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2011 2 of 8

TUESDAY, 2/1/11: Pee at 3:23AM and at 7:02AM and type ANOTHER incredible dream, see DREAMS:2/1/11. Back to bed at 7:59AM and up at 8:36, with two thoughts: be more social by having MANY slide-shows here, and DO try to start Cadman Philatelists' Group. Talk to NY Life to 8:45AM, pleased that THEY will call ME when they get my enrollment request and give me my needed numbers for my Schwab Distribution Request form. Call Mildred to tell her so, and she ends up telling me about her trip to Point Barrow in the 80s and some of her early sexual experiences that she hasn't told me about yet. We talk to 9:12, when I have breakfast while watching a GREAT US Men's Skating Championship, nice without commercials. Leave a note under Toba's door about the Cadman Philatelists' Group. Call Spartacus to make sure he has recorded it and will watch it, and again we quibble about "skating" not including "ice dancing" in his book, and he says Toba won't be replaced as President until after the March elections. He got us tickets for the Academy Awards programs at the Lighthouse Theater on 2/19. Piri calls about giving me a free ticket to a new Gurney play tonight, and I reluctantly agree to go, sorry that I can't see the Tuesday Evening Cuba slides. Leave word with Rita about my Facebook-usage education and catch this up-to-date, leaving January truly behind, by 12:02PM. Back to Datebook entries to 12:50PM, when I leave to get to Ruth's Chris before Mildred at 1:30, and we both find the gumbo and steaks and spinach and dessert cheesecake so good that we even think of going back when it appears Restaurant Week may be extended another three weeks. Back at 3:30, talk to Rita about Facebook 3:45-4, and enter datebook entries through 7/13/10 to 5:25PM. Then play Taipei, as a reward, 5:25-6:05PM, when I leave for 59 E.59th, by AWFUL mistake by walking in my BOOTS to the BMT line, which SITS and SITS and SITS between stations so that I get off at 5th Avenue at 7PM and RUSH to the play, where I COUGH through the first half of the not-that-great "Black Tie," where Gurney lets his characters go on JUST TOO LONG about trivia and outdated "manners." Offer to pay for Piri's TDF ticket, she says I can pay what I'd like, so I give her $5, which I think is what it cost her. I get home to find I've developed a blood blister in the center of the bottom of my left foot from my foot flopping around in the loose-fitting-with-thick-socks Wellingtons, so I'm limping for a few days. And I didn't even NEED the high-topped Wellingtons in mostly clear-of-snow Manhattan. Play Solitaire 9:40-10:30PM. Then watch "Love Happens" with the always-beautiful and intelligent Aaron Eckhart, having good chemistry with Jennifer Aniston, and get to bed at 1:20AM.

WEDNESDAY, 2/2/11: Pee at 7:37 and 7:42AM and get up at 10AM! I call Spartacus to say that I cancelled Sharon this evening because I decided I wanted to see "the best Czech film ever" at 6PM, and he says he can get me another ticket to see "Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore," with Olympia Dukakis, so I call the dermatologist and postpone my meeting with HIM until next week. Have a quick breakfast after playing Spider 10:30-11:10AM, OK to 51.45228 to 672 up after 3 wins, a new high GOOD. Out to meet Spartacus at 1:03PM, concerned when he doesn't show up until 1:10, telling him I'll have to find out where the PLAY is before I agree to meet him, in case he NEVER shows up! The play is much more profound and poetic than I remember from 12/31/63 with Tallulah Bankhead and Tab Hunter, and I don't think Tab showed full-frontal nudity, as the obliging Darren Pettie did here, and Olympia Dukakis is quite wonderful, so that I wonder why the review Spartacus read me from the Times the next day didn't praise her that much. Out at 4:30 and I'm hungry, so we stop at a Cuban Restaurant down the block on 46th where I have a filling toasted ham-and-cheese sandwich with a tasty Snapple peach tea, and then take the subway two stops to Lincoln Center where I pay $8 for my ticket for "Marketa Lazarova." It's just awful: ponderous narration that doesn't say nearly enough, subtitles that have no connection with previous episodes, faces that run into each other so that Spartacus, who slept noisily through most of the first part, said the only one he could identify was Adam, the one-armed. Just awful! Walk over to Grand Canyon, making the rubbed-raw spot on top of my second toe on my left foot in the ill-fitting shoes in my rubbers even worse, for a decent fish and chips with an almost cherry-less cherry pie, but a bargain for $15 including tip, getting out at 10:15PM, noting the waiter saying the kitchen closes at 10:30. Home to watch the DVD from Netflix: "Red," which turned out to stand for "retired, extremely dangerous," with an amusing Bruce Willis, Mary Louise Parker, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren at ease with a machine gun. Bed at 1:35AM.

THURSDAY, 2/3/11: Pee at 4:12; 7:22, noting the first of DREAMS:2/3/11; 8:45, noting the second dream; 9:27; and 9:50, having gotten up at 9:48AM, still tired. Have breakfast and brush my teeth before changing my flannel shirt and getting out to DiMatteo at 10:55, called in at 11 to be told I'm NOT getting teeth in my bridge, only finding that the bridge clicks in and out satisfactorily, and she molds the wax in the tooth spaces to the shape of my teeth, saying that if I'm lucky I'll get the teeth on the 16th, my next appointment, provided another snowstorm doesn't delay delivery from the dental workshop. Out at 11:33, neglect calling Chin to check on my cardio results, and get a call from Charles telling me that the DB Bistro reservation is for 2PM, not the 1:30 I have in my calendar. Spartacus calls to see if I want to join him at The Post House, since his partner is stranded in Connecticut, and when I tell him I'm going to DB Bistro, he asks if he can join. I say he'll have to call Mildred to check and he hangs up in instant anger, but calls me back as I'm calling HIM back to say his anger is unmerited, and he essentially apologizes and says he'll call her. But when I call her to re-check the time, he hasn't called because she was on the phone, and when I call HIM back, he's already left for a solo lunch at The Post House. DB Bistro is crowded and noisy as I join them late at 2:05, again because the subway was very slow, and the yellow pea soup confuses Mildred, who thinks it should always be green, and the "iron steak" is almost pre-digested in its tenderness, and the desserts are the best: Mildred having a chocolate and coconut cake, Charles an orangy custardy mousse, and I a tasty cheese course with tiny pieces of Stilton and Brie, with glazed nuts in one cup and marinated raisins and fruit in another cup. Home for mail, the TV Guide sudoku taking a long time, and do more transcribing, maybe, before vacationing with Spider 7:05-10PM, too much, to 51.45115 to 672 up after 4 wins. Watch two hours of TV on Egypt and get to bed at 12:20AM.

FRIDAY, 2/4/11: Pee at 5:33AM. Up at 5:52 to switch TV recordings, and pee again at 6:04. 7:10 up for j/o. 8:27AM: Sit at my computer and type THE MOMENT. Watch "Repo Men" with a sexy Jude Law during breakfast, then finish transcribing the 2010 calendar at last. At 12:30 decide I MUST go to the gym, since it's been FIVE days now, even though I'm almost dizzy with hunger. Get through the gym by 2PM and get to Clark's Corner for a delicious cheeseburger and a pink lemonade while watching the staff clear away three feet of snow from the sidewalks outside. Play Spider 2:50-3:40PM OK to 51.45299 to 673 up after 3 wins, for another new highest. Then dress in my jacket for Benoit after Sharon, and get out to her at 4:15PM, deciding to wear my regular shoes because both the Wellingtons and the rubber-shoe combination kill my feet. Leave her at 5:15 and make PERFECT subway time: dash down the stairs to jump into the departing train at Clark Street, and the BMT comes quickly at my 42nd Street transfer, so I get to Benoit at 5:50, after stopping in "All About Licorice" to find they want $3.75 for a quarter-pound of the good soft Australian licorice. Pee and see Mildred coming in, and we have good appetizers: she likes her duck breast and duck confit frisée salad, while my Comté cheese souflée is fabulously light in texture and taste. My chicken is filling and just OK, while her lamb with its intense sauce is better. Her Opera cake is OK, while my praline dessert has more filling than container. It gets crowded and noisy by the time we leave at 7:40PM. I get home to watch "Legion" on my computer from Netflix, not bad, not great, and then a vivid "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work," and she DOES look pretty good for 75! Bed at 12:05AM, tired.

THE MOMENT 2/4/11

At 7:10AM this morning I decided, for no particular reason, that I wanted to get up and j/o. Did that until 7:50, very good feeling, absolutely no ejaculate, trying to accept it as moving to a new level of acceptance, even though I really REALLY don't like it. Then remove the porn DVD and put in what I recorded last night: "Repo Men," and start watching it. Jude Law has pumped himself up pleasantly for this 2010 movie, and Forest Whittaker is an adequate foil, and I just decide to watch it, knowing that the only obligation I have today is to go to the gym, see Sharon, and meet Mildred at Benoit as close to 6PM as the subway system will allow. Put the movie on pause, and think to type THE MOMENT. In a sense it started before I got up this morning. Noted the clock at 6:45AM when I started Actualism because my mind was going in the same old circles and I wasn't ready to get up yet. Got the merest beginnings started, and found that my mind was simply overloaded: nothing coherent was moving through my neural circuits. I "looked" at this situation, considering it a development of "something new," and vaguely fantasized about an old age in which medical marijuana is acceptable for intractable arthritic pain, and I swim through my days in a pleasant, pain-accepting, not-really-concerned, high. Then the thought floated through that I hadn't jerked off in a while, and today would be a good day for it since I'm DUE for the gym and don't have anything pressing until this afternoon. So I get up and just DO it---ha, ha, do ME---and then put "Repo Men" on pause and start typing this, taking care to note that I DID do an Actualism session, no matter how abbreviated---it still took over 20 minutes---and note that I jerked off, and then sat down to type this. Now at 8:34AM I've captured THE MOMENT, so I can dress, make breakfast, and settle in for the rest of "Repo Men" before starting my day in a RATIONAL way.

SHARON B. 165 2/4/11

Get there early at 4:20PM in case she's not got a prior client, but her door's closed so I assume she's occupied. But then she comes out on the dot of 4:30 to invite me in, so she WASN'T busy. I read the dreams through while waiting for her and was embarrassed by their "floridity." Couldn't possibly read them all through, so I noted highlights, expressed my discomfort with them, though I insisted that I thought it was a good idea at the time to record as many of the details as I could remember, hoping to reflect inner turmoil that I'm reluctant to bring out explicitly, though she did make some comment like "adhering to the details sometimes covers up the underlying emotion." The word that didn't come up in the transcriptions was "control," which of course I had in neither dream, and was obviously part of my discomfort, even in the stated atmospheres of supportive, even loving, people. Then went into the past week: being greatly caught up, rationalizing my not remembering details from the movies transcribed from the 2010 Calendar into my lifelists as "being pleasant and serving a purpose, whether to just pass time, or from a point of curiosity or interest" IN THE MOMENT, almost like eating a meal, which serves its momentary purpose so that it ISN'T THAT IMPORTANT that I remember them or not. Of course, SOME images and incidents stick in my mind, and that differentiates GREAT movies from merely WATCHABLE movies. Got to Tris's "I didn't know you were away" to categorize my "busyness" over the past few months, which now, with "getting caught up," can segue into true present-time accomplishment, like working on my taxes before they're due, finally getting to Marj's notes from September, and more attention to the website, remarking about how my problems with Facebook (Sharon's not on it) will come to my profit when I start publicizing my website to my "friends." Re-telling Mildred's scoffing at my "investing my time in my immortality," and Sharon noting that, even though her pills are making her easier to be with, she still manages to get in some zingers. I narrated Mildred's dissolving into laughter after scooting along the banquette at DB Bistro, and though I said I thought her therapist might also be helping, Sharon said it was most probably due ONLY to the pills. I talked about my felt need for more socializing: suggesting a Philatelists' Group for Cadman, looking forward to re-meeting Doug, maybe even going out to visit him, maybe going this year for another week in Martha's Vineyard, maybe even catching a cheap flight to Milan to satisfy Edgardo's frequent requests for my visit. But I didn't get any feeling of socialization from Facebook, merely "duties" to be performed. I paused a number of times, feeling slightly awkward, and then at 5:13PM I said I guessed I could leave, but the clock outside said precisely 5:15, as it had said precisely 4:30 when she called me in, so it was a full session.

