Things to Do in Retirement

I retired in late September 2002, and, at the usual moment for such things (the new year), I made a list of resolutions (show here with comments made April of 2003). There were things on it both ridiculous and sublime. Well, the former anyway.

It is extremely sad that, well over four years later, so little is really accomplished from that list. As I like to say, I am always intending to write but instead I only blog. I gave away the video camera. So much for learning how to make a movie. I still use the point and shoot camera on the most basic setting. Although I have added lots of shots to the shop windows and reflections collection. I gave up learning to play Bridge. I gave away the large collection of Bridge books even. As the time approaches when downsizing is really, really needed (since we are moving to a condo) things are still a mess in most closets and storage.

But...I rode the bus! Now why I decided that I should ride the bus here in Austin (not the most public transportation friendly place in the world or even in the U.S.) I don't know. But I've ridden the bus twice in the last couple of weeks. Both times I wanted to go somewhere downtown or close to it. And I was meeting someone who was coming from the south but who lives close and could take me home so I didn't have to actually ride a bus back. Once I rode Route 19 which seems to be the domestic workers' express (since it goes by a prominent retirement home and lots of fancy houses). Once I rode route 3 which seemed to be a slacker express. There were rude, loud young people on board making sexually explicit comments and self-indulgent cell phone calls. Also, excessively using 'like' in their conversations. The domestics and yard men were better companions, speaking quietly among themselves in Spanish and English, tired from a hard day's work. This is a generalization, of course.

One problem with riding the bus from my current home is that you have to walk several blocks to get to a stop. Around a half mile, a little less. In the heat and with a wait at the stop, you can wilt a bit before the air-conditioned bus arrives. At 50 cents a ride it's a bargain, though, with gas costing six times that a gallon.

On one trip I went downtown. I had to walk a few blocks to my destination. But it was fine. And, of course, after a little walking around and dinner with friends, I had a ride home.

On another trip, I went to S. Lamar to the strip mall where the Alamo Draft House South is located (a movie theater that serves beer and wine and food). The photo shown today is the window of one of the junk shops there. Fortunately this bus goes down S. Lamar so no transfer was necessary.

I feel for people who have to ride these buses wherever they go, waiting for the late bus in the heat, having to transfer downtown to get where they want to go. And it was amazing how incredulous my friends were that I rode it. Even someone who owns a hybrid and worries a lot more than I do about the earth seemed shocked that I rode the bus to meet them.

Well, it took me over four years. But I finally did something I said I was going to do. Never say never! [Yes, I know that no one but me would even consider riding the bus an accomplishment. I often take public transportation when traveling. I once avoided taking a cab even one time in Berlin, even making the trips to and from the airport with luggage on public transportation. But here in Austin it seems an accomplishment. And if you had to be really dressed up and it was this hot...it would be a disaster!]

Looking Ahead

There is our condo building rising beyond the tangle of power switching equipment next to the Seaholm plant.

I thought of putting this entry into the Journal of Unintended Consequences. It's sort of the 'appropriate planning' vs. 'looking for happiness in the future and not living in the now' dilemma. It's really been on my mind as I struggle to plan for a significant move and see all these things from my past as I struggle to reduce my 'stuff.'

I've been reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. I was struck by this passage:

"People usually escape from their troubles into the future; they draw an imaginary line across the path of time, a line beyond which their current troubles will cease to exist."

I have done that so many times in my life. Not that I never lived 'right now.' I think I do that better at the moment than I ever have. But I remember so many times thinking that as soon as I (fill in the blank: paid off this bill, moved, changed jobs, retired, etc.) then I would have it sorted and be happy. Or happier. I'm trying hard not to think of the move downtown that way. I'm trying to think of it as just another stage in my life. I'm trying to enjoy my house while I'm still here and I'm trying to embrace sorting all this 'stuff' as a good and fun exercise.

Truthfully, whenever I look into the future these days, I seem to quickly retreat into the present. I'm getting older. Our parents seem perilously old. Then there are terrorists and global warming. Yeah, better enjoy the now.

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.

Discarding the Past

Sometimes it's tempting to discard some things because they are cards and letters I wrote and they show what a dumb a-- I was! Of course, my current writings (this blog included) probably reveal the same failings. Honestly, though I think I'm smarter now! If you click on the picture and get a larger version and a good look at some of the stamps you can see that this stuff is really old. You may well ask how I came to have letters I wrote? Because my relatives (my mother and, especially, two aunts) saved them and I later got them from them.

I couldn't bring myself to discard many of them. I did manage to reduce the 'archive' box I was going through, though, by discarding some other things.

Reading all the stuff in this one box has made me light-headed with nostalgia for that younger, more hopeful and, I think, more energetic self. A number of the letters were written from Europe in 1972. This was my "official youthful tramp around parts of Europe like someone with no cares in the world" excursion. In the days before e-mail I wrote letters and people wrote to me and it took many days to communicate. I didn't save the letters I got while on that trip, apparently. At least I haven't found them. I did find some missives from other people from later decades. I even dropped some people an e-mail and quoted from one of these letters.

Busy?

I am busy. Five days a week I get up for a morning activity at my club. MWF is water aerobics. We welcomed the instructor back from jury duty today. I would rather have more freedom from a structured class. But I am appreciating this class while my dad can participate. Today he put his hands up on the diving board and hoisted himself up at bit. Like a much younger man. So I'd rather not have a class MWF. But I'm glad I do. If that makes sense. Tuesday and Thursday I've committed to playing tennis unless something really comes up to interfere or it rains, of course. I'm not crazy about commitment but I love to play and this gets me out there and my companions are fun. Right now I'm playing most Wednesday nights, too.

I'm trying to get in shape. I would say back in shape but I'm not sure I was ever there. The water aerobics and tennis won't do it so I have to do some riding on the recumbent bike and some ab work and weights. It never feels like I do enough. Last night I walked the neighborhood with my friend SuRu and her dog. My dog isn't a match for the rest of us any more. Sad.

It is the busy time for film reviewers for the Austin Film Festival. The festival is in October. Deadlines loom, films pile up. We are first round screeners. Get the flicks seen by someone. We also go to screener's meetings...we started last Monday.

I've been trying to stay on top of our financial life. Every day I make entries into the budget, check accounts, enter checks into the budget or my dad's account (we pay a lot of his bills out of a fund he contributes every month).

I've been trying to blog a bit and keep up a little private journal. FFP and I are together keeping up the Austin, Texas Daily Photo Site which has been fun.

And the downsizing! I've been going through old boxes of 'archives and souvenirs.' Finding letters from friends and old letters I wrote to my aunts who are dead now (they saved them all) makes me sad and glad at the same time. It's very tedious going through all these pieces of paper and trying to figure out what to do with each thing. I feel I must read the stuff before deciding its fate.

I have a couple of committee meetings this week and another commitment or two. I've never had a problem staying busy in retirement.

Lazy Morning

Yesterday, I was all cheer about everything. I was working on the projects I have for my country club board. They are frustrating in the way that work sometimes was. You know the "I can't find the documents in the form I need them" and the "I can't find the latest information and decisions" and the "you can't please everyone in spite of the fervor of their arguments." And yet I just worked on it and didn't fret.

