2003
1/3/03: 8:52AM: Yesterday was a CATASTROPHE! Did some good stuff in the morning (MOVECHRO:1/3/03), but then KEPT AT FreeCell and KEPT AT FreeCell, even stopping to confirm Spartacus's meeting me tonight at the theater, and then I PLAY THROUGH until 9:30PM, ONLY THEN remembering I was supposed to go to the play. Debated telling him that something dreadful happened, but I left him a message with half the truth: I'd had a terrible argument with Mildred; and then I let it go at that. He said it was good, and that I should go TONIGHT and try to get in. Which I WILL. GOT to improve my LIVING! Noted that I took a sleeping pill at 1:20AM when I couldn't get to sleep from going to bed at 12:45AM, (and peed at 3:10AM and at 7:20AM and got up at 8:15AM, NEEDING to get into a productive day!) (and I still have a DREAM to record! [DREAMS:1/3/03]) actually NAUSEOUS from FreeCell hours, which I have to GO BACK TO, since the pull-down menu doesn't afford a way of minimizing this screen and going to another program, and find that after many dozens of games, ending with an impossibly low 77% after maybe 160 games, I'm not only way down from my all-time high of 83.86..., and from my previous look at 83.850..., down to 27672/33010 (breaking, note, 33,000 games!) which computes at a miserably low 83.82914. Just GOT to GET AWAY from that and start SPENDING MONEY to facilitate MOVING, meaning I've got to call Ikea and have them DELIVER the back order and new order, no matter WHAT the cost, since the terrible conversation yesterday with Mildred, who reminded me that she doesn't do ANYTHING in the morning and thus couldn't POSSIBLY meet me at Port Authority before 12:30PM, at which time there would be ONLY time for Ikea and not Garrison AT ALL, so why should she come along? And why should I waste the hours of time and the cost of a car rental when the shipping will CLEARLY be MUCH less than all of it!!! Also made a note to myself to go down for the mail, hoping optimistically that the letter from Synoptic for me to sign would be there, but it isn't so I have to call them today to see if Bill R. is ACTUALLY negotiating with THEM to send me the letter. Also called Elec yesterday who said that Verizon shows I'll be connected to the phone TODAY. AND I've GOT to put away the pile from the desk, which had been stacked on the stack when I thought Sherryl might be coming to sleep after New Year's Eve, which she didn't do, and Paul hardly glanced at ANYTHING when he swooped in to "have sex" at 12:35 and left at 1:45AM. Now hungry for breakfast at 9:07AM after a FORCED dinner with a small hamburg and veg/applesauce plate at 9:30PM last night. But phone NOT connected, and Saturday was a big day at Ikea. And then Jean-Pierre phoned 11:30-11:45PM which I didn't appreciate (or understand). Sunday was even better:
1/5/03: 10:10PM: Looking at the write-ups for Victorian Nude, on its last day today at the Brooklyn Museum, I find three exhibits that I wanted to see at the MET are closing today, so I phone Gail to say I won't be bringing over the books today, and then Charles calls to say he has to be with a friend arriving in town, so I leave for the Met about 10:10 and get to the Avedon 10:40-11:05, notable mainly for Warhol's Factory's genitalia, including the surprisingly dark cock on Candy Darling, then to Chasseriau 11:08-11:58, then to animal copulation featured in Nomadic Art from 1st Millennium BC Eurasia from 12-1, at which point I get my coat and subway to Brooklyn Museum by 2:13 to Nude, lots of cocks but smooth female pudenda, have lunch, then leave that at 5:30 to see dozens of vulvae at Judy Chicago's Dinner Party until 6, and come home and talk longly to Spartacus and Mildred, finish reading the Sunday Times, put away piles of stuff from the table, updating the "go to" list, and still have a stack of moving-things to handle tomorrow, finishing this hungry at 10:16PM.
1/9/03: 6:30AM: Woke during night and thought about guy calling yesterday about getting acting jobs through Village Playwrights, and get to thinking I could be a producer for Village Playwrights: sponsoring (and paying for?) WEEKLY workshops at the Center with playwrights, actors, and directors working on a PRODUCTION for the once-a-month meetings, advertising each in Center News, charging, say, $4 for the production viewing, eventually getting a WEBSITE (produced by gay donators interested in acting, probably) that contains actors' resumes, directors' qualifications, playwrights' titles and even PLAYS that could be reviewed for directors and actors to indicate which they want. Though I'm right in the middle of a MOVE, the idea is so compelling that I'm determined to talk to Bill P. and Barbara K. (and Kevin B. and Bill C. and all 11 on list with e-mail?). Finish the following page by 7:45AM, unfortunately even now feeling lack of sleep. Try going back to bed.
1/12/03: 9:40AM: Good and bad day yesterday: woke late, not sore from 35-box move yesterday except for my hands. Shower and change clothes and strip sheets for flannel FINALLY (doing SOMETHING good today!) and Arnold calls: what do I want to do with him and Bob from London today? So I have quick breakfast, take over 16 cans of soda for 1/19's party, pick up WHITE Jokel bowl from downstairs which came yesterday, and show apartment with lingonberry drinks for the three of us. Then walk to Gleason's Gym at 83 Front Street for about half an hour, dynamite guy's arms and chest in yellow shirt and floppy pants over skinny legs. Then across the Brooklyn Bridge, glad I brought my scarf for my nose and mouth in the windy, clear, cold day, and walk Foley Square to Chinatown for lunch of Bob's choice in Taste Good Restaurant, then to look for my Horse Chestnut extract, being told to get it in "American pharmacy," and my lights, but maybe I have to get them from Ikea! Then subway home to start FreeCell about 4:30, Jim from Heights Books doesn't call, and I keep on until 9:30 dinner and keep ON to 2:45AM for total of 190 won and 45 lost for 235 games, not being able to get above 81%, bringing average down to 83.83! Disgusted with myself, put phone off and get to sleep after my feet warm by 3! Then catch up with MOVECHRO:1/12/03 at last at 9:45, having bought Sunday Times.
1/18/03: 8:35AM: Everything recently seems to be connected to MOVECHRO:1/18/03, so I'll just continue to put everything there during these VERY hectic days.
1/23/03: Finish 2002 LIFELIST at 3:20PM and don't feel like PACKING more boxes, relieved that I DON'T have to get rid of stuff I'm leaving BEHIND. Back to MOVECHRO:1/23/03.
2/19/03: 1:50AM: Call from Cobble Hill that Pope's going to Methodist Hospital because he's bleeding through his catheter, and other signs are poor.
2/20/03: Since I'm recording VIAGRAS here, I took #7 on 2/16/03.
3/1/03: 1:30PM: Notes from Microdose Therapy for Osteoarthritis: essentially it's 1) testing for food allergies, 2) clearing the system with a three-week doxycycline regimen, and 3) keeping pain-scores so that the hydrocortisone dosage can be kept as small as possible. Cortisone side effects: 1) weight gain, 2) cataracts, 3) bone weakening, though he kept insisting that it wasn't a DRUG, since the body manufactures it, it's a HORMONE used to REPLACE WHAT'S MISSING if you're suffering inflammation. Arthritis aggravated by food allergies, infections, and injury. Insulin needs regulation, so does cortisone. HIS microdose regimen is IN PDR! Dr. Steven Colluci, D.O. (Bronx) spoke. Week 1: "3" dose, Week 2: "2" dose, Week 3: "1" dose; $4000 for therapy. You get a five-day pulse at 1/2 INITIAL cortisone dose. Cortisone takes seven days to become effective. Heat, redness, swelling and pain = inflammation. Use cortisone on bad days. For Osteo: aspirin and Vioxx/Celebrex helps 25% of pain, Methotrexate and Enbaril not tested, Microdose 80% relief.
3/9/03
On April 22, Village Playwrights will be meeting to discuss future prospects, and we invite you to join our discussion.
For months Village Playwrights has been getting calls not only from budding playwrights, but also from actors and directors who are looking for plays to act in and direct.
Should Village Playwrights expand its activities by attempting to stage more readings more often?
Some of the impromptu, ad hoc, first-time readings of members' plays are more engrossing and entertaining than many of the off-off-Broadway productions currently available.
In the past, Village Playwrights members have scheduled special evenings:
! Playwrights called members directly, urging them to come.
! Actors were assembled beforehand for preparatory rehearsals.
! Directors may have introduced staging or props to enhance readings.
Currently, due to small membership and few plays, Village Playwrights meets only on the fourth Tuesday of the month. Previously, we had met every Tuesday. How would you react to the following proposed expansion:
! A list of directors (initially, any members interested in staging readings) would include those who would take responsibility for "Workshop Tuesdays." For example, Director Smith would like to stage a reading of his play for the fourth Tuesday in March. He would announce "Workshop Tuesdays" on the first three Tuesdays in March. During those workshops, actors could be auditioned and assigned roles which would then be rehearsed for a "Reading Tuesday" on the fourth Tuesday in March. Phone calls, e-mails, snail mailings, and flyers would announce and encourage attendance for the Reading Tuesday.
! A file of actors' headshots and resumes could be made available to directors for casting specific roles. We might even manage to get women to read women's roles when needed.
! A collection of resumes of directors who are not necessarily playwrights could be assembled. We are currently placing an ad in April 10's Back Stage.
Depending on the success of a few months' trial of the above expansion, further development is possible:
! A repertory of successful staged readings could lead to more widely publicized productions which might attract more playwrights, actors, directors, and even producers.
! A website could be established to:
! collect resumes, plays, and performance histories;
! publicize upcoming productions;
! recruit new playwrights, actors, directors, and producers; and
! expand production possibilities in the future.
! A permanent monthly showcase could be produced so that the public would recognize Village Playwrights as a valuable asset of The Center.
3/10/03: 6PM: VERY depressing visit to Pope, based on the good feeling that everything went SO well yesterday that I might as well share some of the goodness AND take the forms to Paula. So I looked up the address in the phone book, got a map to see where it was, plotted out the A and F to get there, called Paula to make sure she'd be there, and took the two forms onto the subway about 9:45AM. Many stops to Seventh Avenue and no trouble finding which way to walk from the subway station, but was confused when "the second entrance" was marked "Emergency Only." But I decided to follow Paula's recommendation and asked at Information. "Two turns to the right." But the corridors didn't GO that way and I guess I confused POPE in the Buckley building and Paula in the Miner building, so when I got to the Miner building information desk the guard didn't know Paula's name, but phoned two numbers and got permission to send me up. Up the elevator to 8, but couldn't do the two lefts the directions were, so I double back and ask, and some clerk phones for Paula and starts Xeroxing my forms. Paula enters, cheerful and plump, and takes me to 5 and down the hall where she pulls B. away from a group of interns making their rounds to talk to me: Pope's lack of fluids led to too MUCH fluids so now he's got water in his lungs, making it difficult to breathe. "Today is a relatively good day," he assures me, and then Paula shows me where Pope's lying in a good-sized, clean, private room. He turns at the sound of my voice and stares at me and I ask, "Do you know who it is?" And he says, "Yes, Bob, thank you SO much for coming," and then he starts complaining about the pain, saying he's lying on something hard, but the nurse says his deep buttock ulcer is being treated and dressed, not with a protective ring, and he's turned when he needs to be, and she gives him pain medicine. Pope says, "I know this sounds imaginary, but when they cut into my foot they cut so deeply that it cut into the DOCTOR'S foot." I agreed it was imaginary and Pope seemed to agree because believing it caused "too many inconsis---incon--" and couldn't even complete "inconsistencies" when I said the word. THEN he insisted the doctor was no good because "they" were so happy to see him LEAVE, and he refused to think it was like when HE was working and felt good when his boss wasn't looking over his shoulder. Then he started complaining about his teeth, saying they may have lost his plate, and they didn't CLEAN them and that was causing trouble, and later when the nurse came in I went into the hall to talk with her and she said they'd cleaned his teeth yesterday, but then he asked, "Did I clean my teeth?" I asked if he was delusional, and she said not really very often. Went back to listen to an increasing drone of problems, sadnesses, and troubles with the doctor, and I thought he might even be going to sleep, but when I asked, he said he was OK. Barely had the strength to raise his arms two feet into the air without grimacing with the effort. He asked for the blanket to be taken off, but when he said he wanted to be able to pull it back up, I had to raise the edge halfway up his chest before his grasp could reach it. He talked on and on until I couldn't stand it anymore, said I wanted to talk to Dr. B., and would be back in a few days and he thanked me again for coming, we both agreeing that he'd be here a long time, and he DIDN'T want to go back to Cobble Hill because "that woman stored all her furniture in the basement." I didn't bother to pursue it, or to tell him that he'd been transferred to the fourth floor as the middle bed of three in a room. Was then told that Dr. B. had finished his rounds and wasn't there anymore. Left with relief, getting back about 12:10PM and calling Spartacus to say that I'd be canonized in the Vatican on Thursday, and he thanked me profusely for going to see him; he'd called B. on Saturday but his call wasn't returned, and it didn't seem like he was likely to visit anytime soon. Told all this to Carolyn, along with other goodies, including the stolen will, and she agreed to seeing me only on 3/24 and 4/8 when I see Dr. J. to start reducing my medication, since "I don't seem to be needing it anymore"; "Right---your depression is just about over." I said I'd be interested in seeing how the withdrawal would go. Type this by 6:10PM before Beard meal.
3/23/03: 8:15AM: Put the dreams on DREAMS:3/23/03 and prepare to start POPEDEAD, but though I want to add a few lines to the "end" of MOVECHRO, I should come back HERE with the detritus of my wanting-to-be-emptied mind. The dreams heralded a return to normality after the burdens of moving and awaiting Pope's death (even though both are certainly not finished and put away), as I return to this part of the journal, still not started with proofing John's transcription of eight or nine volumes of my journal, the last big task postponed BY my move. Again remark here about my ingestion of about a QUART of ice cream yesterday, fatigued by lack of sleep, depressed about the mode of Pope's death, too worn out to do anything but eat and watch television tapes before and after the two-hour premiere of Riverworld and the live skating program I found on TV before looking at the Cola Wars hour from the History Channel and other skating programs (all of which I'd watched, including the SEXY Swan Lake from the first segment (I think) from the Ice tape I borrowed from Spartacus for the sexy Smucker's Ice Show at the end, which I put as #2 (after his Aerial Britain tapes) on a list I've started of the tapes of HIS I'd want to keep when HE dies!) on his Ice unnumbered yellow-dot tape, and leaving tape in to watch the building of the Trans-Siberian Railroad before watching Above Alaska. But this satisfies my urges for THIS segment: on to POPEDEAD at 8:30.
3/26/03: 12:20PM: BUSY FEW DAYS! Lots recorded on POPEDEAD:3/26/03, also on MOVECHRO:3/26/03, and Arnold hasn't gotten any more information about the people HE called about the change of Pope's memorial from 4/13 to 4/27, though Vicki can now make it and Carolyn still can. Told J. that I had 75mg Bupropion when I really have 100mg, but I renewed the prescription anyway after having the disappointment of going to the post office to find the philatelic window closed (and when I asked the guy in the shop what the hours were, four times, he said, "Can't you see I'm helping this woman? [which in fact he wasn't because he was only waiting for her to dig money out of her handbag]; can't you say 'Pardon me?'"---I almost walked away in disgust but turned back to say, as snidely as I could, "Could I humbly beg a moment of your time?" ---And he swallowed some smart-ass retort and said, "She's not in today!"---Thanks for the help) for my stamp book, for which I got the supplement of Volume 1 of the Scotts for 2002, only good through April 2001, so it means the 2004 will soon be out! STILL trying to clear my desk of all the junk from Pope and Helen's will! Not to mention leaving ANOTHER word with Terry, after my unanswered Monday message, asking if I should wait for an index file from the compositor OR transcribe the index so I can change the page numbers, needing to get John to do it on the scanner that only HIS computer can handle. Like Mildred would have to come HERE to get multiple phones for a "conference call" to Jack L. since Arnold can't arrange a conference call from his telephone. Busy, busy, busy, having washed my face now at 12:30PM in preparation for lunch at 2PM with Mildred at Craft, followed by a 6PM free showing of Stevie with Spartacus, and I'll bet the movie is just about worth the price of admission. Still putting medication on my foot-warts, which have now spread to a side place where I pulled at a lump and was left with a bleeding spot. Trim my beard with the variable-depth attachment, which is the only one that reasonably works, and I fear my head-hair is getting THIN: have seen a reddish spot shining through the top of my pate, and my part seems to be getting bigger, even though there are more horrid scabby-blood spots where those dermatoses, or whatever, keep erupting on my head, leaving bloodspots on my pillowcase on occasion. Now 12:45 and STILL stuff to clear off my desk, STILL waiting for the latest IRS publication with which to finish my taxes, now up to about $30,000 needed from Mildred before my bonds come up for cash on June 6; and the stamps from NBK, now sent almost three weeks ago. Decided not to take Pope's Time subscription over, since it appears to end in May, and it would probably take that long for an address change to kick in. Got back from the gym Sunday evening to stand on MY BALCONY for a blissful 20 minutes looking at MY view complete sans plastic!