SATURDAY, 2/5/11: Pee at 4:40. At 7:34 I pee, get the Times, and type DREAMS:2/5/11. Start Actualism, doze, look at clock: 9:07! I next look at clock at 9:52 and get up at 9:58. Breakfast with the Book Review section, get to 25 words on the 3-D grid by 11:30, and finish the puzzle about 1PM. File away the 2010 lifelists and start catching up with the journal. At 2:20PM I type: My tooth gel just about finished with its hour, getting to the tenth application, hoping, with Dr. DiMatteo, that it's not THAT which is causing the slight pitting of the surface of my central upper incisor. There are slightly more than ten applications left, which will take one MORE pile off my desk that's been there over a year. Look out at the mist-changing-to-rain-changing-to-snow fogginess outside, the winter continuing severe but beautiful to watch from my aerie. Finish catching up at 3:45, Spartacus calling to say Ebert might repeat on Channel 21, and we might go to "Drowsy Chaperone" tomorrow matinee, and now I'm hungry for lunch! Printed seven pages today! Put on television to watch something with lunch, but the picture is FROZEN on the set! Pull the plug, and get some kind of warning message saying "No Control CARD." Phone Time-Warner and she first asks how long this has been going on, and I tell her about the channels that have been blacked out for the past few days. Then it's reloaded and seems to be working OK, even to the channels that had been black. I watch it for a few minutes and AGAIN it freezes on the picture. Try pulling the plug and call Time-Warner back, and when the message STILL appears, and he says I need a new cable box which will be delivered Monday between 11 and 2. Call Spartacus to see if he has "The Informant!" and he says he's going to Bob's and will deliver that, more "30 Rock," (due back Thursday) and other things [now at 6:20PM he says he's bringing two James Franco movies, "Camille" and something like "Mad Max," and can't tape "Titanic II" for me because Sunday at 9PM is a busy time for him]. Watch a relatively boring Bill Maher, and try TV again and the picture is WORKING again. Find an early-Sunday broadcast of "The Informant!" and set up for that, thinking it MAY not freeze. NOW I can treat myself to more Spider at 6:22PM! Play till 7:30, when Spartacus enters to watch an episode of "Episodes" with me, breaking up over Matt LeBlanc's vomiting on the female writer's shoulder, and resume at 8:15-8:40, good, to 51.45618 to 675 up after 3 wins, anaother highest. Then have dinner while watching "Fingers at the Window," an odd, and very amateurish, MGM B movie with Lew Ayres as an innocent actor, Laraine Day as an entirely stupid woman, and Basil Rathbone as the villain. Try to watch "The Informant!," but it broke up during the credits when I tried it on my Panasonic, worked well until about ten minutes in and then FROZE on my Dell desktop, and then refused to even read in. Found that my cable box seemed to be working, and actually recorded it early Sunday morning! Ended by watching two hours of the American version of "Skins," with improbable young teens in unbelievable relationships with unconvincing acting. Bed at 12:54AM.

SUNDAY, 2/6/11: Make a note to change my bedroom lightbulb AGAIN. Pee at 5:46AM and type DREAMS:2/6/11, and turn off the bedroom radiator: it's just too hot in the bedroom! Get up at 6:48AM to write TERABYTE MEGALOMANIA:2/6/11. Then stay up, having breakfast with the Times, checking that "The Informant!" seems to have taped and, with hope, set up for "Titanic II" tonight at 9PM. Can get "Emma" from Spartacus (and "Spartacus" from Emma?). Water plants, tear out an article to make sure I watch "Jeopardy" played against IBM's Watson, and decide to start back on proofing Marj's notes at 9:30AM. When I get to the laptop, I find that I have to go to the projector-case in the living room closet to get the power wire for the laptop! Talk to Ken, accepting his free ticket to a recital at Carnegie Hall at 2PM on April 3, and go through a page and a half of notes from 9:50-10:45, momentarily panicking when the only Morocco files on the flashdrive are my original to Marj and Marj's original to me: did I lose my hours of working on the first 22 pages? But there's a new kind of sidebar on my file, listing an "Automatic save" file, which DOES contain my previous work, and when I finish talking with Marj my laptop screen has not only gone black, but the computer has SHUT OFF, which it had probably done before, leaving only the "Automatic save" file AGAIN. Spartacus has had little sleep and doesn't want to go to the play, but I convince him to have a two-hour nap just before 11AM, and he asks me to call him at 1PM. Call Marj on the dot of 11, she's in a good mood, we talk about past adventures and psychologies to 11:57, when we start talking about "the page and a half," which she appreciates, and we're BOTH very rusty, though laughing about it, from our last session on 11/12/10! We finish at 12:43PM, quite exhausted from our efforts. I phone Spartacus at 1PM and he moans that he only got about 20 minutes' sleep before being wakened by the phone. We agree to meet at the Boro Hall station at 2PM. I have shrimp lunch and get out at 1:35 to CVS to pick up simvastatin ready from 2/2, which was the prescription they phoned to say was waiting for me on Saturday, though the clerk said the call was to renew a prescription for tamsulosin on 2/23, which doesn't make sense to me, telling her that this has never happened before, but agreeing to put in the request for tamsulosin for 2/23, when I might need it again. Also pick up ten cans of tuna in oil for $5, a great bargain Spartacus told me about for which I give him, as a reward, a free can for him to try. He's waiting when we get to the station, and the R-train is working again so we just take one train to 9th Street, getting to the box office to find that it's full, but we're third and fourth on the waiting list, so I go into a classroom to read until 2:55, when we're out to get the last two seats for "Drowsy Chaperone," which I don't care for very much, though I'm impressed by the fact that OUR "man-in-chair" played the part in a national tour of the Broadway play. I actually thought there WAS a 1928 play of that name, but Wikipedia on Monday told me that wasn't so, and even described "man-in-chair" as AGORAPHOBIC, which I hadn't gotten, making more sense of his triumphant apartment-leaving in one of the climaxes. I thought that Spartacus and many in the audience "force-laughed" their way through the play, though he insisted that he really enjoyed it---for the second time. Out at 5:15 and he has to remind me that I wanted to have dinner at Industria Argentina, so we change at the stair-laden Atlantic-Pacific station for the 7th Avenue subway, rerouted on the central platform, and get out at Chambers to walk east to the open-until-7PM-on-Sunday Lots Less store to find they don't have licorice, though Spartacus buys other things anyway. Then back to Industria Argentina, which disappoints because they've changed the Restaurant Week menu and no longer offer the great lentil stew and lamb cube which I had the week before. We get (by mistake for my order of beef) corn empanadas which are mediocre with my corn soup, also not very good, and his fish sausage, which isn't bad, and his rib eye is large and tough and tasty, while my sweetbreads are OK, but not worth going back for. I have a bit of his creampuff-shaped "Napoleon" and we leave at 7:35PM. I find that my cable box is still working, recording "Titanic II," and I watch "Audition" on Netflix, a gruesome tale of a man terrorized by a psychotic young Japanese would-be bride, and continue with "Horsemen," with an old, cranky Dennis Quaid terrorized by a psychotic young Japanese would-be member of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Two VERY ugly, graphic, bloody, gruesome films. Bed at 12:25AM.

TERABYTE MEGALOMANIA 2/6/11

5:53AM: Visions of terabytes of my photos, words, ideas, and megalomania. Networks of thousands of my friends, and friends of friends [yea, unto the sixth degree of connection] on Facebook. Thousands of photos of my places on Most Traveled People. Distribution of zolnerzone.us webwide. And I just checked Google to make sure zolnerzone.us is still coming up. Can't wait to polish off many of the 13 piles on my coffee table to start expanding my website-reference universe: Selecting hundreds of photos NOW to send to Most Traveled People. Starting on my REORGCHR process to exchange travel brochures displayed on shelves with books currently hidden behind mirrors in my living room, with the accompanying lists of double-shelved travel brochures available on lists taped to the insides of the mirrors. Taking digital photos of each country's brochures to make thousands of connections between my website and the places I've visited. Selecting dozens of the best photos so that each entry in TRAVEL has its own gallery with appropriate titles for webcrawlers to assimilate. Incorporating (certainly in the far future) appropriate images from my videotapes and my DVDs for thousands of added connections. Tempted AT THIS MOMENT [7:15AM] to point my digital camera out my window to capture the dozens of pigeons wheeling in and out of the dawning sunlight of the Brooklyn Heights morning, with the glittering sunrise reflections off Manhattan skyscrapers, including the two cranes atop the 50+ floors of 1 World Trade Center, and the wrinkled-aluminum-foil surface of Frank Gehry's 8 Spruce Street. But I think I've had my megalomaniacal orgasm, have depleted my urge to capture my mental moment, and will dress and have breakfast while reading the early-delivered New York Times.

MONDAY, 2/7/11: Up at 8:39AM, not having had to pee for 8:14!! Call HIP at 8:40AM, told to hold to 8:41, then to Chin's office to be told to hold at 8:44, and she returns at 8:47 to say he's still with a patient, so can he call me back. I take the phone in while I shit, and he phones at 9:06 to tell me my ejection fraction is 60, which I log with happiness in MEDICAL:2/7/11. Phone Mildred to pass on the good news, and she dumps all over it, but I've independently decided that STAYING OFF ALCOHOL IS A GOOD THING, though I might allow myself a SIP of wines that friends have. Type DREAMS:2/7/11, and then catch up with this to 10:11AM, ready to clean up for Time-Warner's cable box arrival between 11AM and 2PM today. Do chores and have breakfast until he calls at 1:40, saying he'll be here in 10-15 minutes, then calls again at 2:07 to ask for my apartment number, says he'll be here shortly, and arrives at 2:10, with a shiny new little black box, for which he says there is no new remote, and I check that all the channels are on, and he leaves at 2:25. I guess New York Life calls today to give me the Account Number and Institution Name, Address, and Phone Number, saying I won't need the ABA Number or Name of Plan. Most of the rest of the day was occupied by watching James Franco in "Howl" twice, once with commentary, and then a number of extras running over an hour, and at 8PM I watched a maudlin "Blossoms in the Dust" with Greer Garson getting "illegitimate" removed from the worlds' birth certificates. Completed the day in front of the television by watching the DVD of "The Ghost Writer" that Spartacus got from Netflix that he insisted I watch before he did, while he was watching "Howl." TV day. Bed 1:35AM.