I stared at the piles around the house that are the detritus of the downsizing without sadness or retribution. I did note that some of the boxes and containers stacked around are actually...empty. This is progress, I think. I even photographed an old 'art' (we use the term loosely here) project of mine that I mentioned yesterday as being something saved from the dump. It's pictured above.

I exercised and felt good about what I did with no recriminations about how far I have to go.

I went out with FFP and wandered downtown (exhaustively recounted here) without fretting about what will happen when we move there or how I'll ever get my stuff reduced to a small enough pile. And I didn't fret about the fact that I haven't gotten my dad a present or a card even for Dad's Day and hadn't even arranged a meal or outing. I just suggested to FFP that we maybe try an extremely early dinner at Chez Zee where they were thoughtfully starting a Dad's Day dinner at 4PM. He set it up and we got the parental units to agree.

This great feeling carried over into the morning. I got up late. I blogged and sat around in my bathrobe. I made my morning welfare call to my dad. I didn't worry when he didn't answer. I figured he was at the monthly church breakfast. He was and called back later.

Yeah, nothing bothered me yesterday. The world seemed full and interesting. I didn't try to control everything. I thought several times about friends who are ailing. I know that these things can happen to me. That something will. But I felt joy in the moment, in my rich and privileged life. I wish I could do that every day.

What to Save?

I've made several decisions over the past few weeks about stuff to keep and stuff to let go. I told FFP yesterday that I wanted to keep my Ultimate Talking Buzz Lightyear Room Guard.

"I think he'll look good in the condo," I said.

"OK. Sure." He said. Not sounding really sure.

He gave Buzz to me (one Christmas, I think) and that's part of my sentimentality, probably.

I packed Buzz in his original box. He's ready to move. I'm pretty sure he won't be one of the objects that we use to decorate the house to interest buyers.

I also decided to keep an old cardboard cracker box covered with magazine cutouts and painted with some sort of decoupage varnish. I made it over thirty years ago. It's old enough to evoke a lot of things with me. I think, when I move, I'll keep letters in it or something.

The other day I almost threw away several notebooks in which my parents had meticulously collected columns clipped from The Dallas Morning News. The columns, by the late Frank X. Tolbert, recounted history and lore of Texas as he traveled around the state. Then I thought why not give them to my dad. I figured he'd enjoy reading them again after all this time. Indeed, he's been having a ball reading them and he's loaned out two of the three notebooks to friends who are enjoying them, too. It's amazing, that. In a day and age when dedicated book store owners are burning books, that people would read aging clippings. I think that some of this material was collected in a book that is out of print. Ah, yes, here it is at Powell's City of Books in Portland.

I was fascinated by an article in the June 11/18 issue of The New Yorker about the Harry Ransom Center and all the important archives they preserve. I'm not really much of a preservationist myself. I toy with the idea of saving things for posterity and then somewhat happily toss them. I think I'll leave preservation to others. The space for it and the dedication to saving just aren't in my nature. I'm keeping Buzz, though. For now.

Downsizing Gazette

Newspapers aren't really the problem. No matter how long they sit around eventually they hit the recycle bin. No. Things of more substance. Books. Worn out shoes. Toys. My excuse to have toys as I close in on six decades on earth? Some were for young folks who would visit. Some were 'collections.' I decorated my offices when I worked with silly toys and organized things for other people's kids. Nevertheless, toys are going to have to go. Some souvenirs, too. Old piles of photos are hard. And my latest dilemma are computer backups on tape and floppies that are a decade old.

I'm a bit stymied at the moment. But the pace will pick up again. I'll be soliciting people to take things, packing up stuff for the thrift store. And filling the 'pay as you throw' container. I've been concentrating on more ephemeral things. Like manipulating the bits and bytes of my financial life and watching media. And reading those newspapers that I'm giong to ditch in any case.

Cute...if you don't have to change diapers

I enjoyed visiting the relatives. Especially the young ones. Who can resist a smile like this one? Of course, I didn't change one diaper. And I gradually got to the point where I wanted things a bit calmer. I wanted to eat sophisticated food and talk to adults. But, yeah, what a cute smile.

Road trip over, I'm trying to tame a pile of newspapers. I've caught up a lot of personal financial stuff and have a bit more of that to do. I've gotten back into water aerobics and tennis, but I need to get back to the weights and aerobic conditioning. I've gotten started on some work for my club.

Last night and tonight I had nice restaurant meals with wine and peace and quiet. (Well, one of the restaurants was loud, but still, no kids.) I've recovered from all the driving, I think, and caught up lost sleep.

I need to, gulp, get into the downsizing again. The summer of purging. That's what this will be.

It's All Relative

My dad asked today if I wasn't glad that the close relatives were nine hundred miles away. And it's true that the distance allows us to lead our own lives and, when we get together, enjoy each other. Even squirmy babies and hyper kids. It's been entertaining and this little baby boy is cute. But, nine hundred miles is about right! We can see each other now and then. We can even drive that distance sometimes. In between we can look at Snapfish photo albums of the kids! Or share their antics on YouTube. Yep. That's about right.

A River Runs Through It

FFP is maintaining the home fires. I'm visiting my nearest relatives (sister, brother-in-law, two nieces and their husbands, three great nephews and a great niece). My sister lives in a largely uninteresting sprawl of subdivisions west of Denver. However, on my daily walks I can see the South Platte roaring through a natural area. Otherwise, it's been a bunch of amusing babies and making up tasks for the five- and seven-year-old kiddos and helping them assemble Lego toys.

I'm not sure how it counts in the annals of downsizing but a van load of stuff is staying at my sister's (ground zero of the need for downsizing) and with my niece with the boys.

Happy, Texas

There is a movie called Happy, Texas. I guess I didn't realize that there is a Happy in Texas. (Should have because there is a town named almost everything you might imagine in Texas. In fact, there are 254 counties and a lot of variety there, too. Although, for example, Austin is not in Austin County and Sherman is not in Sherman County.) Today I spent most of the day lost in the vast reaches of Texas west of Austin. My dad was driving when he decided he really needed to stop. There were no truck stops or gas stations visible, but he drove into Happy, Texas and we went to a full service gas station. The cheerful attendant pumped the gas and washed the bugs off the windshield. Made me happy.

A Book Vortex

Sometimes, even when there is a precarious tower of newspapers in front of my reading and TV chair, a pile almost obscuring my view of the TV especially if it's a TV-formatted movie with subtitles, I get seduced by a book. Ever since Joan Didion's book about grief and death and such in the wake of her daughter's illness and her husband's death The Year of Magical Thinking came out I'd read reviews in those very newspapers and been drawn to read the book. Still, struck dumb by all the books we were having to deliver from this house in anticipation of downsizing, I hadn't bought it.

One of the things we do, FFP and I, as I might have mentioned is go on vacation and read. We take books along on trips in anticipation of this reading but we still feel compelled to seek out and patronize book stores, preferably lovely little independent ones.

So while I could have gotten The Year of Magical Thinking at Costco, if I'm not mistaken, we payed full price for it, albeit the paperback edition with a gold seal proclaiming its National Book Award, at a place in Santa Fe close to the plaza called, I believe, Collected Works. We bought two books and I immediately read the other, a small tome of essays on reading by someone whose name I've forgotten at the moment, culled from a smartish publication Dave Eggers may have had something to do with. FFP meanwhile read some of the Didion book. I returned after finishing the one new purchase to Tennessee Williams' Memoirs published over thirty years ago and bought by us in Powell's City of Books in the last couple of years. I think anyway.