3/27/03: 9:25AM: Nice dinner at Henry's End with Spartacus last night after seeing Stevie for free from his New York Times card, and not wanting to eat in midtown because of the rain. They took my word for having the card, though they did NOT give me the flaming cupcake they'd given the guy at the next table. But their food quality is way up: the sauce on the barbecue shrimps was a heavenly mixture of three C's: cumin, coriander, and curry---or something else. The sauce on my morelled veal scaloppini was good, though the veal was only mediocre, and for the first time in a long while I enjoyed their Mr. Mud Pie ice cream of vanilla and Heath Bar Crunch with their Mrs. Mud Pie covering of warm chocolate-espresso (WONDERFUL taste) topping---unless it's the other way around. Somehow remember that I haven't told JOHN about Pope's death, which I do this morning, after waking with the thought: I should look AGAIN in Pope's file and the Village Playwrights file and the Moving file for the Metropolitan Museum folder that I couldn't find two days ago, and after looking through THOSE again, I suddenly think of the bulk of Pope's files in the bottom drawer of Rolf's filing cabinet, and I open it and get out the bunch of stuff that I want to KEEP in the gray envelope and, sure enough, there's the folder, with the THREE things that I wanted to see today when I phone Charles after I finish this, so I can get to the gym BEFORE eating breakfast (my stomach STILL feels full after the 11PM finish of dinner last night), making sure I GET to the gym today before going to the museum, and am beginning to see the completion of EVERYTHING I NEED TO DO before Spring lets me see some of the blossoming parks and outdoors of the town from my new apartment! Finish this at 9:32AM. AND reopen this after I've shut off the screen to record that I finally got Publication 560 from the IRS, and a reading last night seems to say I can take off ANY amount up to $40,000, but for some reason the Rate Table for Self-Employed takes a plan contribution rate (a maximum of 25%) and converts it to "your rate" as .20, which of course is only 20%. Debate phoning them to find out why it's THAT way, not .25, and CAN I include the catch-up contribution even though the instructions say I should IGNORE that listing if I haven't made any elective deferrals, which definition another reading didn't make quite clear. Do phone them, and someone will call me BACK between 11AM-3PM on Friday, Saturday, or Monday with information. Productive day: went to the gym; then to the post office to purchase an $18.95 wonderfully updated (but only through 2001, with projections for 2002, most without Scott numbers) stamp book, with a bat-sheet and 25 3¢ stamps for the 25 34¢ stamps I found in Pope's belongings; then to the Metropolitan Museum for da Vinci from 3:05-5:10, not having time for any other exhibits, so I have to return before April 13; then to dinner at the Savoy, disappointing; then to Triumph of Love at the Jean Cocteau, all with Charles, and back to jerk off quickly, just to do it.
3/28/03: 9:25AM: Good Actualism session this morning, and I make up a definitive do-list to celebrate coming to the end of moving AND Pope's doings: 1) casters under TV table, 2) blacken bedroom window, 3) punch out my screens, 4) buy suit, 5) hook up more VCRs, 6) proofread journals, 7) tuna casserole for Spartacus, 8) check National Park hotels, 9) Met Museum again before April 13, 10) get rid of Pope's stuff, 11) files to Vicki, 12) start my Internet site, 13) get horse chestnut capsules, 14) finish stamps. Hope to do AT LEAST one a day and put other items on, like getting rid of bookcases, when I reduce it to 7 items before adding ANOTHER week of 7 items. Feel GOOD now at 9:30AM.
4/6/03: 9:23PM: WASTED entire day: up late, stuffed from Shelley's friend's birthday cooking, wasted from cumming, watching TV until 3:15, partly due to the hour's "springing forward." Read Times and do BOTH puzzles by 12:30PM, preferring, as I tell Spartacus, that it be the OLD time of 11:30AM! Then set up TV to record and start playing FreeCell at about 1. FINISH at 9:20PM, having FINALLY managed, after 112 games, to get a better average! UGH!
4/8/03: 6:20PM: Finished filling out the tax forms (WITHOUT Pope's account interest, let's see what THAT does to me?) late Sunday so I'd know how much to ask Mildred for on Monday! Lusardi's good with two primis and a nice Sambucca when Mildred glances through the printed-out e-mails about Helen's will. Then fabulous tidbits at Carol's after mercifully brief Jewish service at Campbell Funeral Home, livened by GREAT SNOWSTORM that left the branches of the trees as white arches over the roadways. Do stamps until 3AM when I MUST eat (cream cheese, as for lunch today). Today got the forms for Doug to sign to get the Burial Account (which I HOPE he signs over to me), and told that my $36,000 check from Mildred will take until Monday to clear, so I can write checks on the 15th and pay John, too. FINALLY finish with the US stamps at 5PM, putting things away in drawers, which just fit, and later have to return to find, thankfully, that I'd misplaced Mildred's questions for me to Lynett (which she instructed me from 2:15 to 3:35!, but I resisted getting annoyed with her because I "talked out" my irritability from the past week with Dr. J. and Carolyn at 11:20 and 12, which fit nicely behind the two businesses at HSBC) right ON TOP of the stuff I'd filed for the US stamps. NOW AT LAST I can get to OTHER things to do, like the gym tomorrow and the Met Museum on Thursday, and FINALLY get to start proofreading John's pages, after finishing Terry's index, which finally came Monday, giving me a HASSLE of converting to Cindex, but it seemed to finally work: only proofreading to do before converting the page numbers. Phoned Toba for tomorrow evening's "sell-out 101" meeting, and he's got a system where I RING and he can call me BACK! Now finish this at 6:28PM, in time for dressing MORE CASUALLY (jacket, no tie) for the Beard this evening with Ken. Snow still covers the rooftops below my view, but it was too high to enjoy the snow-capped branches yesterday---pity.
4/28/03: 9:10PM: Crisis with Village Playwrights, so I copy the ads I'd forgotten to get in the April 18, 2003, Back Stage: Page 39 (in a box): PLAYWRIGHTS, SCREENWRITERS///4/22,5/27, and 6/24 from 6-8PM at The Center, 208 W. 13 St. NYC./// Seeking: playwrights and screenwriters to join Village Playwrights (PO Box 20303, NYC 10011), a gay and lesbian group that meets at The Center. There is no membership fee, but there is a $2 cover to attend meetings, which helps pay for the meeting space. The next meetings will be held April 22, May 27, and June 24 from 6-8PM at The Center, 208 W. 13 St., NYC (First posted 4/18). And then on page 14, as a paragraph in a column in Casting: ACTORS & DIRS., VILLAGE PLAYWRIGHTS///Village Playwrights, a gay and lesbian group that meets at The Center, located at 208 W. 13 St., NYC, is seeking: actors and directors of all types, sexes, ages, and ethnicities for future readings and productions. Actors should send pix & resumes, and directors should send resumes, to Village Playwrights, PO Box 20303, NYC 10011. No pay. No fee. (First posted 4/18). But somehow, at the last meeting, the ACKNOWLEDGMENT of the head shots turned into an INVITATION.
4/30/03: 11:20PM: I would hope to capture it, but the personal interactions at table 1 this evening at the Beard Foundation are irretrievable: the pink fingertips of the Jamaican hunk to the left of Ken, who was frustrated when the guy kept talking with his woman; and my interaction with the couple to my right, the beautiful Lucille who talked of her older son who was a wine-person already, though she didn't know about Keller's previous New York connection with Rakel's, and her 16-soon-to-be 17 Max, who ate all the nine courses at the French Laundry, but this is her SECOND husband, her first dying of a brain tumor, she starting her lingerie shop in the Hamptons by accident, and she confided about her religious background, while her new husband talked about his LSD experiences, and I bragged about HOLLYWOOD Hospital on FIFTH Avenue, and the food from Alfred Portale was WONDERFUL, with good wines, and extra pours from the wine-guy, and multiple dessert plates from which I STILL managed to not get chocolate, WONDERFUL, but still, in essence, uncapturable!
5/9/03: 9:43AM: Record the first dream in forty-seven days [DREAMS:5/9/03], and feel I MUST do something here, but it's been "only" 9 days since the last entry. Of course, Paul C. arrived soon after, and all my spare time has been delightfully devoted to stamps, finally exhausting the A-B volume after majorly processing Bulgaria and Belgium, still waiting for the G volume to finish the Great Britain that I'd sorted out about a month ago and still haven't gotten, and now ending the C-F volume with a nit-picky (what with the difference between typographed and engraved, one row or two of blocks between the sail and the frame, only horizontal lines or horizontal AND vertical lines, and very subjective differences of nuances of colors) Denmark, having gratifyingly processed what I though may have been a too difficult Equatorial Guinea by finding that the hundreds of stamps resolved to only 45 VARIETIES, which fit nicely on three album pages while the rest, including the too large folded block of 16, was put nicely into the "For Record Only" plastic box. Of course both remaining catalogs have to be returned to the library before leaving for Alsace and Switzerland (providing my as yet unreturned call from Ken informs me that he CAN continue planning for the trip, rather than telling me he CAN'T possibly risk his back on the trip) in only eight days. The crux of Paul’s and my non-sexuality came on Sunday, when he "innocently" asked if I wouldn't mind giving him a massage. I thought he may POSSIBLY have needed it, so I considered and considered and said yes, but when I went into the bedroom and he'd stripped off his disgusting little black undershorts and was lying face-up with a semi-erection, I stood to the side, squeezed my eyes shut in hard thought, and said, "I really don't think it's a good idea, since I have to leave for the play in just a short time," and he snapped out his typical "OK," and then we settled into the satisfactory pattern of my going to bed at least an hour after him, when he's usually snoring, and thus his getting up and jerking off before the television tapes for an hour or two before I haul myself out of bed about 8:30 or 9AM. The unutterable CONCENTRATION he has, jerking off when he sees a good section on the usually fast-forwarding tapes, for hours and hours---and it seems never cumming, or at least not outside the showers he takes every day---is almost a mystery, except he has nothing better to do, and I'm not about to participate or even suggest an alternative for his too-long ten-day stay. Some NICE events: hours and hours spent on stamps; and two hours spent on the piddling $125 job from Watson-Guptill on Makeup, and finding that the long-awaited Yong-Sung Hwang Springer-Verlag index, starting 2/10, was finally told on 5/8 that the author had done it, and Tim T.'s index, sent 5/3, still on my table to do; making tuna casserole for Paul's first dinner here, but even my third try doesn't produce the side-and-bottom-burned taste I like so well; seeing My Fair Lady and Chess at surprisingly competent small Brooklyn off-off-Broadway repertory groups; the delightfully relaxing flowers and trees and plantings at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (FREE for seniors on Fridays!) and the Bronx Zoo when the Bronx Botanical Garden was closed on Mondays, and the Metropolitan on Thursday for the first, blessedly uncrowded, day of the Ancient Cities exhibit; and then, of course, the meals: Thursday here, Friday at Park Plaza, Saturday at Boulud (where I was inexplicably an hour late, at 7PM rather than 6PM, missing the appetizer and not getting any sweetbreads because they were out of them), Sunday at Kapadokia (after Teresa's was out of roast duck) where they didn't have the schwerma for the Iskander kebab, Tuesday lunch at Bouley after my new toilet installed in an hour from 9:45AM (marred only by a crying baby [Bouley, not my toilet]), Wednesday lunch "free" at La Bouillabaisse with Carolyn ($7 glasses of wine, and a pompano fish-sandwich that lasted TWO lunches), Thursday (last night's) dinner at Alain Ducasse for $253.83 EACH, with good ravioli amuse-bouches, pate-like foie gras, OK John Dory (aka St.-Pierre) "a plat," and TINY veal portion, but then more-coffee-than-chocolate tart, and an APRES-amuse-bouche that I think will start a trend, as well as final nougats, three kinds of caramels, and two kinds of lollipops (lemon and orange) filling my pocket as we leave at 8:45PM.
5/14/03: 10:38PM: Woke about 6AM depressed: so much to DO today and I really didn't want to DO anything today except work on stamps: Egypt still spread across the dining table. Then up at 7:30, actually in bed 8 hours from bed last night at 12:30AM, and gather laundry together and get down to the third floor at 7:58AM to find some machines in USE, though the sign said that the place was only open 8AM-10PM. Read that the card-machine took $10 for a new card, and I HAD a tenner, thankfully. Loaded up two white baskets and my Guatemala-colored plastic bag with all my socks, underwear, and a goodly number of T-shirts, with the over-heavy Tide soap-bleach. Down to find someone using about FIVE dryers, sorting his stuff over the one table, and I buy a card, put over-three-cap-lines of soap-bleach in the pre-wash and over-three-lines of soap liquid in the wash cycle, and start the main laundry (capacity 35 pounds!) for 35 minutes for $1.50. Then take the next smaller one ($1.25) for socks, and it only goes for 25 minutes. Woman comes down who tells me that I'm blocking traffic, and that people put their own carts in the far corner, so I do that and go upstairs to clean up from Sunday night: collecting the cups and tea-balls and Pictionary and putting things away, then going down at 9AM to find both washes finished and the guy STILL taking up the sorting table, dryers spinning madly behind him. Transfer my two loads with their carts into a top-and-bottom combination of 20 minutes for 40 cents and back up to put more stuff away, and then down at 9:30 to sort out the socks at the empty table while the whites go through a second twenty-minute dry-cycle, stopped frequently to put in socks that aren't quite dry yet. The sorting takes JUST 20 minutes, thankfully no one coming in, and I match all the socks and load up on the whites and get upstairs about 10AM to have breakfast and get a call-back from Tim T. that he wants his index DELIVERED, and try to get Sherryl and Mildred and Ken and Fred to join me tonight at the Beard, but all of them won't, so I phone at 10:15AM and get my single reservation. Move furniture away from the living-room air-conditioner post, and clear out the closet, and am JUST finished when Joe buzzes at 11:25 with a load of junk in the hall, but works on the living room to say he has to take the old one downstairs to remove from the case, and when he looks at my freebie from the women downstairs at 167 Hicks, he says that NO WAY can that be installed on the 20th floor: it would be too dangerous. AND the old one, though working, isn't big enough to cool the living room, isn't 220 volts for the special line in the living room, will probably cause circuit-breaks when put on the 115-volt line, and is corroded and won't last long. I think and think and in desperation say, "Why not put the old one in the bedroom?" and it's the perfect solution: there's ONLY a 115-volt outlet there, the room is small enough to be cooled, and he suggests that I should look at Sears or Bruno's for a 14,000BTU 220-volt conditioner for about $400, cheaper before a hot spell raises prices, and installs in the space I cleared by disconnecting the computer, the printer, the keyboard, the video, and moving everything under the desk-proper. He calls his 2PM to say he'll be delayed, puts cardboard over the opening in the still-unused living room, after he said I should "protect the little pieces of paper," not even calling them STAMPS, on the table from the wind from outside. He's finished about 1PM, taking a check for $125 that I make clear, I hope, INCLUDES his tip, and move things back (OH, in the morning, while he worked in the living room, I finished printing out the OLEDS index, getting it set to Express Mail this afternoon, and Ron called about a FedEx from Watson-Guptill with a FORM that I have to fill out before getting paid!). Put the computer back together, and find that the "new" plug does NOT give the "Faulty house-wiring" signal! Call Spartacus to say, "I found the horse chestnuts," and put things together to mail BOTH Express Mail and FedEx before gym 3:45 (they don't CARE that I'm late!) to 5:15, get prescriptions that I phoned in, check Emerson Model 14HT13 for $400 at Bruno's, get dressed nicely for the Beard, have INTERESTING table with Henry and Marion to my right, mediocre food, and pick up TWO bags of greens for my needed salads for the three remaining days, and finish this at 10:56PM!
