a qualm. I used to create my own HTML journals and such and I would upload those to the servers of companies I paid to host them and then I was pretty blase about otherwise backing them up.

Where am I going with all of this? Don't know. Life is complicated. We are complicated. Computers are complicated. I'm going to go across the hall and exercise and read the newspaper.

Undecided

No. I'm not talking about you voters who didn't vote early. (Presumably if you DID vote early you were decided, but that's not this story.)

No, I'm talking about, once again, deciding how to spend a day that isn't full of appointments.

I usually get up at seven. I did so today, more or less. Lots more light at seven these days. Someone changed the time.

Things I need to do: get an appointment for teeth cleaning, take my car for regular maintenance, clean my house. Straighten and file some stuff. Shred. Workout. Take a walk. (A kind of workout and yet it doesn't 'count.') I'm not even going to think about writing. That's what I'll probably actually do, then.

But right now? I'm watching a lugubrious Chinese movie (Three Times) that I rented from NETFLIX ages ago. I hate to send them back without putting them in the DVD player. (Although I rented and never watched the Sweeney Todd with Johnny Depp and a film of a staged version of same because FFP refused to watch them and I never found time without him.) The lugubrious movie is two hours long. I started watching it yesterday. I use the term 'watching' loosely, I was doing other things like reading at the same time and you know subtitles and reading don't gel that well. Anyway, I'm sending it back and getting something else to not watch. Yesterday I watched a documentary about Amish teenagers going wild while they tried to decide whether to commit to the church. That was pretty good, actually. It was called Devil's Playground. I was very impressed with it. I think the Amish might do well to wait until the kids are 18 or 21 to give them that much freedom, but what is amazing is how many survive the freedom and do join the church.

But I digress. What am I going to do with my day? What am I going to do right now? Why I'm going to work the puzzle in the New York Times, silly. I can usually whip through it, get a laugh. I love Monday when the Arts section of the Times is thin and manageable (few ads) and packed with interesting stuff including an easy but still amusing puzzle.

My Austin FIlm Festival, Part 4

We decided to mix things up and go to a script reading and some docs yesterday. The reading of the script "Mine" (Drama screenplay winner by Anita Skibski) was a tour de force with a bunch of actors doing the reading. This is the first script reading we had attended at the festival (we'd been to other script readings of movie and play scripts before). I enjoyed it although I did use one piece of my brain to work on the Sunday New York Times magazine crossword puzzle.

We read, napped (and I watched some recorded episodes of Jeopardy while finishing said puzzle, cheating only a little). Then we met up with a friend who lives in our building, went to Royal Blue for some snacks and drinks and walked over to the Rollins Theater at the Long Center. This would be an easier walk if the City of Austin wasn't taking three years to improve Cesar Chavez and the Hike and Bike. A digression I know, but I am SO sick of the mess to use the First Street pedestrian bridge. The other day I saw six workers watching women on the Hike and Bike while one guy poured a concrete footing for a post to keep cars from driving into the Lake and one guy watched that guy. I'm serious. My tax dollars at work.

We were almost the first people to queue for the movie. There was a technical problem and it didn't start until 45 minutes late. There was a performance at the Dell and so there was catering and I had a Shiner Bock to top off my Orangina I had on the way over. I never did eat the energy bar I bought in case I got hungry.

The first doc was "The American Widow Project." I didn't think I would like this one too much. The women in the movie are very young, most are mothers and their husbands (and in one case the widow, too) had committed to the military as careers. I'm more sympathetic with Viet Nam era vets and widows, especially where the guys were drafted. I'm in awe of WWII vets. But I digress. I didn't expect much from this. However, I was surprised. I couldn't really relate to these women. (Married younger than I did and widows before they knew it, little kids, etc.) But the story was told well. I came at the end to see the dramatic arc of these stories as they were revealed through the interviews, stills, home movies, news footage, etc. The woman who made the movie,Taryn Davis, with the help of Don Swaynos was there. She is a widow herself and she also starte a project to connect and help military widows. Two of the other widows in the movie were also there. I am very impressed with the movie because the real stories were told so well and represented a larger group and a larger truth about this era and I am also moved by the effort of these young people to help themselves.

The second doc I expected to like. It was called "Happiness Is..." and the blurbs led me to believe it might be a nice peripatetic trip around the U.S. full of kitsch and characters in a (vain) search for happiness. That sounded like fun. It turned out to be a movie that overused a drugged out woodcarver and Matthew Dowd. There was a pretend 'discovery' that doing good and being spiritual were the keys to happiness. La. Ti. Da. I came out of it asking my companions (1) If Matthew Dowd was gay. He was wearing clothes and jewelry that made me wonder. (2) If he really didn't imagine that Bush-Cheney might initiate a war. (3) If he understood that his son volunteered for the military. I'm not against theories like "you get more than you give" and such but I was geared up for some people I could relate to. Happiness scholars? Hrrumph. Willie reading a script. (Willie Nelson that is. He seemed to have agreed to say whatever for a quick interview. Not that it doesn't believe in giving, except to the tax man. Hard to disagree with that.)

Anyway, I wasn't happy with it. Ha. There was a rabbi saying all religions are the same. Well, no. And yes, but. Some religions would consign all other practitioners of other faiths to some kind of hell. Most believe non-believers are destined to some such fate. Many wars and atrocities can be lain at the feet of religions and I'm not talking about Muslims in the 21st century either. The rabbi said 'no religion came up with anything new.' Well, how about this: I just invented a religion. This religion believes that there is a life after this one of profound happiness and unending joy. No one on this earth from Mother Teresa to Jeffrey Dammler is barred from this second world. All of us end there. What we do on earth just enhances this low sad life stage for ourselves or others. No faith required to enter the kingdom of heaven. Maybe there is a religion that professes such a view. But it is far, far from the Judeo-Christian-Muslim canon of prayer, faith and atonement. As soon as you concoct this religion you see why it wouldn't be popular. No religious leaders are necessary to guide you. Unemployment for those involved in leading religious groups, printing religious texts, building religious complexes. Oops. Better hope my religion doesn't catch on. And, of course, it won't. I like to watch televangelists now and again and they are more entertaining than this movie. Sorry. Was I not supposed to be entertained? I guess not.

We walked back to the condo and watched "Mad Men" off the DVR. I like this show although the Don Draper thread is a bit bizarre. They are exploring lots of foibles and prejudices of the early sixties (a message is there yes) in a very entertaining way.

[The photo, completely unrelated to the post, is of a work of public art in a park near the East Bouldin Creek Greenbelt. I mean it could be a comedy (or tragedy) mask, I guess. I just feel I should always give you a picture.]