Sometime in the last couple of days I decided to take Didion's book along to read on the bike instead of a stack of the aging aforementioned newspapers.

For some reason I was compelled to read it through to the finish. It's a short book. But its "I can't put it down" aspect for me wasn't the train wreck aspect of it. It wasn't watching this brilliant woman felled by the inevitability of life and death just like the rest of us. No, I think the fascination was imagining that I was the child of Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne. I love my parents and they loved me. But for some reason I find kids with very literary parents an enviable lot. It's a good book and I guess there is a little something for everyone in it except maybe those who find religion their salve for illness and death. I enjoyed the peek into the literary life as much as anything.

Downsizing Blues

OK...I'm really sad about people getting old and having cancer. I know...that's the way of the world.

But I'm projecting it on the downsizing project.

Nothing matters, everything matters.

The picture shows books piled on top of my file cabinet waiting to be cataloged. They have survived a round or two of tossing books.

I look at it like a series of ever finer sieves. Things escape being discarded or given away once only to be considered for disposal again and again with an ever more critical eye.

I told FFP today that I thought I would stop cleaning out my office where things are too infused with nostalgia and regrets and clean out the kitchen or something. In my office, there are too many souvenirs and photos. And while I usually look at them as the happy times that they were...after a while it just starts to seem like a crushing march of time.

Dogs We've Known

FFP put a not-so-current picture of our current dog Chalow on Austin Daily Photo. Of course, that draws a few dog people chatting and he wondered if there was a picture of our Old English Sheepdog who died in April of 1991.

Well, there are several but this one had Oscar the sheepdog looking better-groomed than usual as we posed for a picture for our 1983/1984 holiday card. We all look pretty well-groomed that day. And talk about not-so-current!

Look at us: no gray hair. Thinner? Both dogs have met their maker but they were young and frisky then. Lucky, the little mutt in my lap, made it to '97, I think, and the age of 17.

Well, must accomplish something. My downsizing tasks are making me sad today. And the pest control people are coming and right now you can't see the baseboards in here.

The Urge to Post

Since FFP and I started Austin Daily Photo, I seem to have the urge to post something frequently. The rule there is one day=one photo. So once one of us posts there, that's it for the day.

Nothing stopping me posting here or in the Journal of Unintended Consequences, however. Of course, the JoUC requires a certain kind of post.

But there are no rules in The Visible Woman really. Not exactly.

This is a reflection of us in a window that looks out onto a deck at the Norwood Building. You will notice that my new camera (Nikon CoolPix P4) has no viewfinder. Therefore you will not see my face obscured by the camera in so many of these shots. An Unintended Consequence. Wait, wrong blog.

Well, that's it. Like I said: I just had the urge to post.

Not Disappointed...Just Sad

When I was younger, everything was a disappointment. My expectations were so high and rarely met. Doesn't happen that way much any more. I don't expect much. I receive a lot.

This afternoon I came home to find that the yard guys had done the mowing. The maid came late, but I made her leave on time. I cooked or, rather, I heated up things I bought at Central Market, hiding the containers, trying to make it look special.

"Should we call?" FFP asked.

"Not until seven," I insisted.

It wasn't quite seven when he called, though.

Our would-be guests are stressed. So stressed by her illness that she'd actually forgotten. But from FFP's end of the conversation, she wasn't well enough for an outing in any case.

We ate the meal with the two vacant seats at the table in what we call 'the room.' It was good. Especially the dish FFP prepared 'from scratch.' We drank some wine. We looked outside at the backyard where our friends who should have been our guests this evening had gotten married nine years ago this month.

I wasn't disappointed. But I was sad.

We turned on the outside speakers and took a drink outside. In spite of spraying ourselves with some foul-smelling moquito repellant (that was allegedly 'natural') the mosquitoes did bite.

I wasn't surprised at the mosquitoes. Or disappointed. But I did feel a bit sad. We watched the dark but wonderful movie "Notes on a Scandal" and that increased my sadness.

Wedding Cake Building

FFP and I went to the dedication of the Norwood Tower on 7th Street as a Texas Historic Place last evening. This wedding cake building was once the tallest building downtown.

We have been busy with activities for our charities, volunteer work, exercise and with the continuing downsizing effort. I'm getting ready to take off after the holiday weekend to Colorado. If all goes well, I'll give away another van load of stuff to my relatives up there and come home with a bunch of digital pictures of squirmy kids who will never look that way again. I bought a new digital camera. If I could have, I would have purchased a Nikon Coolpix 5900 identical to the one I have. And I could have purchased one on ebay I suppose. But I went to the camera store and got as close as I could by buying a Nikon Coolpix P4. Same batteries, same USB cable, lot of the same operation and the same type of memory (SD). Sadly, no viewfinder. My 5900 still works great but we sometimes find both of us want to have the camera. Particularly if I go on a trip without him as I plan to do this time, taking my Dad to see relatives.

The Journal Dilemma

In trying to eliminate a few cubic feet from my life, I've consdiered tossing some handwritten notes and journals. When I'm gone, after all, no one is going to collect all this stuff and sell it to the Harry Ransom center for a few million so researchers can mine it for info. In fact, instead of writing something to get famous enough for that to happen, I blog. And I scribble the my mundane activities and events and thoughts into little notebooks. So, yeah. Toss them. Right? Well, I just can't. Not until, at least, I transcribe them so they can be lost in the cobwebs of my hard drive where they take far less room. What to do, though, when there is some little drawing or doodle on the page? Inconsequential, I suppose.

So glad I retired so that I can spend my entire morning at my country club and my afternoon worrying about stuff like this and helping Forrest start a blogging career.

That Old Self

Going through my closets and sorting every single thing, trying to reduce, reduce, reduce has resulted in rather too much nostalgia. And I'm not even close to done. I've been reading things I wrote in the '70's and '80's and '90's. And postcards and letters from other people and ones I wrote myself and got back from the recipient. And pictures. This one I haven't actually physically touched in a while. I scanned it into the computer a long time ago. It was probably displayed on a journal but maybe not. Scanning and transcribing things into the computer is one way to let go of the physical thing. Not that I would give up this Polaroid of FFP and I on our 13th anniversary. If I could actually find the actual picture, I mean. I have no idea where it is at the moment. As we get older we have more and more past and less and less room to keep it all, I think.

The picture is a Polaroid taken by the owner of a restaurant in New Braunfels where we celebrated our anniversary. Ignoring the oversized glasses (what were we thinking?), notice the lack of gray hair.

Nostalgia can choke you with its dust and over important poignancy after a while. Just looking at one old hand-written journal or photo can be fun. Stacks of them? Overwhelming. Sad.

If You Can See Me...

The Armstrong-Connelly studio at the new Ballet Austin Butler Dance Education Center has a glass wall to the outside. You can see the balcony of what will one day be the Preece-Ball home. And yes we named something in the new building. The Ballerina's Locker Room I think it is.