5/16/03: 11:50AM: Wednesday was so busy I even FORGOT to enumerate things that I'd done: bought horse chestnut at the THIRD place I tried when LifeThyme was out of it AGAIN, and Bigelow's didn't have it, but next door at Hickey Chemists they had three bottles for $28.79 for 270 capsules, about 11 cents apiece, and bought a torchiere t-bulb at Bruno's, which I at first put into the wrong slot in the fixture, puzzled over why it didn't work, tried other implements in the plug, and finally fixed and moved it into the living room where it gives the brighter light I so much needed. John dominated yesterday by phoning (once garbled Wednesday night, twice garbled Thursday morning about 8:30AM) at 8:40AM (thank goodness I moved the phone back under the bed for the second set of two calls and again for the wrong number from Joe, the Super, at 9AM), saying he was in LICH with a heart problem! He'd been breathless and faint and suffering chest pains, so when he read that could be an emergency he checked himself into the emergency ward, waiting 4-8PM, getting a room and dinner, and I put his sardines and yogurt (UGH!) in the fridge while picking up a half-dozen small things he wanted from his apartment, and I stopped back at Bruno's to measure that the Emerson FIT into my opening, but when I phoned to ORDER it and "reconfirmed" it was 220 volts, it WASN'T 220, and I dragged myself back to check if they had others, but the smallest was 18,000 BTU for $600, maybe overkill. Solaced my depression over John's illness with lots of Minesweeper and even some FreeCell, keeping it highest, and then picked up a $7 sandwich at Lincoln Center, eating it while regaling Spartacus and Kit with John's illness, and see Hallelujah Junction, good only because it features a very athletic and attractive Benjamin Millepied; Symphony in Three Movements by Stravinsky and Balanchine from 1972 that I'd seen only once before in 1977, quirkily uninteresting, and a moody Guide to Strange Places that's mostly dark and not terribly emotional. Back to buy bread, have part of my Beard salad with a slice of cream-cheese-on-toast for a second dinner, and do most of the Egypt stamps until 12:30AM, getting to bed exhausted and beginning to fret about the flight on Saturday. Then at 9AM this morning Ben calls to say that Carlos will be up between 11 and 12 for my valves. So I finish the Egypt, putting all the stamps away by 10:30, and then get a call from John saying that his angiogram showed NOTHING WRONG with his heart: he'd shed tears yesterday at the bad news and shed tears again today at the good news. So he'll be going home soon, I'll keep his keys in my Peru box which I told him about, and Spartacus agreed that I should tell Bob to collect my mail, too, which would let him order TDF tickets with my credit card, knowing that he'd have access to my mail while he's gone. Clear up the dining-room table, and get to the bedroom to finally process everything on my desk when Carlos comes in at 11:40 and starts on the living-room radiators, not yet finished by 12:10, now, when I'll get back to putting things away. Trip coming up fast!! Now at 3:15 he'd finished at 2:10 (2.5 hours!) without a tip, since this really seemed to be for the BUILDING and not for me personally. File lots of old stuff and clear off my desk JUST as Carlos finished in the living room, so I moved in there to have lunch and get ready for vacuuming. Then to the bank to deposit Springer-Verlag's perfectly timed check for $1400, withdrawing $300 for the trip expenses, checking that the library's open at 10AM tomorrow for return of the stamp catalogs I might end up using tonight if I get far enough along with packing, and find the lost printer-plug safety-fastener on the carpet before I suck it up with the vacuum: DAMN thing to put back! Phoned Doug and left word, and sent an e-mail to Herman and Rita about my vacations. Found that the distortion on my living-room radio isn't from the STATION but the fragile splicing of wires leading to the speakers! Will I be glad to KNOW that I've caught up with moving in! Put the paint away since Carlos didn't need it, though he hadn't gotten his chit to Ron for me to sign by the time I collected the mail at 3PM, happily getting Scientific American, because I'd just finished the LAST unread magazine at lunch, finishing one bag of Beard greens. Now at 3:20PM will start into packing to see how far I get---and stamps? TRAVEL:SWISSALS.
6/16/03: 1:25PM: By coincidence, exactly ONE MONTH from the last page, since the SWISSALS trip-journal kept track of everything up to Saturday. Saturday got to bed at 9:45 after having dinner and getting the Times and finishing it except for clipping the puzzle-page and putting it with stuff to take tomorrow. Yesterday, Sunday, got up at 6AM and ate breakfast quickly, did a lot of stamps, then got to my desk to figure out my Visa bill and the expenses for the trip, phoning Ken that I owed him, but will wait for our Beard on 6/30 to pay him. Change addresses and put stuff away and eat lunch before Shelley calls at 11:22AM to say she'll be downstairs in 18 minutes. I meet her there and we chat, then back up to COMPLETELY clear the desk of stuff, making a list of 11 items to do Monday before leaving. Then realize with a start that I haven't started taking Melitonin, despite a note to myself this morning: and look at the timing-sheet and see at 1:59PM that I should take my first dose at 2PM: how's THAT for timing! Feeling very TIRED, so I get to MAN somewhat late, at 2:45, and the place is a downer: not that many tables of pool, and none willing to play with a COMPLETE duffer. No one to talk with, though the phone-man chats me up about his system which e-mails my voice to his computer! Have a nice dinner about 4PM and get home to do more stamps, setting up TV for the one Ebert & Roeper, and play a bit of FreeCell, but feeling SO tired that I put shades down BEFORE SUNSET at 8:35PM, taking a sleeping pill, and I seem to get to sleep almost INSTANTLY, a good sign. Pee at 10:40 and at 12:45, and up at 4, feeling tired, but ready to get back to stamps until I'm hungry enough to have breakfast before 5:30AM, a "normal" late breakfast in Europe just before noon. Put on the battery to charge, put the rest of the milk into one COVERED ice-cube tray to try again, and change "gym" on my list to "shower," since I just DON'T feel like tackling the gym! Wash dishes, to get most of them done, obsessively cleaning out the milk-fatted four ice-cube trays from the last fiasco, and scrubbing the two plant-dishes, having called Bob, who DID remember that he was supposed to get my Times next Sunday. Then decide to pay the taxes, getting that done easily, and now typing this at 1:40PM, with only SIX items left on my list: 1) Melitonin at 2PM, 2) record phone message, 3) shower, 4) pack, 5) stamps away, and 6) eat dinner. Three hours and ten minutes before 4:50, when the car will come from Fred's to pick me up. 3:40PM: Having stripped my bed, put stamps away, winnowed papers-to-take, filled pillbox, I decided, about 3:25, to check seat-change on Lufthansa: called one number and asked about United Star Alliance, and they gave me another 800 number and hung up! Called that, got a new account with a FIFTEEN-DIGIT account number! At 3:45 FINALLY get two window seats on the flights BACK, but the "two available window seats are closed to the airport now, so I can't change your NYC-Munich flight." Now to pack, eat, and shower in 65 minutes! 4:15PM in a PANIC: finally packed, meat's on, but still shower and mail to deliver and pick up. GOT to end this NOW! TRAVEL:MUNICH/SPAIN
7/2/03: 2:30PM: FINALLY cleared my desk of the stuff I'd piled there on my return from Spain. Did everything about the trip I had to do except what was there, and at last (after gratifying Spanish stamps finished) cleared it up, finding that Fred owed me $22 and change. Did NOT go to pick up my suit today, and have dinner tonight at 6PM with Mildred, and have ONLY the list of "Things That Went Wrong on Monday" to type: 1) J&R doesn't INSTALL AC (so I contracted Joe to do it tomorrow afternoon). 2) Bruno's wants $150 MORE for AC (so I got it from J&R), 3) Forgot Spain ATMs--John's check would BOUNCE, so I rushed over with $190 cash and my IRS $1337 check, and ended with a balance of SEVEN CENTS! 4) Beard charges Ken full amount (but they don't). 5) HSBC STILL won't clear Pope's account (but Doug's sending crematory bill). 6) J&R won't answer phone, but they did on Tuesday, and I bought it that morning. 7) Doug not THERE, but he called Tuesday morning. 8) FreeCell bombs, but I made it up by 10AM Tuesday morning. 9) Can't come Monday evening, but I do Tuesday. 10) Can't pick up LAUNDRY, no cash, but Mildred pays lunch Tuesday, and I GET it!
7/11/03: 9AM: Minor set of apotheoses while doing Actualism this morning between 7:30 and 8:10AM. Again the "people as fingers on a 4-D hand" image, mixed with a Time Machine as a Machine that STORES Time, just as a battery stores electricity, which can then put it to WORK moving forward or backward (or sideward?) over the 5-D plane of the coordinates of time. Back to the LSD "all is one" for the idea of generating a 4-D "tree" of connectivity of everyone living, showing HOW all are connected; which would go along with a 4-D (including time) representation of everyone's genetic components so that they could INDIVIDUALLY be studied, changed, improved, made to work "perfectly." Down to the Ground of Being as the primordial soup in which virtual particles zip in and out of existence below the time-restrictions of Uncertainty. So everything IS possible, and even Actualism, with its modified meditation technique, puts me in touch with WHATEVER the higher may turn out to be, just as Franklin didn't really know what the electricity he investigated actually WAS (as if WE know what electricity actually IS!), but future generations at least found myriad ways in which to let it PERFORM TASKS for humanity and individuals. And again the idea that "the higher" is really only a few micrometers away in another dimension, which, when we can harness it, will enable mind-reading, telekinesis, communication with the dead, and all other varieties of ESP which would add ANOTHER dimension to Actualism's "mental, emotional, sensory": EXTRASENSORY. Woke from a dream in which I KNEW I wasn't dreaming when I was sucking on my own cock (though, no surprise, it WAS a dream) to the thought that WE ARE ALL DREAMING, and the reason we haven't found any extraterrestrials is that WE, or our HIGHERS, have ROPED US OFF from the realization that we ARE dreaming, and that "when we wake up" (does it HAVE to be the same as "when we die"?) we would know that we WERE/ARE more than we are/have been. We ARE ALL dreaming, and phanerothyme, like LSD or pot at least, brings us to a halfway house where we can see SOME of the facets of our higher, undreaming, immortal beings. Of course, UNDER all this are the traditional questions: HOW do the cells in our body cooperate to form ONE HUMAN being? WHY is there something rather than nothing? WHAT REALLY happens down at the Planck length and time? Who IS IT which is dreaming us? WHERE (or just simply everywhere?) are the dreamers? WHEN (or just simply everywhen?) are the dreamers? WHO (or just simply everywho?) are the dreamers. WHY (AH, THERE'S the question---or just simply everywhy?) are we dreaming and how can be wake? WHAT (or just simply everywhat?) is the ACTUAL ground of being for all of creation---and why CREATION, why not just EXISTENCE? Which, naturally, extends to HOW---HOW ON EARTH, or on NONEARTH---is all this MAINTAINED??? Is there a cosmic Fortran-maintenance-group somewhere/when/what/why/who??? Now 9:15 and I'll at LEAST, I hope, finish Pope's finances with a check from his burial account to my checking account!
7/21/03: 3:12PM: At LAST get to pile of stuff on my desk, sending off three "I've moved" and two others: Fred's "accounting" and NYS IRS bill for $45. AND now I'll transcribe my notes this morning from Viagra #8: Took it at 7:49AM after not having eaten since dinner at Park Plaza more than 12 hours ago. Set up mirror at 9AM for slide-show, still little reaction. At 9:26 I've gone through all the slides and settle on the last, most potent, one, and I finish at 9:51AM, ready to watch Autofocus on tape. AND fill out the warranty card for my AC, which I've got to put a RUG on top of to stop the VERY noisy dripping from above, and WHAT can I do with the AC in the bedroom but USE it, since leaving the window ajar makes the shade let in even MORE light, and I can't think of a solution to keep the light out and the air moving. Tried getting used to a facemask, but after a couple times I STILL get up promptly at first dawn-light, about 5:30AM these days, a real pain. Still have LOTS of stuff to do after talking to Doug about Pope, and Robert about Village Playwrights, and leaving messages with Sherryl and Bill P. Now the AC is VERY cold on my bare thighs and I've gotten to the end of the page at last.
7/26/03: 8:23PM: Maybe I can start getting SOMETHING done, now that I've taken the LAST of the stamp catalogs back to the library and verified that not even the 2003 J-O catalog has the North Korean stamps listed, still only a statement that "it will appear in future editions." AND I'm on about the last of the videos from Marty's, having gotten my new year's free membership card and bought another 12-card, just about crossing out as many as I'll be adding when I finish the new list, now just over a YEAR ago. Finally got the gym-task up to the level at which I left, though some of the exercises are a BIT too hard, and I've STILL got to nurse my right shoulder from the strain from putting Ken's bag up into the bus rack. And at least scheduled the dentist for Wednesday to repair my chipped front tooth. Still have two indexes to finish before the end of the month, which is Thursday, and today is still only Saturday, though tomorrow will be taken up with Carolyn's party at the Gowanus Yacht Club at 2PM and meeting her on Monday for the evening at Coney Island's Astroland park at 4:30 on the subway at Carroll Street. And still haven't seen what it'll take to finish the form 5500 for the end of July. At least work is coming in, with another from Springer delivered today, just a regular index for the first time in a long while from them. Consolidated the "do today" list into the "do currently" list, as opposed to the "long-time" list of eight still not done, rather like still moving IN. Gotten into the habit of using my regular sneakers in lieu of gym shoes, one of which I left in the gym before I left on my trips, and it was never found again---though I have to remember to buy another pair of REGULAR shoes, because they're practically giving out. Finally on Tuesday reduced my Bupropion dosage (though since 100mg is the smallest, which I hadn't realized, reducing involves taking it ONCE a day, at breakfast, rather than twice a day, though Dr. J. said it'd take 3-4 weeks before I felt any consequences of reducing the dose, and have another appointment with him at the beginning of October to see if I can stop taking it completely, and Carolyn A. said that I was obviously doing well enough that I could only PHONE her if I felt I needed another session, otherwise she seemed to think I was finished: having gotten over the disappointment about Jean-Pierre, and having settled into my new apartment, which Arnold agreed with me today that I WAS very lucky to have gotten, proving that my phenomenal luck throughout life has held out. And finally got the final "account closed" statement from HSBC on Pope's burial account, so I can start throwing his stuff away officially. Today was busy, too: got back to the video shop for more tapes, went to the gym, picked up the prescription, since it seemed that I was about LIVING in Rite Aid with prescriptions recently, and got groceries, having finally finished the last of the moldering salad while putting away the new salad stuff with dressing, and taking the tops off the Cookies and Cream and the Butter Pecan half-gallons of Haagen-Dazs I got two for the price of one at Key, deciding to treat myself now that I've gotten back into the routine of being at home. Though I AM tempted to see if I can get the single supplement waived and go on the Scandinavian trip and St. Petersburg by myself. And Suzie hasn't answered my e-mail yet, though I did answer Uncle Edward about signing for the final agreement on Helen's legacy, hoping that might come through in the foreseeable future. And Fred will phone about seeing the Spain slides, though I might not get the SWISSALS slides back from Ken until our Beard on August 12. At least I managed to get FreeCell above average after 93 games over last night, getting to bed about 4:25AM this morning, and then up to finish by about 1:30, not having breakfast until then, which meant I didn't have lunch until 6PM watching Tears of the Sun, and then putting some little stuff away and getting this page typed by 8:40PM, enough time to get my pants on and get out for the Sunday Times. Still waiting for the Visa bill for my final Spain expenditures, and will have to update THAT list when I update the Video-Wanted list. And now I can print this out and get the last sheet of STAMPLST sorted by size of album pages, size of catalog pages, A-stamps, and boxes and sheets!