TUESDAY, 2/8/11: Pee 7:38AM, and up at 8:51. Watch three episodes of "30 Rock" and three episodes of "Outsourced" while having breakfast, and then tackle phoning Schwab to find I don't need the ABA Number or Name of Plan, but that I'd have to withdraw my year's minimum withdrawal before I can roll over the $100,000, so I have to sell even more stock. Call to sell the stock, and the bond seller says he'll have to check the latest quotes and call me back in an hour or two. I say I have to go out, and he says he'll call back about 3PM. I go to the gym at 12:30 and get back for lunch and he phones at 3:30 to say everything's been sold. I have a late lunch and do whatever I do. Look at Marj's notes 7:25-9:03PM, when I watch "The Wolfman" from 2010 with Benicio Del Toro, recording it, but AGAIN the unit "writes" to 100%, then freezes, and when I switch to VHS from DVD it ERASES (or doesn't write) the ENTIRE program! So I can't watch the first 3 minutes. Then watch the DVD of the cheap "Titanic II," skimming through much of it, and very disappointed when the critical disaster scenes are almost totally dark on the screen. Bed 12:57AM.

WEDNESDAY, 2/9/11: Pee 7AM and type DREAMS:2/9/11. Check Schwab (with SIX Verizon screens accumulated overnight on my computer!) to find $117,918.81 cash in my Keogh and my Schwab One with $4,250.75 cash. Back to bed at 7:18AM, do a rudimentary Actualism, and get out of bed, rested, at 9:30AM. Shit while starting the New Yorker article on Scientology to 9:45, leave word with Paul in Paris to call me with his e-mail address for Ken, allocate my piss (GOT to leave that typo!) pills to 10:05, seeming to have to do that every other DAY, rather than every other week, and have my last HH breakfast until 10:40, then check HH, finding odd things wrong, and scheduling and cancelling meals for the next week until the dot of 11AM, when I call Marj. Start with "Doom," in a CHEERFUL tone, and she insists that makes her entire day, because SHE was feeling GRIMLY doomed, but my saying it cheerfully took the burden off her. We talk until 11:12, when we start through her notes, finishing at 12:37PM: so it takes US 1:25 to go through what took ME 1:38 to go through---in some way astounding! Finish this at 12:48PM, just time to wash face and get out to dermatologist for 1PM appointment. See MEDICAL:2/9/11. Out at 3:01PM and get $77 in groceries from Key Food, getting home at 3:40 and eating the delicious Key Food roast chicken, with a bit of Edy's ice cream and BBQ-toasted almonds. Finish to talk to Spartacus until 4:35, when I get out to Sharon, getting back at 5:45 to play Spider 5:55-6:35, GREAT to 51.46775 at 677 up after 3 wins, another highest. Then play Taipei 6:35-7:55, and then try to catch up with the journal, stopping at 9:03 to almost finish a quart and a half of ice cream watching the end of "Come Back Little Sheba," when I thought "Cavalcade" had started at 9PM, rather than at 10. Finish typing this at 9:54, trying to start Sharon's session. "Cavalcade" features a Dana Wynyard reminding me very strongly of Norma Shearer, and I hardly remember the movie at all. Bed at 1:15AM.

SHARON B. 166 2/9/11

Say that I had a busy few days, feeling good to be OCCUPIED, and the start talking about the notes Sharon took on my two grand dreams from Friday. When she read the first part, about the power going off, I clearly connected that with my waning physical condition, which hadn't occurred to me when I typed it. Also talked at length about my not feeling like talking with people---coming to the conclusion that I don't WANT to talk to the people at MAN, for instance, because I really look down at myself for being there: a rather desperate way of sublimating sex, and thus I look down at OTHERS for being there: they're BELOW me, so why should I try making SMALL TALK with SMALL PEOPLE. [This was PRECISELY reflected in my TOTAL unhappiness with "Interviewing the Audience," which Spartacus dragged me to on Saturday: I even said BEFORE it started, "This is EXACTLY the sort of thing I just don't like." And it proved to be true in spades: Zach Helm is NOTHING LIKE Spaulding Gray: none of the charisma, none of the intelligence, none of the humor. For his first interviewee, he chose a 16-year-old from New Jersey with a bunny-rabbit hat who came in to town to see this show. The questions were a TOTAL bore, as was the person, and, where I did NOT raise my hand the FIRST time he instructed, "Those who don't want to be chosen, raise your hands," I did the SECOND time, because the FIRST was such a disaster. I don't know why I thought the second might be different, but he chose a 21-year-old from Rio who was visiting NYC for three months---I couldn't hear 90% of what she mumbled into her lapel microphone, but she MAY have said she was a lesbian and staying with a lesbian friend, which he didn't pursue at all, though his questions were SUCH problems: if you answered them INTIMATELY, you would literally undress on the stage, and who would do that after two minutes of chat with an incompetent host? The second was more excruciating than the first, and I whispered to Spartacus that I was leaving, which I did while he was unpinning the lapel mike. Interestingly, the SAME point was made of Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook billionaire: he thought of EVERYONE as below him, so he barely had to LISTEN to what was being said---he just wasn't INTERESTED. And that ALSO applied to some lengthy anecdote Mildred ranted on about on the effect of signing a contract: I just WASN'T interested, as I ALSO wasn't interested---problems by HANDSFUL---in Marj's lengthy monologue about ordering forms from New York for ITS IRS filing, which I said I'd ask about when I got to that pile on my table.] I even said to Sharon, "I know this makes me sound like an arrogant shit, but this is how I FEEL!" Sharon seems impressed with this insight, and I remark again about my happiness with my baths' activities, and how I was used to people coming up to me, and now, I suddenly realize, I'm doing the SAME THING: I don't approach anyone because no one approaches ME! But I'm not unhappy: I'm so busy I have no TIME to worry about not meeting anyone. At the same time, I'm pleased that I'm interacting with many people, doing many outside things, talking a lot on the telephone, since it seems I DO, now, want to interact more with people. A very productive session that I didn't record until I forgot much of it by Friday, and added even more, based on current events, just before noon on Sunday. Very productive session, and I get out pleased with it, having also mentioned the multiple sites of my dermatologist's nitrogen burn. Finished wondering whether to use outdated Bacitracin.

THURSDAY, 2/10/11: Pee at 7:17AM and type DREAMS:2/10/11. Up at 10:14AM. Spend the day in front of the television set: start with "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane," maybe recorded from last night, and then put in one of Spartacus's DVDs and watch "Good Time Max" with James Franco not so cute, and "Camille" with Franco, nothing really about the old melodrama. Then comes "Alice at the Palace" from Joe Papp in the 80s, starring Meryl Streep in a rather talky version, seemingly made for TV, and then a rather boring "Boris Godunov" with Pape as a surprisingly ineffectual tsar. Bed at 12:47AM.

FRIDAY, 2/11/10: Pee at 5:51AM and note DREAMS:2/11/10. Pee again at 7:26 and 7:29AM, then up at 8:50 to pee and j/o to 9:40. Shit, call Charles, Mildred, David Neiderbach (to find that Shelley got home on Wednesday), and Shelley to 10:20AM. Watch Spartacus's DVD for "L'Eclisse" and "Boom." Go to Spartacus to have him change my two burned-off spots on my back, and he says they look like they'll cause no problems. Spider 4:30-8:30PM, a DISASTER, falling to 51.43497 at 666 up after 3 wins, AWFUL, being 11 behind. Watch "Bruno," which my new Time-Warner box won't allow me to record, but it's just as well: it's a TERRIBLE movie, and the people CAN'T think he's for real---unless they do! Just a HORROR of a film. Then watch "Naked Street" with a Farley Granger looking rather mediocre as a two-bit hood. Bed at 12:30AM, but then get up to fill in more Sunday Times puzzle words to 1:12AM.

SATURDAY, 2/12/11: Note 7:46AM DREAMS:2/12/11. Watch a Netflix "Hideaway" for which I have to RETURN to Netflix to remind me that it was an Ozon-directed movie about the brother of the dead lover of a pregnant woman who ends up taking care of the child. Spider 10:25-10:55AM, slow up to 51.52694 at 667 up after 2 wins, up, at 10 behind, then continue to 12:40PM to 51.44063 to 669 up after 3 wins, up, at 8 behind, and AGAIN 2:30-3:40PM to 51.45096 to 674 up after 6 wins, up, at 3 behind. Can't stop playing, so I continue with Solitaire from 3:40-4:15PM, until I get off in disgust, the computer AGAIN protesting that it's low in storage. GOT to do something about THAT! Meet Spartacus to go to "Interviewing the Audience," which I PREDICTED I wouldn't like, but it was SO bad, with an uncharismatic Zach Heim doing the Spaulding Gray thing of taking a random person from the audience to chat with, except that Heim picks vapid young foreign (New Jersey, Rio) girls who are SUCH a bore that I leave after 45 minutes. Spartacus only charges me $5 for the $4.50 TheaterMania ticket that he usually charges me $7.50 for. Back to watch the Netflix "Social Network" twice, getting more from the commentary than I did from the movie. Bed at 12:47AM.

SUNDAY, 2/13/11: DETERMINED to get SOME of this out of the way: Peed at 5:40AM and got the Times at 6AM! Note DREAMS:2/13/11. Did a VERY self-complicated Actualism, seeming to throw up impediments to completing the session at EVERY level. Up at 9:02AM, worn out already. Put on oatmeal for breakfast while watching "The Social Network" for the THIRD time, the second commentary, with the actors and Aaron Sorkin, the more interesting than the director's first commentary, and then stop at 11:30 to start putting things away (delaying reading the Times), phoning Mildred about the arrival of the Certificate for the Annuity, phoning Ken about the two showings of "El Bulli" at MoMA, which he won't be seeing, and phoning Spartacus for him to say to leave BOTH DVDs on his door when I leave for the Games Group. Back now at 12:05PM to record my ENDLESS Spider and Taipei and Solitaire sessions over the past few days, with the NUMEROUS movies watched while I did NOTHING useful! Finish the sessions to 12:11PM, when I've GOT to finish watching "The Social Network" for the third time and get both DVDs over to Spartacus's door. Get to the Games Group just after 2PM, Mark not coming because of subway difficulties, and Piri said she was glad we couldn't do Charades because her LEG was hurting her badly. Invited Diane and Alexandra to the Five Stans show on Friday 2/25. Home to watch the Bafta Awards for 2010, not that interesting. Bed at 12:07AM.