FFP was asking me why there wasn't a Austin Daily Photo site like Paris and London and many cities have. So I decided that I would just make one. I have decided, see, that if I have three blogs then I can pretend that I'm keeping up with them. Ha. However, I will be just prowling the archives for the photo site sometimes showing things that don't exist anymore. And, in general, I'm not going to say anything about the photos over there.
Things are business as usual here. Throwing things away. Lots of memories in some of these things.

Caducity

The Butler Dance Education Center, the new home for all of Ballet Austin's administration, classes, rehearsals for the professional company and small performances, is almost done. (In other words, everything Ballet Austin except the big performances will be in this building.) Silver and gold 'ribbons' are dancing across floors with words from donors.

It's been a day for me to miss people, too. Life is transitory. Perishable. Caducous. I've been cleaning out one of those boxes you keep around of sentimental stuff. We call them 'archives' or 'souvenirs.' Often there are date labels but they can be wildly inaccurate. I find that by going through them I can weed them down to about half the size.

There is sadness, though. You'll be going through the boxes flipping old holiday and thank-you cards into the recycling and the handwriting of people who are gone stops you. Or some notes you made about your goals and desires makes you pause and think how little or how much has changed for you. Or you see a signature and realize you have no idea who this person is who has in the past written a 'thank you' note to you for some kindness. Or you find notes from someone pledging undying friendship. Only the friendship has, in fact, been extinguished by them.

Among the handwritten notes, colorful postage stamps and ticket stubs is a sheet torn from a page-a-day calendar featuring words. Caducity: the quality of being transitory or perishable it reads. March 12, 1990. Nothing special about the date, but over seventeen years gone.

Imagine Me and You

Well, me and FFP anyway. See that glass? That will be my glass! That will be the glass in the living area. Beyond the columns left and right will be a bit more glass in each bedroom only one will be an office. There will be a guard rail making the balcony less scary.

But the whole thing is starting to frighten me as I deal with the downsizing thing.

Right now there are sacks and boxes on my office floor that are either destined for Freecycle or the landfill or maybe my nieces.

I know I don't need a lot of this stuff. I just wish I didn't feel compelled to look through it. To touch it, to try to figure out if there is any reason to keep it.

I found a diary from 1995. You know the old kind where you put pen to paper in a book with dates in it. It was intended as an appointment book, but I tried to write briefly about each day. It was so depressing. One person appeared multiple times but I could only barely remember anything about her. And the bit I combed from memory only came after I read that she brought over a laser disk of the movie "Sirens." That depressed me, too. Laser disks. Remember those big platters? Big as LPs but thicker? We still have some. And a player that, as far as I know, works. This diary contained mentions of other people I remember perfectly well but no longer see. Also people that I do keep up with, of course. Some things haven't changed in seventeen years, some things have.

People come and go. Technology comes and goes. It's sadly easier to shed people than technology. Technology leaves all these artifacts behind.

See...I Even Took a New Shop Window Picture

Yes...a brand new picture from my favorite shop window...that of Uncommon Objects on South Congress, Austin, Texas, U.S.A.

And there I am, in my dog shirt, looking fat.

My computer is a mess. My desk is a mess. My house is a mess.

I even thought of spending one hour working on the 'downsizing' and then one hour writing about it. To spur me on, you know. But instead I cleaned the coffee machine and took my blood pressure and I'm reading a tennis magazine.

Maybe Frequent, Short Posts is the Answer

Maybe I should just pop in whenever I have a picture or a thought to share and post something.

We took a trip down to South Congress to visit our CPA and then we stopped downtown to look at the Ballet Austin building which is getting close to being renovated. I walked down the street west to the corner to look up at 'our' building. There is glass on our floor now. Wow.

The sun was blinding and it felt hot and it almost gave me a headache. And it's only May 8.

I'm Losing my Memory

Not really. I'm really not losing my memory. No more than usual, I mean.

It's just that I haven't been keeping a journal so that, when I forget what I did today and this week, I can refer to it. Not just not blogging. Not keeping a private journal either.

You wouldn't believe how I rely on my old journals.

So I guess I have to pick up the pace or making a record. At least privately if not in this space.

This picture is from a decorative wall in our hotel room (really a condo) in Scottsdale.

I will say this. I have been leading the good life lately with lots of exercise, tennis, fun with friends.

Where Have I Been?

We had to get home from our road trip. And then there was all the financial stuff that we had to take care of that we'd neglected. And we had to unpack, wash things up and restart the social life.

The picture is from the plaza at Taos. I took it because somewhere I think I have a 40-year-old picture of my family in the same spot. But I haven't found that.

The night after we arrived home we had a super wine tasting with friends. It included a '67, '78 and '82 La Tour. Also a Grand Cru Burgundy, champagne, steak and accompaniments. And general merriment.

I've recovered now from the trip and getting back into 'real' life. We are looking seriously at our downsizing and financing all the moving and carry costs of buying and selling. I'm trying to get back to exercise and tennis. I did go to the gym in our hotels four times which is a record for a week's trip, however. The gym at the Valley Ho in Scottsdale was one of the best gyms I've ever seen in a hotel/spa.

I know that the blogs/journals/whatever that I read need to post once in a while to hold my interest. That's what this is. A sort of heartbeat. I am here. I'll have something interesting to say (hrump) later.

Vacation Fun

First, does this condo make me look fat?

Second, isn't it fun when somebody you know knows somebody and they claim they can get you an upgrade and, indeed, they get you a mega upgrade? This is the kitchen of the best room at the Valley Ho in Scottsdale. I'll bet anyway. It's the only one I ever had.

We are having a good time driving across vast parts of the Western U.S. looking for good food and fun.

I have been trying to figure out why I have been enjoying this vacation so much. It's not that we've done things all that exciting. It's more like just really getting away and putting off the things to do at home. We've been answering a lot of e-mail with variations of 'we will be back next week and then...." It's interesting to see what Santa Fe and Scottsdale are sort of about. And the great space between them and between Austin and here is interesting even in its sometimes emptiness.

The art galleries have been fun although I feel like I've been haunted by one artist. To explain: this guy is an artist who does Indians in bronze. Early in his career, almost thirty years ago, he was represented by a gallery in Austin. FFP did some work for them. We ended up with a couple of his pieces. Lovely bronzes. Of Indians. For a long time those pieces and a couple of others provided an eclectic counterpoint to our otherwise native-American-free art collection. A couple of years ago we had a surge of downsizing and found a dealer who managed to get us thirty or forty percent of what we'd paid for them. I knew that the artist had kept on going in his career, drifted away from simple patinas to all kinds of colored effects. In Santa Fe we'd mostly walk by the Indian 'stuff' and go into galleries with interesting contemporary art. But we were walking by this Canyon Road gallery and I saw a lot of Indian sculpture with intricate bead work and was about to pass by when I saw what I was sure was a Milt Kobayashi painting. I went in to look and it was a painting of his. Then I noticed that all these Indian sculptures were by this guy we had owned early in his career. Then we were on this street of galleries in Scottsdale and here were two monumental bronzes of Indians. Yep. You guessed it. The same guy's stuff. I felt like the guy was haunting me a little.

We've met a few people. An architect from Pittsburgh. A young couple living in Lubbock and loving it. An office manager for lawyers from Coronado, California. We haven't done much in the natural wonders and museums category. We did see a Jack Kerouac exhibit that was stunning. One doesn't expect that in the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe with the Indians sitting outside.