8/8/03: 9:30AM: Most everything from the previous page taken care of, though the videos from Marty's went on five more days, and then I got a stack from Arnold to look through, so that when I finished THOSE I was "really done with videos." FINALLY get back to proofreading the journals, starting last Saturday, August 2, and getting through ALL of "Subjective," all 578 pages, though I find on the LAST page that I'd taken out 129 pages for "John," leaving only 449 pages, which is STILL quite a stack. Now I have to find how I stored the REST of the months-and-months backlog. Haven't looked at the last Visa statement yet, but it seems NOT to have any Spain expenses at first glance. Got the Schwab statements, really DOWN (at $304,557, the lowest it had been since 3/02), and cashing in the last of the Schwab One stocks, up from buying in 12/99 at 35.81 and selling today (available for check by 8/13, not too early, but still good for my Visa account) at 39.09, making me roughly $600, and paying $115 commission because I did it over the PHONE rather than the $33 it would have been on the Internet, and I pledge to go to SCHWAB.COM and enter my SS# as my logID and my temporary (6-digit number-and-letter) ID of VUX5SX6B can be changed to BOB0EE, today to ease this in the future. The automatic telephone, whatever that is, commission would have been $53. Go to BREAKFAST at 10:10AM! Back at 10:30, having called Leslie P. to make SURE I was waiting for information from her whether to send in the index as it is, $1200 for 1178 lines, or expand it to include more of the nonsensical terms on the author's list. She said she hadn't been able to contact the editor and would call the author AGAIN now to ask his opinion. "They work for IBM, so I don't know what they want." Then yesterday, feeling VERY good since I'd gone to the gym on Monday, returned the videos to Spartacus on Wednesday so he could tape more of Dead Like Me, looked to see that I had NOTHING scheduled until the Beard on Tuesday the 12th, when I'd get the slides back from Ken, I decided to start sorting out the travel brochures from the US and NYC in the bottom of my bookcase, and ENJOYED it enormously until I thought of how to put them BACK onto the shelf with adequate identification (the strips of paper with the state-name in red ink seemed inadequate, and this morning I thought to separate sections with STIFF CARDBOARD, if I have enough---HEY, empty FILE FOLDERS!---searched ONCE and found only a lot of extra-wide Pendaflex folders, but then looked in the 4-drawer white file AGAIN and found the manila file folders rescued from Judy W. [funny how OFTEN, like NOW, the clouds cover JUST THE TOP of the Woolworth Building, in my wonderful window-view], which will CONTAIN the files, with a little slip as an identifier and handy bookends to stash in place when I take out a state, so the whole shelf won't collapse in on itself, as it so often did in my unsatisfactory arrangement before), and then I got groceries, my MAIN task of the day, and after getting no definitive word from P. on what to do with the Biometrics index, just went to play FreeCell to take my mind off the unpleasant task and did NOT win, and played and played, stopping for lunch (and got the call from N., whom I'd forgotten to call when his two indexes were messengered to me) and dinner, and kept ON until 1:30AM, when I got 15562, a stopper I'd gotten at LEAST twice before, so I shut it OFF, but found out this morning that at least I was higher than any PREVIOUSLY recorded high, but still short of the 83.98 something I got last night when I stopped the FIRST killing set, not being smart enough to stop before getting into the SECOND killing set, but maybe this is all because of the news report that "doing puzzles and games seems to prevent Alzheimer's disease." Taking care of my incipient athlete's foot every day for the past four, putting on more stuff trying to get rid of my plantar warts, and phoned Arnold to say things were going VERY well, then killed it with too much FreeCell. But TODAY promises to be better, even with the gym, and I wonder if the water-soaked rug in the changing room has dried out yet from the SOPPING it got on Monday's storm, all of which has been a kick to watch from my window, and maybe even the SHADE is working well enough now that I don't crawl up on the chair to handle it, just raise it above eye level OK.
8/14/03: 7:45AM: Type two dreams [DREAMS:8/14/03], the first in a month, and have local things to finish today: 1) getting groceries, 2) finishing the Music Marketing index, 3) sending out the Met Opera ticket order. Feeling VERY good for about the past week, with getting back to proofreading (and really ENJOYING) the journals, and got the last things "off my back" yesterday by 1) phone Mildred with the phone number of the real-estate agent at the Beard on Tuesday who lives in the garden apartment on Second Avenue that she wants, 2) phone Charles to find that he loves the four operas that I decided I wanted to order tickets for, 3) Sherryl phones and I schedule for her "not-yet-done, but we'll forget about it because it was in the past (yet clearly I'll always remember it)" final birthday-celebration dinner at Aix tonight, 4) search through the Spain file to get out my boarding passes on Lufthansa (and Spanair, which may be affiliated with it) for possible frequent-flyer miles, though I seem to remember reading from Go Ahead that these were NOT eligible for them, putting them out to Xerox at Spartacus’s when I finally take over more of Pope's tapes that I'll be getting rid of, as I 5) cleared his shelf for journal-typing pages and files and bills, putting the last envelope in the file---and JUST NOW, thinking, "Where IS the card on which Doug's home and work phone numbers were written?" I looked into the wastebasket, took out a small group of items, and SECOND, right under the film-envelope from Ken, WAS THE CARD! 6) interfiled Ken's slides with all of them from the SWISSALS trip, which I have to edit to a show (and WHEN will I bring friends up to date with past slide-shows?---which has REALLY taken a back seat during my move) and then get to putting out the Spain slides for Fred to look at when he FINALLY visits here for the first time, though he's going to New Orleans for six days today, 7) threw away the New York magazine subscription card when the expiration date on the last issue was FINALLY in 2005, 8) found the list of pages sent to Vicki from the first set of journals ON AUGUST 20, 2002, almost a YEAR ago! Also good to have feelings of accomplishment as I FINALLY get to a part of my journal when I'm DOING what I've scheduled, rather than endlessly griping about not having the discipline to adhere to the various high-maintenance schedules of typing or writing that I'd set for myself endlessly in the past, so that I don't feel that I've kept the ABSOLUTE WORST of my past. But then my progress is "too good" yesterday at 1PM because I've marked the first 45 pages of the Music book and feel too hungry to type them without having lunch, and then get back to "try a bit of" FreeCell, and I mess up early and have a lousy average, and make a note about 6PM to REALLY get off the game, at about 68 games, and make tuna for dinner because I've run out of bread---ah, gotta get GROCERIES today, too---but get BACK to FreeCell and get BACK to FreeCell until I stop about midnight at 138 games, with finally getting to 81%, and my average is REALLY down. But I'm not HASSLING it since I DID work during the day and nothing's really DUE, since I ALSO sorted through the things I want to do outside and arranged to visit the Metropolitan Museum on Friday with Charles to catch up on THAT. Bed content with "doing," and also content to spend the money to keep the air conditioning going through the night so I don't wake up about 5AM with a sweat-soaked pillow to put on the air conditioning THEN, though my bill from last month of $100 will be about doubled this month since I've used both air conditioners about twice what I did, annoyed that the drips from upstairs are JUST hitting the opening in the top of the new one, though I suppose it MUST be equipped to handle it, since it would be open to rain and snow through the year, and I guess I'll have to check with Joe if it has to be COVERED to PROTECT the inside of it during the winter, though I suppose I could do that myself. With many local problems solved, start thinking, perversely, about the efforts I'll have to take with taxes with 1) a new apartment floor-space to measure, 2) maintenance charges to be handled differently from rent, with possible deductions, and 3) probably a VERY much lower income, though the year's not over YET and I've before been surprised by unexpected large jobs that increase my income significantly. 4:38PM: No clocks, no television, no radio---at least the telephones are working---but then I think: ah! the AlphaSmart! Was working on the final editing of my Music Promotion index when the computer went OFF (so much for a backup!). Black smoke was (coincidentally?) pouring from the leftmost huge stack on the East River, which Mildred later thought might only be an incinerator. Then noticed my light was out and the clock had stopped at 4:13, and there have been increasingly many sirens below. Tried calling Spartacus, but the phone just rang. Phoned Bob L., and he said it was an outage in the building, but then when I called Mildred to see how widespread it is (thinking that she'd be listening to the radio) SHE was out, too! I'd ACed the living room, so with the windows still closed it was rather comfortable to sit there. With my binoculars it looked like there was another black-smoke source at the BASE of the smoking chimney, but then by 4:30 both were cleared. Sherryl had just come out of the shower, wondering what had happened to her radio, and then gasped, "In another hour we'd have been in the SUBWAY; how awful THAT would have been!" Got a circuit-busy signal trying to get Vicki, so I don't know if it's that far north or not. Of course the thought of possible terrorism is on everyone's mind. Maybe try Vicki again at 4:44. Get through to her but HER power is out, and her visiting friends want to get on the phone to their husbands, so I'm off at 4:49, looking at the throngs moving in both directions over the Brooklyn Bridge. Helicopters hovering over the city, flashing police-lights everywhere, and then the phone rings and it's Mildred, asking what Sherryl said, and "hearing" that the power was off in NEW ORLEANS, and when she tried to phone her lawyer there, the circuits were busy. Maybe I'll try Rita, now at 4:55. Paul answered, which is awkward because I thought it was Denny, but then later, in fact, thought it doesn't sound EXACTLY like Denny, and Rita said it was Paul, and I said, "Don't tell him," and she says, "He's standing right here staring at me with his mouth open." She turns on TV to find it's affected as far west as Cleveland, and most of upstate New York and lots of Canada: Toronto, Montreal, etc. Just as I ask about possible terrorism, she says the TV says it's NOT terrorism. Look out to see the people STOPPED SOLID on the Brooklyn Bridge: debate videotaping it, but I probably have no battery power, and anyway maybe I should save it if something SPECTACULAR happens, like the view at NIGHT! At 5:15PM there's a banging on the door outside and I go out to find maintenance staff in the hall with flashlights, asking if everything's OK. A nice touch. Then I check for MY video machine, and the battery's almost gone, but I got a shot of the people solid on the Brooklyn Bridge and hope I have enough to get a night shot. Look for a flashlight and find one that doesn't work at FIRST, but then gives off a dim light, so I'll have THAT after dark, anyway. Cold tuna casserole for dinner! Then pee, thinking of the strange half-flush when the lights were going off, and I turn the tap in the sink and there's NO water at all! Sirens stopped for a bit, but they're going again. People grouped around the subway exit and the restaurant and theater entrances, and people out on balconies and on the roof. Traffic stopped on the Brooklyn Bridge again, and LOTS of people walking on the ROADWAY below, too. The bright plane-avoidance beacons are still flashing atop---is it some telephone building in Manhattan? About 6PM try Spartacus, Shelley, and Carolyn, but they just ring and ring (except Carolyn's that gives some crappy message about "redialing with the area code, unless you have a mailbox on this system." Then get through to Mildred again, who's talked with people in the building who drove home, and they say the situation "might" clear up in a few hours, but it may take until the morning. Mildred, for some reason, insists she's worried that it'll go out tomorrow, too! When I tell Charles that the hallway's dark, he says there has to be emergency lighting, and I go out to see that there IS a light at the elevator, that the red exit-lights are on, and there's a fluorescent tube at each stair landing. Later, I go down to the open door at Toba's apartment but there's only a black cleaning lady who says, "He's not here," and I ask what the radio says, and she says, "Not much." Listen to the radio from across the hall (I tap, but I guess she didn't hear me) and it says, "No problems yet, no fires, no rioting, people leaving on foot." Then Vicki calls to update me about 6:10 and says, "People came out of manhole covers to leave the subway." Ugh! Huge blue OEM (Office of Emergency Management?) busses go down Cadman Plaza, and there's a constantly blinking fire truck sitting out in front of 75 Henry Street. Lots of sirens, too. My binoculars tell me, now at 6:17, that some parts of the Brooklyn Bridge foot-traffic is moving easily, some is jammed solid. I'm starting to get thirsty, sorry that I didn't, as Vicki said, get pails of water---at least fill my bathtub---before my pumps to the 20th floor stopped. The seltzer, from the bottom of the refrigerator door, is NOT very cold ALREADY. Should, say, sort out the typing pages now that I have LIGHT, and wait for the NIGHT to do things that don't require all that light. So I went through Pope's videotapes, and I must have gotten rid of MOST of them before, because there's only ONE bag of them left, mixed in with some from Dennis, which I decided to keep. Then went through the REST of his stuff (except for the clothes in the closet) and took some stamps, the coins, some few porno brochures, and three photos of him: very young, one at a party in Mexico with his rich friends, and one of a lovely Sandy and him at Christmas. Then put the rest into one bag to take to Spartacus, who hasn't called YET as I type this at 7:15, starting to get hungry for dinner. They seemed to have managed to keep the pedestrians off the car-level of the Brooklyn Bridge at this point. 7:24: Someone seems to be CHEERING people as they come off the eastern end of the bridge. What looked like a light in midtown turned out to be the sun gleaming on a perfectly angled water tower. Temperature on my room thermometer is still 83 degrees, and I debate going on the balcony to eat, but still feel it's probably cooler in the AC left in the living room. 8:20PM: finished dinner of tuna casserole that gradually warmed up as Ken talked to me: they could rev up the elevators to take him down the 29 floors in his office, he couldn't find a bus uptown so he walked, and then he walked up his eight flights to NOT be able to see where his apartment was until he knocked on someone's door for a flashlight. So I hung up and got out MY dozen or so candles with holders and matches, and then took a chair out to the balcony to take what may be the LAST video pictures of the surprisingly lit South Street Seaport, many of the lower Manhattan buildings, large outside lights on the Court buildings, distant lights on building-tops, and the large, disgusting Jehovah's Witness building to the north east, ALL lit, with TVs even! Video them and HATE them. Candles in a room across the way, about where two shirtless older guys looked out their window. Verizon sign going, and lots of flashing police lights on the streets. Ken said all the airports were closed, so maybe that's why the aircraft-warning lights weren't needed. Some of the distant roadways look like strings of pearls where the headlights aim toward me, and the FDR drive is mostly RED, while the oncoming Brooklyn Bridge traffic, moving slowly but steadily, is all white. NO lights on Henry Street below, except for passing headlights. Ken said he heard the same restoration estimates as I did: hopefully in a few hours, probably by tomorrow morning. Let's hope so, but it's over 3.5 hours already. I suggested that the "key person" looking over the repairs HIMSELF would have little idea when it would finally be fixed. It WAS a transformer, or generator, or distributor, somewhere in Canada that went down first, so as Ken said, "Blame Canada." Sky was a bit pink, now sullen red, and it's 8:25 and at least my watch will light up when I press the button. My PHONE dial lit up when I knocked it off the table, too. So I sit, warm, on the balcony with my laptop, my telephone peeking out the balcony door, and my binoculars and video recorder at the ready in case anything is worth another try. There ARE planes in the air, but clearly they're not even getting near any of the neighboring airports. Glad I got up at 7:30 this morning, I'll feel like going to bed EARLY. AGAIN, astounded by the NUMBER of lower Manhattan buildings that have ALL their lights! At 9:10 I decide I've had just about enough of sirens,
black beetle-cars with wildly flashing lights and blaring sirens even if there's no one in front of them, and it's not really gotten DARK: the area is lit by the sidelights from the Court Building across the street to the east, and all the headlights coming toward me along Cadman Plaza. Bring everything inside and light a candle, which is QUITE bright enough to type by, and take clothes off and prepare to use seltzer to wash my greasy face and eyes and get to BED. Can wake at dawn and the LIGHT tomorrow. 9:26: Wash VERY effectively with a corner of a towel dipped in seltzer, rinse with the other side, drink my pills, shit a tiny turd, and get ready for bed: thankfully the night isn't VERY hot, just about right with the window open a crack, with earplugs to keep out the sound; OH, and better put off the phone volume, in case someone wants to WAKE me. Bed 9:30, hoping to sleep and to have LIGHTS in the morning! Take about half an hour to get to sleep, Actualism finally working, and wake at 11:20PM to pee, lights still out.