MONDAY, 2/14/11: 5:35AM: Note DREAMS:2/14/11. Do a quick Actualism and get up at 8:14AM, exhausted, DETERMINED to have a productive day. Clip an annoying left little toenail, shit, have breakfast while watching a half-hour program taped last night, and type this at 9:32AM, determined to finish with Marj's notes by the time I call her at 11AM. Work on her Prague notes 9:35-10:30AM, and continue with Rome to 11:01, when I phone her, and we go to 12:04PM, getting off phone at 12:07PM. When I transcribed this data into my journal, I noticed that I HADN'T recorded that I STARTED the Morocco notes on 11/11/10 at 8:05PM and ending at 10:20PM, checking them with Marj 11/12 from 11:19-11:55AM. Finally get to the gym, after SIX days, gingerly washing around the two scabs on my back, and deciding they're solid enough that I'll risk not putting bandaids on them. Watched "Ferngully" at some time today, not remembering anything from having seen it before. Play Spider 5:35-6:50, getting up to 51.45697 at 677 up after 3 wins, 0 behind at last, and continue to 8PM, when I stop to watch "9 (rag dolls)" not the best of the animated lot. Back to Spider, cursing myself, from 10:25-10:55, BEST at 51.46495 at 681 up after 5 wins, but still behind in score, so I continue to 12:50AM, again BEST at 51.46628 at 682 up after 3 wins, still behind; then to 2:25AM, BEST at 51.46774 at 683 up after 5 wins, but still behind by .00001! Do a back-aching sheet-change to 2:39AM. Then wash face, face, pee, take night pill, apply deodorant, and get to bed at 2:48AM.

TUESDAY, 2/15/11: 10:13AM: Typed DREAMS:2/15/11. Since I stayed up so late last night playing Spider (still haven't done a yearly, or even monthly, average as I'd been meaning to do to "catch up with year-end tasks"), I woke after my dream and did Actualism for the required twenty minutes, then considered that I'd have breakfast while watching part of what I taped last night and then FINISH, at last, Marj's notes, calling her whenever I finished, not being "slavishly" bound to call her at my usual 11AM time. Feel good about having started catching up on my journal by 10:15AM. Finish with the Rome notes 10:53-noon, when her phone is busy. Play Spider 12:25-12:57PM for the BESTEST session to 51.4697, the very highest, at 684 up after 2 wins. Her phone is still busy, so I then play Taipei 12:58-2:11PM, when she answers, and we FINISH THE NOTES, AT LONG LAST, from 2:11-2:40PM. Then phone Schwab, ask questions about the Keogh RMD form, and send THAT in, feeling accomplished! Pick up Spartacus's Alliance Francais membership card and subway to East 59th to see the 20-minute "Naockchott," just a piece of trash filmed (it seems) from some hotel window (because filming is forbidden?) that makes the place MOST unappealing. That's followed by the 2007 "teenage" movie "Just About Love," which is just about a movie, but only barely, with one or two teenagers in mid-France showing SOME slight glimmer of intelligence. Hardly worth the trouble seeing. Bed 12:53AM.

WEDNESDAY, 2/16/11: Pee at 7:32AM and type DREAMS:2/16/11. Pee again at 7:46AM and go back to bed with a LONG Actualism session, during which I REALLY go through lots of stuff that I determine to type into a WHERE AM I NOW? Up at 8:53AM, marking exactly eight hours after I went to bed, and go through my morning ritual and start typing at 9:07AM, finishing to HERE at 9:22AM after typing MEDICAL:2/9/11. Finish typing WHERE AM I NOW? at 9:50AM. [And that's the LAST I typed here until 1:25PM Tuesday, 2/22, with lots still to do, so I'll stop NOW for lunch, since I've GOT to go to the gym today, and I REFUSE to be there hungry as I've been in the past, and I just want to print out THIS PAGE, TOO!] Finish breakfast and cleaning teeth at 11:04AM, find that I have only 84.9 mb free on my desktop, and watch "Histoire du Cinema" on YouTube to 12:43PM, then get out to DiMatteo, who puts in my bridge and it fits perfectly! Have trouble the first few times I eat: when I chew only on the left side, as I'm accustomed to without teeth on the right, the bridge feels unbalanced, as if it might come loose. When I work my tongue in the wrong way, I get a suction from the bottom that almost pulls the bridge free; and then when I don't stuff food into my right cheek, my bridge bites down on it, causing a painful sore. But the following days improve quickly, happily. Deposit my $250 check for falling into the HIP prescription donut hole, look through the Discount Basement to find no licorice on sale, and buy groceries to take advantage of the Progresso soups for $1 each. Back at 2:15 to call Frelich about my biopsies, and he tells me that the bottom one looked OK, but there were some questionable cells in the top one, so I make an appointment to return for another biopsy next month. Talk to Spartacus and Charles to 3:10PM. Check e-mail to 3:30, getting lots of Spam. Watch "The Client," with Natalie Baye, recommended by Spartacus, and it's OK, and I watch my "Vivre Sa Vie" from Netflix twice, not realizing how revolutionary Godard was in so realistically depicting a prostitute on the Paris streets. Play Spider 6-8:15PM, poor to 51.4666 at 683 up after 4 wins. Watch other TV and get to bed at 1:23AM.

WHERE AM I NOW? 2/16/11

Been ages since I've done this, and ages since I've felt the NEED to do this. But so MANY things have gone through my mind with Actualism this morning: A) Things to do before starting my day: 1) clear a second pen and my cough drops from the night table, 2) wash my face, 3) Q-tip my ears, 4) dress, 5) straighten the bed, though the newly placed flannel sheets already have a sweat ring from last night, 6) bring the night-note to my desk, 7) type all this. B) Wonderful "completions" yesterday to enable me to THINK of writing this: 1) fax the MDR form to Schwab, 2) finish Marj's notes from August, 3) finally see the AWFUL "Nouakchott Rocks." C) Think of PAST accomplishments which are currently progressing: 1) my haircut is finally long-enough past that the hair's not sticking up uncontrollably because it's too short, 2) the scabs on my back, on the backs of my hands, and on my forehead are healing from the dermatologist a week ago, 3) my left little toenail is not longer cutting into my next-left toe, 4) the newly changed flannel sheets are beginning to look "slept in" rather than "newly changed." C) I can think of LONG-TERM things to PUT BACK on the list of things to accomplish: 1) REORGCHR, 2) getting a permanent shade for my bedroom window, 3) start going to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens on Friday, now that Spring is slightly in the air with a prediction of 60 for that day, 4) call Charles again to try to the Morgan and Blue Smoke on Thursday. D) Items to handle RIGHT ON MY DESK: 1) Sage renewal, 2) Visa checking, 3) journal updating, 4) annuity processing, 5) NYS tax-form getting, 6) Prescription-hole $250 check cashed. E) Just spent TEN MINUTES with NYS tax-form getting: a) 9:33 phone 311, 9:34 press 1 for English, 9:35 cut off, 9:36 redial 311 and press 1, 9:37 answer: libraries and post offices and website www.taxny.gov; otherwise only Albany phone, no 1-800 number: 518-457-5181; 9:40 long recorded message, on my dime, repeating choices, and request forms, mailed FIRST in two weeks, LATER in one week, to 9:42. F) Coffee table shows FEWER piles: 1) scanning slides, 2) tooth whitening, 3) MTP, 4) movies, 5) Morgan/Blue Smoke, 6) annuity, 7) taxes, 8) miscellaneous to-do pieces. G) Think of WONDERFUL FUTURE: 1) work on REORGCHR, 2) Friday will be 2/3 through winter, as a good time to revisit the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, 3) walk or bus to Brooklyn restaurants in Spring, 4) more data on France trip in May, 5) work on website, 6) free up much storage on Dell desktop, 7) have breakfast today, finishing this at 9:50AM!

THURSDAY, 2/17/11: Pee at 7:08AM, do a sketchy Actualism session, and get up at 9:40AM. Charles calls to say we can meet at Blue Smoke at 1:30 and see the Morgan today, so I watch TV and get to good deviled eggs and three kinds of ribs at Blue Smoke, my bridge working satisfactorily, but Charles won't tolerate me taking them out to clean them in front of him. Stop to shop at the mineral store on 34th and Madison, where he buys three pieces for $227. To the Morgan for the Shakespeare portraits and the Assyrian seals, actually feeling quite exhausted by the time we're finished at 4:30. Watch "Playtime" and "M. Hulot's Holiday" on Neflix to get rid of some of those. Also see "Sunset Limited," which I also can't record, and it's really quite depressing, with Tommie Lee Jones unchanged by his lectures from Whoever Jackson. Also can't record "Chariots of Fire," which I watch, and it's not nearly as good as I remember without a blaring music track by Vangelis. Bed at 12:27AM.

FRIDAY, 2/18/11: Pee at 7:12AM and shit and read New Yorker and bed again at 7:30. Up at 9:48 after, again, sketchy Actualism, and the strong thought that "I want some ONE" that I go into detail later today with Sharon about. Charles calls to say he can't spend two consecutive afternoons away from Bill, so I go to the gym and then leave at 1:40PM for the subway and get to the gate to find that it's free all weekdays until March 15! In at 2PM, quickly through the flowerless first part, except for the wilted pansies in the front round pot and last year's crabapples decorating trees like Christmas ornaments. AMAZING amount of snow left, some of it a couple feet deep, with some paths unplowed, and the native garden, the rose garden, and the Japanese gardens all closed. The big old weeping willow in front of the rock garden has been cut down! I'd always relied on it to have the first glimmer of green in the early spring. Around to the greenhouse, through the orchids, and down to a good $9.80 lunch of pea soup and a tuna sandwich from 2:25-2:45. Greenhouse featured beautiful Massonia pustulata (fuzzies under wet leaves), and flowering quince and apricot bonsai trees. Outside were BEES on hundreds of white snowdrops, alongside thousands of green tips of shoots. Leave at 3:25 to subway at 3:35 and home at 3:55, tired enough. Back to count that I have 11 piles. Meet Spartacus at the wrong place in MoMA at 6:30 and go to fish and chips (and his shepherd's pie) at Connollys before returning to MoMA for "El Bulli: Cooking in Progress," not really that compelling, but it was nice to recognize that I'd been there already. Home and TV, I guess, and bed at 12:50AM.

SHARON B. 167 2/18/11

Immediately brought up my "yearning for ONE" that I felt so strongly this morning, just in time to bring it up here. It's not that I didn't have a lot of friends that filled various functions: Spartacus to give me ticket offers, DVDs, bandage changes; Charles for museums and meals and news; Mildred for financial advice and arguments; Marj for obsessions greater than mine---but to NONE of them, even to Sharon, I added, could I feel that I could invite them---nay, ELEVATE them---to be "the one" to whom I could tell EVERYTHING, and even HOLD when that was what I wanted. I was even thinking that maybe, just maybe, Doug could be a proper sex partner, and Sharon urged me to get in touch with him again. When I expressed doubt that I would ever find someone like that, she seemed genuinely pained as she asked me WHY I didn't think I could, and I searched for the reason that, even though I knew I was usually lucky, I was shielding myself against possible failure by thinking that it could never happen in the first place. When she wondered where the feeling came from---and she seemed pleased that I really couched it in terms of FEELING---I said that I'd watched a number of movies recently that seemed to deal with relationships: "Client" with the older woman and the younger, married man; "The Social Network" with the involved relations among the men; the sweet young woman who usually smiled at Jacques Tati as Monsieur Hulot; and the crazy teenagers in "Just About Love." Then I related some of the conversations about the trip to France in May, and she again made particular note of it. I repeated how pleasant Mildred has been with her pills, how much Spartacus has been doing for me, the great plans that Ken is making for our trip, and even Paul seeming willing to share his apartment with us in Paris. But I didn't bother to record the session until the following Tuesday.