We always intend to exercise a bit when we are on vacation. Usually we just manage walking between meals and drinks. But on this trip we actually have managed to use the hotel gym four times. Two have been in the delightful gym at the Valley Ho (no, no, not that kind of hotel, think 1950's retro when it was a bit of word play on tallyho).

We've had some good food. Quality NMex food, fusion Japanese tapas, stuff like that. We've gotten to visit a good friend.

Good vacation so far. Wish me luck on the 'last gourmet meal' and the 'long drive homeward.'

Where are the Pictures?

The pictures are in my head. I haven't been taking pictures although I did bring my digital camera. I remember hearing (is it true?) that Indians think photos steal your soul. As a kid, my one other time in Santa Fe, I seem to remember that they would sell you the right to take a picture but I could have made that up.

I promise to take some pictures today.

We drove from Lubbock to Santa Fe. If there isn't much to look at between Austin and Lubbock, there is far less in the drive from Lubbock to the state line. Then the landscape is a little more interesting. There isn't even much livestock or road kill. No animals. No animals killed on the road. I have sucked FFP into road kill spotting but only Firestone and Bridgestone yesterday (strips of tires thrown from trucks) yesterday.

The drive was easy. We had a so-so lunch along the way. We kept the coffee cup full. An Allsups (a popular convenience store gas station out this way) filled it for 59 cents. That's what I'm talking about. There was some special New Mexican wildflower (a low-lying purple one) after state line. There was a lovely derelict church with the NM landscape behind it that I should have taken a picture of. I have a fantasy project of taking pictures of derelict buildings and junk yards across the country. I don't stop, however. One looks forward to the little derelict towns. Because the landscape is relentless. There were many long trains, though, and the long straight road follows the long straight tracks.

When we got to Santa Fe, we found our cheap chain hotel where we are staying one night before going to a hotel near the plaza. We got here really early. We'd sort of forgotten the time change, too. Our cell phones confirmed it, though.

After settling in we went to the Plaza area and spent the day wandering around. We saw some interesting contemporary art. We saw the Indians at Governor's Palace selling jewelry that was lovely. I don't wear much jewelry. It simplifies my life. We had some snacks at the bar at La Fonda while some guys played mariachi-type tunes. We scoped out some high end Men's clothes for FFP but made no purchases. We checked out the hotel where we will stay tomorrow night and FFP made himself a spa appointment. I'm not that into massages and stuff but he loves them. We found a restaurant that had piano music. Made a reservation for eight.

We went to an independent book store and bought a couple of books and sat at (gulp) Starbucks because it was the only coffee shop we found. I've noticed that the demographic here tends to be older than Austin. By a long shot. You'd think you were in a retirement village sometimes. And you sort of are. At Starbucks I just wanted brewed coffee and I wanted to drink it there. My request not to have the stupid paper cup with the cardboard around it was met with chagrin. They provided a cup but said it was 'bigger than tall,' tall being the smallest cup of coffee and the one I ordered. "Do you just want me to fill it to the tall level?" asked the girl. "Um, yes." I think that in spite of all the signs about fair trade and the fact that they sell water that is supposed to give 5 cents a bottle (about the value of the water!) to clean water in the third world, in spite of all that, they don't want to wash dishes but want to fill landfills with their stupid cups. Sounds like a journal of unintended consequences entry when I have time.

Being Some Place Else

It focuses your attention on a different set of things when you travel. I find that the act of putting everything you'll expect you need (except for food and drink, of course) in some bags and taking off makes you think about your possessions and your needs and relax and go with the flow of the world. Or fret over finding the one thing your spouse decides he wants while you are driving.

When you go on a driving trip, things at home take on a different perspective as the miles unwind behind you. You imagine yourself cleaning out a closet or cabinet and having it go really well, knowing just what you want to do with everything, no hesitation, no sneezing because of the dust.

Today we left the house to the house sitters and headed out for a leisurely drive to....Lubbock. Rather than make Santa Fe in one nearly 700 mile hop, we decided to spend the night in Lubbock, making two pretty easy drives of it.

Our new Accord seemed to purr along effortlessly. I like to eschew cruise control to stay connected to the drive and I had to keep from putting my foot in it and exceeding the speed limit. we don't see a reason to waste gas and squeeze past the limits too much. It's a vacation! Relax! We listened to jazz (mostly...the real non-Kenny G type) and acoustic rock on the XM radio. That's a plus. When the other person was driving, we read the day's papers. We made a stop for gas and the bathroom. We stopped at a Chili's for an early lunch. And we stopped at, gulp, McDonald's for a fill-up of our commuter cup with coffee and the bathroom. (McDonald's coffee is not that bad. And cheap. In any event, there weren't a lot of local coffee shops offering organic shade-grown fair trade brews at that point.)

The road offered the usual small and half dead Texas towns (with names like Bangs and Lawn). One town's school mascot was the Gorillas. Hmmm. Most of these towns had a few derelict structures along the highway, some suspicious-looking eateries and maybe a junky 'antique' shop. To add to those usual entertainments and the roadkill spotting there were some amazing displays of wildflowers, a few dramatic wind farms and donkey heads pumping oil. With our reading material and radio, it was really effortless.

Lubbock is just a stop so that we don't work too hard getting ourselves to Santa Fe. The road is part of the trip.

When we arrived at our Quality Inn the staff was nice and upgraded our room. We searched the Internet on the free wireless and found what we hoped was a non-typical restaurant for Lubbock. We ended up having dinner at a wannabe French place called Chez Suzette. It wasn't bad and better than we could have hoped for its arbitrary selection. Drinks and music at a place called Stella's was unexpectedly good, too. Especially the conversation with a young couple who could walk right onto the set of Friday Night Lights.

Dreaming Some Place Else

When you are planning a move, a job change (or retirement) or a vacation, you visualize yourself somewhere else. You imagine what you'll do, the things you'll have around you, how each day will shape up.

Reality is always somewhat different. To say the least.

This photo was taken on a bit of the hike and bike trail in downtown Austin, looking east at some of the flock of cranes that are ubiquitous in the Austin skyline at the moment. For those keeping score at home the building in the foreground is the 360 which will one day be 44 stories and will contain our small home. The eighteen-story building next in line is the new AMLI rental units.

With hundreds of units actually being built at the moment in downtown Austin and others on the drawing board, there are lots of people visualizing a new lifestyle.

My own vision is having a lot less stuff. I'm a bit puzzled about how I'm ever going to accomplish this but I know that I just have to keep asking myself: Will I use it? Will it look good? Could I just get something like it later if needed? It seems like we've been getting rid of stuff at a good pace for years especially since we started remodeling the house. But we've acquired stuff, too. And maybe the getting outpaced the getting rid of. The pendulum has swung around here, but it's not going fast enough to suit me. I have to look at every little thing and ask myself "do I see it being useful and having a place in my new digs?"