8/15/03: Wake at 2:10AM to look at much-lessened traffic, car-lights zooming along invisible roadways almost like airplanes in low-flying routes. Many UFO-bright flashing-light vehicles pass, but without sirens, maybe just keeping vandals at bay. Jolt awake at 6:11 with light---but it's only daylight through the blinds, no lights yet. Shit and find the toilet doesn't work at ALL, so I can't even figure how it worked, to whatever small extent it did, the SECOND time I used it last night. Look at the cherry-red sun rising in low clouds in the east, lighting up MUCH of the sides of my rooms, and then back to a weary bed, but then start thinking of how many tasks I could do without electricity, and get up at 6:45 to find that I can get rid of the rest of Pope's stuff, his clothes, and update the stacks of typed pages, primarily NOTEBOOK and DREAMS, and if needed even get into the travel-files to work on the complete TRAVEL journal also. Tired, disappointed that the lights aren't on, remember that I DID current work for C. so she has my new address, which I forgot to discuss with her yesterday when talking about the important new Lippencott index she'll be sending me for about $2000 for completion by the end of the month: only two weeks, so officially $1000/week! Finish this at 6:56, sirens taking up again, ready to put back the volumes on the telephones I took off last night in case Spartacus tried to phone when I was sleeping early. And, of course, I can always MARK the Watson-Guptill Record Label book for the index. Check up on the two previous blackout dates: November 9, 1965, out in 8 states and 2 provinces about 5:15PM (just as I was leaving work at 635 Madison Avenue), Eddie came over for the night, and it was fixed the next morning, since we worked till 12 and then came to 320 East 70th for a party, which must have had lights. Then July 13, 1977, when it went out at 9:30PM (when I on the 16th floor at 27 W. 72nd Street at Actualism, and then I went to Dennis's), and it lasted until 9:30AM in Manhattan and 3:50PM in Brooklyn, where I was living at 167 Hicks Street. Then I searched and searched for the binders for the printer pages and COULD NOT find them---another item to add to my "lost" list, and then went through the closet to root out the last of Pope's clothes and got rid of some old things of mine, too, but found a suit that FITS (though with too bold a herringbone stripe) in an OLD Prato suit bag. Go through the bags below the sink to sort THEM out, and put the two bags of clothes behind, crossing off "Get rid of Pope's stuff" but adding "Take out two bags of clothes" TO the do-list. Type this at 8:21AM, ready for breakfast, and it's already lasted 16 hours, probably longer than the first blackout and going toward the 18 hours, 20 minutes (in Brooklyn) of the second blackout. 8:48AM: I'm putting my pills away for the two weeks and open the refrigerator to get the milk before putting the aspirin in, to let my cereal soak, AND THE LIGHT GOES ON!! Have breakfast, phone and talk to Mildred and Sherryl and Carolyn, but only leave a message for Charles, and Shelley's usual phone is out of order. Finish the index at 11AM, but N.'s phone is busy. Phone C. to ask when the big index is coming, only to leave a message. Then call Spartacus and he says the cable box will indicate when the power came on, and mine says what his does: that the power was actually back at 8AM, and I just hadn't noticed! Listen to the noon WQXR news, since only Channel 50, for whatever reason, is visible on the still-not-working cable box: Spartacus says that when it records the correct time it'll be working, and now the blame has seemed to shift from Canada to OHIO, starting the blackout cascade. Need to get a 9-volt battery for my answering machine, and for some reason (didn't this happen before?) the surge protector does NOT have the red wiring-wrong light on, and there are probably no beeps, either. Told Arnold I'd bring over the two bags of stuff today, and he said he'd phone if he was going out anytime. Take the stuff from the AlphaSmart and proofread it, then finish these pages by 12:25PM, hopefully back on schedule. WQXR said it would take six hours for the subways to come back on line even AFTER power is restored, so that definitely shifts the Metropolitan Museum with Charles to tomorrow.
8/20/03: 8:30AM: Well, turns out the Metropolitan was CLOSED on Saturday, which meant that I got to bed early Saturday night and got up early Sunday to get to the Museum at 9:39AM. Kept track of what I saw: 1) First Cities (for St. Petersburg's items that weren't here at the start of the show) 9:45-10:25, and it was really a GREAT show! 2) Contemporaries of Charles Sheeler 10:27-10:40 3) Charles Sheeler 10:41-11:03, but his nudes were all of his flabby wife. 4) Central Park Plans 11:10-11:51, wonderful exhibit, sandwiched outside the storage galleries, which I looked into trying to find a replacement admission button, which I'd lost, and finally found one before leaving. 5) Goltzius 11:54-12, when I figured to have lunch in the new basement cafeteria from 12:03-12:26, for "only" $16 and change, and back to Goltzius 12:03-12:26, and then see that the 6) St. Petersburg exhibit is very small, and glance at it 1:30-1:40 before leaving for the Games Group. Then on Monday decide to tackle the slides, thinking it'll be a SMALL job, but it turns out there are MANY old slides to be gone through, and then I start bringing the lists up to date, and decide I MUST get out the atlas and transfer the trip-numbers (1-74, so far) to the slide entries to see what I've already filed, and that goes on so long that I get bored and switch off with FreeCell and proofreading the journals. Tuesday, yesterday, was occupied by taking all the travel notes out of the souvenir folders and numbering them consecutively 50-74 and putting them into the new binders that I FINALLY found yesterday, after searching for the third slide-storage box, which after an HOUR I find behind the French souvenirs in the bottom of the last mirrored cabinet! THEN I can't find the France/Ken slides, and just before dinner decide that what I'd RELABELED as "France-Car" DISCARDS are the France-Ken SHOWS, but then I can't find the LISTING of the slides, so I look for that until time to leave to meet Mildred (and Charles, surprise!) at 66, which turns out to be a confusing, overpriced, and not-great VERY popular place. Back tired, so after doing the New York magazine puzzle, I just decide to get to bed at 10:55PM! Wake at 3 and lie until 4, thinking of what to do next, then CAN'T get back to sleep and decide to just get up and separate out all the OLD, unfiled pages, taking till about 6AM to do that, then update the PERM, NOTEBOOK (needing four pages printed, which I did, and am doing THIS to print the last page to get the last reprinted page out of the printer!), DATEBOOK (though what happened to 2001?), and ACTUALISM (with all of two pages) books, putting aside the TRAVEL book to work on MORE in the living room before getting with the slides into the still-dark bedroom and probably have to TYPE the slide-list for France/Ken---unless I go through the French souvenirs to try to find it! Which I try now at 8:46AM---but it's REALLY not there! So I'll isolate the slide-entries from the old JOURNAL and print those out as a guide to making the list for the show-slides, which I just have to assume wasn't done, as MOST of the new trips haven't been done yet, and I REALLY have a lot to tackle on the SLIDE effort now that the page effort is essentially over. AND am MUCH overdue for a physical with C.! NOW!!
8/24/03: 9AM: Printed a DREAM [DREAMS:8/24/03] page, even though not finished, and updated my "final consolidated list" yesterday with four, doing one already, leaving 11: 1) Fix warts, 2) C. physical (started already), 3) Blacken windows, 4) Hook up more VCRs, 5) Proofread journals, 6) Check National Park hotels, 7) Files to Vicki, 8) Set up my website, 9) Transplant plants, 10) Buy copier, and 11) Buy new computer. Some of these will surely last to the end of the year, but I'm happy with eight of the items I've ALREADY crossed off: 1) 8/5: Fix bathroom drip; 2) 8/8: Do Biometrics index; 3) 8/12: Sort living-room travel files; 4) 8/15: Get rid of Pope's stuff; 5) 8/18: Bags of old clothes out; 6) 8/21: Update NOTEBOOK and TRAVEL pages; 7) 8/23: Re-sort slides; 8) 8/23: Call Sherryl for dinner. Obviously, too, A) Set up my website won't be until into next year, and B) Buy new computer will be one of the last items done. And I have the CT index on my desk, which isn't even ON the list. And have to go to the gym today, which thankfully I'm keeping up with. Felt good clearing off all the slide-stuff from the table after more than a week, finishing the Record Label index on Saturday, and even got the Times late (7:45PM) and finished the puzzles and reading it early (11PM). Even felt happy enough enjoying the moderate temperature and humidity of yesterday INSIDE, without really needing to go outside. Some of the items have been on the list so long, and are so relatively trivial, that I figure soon I'll just DO them just to get rid of them: off my mind. Like this page, which I've done satisfactorily.
8/28/03: 7:48AM: To continue the PREVIOUS entry: felt so good about doing those two pages on Sunday morning that at 9:17AM I started a list of what I did with Google for the task of 6) Checking National Park hotels, and get a phone number to call later for rate-printed brochures for the specific hotels (I hope), and check 14 destinations and print out six brochure pages till 10:10AM. Then THAT felt so good that I started a list of ARCHIVED pages, starting at 10:23AM, and going through 14 files, starting an AR directory for the 347-1085K files totaling 9,302K and 2515 pages, to 11:17AM, when I send a second file to Vicki and only then get her e-mail from the FIRST file that she's nervous about opening attachments, and couldn't even read my e-mail because "it circled and circled," taking long because of the 776K JA.DOC attachment, and she probably didn't give it nearly the 2.3 minutes it took me to SEND the attachment to her. Breakfast, then worked on the CT index for three hours, and talked to Carolyn about replanting my plants, and she AGREED, except that was Monday, after I'd gone to Alma for dinner Sunday night (after closing the gym at 7:30 by being the last out of the shower) after finding that MidAtlantic had closed on Atlantic Avenue. Then felt good (except the index is so AWFUL) working on the CT index the next days, taking a LOT of time for FreeCell, and then Tuesday phoned for reservations at the Harrison for after Village Playwrights, since I'm now in a "finish the 2001 restaurant list" mode. Playwrights was good: awful "rehearsed" first hour of Scrambled Eggs, Bagels and Other Acts of Love with a very attractive Jesse M. and an unpleasant Peter D., who discouraged me when he said HIS was the only "gratuitous" frontal nudity, and a GREAT hour of two of Robert L.'s VERY funny items: one about the Pope's nose, the other a fabulous one-talk one-silent dialogue between a controlling Lucy and a leaving Mags, both of which Robert asked me to moderate. Harrison wasn't that great (I even left the bag, though not wittingly, of leftover liver and potato-onion tart and bitter chard on the chair when I departed), but the walk around the WTC site was interesting in that not much was DONE since my last trip there: though #7 was up to the third floor, and some of the blasted buildings were beginning to be reconstructed, though a few others were still untouched. Tuesday night, looking through New Yorker, I found that Max Beckman's Hell had been held over at the Met through 8/31, when I thought it had closed on 8/10 when I went 8/17, so I figured "AHA, go to the Met Wednesday afternoon before walking across the park to Aix for Sherryl's dinner," and then "AND I can get either Plate 347 or Siren off the list for LUNCH before the Met!" But when I phone, Plate 347's message is "Memory full," and Bistro St. Marks replies "remote interactions not acceptable," or some such arcane brush-off. So after a frustrating talk with Arnold, who insists I should phone the Met to make SURE the Beckman is showing, and makes other ridiculous demands that I'm not prepared to perform, I decide NOT to take my shoulder bag to the Met, so put all the magazines and brochures into my pockets and take off, rather late, about 12:45PM to the East Side. It's hot, too, and clearly my new deodorant isn't working, so I'm aware of my tacky smell in the sun, not to mention an occasional waft of shit from my too pungent farts. Walk over to Second Avenue and 20th to find a note on Plate 347's door "Closed for renovations; we expect to be open at the end of June." Oh, oh---Spartacus was right!---mark it as permanently closed, since even if it DOES open two or three months late, there's no guarantee its blue-cheese burger will be on the menu. So continue down a broiling Second Avenue to St. Marks Place to find some Mexican restaurant at 12, where Siren with its barbecued filet mignon had been. Prepared to walk up to Union Square Cafe for a VERY late lunch, past 2PM now, seeing as I have dinner at 6:45, and, about 13th Street, feel for my wallet: which isn't there! Clearly I did NOT transfer it into my pocket when I transferred the OTHER stuff from my shoulder bag into my pockets! Thank goodness I did NOT eat in the other two restaurants, because I would have nothing to PAY them with!! So I'm down into the R train for the ride BACK home, getting mail and [OH, also forgot that Wednesday morning I found that the CARPET atop my new air conditioner had sailed away, and not a search of the terrace below (still closed to the building's public) nor the streets around LOCATED it, and the maintenance man said they had some sort of glue that they used, so I should call Joe about it, though when I look down none of the OTHER air conditioners have anything atop them!] [Should also mention, speaking of the building, my abrupt elevator-stop with the indicator at 14, but not by ANY floor, and a two- or three-second wait until it decided to continue its descent. I told the security guard about it, who thanked me for the information about elevator 2, but Arnold said Bob said it happened rather frequently!] having a hurried late lunch, including a SECOND delicious ear of fresh corn with a sixteenth-pound of butter with it, and THEN out to the Met AGAIN, see LOTS of spaces, VERY nice, and then out at 5:20 to wander into Central Park, stroll along reservoir, noting that they're replacing the unsightly high fence with a duplicate of the ORIGINAL 4.5-foot fence, and sit watching the walkers, joggers, runners, skaters, and bicyclists moving past, then go to a FABULOUS dinner at Aix, meeting Sherryl on the island in the middle of Broadway and 88th Street. The 4-course tasting at $58 cost me $3 more for the creamy chanterelles, but they were WONDERFUL, as was Sherryl's briny shrimp-cake and attendant salad, then her mild dorade and my tasty bass both had great sauces and good sides, my lamb was less spectacular, but filling, and she gave me lots of her squab and potatoes because she was full, and we both settled for the banana-tart dessert, though I was tempted to the sorbets, and I included the wine-tasting for an extra $28 for four GOOD glasses of wine, after my sweet-and-sour Scorpion Honey for $12 to start, while she changed our table. Got home about 9:30, watched a bit of Coronation of Poppaea on Channel 25, recording the whole thing, and put on the air conditioner to get to bed about 10:30, to sleep quickly and comfortably, and then had the multifaceted travel dream noted on DREAMS:8/28/03, and made a note to record the play-idea from Harrison, watching the epicene, plucked-eyebrowed handsome man courting his frowsy date across the way. But still have to edit the CT index, blessedly finished entering after 14 hours of work to 1755 entries, add to the Biometrics index when the information arrives today, go to the gym before having lunch at 44 with Mildred at 1:30, and note I have to 1) re-fix AC rug-top, 2) get new deodorant, and 3) see C., regardless that I haven't started a meatless fast for my stool samples, with testosterone later.
Also on 8/28/03: PLAYLET IDEA: Based on the "epicene, plucked-eyebrowed handsome man courting his frowsy date across the way" I noted on the previous page: a shy girl from the country hires an escort for her first date in NYC, and their conversation starts haltingly: she reluctant to say anything, fearful of NYC, he brash and self-confident and attractive, trying to get close to her, and they come to increasing intimacy in simple dialogue over a meal, when it finally comes out that she, finally finding that he is willing to tolerate almost anything in a spirit of NYC-can-do, is a GUY, terminally disappointing her date, who reveals himself to be a GAL, interested ONLY in another GAL.
9/9/03: 11:05AM: Finally finished with the 2001 restaurants and have subdivided my new list into quarters, with one gone from each of 2002 already and Alma must be reserved as the first of TODAY's do-list: 1) Alma, 2) return videos, 3) list "AR-to-do" for ALL files to be archived, with the aim of setting up an AM file for those that I CHANGE at least once a month, so that, say, weekly I can put THEM all together for an "UPDATED CURRENT ARCHIVE" in case my computer-disk is destroyed. But now that I've run out of clean underwear and have to do laundry, I just don't want to DO anymore! Yesterday's list was completed, however: 1) Vicki's birthday greeting, 2) brush teeth (with an awful decay-smell from the brush in the upper right!), 3) gym, 4) finish FreeCell, which I finally did at 1AM today, having started SUNDAY, and finish at ONLY 80% after 221 games of an IMPOSSIBLE series, having been told by Vicki that there was ONE unsolvable, 5) take third stool swab, 6) samples to HIP, 7) gym---just so I'd be SURE to do it, 8) return videos, 9) breakfast, which I finally had at 1:30PM, 10) lunch at 6PM over the second video, and 11) dinner at 1:30AM, finally finishing the terminal chicken from 8/26, 13 days, and then watching a well-acted but poorly special-effected The Core until 4 and getting to bed at 4:20AM, finally dragging myself up at 11AM, putting the phones back onto volume. Then call HSBC about Pope's Burial Account (for which I'm STILL getting zero-balance statements) at 11:25AM, getting an incompetent Indian woman at the 800 number who'll transfer me to my branch. Decide I MUST get lots of this LITTLE stuff out of the way so I can have my future CLEAR for me! Print this page at 11:27AM, anyway.