SATURDAY, 2/19/11: 4:57AM: Sit to shit and only pee and finish New Yorker. I have two pains: yesterday in my high stomach that makes me fear cancer, today a rectal pain that I fear, rightly, ISN'T an impulse to shit---thus, again, cancer? At 6:09AM I start writing a series of notes: My search for a mystical, magical name: Prester John? Like seeking Samuel L. Jackson as the "black" to Tommie Lee Jones's "white" in "The Sunset Limited" as filtered through "Sunset Express" or "Limited Sunset." A name as liquid as Trevelyan, as odd as Her-me-own transforming into Her-my-oh-knee. Melanchthon. Richness, like O-rube-o-rous. A 15th-Century explorer with a 20th-Century name. Like silk cloth pressed, or musical liquor. Odd clunk of Onderdonck. A very rich man in a forgotten story. Semi-Oriental lushness: Turandot. Forbidden, like Rumplestiltskin. A legendary, almost mythological explorer, again Trevelyan. A Persian merchant with a British name. Semmelweiss, Eidelweiss, oleagenous liquidity of m's and n's and l's. Emolluments, soliloquies, illuminants. World-ranging merchants, magical---phaleanopsis, titanotheres. Eugenie Leontovich. Congoleum and Kingon Gould. Cameleopard. Sardanapolos. TRAGACANTH is close. Stop writing notes, dizzily, at 6:39AM. 6:49AM: TRADESCANT! Pause. Then had to READ the name to remember Tragacanth! Up, dizzy, at 8:08AM, noting DREAMS:2/19/11. Have breakfast and brush my teeth and get out to DiMatteo at 8:40AM, she not even looking in my mouth, happy that I'm having no trouble, mentioning that I'll be needing a cleaning, since I haven't had one in a long while, though I usually have pretty good hygiene. Then out at 11AM to meet Spartacus to go to the Academy Theater in the Lighthouse to see the five Academy Award nominated short subject--live action films (with my rating): "God of Love" (4), "The Crush" (3), "Wish 143" (3.5), "The Confession" (2), and "Na Wewe" (1) for sheer ugliness. Then the five short subject--animated films: "Day & Night" (2.5), "The Gruffalo" (2), "Let's Pollute" (3), "The Lost Thing" (2), "Madagascar, carnet de voyage" (2), the last two of which I hardly remember at all. Then we break about 4PM, dashing next door to the Oxford Cafe for a quiche and soup, and back for the short subject--documentary films: "Killing in the Name" (3), "Poster Girl" (4), "Strangers No More" (4), "Sun Come Up" (3.5), and "The Warriors of Qiugang" (4.5) to 8:06PM, quite tired, not willing to go anywhere with Spartacus to eat dinner. Then read the Times and do both puzzles and get to bed at 1:10AM.

SUNDAY, 2/20/11: Pee at 7:10AM and up at 8:13, with the GREAT idea of dividing the piles on the coffee table into "pleasures" [1) slide scans, 2) website, 3) MTP, 4) Cadman Philately, 5) books to read, 6) tooth whitening, 7) movies] and "tasks" [currently, 8) game-hour calculations, 9) Schwab-account updating, 10) taxes, 11) journal-update notes]. Have breakfast with the Times, watch the first time through "Under the Flag of the Rising Sun," and then it's time to get out to MAN by 2PM at the Leslie-Lowman Gallery. Load up with three wraps: roast beef, shrimp, and tuna salad, and have lots of Mist from the muscled bar-man, and indeed man he was. As I'm dressing I spot blood-marks on the back of my T-shirt, which distracts me, thinking I might have appeared GROSS to others, and I get home to watch "Under the Flag" for the second time, and get a call from Steve that they found my WALLET on the floor of the Gallery, which he'll bring home with him, and we plan that we'll meet for lunch tomorrow so I can pick it up. Incredible Spider session 6:15-7:50PM to the highest yet: 51.47898 at 689 up after 7 wins, WOW! Then to Netflix to watch the PERFECTLY HORRID "Ichi the Killer," clearly intended for hard-core S/M watchers, and then the filler "Men Who Stare at Goats," with a surprisingly good cast in a surprisingly mediocre movie, getting to bed at 1:30AM.

MONDAY, 2/21/11: Pee 6:45AM and up at 9:20AM. Breakfast with junk TV and play Taipei 10:20-11:35AM, when I leave for Steve's to chat until 1, when we leave for Tamarind for a very good Restaurant-Week-priced lunch with a tiny lamb appetizer, good fish and chicken entrees, and tasty Black Forest cake (from India? Steve asks) for dessert. Quick subway home. Maybe spend time updating my journal entries. Register for the Met Opera drawing this weekend. Mesmerizing Spider 3:30-10:20PM! But it's a TOTAL disaster, with a string of ten losses somewhere in the middle, but I CAN'T stop, ending with a disastrous 51.52624 at 666 (OH, yes!!) up. Nothing else recorded for the day, and I get to bed at 12:21AM.

TUESDAY, 2/22/11: Pee at 6:26AM and note DREAMS:2/22/11 and the fact that I have one of my rare headaches. Pee at 7:24AM and note another dream. Pee at 7:49 and 8:23 and get up for breakfast. Go through my Schwab Visa charges at last, and even write out and mail a check for the total, just to get it out of the way. ONE MORE PILE GONE, but I add another reminding me to check out of Netflix before 2/28, my next billing date, and on Wednesday add a Facebook note, so I'm actually back up to 12 piles. Stuart Clark from New York Life calls to say that my annuity has started: first payment of $667 on 3/23 to my checking account. Call Mildred to tell her it's started. 3:17PM: Can't believe it's this late already: I'm not finished catching up with the journal, and now I've got to stop to take out the laundry and get to the gym before 3:30PM. Back to typing at 5:08. Decide I'm not going to the EFA Scrabble Game this evening. Stop at 5:40PM to watch "Skippy." Then continue watching with "The Red Balloon," and turn to Channel 13 for "Sitcoms," "Frontline" on Cairo and the Muslim Brotherhood, and "William S. Burroughs," with the Pandrogyne Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (of all people). Then call Charles and talk marvelously to 11:35PM and transcribe this remainder of a great day. End the day (when I should have just gone to bed!) at Spider from 11:59PM-1:13AM at 51.42795 at 667 up after 2 wins, again the VERY slow back up from disaster. To bed at 1:27AM and then get up to check I haven't won anything on the Met Opera drawing at 1:37AM.

WEDNESDAY, 2/23/11: Pee at 5:31AM and up at 8:47 to shit, and back to bed at 9:02 to get up at 9:52AM. 10:41AM: Getting into a small pattern of "dropping in" to the current day when I start catching up with my journal---about as confusing as adding "future" items to "previous" days before I print out the corresponding page. Good late lie-a-bed, good HH breakfast of fruit and cottage cheese, and good start with "doing" by filling the kitchen sink with suds and soaking my dirty pill container for its every-four-years cleaning. Now I want to get the notes off my desk before checking in to see how Marj is. Get to the word "T-shirt" in Sunday's journal entry, and it's 11AM, so I phone Marj, to find (after MUCH talk) that it IS T-shirt, and not tee-shirt. She's happy about my labeling piles on my coffee table "pleasure" and "tasks," and I get up the nerve to ask the "forbidden question," as to when I can expect something from her, and the answer, which she said she's told me before, is that SHE DOESN'T KNOW, even after I suggest that "if the world wouldn't send her anything from outside, would she then have to face my tasks?" She says she's thought exactly the same thing. Talk to her until 11:35AM, then decide to call Tris about 1) website "difficulty of change" questions [hard going from HTML to CSS, but not otherwise], 2) zolnerzone.us about $5/year, ours for eternity, and 3) basic data about iPhones, apps, SmartPhones, and costs. Get off at 12:15PM and start back updating journal, finishing this at 12:32PM, having checked pbs.org to find that "Emma" does NOT seem to be available for watching on-line. Leave a message on Doug's home phone, as recommended by Sharon. Catch up with the journal AT LAST at 1:18PM, and now to update DREAMS pages, finishing that at 1:30PM, caught up with ANOTHER pile! Wash dishes and scrub the counters, which seem absolutely ENCRUSTED with grime, and print two missing pages (I guess) from MEDICAL to 2:35PM. Then MUST relax with Spider! Play to 3:50PM to 51.42954 at 688 up after 2 wins, again a slow up. Have lunch, go to Sharon, and stop by CVS to pick up tamsulosin and a 7-oz bag of Australian licorice for $3.47 at 5:40 and ingest the whole bag while reading my mail and looking through New Yorker until 6:20PM, getting my bridge thoroughly blackened. Then determined to write up the hard-to-pin-down session, doing that desultorily by 6:35, feeling that I hadn't done a very good job with it. Will now play Taipei 6:35-7:05PM before leaving for "Armida," which I saw last August on TV, I find out today after Spartacus reminded me of its broadcast from its premiere last year. Charles is late, saying the small theater doesn't have subtitles! I don't remember MUCH of what I see; could they have edited out the ballets, and not shown the full scope of the batwings at the climax? It's over at 11:33PM and we exit from the elevator past the ticket offices, a new way for me. Spartacus says that the construction in the plaza toward Damrosch Park was for Fashion Week, which was held in a large tent there. Have a bowl of soup for supper while watching TV, many channels still black, and I play Solitaire from 1:30-2AM, delaying bedtime until 2:04AM.

SHARON B. 168 2/23/11

Figure I really have nothing to say, and start by saying "Nothing much has happened," and go on to talk for 45 minutes about all that happened. Complain about my anger at myself for getting so angrily impatient with Spartacus when he doesn't LISTEN to what I'm telling him, and she goes into our relationship which I describe as like an old married couple of 40 years who know each other too well. I end by considering I might be jealous of his freedom to do EXACTLY what he wants: eat, travel, watch TV, shop, EXACTLY when he wants to, as if he didn't have nearly the duties I've laid down for myself. I did, at the start, tell of my agreeable division of my "piles" into "pleasures" and "tasks," and Sharon thought that was great! Praised Tris for his explaining how the website shouldn't have too many sites "under construction" because it might turn people off the entire website. At the VERY start said that I'd, for her, in a sense, phoned Doug to say that I'd responded to his e-mail of two months ago, and was looking forward to hearing from him again. She brought my mother in, asking if I felt the same sort of heckling I felt from Spartacus in asking questions, but I said I never felt as PRESSED by her as I'd felt from him, who in his Jewish pushiness seemed to have nothing better to do than YELL at me, reminding me of the "Sitcoms" comment that Danny Thomas just liked to YELL as he communicated, and co-workers weren't to take it personally. I'd thought vaguely, beforehand, of asking for a sort of vacation, but felt that maybe it would be better to have more sessions, like this, that just weren't ABOUT anything. Sharon seemed to think it was good, talking much more than she usually does, suggesting ways that I might be looking at things, and a number of times I totally agreed with him, though at the present moment I've forgotten what it was about. Didn't say a word about the minimal dreams of the past week, and did say that I felt more generous talking to Paul on the telephone now that he was helping Kem and me in our plans for our stay in Paris before and after our French-eating trip. Repeated my argument to Mildred that I didn't have to see how much I spent each year, since I won't be spending as much now as I spent in the past. At one point she said, "Don't hurry, take your time," when I tried to explain something, but I never felt that I actually got anything DEEPLY affecting in the whole session. Said that I'd see her next week, and that was that.