We are thinking about a trip we are going to take soon. Going on a trip is like moving in a way. You take with you what you think you need for a short period instead of the rest of your life. One finds that a lot of things can be left at home and not missed when you pack up for a car or plane trip. Of course, you might eventually miss your souvenirs and book collection and miscellaneous gadgets. And, of course, the coffee machine. Other than the stuff I take on a trip (clothes, toiletries, camera, laptop) I guess the things I most want to keep are books and things with sentimental value. We faced the fact long ago that books took up a lot of space around here. The paring down of those continues but a kernel of the collection is going to surround us in that condo, I think. Making it a warm and welcoming place to sit and read. While drinking coffee. When I visualize myself elsewhere I'm always reading (or writing in my notebook) and sipping coffee. Or maybe enjoying a walk on a trail or sitting on a lawn. Many people say when confronted with our yard "you must spend a lot of time out here." It isn't true, though. I'd visualize that, too, if I were them. But what time I spend out there is usually doing something like chopping bamboo back that escapes from my neighbor's yard.

Can you tell that the downsizing is weighing me down again? I keep finding more stuff and it gets harder and harder to decide what to do with it. But meanwhile...let me pack for a trip and forget about it for a little while. Just taking along things I really might need.

Recycling? Good or Bad?

This picture is a detail of an image from my hard drive. I took the picture outside a small theater in Waterville, Maine in 2005. (See journal entry here.) I think this work of art, made from found objects, is a depiction of the town of Waterville.

I'm a great fan of found object art. I save old and useless things sometimes, pretending that I will turn them into a clever collage or sculpture. But, truthfully, I'm no artist. So this old junk just takes up space and taunts me.

Today, while cleaning out a cabinet that hadn't seen any attention in a decade or two, I came across some moldy old books that belonged to my mother and her siblings. One of my favorite local artists, in fact one of my favorite all-time collage artists, is Lance Letscher. His work often uses parts of books, old book covers, etc. (As the link shows.) So immediately I thought: I should give these to Lance Letscher. I've never met him, of course. I heard somewhere that he actually fishes around in the dumpsters behind places like Half Price Books to find material. Somehow I doubt that. Surely his friends are always giving him old books and such.

Our downsizing is this crazy effort to find just the right homes for things. Discarding books is very hard for me. It just seems wrong. I've done it. But it doesn't feel good. A lot of my technical books that are hopelessly out-of-date may actually end up in the landfill. But it's hard for me to be the one that tosses them.

This same cabinet has yielded up FFP's books from his childhood. He has had fun today remembering reading these. What will we do with these old, dusty, tattered children's books? Right now I haven't a clue.

As we go through this purging process a lot of people give us advice. About selling things on ebay or getting one of those estate sale people. Or who might like different things we have to give away. I've mentioned before how weary it makes me. I just have to keep saying "progress is being made." True the stack of moldy books is on the floor of my office. Along with other things awaiting their fate. I sometimes think back to a time when I was much younger. When I would have been so delighted to know someone who was like I am today...getting rid of all kinds of interesting 'stuff.' Fact is...maybe that's how I acquired many of these things! Mostly we get rid of things by taking them to the thrift store, putting them on Freecycle or giving them to a friend. We have sold a few things over the past few years. Giving things away is hard. Selling them doubly hard.

Unexecuted Ideas

I love museums but I'm almost as fascinated by the other people as by the art and artifacts. Today I read in the Arts Section of The New York Times about a photographer Thomas Struth who took pictures of people in museums looking at art. And then inserted some of them in the Prada among the paintings for one show. Hey...I had that idea. Lots of times I get one of us in the picture, too. But sometimes strangers as here in MOMA in 2005.

I finished shredding a bunch of old financial stuff from the eighties and early nineties today. I always think I will keep stuff organized, discard it at just the right time and then it ends up jumbled together in a box. There was almost nothing we needed to save in the box but it needed sifting through to be sure of that. And some things needed to be shredded. Although many accounts were defunct and financial institutions had changed their names, etc. a depressing number of things had signatures, driver's license numbers and even Social Security Numbers.

I did find a report from an EEG I had 1990 after having an unexpected faint. They didn't find anything. I decided to save it, though. "The predominant waking activity is a well-organized admixture of 10-11 per second occipital alpha with some intermixed low to medium voltage fast." At least my brain waves were once well-organized.

Slowly stuff moves to the thrift store piles. Including some of the stuff that I saw receipts for in those credit card bills from the twenty years or so ago. And as I decide to keep books I wonder when I will have the time to sit down and enjoy reading them. I have been doing a better job of reading the papers that show up since our subscription to The Wall Street Journal lapsed. (FFP has renewed it now, I think.) As a consequence I have been reading a book I found and decided was a keeper. Memoirs by Tennessee Williams. Published in 1972 it is a stream of consciousness remembrance and diary of what was going on at the moment. I seem to have bought it at Powell's during a trip to Portland. Believe I'll keep it even after reading it. What a name dropper he is!

I suppose that maybe I'll look back on the downsizing of 2007-2008 as something that I did execute on, however slowly and painfully.

The Gala Fete Ball Performance Dinner

This picture is a couple of years old. But it is an example of one of the many 'events' we attend in the course of a year. They are intended to (a) raise money for good causes; (b) focus attention on the work of various organizations; and (c) jolly up the patrons of said groups.

We attended one night before last. I don't have any pictures. It wasn't black tie. As this one clearly wasn't either. (If it had been, FFP would certainly have been tuxedoed.) This most recent one was at the Driskill Hotel. As was the one where we took this picture.

And lest the suspense be killing you...yes that is Carol Channing with FFP. The event was a fundraiser for Austin Cabaret Theater and she performed.

I remember when we were younger and poorer. When we finally had some money to invest in charity and its requisite gala/fete/ball/fundraiser/performance/dinner events, I remember having some joy in going to them and even in helping plan one called Black Tie and Tennis Shoes to benefit Women's Athletics at UT. And it's not that I never have fun at these events. I do. And money is raised. All good.

However, there are a number of things that I guess I've become a little jaded about over the years. I'm too demanding or something. So this is a bit of a rant, but not really. That's why I didn't put it over in the Journal of Unintended Consequences. Although there are consequences. And some unintended.

All these gala/fete/ball/performance/dinner fundraisers have some elements from the following list:

• formal attire
• silent and/or live auctions of goods to raise more money
• food
• drink
• entertainment
• presentations of awards and acknowledgements
  
• decorations
• souvenir gifts
  

Now formal attire does take things up a notch. There are lots of dresses to look at (not on me, of course) and the guys look elegant in tuxedos (or dinner jackets when it's appropriate or sometimes even when it's not). You sort of feel like there is a certain amount of elegance that you can co-opt. I get weary of coming up with appropriate outfits, though.

We went to an event two nights ago that was just 'business/cocktail' which let some of the mucky-mucks where fancy dresses but allowed FFP and I to slide with business suits.