9/10/03: 2:15PM: It's so easy when you just DO! Got up about 9 after getting to bed about 1:30AM, 1) washed dishes, 2) had breakfast, 3) phoned for the guy to come up to glue on the AC carpet, 4) phoned for Ahwahnee and 5) Old Faithful Inn brochures, 6) phoned to cancel wrongly addressed Fleet ads, 7) changed my address with Playwrights Horizons, 8) phoned for my prescription, 9) bundled and took out magazines and newspapers, 10) sorted laundry, then got out to 11) order glasses and pay for them with Visa for $70, 12) buy a drainboard and 13) a cutting board, 14) buy deodorant and 15) quad-ruled paper for the puzzles and 16) pick up the prescription, 17) go to the bank for cash and 18) envelopes and to 19) deposit my check, then returned to 20) catch up with this page!!! As for the "amalgamated do-list," it's now down to 6: 1) wire more VCRs, 2) blacken bedroom window, 3) proofread journals, 4) send archives to Vicki, 5) set up website, and 6) buy new computer. And even the "daily list" is down to a minimum of 3): 1) get call from AC rug-placer, 2) phone Alma for reservations for tonight, 3) update AR. Decide to leave WQXR on in BOTH rooms, "solving" the problems of not wanting wires going from room to room AND the "switch buttons" of the radio not working. Now about 2:30 have to think about having lunch before dinner early tonight at 7PM with Carolyn. Played LOTS of the GOODSOL.COM 560 Solitaire download (over, or more precisely UNDER, about 20 Juno ads) over 35 minutes yesterday per Vicki, AH, 21) whom I also called to say it was a waste of time, but now, to delay lunch just a bit, will play a maximum of 10 FreeCell games to try to get the average back up after the debacle ending Tuesday. And enjoy the white-topped clouds on the horizon looking like snow-peaks surrounding our fair New York City in autumn.
9/13/03: 9:45AM: Maybe it was the "maximum of 10 FreeCell games" that lasted another series of long times until I finally got it up to marginally over my current average yesterday about 1PM, resolving that I REALLY DON'T need it for quite a while. Dinner at Alma was pleasant; we didn't even need the jackets we'd brought for the warned-about coolness of the night breezes; and we saw the one-tower light pre-9/11/03, and watched THE MOST INCREDIBLE full moon dislodge itself from the treetops in the east and rise, and shrink, into the clear night sky. Proofread 3:20 on 9/11, finishing JE and starting JF, spending most of the time sending SEVEN archived files from SC and TR to Vicki, starting a second archive-box for file #26, and actually washing clothes for the second time at 101 Clark. Then yesterday spent 7:05 proofreading JF, stripped the bedding for the Chinese laundry and changed shirt and trousers when I got back from the gym, thinking to take them in today when I took my $1200 check to the bank, having gotten no call yet from the maintenance department to paste the rug to the AC. Delighted to see the lights (though somewhat dimmer than I seem to remember them before they were shut off "to save the $75,000/year electric bill") BACK ON the superstructure of the Brooklyn Bridge. Woke today to find it raining, plunking drops onto both air conditioners, so I'll wait for it to stop before going out. Before getting up, thought of what rose to the surface of "things to do": update the will, survey the last ten years of credit-card statements to see just what my expenses have BEEN in what category, thinking mainly about travel. Signed up for the no-added-expense single reservation on the January Malta trip with GCT, and really wanted to do the Eastern Turkey and the Turkmenistan and Tajikistan trip offered by Archaeological Tours, even though Ken said no because they looked too strenuous and uncomfortable. Maybe Fred will join me, maybe I'll spring for the single supplement myself, thinking that when 70½ comes I'll start getting, perhaps, 1/20 of $300,000, or $15,000/year as the obligatory withdrawal from my retirement funds, which, along with the (estimated $15,000/year from Social Security, will bring $30,000/year, or $2500/month, which would just about pay for my usual $1500/month Visa bill and $700/month rent and utility bills, with $300/month left over, not much for much expensive travel, but I suppose I'll still be earning something like $10,000/year, at least, on indexing, so I can TAKE two expensive trips like the two Archaeological ones---and I'm not getting any younger for ENDURING the strain of remote, non-touristy travel. Then looked through my desk drawer and saw the card "add to Earliest Memories" that had been there for months, and decided to DO that. THOUGHT that the "Earliest Memories" volume had been computerized already, but searched through MY and SC and OL and LI and LS files to find NOTHING, and finally resort to my old Volume 1 Table of Contents and it (nicely, thank you) tells me it's Volume 43, and hasn't been transcribed yet! Do hope to finish the last three unproofed volumes soon, and get the 7-8 John has finished already before he leaves for China 9/30, and vaguely wonder what I'll do when the proofing task is finished, but I'm sure something will come up, since I've been vaguely tempted to get another stamp catalog from the library when I pass it, but thought that the proofreading should really take priority, followed by transmitting even MORE archives to Vicki and to my AR file. But there IS a problem on how to preserve all the LITTLE files---maybe just hope my hard-disk isn't clobbered, and that I'll have backups on other diskettes on the files that haven't changed in ages. Though I really don't know how many files were actually on the Bernoulli disks which I threw out months ago. Another thing to think about doing in "my spare time." STILL get a thrill out of my apartment, I should say: looking out the window at the rain, the sunsets, the spectacular clouds during sunny days; the relative quiet of the apartment compared to my constant referral to the "woman clomping upstairs" at 167 Hicks (except for the rain on the AC!), and the newness and utility of the kitchen and bathroom. It still doesn't TOTALLY feel like home, but it's quickly getting closer. Let's hope I ENJOY it for 30 years! 10:20AM: Phoned Ken to thank him for Kissing Jessica Stein, and he was reminded of asking his mother to return a tape he'd lent her, and her telling him it would cost more to send it back than to buy a new one, and he recalled when he and Jay bought one of the early VCRs, back in the 70s, each tape cost $20, and some of them he's still using! But NOW decide that I really have to have BREAKFAST. Now to type John's mistypes before I can't read them:
Watched sail boars on the river (boats)
I get around to dosing him (doing)
Mary getting a hard-on (Marty)
Production numbers just goon and on (go on)
Into a specious garden (spacious)
Dessert of Sergio's deign (design)
Send a letter to Grog (Grof)
I start nicking with John (necking)
Two couples swimming in the supper falls (upper)
Listen to "Alexander's Feats" (Feast)
The travel-voiced (gravel)
To the West Die Terminal for Mom (Side)
Shift to lower bear in car (gear)
The U.S. girl won a silver model (medal)
The specious elegant houses (spacious)
Don't up and out (Don's)
The "rage to riches" theme (rags)
I prop a plunk in front of the leak (plank)
Excuse myself for the joyhn (john)
Getting tire dup in traffic (tied up)
I fink into a funk (sink)
The Marty Tyler Moore show (Mary)
Not clear who's how (who)
Air gun punctures a can with a think (thunk)
Heart-creakingly helping (breakingly)
My cock, still spamming (spasming)
Song "Lose Is Sweeping the Country" (Love)
Her sexy name on an ecclesiastical marquee (ecdysiastical)
As he ass (asks)
My red wood scarf stolen (wool)
My dour years of idleness (four)
Surgeon who amputated an arm during a gamine, and ate it (famine)
He haired his staff (hired)
The bleacher blonde (bleached)
A 122-string guitar version (12)
At the While House (White)
Work from 9:66 to 10:45 (9:55)
I shower fat (fast)
ADD TO EARLIEST MEMORIES:
1) In St. John the Baptist's grade school, I was chosen for one of the leads in the Christmas play, dancing "Jack Frost" to something ("Sugar Plum"? Something wintry?) from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. I fantasized about making my own costume, with tinsel dripping from the arms, and a battery-powered wand that would light up lights on the set-drape behind me, but as usual I did none of this, and the class nun came up with a stick-wand with a tuft of bunched white crepe paper with silver glitter on its tips. I had no choreography, was just to leap around under my own imaginings, and I thought it would be wonderful, but the music kept on and on, I didn't know what to do, and I felt increasingly like this was an embarrassment to myself and to everyone watching, like I'd been chosen for being so "artistically different."
2) At St. John's, the highlight of the year was the 40 Hours celebration before Easter, and the apex of that celebration was the procession, at night in a brightly lit and crowded church that had been given its yearly cleaning for the occasion. All grades, separated boys and girls, would dress in exact attire: the boys in dark suits, the girls in dresses color-coded by grades: white for the littlest "angels," pink or light blue for others. The altar boys would parade in their cassocks and surplices: the common black cassocks for the youngest, the more festive red cassocks for the more adult boys, and the white cassocks for the oldest boys, made out of what seemed to be silk compared with the cotton of the other colors, were fringed with gold---this was the only time they were worn. The two priests brought up the rear, followed by the pastor with the ciborium, and at the head of the procession was the processional cross, again used only this once during the year, and two acolytes with the largest candlesticks. I'd been an acolyte as a younger, again obviously "selected," student, but when I was in the 6th grade the older boys were particularly naughty, for some reason, and the principle nun, in a pique, selected ME to be the cross-carrier! What a privilege! How all the others envied me! I had to be given the privileged information of the route of the procession, and at the corner, when the procession was so long that it fit the length of the nave twice and the width of the nave two half-widths, I had to stop while the TAIL of the procession slowly caught up with its head, ME, and gave me room to continue on the next leg of the procession. With the organ music, with the Czech parishioners singing their Czech hearts out, with the incense filling the air, everyone dressed in their best, I was the HEAD of the PROCESSION!
3) Don't recall exactly how it started, but probably the entrepreneurial accordion teacher approached the school with discount prices for lessons, and I signed up for the smallest, twelve-button-left-hand, cheapest accordion. I was given basic lessons in reading and playing music, and remember the agony of the first few simple pieces: coordinating the keyboard of the right hand with the buttons of the left hand, and then pumping the bellows to keep the air flowing to keep the sound coming! Scales and monotony, supposed practice during the week which I didn't do, making weekly lessons an exercise of unpreparedness and lame excuses. The teachers weren't particularly good, but I do remember one of the lesson-rooms, seemingly in a building perched on the edge of the ravine that necessitated the Viaduct, because I remember looking out and DOWN on the treetops below, thinking this was almost like a medieval castle on a hilltop long ago. When I FINALLY got through the first book, I kept it and in later years would play straight through it, marveling at how easy it seemed now that I had experience. Then there was a second book, or maybe a third, which was a book of polkas and waltzes, and some of them were melodies that I actually KNEW (and recognized that I wasn't playing very well or nearly fast enough). I bought sheet music of a couple of popular songs which I liked, like "Delicado" and "Blue Tango," and then there were the showpieces of "Cielito Lindo" and "Malaguena" and the fearsome "Light Cavalry Overture," which required a bellow's-shake which I could never quite get the hang of. And it was AGONIZEDLY slow, as I recognized when I heard it on records, but I was requested once to play at St. Mary's, which wasn't as bad as the horror of the endless "Light Cavalry" at some assembly at Salinas Union High School, when they applauded when I was only halfway through, and AGAIN I thought it would never end (like my awful singing of the "Ave Maria" in camp when someone terminally devastated me by saying, "You were FLAT."), and never again played in public, though I used to joke that I could play the piano if I lay on my side on the piano bench and played the keyboard like an accordion keyboard with my right hand. Have no idea what my left hand would be doing. But now, in my enlightened old age, I put everything that isn't DREAMS into this NOTEBOOK, which I'll have to remember to add to the Volume 43 pages when it's finally transcribed, sometime in 2004, with memories from the 1940s!!
9/17/03: 8:45AM: Poor Tony! Phoned two days ago, said he'd be coming over yesterday at 2PM after his doctor's checkup for his FOURTH series of operations for malignant colon cancer. As luck would have it, that morning I heard Gus knocking on Beverly's apartment and went over to ask when anyone was going to be putting the rug on my air conditioner, which I'd asked Joe to do last week. Then Arnie said I shouldn't leave non-building-necessary requests on the maintenance line (which Joe yesterday said was perfectly OK, except that it might take him a while to get around to it, and he apologized for not getting back last week). So Joe said he'd be up before 11AM. But when it got to be 12 and 1---and I HAD wanted to go to the gym before Tony showed up, but I couldn't go out waiting for Joe--- I figured there had been times when Tony didn't show up, so I waited for whomever showed up first, and Tony buzzed from below about 2:03PM, said he only had an hour because he was parked in a meter downstairs, so I phoned maintenance and said, "Don't come up until after 4PM.” Tony was the least enthusiastic about my new apartment (ah, and then JOHN called to say that FedEx from ASME had left a note at 167, and I then had to call FedEx, but got no response, maybe because I didn't have the routing number, and I don't think John made it clear that he WENT to the Court Street office to change my address, so when I went to Court Street, the guy remembered John coming in to change my address for future delivery), noting that it was smaller than my old one, having one less room, and not enthusing about the balcony because he hung back, saying he was afraid of heights, and then he took off a cummerbund of white foam, saying he had to wear it for a couple months, until "all the organs lowered into their right place," and he'd just had the DRAIN removed that had been in place for two months after his last surgery, filling up with blood and pus and fluids, saying he had to take blood thinners because he was a clotter, and he'd been in a lot of pain, not even being able to lie down at night, sleeping sitting up, and then I was amazed to find that he hadn't been WORKING during all this time---and then when he said he hadn't come "in a while," I thought it was maybe three or four days, for him, but then it hadn't been since the operation in JULY! His doctor said he could engage in sex, but "nothing rough," and they couldn't quite agree on what the parameters would be. He said the medications had enlarged his prostate, and he could feel pain going FROM his groin TO the site of the operation (and he showed four or five scars on his stomach, two from a hernia operation, and a prior nonmalignant polyp removal from his colon. POOR GUY! So he sat in his chair and smoked his cigarettes and didn't have his panties on because he'd just come from the doctor's, where, when he was taking a piss, another patient came up behind him and brushed his ass, then grabbed his cock when he was pissing, so Tony grabbed his cock back, jerked him off when he said he didn't mind semen in his urine sample, and gave him his number---and he told me that his "straight" movie house on Kings Highway had put in TV rooms for the clientele, and he sat outside watching people go in and out, cute guys, and one of them even sat next to him (I guess this was before the operation). His long-time friend William died of a heart attack at about 69 five months ago, his sister taking some of the nicer lingerie and leaving Tony with stuff that he didn't know whether he wanted to keep or not, and he rocked back and forth in the rocker, enjoying the videos, rocking into my fist-pressure against the base of his prostate BEFORE I knew of his chance for pain, but then he HAD pain, from the base of the cock to the scar, and we laughed about my cutting into his cock-head with my fingernail the LAST time he was here, and then he ALMOST came, but when he went down he knew he wouldn't come back up again, and so I suggested he could come back on Thursday so he said he'd call when he got up, "about 11:30" and arrange to come over then for his first orgasm since July, though I thought he might take care of himself, as I was tempted to take care of myself, but as of 9AM today I've managed to avoid it, waiting for Charles's call about going to the Queens Museum of Art for the Dali exhibit ending this week, my "thing to do in art."