THURSDAY, 2/24/11: Pee at 8:33AM and get up at 9:47, deciding to check Netflix, adding some movies, and putting the remaining pile on the Netflix shelf, rather than leaving it on the coffee table. Still 11 piles, however. Put laundry into two large plastic bags, warehousing my old plastic Guatemala bag that's coming apart at the seams, and getting rid of the awkward white "baskets" that I'd used for a bit. Decide to e-mail Toba about the Philately Group at 11:55AM. But do a Spider session from 11:55-12:45PM to 51.43138 at 669 up after 3 wins, still slow up. Spartacus drops off "The Town," which I watch, and put into the mail about 4PM, so I'm surprised when Spartacus tells me on FRIDAY that they GOT it already! Scrub the bathroom, appalled at how DIRTY the wall across from the toilet was with encrusted uric acid, or whatever the solid residue from urine is. Took the toilet seat apart to clean, and glory whenever I use it now at how PRISTINE it is! Start totaling hours on Taipei, Solitaire, and Spider, and then watch "The Reincarnation of Golden Lotus," rather disappointing, and a fascinating "Mother Ghost" with a tiny bit of James Franco and a whole lot of Kevin Pollak, watching a very interesting commentary after midnight, which gets me to bed at 1:50AM.

FRIDAY, 2/25/11: Pee at 8:37AM and get up at 9:51AM. Spartacus and Carolyn call during breakfast, Carolyn to say she doesn't have breast cancer! Watch some of the "Mother Ghost" extras with breakfast, and Spartacus reports that he's fixed his computer and can now FIND "Emma," "Gone Baby Gone," and "Armida," and he wants to see "Mother Ghost." I decide to "go on vacation" with Netflix to May 1, just to get ANOTHER pile off my coffee table, down to NINE piles. Catch up with this at 12:35PM, feeling GREAT to be getting these things DONE! Eat lunch while watching the last three installments of "Episodes," fun enough, and then get to moving furniture around for the show tonight, vacuuming again, and cleaning the last spots in the kitchen and bathroom. Setting up the show itself is more difficult because the wiring is causing problems when I move things around. Glad we're only six at the show. Change at 6:45, which is good, because Fred shows up early at 6:50, bring Trader Joe's wine for himself---and taking the rest of it home with him. Then the Kahns arrive, bringing THREE bottles of wine. Diane brings nothing; Alexa brings chocolate-chip cookies and contributes $5 for the pizza, arriving last at 7:10, when I start the show. Order pizza at 7:50: they say it'll take an hour, and it arrives just before 9PM, when I'm almost half through. We chat and eat, Dale not finishing her second slice but depriving others of part of it. They all love it, but Diane and Alexandra leave at 9:50, saying it'll take at least an hour for them to get home, and Norman says he's tiring about 10:10, so I rush through the end. Don't clean anything up, watch Ebert 10:30-11, and Bill Maher to 12, and get to bed at 12:10AM.

SUNDAY, 2/27/11: Pee at 8:32AM, get Times, type DREAMS:2/27/11, get back to bed for Actualism, and get up at 10AM. Have breakfast, push all the furniture back into place, wash the dishes, and get the apartment back into shape after having left it a mess after the show on Friday night. Finish the Spider, that I left undone last night, from 10:55-11:05, ending at 51.4453 at 676 up after 6 wins, FAST up, only 8 behind. Water the plants, read the Times, and get out to the gym at 1:11PM. Back to pick up lots of mail from yesterday, and then have dinner while watching "Gone Baby Gone," recommended by Spartacus, and I report to him that I wouldn't want to spend much more time with these unpleasant people: I'm glad I saw it, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. Finish all the HH meals except for one salad and one dinner, which I'll save for tomorrow. Look through the tax pile to find what I think is the only sheet applicable to my now-closed Roth IRA, and look through my files to find the appropriate folder that will contain all the sheets to be saved about that account, but just don't feel like starting it. Sit watching TV until 7:30, when the run-up to the Academy Awards starts to bore me, and I play Taipei until 8:30 when I return to the actual awards, starting, as usual, with an amusing potpourri of nominated movies featuring the two young emcees, James Franco and Ann Hathaway. Not many surprises in the awards, though I'd never heard of the foreign film that won. Have a bowl of soup for dinner, followed by microwave popcorn that's greatly burnt for some reason. Then watch news, about Libya and the coming rainstorm, and the start of "Jimmy Kimmel Live" until it gets boring, and get to bed at 12:40AM, VERY tired for some reason.

MONDAY, 2/28/11: Wake at 5:24AM feeling very erotic after a dream fragment of an engorged cock on the point of cuming, and start to jerk off, culminating in an odd semi-cum at 5:46, prompting me to put a question mark after my cum-note entry, and I go to the living room to see rain only in a large puddle in Cadman Plaza West, and see strange sheet lightning behind 75 Henry Street, and men on the sidewalks under umbrellas to 5:56, and get back to bed at 6AM. Pee at 7:52, noting DREAMS:2/28/11. Up at 9:47 to shit again for some reason, having shit three times yesterday for unknown causes, finishing a New Yorker article about Egypt (rarely have I been so "up" on current affairs!), register for the Met Opera drawing, type my dreams, get a call from Carolyn about her breast biopsy that came back cancer-free, telling me about Tris's being enrolled in a new skin cancer study in Philadelphia, and about Vince's interest in reading my website when I publicize it on Facebook. I somehow destroy my previous Notebook K page-100-filling data about Sunday in finalizing Notebook K with a short page 100 and starting Notebook L with Sunday. Redo that and come up to date now at 11:20AM, ready to start my day, having detailed to Carolyn that my next tasks are 1) my Schwab accounts, 2) my taxes, 3) my MTP Africa-trip notice, and 4) my Jewel Box completion so that I CAN announce my website on Facebook. Feel GOOD now after having felt VERY tired and low-energy on getting out of bed this morning. Of course I have to go to Spider from 11:25AM-2:30PM, getting SO bad that I just QUIT without taking my score, getting it only later today at 51.4332 at 671 up after 0 wins, UGH, 13 behind. Watch the four-hour PBS "Emma" for most of the rest of the day, then find that "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" starts at 7:45PM, so I tune in at 7:50PM and AGAIN can't record it---what a PAIN! So I watch it, with ads, until 10PM, then back to Spider 10:20PM-1:05AM, good to 51.4454 at 677 up after 4 wins, only 7 behind. Bed at 1:15AM, after changing the calendar to the March page.

TUESDAY, 3/1/11: Pee at 7:09AM and note DREAMS:3/1/11. Pee at 8:48 and type more dreams and return to bed at 8:57, getting up to a (maybe dreaming) phone ring at 9:15AM to find no one there. Up at 9:51, after Actualism. Check e-mail, and my mouse seems to fail, and that starts the awful COMPCHRO:3/1/11 anxiety, solved when the mouse WORKS at 11:02AM, at which exact moment, worthy of the Coincidence File, Marj calls. I put her off while I have breakfast, and phone her back at 11:25AM and talk to 12:15PM, mainly about James Franco's drag bust on the Academy Awards. Then call Spartacus, who can lend me a wired mouse in case mine really IS on the point of failure, and go over at 12:30 to pick up some articles, 2 DVDs, the mouse, and then out to pick up laundry and bring it back at 1:30 to change jeans and catch up with this journal, printing out the last page of NOTEBOOK K at 1:58PM. Then write COMPCHRO. Finish that at 2:17PM, but sadly find that the mouse AGAIN doesn't work when I try to use it. It would be AWFUL if I've somehow messed up the connection at the back of the Dell tower by jerking on the mouse cord! Charles calls and we'll meet at the Bible Museum at 3:30, giving me time for lunch. Now at 2:18PM my mouse STILL doesn't work! DAMN! Reboot and it works again, enough to let me get to the Met Opera site to find that I've won two tickets to Saturday evening's "Iphigenie en Tauride," so I phone Charles, who wants to join me, and we change our meeting to 4PM so I have time to order our second-last-row orchestra seats and have a quick lunch of Spam and salad while watching half of a "30 Rock" episode. Out to meet him at about 4:05, though he doesn't mind that I'm late, and we see a decent exhibit until 5:03. He wants to check to see if the Borders Books in the Time-Warner Center is closing, so we're down there to find it's not closing, and he glances through the incredibly expensive audio books: "Freedom" is $60! Then I suggest we have a snack at Bouchon, where he doesn't like his Crepe Cake, which is more like cheesecake than anything else, and not very sweet, while I have the intensely flavored Chocolate Bouchons, and we remark about our great view from the edge of the balcony. Saw the Dali objects on the second floor on our way up, and go up to the fourth floor to look down and pick up menus from Porter House and Per Se, now up to $295 for its dinner, though when I check my restaurant list, it was $322 on 11/6/05, which would be $295 plus 9% tax, since service is included, though the new menu appears NOT to include wines. Then across traffic to see that the circle is not surfaced with ice for skating, only used by in-line skates and skateboards. Home well after 7PM, tired, look through the two magazines delivered today, and have soup while watching three episodes from Spartacus's "30 Rock" and "Outsourced" DVD. Tired enough to go to bed, but figure to get back to Spider and go well from 9:10-9:35PM, ending at 51.44735 at 678 up after 2 wins, OK at 6 behind, but then CONTINUE, having to reboot and losing a couple of wins when my mouse dies AGAIN and Spartacus's works after I clean the gloopy innards, to 12:45AM, for a shitty session to 51.43771 at 674 up after 3 wins, 10 behind. No, watch TV THEN with dinner to 1:55AM!

WEDNESDAY, 3/2/11: Pee at 7:37AM and note first of DREAMS:3/2/11, pee again at 8:32 and 9:31, and shit and type second dream. Then catch up with journal to 10:20AM and, forgive me, go back to Spider! Play 10:20-10:50AM, OK to 51.43955 at 675 up after 2 wins, 9 behind. Doug calls and we'll meet for lunch on Wednesday AND he'll come to the Friday show! Spartacus's mouse works, but it's VERY sluggish; I guess I'll have to buy a new one? Start breakfast at 11AM. Then I CLEAN the mouse and it's OK afterwards. Down to a five-minute's-late Toba in the office, and he likes my ideas, saying I should bring Christina some stamps so she can decorate the notice on the upright boards in both buildings. Then actually process the Roth IRA files before going to Sharon. Back to play Spider 5:50-8PM, stopping for "Yanomami: Secrets of the Tribe" which won't record, and then back to Spider 10PM-2:10AM, MAD, to 51.41774 at 666 (AGAIN!) up after 4 awful wins, 18 behind. Then to bed.