Then there are the auctions. The way it works is that a committee forms and then people and businesses are talked into donating everything from wine and jewelry and gift certificates to trips, clothing, signed memorabilia, etc. Bids are either taken on sign up sheets or by live auction. Our event of two nights ago didn't have an auction. (Although they were selling off the beautiful art glass centerpieces at the 'after' party.) It was into the entertainment/presentation mode. The tickets for those who paid to eat the dinner and share in the festivities were, I believe, $500 a piece. So not so necessary to raise extra money, I guess. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago we were at an event that had a large silent and a live auction. It does give people something to do, walking around looking at the stuff on offer. FFP had helped gather donations for that one. He mostly got restaurant certificates. We bid briefly on some wine in that silent auction but didn't get anything. We ended up not getting something in the live auction but donating some money for one. Complicated, 'nuf said. I can't tell you how much we have donated by buying items in these auctions. I never try to write off the donation either. Unlike the tix to some of the events (which have a stated value of services less than the ticket price, natch) usually these items are pretty much worth what you pay for them or a little less. But the charity gets a donation and, I guess, some of the donors get a write-off. Anyway, yeah we have bought a lot of these things in the past. Just a brief look around our house uncovers a number of items we got at these auctions: several pieces of framed art, a 48-inch round table, a Chinese-looking vase, a Christophle vase with snakes on it, a beautiful wooden painted chair, an oak coffee table, some yard art, wine, glassware and an antique silver party purse. There is a large photographic portrait of us, too, that we bought the sitting for in an auction. Innumerable gift certificates for restaurants and stores and entertainments were purchased, too. And most of them used.

My biggest objection to these auctions? Long checkout lines for the silent ones. Confusion about who is bidding what in the live ones. But they do raise money. And, I'm convinced you could furnish your house with the stuff you could buy if you went to enough of them. And I have solved the silent auction thing a few times by walking out and contacting them and paying up later. They always know where to find us and we are good for it.

Ah, food. The most formal and expensive of these have a sit-down dinner. (Although dessert is often offered buffet-style.) Sometimes the food is quite good and innovative. But I'm a little tired of the beef and fish plates meant to (half) satisfy people. You shouldn't go to one of these things expecting to be dazzled by the food. Or expecting a good cup of coffee. Cheaper stand up affairs may have restaurant-sponsored little 'stands' or hors d'oeuvres buffets. It's funny how you perch at a table and gossip with strangers about where to find the best offerings.

The expensive events have open bars. Some have cash bars. In order to avoid crowding at the bars the venues put waiters out there with trays with, usually, white wine, red wine and water. Occasionally champagne. I usually take one of these offerings as a line of least resistance. But I'm usually happier standing in line for an actual cocktail before dinner rather than an indifferent wine. The cheaper stand up affairs (tix $100 or less) often have liquor sponsors which can lead to dazzling specialty martinis but no Jack Daniels. You can get very, very drunk at many of these events. Which is, of course, a bad idea. The worst ones for me as far as curtailing the amount of drink to allow feeling fresh in the morning are wine dinners where excellent wines are poured. It's all too easy to drink every glass offered. Which would be too much. Think tasting.

Entertainment at these events can be bands, dancing, performances, etc. I can't stand the really loud bands. (Especially on the mezzanine of the Driskill hotel, the loudest room on earth. The sound drifts into the ballroom and side rooms to make even conversation there impossible for those of us with any difficulty hearing.) When there has already been ample entertainment (sometimes a performance/presentation occurs at the Paramount and then an after party at the Driskill), any music should be quiet and allow patrons to talk about what they just experienced.

Presentations and entertainments where everyone needs to be focused must be done at an actual theater or at a time in the dinner when people are sort of captive at their tables. [Presentation and entertainment at the Paramount for the one the other night had the most fidgety audience I've ever seen. There were cell phones ringing, people talking, people going in and out and in and out.] What seem like great lines when one is forming a script can get very tedious when one is sitting there in an after five outfit with a few drinks needing a bathroom break and things go on and on. Have your entertainment choreographed and precise. When you are presenting awards to people who are going to be allowed to speak, try to keep them from making a speech as if they are in Oslo. Especially if they are in their dotage. They won't mind being taken off the hook. I promise.

The decorations at some of these things are so darned elaborate that you really question the sanity of it all. Towering candelabras, hundreds of colored votives on tables (so many napkins were burned that night), etc. I sort of like the ones where they have some centerpiece they can sell off. Makes me feel better about it all.

And then there are the souvenir gifts. The phrase 'swag the rich' comes to mind. It isn't like Hollywood with companies giving gift baskets worth tens of thousands to famous influencers. No. It's perfume samples, key chains, memo pads, corkscrews, T-Shirts. A lot of the stuff just adds to the clutter, I think. But the gift bag to take home has become a standard at some of these things. Maybe sponsors insist on it. Anyone want two AT&T key chains made in China? I'm just saying.

Yeah, we keep going to these events. But I have to tell you. When there is an evening, like this the one tonight, when our calendar is blank after 2PM, I breathe a sigh of relief.

Down about Downsizing

A couple of years ago I stuck the camera in a drawer of pens and scissors and such and took a picture. I wish I could tell you that mess is gone, gone, gone. But it's not. All the scissors are from an era when I thought my homemade greeting cards would benefit from those scrapbooking scissors that make different decorative cuts. They didn't.

We are getting rid of stuff, however. When we are filling up the trunk of the car for the thrift store or piling stuff on the sorting table it seems like a lot of stuff. (The sorting table is divided in half. Himself puts things on one half and I use the other. Then, at our convenience, we 'approve' the things and put them in the box for the thrift store or other recipients.) We are processing out lots of stuff this way and every week our recycling pile is huge and our 'pay as you throw' garbage can is stuffed. But when we look around, it looks hopeless.

I get depressed about it. It's not that I mind going through the stuff. It's kind of interesting actually. This week I was shredding old receipts and bank statements and found the receipt for something I'd thrown in the garbage that very day. That was strange.

It's not that I mind trying to find homes for things either . (Although that requires some communication with people that isn't always easy for me.) No, the worst part is that sometimes you feel like you aren't sending the thing to the right home. Should I just throw it away? Is there some specific person I should ask to see if they can use it? Could I sell it? Would it be a perfect thrift store donation? Should I just put it out on the curb and see if someone takes it?

I offered some technical books to old techie friends. This resulting in giving away eight books out of several dozen, one date for listening to jazz with another couple and a couple of lunch dates.

I posted some stuff of the Yahoo group for Austin Freecycle. This is a deal where people post things they will give away or want to acquire for free. I have learned that you give a deadline and then review all the e-mails trying to find a good home for the stuff with someone who might actually pick it up. It is sort of depressing. You offer an old digital camera that needs a battery (the ones I have for it won't take a charge and it uses only special rechargeable ones). And has some other issues. And someone writes that they want it to take pictures of their grandkids for Easter. This weekend. You know they will be disappointed by having to find a battery (if they can afford it and find one) and get it charged by Sunday. I wrote all the issues for each item as clearly as possible. And wrote, as clearly as I could, that I would wait until Thursday evening to decide among the requests. But people don't read that carefully. They fire off a response and say they can pick it up now. I also try not to be too critical of spelling, grammar, etc. One person wants the cameras. She says she is 'a Camera Conasour.' Does bad spelling make a person a bad owner for the cameras? One of the cameras I'm offering I described as an 'antique digital camera.' A guy responded who is a camera collector. It made me wonder whether I should offer him my Polaroid Land 100, a camera I'll never use again but have kept for sentimental reasons. I received that camera for Christmas in the early sixties and took hundreds of shots with it, particularly of my nieces when they were babies. They are 36 and 38 now.

There is entirely too much thought involved in this downsizing thing. And it's getting me down.

Feed the Rich...Desserts

I was torn about where to post this entry. Here in my regular journal (which my husband says makes our lives an open book but I don't really think so)? Or in the Journal of Unintended Consequences, my other blog, which is intended to capture the chaotic results from well-intentioned (or not) actions? I decided to put it here because somehow I thought that would be less controversial. I'm not really raising an objection to feeding the rich. Everybody's got to eat, you know, to sustain life.