Should have some way of keeping John's typos together, but I'll do it later:
The 1st of the Cream of Wheat (last)
I fry to finish the book (try)
Sylvia Plath's poetry wet to throbbing songs (set)
The Mr. University from Brooklyn (Universe)
Toast that I devout with jam (devour)
Tomato coup and been sprouts (soup) (bean)
A hoarse cut Mark Spitz as commentator (cute)
Write her a litter about my proposition (letter)
A crash of breakfast glass outside (breaking)
All these electrical forces cat on man's brain (act)
The Metropolitan Music of Art (Museum)
Last Voyage of Lisbon (Sinbad)
Watch a movie out of sheet inertia (sheer)
Water Matthau (Walter)
Wine-veal-ptarmigan dinner (parmigiana)
Washed all of Come Back, Little Sheba (Watched)
Watch The Little Price (Prince)
Checking the number of cads I sent out (cards)
Restaurant bill only comes to $8150 ($8.50)
9/25/03: 9:25AM (HA!): 1) Wanted to particularly note the outrageousness of the MAN group in the seven-room Riverside Drive apartment, gorging on cheeses and veggies and dips and good wines, including Albarino, sitting naked on chairs and sofas and floors (the large cock on the sofa across the way eyeing a good crotch to my right), listening (and watching) the big-butted Robert C. playing Bach, Mendelssohn, and even his OWN composition on the Steinway, with the trio adding the sturdy-legged black-eyed violinist naked with his pierced penis meatus, and the chunky black-Spanish cellist with his instrument blocking a view of his instrument. Surely, I'd thought, "classical music" meant CDs. Not at MAN! And with the flattery of the old fart to my left remembering my Antarctic slides from PrimeTimers at the Center ages ago! 2) The satisfaction of dining on grilled mushroom-onion pizza with a quartino of Dolcetto d'Alba at Gonzo after the Village Playwrights meeting that managed to get an audience of FIVE for the first "grand" meeting in September, only hoping that Bob Q. was right in thinking that the fourth Tuesday not being the LAST Tuesday in September may have confused the prospective attendees. 3) The EXTREME satisfaction of last night: a) having finished by a messenger picking up the printed ASME 2004 Catalog index from Ron downstairs, b) getting the third of the trio of Springer-Verlag indexes delivered by Airborne downstairs, c) walking the completed first of the Springer-Verlag trio to the Express Mail box before d) going to the gym, and then returning to read the mail and e) going to find that Channel 13 left NO $10 tickets for the Alcina last night, almost sold out, but getting a standing room for $12 and slipping into a comfortable aisle seat for the decent performance from 7:35-10:35 after f) having a contented quarter-liter of white zinfandel with my three-little-sandwich puffs and a dense brownie for $16 at the Espresso Bar in Avery Fisher Hall beforehand, while watching memory-evoking jets heading into the two Lincoln Center towers to the northwest of my window view, and g) being content to watch people on the subway even though I was fuming about the city's refusal to build up service on the #1 line when Lincoln Center and Broadway audiences wait in frustration for their rides home after the shows let out. Then this morning I equally contentedly h) sent the $450 check to John H. for the bill for handling Helen's estate for us, and i) finished this page to print it out, with the dark new ribbon, before getting to breakfast and the second of the Springer-Verlag indexes, hoping that Joe might find his way up TODAY to put the carpet atop my air conditioner, now into two weeks' requests.
9/26/03: 10:40AM: After Robert W. called this morning for "general indexing information" for his perusal of my 2004 ASME Catalog indexes, and I "on a whim" mentioned that leading prepositions in subentries weren't alphabetized, he gasped and said he'd have to cancel some of his changes, made when he thought the alphabetization was wrong when it DIDN'T follow alpha-order by leading prepositions, I thought I MUST record OTHER things that I "just happened to do" at apposite times: 1) Called Judy G. Sunday morning about the Games Group here that afternoon, and she phones from town, thanking me for leaving the message, and coming to her first group in a number of months! 2) Called John A. Wednesday, on the morning of the day he was going to see Wes M. in the hospital, remarkably recovering from his three-week coma after ablation of one lung for aggressive lung cancer, so he got to talk to me about it, when he probably wouldn't have called me about it. 3) Called Piri H. on Saturday, to give directions for getting to my place for the Games Group, and she expressed surprise since "I was just thinking of calling you." 4) Told Robert W. about an indexing detail he hadn't asked about, which led him to rescind what he thought was an alphabetical correction to my work. And, importantly (just behind my luck in getting to the top of the list at Cadman Plaza JUST as apartment 20K was becoming available!), 5) the months-ago meeting with maintenance about a new toilet because my old wouldn't flush, JUST as Rick B. happened to be there, and HE'D been one of the few to request and appreciate a better-working toilet, encouraging me to get one for myself. Fringes of Spartacus working today "and THEY said there might be rain, but I'm working, so there won't be" almost ensuring that his luck will have to run out sometime. Let's just hope mine won't!
9/28/03: 12:17PM: Woke this morning (or yesterday morning, or before going to sleep last night) with the feeling that "life, right now, is JUST where I wanted it to eventually get”: nice apartment, adequate savings, decent indexing work still coming in, satisfied travel and sexual and restaurantal and cultural cravings, and the feeling of "being caught up," which I'd been pursuing so long through the early 70s in the journals I've been proofreading over the past month. Thinking in detail, now, friends could be a BIT better: Spartacus and Mildred can be SUCH pains, Sherryl and Carolyn are pleasant but have NO money to share restaurants or cultural events, John's doing travels on his own, Pope's dead, and Shelley's recovering from the physical and emotional traumas of a broken-hip hospital stay where she was sexually assaulted. I'm just AMAZED at the volume and range of my sexual encounters and adventures during the early 70s, before I met Dennis, which of course aren't happening now, despite the years' accumulation of "cruising" brochures that I've never followed up on. And then the New Yorker isn't very good about letting me feel uninformed about the gluttonous, damaging, thieving, polluting politicians under Bush who are raping the environment, destroying the economy to line the pockets of their wealthy contributors, lying to the public and BEING BELIEVED: I can't FATHOM that they could be reelected, but if money IS all the matters, then they HAVE already bought the next election, and the stupid non-voting or non-thinking (or non-participating, like me) electorate will get just what they deserve by their inactivity. And, of course, there are my RECURRENT thoughts of aging: 1) DISBELIEF that I've actually lived 67½ years!, 2) RELIEF that I won't be living another 40 years to participate in the financial debacle when Social Security runs out of money and the environment goes full-tilt into catastrophe mode, 3) SADNESS that the sexuality and effortful travel is ALL IN THE PAST. But I gaze out at the dramatic cloudscapes from my window above the Brooklyn Bridge, revel in my collections of books and slides and souvenirs and journals, now almost half committed to archives, and continue to think about getting a new computer and setting up a website which will enable my archives to be "out there," to continue when I'm gone, reflecting the rue of My Life Without Me, the movie title just reviewed on Ebert and Roeper.
9/30/03: 7:30AM: Woke at 5:35AM with a dream [DREAMS:9/30/03] I recorded on the AlphaSmart, but then I couldn't get back to sleep, and about 6:40 I got out of bed and checked the Sunday Times to find the sun rises at 6:50AM on Sunday, 9/28, and 6:51AM on Monday, 9/29. I put on bathrobe and sit in chair at window for a perfectly clear horizon and see that the sun rises at 6:50AM from my 20th-floor view, marking the place to the right of the protruding building on the card I made 6/13/03, showing the sun rising WAY to the left of that, at 5:24AM, noting that it'll be the same rise-time for many days for the earliest rise, setting at 8:29PM, again in sight, but not recorded where at the northernmost because I was out of town then. So I can watch sunrise MOST OF THE YEAR! Will have to check when I won't be able to see the sunrise, sometime in October, or even November if I'm lucky. Dress and put up shades to see at what time I LOSE the sun on my facade, sometime after 8AM, having it for more than an hour even past the equinox. Trees in Cadman Plaza get sunlight relatively late, but I can watch SOME change of autumnal color from here, since I woke and thought about the colors at Hemlock Hall and (having to convince myself that it IS the right name) Garnet Hill about this time of year, seeing the "best color" map in the Sunday Times indicating it's about now in the high Adirondacks, vaguely debating asking Suzie or Vicki for a drive through the colors, or even taking a BUS up to the Adirondacks, renting a car, and staying in bed-and-breakfasts for a few days. See a duck fly by, so those WERE duck-calls I heard a few evenings, sounding like distant dogs barking; also see a large white bird, a seagull I guess, though a swan would be outrageously wonderful. Many pigeons flying around, some bright-white in the newly risen sun, reminding me of the DARK shape sweeping past my window just after dusk last night, a passing pigeon. Fast ferries rush south, causing crashing wakes on the up-East River shores; some Manhattan spires catch the reflected light, while trucks and subways going west across the Manhattan Bridge reflect kleig-light brightness off their flat backs when the angle with the sun is perfect. Sun comes later to Henry Street; many joggers and walkers, some with dogs, along Cadman Plaza. A small fly brushes its front legs in the exaggerated shadow atop my air conditioner, still not blanketed. By keeping my earplugs in, I block out the sirens, traffic noise, and horns from below. When I dress, I get out Betsy's old cardigan, torn at top and elbows and missing buttons, again taking me back to Adirondack autumns of marvelous memory. A glass cylinder-facade behind the---WHAT's the name of the high-masted ship to the south of the South Street Seaport?---casts a reflecting bar of silver all across the river in my direction. Ascending pigeons really attract attention in the unobstructed sun. Some sign on the Brooklyn Bridge is a combat-medal bar of brightness halfway to the near tower. Cadman Plaza trees still perfectly green even now, though one stunted leaf-growth in front of 101 is almost brown and completely dried up. One or two people putter on the east-facing balconies of 75 Henry, but I'd put my binoculars back on the hall table, removed from easy reach. Still sun on my living-room wall at 8AM, so I'll pause to enter my dream and return here. Transfer dream to DREAMS:9/30/03 and return here at 8:05AM. Lots of busses on the FDR Drive, which I thought was a no-no. Lots of bright facades below, reminding me of the current blaze from the side of the Art Deco building on Cranberry and Henry at sunset, where it has an unobstructed view of the setting sun. Check that C.'s in 8:30-2:30 today for asking about my x-rays, my C-reactive protein, a possible testosterone check, and the availability of this year's flu shot, which John HAS already, leaving for China TODAY. Surprisingly hungry this early in the morning: maybe my body thinks I'm on some kind of TRIP. In another month, all this will be an hour EARLIER after we "fall back," giving more light in the relatively useless morning and taking it away from the afternoons, too early at 4:30 to be called evenings. Onto the balcony: they start taking down the scaffolding at 75 Henry!! Sun goes at 8:30AM (100 minutes!), sunlight down to top of lowest-floor window of St. George, my shadow just at roof-line! GOOD!
10/1/03: Notes from 9/30 Forbes "400 Top Richest" list:
1. Bill Gates (8 years on top) $46B
2. Warren Buffet (no electronics) $36B
3. Paul Allen (Microsoft/guru) $22B
4-8. Waldrop family(Wal-Mart)$102B)$20B
9. Ellison (Oracle) $18B
10. Dell (on list at age 26) $13B
10/9/03: 9:35AM: Very bored proofreading my journals from 1968 to 1979, but I'm about to get to interpolated pages in what I started calling NOTEBOOK in April, 1979. THIS day remarkable because it's the first day I can look out my bedroom window and see NO construction sheds around the sidewalks of 75 Henry Street, which they started taking down on 9/30 when I watched the sunrise for timings. A maintenance man is sweeping up the crud gathered under the wooden bases for the metal supports for the wooden scaffolding that obscured the views of whomever might be walking on the sidewalks. Disappointed with my memory: went to Tristan on Monday and Finta last night, and THOUGHT I wanted to see Ermione in their spring season, but look at my opera list and I saw it in 2000 in Santa Fe! And remembered ONLY some black dress and negative characters and the fact of NOT remembering anything about the music or the singing. But when I tried to refresh my memory by looking back to my travel notes, the ONLY thing I mentioned was the COMPLEXITY of the PLOT---NOTHING about how good it may have been or whether I might like to see it again or not! Then look at my program-folder for operas, which I haven't kept up to date for the past ten years, and THEN debate making a "MASTER OPERA" list which could be sorted by date, composer, opera, or place where I saw it, and get into a typical compulsive niggle over how to code the PLACE in only two characters: FIRST character: * for TV, U for US outside NYC, F for foreign, O for Old Met, N for New Met, C for City Center, S for State Theater, H for Carnegie Hall, Y for other New York City venues, M for miscellaneous not fitting into any of the above, like MR for radio hearing or MD for a record hearing; SECOND character for U and F being the city, and for Y and M being a code for the place, hoping that 26 will be enough. Not to mention my foreboding that some of the composers and places will be extremely difficult to reconstruct for many of the more obscure listings. Look through my LIFELIST and find that I have a Zauberflote as well as many Magic Flutes, figuring to go by Abduction since I'm not sure about---what is it?---Aufwartung. And the list is 11 pages, meaning that each of the four sorts will NOT be SHORT! And then I envision a "frequency code," blank signifying "1" for most, going up into the alphabet for more than 9 for Carmina and Tales of Hoffman. HOURS of work coming up, but what's my life for, anyway? Not to mention the temptation to add a field of SINGERS, so I could "collect" all the Nilssons and Sutherlands and Vickers---which then leads to thoughts of doing the same for DANCE, with Nureyev and Baryshnikov and Alonso and Bruhn----ENDLESS!!!! Now, at 10:06AM, decide to GO to the LIFELIST listing to see "what can be done with the starting document."
10/13/03: 11:25AM: Well, THAT did it! Yesterday and today my MONITOR faded to black: yesterday it came right back on, today it came on at the THIRD try, so I phoned Doctor Data and asked him to do it ALL for me: 1) Dell the best packager now, 2) if my WP51 and CINDEX are DOS-programs, the FOLDERS can just be copied to the new computer, 3) can get a 15" flat monitor for---$750? 4) what was LAST on my list is now FIRST, because I just can't afford to be WITHOUT a computer---what would I DO if I couldn't even PROOFREAD to occupy my current time, or update my Opera list, or write in my journals, or play FreeCell, or use the Internet. Got to get a replacement SOON, before this GOES and leaves me with NOTHING. At least I shut it off during breakfast to save whatever monitor-energy I have left before it shuts off PERMANENTLY! BAD!
10/22/03: 10:15PM: JUST finishing the third printout of ALLOPERAS: first by opera title, in date order, from wp51\li\allopera; then by place seen, in date order, from wp51\li\allop-pl; then by composer, in date order, from wp51\li\allop-cm. Took a couple of days, but the lists are WONDERFUL! AND the new ribbon is holding up VERY well! TODAY was great: Spartacus found Two Noble Kinsmen on Audience Extras for noon today, so I deposited, finally, my $2500 check from C. and went to the Public Theater to sit in the SAME ROW WITH JERRY C., since Ernie just joined Audience Extras. Good talk, and GOOD production of a problematic play, BUT it's THE play that NOW means that I've seen ALL of Shakespeare's plays AT LEAST TWICE---the time when I said I saw each of his plays AT LEAST ONCE was with King Henry VIII in 1979. Won't ever get to thrice, I guess, since I don't suppose Two Noble Kinsmen will be revived anytime soon. THEN followed my restaurant list to Jane's on Houston near Thompson, and had a GOOD bread-plate, a GREAT mushroom soup for $5, and a FABULOUS burger with INCREDIBLE fries for $12, so good that I brought home FRIES, and told Charles about the place when he finally called today to say he'd gotten ten mysterious words from me yesterday on his cell phone, and got something more today, but didn't want to talk past 7PM because Bill was "ringing the dinner bell" and he didn't want to be caught talking on the phone. VACATION plans going well, too: Paul said I'd leave for DC on 10/31, we'd leave on the auto-train (for which I reserved a seat with him through Amtrak for $150) for Orlando on 11/7, and then we'd pass by Laird's on Sunday, 11/9, so I phoned HIM and it's great with him, and then I'd visit Avi on Monday and Tuesday while Paul's visiting his lover in Coral Gables, and when I finally phoned Avi back, he said he was so incapacitated with a hernia that he wouldn't drive more than a half-hour, but was willing to pick me up on a highway outside Venice which Paul would have to take to get down to Fort Myers anyway---though I'm not quite sure how I'm going to get BACK---but maybe THERE I'll rent a car and go up to see Edward, since I'm about halfway there anyway?? Things may be falling together. Then I've gotten FIVE stock certificates from Helen's companies, maybe $100,000 at the most, but at least I HAVE it, just NOW that it's a YEAR since she's died! AND got two packages from Dell for my new computer, which may be delivered tomorrow, so maybe I can get THAT together before I leave. BUT there's no new indexing work, which is probably for the better, since I have enough to concern myself about, when I'm not involved in reducing my FreeCell average from the tip-top of 84.02% that I finally attained, and then reduced to 84.01+. Borrowed Arnold's monitor, and THREW OUT MY OLD ONE, I presume NOT prematurely. Arnold gave me an article about various ways of transferring files from one computer to another that I assume Owen knows all about. Look back at previous pages, and will note that C. said my "bones are thin" and I should take a THIRD 600mg calcium per day. He gave me my flu shot and I put in a blood test for C-reactive protein for the THIRD time, and for testosterone level. They GOTTA do it now. Haven't CUM since 10/3, 19 days ago, and haven't really FELT like it. Bizarre side-effect of STOPPING the Bupropion? AND noted with displeasure an ache at the BACK of my upper-rightmost molar, noted first as a ROTTEN smell when I sniffed the brush that I CLEANED back there with. REALLY debated whether to see Dr. D. BEFORE my trip, but resign myself to the fact that it might be LESS than a month, since I'm not leaving until the 31st and MUST be back by La Juive on 12/5. Staying longer (noting that the Assumption wine-tasting was CANCELLED because of the World Series) gets me a zakuski tasting with Carolyn on the 28th, the windows board meeting on the 29th, but not quite to the Chicago-people meeting on 11/1. Stuff (note cards) LOADING my desk and the coffee table, so I've GOT to get some of that away before the computer comes, possibly tomorrow---though I wish New Yorker would arrive, my check from 8/17 being cashed ONLY 10/10, so it SHOULD start FAIRLY soon, but disgusting Arnold said, "Oh, maybe it'll take THREE months." STILL haven't checked my subway-card usage.