SHARON B. 169 3/2/11

Taken a few minutes late, I start with my dreams, first the short one of organizing lists of data, then the long one of being lost from my room, looking for my camera for the coming tornado, the stairway out that she's very interested in, and then the "oh, I'm so SORRY this isn't a dream, because I'm so AWFULLY lost," climax, which prompted the feeling, on my way over, that in many ways I wish my WAKING life, now, WAS a dream that I could wake up from: no pelvic-bowl pain, no fatigue on getting out of bed in the morning, no "wishing for something exciting" [remedied the next day by signing up for a Turkey trip, single supplement FREE, that HAD to be July 26-August 21 for the desired Syria post-trip extension], no CERTAINTY that my endurance was weakening along with my strength. I did insist, however, that it was more of a "wish" than a real "desire." She pursued the stairway, and I had to say it was more of a SLOPE, like the framework of a roller coaster (dreams of which I've had FEW of, recently), than STEPS that I had to be aware of the edges of. I mentioned how it reminded me of the atrium spare at the Time-Warner Center, which I described, along with the museum and the attendant fatigue, but also crowed about how my "free week" became almost instantly cluttered with a show from Spartacus on Thursday and a cheap opera on Saturday thanks to the Met Opera lottery. And mentioned Doug's lunch AND attendance at my Friday Dubai show. But I still longed for AN ADVENTURE, something that would be out of the ordinary: I'd been SO accustomed to trip-trip-trip for the past number of years, I'm really at a LOSS with so few trips planned now---pace tomorrow. Can't imagine, one day later, what took up the REST of the time, but it passed very quickly.

THURSDAY, 3/3/11: Went to the gym and got back to find an OAT brochure about an eastern Turkey trip that I liked, so I phoned Mildred to find she didn't know whether New York State required withholding on annuity income, and was PLEASED at the thought of a trip to eastern Turkey. Call OAT and find that I have the LAST single-supplement-free trip of the year, earlier (and hotter, John says when I phone him to crow about going to Syria after he does---though he insists that it'll be safe for both of us since the people rather like their autocrat) than I would have liked, "only" 40 days after my return from France! So maybe then I CAN put in a third trip? Feel good about the thought of the trip as I type this at 5:53, deciding to go back to Spider before meeting Spartacus at 7:10 at the 8th Avenue subway station. Spider 5:53-6:53 ends AGAIN at 666 up (that accursed number!) at 51.41738 after 2 wins, still 18 behind. The Skirball Theater is in a building constructed in 2002 on the south side of Washington Square that I don't think I've ever seen before. "Circa" is painful to perform and, for me, painful to watch, though the audience and Spartacus are more appreciative than I am. Find, sadly, that Johnny Rocket's has closed, but we find a Burger Connection just down the block for a good burger and a great caramel-flavored vanilla milkshake, going almost to their closing time of 11PM. Home to irresistable Taipei from 11:25PM to 12:25AM, and bed at 12:28AM.

FRIDAY, 3/4/11: Pee at 7:44AM and up at 10:06AM!! Just can't get into Schwab accounts! Spider 11:30AM-3:15PM, UGH, to 51.42239 at 669 up after 6 wins, TOO LONG, and still 15 behind. Have lunch and decide to finish Hawking, "The Grand Design," just to DO it. BACK to Spider 6:35-8:30, telling myself STOP, at 51.42407 at 670 up after 2 wins, 14 behind, but then go to Solitaire 8:30-11PM, watch two hours of "Golden Girls" to 1AM and get to bed at 1:11AM, disgusted with my wasted day.

SATURDAY, 3/5/11: Pee at 7:06AM and get up at 7:30, not happy with my thoughts just lying in bed. Read the Times with breakfast, and then start the crossword at 9AM, after the doublecrostic looks impossible, and finish it at 10AM, and then hack away at the doublecrostic until it turns into a Nabokov quote at 11AM, when I call Marj to congratulate myself on solving both puzzles and my second trip of the year, and we talk until 12:15, when I MUST finish with this to 12:22PM, before, DAMMMEE, going back to Spider! Play OK from 12:22-1:15PM to 51.42589 at 671 up after 3 wins, 13 behind. Then get back to doing and doing and doing the Schwab accounts, and ACTUALLY FINISH at 6:45, then rush through dinner to leave for the Met at 7:15, getting there just after 8PM to meet Charles and read the programs, and we both JUST DON'T remember "Iphegenie en Tauride" AT ALL! Home after 11:30 to check my journals, and all I can find, on 12/5/07, is that AFTER the opera I found myself locked out of my apartment! No mention of whether Charles was there or not. Bed at 1:16AM.

SUNDAY, 3/6/11: Pee at 3:30AM. Up at 8AM to get Times, but it's not there, and the Times for 21F is lying in front of 20F. Type DREAMS:3/6/11 and phone the Times at 8:20AM to be told "I'd have to call back after 8:30." I shout back that if the system can't process my call: that the DELIVERY WAS WRONG, and I don't WANT to call back, they should change the system and I want to talk to her supervisor. She connects me, the supervisor understands and says I won't have to call back, and I congratulate her for her service. I get back into bed at 8:29AM and at 8:33AM I jot the note that the tune I'd been trying to think of SOME words to, so that I could find the lyrics on Google, contains the phrase "Save the best for last." At 8:43AM I write the note that I resonate to the TRUTH of "If you WERE that person, YOU would have done the SAME THING!" Want to look THAT up, too, to find the source of it. At 8:55AM I can't resist recording that my collections, files, WHOLE APARTMENT will be TREASURES in the future when I'm FAMOUS through my website. In addition, I would wish that Google could furnish a great graph: the y-axis at the left showing the HUGE number of pages at the site with the GREATEST NUMBER OF PAGES, with progressively less-high bars showing the DECREASING number of pages---at some quick point the NUMBER OF SITES that have that same number of pages---until the infinite tail of one page by a VERY large number of sites. Also note that ACTUALISM MAKES MY HAPPINESS! At 9:35 I'm feeling HAPPY with my Actualism session, and decide to jerk off in bed, finding that Paul had reorganized my porno pages in the file drawer, and use the vibrator to cum very feelingly at 10AM. Then up to find that my movie didn't record last night: GOT to call Time-Warner to find why I can't record ANYTHING with my new box! Settle into watching "Benny and Joon," with the great casting of Johnny Depp, Aiden Quinn, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Julianne Moore, taking advantage of numerous ad intermissions to dress, have breakfast, and clean up the apartment from my morning cum. That goes to 12:30, and I can't resist Spider from 1:10-3PM, a totally HORRID session that takes me BACK DOWN to 51.41437 at---wait for it---666 UP! after 2 wins, again 18 behind. Then catch up with journal to 3:35PM and go to Google for two items: 1) Enter "Save the best for last," and that turns out to be the TITLE of a 1992 song for Vanessa Williams whose first verse reads "Sometimes the snow comes down in June/ Sometimes the sun goes 'round the moon/ I see the passion in your eyes/ Sometimes it's all a big surprise." 2) Enter "If you were that person, you'd do exactly the same thing," and get nothing like the IDEA for which I wanted to locate the first recorded person who thought of this like-tautology. Phone Marj about 3:45PM and talk, with extreme frustration with a Marj who's more interested in Watson's performance on "Jeopardy" than she is in my Google-unhelped quandary, until 4:25, when I beg off the conversation with my need for lunch. Turn on TV and watch a 2008 program about the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, then about 45 minutes of the end of "Independence Day," then fragments of "African Rift Valley" and some other nature program, then cartoon sitcoms like "The Family Guy" and another by the same cartoon producer, and then watch the new Bill Maher show from 7-8, and then disappointed to find that Channel 13 isn't showing the Nature program on the Drakensburg Mountains, so I watch another cartoon until 8:30, when I watch the awful "Bob's Burgers" while having popcorn to supplement the HH pork dinner that didn't satisfy my craving for food-while-watching-TV. Watch another scattered hour and resort to Taipei from 10PM to midnight, feeling absolutely awful. Get to bed at 12:22AM, tired from doing absolutely nothing.

MONDAY, 3/7/11: Up at 8:30AM to compulsively open my door to find no late-delivered Sunday Times in the hall, and then pee and type DREAMS:3/7/11 and then this to 9:11AM. Print two pages to prove I exist in frustrating real-life, and not in a frustrating dream-life. Decide to leave $12,000 cash in my Keogh account until I figure out my IRS-tax-cash requirements. Then, of course, to my daily Spider until 9:40, OK to 51.41631 at 667 up after 2 wins, 17 behind. Then, determined to have a useful day, I start a did-list: 1) breakfast to 10:30, 2) tooth whitener in 10:35, 3) Time-Warner call 10:50, 4) NO Times downstairs 10:55, 5) Times phone call to 11:14, 6) Marj busy at 11:05, 7) AARP has no NYS tax-law help, 8) 311 has no tax-law help, 9) Mary 11:28-12:47, mostly nonsense, 10) Arnold to 1:04PM, 11) tooth whitener off 1:05, 12) finish lunch and get Beverly's Times EXCEPT for Metro and first section, 13) read Times to 2:30, 14) "no" tax withheld on annuity form, 15) get Times from Spartacus to 2:35, 16) back from gym 4:35, 17) mail and Times to 5:15. 18) pluck ear-hairs to 5:30, 19) look at taxes to 6:07, and decide to do an EXHAUSTIVE summary sheet from 1958, 20) tuna prepare to 6:27, 21) taxes to 7:30, 22) dinner and 25th anniversary "Les Miserables" to 11:20PM, 23) taxes to 2000 to 12:10AM. Bed at 12:25AM, feeling GOOD about the accomplishmentful day!

TUESDAY, 3/8/11: Pee at 7:24AM and up at 8:36AM. With yesterday's success in mind, I start a did-list: 1) clip toenails to 8:55, 2) breakfast (having to use apple juice as a coolant for my oatmeal because I STILL haven't gone for groceries at Key) to 9:35, 3) call Piri about Sunday's Games Group at 10:10, 4) tooth whitener in at 10:15, 5) finish TO 2010 taxes to 12:20PM, feeling good about all the data I've gathered, and the pounds of paper thrown away from more-than-six-years-ago folders, 6) e-mail (Zagat voting doesn't work today) to 12:27, 7) catch up with journal by 12:37PM, ready for---oho---Spider! First I check my e-mail, and Audience Extras, and Mark Morris, who I deem to be too expensive at $50, and then play Spider from 12:45-2:50PM, just DREADFUL, down for HH meals and the mail, which I go through with lunch, and then, on a whim, pile my laundry into two overstuffed plastic bags and take old detergent down to the laundry room, where I get EXTREMELY frustrated with my non-working card, until I clear a spot of dirt off the gold seal, and maybe that was the problem, though I had to give another card-holder $1 to get my small machine with my socks and jeans going, and come up at 5PM to play more disastrous Spider while waiting for the small laundry to finish and transfer to the dryer, which works almost at once with my newly cleaned card, for one cycle, and then sit for five minutes until the big machine finishes and load up another dryer for two cycles for most of my underwear and towels. Up for more poor Spider, getting to SEVEN losses at one nadir, and back down to clear the small dryer, pair socks while listening to the penultimate day (why do I ALWAYS get that?) of the WQXR fund-raising boredom, and then down for the last dryer, having still to put out two towels to completely dry after two cycles in a jammed dryer. Then return to Spider after 7PM, getting to dinner of cold tuna casserole, which I finish while watching stereotypical marry-a-rich-man floozy of Jean Harlow in "Red Headed Woman," and a somewhat more sympathetic loose woman in "Three Wise Girls," continuing on to a more adult role in "Riff Raff," where Spencer Tracy is the villain, rather than Jean Harlow. That ends at 12:25 and I'm back to Spider just so I won't leave the disaster on the screen, and finish at 2AM with the horrendous score of 51.39283 at 657 up after 2 wins, 27 behind! Get to bed at 2:28AM and start STEAMING WITH RAGE over my predicted frustration of trying to complete my e-version of Form 5500, thinking I'd rather go to JAIL than put up with the computerized version, and finally at 2:44AM take a valium to assuage my RAGE AT THOSE THOUGHTS! Fall asleep fairly quickly thereafter.