The photo is of a sausage-shaped big cheese (I think) at Mandola's Market, posing with some of its sausage friends.

Now, I consider myself rich. I don't have any debt, I can budget for things like 'gifts' and 'donations' and 'eating out.' I don't work. Yeah. The idle rich even. Hasn't always been so, but I was never as poor as my parents or grandparents once were.

I've noticed that, when you donate money to things or you entertain friends or do them favors or people think you are going to do them a favor or donate money, people give you free food and booze.

I have often wondered if you could just live off this free stuff. For weeks at a time. I'm not really trying to do that and, besides, it would probably require lining your pockets with zip lock bags as my friend SuRu points out. But yesterday when I got up I realized that for that one day I could probably get by on what was free. So I decided to try it.

Now first off, I'm not a 'breakfast is the most important meal of the day' person. When I get up in the morning, I'm not usually hungry at all. I want coffee. Black coffee. And lots of it. So in my experiment I decided that I would allow myself unlimited coffee made in my very own Jura-Capresso E8. (See this entry also.) Of course, there are no calories in black coffee. Just a buzz.

During the morning, I went to my club and rode the recumbent bike for thirty minutes. The bike claimed I'd burned 200 calories. Just before I showered I weighed on the fancy-looking digital scales from Sharper Image that we bought when we decorated our remodeled bathroom. (See photo of bathroom in my old journal...the scales fit in with that decor. Hmmm...maybe FFP is right about the open book thing!) My weight was 163.6. Seems like the scale said just over 160 a few days ago. But it fluctuates. Who knows?

Around 12:20 we headed downtown. We got into a huge traffic jam at 5th and Lamar caused by the city's urge to close a couple of lanes of W. 5th every weekend. Still we found a parking place and found a bus that was taking the media around for a tour of markets as part of the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival. I figured...free food! While we waited for the bus to depart I took a quick swing through the Saturday Downtown Farmer's Market. (I imagined when we were living downtown how I would stroll through the market and buy some vegies and greens and goat cheese for the week.) I got a free taste of some delicious Hibiscus Tea. I saw that the goat cheese and honey people had those tiny plastic tasting spoons. But I figured a small taste would just send my juices up too high.

The bus headed out to Mandola's Italian Market near our house. For some reason they used the surface streets. As we drove by the University I saw some homeless guys digging in a trash can. I was feeling a little hungry myself. Several eateries on Guadalupe (Milto's, Ruby's Barbecue, Zen, NeWorlDeli) suddenly seemed very attractive. As we filed into the market to get a talk from one of the owners we walked by outside tables where people were scarfing late lunches (it was 1:15 by now) of pizza and salad and anti-pastas and all manner of stuff that was looking increasingly delicious. But there were no samples! The best I could do was to grab a little bit of cranberry walnut bread out for sampling by the general public. I listened to the owner talk about the operation (their own winery, imported Italian groceries, baking almost all their own stuff, very interesting actually, etc.) and tried not to feel too hungry. We were given a goody bag. It contained a jar of artichokes and olives and stuff in a tomato sauce, a pack of three or four baked crackers and some biscoti and cookies along with one of those napkin/cutlery packets you get with takeout. On the way out I looked at the bread sample basket...but all the samples were gone. Darn! In the bus, I ate one of the crackers and a little cookie of some sort. That took the edge off.

We drove back toward downtown and over to South Congress and were soon at Cissi's Market. This was feed the rich nirvana! I took a glass of the offered white wine but fortified myself before drinking much with chips on sample. They had some Austin Slow Burn Salsa Verde out, too. Then they started circulating with platters containing tiny bite-size hors d'oeuvre. Ah, heaven. Vanilla-poached lobster with Shiraz grits. Little pulled pork sandwiches on cornbread the size of pill boxes. They had a lot, too, so we were encouraged to have multiples. I began to think I'd survive on my free food diet. I sipped a little wine. I had one bite of lemon bar dessert. I'm not much of a dessert person. That would be my downfall on this regimen. A peek inside our goodie bag from Cissi's revealed a sack of coffee beans, giant home-style cookies and chocolate!

Next we went to Farm To Market Grocery. It's been there on South Congress for a while. A tiny space stocking a lot of food and a few gift items, it has 30% local products including flowers out front that are from the Hill Country. The people there were really nice and were passing out goat milk ice cream, sodas and water. And they gave us goody bags with a private label chocolate bar and a Butters Brownie. Now, as I said, I'm not much on sweets. I actually had eaten a Butters Brownie a few nights ago. (There was a sample in the media bag we got.) The goat milk part tempted me on the ice cream but I just ask others how it tasted.

We headed west of W. Mary and located the P&K Grocery. This place was ultra funky and hip at the same time. They had taken an old building, used antique fixtures where possible and had some antique glassware and china and collectibles for sale. They had a deli counter with hot sandwiches and other stuff. They make their own pimento cheese and hummus and hot dog condiments. They sell goat cheese on a stick (lolipops!). That made my stomach rumble. But they weren't giving them away. They were giving away little square pimento cheese sandwich samples and freshly made lemonade. Also deviled eggs but for some reason I didn't get one before we got on the bus. I'd regret that. That 1.5 inch square sandwich wasn't going to hold me long. And their goodie bag had samples of their hot dog condiments. Which would have been great if someone was giving away hot dogs!

When we got home, I had some coffee and water. I was actually a little hungry. The only free thing that wasn't sweet was some of those plain crackers and that artichoke concoction Mandola's gave us. So I opened it up and had a little of that with the crackers. Later a bag of caramel corn Cissi's gave us (a private label product with a light hand on the coating, not at all like Crackerjacks) called to me. As I always do with such products...I checked the calories in the entire bag...about seven hundred and eighty! They were pretty good, sort of salty and sweet, but I stopped eating after only a couple of hundred calories.

A few hours later, we dressed up and went to a house over near Lake Austin. The party was free. Well, if you don't count the hefty annual donation that had yielded the invitation. When I saw plates of food, I found the dining room and filled a plate with tender beef, roll and butter, green beans, roasted root vegies, roasted purple and white fingerling potatoes and rice. The offerings seemed a bit odd...no chicken or fish and a lot of starch but I wasn't complaining. I took some of everything and polished off all the carbs and a few ounces of the beef with a glass of free red wine. (I had finished a glass of white I'd gotten coming in.) Later I had a coffee and three mini madeleines.

At home Forrest ate some of the caramel corn and so I finished the bag. I was tempted to grab a cheese snack from the fridge, but true to my word, I stuck to coffee and what the world fed the rich today. Which seemed a little heavy on the sweet side. Let 'em eat cake, I guess.

As I finish this entry I'm waiting for FFP to come home. We might go to the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival Fair. There would be lots of free food. And we have press passes. But jockeying for free food with thousands of other people and drinking wine outdoors on a hot day sounds less and less fun now that I think about it. I haven't eaten so far today. I've had my coffee, a bottle of water and a walk around the neighborhood. I'm feeling a little hungry. But not hungry enough to go for the chocolate and cookies left over from the free stuff from yesterday.