10/25/03: 8:15AM: Went to bed at 11PM last night, exhausted from putting the computer together, as much as I did, and playing Spider Solitaire and looking at Pinball and Solitaire. Woke at 6:35AM to pee and decided to see where the sunrise was these days, since it's clear outside. Dress and put on coat and get out at 7:04 to balcony, pigeons flying around mostly at lower levels, a black town car polluting the air with gray exhaust, a silly runner IN the middle of a lane on Cadman Plaza North. Pre-dawn brightness is much more north than I would have thought, thinking this would be about the "no-show" time, and at 7:16AM it rises just to the right of the needle-like antenna, moving behind the wall of the building at 7:45AM for PRECISELY 30 minutes to direct sunlight, the sunlight coming down only to the fourth floor of the St. George, my shadow just at the level of the LOWEST of the four just-visible balconies on the north side of the St. George Tower. Look at my record from 9/30 and see that I had 100 minutes of sunlight, so extrapolating linearly, to when I won't be here, "zero minutes" will come roughly November 4, leaving 26 sunless days in November and 20 to the solstice in December, or 46 sunless days before the solstice and 46 days after, for 92 sunless days, or as close to three months or ¼ year as makes no difference, with, if I'm lucky, MAYBE as much as that for BOTH sunrise and sunset. Come up with "Manias" at 101 list until 9:15, when I stop to go down for the mail and have breakfast! Get LAST stock certificate and Helen's death certificate, saying she died at 89 when she was 87, and had no check by "coronar." Back to typing at 12:42PM after talking with John about his China trip (after Barcelona) and sorting through LOTS of paperwork that had piled up. Here's my "Manias" list: Move 12/15/02-3/28/03, Village Playwrights "goose" from me 3/9-4/28, Pope's dying 3/10-3/26, proofing journals 8/2-10/19, stamps 3/26-7/26, Helen's legacy 3/1-10/25, index 7/15-9/29, Paul C. 5/4-8, buy air conditioner 5/16-7/3, SWISSALS trip 5/17-6/9, SPAIN trip 6/16-27, videos, blackout 8/14, NOTEBOOK:8/24/03 do-list, and new-computer trauma started 10/13, which I'd best fill out COMPCHRO [COMPCHRO:10/25/03] while I'm thinking about it. Threw out the old monitor as being useless, but maybe Owen can tell me what to do about disposing of my old computer usefully. Apartment is just wonderful: enjoying views, taking the trash only down the hallways, putting bulk junk into the lobby-basement door, and the remodeling of apartment 19A, or whatever, seems to be done so there's no longer banging all day. Left word for Sol S. to call about possible tickets for me and Spartacus for the Fame that he co-wrote and is now on 42nd Street. Finishing up with the restaurant list, a wonderful Jane for hamburger and fries on Wednesday after a good---hey, I DID write about this on the previous page!
10/27/03: 9:45AM: WONDERFUL Actualism session this morning puts everything into perspective: 1) Don't HAVE to do anything with new computer; when I do it, I'll DO it, after I get back from Florida. 2) Get a haircut today so I can go to the Met tomorrow, Dahesh Wednesday, Thursday pre-trip everything, and Friday leave. 3) Talk to Arnold or travel agent about getting a TOUR back from Florida to NYC, stopping off at, say, Williamsburg and Mammoth Cave, or other touristic sights I may have missed on previous trips. 4) Don't NEED my ATM card if it never comes: a) take lots of cash, say $1000; b) take a couple checks; c) rely on credit cards! 4) Don't worry about having enough film: I can actually BUY film on the way if I want to, don't HAVE to get "the best possible price" at B&H. 5) Anything ELSE I need I can BUY, since I'll be in the USA and don't have to worry about language or availability. Pack very lightly, relying on Paul's for laundry in the middle, and it'll be WARM for most of the trip. Add 11) Check all pills to my "Before Trip" list, having added seeing the Met Museum on Tuesday and the Dahesh on Wednesday, and I have a taste of THIS IS WHAT THE REST OF MY LIFE WILL BE LIKE. If I get work, I'll do it, but I can play ALL THE COMPUTER GAMES I WANT: this is MY relaxation: I don't drink, go to bars, read, travel like Fred; THIS IS ME NOW!!!
10/30/03: 10:45AM: From above, 1) I DID do the Met, Dahesh, and today's pre-trip stuff, 2) GOT the ATM card, 3) found I needed glucosamine and bought it and did most of the stuff on my "Before Trip" list from COMPCHRO-32. Made a "Thu" list: 1) address/phone list, 2) clip toenails, 3) trim beard, 4) wash dishes, 5) update diary, 6) pack, 7) last Juno, 8) call Visa, bill amount?, 9) set up TV, 10) Spartacus, exchange New Yorkers, 11) C., blood results?, 12) gym?, 13) pay rent, 14) return stamp catalogs; and a "Fri" list: 1) shower, 2) phone message, 3) computers off, 4) water plants and set up for Bob L. Charles called that we HAVE an AOL tower appointment at 3:30, meet at 3:20 at table. Called Visa for balance, and at over $3900 I have to pay CADMAN with a SCHWAB ONE check! 1:15PM: Feeling so good I'm just walking around with a SMILE on my face! The Cadman bill came under the door, so I made out the check and phoned Arnold to go over, and he said he just checked his bloodwork with C., and he's in from 11AM today, rather than the 2PM I had on my old list, so I phoned for my results and told Donna to tell him to call me back at 1:30, because he wouldn't leave the results on my machine "since anyone could listen to it." Mail's not in yet, but pick up a November, 2003, National Geographic to add to my reading list for the trip, get the Halloween issue of New Yorker from Arnold, give him the rest of my baked pie, take the stamp catalogs back to the library, and come here to finish this off, happy that my timing has "prevented" me from going to the gym today. SO sorry! The Met on Tuesday was exhausting: to coat-check at 10AM, then to 1) Roy Lichtenstein on the roof from 10:05-10:17, GLORIOUS colors in Central Park, 2) American Indian Art (to learn about a tree octopus!) 10:20-10:50, 3) Italian manuscript painting (St. Bartholomew flayed, his skin tied around his neck, then decapitated) 10:52-11:08, 4) Philip Guston (Crumb-y) 11:14-11:20, 5) Daguerreotypes 1939-1855 11:22-12, 6) Romanticism 12:01-12:25, tiring, going through to the Private Passion 12:25-12:32 and 7) El Greco 12:39-12:55, exhausted, pleased that the NEW Calendar has NO new shows, and the illustrations are so comprehensive of what I've seen I guess I've determined to visit at least once every two months and collect ALL the Calendars in a series finally. Across to Goethe House for "Information and Apocalypse" by Michael Najjar until 1:23, then back to Brooklyn for Liberty Travel and few tours from Florida from 2:19-2:45, get my Proscar refill for $94.49 at Rite Aid (which, it occurs to me now, PROHIBITS me from getting a refund and using the following five "sticking points" I listed for HIP: 1) Want to MAKE busywork? 2) Want to cheat us? 3) Want us not to travel? 4) Want to make HIP look petty? 5) Want to annoy us? when I ask for my reimbursement since they "don't handle vacation prescriptions") to 2:52, and deposit my $675 check and withdraw $500 in cash for my trip at HSBC, and home to a VERY hungry lunch. Carolyn stops by, leaves stuff that she has to come tonight to pick up, and we go to De Ribes Restaurant for cold zakuski and pelmeni and semi-sweet wine from 5:30-6:30, and I'm home tired. The Dahesh came Wednesday after A-training to Ruby et Violette for a too-sweet cookie and too-dark brownie that gave me stomach upset, took from 1PM to 2PM, and then a LONG wait for a BMT back to search three places for glucosamine, again getting back to a hungry lunch. Look through maps today to find that the Y.s’ Wittmen is JUST across the narrowest part of Chesapeake Bay from Paul's North Beach, and complete my address list by adding Edward's phone number, and E. and W.'s address and phone, in case we DO get down to the Keys. Checked Juno and Rita answered my e-mail saying the dates were OK, I called HIP to get a new dermatology appointment in December, and talked to Mildred about a number of places to sightsee in DC. Took map pages from my atlas, have stuff piled all over to pack, and now at 1:55PM I'm hungry AGAIN for lunch, having to go right off to meet Charles for the AOL tower apartments, and I've updated and put away my do-in-NYC stack with a 12/6 deadline for the next Metropolitan Museum visit. C. HASN'T called back by now! Down to last five items on today's do-list, and actually looking forward to proofreading journals to fill in last times. TRAVEL:FLAPAUL
12/4/03: 3:30PM: Type note from the week before the trip: PROPHETIC: Do I TAPE or WATCH 8-10PM String Theory, and I decide to TAPE it because phone might ring, and Owen CALLS 8-8:10PM! FINALLY have all the New York Times read, all the unpacking done, souvenirs put away, phone calls caught up with, and now at 7:50PM am finally ready to proofread the trip journal, starting with page 2, after putting notes on the FRONT of the stuff from AlphaSmart, and having 1) put out stacks of newspapers and magazines, 2) watered plants, 3) deposited check and cash to be able to pay rent bill, 4) sorted out ToDo stacks of a) glucosamine pricing and b) investment material to review, 5) made plans for Christmas Eve and Christmas with Vicki, checked both months' Visa bills, bought groceries, gone to see Carolyn, or Change, decided to go to the Met Museum tomorrow before the opera, whether with or without Charles, whom I now call to leave word about it, 6) played Spider almost to displeasure with the randomness of the deal-out, 7) and lots of other things.
12/8/03: 9:15AM: Now that the FLAPAUL trip is about caught up with (just have to transcribe the summary notes to the calendar pages, and do the final trip-list entry), I'd checked that I have enough Christmas cards to send to overseas and Rita, so I can do the year-sheet now, but I want to include the number of jobs I've had each year: get out Indexed-book list to (but later get out the IRS cumulative sheet and find I'd DONE most of them already) find 1973=6, 1974=8, 1975=6, 1976=3, 1977=22, 1978=39, 1979=46, 1980=24, 1981=15, 1982=59, 1983=33, 1984=42, 1985=43, 1986=51, 1987=22, 1988=32, 1989=35, 1990=34, 1991=44, 1992=36, 1993=45, 1994=55, 1995=52, 1996=46, 1997=42, 1998=50, 1999=34, 2000=29, 2001=30, 2002=26, 2003=18. So the highest was 1982 with 59, probably at the time I was training people and giving THEM lots of work, too. But 1998 jumped to a high with 50, then down to this year's 18. Noted that I took Viagra #9 at 11:25PM 12/4/03, and note that I have 4 left from C.'s prescription of 5, which should be "discarded 7/22/03." Sure! Then I checked out Volumes 1 and 2 of Scott's 2003 Stamp Catalog on Saturday, eager to get to stamps. Still have piles to look at on my table: a) glucosamine pricing, b) investment material to find how to get $7000 by 12/15 mailings, c) HDTV and other video-get clippings, d) Christmas cards to be sent out after writing year-page, e) journals (up to 6 volumes now that John's brought me ALL that he's done so far, and he'll need new supplies next month) to proofread, and f) new computer to hook up, still sitting on the living-room table. Also decide I want to talk to a) Bill P., b) Bob L., c) Beverly, d) kid-ridden-couple in Apartment H (?), e) Spartacus, and f) Mildred about 101 Clark St. Board with (1) manager-supervisor duties, (2) privatization information. Then I can RELAX into a) stamps, b) videos from Marty, c) computer hookup (which reminds me I want to (1) check Juno, (2) check my Schwab website to see if I can sell things cheaply, (3) check the couple of stock-evaluation websites given me by Denny to see if they'll check MY portfolio for free), and FINALLY d) seeing how to get more service from my cable box without paying more for "watch X while recording Y," at least. Then I STILL have to 1) check on "early versus late dining" on the Pacific cruise with Ken, 2) set up my next Metropolitan Museum see-date, 3) set up my 2004 calendar-book, 4) get started on typing the DATEBOOK from 2003, 5) order film for my Malta trip. Printing out this page in duplicate should give me a LONG to-do list for the rest of 2003 and well into 2004. Also have to go to the gym today to make up for my laziness yesterday (but I DID shower after the hot tub on Saturday, which excuses a bit of it), wash dishes, file the FLAPAUL trip away in the TRAVEL (NEWER) folder, and eventually phone Owen to set up SOME kind of date to get my computer hookup started. And now at 10AM I SHOULD get down to breakfast, still woefully overweight (highest of 207#) from the overeating on the trip, worried about what my weight will be at my appointment with C. on Friday, when I'll find my C-reactive protein number and have to figure what THAT means, though I probably won't take testosterone no matter WHAT my current reading is. At least I'm finished typing up THIS awful page!!
12/13/03: 1:48PM: Whittled down the eventually 34 items on the previous page to 11, and will wait for Monday to do things for the Malta trip, and next will start transcribing the 2003 DATEBOOK. Hoped this would be a page near the bottom so that I could say little and print out the page to clear the printer of Stephanie's year-end Christmas letter, the last to be mailed out of the 38 that I've done so far this year, happy to be finished with THAT after I finally finished with the trip stuff, except for sorting out any slides from the two boxes that I got back already, with a dynamite shot of San Sebastian from the Spain trip at the start of the first box. The fan on this computer started sounding stertorous last night, but it's better now, probably helped by the cold air from the window, and I just put on the two heaters that I'd turned off after the snowstorm last week and the 58° weather a few days early this week. But I've got to at least PHONE Owen to start the ball rolling on getting my new computer going for something besides Spider. Still to get groceries today, pick up my Proscar prescription and 9 tapes at the rate of 6 for $7.60, which I sold to Spartacus yesterday at his request, getting Spam spread on Leeds matzoh in return, with lots of watery pulpless non-concentrate orange juice. Wonderfully clear outside, sun reflecting off third floor from top of the next building, and it'll start elevating, and reflecting from lower, in just ONE WEEK to the longest night of the year. ENOUGH of this!
12/25/03: 7:40PM: Finally finished with all the things on my list EXCEPT 1) proofreading the journals (waiting for my desk to be cleared off), 2) shopping for HDTV, which I figure will wait until after a few vacations for the prices to come down even more, and 3) connecting the computer: Owen finally DID call, but then his kid got sick and he had to stay home with him, and he hasn't come over YET, so I just keep playing Spider and hoping the old machine doesn't conk out. Today got frustrated getting two plays from Audience Extras and paying my TDF bill online, but it took about three hours! Hope the NEW machine will make things better, but I don't see how. Even tried "fixing" the VCRs, but the left GO is STILL no good and I STILL can't get the remote-taping device to work in ANY WAY. MOST frustrating. But cleared up ALL the stuff I wanted to do with the first two volumes of Scott's 2003 catalog, and will get the NEXT two volumes tomorrow (if the library's open), ahead of Saturday's due date. Now finished typing at 7:45 to watch Hugh Jackman's Oklahoma! on "live" TV, recording it in case it's worth keeping, having Il Trovatore to watch to pass meals in front of. About time to get started worrying about the Malta trip! It IS in just 17 days! And then 15 days away and 30 days here and MORE days in the South Pacific!
12/29/03: 9:50AM: Nothing recorded THEN, but now, on Friday, 1/9/04, I record that I took Viagra #10 after the 101 Clark Street Christmas party on 12/17, having eaten rather much food from 7:45-8:45, taking it at 9:55 and watching TV movies but not getting terribly excited, and finally cum with no great feeling by 1:23AM.