WEDNESDAY, 3/9/11: Pee at 7:08AM and note the first of DREAMS:3/9/11, and note second dream at 10:07AM when I get up, shit, read magazines, have breakfast to 11:25AM, then do my daily Spider 11:30AM-1:10PM to 51.40072 at 661 up after 5 wins, "only" 23 behind. Then print a page of three dreams to take to Sharon this afternoon, and catch up with this by 1:35PM, wondering where the day went! Then print the previous page and tackle the stack of 2010 tax papers. Then shut off the computer and come BACK to note the fact that I sent a long e-mail before bed last night to Doug, who called Tuesday to say that he had to cancel lunch Wednesday because he forgot it was Ash Wednesday and he has two organ-playing engagements through the day. Go through the receipts and bills and finish the 2010 taxes sheet by 2:20PM, and start sorting through forms, finishing that by 2:55PM when I have lunch, trying to watch the end of "Suzy," but the DVD seems to be ruined, made maybe worse by trying to wash it and rub off the many scratches on the surface, leaving it to see if Spartacus can read it on one of his machines. Then get through the front of Schedule D from 4:15-4:30 when I leave for Sharon, picking up four prescriptions for $30 and two one-pound canned hams for $5, quite a bargain. Back from Sharon to pick up $62.54 in groceries from Key Food, among them a pound jar of extra-chunky peanut butter which I almost FINISH while putting the groceries away and doing the sudoku in "TV Guide," messing it up so that I have to start over. That goes to 8:15PM, when I think to catch this up to date and transcribe what may be a turning-point Sharon session. Finish that at 8:32PM, damn dog barking down the hallway outside, this time from Toba's end of the hall, and I'm not resisting the impulse to put in my earplugs (though I try closing my bedroom door first) and play Spider. Play 8:35-11:10PM, OK, to 51.40194 at 662 up after 8 wins, also after 7 losses, to 22 behind. Then, tired, just go to bed at 11:23PM.

SHARON B. 170 3/9/11

Start by talking about the valium I took early this morning to get to sleep after I worked myself into a RAGE about the difficulty of filing Form 5500 on the computer rather than filling out a simple form, when all they want, literally, is ONE NUMBER. Start boiling about it again, and go to the three dreams I'd printed out for her, refusing to see myself at all in the fish that falls from the sky and dies in front of me, and she remarks about how many times I see things "as in a movie" so that I don't have any direct feelings about them. I return to the dreams in which I'm lost and frustrated and KNOW that I can't wake from a dream, and then wake from a dream, saying there might be other telling details if she'd look through my transcriptions, which she says she'll do. She delves into my feelings about my rage: it's not that they're doing it against ME, it's just NOT RIGHT that they're doing it to MANY people, but no one seems to be fighting it. I'm reminded of "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more" from "Network," but I say I'm really not ready to commit suicide over it. I try to apply my occasional Messianism to this situation: since it's STILL the case, clearly no one has YET changed the system, so it's up to ME to lead the way in doing it, though I'm really not willing to ORGANIZE the thing myself: I can only scream and yell and talk to supervisors and hope someone LISTENS to me, lets me be an EXCEPTION---either sends me a form, or takes my number and puts it in for me---or sends me to jail or fines me. I say that this is only one of a NUMBER of frustrations: can't record anything from channels higher than 99, but I can QUIT Time-Warner and go to FIOS. I didn't want to do what IBM wanted me to do, so I quit! Can't recall anyone in my family telling me I couldn't do anything, but she said I should look at it in the intervening week (mentioning that she'll be off the following week, which I'd have to cancel because of the Japan show at 55 Pierrepont). At the end, I said I guess I realized I was OVER-REACTING (after I made the point that I would NOT pay someone ELSE to do it for me: I was cheap about THAT!) to the point of RAGE, so it MUST be connected with something else: that DID seem clear to me, though I didn't have a clue what it might be. Yes, Marj was complaining, and Mildred was complaining, both of which were hard to take, yet they listened to me so I had to listen to them, Marj even SAYING, "Yes, I WANT to go through the steps, not just go to the bottom line." I said I RECOGNIZED prideful people who wouldn't change their minds: Qadaffi in Libya, Mubarak in Egypt, Spencer Tracy in "Riff Raff," but that, in some way, didn't apply to me. Even went into my frustration with the money-card in the laundry room yesterday. We even went a few minutes over in my trying to at least realize what I should be working on (and won't) during the following week.

THURSDAY, 3/10/11: Pee at 4:30AM and up at 7:54, recording times on NOTE THAT I SOMEHOW LOST without transcribing it, trying to recall the times as nearly accurate as I can. Sort through the stored 2010 tax papers to find 1) the fourth page of my NYS return, 2) the Form 5500 notes, and 3) last year's copy of the Cadman financial form. Play another disastrous Spider 8:40AM-11:20, down to 657 up after 2 wins, 27 behind AGAIN! Then have breakfast, during which Charles calls, and I say "Let me guess," and of course he cancels today's meeting at the Met Museum "for various reasons," not least because it's supposed to RAIN today. I finish breakfast just after noon and play Taipei 12:15-1:20PM, and then catch this journal up to date by 1:30, JUST NOT FEELING LIKE DOING ANYTHING USEFUL! I'd put in my tooth whitener at 12:10, and now take it out. HA! FIND this morning's note: I'd put it back in the blank-note slot UPSIDE DOWN so I couldn't read that I'd written on it. Only error was saying that I peed at 4:30, rather than the written 4:10. Then take up the Wolfram, determined to read it, but JUST DON'T CARE FOR IT: keep falling asleep reading it, and finally decide I'm just NOT getting anything from it, so decide to shelve "A New Kind of Science" UNREAD. Play Spider 5:25-8:25PM, OK to 51.39775 at 663 up after 5 wins, 23 behind, then Solitaire 8:25-9:35PM. Probably spent the rest of the evening watching nonsense television and got to bed at 1:03AM.

FRIDAY, 3/11/11: At 7:36AM I pee, take a valium, and type DREAMS:3/11/11. Then pee again, shit, and get back to bed at 8:13AM. Up at 10:15AM. Prepared for the evening's program through most of the day, possibly wrecking my back by pushing the two heavy sofas into position in front of the big screen, used for the first time since its 16th use on 6/29/10. Mildred pizz [ha, have to leave typo] pissed me off by refusing to leave her house in her fatigue from her busy day. Had just changed into my short-sleeved shirt and good black pants at 6:20PM when Doug arrived early and poured himself a small tumbler of my vodka. Piri was the last to arrive at 7:10PM, just after I ordered two pizzas, and the show was a great success except when some power glitch stopped current to my laptop and the screen went black and I had to reboot the whole system, and then when I tried to get back to my "classic shot" and [had to go to DESKTOP to recall the name!] Olympus had to be restarted so that it stopped "not responding," while Stephanie remarked how often a reboot cleared up all problems. Pizza arrived about 8:20 and was eaten all but two slices of the regular, which I finished on Saturday evening. No one complained about it being too long when I stopped with the spectacular Lalibela sunset at 10:05PM, though all agreed it was time to go home. Pushed sofas back and even washed dishes before going to bed at 12:01AM.

SATURDAY, 3/12/11: Pee at 7:10AM and type DREAMS:3/12/11. Type to 7:15, shit and read Times to 7:56AM. Up at 8:38AM. Finish Times and puzzles by 11:47AM. Charles agreed to meet at Met Museum at 2PM, but I left just after noon to get there after 1PM to see two great exhibits on Andean tunics and African icons before meeting him in the gift shop at 2:15, then losing him in China and re-meeting downstairs at 6PM so I could give him the Metropolitan Opera book. Home to feel like doing nothing more than playing Spider 7:35-9:45PM OK, but LONG, to 51.40333 to 664 up after 7 wins, 20 behind, and then eating the rest of the pizza from last night and digging out Ballard's "The Drowned World" to pass the time digesting before getting to bed. at 12:18AM.

SUNDAY, 3/13/11: Up at 7:58AM and read Times. 9AM: Feel good NOT to slavishly finish each day---though I may catch up later. KNOW I have to change the clocks, dress, have breakfast, and get out to the Games Group, but luxuriate in reading the Times while sitting on the pot for half an hour after pissing, and then typing DREAMS:3/13/11 and noting the highlights of the last three days to 9:02AM, then playing Spider 9:03-9:48AM, OK to 51.40514 at 665 up after 3 wins, 19 behind. Do what I have to do and finish with the Times by noon, so I play Spider from 12:02-1PM, good to 51.41106 at 668 up after 4 wins, now only 16 behind, and get out at 1PM for the Games Group, one of the larger at eight people, a young Black a welcome newcomer. We start with Boggle until Mark, the last to arrive, and then play Charades and end with Scattergories, leaving while it's still light. Play Spider again 7:30-7:40 to record the score, then continue to 11PM with many, many losses, and go through to MIDNIGHT, getting to bed at 1:28AM after having a very late dinner while watching TV.

MONDAY, 3/14/11: Up at 9:52AM, feeling good about not having to get up at night to pee. Start Spider at 10:20AM and stop at 11:30 to have breakfast to 12:02PM and put tooth whitener on at 12:15 and then Google to find that the Beresford DOES have a hollow core, and look again at the buildings around my apartments in Brooklyn Heights. Then back to Spider to 5:20PM, feeling AWFUL, ending at 51.39568 at 662 up after 4 wins, still 22 behind. Can't bring myself to do anything useful, so I watch "The Losers" with a just-beautiful Chris Evans, with an IMPOSSIBLE shelf under his pectorals, when he strips in the elevator, to his tight-white torso, and then continue with a stupid "Baby Mama" with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, just to waste time. Bed at 11:36PM.

TUESDAY, 3/15/11: Type DREAMS:3/15/11 and pee at 6:20AM. Type more dreams when I get up at 9:42AM. Have breakfast and do Spider 10:05-11:50AM to 51.40352 at 666 (!again) up after 7 wins, good at 18 behind. Back to Spider 12:40-2:05PM to 51.41147 at 670 up (the best of this card) after 6 wins, good at only 14 behind. Somehow pass the rest of the day---have NO idea what I did---maybe tried reading more Wolfram---and leave at 6:45PM to look for the red-bereted Catherine in the lobby of Symphony Space until 7:55, when I ask at the desk and they say the St. Charles people went in long ago, so I go in and get a fifth-row-center seat with the impaired audience and their keepers for "Deeply Rooted Dance," not that bad, but not that good, either. Walk down Broadway at 9:45PM trying to find a long-lost good burger place on the west side of the street, but pass Five Napkin Burger, and go in to sit by the bar and get served by a BEAUTIFUL Tanner D., a good burger and fries for $15, too full to consider dessert, and home to get to Spider 10:05-1:30AM, ending at 51.41316 at 671 up after 3 wins, good at 13 behind, and bed at 1:45AM.